Accessibility of European museums to visitors with visual impairments

People who have visual impairments exceed 250 million persons worldwide and represent an important cohort of museum visitors. However, they experience many constraints to participation in daily life. Few studies analyse the accessibility of museums to visitors with visual impairments, and many are confined to a single museum and to a small set of strategies for improving accessibility. This article aims to identify a broad set of strategies to increase the accessibility of museums to visitors with visual impairments and analyse the accessibility of museums in four European cities. Conclusions and implications for policy-makers and museum managers, designed to promote the creation of inclusive museums, are presented.     

The Effects of Pop-up Harm Minimisation Messages on Electronic Gaming Machine Gambling Behaviour in New Zealand

In New Zealand a simple pop-up message feature that provides gambling session information and forces a break in play is mandatory on all electronic gaming machines in all venues (EGMs). Previous research has demonstrated small effects of more sophisticated pop-up messages tested predominantly in laboratory environments. The present research examined gambler engagement with and views on the New Zealand pop-up messages and on the relationship between pop-up messages and EGM expenditure. A sample of gamblers was recruited at casino and non-casino (pub) EGM venues. Most participants were aware of pop-up messages (57 %) and many saw them often (38 %). Among gamblers who reported seeing pop-up messages, half read the message content, and a quarter believed that pop-up messages helped them control the amount of money they spend on gambling. Participants who reported being likely to stop gambling in response to pop-up messages spent significantly less money on gambling when variables that were independently associated with EGM expenditure were controlled for. A modest harm minimisation effect of the pop-up message feature that has been operating in New Zealand for 5 years was evident. Suggestions for improvement of the harm minimisation potential of the current pop-up message feature are discussed.     

Internationalist Challenges: Antiglobalisation,Occupy, and Indignados

Subaltern classes' internationalism has a long history. The 1990s and first decade of the twenty-first century saw the rise of a new internationalism because of the emergence of the antiglobalisation movement. It was a short-lived movement, but that gave birth to a new set of strong internationalist activity. In 2011, there emerged a new international wave of protest by both the Indignados and the Occupy movements. These new movements, however, have developed relatively low levels of cross-border activity compared to the antiglobalisation movement, although it has brought a new internationalist drive.     

The politics of gender in the UN Security Council resolutions on women,peace and security

Women’s groups have worked diligently to place gender and women’s vulnerability on the transnational security agenda. This article departs from the idea that negotiating and codifying gender and women’s vulnerability in terms of security represent a challenge to mainstream security contexts. By contrasting the UN Security Council resolutions on women, peace and security with feminist theory, this article aims to analyze what is considered to be threatened when women’s vulnerability is negotiated. The article identifies two approaches to the gender/security nexus: gendering security, which involves introducing ideas regarding gender-sensitive policies and equal representation, and securitizing gender, which proceeds by locating rape and sexual violence in the context of war regulations. We demonstrate that, although these measures are encouraged with reference to women’s vulnerability, they serve to legitimize war and the male soldier and both approaches depoliticize gender relations.     

Population Density is a Key Factor in Declining Human Fertility

In studying the complex determinants of human fertility, social scientists have given little attention to population density, although reproduction has been shown to be density-dependent for a wide variety of other species. Using fixed effects models on the time series of 145 countries and controlling for key social and economic variables, we find a consistent and significant negative relationship between human fertility and population density. Moreover, we find that individual fertility preferences also decline with population density. These findings suggest that population density should be included as a variable in future studies of fertility determinants.

Analysing International Student Mobility Flows in Higher Education: A Comparative Study on European Countries

The analysis of the factors pulling and pushing students in a foreign country to complete their higher education is key for the implementation of university policies aimed at increasing the number of credits gained by students abroad and hence the degree of internationalisation of institutions. Consistent with previous studies, the present contribution examines the roles played by countries in the Erasmus student mobility flows by considering a joint strategy of analysis based on social network analysis and exploratory data analysis. First, data on Erasmus student exchanges among countries are gathered at macro-level from the European Union Open Data Portal and network data structures are analysed. Second, educational indicators from the Eurostat website are collected to describe the investments in higher education. The main findings suggest the presence of a core-periphery configuration in the student mobility network with few central countries in which the economic benefits and the investments in education seem to act as key elements for university attractiveness.

     

What’s in a yardscape? A case study of emergent ecosystem services and disservices within resident yardscape discourses in Minnesota

Urban Ecosystems - Residential yardscapes are at the forefront of human interaction with nature for those living in urban areas across Europe and North America. In recent years a significant amount...     

The Great Convergence: Gender and Unpaid Work in Europe and the United States

Over the past decades, men's and women's time use in industrialized nations has changed dramatically, suggesting a gender revolution. Women increased their time in paid work and reduced time in unpaid activities, while men increased their time in unpaid work, but not enough to compensate for women's retreat. We investigate developments regarding men's and women's unpaid work across Europe and the United States, using time diary data from the mid‐1980s and onward. We find evidence for gender convergence in unpaid work over time, but different trends for housework and childcare. Gender convergence in housework primarily resulted from women reducing their time, whereas childcare time increased for both sexes, resulting in convergence only where men increased more than did women. Decomposition analyses show that trends in housework and childcare are explained by changes in behavior rather than compositional changes in population characteristics. Though level differences in unpaid work persist, our findings regarding trends support gender convergence in that they are general across country contexts that vary regarding policy and social norms about gender, family, and work.     

A new regression model for bimodal data and applications in agriculture

We define the odd log-logistic exponential Gaussian regression with two systematic components, which extends the heteroscedastic Gaussian regression and it is suitable for bimodal data quite common in the agriculture area. We estimate the parameters by the method of maximum likelihood. Some simulations indicate that the maximum-likelihood estimators are accurate. The model assumptions are checked through case deletion and quantile residuals. The usefulness of the new regression model is illustrated by means of three real data sets in different areas of agriculture, where the data present bimodality.