Search

The article is a result of a complementary advanced publication workshop accompanying the curriculum course exercises for PhD students, on the role of ICT in the research work of a scientist. To fulfill the extended course requirements the participants decided to write relevant paper, if possible, related to their individual research endeavors and their relations to the digital world. The paper consists of a collection of short chapters written by young researchers. They express their own views, based on early research experience, relevant generally to the inclusion of critical digital age components in their theses. The chapters are only moderately consulted by the tutor in the direction of finding a common denominator related to social sciences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social Science deals with the study of phenomena related to the social status of human beings. The importance of such sciences lies in the fact that they make it possible to know, predict, modify and improve the functioning of human societies today. Due to the great complexity of modern societies, it is virtually impossible to have accurate data or knowledge about any contemporary society. That is why neutrosophic theory is suitable for representing and modeling the data from studies on any social sciences. They may contain data that is contradictory, incomplete, inaccurate, vague, and so on. In particular, neutrosophic statistics generalizes classical statistics to interval-valued data. Since classical statistics are of great importance for the study of Social Sciences, in this paper, we compile, define and illustrate some statistical methods typical of classical statistics generalized to neutrosophic statistics. We will emphasize the Legal Sciences in our approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social Science deals with the study of phenomena related to the social status of human beings. The importance of such sciences lies in the fact that they make it possible to know, predict, modify and improve the functioning of human societies today. Due to the great complexity of modern societies, it is virtually impossible to have accurate data or knowledge about any contemporary society. That is why neutrosophic theory is suitable for representing and modeling the data from studies on any social sciences. They may contain data that is contradictory, incomplete, inaccurate, vague, and so on. In particular, neutrosophic statistics generalizes classical statistics to interval-valued data. Since classical statistics are of great importance for the study of Social Sciences, in this paper, we compile, define and illustrate some statistical methods typical of classical statistics generalized to neutrosophic statistics. We will emphasize the Legal Sciences in our approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social networks influence health-related behavior, such as obesity and smoking. While researchers have studied social networks as a driver for diffusion of influences and behavior, it is less understood how the structure or topology of the network, in itself, impacts an individual's health behavior and wellness state. In this paper, we investigate whether the structure or topology of a social network offers additional insight and predictability on an individual's health and wellness. We develop a method called the Network-Driven health predictor (NetCARE) that leverages features representative of social network structure. Using a large longitudinal data set of students enrolled in the NetHealth study at the University of Notre Dame, we show that the NetCARE method improves the overall prediction performance over the baseline models—that use demographics and physical attributes—by 38%, 65%, 55%, and 54% for the wellness states—stress, happiness, positive attitude, and self-assessed health—considered in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

More than 50 countries and international organisations worldwide are currently working on strategies and policies to promote a transition to a bioeconomy. This economic system centres on a sustainable use of bio- and renewable resources to guarantee sustainability. Although many contributions have been made to the field of bioeconomy, most focus on a science perspective (e.g. chemistry, engineering, technology, biomedicine or biology). Despite the significant importance of social and economic issues for a bioeconomy transition, studies from a social science perspective are largely lacking. This paper presents a systematic review of academic contributions to the field of bioeconomy from a social science standpoint. The results reveal the need for an in-depth analysis of the challenges and opportunities that the bioeconomy faces in social and economic terms. Image 1 • Significant gaps in bioeconomy contributions from a social science perspective. • Lack of multidimensional studies on socioeconomic impacts. • Mixed and refined methodologies are required, especially, empirical studies. • Academic studies on the bioeconomy require a major focus on opportunities and risks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given the centrality of regions in social movements, politics and public administration, here we aim to quantitatively study regional identity, cross-region communication and sentiment. This paper presents a new methodology to study social interaction within and between social-geographic regions, and then applies the methodology to a case study of England and Wales. We use a social network, built from geo-located Twitter data, to identify contiguous geographical regions with a shared social identity and then investigate patterns of communication within and between them. In contrast to other approaches (e.g. using phone call data records or online friendship networks), use of Twitter data provides message contents as well as social connections. This allows us to investigate not only the volume of communication between locations, but also the sentiment and vocabulary used in the messages. For example, our case study shows: a significant dialect difference between England and Wales; that regions tend to be more positive about themselves than about others, with the South being more ‘self-regarding’ than the North; and that people talk politics much more between regions than within. This study demonstrates how social media can be used to quantify regional identity and inter-region communications and sentiment, exposing these previously hard-to-observe geographic concepts to analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper questions the validity of the so-called "publishing studies" as an academic discipline, while trying to situate them within the field of social sciences and to contextualize their success. It argues that a more appropriate frame could be adopted to describe what people studying the transformations of book publishing do - or should do - both at a theoretical and methodological level. The paper begins by providing an overview of the scholarly and academic context in France as far as book publishing is concerned, highlighting its genesis and current development. It goes on to underline the main pitfalls that such a sub-field as publishing studies is faced with, before making suggestions as to the bases for a stimulating analysis of publishing, making a case for an interdisciplinary approach nurtured by social sciences. The paper is based on a long-term field study on independent presses in France, together with a survey of literature on the subject. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The international take-up and rapid development of environmental assessment (EA) systems has been driven by the introduction of EA legal requirements and by the advancement of methodological aspects published in the EA literature. However, despite the existence of common legal frameworks and methodological guidelines, the way in which EA is practised and conceived within a multidisciplinary context varies. There are a range of interpretations defining the way in which EA should be used and how EA fits within different disciplines; in Europe, this variation is reflected in the formative and educational programmes offered by universities in EU Member States. This paper identifies existing trends in EA education by providing an overview of the ways in which EA is taught in Europe. A comparative analysis of 64 EA-related Master programmes representing nine EU Member States is conducted. Furthermore, the paper aims to set the basis for a discussion on the different social science and physical science understandings of EA revealed by the research findings. We recommend that interlinkages between these two understandings be improved and suggest that this could occur through the introduction of formal EA education, enhanced collaboration between different types of departments, and holistic approaches to teaching and learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the issues related to social work education. The author believes that one reason is that many authors seem to have the impression that a paper that is meant for social work education must be quantitatively oriented and empirically based to be published. To many this means con- ducting studies on fairly narrow questions that may be of interest to a limited audience. Junior faculty especially, he has found, often believe that tenure and pro- motion committees are much more interested in published papers filled with statistical analyses and tables than in theoretical or conceptually oriented essays. The author has heard many junior faculty comments that they would prefer to write about the latter but feel pressured to churn out the former. The concludes that one need to take a hard look at the "market forces" that are pressuring so many faculty to conduct research and write papers on topics that do not attract. It is essential that social work educators engage in thoughtful discourse about these matters, because they do matter. Finally the author concludes that reach on these issues have a great deal to do with the character of this noble profession.

We tested the effectiveness of an intensive, on average 17-session, adaptive and computerized working-memory training program for improving performance on untrained, paper and pencil working memory tasks, standardized school achievement tasks, and teacher ratings of classroom behavior. Third-grade children received either a computerized working memory training for about 30 minutes per session (n = 156) or participated in regular classroom activities (n = 126). Results indicated strong gains in the training task. Further, pretest and posttest transfer measures of working memory and school achievement, as well as teacher ratings, showed substantial correlations with training task performance, suggesting that the training task captured abilities that were relevant for the transfer tasks. However, effect sizes of training-specific transfer gains were very small and not consistent across tasks. These results raise questions about the benefits of intensive working-memory training programs within a regular school context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents some of the findings from two national research projects which focussed on Ph.D. research in Britain. Through interviews with graduate students, supervisors and department heads, it explores the characteristic structures which index natural science and social science doctoral study in both single and multi/inter-disciplinary fields. By comparing and contrasting a 'research group approach' to Ph.D. research with the 'one-to-one' model, the research findings highlight ways in which doctoral study can be organised to minimise some of the problems routinely faced by graduate students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]