Physical-World Knowledge and Public Views on Climate Change

Climate change is a formidable topic, challenging the research efforts of countless scientists across many different fields. Surveys find surprisingly high levels of confidence among nonscientists, however, regarding their own understanding of climate change. More than threefourths of the respondents on recent U.S. surveys claimed to understand either a moderate amount or a great deal about climate change. Follow-up questions testing actual knowledge suggest that self-assessments are high relative to physical-world knowledge. For some people, self-assessments reflect confidence in their political views rather than geographical or science knowledge. This paper replicates and extends previous research using new data: an October 2018 survey that included a four-item test of basic, climate-relevant but belief-neutral geographical or physical knowledge, such as locations of the North and South Pole. Mean knowledge scores are higher among younger, male, and college-educated respondents, and also differ significantly across political groups. Relationships between physical/geographical knowledge and selfassessed understanding of climate change, or between knowledge and agreement with the scientific consensus on climate change, are sometimes positive as expected — but in both cases, these relationships depend on political identity

Transportation and Taxes: What New Hampshire Residents Think About Maintaining Highways and Bridges

In this brief, authors Linda Fogg, Lawrence Hamilton, and Erin Bell share New Hampshire residents’ responses to questions on the state’s transportation infrastructure in surveys conducted by the University of New Hampshire’s Granite State Poll during 2016 and 2017. They report that only 36 percent of state residents are aware of the worsening conditions of New Hampshire highways and bridges. A thin majority support increased spending on public transportation, while 42 percent support more spending on highway maintenance and environmental protection. Disaster preparation and stormwater management are seen as lower priorities. There is little agreement on the main source of funds—for example, tolls, gas taxes, per-mile assessments—to maintain highways and bridges. Majorities would support a gas tax increase of 10 cents or somewhat more if needed to maintain state highways and bridges. Both awareness of infrastructure conditions and willingness to support tax increases to maintain highways and bridges vary by party affiliation

Conflict Resolution in Popular Film

Studies on media content have been focused for decades on the frequency of violence, types of aggression, and sex roles. These studies have largely focused on children’s media, especially Disney, with few investigating the presence of violence in adult media as it is perceived as less harmful. Although these are all important topics of research, they have failed to incorporate the larger picture of media\u27s portrayal of conflict resolution. This study aims to answer the questions: how is conflict resolution portrayed in popular films and does it change based on the MPAA rating? using popular movies from 2016. The ratings are based on the Motion Picture Association of America’s rating system which is applied to all major production companies. The ratings studied, PG and PG-13, are proxies for age as the target audience changes as PG-13 rated films are not recommended for children under the age of 13 and suggests parental guidance or supervision for those youth. Results indicate that the resolution to conflicts does differ between PG and PG-13 movies, as PG movies are more likely to use verbally aggressive methods and PG-13 are more likely to use physically aggressive methods of conflict resolution. Following this, PG-13 movies are more likely to result in total control over, or the death of, the opposing member of the conflict. PG conflicts are more likely to result in toleration by one of the actors. Both PG and PG-13 movies largely follow traditional gender roles. Even as female characters engaged in violence and aggression similarly to the male characters, they also were more likely to be presented as “bad” characters when doing so and less likely to attain their goals

“They Turn to Violence”: Active Shootings and the Convergence of Hegemonic Masculinity, Race, and Perceived Injustice

Public rampage shootings like Parkland, FL, the Las Vegas concert shooting, and Sandy Hook are a type of crime that captures national attention. As media covers these incidents and the perpetrators of them, they seek to explain why someone would commit such violence. Using active shooter data for incidents that occurred between 2000 and 2019, I examine shooter identity with particular focus on the shooter’s race, an often-unreported statistic. Finding 55.4% of active shooters are white men, interviews with 20 white men and 10 white women are analyzed for explanations for white men’s violence. These men and women describe active shootings as resulting from the combination of white men’s race and gender expectations that produce strain and encourage violence. These combine with fears of lost privilege and status causing what they describe as attempts to rectify perceived injustices that threaten the hegemony of white masculinity. White masculinity is defined by historical violence and social status. Feeling threats to that social status and to white masculinity generally, white men’s last resort in the face of a society that they perceive as unjustly discriminating against them is violence. Violence restores masculinity and is the ultimate form of dominance over others. When society itself is perceived to have harmed them, all members of that society are their enemy

Views of the Highway: Infrastructure Reality, Perceptions, and Politics

Transportation infrastructure such as highways and bridges requires upgrades and maintenance. In many U.S. regions, these requirements have surpassed current funding, so new solutions are needed. One obvious though imperfect source is gasoline taxes, but raising these is politically risky, regardless of need. To illuminate this conflict, we analyze data from four random-sample telephone surveys (2016–2018, n = 2,035) that asked residents in the U.S. state of New Hampshire about their perceptions of highway and bridge conditions, and support for gas tax increases. About one third of the respondents counterfactually reported that highway and bridge conditions had improved compared with 10 or 20 years ago. At the county level, subjective perceptions correlate well with actual pavement and bridge conditions. Majorities of respondents also said they would support tax increases of 5 of 10 cents, although support falls off at higher amounts. Support for a tax increase varies not only with the proposed amount, but also with individual characteristics—especially political identity. In a structural equation model, infrastructure perceptions serve as an intervening variable between ideology and tax support: if infrastructure is falsely seen as improving, that supports an ideologically favored rejection of taxes. Partisan differences in perceptions of physical conditions, noted previously in other domains such as climate change, pose an unexpected challenge in building public support for transportation infrastructure

Impact of an Expanded Definition of Family History on Outcomes of Active Surveillance for Prostate Cancer

PURPOSE: Despite family history being an established risk factor for prostate cancer, the role of a broader definition of family history inclusive of not just prostate cancer but other genetically related malignancies has not been investigated in the active surveillance population. Here, we evaluate the impact of an expanded definition of family history on active surveillance outcomes. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Patients undergoing active surveillance for prostate cancer at Massachusetts General Hospital from 1997-2019 with detailed data available on family cancer history were identified. Primary outcome was biopsy progression-free survival, and secondary outcomes were treatment-free survival, adverse pathological features at prostatectomy, and biochemical recurrence after treatment. Statistical analyses were conducted using the Kaplan-Meier method and Cox regression. RESULTS: Among 855 evaluable patients, 300 (35.1%) patients had any family history of prostate cancer, and 95 (11.1%) had a family history of related malignancies suggestive of a hereditary cancer syndrome. Family history of prostate cancer alone was not associated with biopsy progression, whereas family history suggestive of a hereditary cancer syndrome was associated with a significantly increased risk of biopsy progression (HR 1.43, 95%CI 1.01-2.02), independent of other known clinicopathological risk factors in multivariable analysis. Similarly, family history suggestive of a hereditary cancer syndrome was associated with significantly lower treatment-free survival (HR 1.58, 95%CI 1.14-2.18) in multivariable analysis. No significant association was found between family history and adverse features on surgical pathology or biochemical recurrence. CONCLUSIONS: An expanded family history suggestive of a hereditary cancer syndrome is an independent predictor of biopsy progression during active surveillance. Men with such a family history may still be offered active surveillance but should be counseled regarding the higher risk of disease progression

Garotas de loja, história social e teoria social [Shop Girls, Social History and Social Theory]

Shop workers, most of them women, have made up a significant proportion of Britain’s labour force since the 1850s but we still know relatively little about their history. This article argues that there has been a systematic neglect of one of the largest sectors of female employment by historians and investigates why this might be. It suggests that this neglect is connected to framings of work that have overlooked the service sector as a whole as well as to a continuing unease with the consumer society’s transformation of social life. One element of that transformation was the rise of new forms of aesthetic, emotional and sexualised labour. Certain kinds of ‘shop girls’ embodied these in spectacular fashion. As a result, they became enduring icons of mass consumption, simultaneously dismissed as passive cultural dupes or punished as powerful agents of cultural destruction. This article interweaves the social history of everyday shop workers with shifting representations of the ‘shop girl’, from Victorian music hall parodies, through modernist social theory, to the bizarre bombing of the Biba boutique in London by the Angry Brigade on May Day 1971. It concludes that progressive historians have much to gain by reclaiming these workers and the service economy that they helped create

A morphometric method for correcting phytoplankton cell volume estimates

Cell volume calculations are often used to estimate biomass of natural phytoplankton assemblages. Such estimates may be questioned due to morphological differences in the organisms present. Morphometric analysis of 8 species representative of phytoplankton types found in the Great Lakes shows significant differences in cell constituent volumes. Volume of physiologically inert wall material ranges from nil, in some flagellates, to over 20% of the total cell volume in certain diatoms. Likewise, “empty” vacuole may comprise more than 40% of the total cell volume of some diatoms, but less than 3% of the volume of some flagellates. In the organisms investigated, the total carbon containing cytoplasm ranged from 52% to 98% of the total cell volume and the metabolizing biovolume ranged from 30% to 82%. Although these differences complicate direct biomass estimation, morphometric analysis at the ultrastructural level may provide ecologically valuable insights.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/41732/1/709_2005_Article_BF01275650.pd

Societal and ethical issues of digitization

In this paper we discuss the social and ethical issues that arise as a result of digitization based on six dominant technologies: Internet of Things, robotics, biometrics, persuasive technology, virtual & augmented reality, and digital platforms. We highlight the many developments in the digitizing society that appear to be at odds with six recurring themes revealing from our analysis of the scientific literature on the dominant technologies: privacy, autonomy, security, human dignity, justice, and balance of power. This study shows that the new wave of digitization is putting pressure on these public values. In order to effectively shape the digital society in a socially and ethically responsible way, stakeholders need to have a clear understanding of what such issues might be. Supervision has been developed the most in the areas of privacy and data protection. For other ethical issues concerning digitization such as discrimination, autonomy, human dignity and unequal balance of power, the supervision is not as well organized