Living in the shadow of occupation: Life satisfaction and positive emotion as protective factors in a group of Palestinian school children

Starting from perspectives on functioning and wellbeing, the aim of the present study was to investigate positive and negative affect, self-perceived life satisfaction and happiness in a group of 74 Palestinian children exposed to political violence. We hypothesized that the children in our sample would display generally satisfactory wellbeing and good functioning in terms of positive affect, life satisfaction and happiness, despite their negative life conditions. Both quantitative and qualitative analysis of the dimensions of participants' wellbeing was carried out. In particular, we explored the ecological dimensions affecting the wellbeing of Palestinian children through content analysis of narratives produced by the group of participants. Positive emotions were found to contribute to wellbeing and life satisfaction in children, acting as protective factors in dealing with daily violence. The children displayed a range of personal resources facilitated above all by the functioning community structure supporting them. Implications for clinical intervention are discussed.     

Adaptive information design for outdoor augmented reality

Augmented Reality focuses on the enrichment of the user's natural field of view by consistent integration of text, symbols and interactive three-dimensional objects in real time. Placing virtual objects directly into the user's view in a natural context empowers highly dynamic applications. On the other hand, this necessitates deliberate choice of information design and density, in particular for deployment in hazardous environments like military combat scenarios. As the amount of information needed is not foreseeable and strongly depends on the individual mission, an appropriate system must offer adequate adaptation capabilities. The paper presents a prototypical, vehicle-mountable Augmented Reality vision system, designed for enhancing situation awareness in stressful urban warfare scenarios. Tracking, as one of the most crucial challenges for outdoor Augmented Reality, is accomplished by means of a Differential-GPS approach while the type of display to attach can be modified, ranging from ocular displays to standard LCD mini-screens. The overall concept also includes envisioning of own troops (blue forces), for which a multi-sensor tracking approach has been chosen. As a main feature, the system allows switching between different information categories, focusing on friendly, hostile, unidentified or neutral data. Results of an empirical study on the superiority of an in-view navigation cue approach conclude the paper.     

Violence and political culture in Mozambique

This article is an attempt at developing a lens through which political culture in Mozambique can be analysed, described and interpreted. It is based on the notion of a political teleology that emerged out of the conditions within which the country fought for its independence. The paper argues that violence in a symbolic and physical form played a central role in the constitution of this political teleology by, on the one hand, allowing the liberation movement to produce an account of Mozambican history which both gave legitimacy to its own struggle while at the same time undermining alternative accounts and, on the other, set the scene for the implementation of a national project that came to be primarily concerned with the reproduction of the claim to power of the liberation movement. Forty years of independence in Mozambique offer an ideal time frame to attempt the construction of such a lens.     

Soil organic carbon stock in different urban land uses: high stock evidence in urban parks

Urban Ecosystems - Urban areas are major producers of atmospheric CO2 emissions, but at the same time they can offset some of the associated C losses by retaining stable organic carbon in their...     

Conceptualization and Measurement of Adolescent Prosocial Behavior: Looking Back and Moving Forward

The struggle to cast a net around the numerous ways prosocial behavior is expressed lends itself to the absence of widely accepted methods of measurement. Additionally, research intent on evaluating the psychometric properties of current approaches has been somewhat limited. Weaving together seminal as well as contemporary research, the current review focuses on how these conceptual and measurement issues pertain to adolescent studies (in an intentional effort to offset the somewhat disproportionate focus directed toward prosocial development in infants, children, and adults). Recommendations to address current limitations and attain a more nuanced understanding of the construct are presented and discussed.     

Conditions for Exercising Residents’ Voting Rights in Long-Term Care Residences: A Prospective Multicenter Study

To assess voting conditions in long-term care settings, we conducted a multicenter survey after the 2009 European elections in France. A questionnaire about voting procedures and European elections was proposed in 146 out of 884 randomized facilities. Sixty-four percent of facilities answered the questionnaire. Four percent of residents voted (national turnout: 40%), by proxy (58%) or at polling places (42%). Abstention related to procedural issues was reported in 32% of facilities. Sixty-seven percent of establishments had voting procedures, and 53% declared that they assessed residents’ capacity to vote. Assistance was proposed to residents for voter registration, for proxy voting, and for voting at polling places, respectively, in 33%, 87%, and 80% of facilities. This survey suggests that residents may be disenfranchised and that more progress should be made to protect the voting rights of residents in long-term care facilities.     

The Kumaraswamy skew-t distribution and its related properties

Skew normal distribution is an alternative distribution to the normal distribution to accommodate asymmetry. Since then extensive studies have been done on applying Azzalini’s skewness mechanism to other well-known distributions, such as skew-t distribution, which is more flexible and can better accommodate long tailed data than the skew normal one. The Kumaraswamy generalized distribution (Kw ? F) is another new class of distribution which is capable of fitting skewed data that can not be fitted well by existing distributions. Such a distribution has been widely studied and various versions of generalization of this distribution family have been introduced. In this article, we introduce a new generalization of the skew-t distribution based on the Kumaraswamy generalized distribution. The new class of distribution, which we call the Kumaraswamy skew-t (KwST) has the ability of fitting skewed, long, and heavy-tailed data and is more flexible than the skew-t distribution as it contains the skew-t distribution as a special case. Related properties of this distribution family such as mathematical properties, moments, and order statistics are discussed. The proposed distribution is applied to a real dataset to illustrate the estimation procedure.     

A new financial stress index model based on support vector regression and control chart

Financial stress index (FSI) is considered to be an important risk management tool to quantify financial vulnerabilities. This paper proposes a new framework based on a hybrid classifier model that integrates rough set theory (RST), FSI, support vector regression (SVR) and a control chart to identify stressed periods. First, the RST method is applied to select variables. The outputs are used as input data for FSI–SVR computation. Empirical analysis is conducted based on monthly FSI of the Federal Reserve Bank of Saint Louis from January 1992 to June 2011. A comparison study is performed between FSI based on the principal component analysis and FSI–SVR. A control chart based on FSI–SVR and extreme value theory is proposed to identify the extremely stressed periods. Our approach identified different stressed periods including internet bubble, subprime crisis and actual financial stress episodes, along with the calmest periods, agreeing with those given by Federal Reserve System reports.     

The Past in the Present. Lessons on Semiotics of History from George H. Mead and Boris A. Uspensky

This article examines the parallels between George H. Mead's theory of time and Boris A. Uspensky's semiotics of history, looking for implications relevant to the symbolic interactionist theory of historical processes. It suggests that Mead's theory of time and theory of communication hold important implications for semiotic analysis of the historical dimension of sociocultural phenomena. A further aim is to link the symbolic interactionist tradition of the Chicago school with the Tartu school and its semiotics of history. This would fuel the further development of both theoretical orientations.     

Toward total student health: A qualitative pilot study

Objective: Colleges should aim to cultivate healthy behaviors among students by addressing alterations in wellness students view as important. The purpose of this study was to determine the self-perceived wellness-related concerns and behaviors of college students. Participants: Thirty-seven undergraduate students participated in this study between January and March 2017. Methods: Focus groups served as a data collection method. Groups were recorded and transcribed verbatim. Directed and conventional approaches to data analyses were employed. Results: Participants expressed concern regarding four campus wellness topics: nutrition, economics, mental health, and campus safety. Participants offered solutions for improving campus wellness, representing a fifth theme. Conclusions: Health concerns for college students and realistic solutions to address concerns were identified across focus groups. Overall, students cared about their own health, as well as the well-being of other students. Future directions include conducting a Web-based survey among students to assess prevalence and impact of select health and wellness topics.