The mammalian placenta exhibits elevated expression of endogenous retroviruses (ERVs), but the evolutionary significance of this feature remains unclear. I propose that ERV‐mediated regulatory evolution was, and continues to be, an important mechanism underlying the evolution of placental development. Many recent studies have focused on the co‐option of ERV‐derived genes for specific functional adaptations in the placenta. However, the co‐option of ERV‐derived regulatory elements could potentially lead to the incorporation of entire gene regulatory networks, which, I argue, would facilitate relatively (...) rapid developmental evolution of the placenta. I suggest a model in which an ancient retroviral infection led to the establishment of the ancestral placental developmental gene network through the co‐option of ERV‐derived regulatory elements. Consequently, placental development would require elevated tolerance to ERV activity. This in turn would expose a continuous stream of novel ERV mutations that may have catalyzed the developmental diversification of the mammalian placenta. (shrink)

Food security is one of the major concerns in the Philippines. Although livestock and poultry production accounts for a significant proportion of the country’s agricultural output, smallholder households are still vulnerable to food insecurity. The current study aims to examine how livestock production and selling difficulties affect smallholder households’ food-insecure conditions. For this objective, Bayesian Mindsponge Framework (BMF) analytics was employed on a dataset of the Food and Agriculture Organization’s Data in Emergencies Monitoring (DIEM) system. We found that production and (...) selling difficulties significantly adversely affect food insecurity in the Philippines. However, their effects vary according to the severity of food insecurity. In particular, production and selling difficulties affect the households’ likelihood of eating less healthy and nutritious food equally. However, the production difficulties have more negligible impacts on the possibility of skipping meals and even ambiguous impacts on the likelihood of not eating for a whole day compared to the effects of selling difficulties. Moreover, we also found that the market plays a crucial role in facilitating not only livestock trading but also livestock production (e.g., purchase of feed and medicines). Based on these findings, we suggest that the livestock market needs to be expanded and regulated to maintain the balancing prices between livestock products and products and services used for livestock production, and facilitate the product-exchanging mechanism. (shrink)

Marine and coastal ecosystems are crucial in maintaining human livelihood, facilitating social development, and reducing climate change impacts. Studies have examined how the benefit perception of aquatic ecosystems, knowledge, and emotion about climate change affect peoples’ support for marine protection. However, their interaction effects remain understudied. The current study explores the intricate interaction effect of the benefit perception of aquatic ecosystems, knowledge, and worry about climate change on marine protection support. Bayesian Mindsponge Framework (BMF) analytics was employed on a dataset (...) of 709 stakeholders from 42 countries generated by MaCoBioS—a research project funded by the European Commission Horizon 2020. The statistical analysis shows that the impacts of benefit perception of ocean ecosystems, knowledge, and worry about climate change on marine protection support vary due to their interactions. Specifically, when stakeholders perceive ocean ecosystems to have little utility in mitigating climate change, greater climate change knowledge and concern are associated with a higher level of marine protection support. Nevertheless, in the scenarios where stakeholders perceive the benefits of ocean ecosystems, the effect of climate change knowledge becomes conditional on the worry level. If stakeholders are concerned about climate change, those with a greater level of climate change knowledge will associate with a higher level of marine protection support. Otherwise, greater climate change knowledge will result in lower support. These findings highlight emotion’s importance in directing climate change knowledge’s effect on marine protection support. Linking people’s “objects of care” to the consequences of climate change can help improve climate change communication effectiveness. (shrink)

Aesthetics is a crucial ecosystem service provided by biodiversity, which is believed to help improve humans’ quality of life and is linked to environmental consciousness and pro-environmental behaviors. However, how aesthetic experience induced by plants/animals influences the belief in the occurrence and significance of biodiversity loss among urban residents remains understudied. Thus, the current study aimed to examine how the diversity of pets and in-house plants affect urban residents’ belief in biodiversity loss in different scenarios of aesthetic experiences (positive and (...) negative aesthetic experiences at home due to plants/animals). Using the Bayesian Mindsponge Framework (BMF) analytics on a dataset of 535 Vietnamese urban residents, we found that the people’s aesthetic feeling about their house induced by plants/animals positively affects their belief in the occurrence and significance of biodiversity loss. The diversity of plants and pets also positively influences the level of biodiversity loss belief, but the effect is conditional on the aesthetic experience of the urban residents. Specifically, the positive impact of species diversity on the belief only exists when urban residents feel that their houses’ aesthetics are negatively affected by plants/animals. Moreover, the effect of pet diversity on biodiversity loss belief is less significant and reliable than that of plant diversity. These findings suggest that raising the houses’ aesthetics through in-house planting or pet ownership can potentially enhance biodiversity loss belief and subsequently build an eco-surplus culture among urban residents. (shrink)

We have been using feather development as a model for understanding the molecular basis of pattern formation and to explore the roles of homeoproteins, retinoids and adhesion molecules in this process. Two kinds of homeobox (Hox) protein gradients in the skin have been identified: a ‘microgradient’ within a single feather bud and a ‘macrogradient’ across the feather tract. The asynchronous alignment of different Hox macrogradients establishes a unique repertoire of Hox expression patterns in skin appendages within the integument, designated here (...) as the ‘Hox codes of skin appendages’. It is hypothesized that these Hox codes contribute to the phenotypic determination of skin appendages. High doses of retinoic acid cause a morphological transformation between feather and scale, while low doses of retinoic acid cause an alteration of the axial orientation of skin appendages. We have tested the ability of molecules directly involved in the feather formation process to mediate the action of the Hox codes, and surmise that adhesion molecules are potential candidates. Using specific Fabs to suppress the activity of adhesion molecules, we have found that L‐CAM is involved in the formation of the hexagonal pattern, N‐CAM is involved in mediating dermal condensations, tenascin is involved in feather bud growth and elongation, and integrin β‐1 is essential for epithelial‐mesenchymal interactions. More work is in progress to fully understand the molecular pathways regulating the feather formation process. (shrink)

Climate change and environmental degradation are threatening the existence of humanity. The youth have the potential and capability to play a pivotal role in tackling these challenges. Therefore, the current study aims to examine how school and family environmental education can enhance environmental knowledge, willingness to take action, and pro-environmental behaviors among children and young people. The Bayesian Mindsponge Framework (BMF) analytics was utilized on a nationally representative dataset of 2069 Vietnamese primary, secondary, and high school students. The analysis results (...) suggest that school and family environmental education is beneficial for improving students’ environmental knowledge and willingness to take environmental actions. Notably, the effect of school education is more substantial for cultivating environmental knowledge, whereas family education has a stronger impact on raising students’ willingness than school education. Students with higher levels of environmental knowledge are more likely to conduct pro-environmental behaviors only when they are willing to take environmental actions. If students are unwilling to act, higher environmental knowledge is negatively associated with the likelihood of pro-environmental behavior. Following these findings, we call for coordinated education efforts of schools and families to cultivate students’ eco-surplus culture. The education efforts should be implemented along with exposing students to environmental settings and encouraging them to read environmental books. (shrink)

Public parks play important roles in conserving biodiversity, promoting environmental sustainability, fostering community engagement, and enhancing the overall well-being of residents in urban areas. Nevertheless, finance is needed to maintain and expand the greenspaces in the parks. The current study aims to examine how perceptions of biodiversity loss consequences and park visitation frequency influence the residents’ willingness to contribute financially to tree-planting projects in public parks. Employing the Bayesian Mindsponge Framework analytics on a dataset of 535 Vietnamese urban residents, we (...) discovered that perceived health loss and knowledge erosion as consequences of biodiversity loss and park visitation frequency are directly positively associated with financial donation willingness. Meanwhile, the perceived economic growth loss was found to be indirectly positively associated with donation willingness through park visitation frequency, whereas the perceived loss of nature-based recreation opportunities exhibits the opposite indirect association. Based on these results, communication strategies focusing on the multifaceted benefits of biodiversity preservation and investments in public parks are recommended to improve urban residents’ financial support to park panting initiatives, accessibility to greenspaces, and connections with nature. These are crucial for promoting an eco-surplus culture that enhances biodiversity conservation and human well-being. (shrink)

Author's interpretation on Kinh Dịch in Vietnam.

Effective stakeholder engagement and inclusive governance are essential for effective and equitable ocean management. However, few cross-national studies have been conducted to examine how stakeholders’ economic and cultural benefit perceptions influence their support level for policies focused on ocean preservation. The current study aims to fill this gap by employing the Bayesian Mindsponge Framework (BMF) analytics on a dataset of 709 stakeholders from 42 countries, a part of the MaCoBioS project funded by the European Commission H2020. We found that economic (...) and cultural benefit perceptions are generally negatively associated with the policy support level. Regarding economic aspects, stakeholders considering transportation and shipping, renewable energy generation, and oil and gas provision as the most crucial benefits their countries’ oceans provide tend to obtain less support for policies focusing on ocean preservation. Meanwhile, for cultural aspects, perceiving recreation and tourism, aesthetic pleasure, mental health and well-being support, and sense of identity provision as the most important benefits provided by the country’s ocean are negatively associated with the policy support level. The perceived economic, cultural, and environmental tradeoffs when supporting policies focused on ocean preservation were discussed. Recommendations for improving the effective management of multi-use marine space are also provided to reduce the perceived competing interests among stakeholders. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Amartya Sen’s capability approach is often used in disability research as a normative framework for describing and evaluating the well-being of people with disabilities. Nevertheless, recently, the possibility of going beyond description to the use of the capability approach as an explanatory tool has been raised. However, to allow the use of the capability approach in this way requires grounding it in an appropriate research paradigm. In this paper, critical realism is adopted for this purpose. It is argued that (...) critical realism can provide the ontology needed to justify finding explanations for the way that people with disabilities achieve their valued capabilities. The assumption here is that there are real, emergent structures and mechanisms that underlie empirical capabilities; and that these structures and mechanisms are related to people’s agency, as described by critical realism’s conception of the relationship between structure and agency. (shrink)

Our language system is ambiguous in that the same utterance can be interpreted in different ways depending on the intention of the speaker. For example, the phrase, “Nice job!” can be interpreted a...

Thomas Aquinas persistently defended the idea that the soul survives physical death. But what exactly is the rational soul that becomes separated from the body at death? When a person’s body dies, do they cease to exist? Over the past few decades, a nuanced debate has developed between “survivalists” and “corruptionists” over whether or not a separated soul is still a person, leading to impenetrable disagreements in which neither side can seem to sway the other. In this research, I propose (...) a previously unexplored answer to this contentious query: that a person whose soul has been separated from their body is an incomplete human being. (shrink)

With growing global concerns about water scarcity and environmental sustainability, understanding the factors influencing individual water conservation behaviors is crucial. This study utilizes the Bayesian Mindsponge Framework (BMF) analytics to investigate the relationship between concerns of local issues and water conservation behaviors in a sample of 1831 residents in Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA. New Mexico is an arid region of which 90% faced severe drought driven by the most significant wildfire in state history and some of the driest months ever (...) recorded in 2022. The results show a positive association between the drought or water scarcity concern and the number of water conservation behaviors adopted. Likewise, the positive association between the concern about population growth and development and water conservation behaviors is also observed. However, further examination is needed due to the weak reliability of this relationship. In contrast, negative associations between concerns about water quality and water bills with water conservation behaviors are also identified. Based on these findings, the study discusses the potential of building the eco-surplus culture by improving information dissemination of water-saving methods and existing water-related issues in the local areas. (shrink)

Community and stakeholder support for marine and coastal ecosystem conservation policies is crucial. However, extant multinational studies on climate change-related factors that constrain stakeholders’ willingness to protect the ocean are limited. Therefore, the dataset from 709 marine stakeholders across 42 countries, part of the MaCoBioS project funded by the European Commission, was analyzed using the Bayesian Mindsponge Framework (BMF) method to fill the knowledge gap. The findings reveal that for individuals who think society is doing too much to address climate (...) change, new technologies can solve climate change. Responses to climate change can damage the country’s economy and might not be productive in supporting actions protecting the ocean. Based on the study results, we recommend policymakers raise awareness among individuals engaged in marine and coastal ecosystems about the crucial role of marine protection in combating climate change, taking into account the limitations of technology in solving climate change problems and the inadequacy of current efforts. The findings also provide insights for enhancing the effectiveness of awareness and knowledge-raising campaigns, conservation programs, and eco-surplus culture-building agenda. (shrink)

Motile eukaryotic cilia and flagella are hair-like organelles responsible for cell motility and mucociliary clearance. Using cryo-electron tomography, it has been shown that the doublet microtubule, the cytoskeleton core of the cilia and flagella, has microtubule inner protein structures binding periodically inside its lumen. More recently, single-particle cryo-electron microscopy analyses of isolated doublet microtubules have shown that microtubule inner proteins form a meshwork inside the doublet microtubule. High-resolution structures revealed new types of interactions between the microtubule inner proteins and the (...) tubulin lattice. In addition, they offered insights into the potential roles of microtubule inner proteins in the stabilization and assembly of the doublet microtubule. Herein, we review our new insights into microtubule inner proteins from the doublet microtubule together with the current body of literature on microtubule inner proteins. High-resolution cryo-electron microscopy structure of the doublet microtubule from Tetrahymena reveals insights into the interactions between microtubule inner proteins with the doublet microtubule tubulin lattice and implication of their functions in the stability and assembly of the doublet microtubule. (shrink)

In an Internet of Things (IoT) environment, IoT devices are typically connected through different network media types such as mobile, wireless and wired networks. Due to the pervasive nature of such devices, they are a potential evidence source in both civil litigation and criminal investigations. It is, however, challenging to identify and acquire forensic artefacts from a broad range of devices, which have varying storage and communication capabilities. Hence, in this paper, we first propose an IoT network architecture for the (...) forensic purpose that uses machine learning algorithms to autonomously detect IoT devices. Then we posit the importance of focusing on the links between different IoT devices (e.g. whether one device is controlled or can be accessed from another device in the system), and design an approach to do so. Specifically, our approach adopts a graph for modelling IoT communications’ message flows to facilitate the identification of correlated network traffic based on the direction of the network and the associated attributes. To demonstrate how such an approach can be deployed in practice, we provide a proof of concept using two IoT controllers to generate 480 commands for controlling two IoT devices in a smart home environment and achieve an accuracy rate of 98.3% for detecting the links between devices. We also evaluate the proposed autonomous discovering of IoT devices and their activities in a TCP network by using real-world measurements from a public dataset of a popular off-the-shelf smart home deployed in two different locations. We selected 39 out of 81 different IoT devices for this evaluation. (shrink)

Third-party punishment (TPP) occurs when the perpetrator of a transgression is punished by an individual who is not the victim of the transgression and, therefore, not directly affected by it. As F...

Recent studies have revealed how workers’ movements adapted republicanism into a language of anticapitalism in the nineteenth century. Much less attention has been paid, however, to the role feminists played in this process. This essay addresses this oversight by introducing the voices of the utopian socialists under July Monarchy France. These socialists insisted that there could be no social revolution without sexual revolution. Although they are often positioned outside of the republican tradition, this essay argues that the utopian socialists are (...) better understood as rendering the legacy of classical and French republicanism compatible with nascent workers’ movements in the 1830s. By foregrounding the feminist Flora Tristan, this essay shows how utopian socialists weaponized republican tropes to address the social question, thereby expanding what a republican critique of capitalism could look like. (shrink)

The expanding integration of artificial intelligence (AI) in various aspects of society makes the infosphere around us increasingly complex. Humanity already faces many obstacles trying to have a better understanding of our own minds, but now we have to continue finding ways to make sense of the minds of AI. The issue of AI’s capability to have independent thinking is of special attention. When dealing with such an unfamiliar concept, people may rely on existing human properties, such as survival desire, (...) to make assessments. Employing information-processing-based Bayesian Mindsponge Framework (BMF) analytics on a dataset of 266 residents in the United States, we found that the more people believe that an AI agent seeks continued functioning, the more they believe in that AI agent’s capability of having a mind of its own. Moreover, we also found that the above association becomes stronger if a person is more familiar with personally interacting with AI. This suggests a directional pattern of value reinforcement in perceptions of AI. As the information processing of AI becomes even more sophisticated in the future, it will be much harder to set clear boundaries about what it means to have an autonomous mind. (shrink)

The proposal by Clarke and Beck offers a new explanation for the association between the approximate number system and math. Previous explanations have largely relied on developmental arguments, an underspecified notion of the ANS as an “error detection mechanism,” or affective factors. The proposal that the ANS represents rational numbers suggests that it may directly support a broader range of math skills.

Cancer care has transitioned from clinical-based to home-based care to support longterm care in a more familiar and comfortable environment. This care transition has put family caregivers (FCGs) in a strategic position as care providers. Cancer care at home involves psychological and emotional treatment at some point, making FCGs deal with the stress of cancer patients frequently. Due to their limited care competencies, they need supportive care from healthcare professionals in cancer stress management. This study aims to examine how types (...) of demanded healthcare information affect the FCG’s role in reducing the stress of female cancer patients. The mindsponge theory was used in conceptual development and interpretation. Bayesian Mindsponge Framework (BMF) analytics were used for statistical analysis on a dataset of 48 spouses (husbands) and 12 other family members in five congested communities of Surabaya, Indonesia. Results showed that among the six types of healthcare information, FCGs with higher demand for cancer-specific information were more likely to need support in reducing the stress of female cancer patients. Meanwhile, FCGs with a higher demand for information about support services were less likely to need support to reduce cancer patients’ stress. Other types of healthcare information have ambiguous effects on the need for support in reducing cancer-induced stress. This study reveals that the demanded cancer-specific information, e.g., cancer prognosis or likely outcome, must be prioritized to assist FCG’s role in managing cancer stress. (shrink)

Vietnam, with a geographical proximity and a high volume of trade with China, was the first country to record an outbreak of the new Coronavirus disease (COVID-19), caused by the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 or SARS-CoV-2. While the country was expected to have a high risk of transmission, as of April 4, 2020—in comparison to attempts to contain the disease around the world—responses from Vietnam are being seen as prompt and effective in protecting the interests of its citizens, (...) with 239 confirmed cases and no fatalities. This study analyzes the situation in terms of Vietnam’s policy response, social media and science journalism. A self-made web crawl engine was used to scan and collect official media news related to COVID-19 between the beginning of January and April 4, yielding a comprehensive dataset of 14,952 news items. The findings shed light on how Vietnam—despite being under-resourced—has demonstrated political readiness to combat the emerging pandemic since the earliest days. Timely communication on any developments of the outbreak from the government and the media, combined with up-to-date research on the new virus by the Vietnamese science community, have altogether provided reliable sources of information. By emphasizing the need for immediate and genuine cooperation between government, civil society and private individuals, the case study offers valuable lessons for other nations concerning not only the concurrent fight against the COVID-19 pandemic but also the overall responses to a public health crisis. (shrink)

Environmental activism plays a vital role in raising awareness of environmental degradation and halting environmentally destructive activities, which is expected to contribute to safeguarding the Earth’s system against climate and biodiversity loss crises. Although the passion and commitment of environmental activists should be acknowledged, several groups of environmental activists are embracing the radical environmentalist movement. They support using illegal actions to achieve their primary goal of environmental protection. The actions perpetrated by radical environmentalist groups are not impulsive but rather part (...) of a deliberately planned and organized following a long-term strategy. (shrink)

BackgroundBiobanks are considered to be key infrastructures for research development and have generated a lot of debate about their ethical, legal and social implications. While the focus has been on human genomic research, rapid advances in human microbiome research further complicate the debate.DiscussionWe draw on two cystic fibrosis biobanks in Toronto, Canada, to illustrate our points. The biobanks have been established to facilitate sample and data sharing for research into the link between disease progression and microbial dynamics in the lungs (...) of pediatric and adult patients. We begin by providing an overview of some of the ELSI associated with human microbiome research, particularly on the implications for the broader society. We then discuss ethical considerations regarding the identifiability of samples biobanked for human microbiome research, and examine the issue of return of results and incidental findings. We argue that, for the purposes of research ethics oversight, human microbiome research samples should be treated with the same privacy considerations as human tissues samples. We also suggest that returning individual microbiome-related findings could provide a powerful clinical tool for care management, but highlight the need for a more grounded understanding of contextual factors that may be unique to human microbiome research.ConclusionsWe revisit the ELSI of biobanking and consider the impact that human microbiome research might have. Our discussion focuses on identifiability of human microbiome research samples, and return of research results and incidental findings for clinical management. (shrink)

Universities and funders in many countries have been using Journal Impact Factor (JIF) as an indicator for research and grant assessment despite its controversial nature as a statistical representation of scientific quality. This study investigates how the changes of JIF over the years can affect its role in research evaluation and science management by using JIF data from annual Journal Citation Reports (JCR) to illustrate the changes. The descriptive statistics find out an increase in the median JIF for the top (...) 50 journals in the JCR, from 29.300 in 2017 to 33.162 in 2019. Moreover, on average, elite journal families have up to 27 journals in the top 50. In the group of journals with a JIF of lower than 1, the proportion has shrunk by 14.53% in the 2015–2019 period. The findings suggest a potential ‘JIF bubble period’ that science policymaker, university, public fund managers, and other stakeholders should pay more attention to JIF as a criterion for quality assessment to ensure more efficient science management. (shrink)

Ao dai is a typical long dress of Viet Nam used to be worn by both men and women of the Viet and other ethnic peoples. In her shaping and development history, Viet Nam became a place that converged various cultural flows such as the Vietnamese indigenous culture and that of the Chinese, Champa and Indian etc. To the end of the 19th century, especially the 20th, Viet Nam continued to be influenced by the French culture and the American ways (...) of living. The acceptance of cultures from various nationalities and communities from the North to South, East to West made it possible for the Vietnamese fashion designers to harmonize all into an Ao dai for the Vietnamese women. This article will synthesize and analyze three renovation movements of Ao dai in the 20th century. It also discusses about these processes and introduces typical innovators whose contribution has created the Ao dai as it is today, a traditional dress that represents history of the Vietnamese culture, aesthetic sense, art and vitality. (shrink)

Cet article revient sur le surréalisme pour montrer de quelles façons la psychanalyse a fourni une lingua franca internationale à la critique de l’humanisme européen et du racisme colonial du milieu du siècle dernier. La Première Guerre mondiale a initié une remise en question des valeurs européennes, qui a été exacerbée par le modernisme de l’entre-deux-guerres et la Seconde Guerre mondiale. Les écrits de Freud ont contribué à cette remise en question. Cela a non seulement été le cas pour l’École (...) de Francfort et la philosophie française, mais également pour les intellectuels et artistes surréalistes des deux côtés de l’Atlantique. Entre leurs mains, des concepts tels que l’inconscient, l’aliénation et le mythe ont proposé un vocabulaire commun pour s’attaquer à la hiérarchie raciale et esquisser un nivellement culturel entre l’Europe et ses autres. Lire le surréalisme en même temps que ses ramifications, de la négritude au structuralisme, permet aux théoriciens contemporains de renouer le dialogue avec ces ancêtres qui ont été oubliés à mesure que l’influence de Freud s’affaiblissait au cours du xxe siècle. (shrink)

No concept attracted as much controversy, or muddled ideological identifications so thoroughly, as ‘myth’ in interwar France. By the late 1930s, ‘la mythomanie’ was drawing systematic attention from existentialists, Surrealists, ethnologists, sociologists, and nascent fascist movements. This essay reconsiders this polemical and misunderstood moment in interwar thought. It focuses on the intellectuals most central to its notoriety: the members of the Collège de sociologie and their fascination with Georges Sorel. Though interwar mythomania has long been treated as an antiparliamentary cultural (...) politics designed to secure enthusiastic mass conformity, this essay argues that such accounts are incomplete. They misunderstand the deeper philosophical debate unfolding about the conditions of revolutionary agency in a desacralized society. Bringing this debate back into focus helps liberate mythomania from historiographic commonplaces. It emphasizes how, for better or worse, many of those who advocated for new political myths aimed to spur human agency, not confiscate it. (shrink)

The annotated dataset is an essential requirement to develop an artificial intelligence system effectively and expect the generalization of the predictive models and to avoid overfitting. Lack of the training data is a big barrier so that AI systems can broaden in several domains which have no or missing training data. Building these datasets is a tedious and expensive task and depends on the domains and languages. This is especially a big challenge for low-resource languages. In this paper, we experiment (...) and evaluate many various approaches on sentiment analysis problems so that they can still obtain high performances under limited training data. This paper uses the preprocessing techniques to clean and normalize the data and generate the new samples from the limited training dataset based on many text augmentation techniques such as lexicon substitution, sentence shuffling, back translation, syntax-tree transformation, and embedding mixup. Several experiments have been performed for both well-known machine learning-based classifiers and deep learning models. We compare, analyze, and evaluate the results to indicate the advantage and disadvantage points of the techniques for each approach. The experimental results show that the data augmentation techniques enhance the accuracy of the predictive models; this promises that smart systems can be applied widely in several domains under limited training data. (shrink)

Coastal protection is crucial to human development since the ocean has many values associated with the economy, ecosystem, and culture. However, most ocean protecting efforts are currently ineffective due to the burdens of finance, lack of appropriate management, and international cooperation regimes. For aiding bottom-up initiatives for ocean protection support, this study employed the Mindsponge Theory to examine how the public’s perceived economic and cultural values influence their willingness to support actions to protect the ocean. Analyzing the European-Union-Horizon-2020-funded dataset of (...) 709 respondents from 42 countries, we discovered that perceived economic values have negative effects on the tendency of ocean protection supports (i.e., food, transportation, renewable energy, oil and gas, and recreation). In contrast, certain perceived cultural values can help increase the willingness to do so (i.e., mental well-being and sense of identity). However, the effects of perceived cultural values are only moderately reliable. These findings suggest that designing cultural information delivery campaigns can help promote coastal reserve supports, such as fundraisings and preserving the oceans from the community. (shrink)

Folklore has a critical role as a cultural transmitter, all the while being a socially accepted medium for the expressions of culturally contradicting wishes and conducts. In this study of Vietnamese folktales, through the use of Bayesian multilevel modeling and the Markov chain Monte Carlo technique, we offer empirical evidence for how the interplay between religious teachings (Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism) and deviant behaviors (lying and violence) could affect a folktale’s outcome. The findings indicate that characters who lie and/or commit (...) violent acts tend to have bad endings, as intuition would dictate, but when they are associated with any of the above Three Teachings, the final endings may vary. Positive outcomes are seen in cases where characters associated with Confucianism lie and characters associated with Buddhism act violently. The results supplement the worldwide literature on discrepancies between folklore and real-life conduct, as well as on the contradictory human behaviors vis-à-vis religious teachings. Overall, the study highlights the complexity of human decision-making, especially beyond the folklore realm. (shrink)

Background. Drawing on social identity theory and positive psychology, this study investigated women’s responses to the social environment of physics classrooms. It also investigated STEM identity and gender disparities on academic achievement and flourishing in an undergraduate introductory physics course for STEM majors. 160 undergraduate students enrolled in an introductory physics course were administered a baseline survey with self-report measures on course belonging, physics identification, flourishing, and demographics at the beginning of the course and a post-survey at the end of (...) the academic term. Students also completed force concept inventories and physics course grades were obtained from the registrar. Results. Women reported less course belonging and less physics identification than men. Physics identification and grades evidenced a longitudinal bidirectional relationship for all students (regardless of gender) such that when controlling for baseline physics knowledge: (a) students with higher physics identification were more likely to earn higher grades; and (b) students with higher grades evidenced more physics identification at the end of the term. Men scored higher on the force concept inventory than women, although no gender disparities emerged for course grades. For women, higher physics (versus lower) identification was associated with more positive changes in flourishing over the course of the term. High-identifying men showed the opposite pattern: negative change in flourishing was more strongly associated with high identifiers than low identifiers. Conclusions. Overall, this study underlines gender disparities in physics both in terms of belonging and physics knowledge. It suggests that strong STEM identity may be associated with academic performance and flourishing in undergraduate physics courses at the end of the term, particularly for women. A number of avenues for future research are discussed. (shrink)

As climate change continues to pose global challenges, understanding how individuals perceive and respond to its effects is crucial for informed policymaking and community engagement. Conducting the Bayesian Mindsponge Framework (BMF) analysis on a dataset of 1,831 water users in Albuquerque, New Mexico, the study explores the intricate dynamics between climate change belief, awareness of water scarcity, and water conservation behaviors. Results reveal a complex relationship wherein residents with increased awareness of water scarcity demonstrate intensified water conservation behaviors, particularly when (...) believing in climate change’s negative impacts on water supply. The moderating role of water scarcity awareness introduces complexity, suggesting that the correlation between residents' belief in climate change and their engagement in water conservation behaviors depends on their awareness of local water challenges. This study highlights the importance of appropriate interventions that consider both psychological and contextual dimensions in promoting sustainable water management practices. Policy recommendations emphasize integrated awareness campaigns, developing an eco-surplus mindset, and incorporating sustainability principles aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals. (shrink)