How a little bit of technology can fix the editing and production processes for the social sciences.

Academic text production faces many challenges. Some of them are of a technical nature. Johannes Wilm, initiator behind Fidus Writer, argues that by adapting the text editing environment for scientific articles in the social sciences, the amount of manual labour going into journal and book production can be cut dramatically while making the product accessible to a wider audience, and enhancing the quality of research

The Significance of the Agrarian reform in Nicaragua

The term "land reform" is in Nicaragua often-times presented as a feature only associated with the government of the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN) of the 1980s (see for example Rocha, 2010; “Land reform reformed,†1997; Zalkin, 1990), yet in this article I argue that some type of land redistribution has been the policy of all governments both before and after the 1980s, and that this process continues during the current FSLN government, but that the direction and the magnitude of the redistribution has changed significantly over time. One needs to understand this history and the considerations about Nicaraguans make about previous land redistribution patterns in order to make sense of what land ownership means in this country. While the land reform of the 1980s was the most direct redistribution, this article argues that land reform in favor of small-scale producers has been taken up again after 2007, even though it does not form part of official government policy. At the same time other factors seem to be if more importance in lowering economic differences

Knights, Puritans, and Jesus: Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, Stonewall Jackson, and the archetypes of American masculinity

I interpret Civil War romanticism by looking at well-known archetypal characters such as the knight, the Puritan, and the Christ figure. I argue that sectional reunion occurred, in part, because Americans shared a common celebration of the Christian/chivalrous hero expressed through stories about the lives and personalities of leading figures of the Civil War. Western traditions like Christianity and its medieval warrior code, chivalry, conditioned Americans to seek heroes who conformed to a certain pattern that resembled the knightly ideal. Chivalry did not crowd-out other forms of masculine behavior, but during the nineteenth century, the British century, Americans had not yet created a man in their own image. That would come later with the twentieth century’s most favored man: the cowboy. Americans created Robert E. Lee as a knight figure resembling Western heroes such as King Arthur. Unlike the more controversial Confederate notables Stonewall Jackson and Jefferson Davis, the Lee figure offered Americans the genteel, Christ-like, hero who could be made to represent all of white America. Davis was too defiantly unreconstructed to ever affect much sectional agreement, and Jackson simply could not be made to fit the chivalrous pattern. Thus, Lee allowed southerners to identify themselves as uniquely chivalrous and honorable compared to the modern North. At the same time, the Lee figure provided northerners the opportunity to romanticize a charming, orderly, Old South while rejecting the violent, narrow-minded, states\u27 rights South best symbolized by Davis. I prefer to interpret commentary about the Civil War as storytelling and do not use terms such as the Lost Cause or Civil War memory. High-ranking officers, the common solider, and those who never participated in the Civil War each told stories about it. Due to the large number of stories told, certain common themes became evident in American interpretations of the Civil War era. Common stories include: Lee at Appomattox, Jackson\u27s unmerciful marches against Union forces, and Davis (almost) eluding capture dressed as a woman. Taken together the sub-stories reveal much about the grand narrative of the Civil War, and how Americans, though succeeding to a great extent, failed to completely reunite

Modeling of Responses and Response Times with the Package cirt

In computerized testing, the test takers' responses as well as their response times on the items are recorded. The relationship between response times and response accuracies is complex and varies over levels of observation. For example, it takes the form of a tradeoff between speed and accuracy at the level of a fixed person but may become a positive correlation for a population of test takers. In order to explore such relationships and test hypotheses about them, a conjoint model is proposed. Item responses are modeled by a two-parameter normal-ogive IRT model and response times by a lognormal model. The two models are combined using a hierarchical framework based on the fact that response times and responses are nested within individuals. All parameters can be estimated simultaneously using an MCMC estimation approach. A R-package for the MCMC algorithm is presented and explained.

Alvin Lucier's Music for Solo Performer: Experimental music beyond sonification

Dieser Beitrag ist mit Zustimmung des Rechteinhabers aufgrund einer (DFG geförderten) Allianz- bzw. Nationallizenz frei zugänglich.This publication is with permission of the rights owner freely accessible due to an Alliance licence and a national licence (funded by the DFG, German Research Foundation) respectively.Alvin Lucier's Music for Solo Performer (1965), often referred to as the ‘brain wave piece’, has become a key work of experimental music. Its setup, in which the brain waves of a solo performer are made to excite percussion instruments, has given the work a central place in the discourse on artistic sonification. However, only a small number of the authors making reference to the work seem to have studied the score, and even fewer have given thought to the score's implications for performance practice and aesthetic reflection. This paper pays detailed attention to these yet overlooked aspects, drawing on accounts of early performances as well as the authors’ participation in a 2012 performance led by the composer. We also trace the history of live-electronic equipment used for Music for Solo Performer and discuss the work's reception in sonification research

Provision of community-based mental health care, Latvia

(c) 2020 The authors; licensee World Health Organization.Problem In Latvia, the move towards community-based mental health-care services has been slow. Approach The hospital managers of the only psychiatric hospital in Riga decided to establish two community-based clinics that were financially and administratively integrated with the hospital. The clinics were established using a step-wise approach by redistributing resources, including psychiatrists, nurses and beds, from the hospital to the new clinics. In 2005, the Veldre clinic started outpatient consultations and day care admissions. In 2009, Pardaugava clinic opened as an outpatient clinic. In 2012, an open-door inpatient ward with 30 beds was transferred from the psychiatric hospital to Veldre. In 2013, Pardaugava clinic opened a day care clinic and an open-door inpatient ward, transferring 26 beds from the psychiatric hospital. Local setting Latvians have worse mental health indicators than those of the average population in Europe. Mental care has traditionally focused on inpatient care. Relevant changes The clinics are now providing most of the outpatient services and the number of inpatients treated at the hospital has declined from 5696 patients in 2004 to 4957 patients in 2018. Patients are treated in a more open and patient-centred environment. Lessons learnt The administrative and financial integration of the new community-based clinics within the existing structures of the hospital is a successful approach. Transferring resources to the clinics seems to have improved the quality of care without requiring additional funding apart from the initial investment costs. Involving the staff members during the planning phase reduced resistance to the project.publishersversionPeer reviewe