Waiting or Acting? The Gender Gap in International Football Success

The conditions under which women's national football teams do better or worse in international tournaments remains an open question. Using data from 116 countries worldwide, we have examined three arguments accounting for the gender gap in international football success, focusing on positive externalities from economic development and women's empowerment, and the active policies promoting women's football. Our findings show that the international performance of women's national football teams compared to men's national football teams increases with women's empowerment and in countries committed to the promotion of women's football, while economic development is not relevant. The general question we address is whether gender gaps disappear because of economic and social development, or if active policies promoting women are required to achieve gender equality.

Mapping manifestations of parametric uncertainty in projected pelagic oxygen concentrations back to contemporary local model fidelity

Pelagic biogeochemical models (BGCMs) have matured into generic components of Earth System Models. BGCMs mimic the effects of marine biota on oceanic nutrient, carbon and oxygen cycles. They rely on parameters that are adjusted to match observed conditions. Such parameters are key to determining the models’ responses to changing environmental conditions. However, many of these parameters are difficult to constrain and constitute a major source of uncertainty in BGCM projections. Here we use, for the first time, variance-based sensitivity analyses to map BGCM parameter uncertainties onto their respective local manifestation in model entities (such as oceanic oxygen concentrations) for both contemporary climate and climate projections. The mapping effectively relates local uncertainties of projections to the uncertainty of specific parameters. Further, it identifies contemporary benchmarking regions, where the uncertainties of specific parameters manifest themselves, thereby facilitating an effective parameter refinement and a reduction of the associated uncertainty. Our results demonstrate that the parameters that are linked to uncertainties in projections may differ from those parameters that facilitate model conformity with present-day observations. In summary, we present a practical approach to the general question of where present-day model fidelity may be indicative for reliable projections.

Deformation-induced actuation of cells in asymmetric periodic flow fields

Analyzing and sorting particles and/or biological cells in microfluidic devices is a topical problem in soft-matter and biomedical physics. An easy and rapid screening of the deformation of individual cells in constricted microfluidic channels allows, for example, the identification of sick or aberrant cells with altered mechanical properties, even in vast cell ensembles. The subsequently desired softness-specific segregation of cells is, however, still a major challenge. Moreover, aiming at an intrinsic and unsupervised approach raises a very general question: How can one achieve a softness-dependent net migration of particles in a microfluidic channel? Here we show that this is possible by exploiting a deformation-induced actuation of soft cells in asymmetric periodic flow fields in which rigid beads show a vanishing net drift.

The President – creator or prisoner of his own image? Psychopolitical determinants of the functioning of the Head of State exemplified by the Polish Presidency of Andrzej Duda

Political leadership is among the fundamental political-science categories, it remains to be defined clearly as a phenomenon. Nevertheless, as the years have passed, conditions in and around political systems have given rise to leadership models models describable in line with a triad of change from traditional leadership to marketing-oriented leadership and then to neo-leadership. The innovative definition of the latter has then been brought together with considerations of political image, with the resultant category then proving of interest to those researching either the political, or the sociological, or the communicological perspectives. The images of all key players in politics are both created and managed, while leadership that is actually effective or perceived to be so is essential if political power and support are to be built and maintained. The example of Polish President Andrzej Duda is here used in an analysis of the image of Head of State, in the circumstances of the 2015–2020 period overall, as well as the 2020 (re-) election campaign. This is done with a view to answering a general question regarding the extent to which a given politician (and here A. Duda specifically) is the creator or the prisoner of his/her own image. Account is thus taken of the factors shaping the image of this particular President (i.e. advisors and family, the media and the electorate). While the conclusions obtained here are not unequivocal, they do open up new questions relating to the future of leadership in times of crises and the existence of major populist movements. Consideration of these issues is here based mainly on the comparative and historical methods.

Perception and Practice of Bangladeshi Adults Towards the Prevention of COVID-19: A Statistical Analysis

Background: The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has continued to spread across the world with increasing numbers of confirmed cases and deaths. Due to outbreaks of new variants of the virus and limited treatment options, positive perception and good practice of preventive guidelines have remained essential measures for the prevention of the disease and slowing down its transmission. We aimed to study perception towards COVID-19 and the practice of guidelines for preventing the disease among Bangladeshi adults during the early stage of the rapid rise of the outbreak. Methods: Data was collected data from 320 participants. For measuring their level of practice, we asked a general question: “Are you properly following the WHO-recommended guidelines to avoid COVID-19?” The frequency distribution, Chi-square (χ2) test and binary logistic regression model were used in this study. Results: The average risk perception among the participants was 3.05±0.75 (median, 3.00) (95% CI of mean: 2.96-3.13) where the score ranges from 0 (no risk) to 4 (high risk). More than 27% of participants showed high-risk perceptions. Males (p<0.05), high educated (p<0.05), rich (p<0.01), service holders (p<0.05), and younger adults (p<0.05) had higher odds of high-risk perception. More than 71% of participants had a good practice of always following the WHO guidelines to prevent COVID-19 and living locations in urban areas (p<0.01), high education (p<0.01), rich (p<0.01), and joint family (p<0.01) had the most contributions to good practice. Conclusions: The study findings revealed that special attention should be given to rural areas, and individuals of low literacy, education and socioeconomic level to more effectively prevent COVID-19.

Between Ethnology and Cultural History

While a few larger collections of objects of East Asian origin entered Slovenian mu­seums after the deaths of their owners in the 1950s and 60s, individual items had begun finding their way there as early as the nineteenth century. Museums were faced early on with the problem not only of how to store and exhibit the objects, but also how to categorize them. Were they to be treated as “art” on account of their aesthetic value or did they belong, rather, to the field of “ethnography” or “anthropology” because they could illustrate the way of life of other peoples? Above all, in which museums were these objects to be housed? The present paper offers an in-depth analysis of these and related questions, seeking to shed light on how East Asian objects have been showcased in Slovenia (with a focus on the National Museum and the Slovene Ethnographic Museum) over the past two hundred years. In particular, it explores the values and criteria that were applied when placing these objects into individual categories. In contrast to the conceptual shift from “ethnology” to the “decorative and fine arts,” which can mostly be observed in the categorization of East Asian objects in North America and the former European colonial countries, the classification of such objects in Slovenia varied between “ethnology” and “cultural history,” with ethnology ultimately coming out on top. This ties in with the more general question of how (East) Asian cultures were understood and perceived in Slovenia, which is itself related to the historical and social development of the “peripheral” Slovenian area compared with former major imperial centres.

Discourse of Freedom and Contemporary Greco-Protestantism

In this article, the author provides an analysis of the “discourse of freedom” as one of the foundations for secular and ecclesiastical liberalism. The discourse of freedom receives the name of a “libertian discourse” (not to be confused with libertarianism — a specific political and ideological current). The libertian discourse is studied within its historical origins associated with the legal codes of ancient Rome and the social philosophy of the Enlightenment. The libertian discourse and the related concept of the “natural law”, hardly evolving and unchanged in the 300 years since its inception, has outlived its historical competitors in the form of historical law, Marxism, etc. This phenomenon of libertian fundamentalism refutes the liberal axiom of permanent social progress and modernization, which also applies to the sphere of knowledge. Since the concept of fundamental (generic) rights and freedoms can be neither scientifically proven nor deduced from the traditional norms and values, it should be classified as a metaphysical (in Karl Popper's sense), fundamentalist and quasi-religious doctrine. This article shows the contemporary transformations of the phenomenon of freedom, which results in the libertian discourse becoming an integral part of power practices, an exclusive right to criticize power and a “subtle discourse of power”. The contemporary function of libertianism lies in restricting the freedom of a political opponent in the name of fighting for freedom and in creating a marketable competitive field of political compensation for the restriction of freedoms (stigmatization). The author points to the struggle between two cultural-historical and religious paradigms with different understandings of freedom — the “Roman” (political, elitist) and biblical (social), emphasizing that this struggle generates two versions of the discourse of freedom in the contemporary political space. The author raises the question of the demarcation of freedom paradigms on the same grounds as the more general question of “paradigms of involvement with the transcendent” and the hybrid mixing of different paradigmatic foundations in the modern interpretation of freedom.

THE TRADITIONAL ARAB ISLAMIC CITY: THE STRUCTURE OF NEIGHBORHOOD QUARTERS

This paper is concerned with the structure of quarters in traditional Arab Islamic cities. Previous studies have stressed the idea of an urban structure that corresponds to social groupings, in that it is seen as a collection of neighborhood quarters. This spatial model has often provided the rationale for the design of new housing layouts. The purpose of this study is to examine this issue and to argue that the structure of these cities presents a global whole. To achieve this purpose a general and a specific question are addressed. The general question is about the physically sub-areas within the city, and the specific question is about the issue of social groupings and the kind of relation that space has to society. The proposition thus invokes the idea of a physical structure which appears to correspond to a social pattern. The city of Damascus is used as a model of analysis in which the urban structure is described and characterised. The argument is advanced that the traditional Arab Islamic city has a sub-area structure which is historically generated, but whose morphological combination is fine-tuned and adjusted so that the whole comes to dominate and unify the parts.

Implications of Counselling, Psychological and Social Services on Academic Performance of Primary School Pupils in Southwest, Nigeria

The study examined implications of counselling, psychological and social services on academic performance of primary school pupils in Southwest, Nigeria. The study adopted a descriptive survey research design. The population consisted of all primary school teachers in Southwest out of which 1006 teachers were selected from the three sampled states in Southwest, Nigeria. Multistage sampling procedure was used to select sample for the study. The instrument used for data collection was tagged Implications of Counselling, Psychological and Social Services Questionnaire “(CPSSQ)” and a proforma titled “Data Retrieval Format” (DRF). CPSSQ comprised of two sections. Section A sought information on the bio data of the respondents while Section B was used to elicit information on implications of psychological, emotional and social dimensions of the pupils’ health. The instrument was validated by experts in Guidance and Counselling, Human Kinetics and Health Education and Tests and Measurement. The reliability of the instrument was ensured by using Pearson's Product Moment Correlation analysis and had reliability co-efficient of 0.86, which was adjudge high enough and considered the instrument to be reliable. One general question was raised and one null hypothesis was formulated for the study. The study revealed that counselling, psychological and social services had implications on school health programme. It was therefore recommended that the status of school health programme in Southwest should be improved upon, considering its importance to the survival and academic performance of the school pupils.