Peer Toy Play as a Gateway to Children’s Gender Flexibility: The Effect of (Counter)Stereotypic Portrayals of Peers in Children’s Magazines

Extensive evidence has documented the gender stereotypic content of children’s media, and media is recognized as an important socializing agent for young children. Yet, the precise impact of children’s media on the endorsement of gender-typed attitudes and behaviors has received less scholarly attention. We investigated the impact of stereotypic and counter-stereotypic peers pictured in children’s magazines on children’s gender flexibility around toy play and preferences, playmate choice, and social exclusion behavior (n = 82, age 4–7 years-old). British children were randomly assigned to view a picture of a peer-age boy and girl in a magazine playing with either a gender stereotypic or counter-stereotypic toy. In the stereotypic condition, the pictured girl was shown with a toy pony and the pictured boy was shown with a toy car; these toys were reversed in the counter-stereotypic condition. Results revealed significantly greater gender flexibility around toy play and playmate choices among children in the counterstereotypic condition compared to the stereotypic condition, and boys in the stereotypic condition were more accepting of gender-based exclusion than were girls. However, there was no difference in children’s own toy preferences between the stereotypic and counter-stereotypic condition, with children preferring more gender-typed toys overall. Implications of the findings for media, education, and parenting practices are discussed, and the potential for counterstereotypic media portrayals of toy play to shape the gender socialization of young children is explored

LatHyS global hybrid simulation of the BepiColombo second Venus flyby

Plasma and magnetic field observations by BepiColombo during its 2nd Venus flyby in August 10, 2021 have been examined and compared with the newly developed global hybrid simulation LatHyS for the Venusian environment. The LatHyS-Venus simulation was first validated by a comparison with Venus Express observations obtained during average solar wind conditions, before it was applied to the BepiColombo flyby using as inputs solar wind parameters measured upstream of Venus by Solar Orbiter. The simulation confirms that BepiColombo passed through the stagnation region of Venus, which supports the results obtained by data analysis. In addition, we have sampled the plasma parameters along the BepiColombo trajectory and constructed the energy spectrum for two species, i.e., protons of both solar wind and planetary origins, and planetary oxygen ions, and discussed the possible effects due to the limited field of views of the plasma instruments onboard BepiColombo. The most intense observational features are properly captured in the LatHyS-Venus simulation, which show that the model is a powerful tool for interpreting and understanding in-situ data obtained from the instruments with a limited field of views. The estimated ion escape for protons and oxygen ions at Venus during the BepiColombo flyby is of the order of ∼1024 ions/s, which is the same order of magnitude compared to the estimation from Venus Express observations at the solar minimum

LatHyS global hybrid simulation of the BepiColombo second Venus flyby

Plasma and magnetic field observations by BepiColombo during its 2nd Venus flyby in August 10, 2021 have been examined and compared with the newly developed global hybrid simulation LatHyS for the Venusian environment. The LatHyS-Venus simulation was first validated by a comparison with Venus Express observations obtained during average solar wind conditions, before it was applied to the BepiColombo flyby using as inputs solar wind parameters measured upstream of Venus by Solar Orbiter. The simulation confirms that BepiColombo passed through the stagnation region of Venus, which supports the results obtained by data analysis. In addition, we have sampled the plasma parameters along the BepiColombo trajectory and constructed the energy spectrum for two species, i.e., protons of both solar wind and planetary origins, and planetary oxygen ions, and discussed the possible effects due to the limited field of views of the plasma instruments onboard BepiColombo. The most intense observational features are properly captured in the LatHyS-Venus simulation, which show that the model is a powerful tool for interpreting and understanding in-situ data obtained from the instruments with a limited field of views. The estimated ion escape for protons and oxygen ions at Venus during the BepiColombo flyby is of the order of ∼1024 ions/s, which is the same order of magnitude compared to the estimation from Venus Express observations at the solar minimum

Minimum data requirements for designing a set of marine protected areas, using commonly available abiotic and biotic datasets

Marine protected areas (MPAs) can be an effective tool for marine biodiversity conservation, yet decision-makers usually have limited and biased datasets with which to make decisions about where to locate MPAs. Using commonly available abiotic and biotic datasets, I asked how many datasets are necessary to achieve robust patterns of conservation importance. I applied a decision support tool for marine protected area design in two regions of British Columbia, Canada, and sequentially excluded the datasets with the most limited geographic distribution. I found that the reserve selection method was robust to some missing datasets. The removal of up to 15 of the most geographically limited datasets did not significantly change the geographic patterns of the importance of areas for conservation. Indeed, including abiotic datasets plus at least 12 biotic datasets resulted in a spatial pattern similar to including all available biotic datasets. It was best to combine abiotic and biotic datasets in order to ensure habitats and species were represented. Patterns of clustering differed according to whether I used one set alone or both combined. Biotic datasets served as better surrogates for abiotic datasets than vice versa, and both represented more biodiversity features than randomly selected reserves. These results should provide encouragement to decision-makers engaged in MPA planning with limited spatial data