Musicians' social representations of health and illness: a qualitative case study about focal dystonia

Musicians are artists who use the entire body when playing their instruments. Since over-practicing may lead to physical problems, musicians might encounter focal dystonia, a hand's motor disorder. The cause seems to be the brain's confusion between afferent and efferent information transfer provoking a disharmony with the instrument. Although focal dystonia may have serious consequences for a musician's career, it is unclear how musicians perceive this trouble. This case study describes two musicians with focal dystonia. Qualitative research was used to study their social representations of health and illness. The results show the central role of the hand during music playing, the passion for music and the understanding for focal dystonia as "brain panic". Therapists should account for those specific features inherent to this population in order to better help them in their quest for art through music. Giving a voice to musicians may improve their quality of care.     

Driven by politics: agenda setting and policy-making in Hungary 2010–2014

Studies on media and politics generally find an effect of the media on the symbolic policy agenda. Analysing data from the Hungarian Comparative Agendas Project, we demonstrate that this effect is extremely weak in the Hungarian policy-making process. We identified those issues that received greater than average coverage in the media. However, we found that in the majority of cases governmental initiatives or decisions preceded the media coverage – that is, instead of the media agenda pulling the policy agenda, the general logic is the opposite: the media are talking about the policy initiatives of the government. The ambition of the paper is twofold. First, our findings reinforce those claims in the literature that point to the many institutional and political factors affecting the media-politics nexus. This suggests that policy-making might be very different in new(er) democracies. Second, our research analyses the policy-making side of Viktor Orbán’s governance. Changes in the polity, democratic backlash and illiberal tendencies are usually the focus concerning the political changes in Hungary since 2010, but no attention has been devoted to how this type of governance is reflected in policy-making. Our paper seeks to make a contribution also in this respect.     

Controlling the familywise error rate with plug-in estimator for the proportion of true null hypotheses

Summary.  Estimation of the number or proportion of true null hypotheses in multiple-testing problems has become an interesting area of research. The first important work in this field was performed by Schweder and Spjøtvoll. Among others, they proposed to use plug-in estimates for the proportion of true null hypotheses in multiple-test procedures to improve the power. We investigate the problem of controlling the familywise error rate FWER when such estimators are used as plug-in estimators in single-step or step-down multiple-test procedures. First we investigate the case of independent p -values under the null hypotheses and show that a suitable choice of plug-in estimates leads to control of FWER in single-step procedures. We also investigate the power and study the asymptotic behaviour of the number of false rejections. Although step-down procedures are more difficult to handle we briefly consider a possible solution to this problem. Anyhow, plug-in step-down procedures are not recommended here. For dependent p -values we derive a condition for asymptotic control of FWER and provide some simulations with respect to FWER and power for various models and hypotheses.     

Which traits influence the frequency of plant species occurrence in urban habitat types?

Plants in cities must cope with various anthropogenic environments that differ from surrounding landscapes. Moreover, the differences in biotic and abiotic conditions among these habitats filter species with suitable traits and niche requirements. Here we aim to identify those attributes that promote species occurrence across and within urban habitat types of large cities. Species composition of spontaneously occurring vascular plant species was recorded in 1-ha plots in seven different urban habitat types in each of 32 European cities. Each species was characterized in terms of dispersal type, growth form, height, seed bank longevity, seed mass, selected leaf traits and ecological indicators including Ellenberg indicator values, Grime’s life strategies, and immigration pathways using information from available species-trait databases. For each species, total frequency of occurrence across all plots and habitat frequency of occurrence across plots of given habitat types were calculated and regression trees were used to relate them to traits and ecological indicators. The most frequently occurring species in the cities tended to be human-dispersed, nutrient-demanding plants that prefer drier to mesic soil conditions. These species do not possess the S-strategy and usually produce seeds of low mass forming short-term persistent seed banks. Habitat-specific responses were also revealed, indicating the effects of between- and within-habitat heterogeneity on trends in species performance in cities. Such patterns can be overlooked when differences in species occurrences in particular urban habitat types are not considered; thus, habitat-specific responses can resolve inconsistencies found when whole urban floras are analysed as a whole.     

The Role of Visible Wealth for Deprivation

Social Indicators Research - Motivated by the lack of literature linking actual to perceived relative deprivation, this paper assesses the role of visibility in goods and assets vis-à-vis...     

Chasing foxes in Russian folk tales

This paper examines the representation of foxes in Russian folk tales (narodnye skazki). It explores the frequency of the word “fox” (lisa) in the titles of folk tales, the number of single occurrences of a fox per folk tale, and the vocabulary used to refer to foxes in the texts of Russian folk tales. The paper demonstrates that the fox is the most popular character in Russian folk tales about animals, but is very rarely found in fairy tales. It also offers some comparisons between images of foxes in Russian folk tales and images of foxes in the European epics of Reynard, as well as in tales from Asian (Chinese, Korean, and Japanese) traditions.     

What Narrows the Stepgap? Closeness Between Parents and Adult (Step)Children in Germany

Using data from the German Family Panel (pairfam) based on 11,746 intergenerational family relationships, the present study examined differences in parental closeness across relations with multiple, coresidential, and non‐coresidential adolescent and adult children. Replicating previous research in a multilevel analysis across families, the authors found a strong positive effect of biological descent on closeness in comparison to adoptive and steprelations; this parental favoritism toward biological offspring was partly explained by selection via parental resources and attitudes. Supplemental within‐parent fixed effect analyses suggested that the relative disadvantage of stepchildren was offset by longer duration of the stepparent–stepchild relationship, lower household income, fewer children in the household, and high parental affirmation of familism.