bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Emergence of Female Pembarong in Reyog Art: Gender Stereotypes and Cultural Tightness in The Javanese Perspective
Authors: Sari Ulfi Andrian , Yasri Hayyun Lathifaty , Nulinnaja Ratna
Published: February 2025

The presence of female pembarong (performers) in Java is interesting as a form of defying gender stereotypes. The female performers portray those who try to fight stereotypes and gender norms in a patriarchal society. Based on this phenomenon, this study aims to 1) explain the stereotypical experience of reyog Ponorogo female performers from the perspective of Javanese culture, 2) explain the experience of cultural tenacity of reyog Ponorogo female performers from the perspective of Javanese culture. The research was conducted in two places in Ponorogo. Sawoo Village in Sawoo Subdistrict, Ponorogo Regency which is the location of the Sardulo Nareswari reyog community and Plunturan Village in Pulung Subdistrict, Ponorogo Regency which is the location of the Putri Onggopati reyog community. This research uses a qualitative method. Data collection techniques used included interviews with female performers, observation of videos of female performers' performances from YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram, interview transcripts, triangulation of sources, and data visualization. Furthermore, the data was analyzed using an interactive model: data collection, data condensation, data display, and conclusions drawing. The labeling of the research results shows that: 1) Stereotypical views towards female performers have begun to diminish. Society began to accept their existence in reyog performance art. 2) The loosening of cultural constraints within Javanese tradition, with positive conditions that do not put aside their role as women, wives, and homemakers. These conditions provide freedom and creative opportunities for female performers.
Transmission of Hadroh Kuntulan Banyuwangi Art through Community-Based Art Education
Authors: Hermawati Sri Hermawati , Didin Supriadi , Yehezkiel Petrus Turnip , Gandung Joko Srimoko , Saryanto  , Tuti Tarwiyah
Published: February 2025

This research explores cultural strategies through education, specifically focusing on Community-Based Art Education (CBAE) in Banyuwangi. In order to achieve the stated objective, a qualitative descriptive method was adopted to examine the Kuntulan art form, particularly Hadroh Kuntulan. The art form consisted of playing Hadroh music accompanied by sholawat singing and pencak silat movements that have evolved into dance. This investigation was conducted in Banje Hamlet, Bubuk Village, Rogodjampi District, Banyuwangi Regency, East Java, at Islamic Junior High School 8 & Art Studio Gholet Dhulur. The location was selected primarily due to the presence of the Using tribe, which, unlike more well-known groups such as the Baduy and Sasak tribes, remains relatively unknown. Typically, cultural transmission through Community-Based Art Education (CBAE) is facilitated by integrating educational institutions. Within the context of the present exploration, this studio played a central role. In Indonesia, art education is usually incorporated into a school's intracurricular and extracurricular curriculum. These institutions typically form school-age music groups comprising students from various schools. Within this construct, schools and social institutions function as program planners, students as learners, and the broader community as a source of cultural knowledge. The results obtained from this study show that the integration of cultural arts into the school curriculum through partnerships with social institutions plays a crucial role in preserving cultural heritage. It also emphasized that the resilience of these cultural traditions is sustained through the active support and inclusiveness of the community.
The Discourse of Resistance Against Patriarchal Culture in Short Stories by Three Balinese Women Writers
Authors: Prameswari Ni Putu Laksmi Mutiara , Banda Maria Matildis , Putra I Nyoman Darma
Published: February 2025

This research aims to examine the discourse on Balinese women's resistance against patriarchal culture as reflected in short stories by three Balinese women writers. Short stories by Oka Rusmini, Kadek Sonia Piscayanti, and Devy Gita were analyzed using Sara Mills' theory of feminist critical discourse analysis and Hélène Cixous' feminine writing. This research uses qualitative methods with data collection techniques in the form of literature study. The female characters in these short stories are both positioned as objects and subjects who fight against sexual harassment, domestic burdens, and pseudo identity. However, the writer's position expresses women's rebellion who cut off her legs, decided to become a prostitute, and planned her death. The reader's position then has implications for women's independence as outlined in the short story as women who are independent in the domestic, economic and traditional fields; support the family; and take care of herself and her children after divorce. The objective of this research is to provide inspiring ideas to voice and fight for injustice due to patriarchal culture experienced by Balinese women in particular and Indonesia in general. In addition, this research is also hoped to be a comparison in depicting the insights of women writers' struggles in various different cultural narratives, especially from the perspective of the global south.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Challenge of Religion. By Johannes Morsink
Authors: Moyn Samuel
Published: February 2025

As its title indicates, Johannes Morsink’s new book takes stock of the grounding and prospects of human rights ideals in the face of what people often call “the return of religion.” He starts by claiming that, given its Holocaust origins, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 reflected secular assumptions—a common agreement transcending all faith commitments and requiring none in particular and, in fact, no faith of any kind. I think he proves his case, but scants the reasons why human rights were compatible with so many religions at the time and sidesteps the considerable recent debate about whether “secular” ideals are ever that distant from religious and especially Christian ones.Morsink takes for granted his earlier magisterial study of the diplomatic origins of the Universal Declaration, but now delves into the effect of religion on its making in more detail. He acknowledges that thirty-seven of the fifty-eight countries involved in the drafting were Christian (or “Judeo-Christian,” a popularized coinage of the 1940s, which should not distract from the fact that nearly two-thirds of the countries involved in the negotiations had Christian majorities). One must grant, of course, Morsink’s point that the text of the Universal Declaration abstained from any specific commitment to the divine, in spite of proposals to add one, even as various actors thought they had smuggled their own religious inspiration into the document. Instead, the real worry about Morsink’s baseline is not that it is so early in history, but that it is so late. None of the religions he is dealing with historically supported many or most of the liberal political norms embedded in the declaration. It seems to follow that, not the Holocaust (which few actors at the time cared or even knew about) so much as the victory at arms of historically liberal states allowed them dominance in the United Nations and most control over its highest proclaimed ideals. It is no wonder that world religions that were hardly notable for prizing individual freedoms (even the European Christianity that not a decade before had gotten along tolerably well with illiberal regimes) suddenly found human rights to be compatible with or even the essence of their teachings. At the same time, because he has not engaged with the so-called critique of secularism in contemporary scholarship, Morsink is not in a good position to prove historically that liberal ideals themselves were not a deeply Christian version of “transcending religion.” If secularism is just Christianity by another name, then proving that human rights are secular is not enough.
More Bullets, More Doves? The Impact of Violence on Preferences for Peace
Authors: Alvarez Santiago Lopez , Homola Jonathan
Published: February 2025

Exposure to violence plays a crucial role in shaping political behavior and preferences in the aftermath of conflicts. Previous studies find that citizens respond in different and often contrasting ways to violence exposure. In some cases, higher degrees of conflict generate more hawkish preferences and higher levels of political participation, while in other instances conflict exposure has the opposite effect. To explain this variation, we propose a two-dimensional framework of analysis that takes into consideration the type and level of an individual's exposure to violence. We test our two-dimensional framework in the context of the Colombian armed conflict. Regarding the level of violence, we show that in areas with high levels of conflict, there was more collective support for pacific solutions. In terms of the type of violence, we find that direct victims of the conflict are less likely to support negotiations than non-victims. The theory and results have important implications for researchers and policy-makers alike.
Book Review: Break Through: From the Death of Environmentalism to the Politics of Possibility
Authors: Kysar Douglas A.
Published: February 2025

This essay reviews Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger's recent book, Break Through: From the Death of Environmentalismto the Politics of Possibility, in which the authors argue that the future of environmentalism, and of American politics more broadly, lies not in stronger evidence, better science, and more reasoned appeals to the public, but instead in sheer marketing acumen, in forming and framing policy goals in a manner that activates the deeply embedded values and cognitive metaphors of the public.The essay first argues that Nordhaus and Shellenberger's critique of environmentalism overlooks the diversity that exists within theenvironmental movement and that, to a large extent, anticipates the themes they claim to be introducing. The essay then examines Nordhaus and Shellenberger's proposed alternative to environmentalism, a version of Richard Rorty - inspired romantic pragmatism that the authors dub the politics of possibility. The essay argues that Nordhaus and Shellenberger's alternative approach is ultimately self-undermining, in that virtually any policy aim on their account could be packaged and marketed to activate virtually any cultural worldview. Finally, the essay takes a more constructive turn, identifying the kinds of questions that a truly post-environmental politics would be required to answer in order to avoid the nightmare of Nordhaus and Shellenberger's republic ofconsultants.
Combined Oxy-fuel Magnetohydrodynamic Power Cycle
Authors: Marzouk Osama A.
Published: February 2025

Oxy-fuel carbon capture in power plants is a relatively new concept aiming at reducing carbon dioxide emissions from the plants. This is achieved by burning the fossil fuel using oxygen as oxidizer with no nitrogen, thereby rendering the exhaust gases very rich in carbon dioxide (after condensing water vapor by cooling), which facilitates its capture for environmental or commercial purposes. Despite the worldwide interest in oxy-fuel carbon capture, its progress is at risk given the large energy needed to separate oxygen from air in order to provide the oxidizer, thereby hindering further progress of this concept toward large-scale applications. This paper focuses on alleviating this drawback of oxy-fuel combustion by making it more attractive through combining it with another concept, namely magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) power generators. The end product is a power plant operating on a combined cycle composed of a topping MHD ultra-high-temperature cycle with direct electricity extraction from plasma, followed by a bottoming steam cycle with conventional turbo-generators. Different design aspects and simplified technical analysis for the MHD generator are presented.
Politics by Other Meanings: A Comment on "Retaking Rationality Two Years Later"
Authors: Kysar Douglas A.
Published: February 2025

This paper, prepared as a comment on Dean Richard Revesz's 2010 Frankel Lecture, surveys and evaluates recent developments in the regulatory oversight process, including the incorporation of behavioral economic insights, the development of a uniform federal social cost of carbon measure, and the push for greater transparency and inclusiveness.
Partial "Global Peace": Federalism and the Long Tail of Remedies in Opiod Litigation
Authors: Resnik Judith
Published: February 2025

The Opioid Litigation yields important insights for federalism and for remedies in complex multi-party and multi-prong cases. This sprawling set of cases underscores that essentialized ideas of a set of fixed "state" and "federal" interests do not capture the diverse and often conflicting goals of states and subunits or of the national government. Likewise, this litigation serves as a reminder of the need to reframe assumptions about the role courts ought to play when considering settlements aiming "for global peace." Large-scale litigation is often thought to be a two-step process entailing a first decision to aggregate and a second step of either a trial or a settlement. But these forms of lawsuits do not end there. Law needs to clarify that a third step is needed because, even when interests are sufficiently homogenous to warrant aggregation at a litigation's inception and conclusion, differences can emerge thereafter when implementing remedies. Judges should use their authority to ensure that aggregated plaintiffs continue to have access to courts during all three phases of large-scale litigation. Recognition is needed that resolutions are partial because, after liability issues have been resolved, additional information often emerges about the individuals and entities to whom remedies are supposed to flow, and readjustments may be needed in the structure and allocation of relief.
Does the Sarbanes-Oxley Act Have a Future?
Authors: Romano Roberta
Published: February 2025

Although the enactment of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) received nearly unanimous congressional support, only a few years thereafter its wisdom was increasingly questioned and its supporters had to stave off attempts to recraft the legislation. The financial crisis of 2008 has sidelined efforts to alter the legislation's most costly provision, as Congress's attention has turned to overhauling the regulatory regime for financial institutions. There is, nonetheless, much to be learned about financial regulation and SOX's future, from an in-depth examination of the interplay of the government and private commissions created with an eye to revising the legislation, media coverage of those entities, and congressional responses.
Seeing what I did (not): Cerebral and behavioral effects of agency and perspective on episodic memory re-activation
Authors: Jainta Benjamin , Siestrup Sophie , El-Sourani Nadiya , Trempler Ima , Wurm Moritz , Werning Markus , Cheng Sen , Schubotz Ricarda
Published: February 2025

Intuitively, we assume that we remember episodes better when we actively participated in them and were not mere observers. Independently of this, we can recall episodes from either the first-person perspective (1pp) or the third-person perspective (3pp). In this functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study, we tested whether agency and perspective modulate neural activity during memory retrieval and subsequently enhance memory performance. Subjects encoded a set of different episodes by either imitating or only observing videos that showed short toy stories. A week later, we conducted fMRI and cued episodic retrieval by presenting the original videos, or slightly modified versions thereof, from 1pp or from 3pp. The hippocampal formation responded more strongly to episodic mismatches in previously self-performed vs. only observed actions. In a post-fMRI memory test a history of self-performance did not improve behavioral memory performance. However, modified videos were often (falsely) accepted as showing truly experienced episodes when: (i) they were already presented in this modified version during fMRI or (ii) they were presented in their original form during fMRI but from 3pp. Together, our findings demonstrate that self-performance and self-perspective modulate the strength of a memory trace in different ways. Even when memory performance remains the same for different agentive states, the brain is capable of detecting mismatching information. Re-experiencing the latter impairs memory performance as well as retrieving encoded episodes from 3pp.
Remembering Marvin Chirelstein
Authors: Romano Roberta
Published: February 2025

It is a privilege for me to contribute to this volume remembering Marvin Chirelstein, for he changed the course of my life. I knew Marvin best as my teacher, and that perspective informs my remarks. To put it most directly, I would not be doing what I have been doing for the past thirty-plus years, if I had not taken Marvin's courses. I would also venture to say that this is true of innumerable lawyers and law teachers who were his students.
Cognitive behavior model replicates road user response timing in naturalistic rear-end traffic conflicts
Authors: Rössert Christian , Drever Johannes , Brostek Lukas
Published: February 2025

Driver response timing in critical traffic situations has traditionally been studied using controlled experiments with clearly defined stimuli. However, these approaches often fail to capture the complexity of real-world scenarios. We present a validation study of the driveBOT cognitive architecture, comparing its response timing to human driver responses from the Strategic Highway Research Program 2 (SHRP2) naturalistic driving study. While driveBOT implements general principles of human behavior modeling, we evaluate its performance specifically in rear-end conflicts against the naturalistic data.Our statistical validation demonstrates that driveBOT successfully reproduces human response characteristics in these scenarios without requiring explicit stimulus definitions. The model generates responses that closely match the naturalistic driving data in the relationship between situation kinematics and driver response timing. These results suggest that driveBOT's cognitive architecture captures fundamental aspects of human driving behavior in critical situations.The validated driveBOT model provides a practical tool for simulating driver response timing, with direct applications in vehicle safety system development and risk assessment. This work demonstrates how computational cognitive architectures can bridge the gap between controlled experimental findings and naturalistic driving behavior.
Ecologic: Nanotechnology, Environmental Assurance Bonding, and Symmetric Humility
Authors: Kysar Douglas A.
Published: February 2025

To date, the turn toward market-based regulatory tools in the environmental, health, and safety context has tended to focus on taxes, tradable permits, and information disclosure rules, with comparatively little attention devoted to environmental assurance bonds. This paper argues that environmental assurance bonding offers a particularly attractive regulatory approach for contexts – such as the present state of nanoscale science and engineering – in which both the risk and the benefit sides of the regulatory equation are characterized by great uncertainty. Historical examples and existing scholarly analyses of environmental assurance bonding are reviewed, and the resulting lessons are situated within the larger debate over economic cost-benefit balancing and precautionary approaches to environmental law and policy. In particular, the paper argues that environmental assurance bonding displays the virtue of symmetric humility, paying due heed to the dynamism and complexity both of sociolegal systems such as markets and of biophysical systems such as aquatic ecosystems.
For Diversity in the International Regulation of Financial Institutions: Critiquing and Recalibrating the Basel Architecture
Authors: Romano Roberta
Published: February 2025

This Article challenges the prevailing view of the efficacy of harmonized international financial regulation and provides a mechanism for facilitating regulatory diversity and experimentation within the existing global regulatory framework, the Basel Accords. Recent experience suggests that regulatory harmonization can increase, rather than decrease, systemic risk, an effect that is the precise opposite of the objective of harmonization. By incentivizing financial institutions worldwide to follow broadly similar business strategies, regulatory error contributed to a global financial crisis. Furthermore, the dynamic nature of financial markets renders it improbable that regulators will be able to predict with confidence what are the optimal capital requirements or what other regulatory policies would reduce systemic risk. Nor, as past experience suggests, is it likely that regulators will be able to predict which future financial innovations, activities or institutions might generate systemic risk. The Article contends, accordingly, that there would be value added from increasing the flexibility of the international financial regulatory architecture as a means of reducing systemic risk. It proposes making the Basel architecture more adaptable by creating a procedural mechanism to allow for departures along multiple dimensions from Basel while providing safeguards, given the limited knowledge that we do possess, against the ratcheting up of systemic risk from such departures. The core of the mechanism to introduce diversity into Basel is a peer review of proposed departures from Basel, and, upon approval of such departures, ongoing monitoring for their impact on global systemic risk. If a departure were found to increase systemic risk, it would be disallowed. Such a diversity mechanism would improve the quality of regulatory decision-making by generating information on which regulations work best under which circumstances. It would also reduce the threat to financial stability posed by regulatory errors that increase systemic risk by reducing the likelihood that international banks worldwide will follow broadly similar, mistaken strategies in response to regulatory incentives.
Accent affects voice identification
Authors: Santos Shane Christopher , Kapadia Aaliyah , Feinberg David R.
Published: February 2025

Voice identification across and between utterances are distinguishable tasks. To test how accent affects voice identification, we used voice-cloning to isolate and extract speech patterns from English-language recordings of people from the UK, Poland, and China. These speech patterns were applied to a different set of cloned voices. The result is a set of voices that have the same or different identity or accent and speak the same or different phrases. Participant accuracy in distinguishing voices was tested using varied voice pairs. Different accents applied to the same identity and the same accent to different identities increased errors by ~10% in telling whether people were the “same” or “different”. Using different sentences diminished error rates only when different identities had the same accent. Collectively, these findings reveal that expectations about accent use affect our ability to identify people as same or different, in addition to familiarity and other language-related cognitive processes. Our research supports the view suggesting that voice identification is a complex task that humans employ several different cognitive strategies to solve, depending on the context.
The Relative Importance of Genes and Environments for Predicting Age at Menarche
Authors: Schlomer Gabriel
Published: February 2025

Genetically informed research on the association between father absence and age at menarche (AAM) has generally proceeded by determining if the unique effect of father absence persists while accounting for genetic controls. This approach has proven important for discerning potentially causal environmental effects (i.e., father absence) from genetic confounds, but suffers from a methodological asymmetry that can undermine conclusions about the relative importance of genes and environments. The purpose of this study was to examine the relative importance of a set of 10 commonly examined, ostensibly environmental predictors of AAM in comparison to genetic variation captured by a polygenic score (PGS). Dominance analysis that included 2,048 regression models was applied to longitudinal data from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (N = 3,645 Caucasian female participants) to determine the relative importance of these 11 predictors for explaining variance in AAM. Results showed that the PGS explained more variance in AAM in than any of the environmental predictors in every model and more than double the variance of all the environmental predictors combined. Notably, father absence explained the third-most variance, falling behind BMI and prenatal smoking. The implications of these findings are discussed in terms of genetically informed research on father absence/AAM and how the asymmetry between methods of measuring genes and environment in these studies can impact the conclusions drawn.
Distributional learning of recursive structures is constrained by structural representation
Authors: Li Daoxin , Schuler Kathryn
Published: February 2025

This work investigates the mechanism of learning recursive structures. The ability of recursion is considered crucial for language and universally available, but there are considerable with- and cross-linguistic differences regarding the rules for recursive embedding, which poses a learnability problem. Previous research has shown that adults can learn the recursivity of linear structures in an artificial language from distributional cues in non-recursively embedded data. However, an important open question is participants’ structural representation of the grammar, which is considered crucial for linguistic recursion. In this study, we examined the hypothesis that representation of the structural head is necessary for the distributional learning of recursive structures. Adult participants were exposed to one of the two artificial languages which had identical linear orders but different heads. At test, participants were asked to rate test strings which examined their knowledge of the head and recursion. As predicted, we found that the learning mechanism is constrained: participants who learned the language with the correct head were more likely to allow recursive embedding. The findings suggest that human learners need structural representations beyond surface-level distributional cues to acquire recursive structures.
Replication of Gino and Bazerman (2009, Study 1)
Authors: Fong Min Min Min , Lin Megan , Xu Youyou , Moore Don A , bazerman max
Published: February 2025

We attempted to replicate Study 1 from Gino and Bazerman (2009), which reported that people are more likely to accept the unethical behavior of others if it develops gradually (slippery slope) rather than all at once (abrupt change). Using two Qualtrics surveys conducted with participants from Prolific, we investigated approval rates for estimates based on gradual versus abrupt changes in scenarios where participants had to estimate varying values of pennies in jars. Our key results fail to replicate those of Gino and Bazerman. We obtained no significant differences in approval rates between the two conditions. Thus, this replication’s key preregistered analyses fail to reaffirm the original study’s result.
Development and Validation of the Media Motivations (MEMO) Scales for Children and Parents
Authors: Suh Bolim , Barr Rachel , Kerr Margaret Lee , Radesky Jenny , Kirkorian Heather
Published: February 2025

The complex associations between child media use and development cannot be fully understood through screen time estimates alone. Parental motivations for media use are one of the factors that may shape the quality of media experiences and ultimately child development and family well-being. However, validated scales to capture parents’ motivations for their own and their children’s media use are lacking. Filling this gap, the current paper describes the development and validation of the Media Motivations for Children (MEMO-C) and Parents (MEMO-P) scales in a sample of 521 parents with young children (2-5 years old). The scales were designed to capture regulatory and relational aspects of child and parent media use. Factor analyses revealed a three-factor structure for each scale (MEMO-C: Regulate, Occupy, and Connect; MEMO-P: Regulate, Relax Alone, and Connect). These factors demonstrated strong psychometric properties including high reliability as well as convergent and incremental validity in predicting child- and parent-related constructs above and beyond screen time estimates and related demographic information. By measuring parental media motivations through a relational lens, these scales enable researchers to more closely examine how family media use is associated with child development and family members’ well-being.
A fallacy at the heart of precision medicine - are current clinical prediction models actionable?
Authors: Leighton Samuel , Deligianni Fani , Tsaftaris Sotirios , Krishnadas Rajeev
Published: February 2025

Current clinical prediction models are simply models of association, rather than correctly specified counterfactual prediction models based on modifiable causes. They do not tell us whether, if we change a predictor variable, this will alter the outcome for that individual. Rather, the intervention recommended based on current prediction models is unrelated to the model and only shown to work on average across the population. Consequently, current clinical prediction models are not actionable. To be actionable, clinical prediction models must be based on causation not association, use counterfactuals to predict the individualised treatment effect incorporating the proposed intervention into the model, and provide dynamic not static predictions which react to changes in treatment. Only then will we be able to implement precision medicine as intended.
Evaluating Large Language Model Performance and Reliability in Scoring Picture Description Tasks for Neuropsychological Assessment
Authors: Kleiman Michael J
Published: February 2025

Background: Picture description tasks, such as the Cookie Theft task, are widely used in neuropsychological assessments to detect cognitive impairment. However, manual scoring is time-consuming, requires specialized training, and is subject to interrater variability. Recent advancements in natural language processing, particularly large language models (LLMs), offer a promising solution to automate and standardize the scoring process.Methods: This study evaluated the performance and reliability of five LLMs (GPT-4 Turbo, GPT-4o, Claude 3 Opus, Claude 3 Sonnet, and Llama 3 70b) in scoring the Cookie Theft picture description task. A subset of 25 participants were selected from the DementiaBank corpus. The LLMs were tasked with scoring 22 content units in the participants’ responses using various prompt strategies, including few-shot learning, prompt chaining, and self-consistency. LLM performance was compared to the consensus score of three human raters.Results: LLMs demonstrated comparable accuracy to human raters in scoring the Cookie Theft task, with no significant differences in mean absolute error (MAE) between the best performing models and human raters. Few-shot learning significantly improved LLM performance, while prompt chaining and self-consistency showed limited benefits. Claude 3 Opus and GPT-4o exhibited the highest accuracy and reliability. Notably, LLMs showed significantly higher interrater reliability compared to human raters.Conclusion: The findings demonstrate the potential of LLMs to accurately and reliably score picture description tasks, offering a promising approach to streamline and standardize neuropsychological assessments. By automating the scoring process, clinicians and researchers can benefit from increased efficiency, reduced subjectivity, and improved scalability in evaluating cognitive functions.
Exploring the relationship between suicidality and persistent negative symptoms following a first episode of psychosis
Authors: Ghanem Joseph , Orri Massimiliano , Moro Laura , Lavigne Katie M. , Raucher-Chéné Delphine , Malla Ashok K. , Joober Ridha , Lepage Martin
Published: February 2025

Background and HypothesisSuicide is a leading cause of death in first-episode psychosis (FEP), with an elevated risk during the first year following illness onset. The association between negative symptoms and suicidality remains contentious. Some studies suggest that negative symptoms may be associated with lower suicidality, while others fail to find an association between the two. No previous studies have specifically investigated suicidality in Persistent Negative Symptoms (PNS) and its associated subgroups.Study DesignIn a large cohort of FEP patients (n=515) from an early intervention service, we investigated suicidality in those with PNS, secondary PNS (i.e., sPNS; PNS with clinical-level positive, depressive, or extrapyramidal symptoms), and non-PNS (all other patients). Patients were categorized into groups based on symptoms from month 6 to month 12, and suicidality was evaluated using the Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale (BPRS).Study ResultsCovarying for age and sex, we found that sPNS had higher suicidality relative to PNS and non-PNS, but PNS and non-PNS did not differ. These group differences were maintained after adjusting for depressive symptoms. ConclusionWe observed that PNS did not significantly differ from non-PNS. However, we identified sPNS as a group with elevated suicidality above and beyond depression, suggesting that sPNS would benefit from targeted intervention and that PNS categorization identifies a subgroup for whom negative symptoms are not associated with lower suicidality.
The relationship between surprisal, prosody, and backchannels in conversation reflects intelligibility-oriented pressures
Authors: Clark Thomas Hikaru , Poliak Moshe , Regev Tamar I , Haskins Amanda J , Gibson Edward , Robertson Caroline
Published: February 2025

Conversation is a dynamic, multi-modal activity involving the exchange of complex streams of information like words, prosody, gesture, eye contact, and backchannels. Understanding how these different channels interact in naturalistic scenarios is essential for understanding the mechanisms governing human communication.Past studies suggested that the duration of words is tied to their predictability in context, but it remains unclear whether this relationship is speaker-oriented (e.g. retrieval or production-based) or due to listener-oriented, intelligibility-based pressures (i.e. emphasizing unpredictable words to ease comprehension).This study aims to examine the relationship between predictability and additional streams of speaker and listener behavior, to test how much intelligibility-oriented principles impact conversation.We use the GPT-2 large language model to assess the relationship between surprisal, a measure of unpredictability, and several variables known to play an important role in conversation --- the prosodic features of duration, pitch, and intensity, and the timing of listener backchannels. We perform this analysis on the CANDOR corpus of naturalistic spoken video call conversation between strangers in English.In keeping with previous results using n-gram predictability, we find that GPT-2 surprisal predicts significantly higher values for duration. Moreover, surprisal also predicts maximum pitch and maximum intensity even when controlling for duration. Additionally, listener backchannels were more likely to overlap high-surprisal words compared to low-surprisal words, suggesting that listeners provide verbal feedback and acknowledgement of unpredictable, i.e. informative, words.The results provide additional support for intelligibility-based accounts, which hold that language production is sensitive to a pressure for successful communication, not just speaker-oriented pressures.
How gesture benefits learning: A working framework for examining attention and memory mechanisms
Authors: Guo Xiaohan (Hannah) , Rosenberg Monica D. , Bainbridge Wilma , Goldin-Meadow Susan
Published: February 2025

Spontaneous gestures produced alongside speech (co-speech gesture) help us think and learn. The gestures students produce in their explanations of a problem communicate their understanding of the problem to teachers, prompting them to provide instruction that leads to student progress. This cycle of teacher-student interaction showcases the beneficial role of gesture in teaching and learning. But how gesture confers this benefit is unclear. Here, we propose a framework for thinking about how attention and memory might mediate the link between gesture and learning. We speculate that bottom-up and top-down processes in attention and memory, as well as the interaction between the two, play a role in fashioning the beneficial effects gesture has on learning. By bridging the gesture and cognition literatures, we hope to motivate research investigating the mechanisms underlying gesture’s impact on learning and to shed light on more effective use of gesture in natural settings, including education.
Gender Parity Progress: Assessing Women's Representation in Nepal's Second Constituent Assembly Elections (CAE)
Authors: Guragain Govinda Prasad
Published: February 2025

This research provides a comprehensive examination of the status of women in Nepal, focusing particularly on their participation in the second Constituent Assembly Elections (CAE). It offers insights into the need for future policy and decision-making processes to prioritize women's empowerment through the electoral system, ensuring their meaningful political representation in line with democratic principles. The study analyzes media coverage of women in politics from September to December 2013, during the period of the second CAE. Through qualitative explanatory analysis, it argues that the failure of the first CAE to draft a new constitution for Nepal led to the necessity of a second election within a short span of five years. Inclusion, especially of women, was a prominent theme in both elections. While the first CAE was praised for its inclusivity, particularly in terms of women's representation, the second CAE fell short in this regard. The research concludes that the second Constituent Assembly Election (CAE) witnessed not only a reduced number of female candidates but also a lower success rate among them. It explores the reasons behind this disparity, the issues raised by women candidates, their demands, and offers a comprehensive conclusion on the overall issue.
Exploring Government's Eminent Domain in Land Acquisition: Inevitability of Compensation and Public Benefit
Authors: Thapa Binda Kumari
Published: February 2025

The paper discusses the concept of an eminent domain with special reference to land acquisition and the significance of the compensation payment to the concerned person. Each individual has rights regardless of their background, however, not all rights are absolute in nature. The government, in its official capacity, can acquire or withhold certain rights, such as the right to property, through the doctrine of eminent domain. Thus, eminent domain is a power of the government to acquire private property for public use, as long as it serves a public purpose. This power, inherent to sovereignty, typically doesn't need constitutional recognition. However, the government must fulfill due diligence and prerequisites before encroaching upon individual property rights. Eminent domain reads for an adequate compensation as a crucial element for its application. The paper aims to explore the theoretical aspects of eminent domain, referencing to the significance of compensation payment and public benefit as justifiable grounds to invoke the power of eminent domain. It analyzes the conditions under which property can be lawfully expropriated through eminent domain and the grounds for justifiable acquisition. Additionally, it delves into how compensation is determined and provided to ensure it is fair and reasonable.
A Study on the Asset Selection and Asset Management of Householders by Occupation
Authors:   Korea Real Estate Academy, Seo Kyeong Sook
Published: February 2025

1. CONTENTS
(1) RESEARCH OBJECTIVES
By analyzing the asset selection characteristics of householders by occupation and comparing the differences in asset management preferences, we aim to understand the impact of occupational characteristics on asset selection and management behavior, and derive policy implications based on this analysis to improve the soundness of household asset composition.
(2) RESEARCH METHOD
Data from the 2023 Household Finance and Welfare Survey were used, and the sample consisted of 18,094 householders One-way ANOVA was conducted to analyze the assets and liabilities of householders, and cross-tabulation and multinomial logistic regression analysis were used to analyze differences in asset selection and management of householders by occupation.
(3) RESEARCH FINDINGS
The asset and debt structure of households by occupation was analyzed, and differences in asset selection and management characteristics were identified. Self-employed households had the highest assets but also had high debts, and temporary and daily worker households and unemployed households tended to have low asset sizes and low economic stability. In addition, the willingness to invest in real estate was the highest among permanent worker households, and differences in how to manage spare funds by occupation were also observed, emphasizing the need for policy support.
2. RESULTS
It was revealed that assets and liabilities differ depending on the occupation of the householders, and that these factors affect asset selection and asset preference.
О перспективах использования трансплантационного метода лечения сахарного диабета
Authors: Мейрамов Г.Г. , Корчин В.И. , Шайбек А.Ж. , Конерт К.-Д. , Тусупбекова Г.Т. , Кикимбаева А.А. , Андреева А.П. , Коваленко О.Л. , Мейрамова-Абдраимова А.Г.
Published: February 2025

Работа посвящена исследованию возможностей использования в экспериментально-клинической практике трансплантационного метода лечения сахарного диабета. Показано, что в перспективе этотметод, в отличие от инсулинотерапии, несомненно, может стать методом излечения. Подчеркнуто, что особое значение имеет получение достаточного количества материала для трансплантации в виде изо-лированных и выделенных из поджелудочной железы панкреатических островков, качественная очистка их от примесей и подготовка к трансплантации путем культивирования с использованием ростовых факторов. Показана важная роль визуального гистологического контроля каждой партии полу-чаемых островков; авторами приведены собственные результаты гистологического и гистохимического контроля полученного материала с помощью модифицированных ими всех известных на сегодня вмире основных высокоспецифичных методов исследования состояния гистоструктуры и оценки содержания инсулина в В-клетках. На основании собственного значительного многолетнего опыта работы в западноевропейских лабораториях авторами предложены полезные замечания по вопросам организационного характера при проведении исследований в этом направлении.
Development of mechanical engineering in Republic of Kazakhstan and growth prospects
Authors: Dosmakhov S.M. , Kozhakmetova L.T. , Talzhanov S.A.
Published: February 2025

The article deals with the development of mechanical engineering in Republic of Kazakhstan and the activities of mechanical engineering during the years of Independence, as well as the problems of increasing the importance of this industry. For the successful development of mechanical engineering of Kazakhstan in the mustache of globalization required the production of products with higher added cost certified in accordance with the international requirements of quality. The main source for the consideration of issues related to the development of this sector of the economy is the industrial and innovative programs adopted in the country. As a result of the analysis were identified products of Kazakhstan engineering and the volume of production of engineering activities, a comparison of economic indicators of production and the solution of problems in the development of engineering in Kazakhstan and in the world. In conclusion, ways to improve and develop the machine building in Kazakhstan were proposed.
Динамика численности гусей и казарок на некоторых ключевых миграционных участках Северо-Казахстанской области
Authors: Зубань И.А. , Вилков В.С. , Калашников М.Н. , Жадан К.С.
Published: February 2025

Северо-Казахстанская область является уникальным участком на протяжении всего сибирско-казахстанско-черноморско-средиземноморского пролётного пути. Здесь ежегодно концентрируются в больших количествах, как глобально угрожаемые, так и охотничьи виды гусей и казарок во время весенних миграций. Множество водоемов области, а также большие площади земель, возделываемых для выращивания зерновых культур, создают оптимальные условия для отдыха и пополнения энергетических запасов представителей рассматриваемой группы птиц. В то же время к настоящему моменту в литературе отсутствуют сведения о местах остановок птиц на территории рассматриваемой области с оценкой тех условий, которые определяют причины концентрации в их пределах. В представленной читателям работе приводится характеристика двух ключевых миграционных участков, располагающихся в северо-восточной части области. Дана полная физико-географическая, а также природ-ная характеристика каждого из них. В разрезе конкретной территории приведена информация о видовой структуре, численности гусей и казарок и ее динамике на весеннем пролете за восьмилетний временной период. Выявлена и рассмотрена роль цикличности гидрологического режима рассматриваемых участков в пространственно-биотопическом распределении, а также численной структуры птиц в тот или иной год. Приведена информация по видам из Красной книги.
Analysis of the vegetation cover status of the city of Karaganda
Authors: Nugumanova Sh.M. , Starikova A.E. , Nortseva M.A.
Published: February 2025

It was found that the damage to the soil cover is influenced by the operation of Combined heat and power plant No. 3 (CHP-3) in the city of Karaganda, which is carried out on solid fuels (coal). In addition, direct damage to the soil cover occurs during the movement of heavy transport (cargo transportation of fuel). The object of research is located in the territory within which natural soils are degraded due to the impact of the production activity of the enterprise, and also subject to physical pollution of the soil and vegetation. The main source of physical pollution of land cover is CHP-3. Nickel excess was detected in Maykuduk, 500 m south-west of CHP-3, 1000 m north-west of CHP-3, cobalt — in Prishakhtinsk, iron — in Maykuduk, 1000 m north-west of CHP-3. An analysis of the vegetation of Karaganda showed a deterioration of the plants, a slight growth, a decrease in the number of flowers, and early signs of wilting were observed. The vegetation near the enterprise is represented by a rare and even coverage of unhealthy and unnaturally dried plants for a given season.