Background: This study developed a photo and video database of 4-to-6-year-olds expressing the seven induced and posed universal emotions and a neutral expression. Children participated in photo and video sessions designed to elicit the emotions, and the resulting images were further assessed by independent judges in two rounds. Methods: In the first round, two independent judges, experts in the Facial Action Coding System, firstly analysed 3,668 emotions facial expressions stimuli from 132 children. Both judges reached 100% agreement regarding 1,985 stimuli, (...) which were then selected for a second round of analysis between judges 3 and 4. Results: The result was 1,985 stimuli were produced from 124 participants. A Kappa index of 0.70 and an accuracy of 73% between experts were observed. Lower accuracy was found for emotional expression by 4-year-olds than 6-year-olds. Happiness, disgust and contempt had the highest agreement. After a sub-analysis evaluation of all four judges, 100% agreement was reached for 1,381 stimuli which compound the ChildEFES database with 124 participants and 51% induced photographs. The number of stimuli of each emotion were: 87 for neutrality, 363 for happiness, 170 for disgust, 104 for surprise, 152 for fear, 144 for sadness, 157 for anger 157, and 183 for contempt. Conclusions: The findings show that this photo and video database can facilitate research on the mechanisms involved in early childhood recognition of facial emotions in children, contributing to the understanding of facial emotion recognition deficits which characterise several neurodevelopmental and psychiatric disorders. (shrink)

This special issue is the result of concerns about the marginalized status of gender within the sociology of religion. The collection of exciting new research in this special issue advocates for the importance of a gender lens on questions of religion in order to highlight issues, practices, peoples, and theories that would otherwise not be central to the discipline. We encourage sociologists who study religion to engage more in interdisciplinary and intersectional scholarship, acknowledge developments in the global South, and develop (...) more compelling theoretical frameworks that analyze religion from a gendered perspective. Our aim is to bring religion to the attention of gender and feminist scholars and to encourage religion scholars to consider gender not just as a variable but as a social structure. We hope that both groups of scholars will consider gender and religion as mutually constitutive social categories. (shrink)

Wider diversity in board member characteristics has been advocated as a means of improving organizational performance by providing boards with new insights and perspectives. With data from 240 YMCA organizations, a board diversity index was constructed and compared to multiple measures of board member diversity. Results revealed higher levels of social performance and fundraising results when board members had greater occupational diversity. Gender diversity compared favorably to the organization's level of social performance but a negative association surfaced for level of (...) funds raised. The diversity in board member age groupings was linked to higher levels of donations. (shrink)

This book draws upon a wealth of archival material to present the life and achievements of Pietro Blaserna, a “gentleman scientist” whose greatest legacy is considered to be the Institute of Physics on the Via Panisperna in Rome, of which he was the creator and first director. Both in this role and as President of the Accademia dei Lincei, Blaserna contributed enormously in establishing a sound institutional base for the further development of physics in Italy. Starting from an accurate historical (...) reconstruction of the scientific, social, and political context, the author presents the different phases of Pietro Blaserna’s life and career. As a multifaceted intellectual and a scientist holding several institutional positions, Blaserna worked ceaselessly to promote an effective policy in science and technology, which was critically important in stimulating the development of Italy as a modern nation. Blaserna may not have left scientific works that made history, but what he created in Rome was a real "house of physics", equipped with modern laboratories and instruments. In tracing his important legacy, this book will be of interest for all historians of science and for historians of nineteenth and twentieth century Italy. (shrink)

Recent turmoil in the Middle East and North Africa has prompted renewed concerns about women’s rights in Muslim societies. It has also raised questions about women’s agency and activism in religious contexts. This article draws on ethnographic research with women activists in Indonesia, the country with the world’s largest Muslim population, to address such concerns. My fieldwork shows that some Muslim women activists in democratizing Indonesia manifest pious critical agency. Pious critical agency is the capacity to engage critically and publicly (...) with religious texts. While some scholars have argued that pious and feminist subjectivity are inherently at odds, the emergence of pious critical agency in Indonesia demonstrates that piety and feminism can intersect in surprising and unexpected ways. Moreover, it shows that women’s agency can draw on both secular and religious resources and that religion can be used to promote critical discourses on gender. (shrink)

We propose a discrete time branching process to model the appearance of drug resistance under treatment. Under our assumptions at every discrete time a pathogen may die with probability 1−p or divide in two with probability p. Each newborn pathogen is drug resistant with probability μ. We start with N drug sensitive pathogens and with no drug resistant pathogens. We declare the treatment successful if all pathogens are eradicated before drug resistance appears. The model predicts that success is possible only (...) if p<1/2. Even in this case the probability of success decreases exponentially with the parameter m=μN. In particular, even with a very potent drug (i.e. p very small) drug resistance is likely if m is large. (shrink)

The issue of organ donation and of how the donor pool can or should be increased is one with significant practical, ethical and logistic implications. Here we comment on an article advocating a paradigm change in the so-called.

In _The Long Emancipation_ Rinaldo Walcott posits that Black people globally live in the time of emancipation and that emancipation is definitely not freedom. Taking examples from across the globe, he argues that wherever Black people have been emancipated from slavery and colonization, a potential freedom has been thwarted. Walcott names this condition the long emancipation—the ongoing interdiction of potential Black freedom and the continuation of the juridical and legislative status of Black nonbeing. Stating that Black people have yet (...) to experience freedom, Walcott shows that being Black in the world is to exist in the time of emancipation in which Black people must constantly fashion alternate conceptions of freedom and reality through expressive culture. Given that Black unfreedom lies at the center of the making of the modern world, the attainment of freedom for Black people, Walcott contends, will transform the human experience worldwide. With _The Long Emancipation_, Walcott offers a new humanism that begins by acknowledging that present conceptions of what it means to be human do not currently include Black people. (shrink)

Ethics and robotics in the fourth industrial revolution The current industrial revolution, characterised by a pervasive spread of technologies and robotic systems, also brings with it an economic, social, cultural and anthropological revolution. Work spaces will be reshaped over time, giving rise to new challenges for human‒machine interaction. Robotics is hereby inserted in a working context in which robotic systems and cooperation with humans call into question the principles of human responsibility, distributive justice and dignity of work. In particular, the (...) responsibilities for using a robotic system in a surgical context will be discussed, along with possible problems of medium- or long-term technological unemployment to be tackled on the basis of shared concepts of distributive justice. Finally, the multiple dimensions of human dignity in the working context are dealt with in terms of dignity of work, dignity at work and dignity in human‒machine interaction. (shrink)

The ideology of evidence-base medicine (EBM) has dramatically altered the way we think, conceptualize, philosophize and practice medicine. One of its major pillars is the appraisal and classification of evidence. Although important and beneficial, this process currently lacks detail and is in need of reform. In particular, it largely focuses on three key dimensions (design, [type I] alpha error and beta [type II] error) to grade the quality of evidence and often omits other crucial aspects of evidence such as biological (...) plausibility, reproducibility, generalizability, temporality, consistency and coherence. It also over-values the randomized trial and meta-analytical techniques, discounts the biasing effect of single centre execution and gives insufficient weight to large and detailed observational studies. Unless these aspects are progressively included into systems for grading, evaluating and classifying evidence and duly empirically assessed (according to the EBM paradigm), the EBM process and movement will remain open to criticism of being more evidence-biased than evidence-based. (shrink)

Social robots and their interactions with children are becoming increasingly sophisticated, with the emergence of child-robot relationships as a likely result. However, adequate measurement instruments that tap into concepts associated with child-robot relationship formation are scarce. We aimed to develop three measures that can be used to assess children’s closeness to, trust in, and perceived social support from, a social robot. We established the validity and reliability of these measures among 87 Dutch children aged 7 to 11 years old. Because (...) of their shortness, the measures can efficiently be applied by scholars aiming to gain insight into the general process of child-robot relationship formation and its specific sub-processes, that is, the emergence of closeness, trust, and perceived social support. (shrink)

The present study investigated the influence of related and unrelated emotions on judgments about a news article. An experimental study was designed to manipulate both the relatedness of an elicited emotion to the news article and processing depth. Following mood and emotion effects theory, related anger was expected to have a stronger effect on judgments about the media message than unrelated anger. Processing depth was expected to moderate this effect. The results showed a main effect of relatedness and a main (...) effect of processing depth, but the interaction effect was not found. Implications of the findings for understanding how emotions influence the processing of media stimuli are discussed. (shrink)

Social robots progressively enter children’s lives, but little is known about children’s acceptance of social robots and its antecedents. To fill this research gap, this narrative review surveyed 34 articles on child-robot interaction published between 2000 and 2017. We focused on robot, user, and interaction characteristics as potential antecedents of children’s intentional and behavioral social robot acceptance. In general, children readily accept robots. However, we found that social, adaptive robot behavior, children’s sex and age, as well as frequency of the (...) interaction seem to affect acceptance. Additionally, we found various theoretical and methodological shortcomings in the field. The review concludes with recommendations and directions for future research on children’s acceptance of social robots. (shrink)