1,720,955 research outputs found
Applications of signaling theory to contemporary human courtship
Signaling theory, a popular approach in ethology and theoretical biology, can be employed to better understand social interaction in humans. Applied to contemporary human courtship, signaling theory can provide a framework for interpreting information transmitted at an initial encounter, signals conveyed at key relationship phases both within a romantic couple and to outside parties, and the regular communicative exchange within established relationships. This dissertation applies signaling theory to courtship in testing evolutionary hypotheses within three projects, each involving a different subject population situated at a salient courtship phase. The first project addresses the signaling value of women's faces absent any other information, which is analogous to a first meeting prior to the beginning of courtship. Testosterone-mediated facial features were positively associated with viewer perceptions of masculinity, positively associated with self-reports of sociosexual attitudes and behaviors, and negatively associated with viewer perceptions of attractiveness. The second project explores the signaling potential of engagement rings among a sample of Ohio newlyweds. Engagement ring cost was positively associated with male income and female income, and was negatively associated with female age, indicating that engagement ring cost may reflect both male and female mate value. The cost of engagement rings as a proportion of male salary was positively associated with courtship duration, suggesting that engagement ring cost may reinforce a signal of commitment already conveyed by a lengthy courtship. The third project concerns notions of spousal obligation on the Honduran island of Utila. This project used an experimental interview setting to elicit and measure audience effects. In response to key questions about characteristics sought in wives, men interviewed in the presence of their wives used more forceful rhetoric. Furthermore, men's responses more frequently emphasized women's morality whereas women's responses more frequently emphasized male resource control.Ph.D.Includes bibliographical referencesIncludes vitaby Bria Lane Dunha
Cholera in post-earthquake Haiti: how an outbreak became an epidemic
Cholera in Haiti has persisted since its introduction after the 2010 earthquake. The outbreak demonstrates how a combination of socioeconomic factors, mainly a lack of infrastructure, can cause an outbreak to become a much more serious epidemic and the current enduring endemic. Because cholera came to a previously unexposed nation through United Nations peacekeepers, the outbreak in Haiti offers a unique perspective on the impact of globalization on public health. In addition, it provides a deeper look into the disproportionate impact of diarrheal diseases on low-income countries. Several biological and socioeconomic factors have facilitated the outbreak. Biological risk factors include immunologically naïve populations, low gastric acidity, and blood type. In addition, socioeconomic factors include a lack of clean drinking water and sanitation as well as a fragile and over-taxed healthcare system. The persisting struggle surrounding water and sanitation combined with a lack of knowledge on cholera prevention have precipitated the outbreak into an epidemic and further into its current endemic status. Current efforts to battle cholera include water and sanitation improvements, a national vaccination campaign, as well as the mobilization of community health workers. However, without the construction of sustainable water and sanitation infrastructure, it is unlikely that cholera in Haiti can be eliminated
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
The present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
We provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Home birth midwifery in the United States: evolutionary origins and modern challenges
Human childbirth is distinct in requiring-or at least strongly profiting from-the assistance of a knowledgeable attendant to support the mother during birth. With economic modernization, the role of that attendant is transformed, and increased access to obstetric interventions may bring biomedicine into conflict with anatomical, physiological, and behavioral adaptations for childbirth. This article provides an overview of the role of midwifery in human evolution and ways in which this evolutionary heritage is reflected in home birth in the contemporary United States. Opportunities remain for evolutionary scholars to apply their knowledge and skills to strengthen culturally consonant, evolutionarily grounded maternity care within a complex, multilevel, pluralistic medical system
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
We conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist
We have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
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