Gender, education and reciprocal generosity: Evidence from 1,500 experiment subjects

There is not general consensus about if women are more or less generous than men. Although the number of papers supporting more generous females is a bit larger than the opposed it is not possible to establish any definitive and systematic gender bias. This paper provides new evidence on this topic using a unique experimental dataset. We used data from a field experiment conducted under identical conditions (and monetary payoffs) in 6 Latin American cities, Bogotá, Buenos Aires, Caracas, Lima, Montevideo and San José. Our dataset amounted to 3,107 experimental subjects who played the Trust Game. We will analyze the determinants of behavior of second movers, that is, what determines reciprocal generosity. In sharp contrast to previous papers we found that males are more generous than females. In the light of this result, we carried out a systematic analysis of individual features (income, education, age, etc.) for females and males separately. We found differential motivations for women and men. Third, we see that (individual) education enhances prosocial behavior. Lastly, we see that subjects’ expectations are crucial.reciprocal altruism, gender, education

The Relationship Between Academic Performance and Student Mobility, Gender, Ethnicity, Socioeconomic Status and Number of Moves

This study analyzes the relationship between student mobility, reading and math scores, gender, ethnicity, socioeconomic status (SES), and the number of moves by students during their academic years. Data were taken from four different high schools during the 2015-2016, 2016-2017, and 2017-2018 school years. The purpose of this study was to determine if student mobility when considering gender, ethnicity, SES, and number of moves impact a student’s reading and math scores. The study will provide educational leaders, community, and parents with valuable data to make informed decisions with regards to instructional adjustments and school changes for mobile students. The null hypothesis for this study was tested with an F distribution with an alpha level of .05. Since the establishment of the Federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB), and the accountability system that schools are continually being evaluated on; school administrators and district leaders have tried to adjust instruction to meet all student’s needs. With this study the researcher attempts to identify the implications that student mobility based on gender, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and frequency of mobility had on student’s academic performance in reading and math. In this quantitative correlational research study, the research consisted of correlational research, which was conducted by using SPSS software program, PEIMS data and STAAR EOC state assessment results to determine how mobility impacted a student’s academic performance when compared to nonmobile students. The research analyzes the data to determine if mobile students are more prone to struggle when comparing success on state assessment in reading and math. The research was conducted by collecting data from four different high schools in a school district along the Rio Grande Valley of Texas that was identified as having higher than state average mobility rates. The data will be collected from the Texas Education Agency (TEA) and district PEIMS school records

A spatial-temporal assessment of the Land Value Development Tax

A pure land tax is market neutral because of being entirely paid by lowering prices in land supplied to the market; however it is an almost unattainable public policy objective. A Land Value Development Tax (LVDT) may be an alternative possibility, when levied where regulatory or infrastructural state interventions determine land prices increases. Even when the LVDT is still paid by means of a lowering of land prices (static neutrality), it might accelerate development timing (non-dynamic neutrality), and it can also have price increasing spatial feedback effects when not applied on all the spatial units of a region. We examine the LVDT applied in Bogotá (Colombia) during 2004-2010. This city offers an excellent opportunity for policy assessment since it has both a clearly determined pre and post-tax period, and spatial differences in application. This paper uses spatial panels to assess the LVDT impact on prices. We found that the LVDT had a negative effect on prices while not having any building output, or spatial feedback effects. The results allow us to conclude that the LVDT fulfils the static and dynamic neutrality conditions of a Pure Land Tax in spite of its scattered spatial implementation.This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Elsevier via http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2015.09.02

Optimal sizing of C-type passive filters under non-sinusoidal conditions

In the literature, much attention has been focused on power system harmonics. One of its important effects is degradation of the load power factor. In this article, a C-type filter is used for reducing harmonic distortion, improving system performance, and compensating reactive power in order to improve the load power factor while taking into account economic considerations. Optimal sizing of the C-type filter parameters based on maximization of the load power factor as an objective function is determined. The total installation cost of the C-type filter and that of the conventional shunt (single-tuned) passive filter are comparatively evaluated. Background voltage and load current harmonics are taken into account. Recommendations defined in IEEE standards 519-1992 and 18-2002 are taken as the main constraints in this study. The presented design is tested using four numerical cases taken from previous publications, and the proposed filter results are compared with those of other published techniques. The results validate that the performance of the C-type passive filter as a low-pass filter is acceptable, especially in the case of lower short-circuit capacity systems. The C-type filter may achieve the same power factor with a lower total installation cost than a single-tuned passive filter

An empirical approach to urban land monopoly: A case study of the city of Barranquilla, Colombia

In this paper, we focus on the role and economic effect of land ownership and land monopoly in emerging urban environments. Land monopoly in conventional economics is a theoretical ‘impossibility’ which, nonetheless, allows for a spatial empirical approach. We design a spatial land monopoly test of our own, understood as a pricing strategy where land prices can be ‘over and above’ those determined by city-wide location, urban regulation and externalities. We use the city of Barranquilla (Colombia) as a case study. This city offers ideal conditions for investigation of theories of land monopoly, given extreme land concentration in its highly regulated elite northern fringe. We found no evidence of land monopoly pricing using different specifications of the spatial tests, which conformed to standard urban economic expectations: the pattern of development pointing to different, political channels influencing development. Non

Reaction control system integrated systems performance analysis - LM computer program user's manual

Reaction control system integrated systems performance analysis LM computer program - users manua

Disruptive coloration and perceptual grouping.

Camouflage is the primary defence of many animals and includes multiple strategies that interfere with figure-ground segmentation and object recognition. While matching background colours and textures is widespread and conceptually straightforward, less well explored are the optical ‘tricks’, collectively called disruptive colouration, that exploit perceptual grouping mechanisms. Adjacent high contrast colours create false edges, but this is not sufficient for an object’s shape to be broken up; some colours must blend with the background. We test the novel hypothesis that this will be particularly effective when the colour patches on the animal appear to belong to, not merely different background colours, but different background objects. We used computer-based experiments where human participants had to find cryptic targets on artificial backgrounds. Creating what appeared to be bi-coloured foreground objects on bi-coloured backgrounds, we generated colour boundaries that had identical local contrast but either lay within or between (illusory) objects. As predicted, error rates for targets matching what appeared to be different background objects were higher than for targets which had otherwise identical local contrast to the background but appeared to belong to single background objects. This provides evidence for disruptive colouration interfering with higher-level feature integration in addition to previously demonstrated low-level effects involving contour detection. In addition, detection was impeded in treatments where targets were on or in close proximity to multiple background colour or tone boundaries. This is consistent with other studies which show a deleterious influence of visual ‘clutter’ or background complexity on search

Decolonising the film curriculum through South–North collaborative online international learning (COIL) initiatives

Collaborative online international learning (COIL), also known as ‘telecollaboration’ or ‘virtual exchange’ among other terms, has been employed as a strategy for internationalisation of the curriculum in various disciplines for several years, but the COVID-19 pandemic has provided renewed impetus. This article argues that it can offer an effective means to decolonise approaches to teaching film studies through South–North collaborations. In brief, COIL is a pedagogical approach that holds that ‘learning takes place through a distributed network of connections to other people and their resources, and formal and informal educational assets in the public domain’ (Reo and Russell, 2015: 64). In this article, we argue that a COIL approach with a South–North focus, partnering with a higher education institution in Latin America, would provide unique opportunities to decolonise the film curriculum, given the features of COIL. In 2020, two universities in Mexico, one in Brazil and one in Colombia founded the Latin American Network for COIL. To date, it comprises 135 institutional members, some of which have students from Indigenous backgrounds and are already actively engaged in decolonising the curriculum. Our article proposes ways to take this forward

Identification of the orphan gene Prod 1 in basal and other salamander families.

The urodele amphibians (salamanders) are the only adult tetrapods able to regenerate the limb. It is unclear if this is an ancestral property that is retained in salamanders but lost in other tetrapods or if it evolved in salamanders. The three-finger protein Prod 1 is implicated in the mechanism of newt limb regeneration, and no orthologs have been found in other vertebrates, thus providing evidence for the second viewpoint. It has also been suggested that this protein could play a role in salamander-specific aspects of limb development. There are ten families of extant salamanders, and Prod 1 has only been identified in two of them to date. It is important to determine if it is present in other families and, particularly, the basal group of two families which diverged approximately 200 MYA