Further evidence of automatic reinforcement effects on verbal form

The Analysis of Verbal Behavior - The form of a verbal response allows for reinforcement mediation and language transmission across cultures. Reinforcement, in turn, plays a decisive role in...     

The effect of longevity on schooling and fertility: evidence from the Brazilian Demographic and Health Survey

This paper presents microevidence on the effect of adult longevity on schooling and fertility. Higher longevity is systematically associated with higher schooling and lower fertility. The paper looks at the 1996 Brazilian Demographic and Health Survey and constructs an adult longevity variable based on the mortality history of the respondent's family. Families with histories of high adult mortality in previous generations have systematically higher fertility and lower schooling. These effects are not associated with omitted variables and remain unchanged after a large array of factors is accounted for (demographic characteristics, family-specific child mortality, regional development, socioeconomic status, etc.).

Connecting Two Sides: A Qualitative Study on Social Innovation Ventures and Poor Communities in an Emerging Economy

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations - The relationship between social innovation venture and poor communities has received little attention from studies in the...     

Ergonomics at Volkswagen Brasil. Multidisciplinary work to equalize health, productivity and quality

Following the technological developments and presented to the multidisciplinary processes as automakers, Volkswagen Brazil, represented by its ergonomists, through this paper, shows the importance of ergonomic efficiency of management applied to various levels of life of a product, since its creation to its final implementation on production lines.The preventive work of ergonomists during the processes leading to production of a vehicle is accomplished through assessments on a simulated system called the Digital Factory. Since the initial stages to final product delivery there is a need for a multidisciplinary aligning the concepts of ergonomics, productivity and quality of product. Industrial Engineering, Process Engineering, ergonomists and workers are involved in the analysis made through the Workshop's showing the importance of discussion between the various users of the systems. The processes of series are also equipped with a set of certifications flow of job and planned audits on items that describe processes and applied ergonomics.     

A Field in Search of Concepts: The Relevance of Generativity to Understanding Intergenerational Relationships

Intergenerational relationships are increasingly recognized as an important field of practice and research. However, it has been argued that appropriate concepts and theories are still required to guide and consolidate the discipline. Although a number of concepts borrowed from the social sciences have been used with some success thus far, few attempts have been made to conceptualize intergenerational relationships from a psychological and developmental perspective. This article explores the usefulness of the Eriksonian concept of generativity as a framework for understanding intergenerational relationships. We describe the contribution of generativity to the intergenerational field and we explore the prospects, limitations, and potential of this contribution.     

Design and validation of the revised Regional Identity Scale (RIS-2) / Diseño y validación de la Escala de Identidad Regional revisada (RIS-2)

With the objective of theoretically and psychometrically updating the Regional Identity Scale (RIS) proposed by Zúñiga and Asún in 2004 and expanding the population for which it shows evidence of validity, a revision and revalidation of this instrument was performed via two studies. The first study included 1,113 university students from four regions of Chile, and the second included 1,200 adults from the same regions. Both samples were obtained via a random design through multistage conglomerates. The results enable us to propose a new version of the original scale (RIS-2) with suitable reliability indexes, solid evidence of both convergent validity and internal structure validity, and items with satisfactory psychometric quality. Furthermore, we verify the presence of a multifactor structure with three highly correlated dimensions. We conclude that the RIS-2 is a reliable, valid and conceptually broader instrument than the preceding version, so it is a useful tool to measure the intensity of regional identity in both university students and the adult population.     

The regime’s worst nightmare: the mobilization of citizen democracy. A study of Podemos’ (aesthetic) populism and the production of affect in political discourse

In spite of not even being officially registered three months before the European Parliament Elections of 2014, the Spanish upstart party Podemos captured almost 8 percent of the vote, while barely nine months after its formation, in October 2014, social surveys were citing the party as the leading force in national politics. The overall purpose of this paper is to explore how Podemos’ aesthetic and its discursive strategies are being used to mobilize affect and create collective identities in the battle for political hegemony in Spain. I argue in dialogue with Laclau [2005. On populist reason. London: Verso], Errejón and Mouffe [2016. Podemos: in the name of the people. London: Lawrence & Wishart] that: (a) the articulation of a new political grammar and discursive conflicts in which the popular majority can identify themselves as subjects in opposition to an adversary ‘Other’ plays a central role in constructing ‘the people’ as a new form of political culture, especially in times of crisis whereby; (b) the notion of populism transgresses categories such as ‘oversimplification’ and/or ‘demagogy’ and can also be regarded in terms of exhibiting sensitivity to popular demands and participatory democracy. My findings show that welfare politics are not necessarily best communicated through traditional left-wing symbols, due to the left’s popular link with communism and political defeat; these having been repeatedly recounted by the media/culture industry throughout history. Indeed, many may share the idea of protecting a nation’s common social services without wanting to position themselves within a Marxist (leftist) framework. I point to the representative crisis as an affective crisis where there is a potential affective space to be filled. From here, I stress that resistance movements seem to need to learn the current media logic of conflict and recognition in order to mediate affect and produce identification.     

On the Determinants of Mortality Reductions in the Developing World

This article presents and critically discusses evidence on the determinants of mortality reductions in developing countries. It argues that increases in life expectancy between 1960 and 2000 were largely independent of improvements in income. The author characterizes the age and cause‐of‐death profile of changes in mortality and assesses what can be learned about the determinants of these changes from the international evidence and from country‐specific studies. Public health infrastructure, immunization, targeted programs, and the spread of less palpable forms of knowledge all seem to have been important factors. Finally, the article suggests that the evolution of health inequality across and within countries is intrinsically related to the process of diffusion of new technologies and to the nature of these new technologies, public or private.     

A new destructive Poisson odd log-logistic generalized half-normal cure rate model

We propose a new cure rate survival model by assuming that the initial number of competing causes of the event of interest follows a Poisson distribution and the time to event has the odd log-logistic generalized half-normal distribution. This survival model describes a realistic interpretation for the biological mechanism of the event of interest. We estimate the model parameters using maximum likelihood. For different sample sizes, various simulation scenarios are performed. We propose the diagnostics and residual analysis to verify the model assumptions. The potentiality of the new cure rate model is illustrated by means of a real data.