Could Education Promote the Israeli-Palestinian Peace Process?

This paper explores Palestinians' attitudes towards a peace process and their determinants, with a particular focus on the role of education. Understanding the factors that shape attitudes towards peace is important in order to be successful in negotiations or in implementing a peace agreement. In the literature, there is particular disagreement about the role of education. While some authors have linked violent and extreme positions to ignorance and to low market opportunities, others have found that education is positively correlated with being a member of a terrorist group. To better understand the role of education I decompose the attitudes towards peace into two dimensions; attitudes towards reconciliation and attitudes towards concessions. To measure these attitudes, I use a flexible item response model proposed by Spady (2007), which allows to take into account the multidimensionality of the concepts. The results show that education has a positive effect on attitudes towards concessions but a negative effect on attitudes towards reconciliation. This may occur because relative to a situation of peace, highly educated individuals are more strongly affected by current depressed economic conditions in Palestine. They therefore have more to gain from a peace agreement and may thus be more willing to make concessions. At the same time, they may be more frustrated and therefore less willing to reconcile. I also find that their attitudes to reconciliation move closely with aggregate economic conditions, while those of less educated individual are also influenced by local factors such as the construction of the separation barrier in their region of residence.conflict resolution, education, latent attitudes, item response models

Trust and the Choice Between Housing and Financial Assets: Evidence from Spanish Households

Trusting behavior has been shown to affect households' portfolio choice between risky and risk-free financial assets. We extend the analysis of the effect of trust on portfolio choice to include the dominant component of households' portfolios, real estate. In a simple model, we show how the effect of trust on expected investment returns affects portfolio composition, including the share of real estate. Using data from the European Social Survey, we estimate individual-level trust as an unobserved attitude using survey questions on personal attitudes by applying a hierarchical item response model. Combining these estimates with data on Spanish households' financial decisions from the Survey of Household Finances (EFF) conducted by the Bank of Spain, we show that households with less trust invest more in housing and less in financial assets, in particular risky ones. Trust thus may drive not only (limited) stock market participation, but financial development more generally.portfolio choice, trust, housing, item response models

Bicycling suitability in downtown, Cairo, Egypt

The Greater Cairo is one of the most crowded cities in the world and it is the biggest metropolitan area in Middle East. The high population density in the Greater Cairo causes traffic problems that harm many living aspects. This study discusses one of the solutions for limiting the traffic congestions using bicycle as an alternative transportation mean which is already applied in many other countries. There are many models have been introduced to study the suitability of having bicyclists on a motor road. This study will apply some of the most commonly used models created to measure bicycling suitability.in Down Town Cairo area. A GIS tool has been created to conduct applying the bicycling suitability models on the study area’s streets. The tool was developed in ArcMap using Microsoft Visual Studio. The results of this study encourage having alternative transportation network for bicycles in Down Town Cairo. A GIS tool created that is a user-friendly tool and it could be used for other researches in different areas or countries.The Greater Cairo is one of the most crowded cities in the world and it is the biggest metropolitan area in Middle East. The high population density in the Greater Cairo causes traffic problems that harm many living aspects. This study discusses one of the solutions for limiting the traffic congestions using bicycle as an alternative transportation mean which is already applied in many other countries. There are many models have been introduced to study the suitability of having bicyclists on a motor road. This study will apply some of the most commonly used models created to measure bicycling suitability.in Down Town Cairo area. A GIS tool has been created to conduct applying the bicycling suitability models on the study area’s streets. The tool was developed in ArcMap using Microsoft Visual Studio. The results of this study encourage having alternative transportation network for bicycles in Down Town Cairo. A GIS tool created that is a user-friendly tool and it could be used for other researches in different areas or countries

Trust, child care technology choice and female labor force participation

In this paper we test the effect of trust on the choice of child care technology. We estimate individual-level trust as a latent attribute using survey questions on personal attitudes by applying the econometric methodology by Spady (2007). Compared to other measures of trust, using this technique has several advantages: It makes more efficient use of information by allowing the aggregation of information from several questions and by exploiting additional information from personal and demographic characteristics. It requires very few parametric assumptions and it is conceptually cleaner and more consistent with theory than the proxies or demographic characteristics often used in previous work. Having estimated the individual attitudes to trust using data from the European Social Survey, we analyze their personal, demographic, and regional determinants. We find that trust matters for the degree of externalness of the child care technology people choose. It can therefore be a possible explanation for differences in female labor force participation across countries and across sociological groups

Evaluating the accessibility of a PoN-enabled misuse case notation by the red–green colorblind community

In 2015, an improved version of the misuse case modeling notation designed using the Physics of Notations (PoN) framework was proposed. Empirical data support that the new notation is more cognitively effective than the original notation. The new notation makes use of color, in particular, red and green, meaning that red–green colorblind community will not be able to view the notation as designed and intended. The cognitive effectiveness of the red–green deficient (RGD) version of the new notation in comparison to the original notation is unknown. The PoN outlines a number of principles that can be satisfied with or without the use of color, but would the deficiency of color may be so inhibiting that the cognitive effectiveness superiority of the PoN-enabled misuse case notation becomes diminished? Perhaps the original use case notation would be more cognitively effective for red–green colorblind users. An empirical study using 84 IT (Information Technology) professionals is conducted to assess the cognitive effectiveness of the RGD version of the PoN-enabled misuse case notation in comparison to the original misuse case notation. The experiment data are analyzed for any statistically significant findings. The quantitative and qualitative results of the experiment indicate that the RGD version of PoN-enabled misuse case notation maintains its cognitive effectiveness superiority over the original notation. The results also show that the subjects are divided in their opinions with respect to the aesthetic appeal of the two notations. Adhering to the complete set of principles outlined in the PoN has allowed the new notation to maintain its cognitive effectiveness superiority over the original notation despite a curtailed color perspective

Are models better read on paper or on screen? A comparative study

Is it really better to print everything, including software models, or is it better to view them on screen? With the ever increasing complexity of software systems, software modeling is integral to software development. Software models facilitate and automate many activities during development, such as code and test case generation. However, a core goal of software modeling is to communicate and collaborate. Software models are presented to team members on many mediums and two of the most common mediums are paper and computer screens. Reading from paper or screen is ostensibly considered to have the same effect on model comprehension. However, the literature on text reading has indicated that the reading experiences can be very different which in turn effects various metrics related to reader performance. This paper reports on an experiment that was conducted to investigate the effect of reading software models on paper in comparison with reading them on a computer screen with respect to cognitive effectiveness. Cognitive effectiveness here refers to the ease by which a model reader can read a model. The experiment used a total of 74 software engineering students as subjects. The experiment results provide strong evidence that displaying diagrams on a screen allows subjects to read them quicker. There is also evidence that indicates that on screen viewing induces fewer reading errors

Could education promote the Israeli-Palestinian peace process?

This paper explores Palestinians' attitudes towards a peace process and their determinants, with a particular focus on the role of education. Understanding the factors that shape attitudes towards peace is important in order to be successful in negotiations or in implementing a peace agreement. In the literature, there is particular disagreement about the role of education. While some authors have linked violent and extreme positions to ignorance and to low market opportunities, others have found that education is positively correlated with being a member of a terrorist group. To better understand the role of education I decompose the attitudes towards peace into two dimensions; attitudes towards reconciliation and attitudes towards concessions. To measure these attitudes, I use a flexible item response model proposed by Spady (2007), which allows to take into account the multidimensionality of the concepts. The results show that education has a positive effect on attitudes towards concessions but a negative effect on attitudes towards reconciliation. This may occur because relative to a situation of peace, highly educated individuals are more strongly affected by current depressed economic conditions in Palestine. They therefore have more to gain from a peace agreement and may thus be more willing to make concessions. At the same time, they may be more frustrated and therefore less willing to reconcile. I also find that their attitudes to reconciliation move closely with aggregate economic conditions, while those of less educated individual are also influenced by local factors such as the construction of the separation barrier in their region of residence

Empirically Evaluating the Effect of the Physics of Notations on Model Construction

In 2009, Moody introduced nine principles for evaluating, improving and designing cognitively effective notations called the \u27Physics of Notations\u27 [49] motivating many research works ever since, being cited more than 1250 times at the time of writing this paper. Many research works have adopted the nine principles of the Physics of Notations to improve existing notations or devise new notations. Modeling is a two-step process that has the goal of communicating a mental concept by a model constructor (step one) to a model reader (step two). A subset of the research works utilizing the Physics of Notations have empirically validated the cognitive effectiveness of the new notations by their readers. However, there lacks any empirical evidence that investigates the effect of using Physics of Notations-enabled notations in model construction. This is a serious matter to be investigated as naturally model construction preludes model comprehension. Poorly constructed models can at best be poorly comprehended by its readers having dire consequences in downstream development activities. This paper reports on three different experiments that use software engineering professionals as subjects. The experiments investigate the effect of using notations that adhere to the Physics if Notations principles on model construction efforts. The results do not indicate an outright advantage for model constructors who utilize Physics of Notations-enabled notations in comparison to using their original versions of these notations