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O artigo procura analisar e refletir sobre o papel da língua portuguesa enquanto sistema de poder simbólico na Cooperação Portuguesa promovida pela Administração Central. A análise centra-se no período de 1999 a 2019, tendo por referência os diferentes documentos produzidos neste período. O presente artigo é, em parte, um exercício de autorreflexão, uma vez que os autores se posicionam como “amigos críticos” e não observadores externos da Cooperação Portuguesa. A reflexão realizada permite inferir que a língua, enquanto estratégia de soft power do Estado português, cria um viés aos objetivos inerentes à cooperação para o desenvolvimento, surgindo como um sistema de poder simbólico que perpetua relações de colonialidade. This article aims to analyse and reflect on the role of the Portuguese language as a symbolic power system in the Portuguese Cooperation. This analysis is focused on the period between 1999 and 2019, based on the different documents published in this period. This article is in some extent a self-reflection, since the authors consider themselves as “critical friends” and not external observers of the Portuguese Cooperation. The article argues that the Portuguese language emerges as a symbolic power system that perpetuates coloniality relationships stemming from the fact that it is a soft power strategy from the Portuguese state, not a development objective.

This article portrays youth mobility in Cameroon as a means to escape poverty and to achieve a better life. Youth mobility though not new is, however, taking a new dimension as a result of Boko Haram’s violent conflict. To explore how this violence has affected mobility, this study analyses narration of youngsters’ escape experiences from Boko Haram and their ideas of how to achieve a better life, drawing on interviews in Cameroon’s Far North Region. The study begins with the origin and regionalisation of Boko Haram, followed by the concept of youth, the evolution of mobility trends and better life. It then proceeds to narrations of escape experiences, places of destination and sheds light on mobility pathways and integration dynamics. Este artigo descreve a mobilidade dos jovens nos Camarões como um meio de escapar à pobreza e conseguir uma vida melhor. A mobilidade juvenil, embora não seja um fenómeno novo, está a assumir uma nova dimensão devido ao conflito violento do Boko Haram. Para explorar como esta violência afetou a mobilidade, o presente estudo analisa a narração de experiências dos jovens que fugiram do Boko Haram e as suas ideias de como alcançar uma vida melhor, com base em entrevistas realizadas na região do extremo norte dos Camarões. O estudo começa com a origem e regionalização do Boko Haram, seguidas pelo conceito de juventude, a evolução das tendências de mobilidade e a procura de uma vida melhor. Prossegue com as narrações de experiências de fuga, lugares de destino e lança luz sobre os caminhos da mobilidade e as dinâmicas de integração.

This article focuses on the democracy and legitimacy debates in Zimbabwe after the ouster of Robert Mugabe from power by his erstwhile ally, Emmerson Mnangagwa, in November 2017. President Mnangagwa popularized the terms “Second Republic” and “New Dispensation” to show that his regime differed from Mugabe’s in terms of governance style. The position of this article is that Mnangagwa’s regime could not abandon the system established under the reign of Mugabe. Instead, it argues that the Second Republic reflects continuities of the Mugabe era being transposed into a quasi-military edifice whose commandist approaches denigrate cries for democracy and transparency. This qualitative research draws on data from interviews with political elites in the opposition and ruling parties as well as secondary sources. Este artigo centra-se nos debates sobre democracia e legitimidade no Zimbábue após a destituição de Robert Mugabe do poder pelo seu antigo aliado, Emmerson Mnangagwa, em novembro de 2017. O Presidente Mnangagwa popularizou os termos “Segunda República” e “Nova Dispensação” para mostrar que o seu regime era diferente do de Mugabe em termos de estilo de governação. A posição deste artigo é que o regime de Mnangagwa não podia abandonar o sistema estabelecido sob o reinado de Mugabe. Em vez disso, argumenta que a Segunda República reflete a continuidade da era Mugabe transposta para um edifício quase militar cujas abordagens “comandantes” denigrem os apelos à democracia e à transparência. Esta pesquisa qualitativa baseia-se em dados de entrevistas com elites políticas dos partidos na oposição e no poder, assim como em fontes secundárias.

Este artigo tem como objetivo discutir as influências da globalização e da cooperação para o desenvolvimento na educação e na formação de professores em Angola, em particular nas províncias de Benguela, de Cabinda e do Cunene. Utilizou-se uma metodologia de natureza qualitativa e os resultados apresentados decorrem da análise documental e de entrevistas semiestruturadas realizadas a vários atores nacionais e locais. Verifica-se assim que os parâmetros definidos para a formação de professores em Angola são fortemente influenciados pelos projetos de cooperação internacional nas suas conceções e práticas. Sugere-se a necessidade de monitorização e recontextualização da formação de professores em Angola, assim como a valorização da carreira de professor. This article aims to discuss the influences of globalization and development cooperation on education and teacher training in Angola, particularly in the provinces of Benguela, Cabinda and Cunene. A qualitative methodology was used and the results stem from document analysis and semi-structured interviews conducted with various national and local actors. Thus, it appears that the parameters defined for teacher training in Angola are strongly influenced by international cooperation projects in their conceptions and practices. The need for monitoring and re-contextualization of teacher training in Angola, as well as valuing the teaching career, are suggested.

As a response to widespread conceptualizations of street childhood in the global South as a state of misery and marginalization, recent studies tend to portray street children as social agents. However, many refer to “tactical” or “thin” agency in order to point out the limited scope of those young people’s practices. Yet, the problem of acknowledging a lower degree of agency is that it separates children and youth living in environments “outside the norm” from those who stay with their parents and attend school. This constellation is particularly inadequate in the realm of street childhood in the global South, as it constructs fixed entities of different life worlds that are indeed fluid since street children frequently move between the various domains of socialization. I propose that the social, spatial and temporal mobilities of street children can best be explored through children’s biographical life stories, focusing here on street children in southern Ghana. Em resposta às conceitualizações generalizadas da infância de rua no Sul global como um estado de miséria e marginalização, estudos recentes tendem a descrever as crianças de rua como agentes sociais. No entanto, muitos referem-se à agência “tática” ou “fraca”, para salientar o limitado alcance das práticas desses jovens. Porém, o problema de reconhecer um grau de agência mais reduzido é que ele separa as crianças e jovens que vivem em ambientes “fora da norma” daqueles que ficam com os seus pais e frequentam a escola. Esta constelação é particularmente inadequada na esfera da infância de rua no Sul global, já que constrói entidades fixas de diferentes mundos de vida que de facto são fluídos, uma vez que frequentemente as crianças de rua circulam entre os vários domínios de socialização. Proponho que as mobilidades sociais, espaciais e temporais das crianças de rua podem ser melhor exploradas através das histórias de vida das crianças, focando aqui as crianças de rua no sul do Gana.

Shale gas extraction via hydraulic fracturing has been a controversial issue in many countries. In Canada, the provincial government of British Columbia (BC) has made relentless efforts on developing a liquefied natural gas (LNG) industry targeting potential Asian importers, which has been a heatedly debated public controversy since late 2011. Focusing on the two contending discourse coalitions formed by this policy initiative’s supporters and opponents, respectively, this article explores the intricate economic, political, and ideological struggles underlying Canadian extractivism. A qualitative discourse analysis of related stakeholder communications reveals that the pro-LNG coalition led by the BC Liberal government developed a “progressive extractivism” storyline to frame LNG exports as an unprecedented and ethical economic opportunity deserving the political support of environmentally minded British Columbians. By contrast, the anti-LNG coalition formed by progressive civil organizations, Indigenous groups, and concerned citizens engaged in fierce discursive resistance, notably via (a) adopting mainstream economic knowledge to highlight the fragile economic basis of BC LNG and (b) incorporating potent political issues such as democratic governance and reconciliation to expand public debates beyond the “jobs versus the environment” dichotomy.

Objectives: The objective of this systematic review was to determine what impact governance principles and guidelines have had on sport organisations’ governance practices and performance. Methods: Following the PRISMA, PIECES and Warwick protocols, we conducted a search of academic, grey literature and theses in sport and broader social sciences and humanities databases. We excluded studies that only proposed governance principles and did not actually measure their use by sport organisations, as well as those studies which did not consider the governance principles in relation to organisational performance. Results: From the initial 2,155 studies reviewed, 19 met the inclusion criteria. A wide range of governance principles or guidelines have been considered by the relatively small number of studies included in the analysis. We did find a variety of researchers from mainly developed countries examining the issue, often using case studies as a means to explore the topic. Although the link between board structure and organisational performance has been empirically found, the link between other governance principles and organisational performance remains lacking. Conclusions: Despite an increased interest in good governance principles and guidelines in sport, there is a clear need for both the international sport community and researchers to develop an agreed set of governance principles and language relevant for international, national, provincial/state and local level sport governance organisations. The multidimensionality of the concepts of governance and organisational performance, as well as their interrelationship and the potential positive and negative impacts of implementing governance principles render this need all the more critical.

Literature related to transgender health in adults has focused on definitions, hormone therapy, and transgender-sensitive care provision. Further understanding is needed on the delivery of primary care for transgender adults. The aim of this review was to understand the primary-care needs and access to health care services for transgender adults in Canada. A state-ofthe-art literature review was conducted. Thirteen research studies were included. There is limited literature on the delivery of primary care for transgender adults, particularly in Canada. Health care issues and access to care have been explored. However, there remains minimal Canadian content on primary-care delivery for transgender adults. Additional studies are needed to understand transgender primary-care needs in Canada. Further understanding can reduce the invisibility and disparities experienced by transgender individuals. With better understanding of transgender primary health care issues, primary-care practitioners can advocate for the heath needs of their patients and improve care delivery.

Providing culturally appropriate mental health services to war-affected refugees residing in the West continues to pose many challenges. Gaining firsthand knowledge from the refugee communities themselves is crucial to improving our knowledge and guiding our interventions. The purpose of this study is to understand perceptions of war trauma in the Tamil diaspora. Fifty-one Sri Lankan Tamils living in the Greater Toronto Area, Canada, were interviewed. Transcripts were thematically analyzed using content analysis. Findings indicate that war trauma is not viewed by the diaspora as a pathological notion. Positioned within a moral context, and independent from isolated events of war, manifestations of war trauma were discussed at an interpersonal and collective level. Diagnostic categories, including post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), do not seem to fully capture the breadth of war trauma in this diaspora community. Implications for service delivery, and for incorporating the unique aspects of suffering resulting from a fragmented community, are discussed.

Cultural perceptions of the environment bring us back to elements and factors guided by “natural” cause-effect principles. It seems that academic education has had little effect on the manner and results of learning about changes in the local landscape, especially as regards rational explanations. There is considerable difficulty relating academic concepts about the climate to transformations in the environmental landscape. Teaching tasks are mediatized due to the use of rigorous and precise concepts which facilitate functional and satisfactory learning. This is the objective of the research this article aims to undertake, for which we have chosen the case of Ontinyent (Spain). This research will include two parts: the first aims to identify problems in geographical education of the climate, and the second applies to didactic suggestions for improvement. Methodologically, this study involves qualitative, non-experimental, research-oriented toward change, which purports to understand the educational reality. Our sample included a total of 431 students. Moreover, a semi-structured interview, conducted with teachers in schools and universities in Ontinyent, was organized. Fourteen teachers were interviewed, including two who participated as research professors in the action-research method. The study revealed that students’ conceptual and stereotypical errors, in the different educational stages, vary according to the type (climate, weather, climate change, landscape) and stage (Primary, Secondary, University). They are persistent and continuous, given that they are repeated and appear anchored in the ideas and knowledge development of students regarding the problems and the study of the climate throughout their education.

The understanding that immunity could be strengthened in the general population (e.g., through vaccine interventions) supported global advances upon acute infectious disease epidemics in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries. However, in the twenty-first century, global populations face chronic disease epidemics. Research demonstrates that diseases largely emerge from health risk behavior. The understanding of how health behavior, like the biological immune system, can be strengthened in the general population, could support advances in the twenty-first century. To consider how health behavior can be strengthened in the general population, the authors present a theoretical model of population health behavior. The model operationalizes health behavior as a system of functions that, like the biological immune system, exists in each member of the population. Constructs are presented that operationalize the specific decisions and habits that drive health behavior and behavior change in the general population. The constructs allow the authors to present parallels (1) among existing behavior change theories and (2) between the proposed system and the biological immune system. Through these parallels, the authors introduce a model and a logic of population-level health behavior change. The Adaptive Behavioral Immune System is an integrative model of population health behavior.

Since Benoit Mandelbrot (1924–2010) coined the term “fractal” in 1975, mathematical theories of fractal geometry have deeply influenced the fields of landscape perception, architecture, and technology. Indeed, their ability to describe complex forms nested within each other, and repeated towards infinity, has allowed the modeling of chaotic phenomena such as weather patterns or plant growth. Some human-designed patterns such as the ones developed by Islamic cultures have been found to follow similar principles of hierarchy, symmetry, and repetition. However, the application of these principles in the design of gardens is an underexplored field. This paper presents a comparative exploration of the four-fold garden design model—the chahár-bágh—typical of Persian and Islamic garden design by analyzing two case studies: Taj Mahal and Isfahan’s city plan. This four-fold pattern is known to not only have a religious reading but to be also linked with ideals of fair distribution. Using an innovative compositional fractal analysis inspired by architecture, our results demonstrate that these gardens contain a high level of self-replication and scale invariance and that they exhibit a high fractal dimension. The novel application of this method of analysis to historical landscape plans allows us to assess to what extent fractal concepts were already in use before the European Renaissance and Mandelbrot’s explorations, and to speculate on their symbolism in the context of Islamic and Persian garden design. Specifically, we conclude that the fractal characteristics of these gardens might be intended as a representation of the infinite divine but also of principles of fairness and equality. Moving forward, this approach could be applied to design spaces, namely in the infrastructural design of the urban fabric, which are both meaningful and environmentally just.

Among the discussion threads devoted to racism, conspiracies, and fascist dogma on 4chan’s notorious ‘Politically Incorrect’ board, there is also a small but significant number of posts on the topic of far-right self-improvement. These posts speak in a style that blends the language of self-help and fitness with far-right propaganda and conspiracies, and are designed to turn the movement from aimless online ‘shitposters’ into survivalists and soldiers. This article describes the unique form of self-improvement advice known on 4chan as the ‘iron pill,’ and considers the role that self-improvement plays in radicalisation among the far right online. It addresses how this plays into the history of fascism, looking in particular at the concept of the ‘New Man’ in Italian fascism, and discusses how a political narrative of conspiracy and resistance to imagined tyranny is used to motivate self-improvement, and how this in turn builds and cements radicalisation.

Aging societies are one of the major problems faced in the modern world. Promoting subjective wellbeing is a key component in helping individuals positively accept and adapt to psychological and physical changes during their aging process. Tourism is one of the activities that have been demonstrated to promote subjective wellbeing. However, motivation for tourism and its benefits to subjective wellbeing among the older adults have rarely been discussed. The current study aimed to investigate whether tourism contributes to the subjective wellbeing of older adults. We examined the relationships between travel frequency, subjective wellbeing, and the personal trait of curiosity, mediated by the factor of family budget situation. The results demonstrated that diverse curiosity motivates individuals to travel; thus, diverse curiosity positively correlates to subjective wellbeing, both directly as well as indirectly through travel frequency. However, this relationship is limited by the factor of family budget, with tourism contributing to the subjective wellbeing of only well-off older adults. This study concludes that tourism has potential to contribute to subjective wellbeing during later stages of life.

This paper reports on a three-part investigation into people’s perceptions of cybersecurity, based on their lived experiences. We sought thereby to reveal issues located within the Johari grid’s “Blind Spot” quadrant. We utilized research methodologies from both the Arts and Science in order firstly to identify blind spot issues, and secondly to explore their dimensions. Our investigation confirmed a number of aspects that we were indeed aware of, when it came to people’s lived cybersecurity experiences. We also identified one particular blind spot issue: widespread, but not universal, negativity towards cybersecurity. We then carried out an investigation using a recognized methodology from psychology, as a first attempt to assess the nature of this negativity and to get a sense of its roots. What our initial experiment revealed was that scoping cybersecurity-related emotions is nontrivial and will require the formulation of new measurement tools. We conclude by reporting on the challenges, to inform researchers who plan to extend the research reported in this paper., Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 8, ISSN:2662-9992

Conceptualizing the complexities of the Russian political economy strikingly illustrates the challenging but essential role of the State in the new process of capitalist reforms initiated in the 1990s. A missing ingredient in this discourse has been considering the extraordinary impact technology has on society and how it affects the process. Accordingly, this paper focuses on the current development of culturally unique capitalist theory in Russia, together with the practical application of proven quantitative landmarks and policy implications for managing digital society’s development to optimize capitalism in Russia. The paper performs a quantitative analysis of the considerable influence that the digital society has on Russian capitalism and how the latter can be systemically optimized through the former’s development. This contribution’s originality lies in its consideration of the consequences of digital culture on the unique model of capitalism shaping contemporary Russia. Currently, Russia is implementing a particular and unique model of capitalism model where the digital society’s influence is limited and contradictory. We argue that the Russian model of capitalism could experience rapid development in the foreseeable future with effective digital society management.

Urban subway system, as an important type of urban transportation infrastructure, can provide mass mobility service and help address urban sustainability challenges such as traffic congestion and air pollution. The continuous construction of subways, however, causes large amounts of construction materials and embodied greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. In this study, we characterized the patterns of subway development, construction material stocks, and embodied emissions covering all 219 cities in the world in which subways are found by July 2020. The global subway length reached 16,419 km in 2020, and the construction material stocks amounted to 2.5 gigatons, equaling to an embodied emission of 560 megatons. In particular, China’s subway system contributes to ~40% of the total global stocks, with a pattern of moderate and steady stocks growth before 2010 and a rapid expansion afterwards, implying the late-development advantages and infrastructure-based urbanization mode. Our results demonstrated that identifying the spatiotemporal characteristics of subway materials stocks development is imperative for benchmarking future resource demand, informing sustainable subway planning, prospecting urban mining and waste management opportunities and challenges, and mitigating the associated environmental impacts for global GHG emission reduction.

Social distancing policies are currently the best method of mitigating the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, adherence to these policies vary greatly on a county-by-county level. We used social distancing adherence (SoDA) estimated from mobile phone data and population-based demographics/statistics of 3054 counties in the United States to determine which demographics features correlate to adherence on a countywide level. SoDA scores per day were extracted from mobile phone data and aggregated from March 16, 2020 to April 14, 2020. 45 predictor features were evaluated using univariable regression to determine their level of correlation with SoDA. These 45 features were then used to form a SoDA prediction model. Persons who work from home prior to the COVID-19 pandemic (β = 0.259, p β = −0.322, p

We examined how age and exposure to different types of COVID-19 (mis)information affect misinformation beliefs, perceived credibility of the message and intention-to-share it on WhatsApp. Through two mixed-design online experiments in the UK and Brazil (total N = 1454) we first randomly exposed adult WhatsApp users to full misinformation, partial misinformation, or full truth about the therapeutic powers of garlic to cure COVID-19. We then exposed all participants to corrective information from the World Health Organisation debunking this claim. We found stronger misinformation beliefs among younger adults (18–54) in both the UK and Brazil and possible backfire effects of corrective information among older adults (55+) in the UK. Corrective information from the WHO was effective in enhancing perceived credibility and intention-to-share of accurate information across all groups in both countries. Our findings call for evidence-based infodemic interventions by health agencies, with greater engagement of younger adults in pandemic misinformation management efforts.

The development of urbanization and urbanism in Iran has created a wide socioeconomic gap in urban areas. Rapid population growth along with the lack of socioeconomic growth programs and urban development strategies have deteriorated unemployment, inflation, housing price, traffic congestion, and marginalization in cities, particularly in metropolises of Iran. This paper, using a descriptive-analytic research method and a meta-analysis technique, addresses the urbanization and urbanism changes in Iran. Using GIS technique and CV formula, the spatial distribution of urbanization and its rapid growth in Iran are depicted. The research data was derived from a systematic review of documents and techniques over 40 years. The results of the study demonstrated that Iranian cities have undergone an unsustainable growth trend and urbanization has overtaken urbanism. Over the past 4 decades, cities have been struggling with rapid growth and development. In this regard, development-oriented governments can play a significant role in tackling growth and urbanization problems. These problems are especially evident in the socio-economic, urban planning and urban ecology. The rapid growth of urbanization (74% in 2016) has resulted in the emergence of metropolitan areas in an unstable process. Also, in metropolitan areas of Iran, environmental and ecological threats, rural–urban migration and marginalization have posed serious national–regional and local challenges. The structural–functional reforms in Iran, along with skeletal–spatial and socio-economic changes in cities, have given rise to a new social class (low-income people), which is characterized with non-formal businesses and informal settlements in the outskirts of cities, especially metropolitan areas. This has prompted unsustainability in main indicators of urban development such as security, building density, environmental threats, and centralization, among other things. This analysis is based on indicators such as density and centralization, informal settlement, and urban security.

A substantial number of factors have been examined on the potentials of SMEs to exploit mobile marketing devices to achieve a competitive edge. However, the limited scholarly investigation has focused on the demographic characteristics of top executives of SMEs and how the location moderates the interaction between the demographic structure of SMEs’ executives and the rate of mobile marketing technology adoption, particularly in the south-west of Nigeria where adoption of these devices are slow. The research examines the effects of demographic factors of top SME executives on mobile marketing technology adoption in Ekiti State Nigeria. Data were collected through questionnaires and responses of 230 SMEs were drawn randomly from a population of 620 registered SMEs operating in 6 different industries located in different towns in Ekiti State, South-West Geo-Political Zone, Nigeria. Hierarchical multiple regression was used to analyse the data. Results revealed that the experience, age, and educational attainment of top SMEs’ executives were statistically significant, and the location of the firm significantly moderated mobile marketing technology adoption. Gender also affected mobile marketing technology adoption among SMEs.

The objective of this article is to analyze teachers’ assessment of various resources used to teach history. The research methodology is of a quantitative nature with a non-experimental design using a questionnaire with a Likert scale. The non-probabilistic sample comprises 332 history teachers in Primary and Secondary Education in Spain. The analyses carried out are descriptive and inferential. The results indicate that the surveyed teachers value better the resources that imply a greater involvement of the students in the teaching of history and therefore more active methodologies. Specifically, the most valued resources were heritage, artistic productions and museums and, the least valued, video games, textbooks, and applications of historical content for mobile devices and tablets. The study concludes that heritage is a growing educational resource among teachers and shows that teachers are moving away from their perception of resources, which involve a more traditional methodology of teaching history.

This work describes a general method of testing for redundancies in the sign lists of ancient scripts by data mining the positions of the signs within the inscriptions. The redundant signs are allographs of the same grapheme. The method is applied to the undeciphered Indus Valley Script, which stands out from other ancient scripts by having a large proposed sign list that contains dozens of asymmetric signs that have mirrored pairs. By a statistical analysis of mirrored asymmetric signs, this paper shows that the Indus Valley Script was multi-directional and the mirroring of signs often denotes only the direction of writing without any difference in meaning. For this and five other specific reasons listed in the paper, 50 pairs of signs, 23 mirrored, and 27 non-mirrored, can be grouped together because each pair consists of only insignificant variations of the same original sign. The reduced sign list may make decipherment easier in the future.

Attrition is an important issue in higher education, especially in the field of computer science (CS). Here, we investigate to what extent an education reform affects the attrition of students by analyzing the pattern of grades of CS students’ academic achievement from 2010 to 2018 by IRT, based on Rasch-model analysis. We analyze data from 3673 undergraduate students of a large public university. In 2016 an education reform—as an intervention—was added to our BSc program: all theoretical lectures became compulsory to attend and we introduced a learning methodology course for all first-year students. According to our results, after the education reform most subjects became accomplishable, and students with lower levels of ability also tried to take exams. We succeeded in retaining 28% of our students. Analyzing students’ results could help administrators develop new programs in order to increase retention.

The COVID-19 pandemic has spread uncertainty and social disruption, and exacerbated political divides in the United States. Most studies of the drivers of the epidemic focus on victim characteristics without consideration of drivers in the general population. This study presents statistical models that track the underlying factors in the general population associated with the spread of the pandemic and addresses how social learning mechanisms have led people to adopt perspectives and behaviors depending on their social context. Despite many social, physiological and economic factors, the statistical drivers of the pandemic primarily relate to the presence of vectors and the probability of transmission. However, the relationship between these drivers and COVID-19 deaths is weak and variable outside of the New York metropolitan area. Furthermore, the per capita death rate in much of the country has been much lower than the New York metropolitan area. There have been two very different experiences with the pandemic, one where the signals of its danger have been obvious from the start and one where the signals have been much weaker. Social learning mechanisms (in-group information sharing, imitation, costly punishment) have amplified the effect of people’s experiences with the pandemic. Sheltering in cities and protesting shutdowns in rural areas probably were initially adaptive somatic efforts in the evolutionary sense, given the different realities of the pandemic versus its economic costs in urban versus rural environments. These adaptations, however, have deepened the political divides in an already Balkanized country. The paper concludes with practical recommendations for how to use social learning theory for disseminating information on how to combat the pandemic.

This study explores linguistic features, ideological beliefs, and critical thinking in news comments, which are defined as the comments from readers to news posts on social media or platforms. Within the overarching framework of critical discourse analysis, a sociocognitive approach was adopted to provide detailed analyses of the studied constructs in sampled news comments. In terms of the data collection and analysis, sampled social media, news columns, and news comments were selected, and then 19 college students were interviewed for their responses to different news topics. The primary findings of the study include: (1) personal and social opinions are representations of ideological beliefs and are fully presented through news comments, (2) these personal and social ideological beliefs may diverge or converge due to critical thinking, (3) critical thinking helps commenters form their personal and social ideologies, and then helps them choose the linguistic forms they believe fit their news comments, (4) news topics, however, vary in informing commenters’ critical thinking ability. Finally, a sociocognitive model for studying linguistic forms, ideologies, and critical thinking was proposed in the study.

The ocean provides important ecosystem services to society, but its health is in crisis due to the impacts of human activities. Ocean sustainability requires ambitious levels of scientific evidence to support governance and management of human activities that impact the ocean. However, due to the size, complexity and connectivity of the ocean, monitoring and data collection presupposes high investments, and nations need to cooperate to deliver the ambitious, costly science that is required to inform decisions. Here, we highlight the role that ocean science diplomacy plays in facilitating the science needed to support ocean governance and management from domestic, regional to international scales in the Atlantic region via the All Atlantic Ocean Research Alliance. This Alliance is supported by the Galway Statement (2013), the South–South Framework for Scientific and Technical Cooperation in the South and Tropical Atlantic and the Southern Oceans (2017), and the Belém Statement (2017). We discuss the national and international interests that drove the processes of negotiating these agreements, as well as their challenges to date. We also discuss the potential future of the All Atlantic Alliance, as well as its significance in emerging global initiatives such as the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development (2021–2030).

BackgroundHealthcare workers (HCWs) treating and caring for patients with emerging infectious diseases often experience psychological distress. However, the psychological impact and behavior change of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic among HCWs are still unknown. This study aimed to investigate the worries and concerns of HCWs regarding the COVID-19 pandemic.MethodsIn this cross-sectional survey, a web-based questionnaire was distributed among HCWs working in hospitals or clinics across Japanese medical facilities from April 20 to May 1, 2020. The questionnaire comprised items on demographics, worries and concerns, perceptions regarding the sufficiency of information, and behavioral changes pertaining to the COVID-19 pandemic.ResultsA total of 4386 HCWs completed the survey; 1648 (64.7%) were aged 30-39 years, 2379 (54.2%) were male, and 782 (18.1%) were frontline HCWs, directly caring for patients with COVID-19 on a daily basis. 3500 HCWs (79.8%) indicated that they were seriously worried about the pandemic. The most frequent concern was the consequence of becoming infected on their family, work, and society (87.4%). Additionally, the majority (55.5%) had restricted social contact and almost all HCWs endorsed a shortage in personal protective equipment (median, 8/9 (interquartile range; 7-9) on a Likert scale). There was no significant difference in the degree of worry between frontline and non-frontline HCWs (8/9 (7-9) vs. 8/9 (7-9), p=0.25). Frontline HCWs, compared to non-frontline HCWs, were more likely to have the need to avoid contact with families and friends (24.8% vs. 17.8%, pConclusionsBoth frontline and non-frontline HCWs expressed comparable concerns regarding the COVID-19 pandemic. Because HCWs, especially frontline HCWs, reported that they cannot be obliged to do avoid their duty, effective mental health protection strategies should be developed and implemented for HCWs.

The historical and professional identity of prospective history teachers seems to be central to understanding how these future teachers think of their educational action in articulation with their view of what it means to be historically competent in line with the development of historical literacy and more sophisticated historical consciousness. Thus, in the context of the Master’s Degree in History Teaching in the 3rd Cycle of Basic Education and in Secondary Education offered by the University of Minho (Portugal), following an investigative approach characterised by a Mixed Method in a longitudinal framework, data were collected through an open-answer questionnaire followed by a closed-answer questionnaire. The open-answer questionnaire was proposed at the beginning of the training of prospective History teachers and at the end of the same training course. About twenty answers were obtained and, through their analysis, essentially two types of identities emerged: one more in line with management professionalism and another with the emerging democratic professionalism. Based on the qualitative data, which was analysed inductively, a closed-answer questionnaire was created, intended to understand, through quantitative analysis, the ideas of future Portuguese History teachers about the purposes of being a History teacher, what it means to think historically, what kind of History class they identify with, what should students learn in History classes and whether they should use the terms ‘we’ or ‘the Portuguese’ when presenting the proposals for studying the national historical reality. This questionnaire was applied to students from various Master’s Degree courses in History Teaching, in a purposeful sampling considering the location of Portuguese universities, namely the University of Minho, University of Porto, University of Coimbra, University of Lisbon, and NOVA University of Lisbon.

Euskadi Ta Askatasuna-Basque Country and Freedom (ETA) was an armed organisation from the Basque Country and after it declared that it would cease violent actions and subsequently disbanded, the Basque Country has been involved in a peace process. The Adi-adian programme that is part of this process has been implemented as a part of teacher training programmes. By means of a mixed model that combines both qualitative and quantitative elements, the present study has attempted to identify the attitudes of future teachers-prior to implementation of Adi-adian-regarding terrorism and politically motivated violence that occurred in and from the Basque country since 1960, the information they have received with respect thereto, and their opinions as to how the issues are dealt with in the classroom. The results obtained reveal a generally respectful attitude toward human rights and the delegitimisation of violence; lack of satisfaction regarding the information they have received throughout their lives; and, as future teachers, a lack of certainty as to how to approach such issues in the classroom. It was noted that these future teachers had a high degree of motivation and interest with respect to these matters. Información del autor This project has received financial support from the office of the Vice Rector for Innovation, Social Outreach and Cultural Activities of the University of the Basque Country (UPV-EHU) via the Educational Innovation Project Memory and coexistence (HBP2019-20/102); from the Basque Government, via the Research Group GIPyPAC, UPV/EHU (IT1193-19), and from the Department of Peace and Coexistence of the Basque Government and the: Vice-Rectorate for Basque Language and Continuing Education of the University of the Basque Country (UPV-EHU) (PIC INVEC3L4-D00024-1).

The question of whether people with disabilities should be hired as employees can be considered from three different perspectives: moral, legal, and economic. From a moral point of view, the question can clearly be answered in the affirmative. After all, respect and charity are among the most important cultural and religious values of our society. If a company does not face up to this moral obligation, the company’s image suffers and there may be social consequences that can result in negative word-of-mouth and lower sales. The legal situation differs between countries but is usually relatively simple and straightforward. In Italy, for example, companies with 15 to 35 employees must employ one person with a disability. For larger companies with 36 to 50 employees, this figure rises to two and with more than 51 employees, a total of 7% of all employees must be disabled. If a company does not comply with this quota system, fines will be imposed. This article deals with the third aspect, which for many companies is most important: the economic one. The central question is whether and under what conditions an employee with a disability can perform just as well or even better than a non-disabled colleague and therefore contribute to the economic success of a business. With a number of examples from research and practice, it is illustrated that economic reasons—in addition to moral arguments and legal obligations—also speak in favor of hiring disabled employees.

The journey to another world is an archetype that exists in the forms of marvelous motifs and is also a typical narrative formula with the purpose of creating diverse versions of Vietnamese folk narratives. The archetypal journey was later reborn and expanded in medieval literature as Vietnamese culture, which has become more complex over time. With the aim of discovering the cultural identity of Vietnamese narratives using sociohistorical approaches and discussing the archetype grounded in specific contexts, this research focuses on journey motifs to the upper and lower world in folk narratives in early collections written in Han characters and in related historical and cultural bibliographies. At the same time, by analyzing the fantasy short stories in Excursive Notes on Weird Stories (Truyen ky man luc) by Nguyen Du, this study aims to discover the process of acculturation and creation of materials and motifs from folk narratives, and it discusses how these motifs have been adapted. This research reveals specific messages about the history, culture, era, voice and true identity of the medieval Vietnamese Confucian. Importantly, this study emphasizes the unification of spiritual power between folklore and Taoism and the powerful and influential competition between Taoism and Confucianism in medieval Vietnamese literature. The analysis shows that by recreating the motifs of the folk narratives, writers have built other world journeys to describe the hidden political discourses and religious conflicts in the thoughts of the human mind in the most ideal form.

Over the past few months, COVID-19 has ravaged health systems and economies in countries across the world. While many would argue that a pandemic of respiratory disease was predictable, the systematic failures of the response came as a surprise. From the shortage of hospital beds and medical equipment to the gross insufficiencies in national surveillance systems, supply chains and laboratory capacity, COVID-19 has laid bare the health care limitations that ‘global north’ and ‘global south’ share. A stark set of differences, however, run across the parallels in our collective predicament: indeed, what has become ever-more apparent is the radically uneven distribution of the health, social and economic risks associated with the pandemic—and the public health measures implemented in response—both within and between societies. As concerns grow over a prolonged period of COVID-19 waves, further insights are needed into who bears the largest share of COVID-19 burden and why. The pursuit of health equity is widely held to be global health’s raison d’être; and yet, the deep inequities laid bare by the current pandemic underscore that the field must do more and we must do better. This article identifies five key domains for equity research and action going forward. These ‘equity frontiers’ are not meant to be exhaustive. Rather our emphasis here is on drawing lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic as a prompt for a revived—if not rethought—equity agenda for an evolving global health field.

Many studies have addressed how current immigrant size affects the strength of xenophobia from the perspectives of intergroup contact and ethnic competition theories. Can native residents’ current xenophobia be explained by historical immigrant size? To explore this question, we use historical immigrant size and a survey dataset to investigate the long-term effects of historical immigrant size on current xenophobia in Japan. The results show that historical immigrant size increases current xenophobia in Japan, which may be due to previous negative contact experiences between immigrants and native residents, and the negative effects persist. The implications of these findings for our understanding of the relationship between immigrant size and xenophobia are discussed.

The paper sheds light on the problem of the growing embracement of penal populism (fines and prison sentences) as a measure for dealing with road trauma in Africa through a case study of Ghana. It argues that the policy of hunting for rogue drivers to make roads safer in the continent is as ineffective as killing mosquitoes one by one to control malaria. The best remedy is to drain the swamps in which they breed. The swamps, in respect of road trauma in Africa, are the ineffective public transportation systems and the focus on constructing more expensive roads, which encourage the importation of more old cars, and a high dependence on privately run, deregulated commercial passenger transport sectors that are structurally embedded in driver exploitation. These factors coupled with police corruption and the traffic congestions induced by private capital-driven land-use patterns are what underlie safety-adverse driving and road transport problems generally in the continent. More fundamentally, the paper argues that the law enforcement-heavy approach to road trauma essentializes African drivers as having a danger-prone driving culture. This generates (in)discipline concerns that act as a red herring by deflecting attention from the structural factors undermining road safety in the continent: the continuing effects of neoliberal programs funded by international development bodies, and the profiteering and political interests of powerful coalitions of private transport owners’ unions and public officials that have molded and entrenched the continent’s road transport sectors in its present problematic forms to serve particular purposes. The paper hopes to move road safety conversations in Africa away from the present thinking that enforcing greater punishments against drivers, rather than addressing the broader societal systems whose effects manifest in the road transport sector, is “the” answer to the unacceptably high rate of carnages on the continent’s roads.

Enumeration Areas (EAs) are the operational geographic units for the collection and dissemination of census data and are often used as a national sampling frame for various types of surveys. In many poor or conflict-affected countries, EA demarcations are incomplete, outdated, or missing. Even for countries that are stable and prosperous, creating and updating EAs is one of the most challenging yet essential tasks in the preparation for a national census. Commonly, EAs are created by manually digitising small geographic units on high-resolution satellite imagery or physically walking the boundaries of units, both of which are highly time, cost, and labour intensive. In addition, creating EAs requires considering population and area size within each unit. This is an optimisation problem that can best be solved by a computer. Here, for the first time, we produce a semi-automatic mapping of pre-defined census EAs based on high-resolution gridded population and settlement datasets and using publicly available natural and administrative boundaries. We demonstrate the approach in generating rural EAs for Somalia where such mapping is not existent. In addition, we compare our automated approach against manually digitised EAs created in urban areas of Mogadishu and Hargeysa. Our semi-automatically generated EAs are consistent with standard EAs, including having identifiable boundaries for field teams to follow on the ground, and appropriate sizing and population for coverage by an enumerator. Furthermore, our semi-automated urban EAs have no gaps, in contrast, to manually drawn urban EAs. Our work shows the time, labour and cost-saving value of automated EA delineation and points to the potential for broadly available tools suitable for low-income and data-poor settings but applicable to potentially wider contexts.

Interactions among the environment, humans and language underlie many of the most pressing challenges we face today. This study investigates the use of different verbs to encode various weather events in Sinitic languages, a language family spoken over a wide range of climates and with 3000 years of continuous textual documentation. We propose to synergise the many concepts of kinesis that grew from Aristotle’s original ideas to account for the correlation between meteorological events and their linguistic encoding. It is observed that the two most salient key factors of weather events, i.e., mass of weather substances and speed of weather processes, are the two contributing components of kinetic energy. Leveraging the linguistic theory that kinesis underpins conceptualisation of verb classes, this paper successfully accounts for the selection of verbs for different meteorological events in all Sinitic languages in terms of both language variations and changes. Specifically, weather events with bigger weather substances and faster weather processes tend to select action verbs with high transitivity. The kinesis driven accounts also predict the typological variations between verbal and nominal constructions for weather expressions. The correlation between kinesis and the selection of verbs is further corroborated by an experiment on the perception of native Sinitic language speakers, as well as analyses of regional variations of verb selections that do not follow general typological patterns. It is found that such typological exceptions generally correspond to variations in meteorological patterns. By explicating the pivotal role of kinesis in bridging weather events and the linguistic encoding of weather, this study underlines the role of cognition as the conceptualisation of physical and sensory inputs to sharable knowledge encoded by language.

The rapidly evolving landscape of the global COVID-19 pandemic necessitates urgent scientific advances and adaptive behavioural and policy responses to contain viral transmission, reduce impacts on public health, and minimise societal disruption. Epidemiological models of SARS-CoV-2 transmission are heavily influencing policy responses, forecasting viral infection, transmission, and death rates under simplified representations of human behaviour. They either assume that all members of a population or demographic group behave identically or design individual behavioural rules based on demographic and mobility data. In pluralistic societies, however, individual behavioural responses vary with personal values, situational contexts, and social group identities, affecting policy compliance and viral transmission. Here, I identify and explore the impacts of salient viral identities or “COVID-19 personality types” that are emerging and fluidly coalescing with each other and existing social and political identities. The resultant heightened inter-group differentiation explains the politicisation of the pandemic and rampant racism, discrimination, and conflict observed now and with epidemics historically. Recognising salient COVID-19 behavioural identities can improve scientific forecasting of SARS-CoV-2 transmission and the impact of containment measures, as well as tailor nuanced policy interventions and communications to enhance individual coping and compliance. As governments contemplate easing social-distancing restrictions, the science-society-policy nexus needs fortification through public participation, structured deliberation, and evidence-informed decision-making of policy options to negotiate the complex value trade-offs among public health, the market economy, and civil liberty. By thus valuing human diversity to foster societal resilience, an ethical agenda can be set with a united response to the COVID-19 pandemic and global commons challenges whose impacts are less immediate, but no less dire for humanity.

The purpose of the study was to explain the possible outcomes of mindfulness. The research studied the relationship between mindfulness and employee voice behaviour, affective commitment, job satisfaction, and burnout. The research added one contextual variable, high-performance work system, as a moderator. The sample of the study was faculty members of higher education (management) schools. The sample size was 1092 faculty members. Moderated mediation analysis was used to analyse the data and understand the positive as well as the negative relationship of high-performance work system. Findings indicated the significant positive relationship of mindfulness with employee voice behaviour, affective commitment, and job satisfaction. The research found a negative relationship between mindfulness and burnout. The moderated mediation analysis revealed the significant interaction effect of high-performance work system and mindfulness on consequence variables. To conclude the author found that the mindfulness practice is important for faculty members of higher education. Further the research concluded that mindfulness may enhance employee voice behaviour, which in turn increases satisfaction and commitment and reduces burnout. Such relationship is possible under high performance work system context.

A comparative anthropological perspective reveals not only that some human societies do not engage in war, but also that peaceful social systems exist. Peace systems are defined as clusters of neighbouring societies that do not make war with each other. The mere existence of peace systems is important because it demonstrates that creating peaceful intergroup relationships is possible whether the social units are tribal societies, nations, or actors within a regional system. Peace systems have received scant scientific attention despite holding potentially useful knowledge and principles about how to successfully cooperate to keep the peace. Thus, the mechanisms through which peace systems maintain peaceful relationships are largely unknown. It is also unknown to what degree peace systems may differ from other types of social systems. This study shows that certain factors hypothesised to contribute to intergroup peace are more developed within peace systems than elsewhere. A sample consisting of peace systems scored significantly higher than a comparison group regarding overarching common identity; positive social interconnectedness; interdependence; non-warring values and norms; non-warring myths, rituals, and symbols; and peace leadership. Additionally, a machine learning analysis found non-warring norms, rituals, and values to have the greatest relative importance for a peace system outcome. These results have policy implications for how to promote and sustain peace, cohesion, and cooperation among neighbouring societies in various social contexts, including among nations. For example, the purposeful promotion of peace system features may facilitate the international cooperation necessary to address interwoven global challenges such as global pandemics, oceanic pollution, loss of biodiversity, nuclear proliferation, and climate change.

Competency-based education is one of the challenges currently faced by social science teachers. At present, there is an abundance of research on competencies relating to the social sciences which favour the development of historical thinking among learners. The ongoing training of teachers is of vital importance when it comes to shifting the method of teaching towards approaches which focus more on the learner, which favour the teaching of historical contents and competences aimed at forming a critical citizenship. For this reason, the two objectives of this study are to discover which disciplinary contents are considered by teachers to be most relevant for the teaching of history and what training is required by teachers who give social science classes in primary and secondary education in Spain. The research is a non-experimental mixed-methods study. In order to achieve the first objective, a quantitative analysis has been carried out of the data obtained from a questionnaire with a Likert-type scale administered to 332 primary and secondary teachers in Spain. To achieve the second objective, the information obtained from 12 interviews with primary and secondary school teachers in Spain has been analysed in a qualitative way. The results obtained indicate that teachers update their disciplinary knowledge via scientific journals and that they are interested in receiving training in historical thinking skills, active learning methods and ICT resources. Based on these training needs, it is concluded that teachers currently envisage a teaching model in the social sciences which is more competency-based and focused on the active participation of the learner.

This article applies a science diplomacy lens to examine Sweden’s 1967–1968 intervention in the United Nations—the so-called “Swedish initiative”—that led to the seminal 1972 UN Conference on the Human Environment. The three classic science diplomacy typologies—science in diplomacy, diplomacy for science and science for diplomacy—are employed to structure an analysis of how Swedish diplomats skillfully leveraged science for diplomatic objectives, first for convincing member states of the need to convene a major environmental conference under UN auspices and then to mobilize scientific research internationally—particularly in developing countries—during the Conference preparatory process. The empirical study, based on archival research and the oral histories of key participants, also brings to light how problems of the human environment were conceived of and shaped by Swedish scientists and diplomats during this embryonic moment of global environmental governance. Through analysis of some of the public pronouncements and key documents drafted during the first phase of the Swedish initiative, the article further considers the role of popular science as a style of science communication that is particularly relevant in the realm of environmental diplomacy.

“Post-Western sociologies” mainly refer to some sociological systems constructed by non-Western and Western sociologists, after the so-called “Western sociologies” have been spread to the non-Western world. It includes various types, such as “non-westernized Western sociologies,” “westernized non-Western sociologies,” and “non-Western sociologies.” “Post-Western sociologies” therefore are neither equal to “non-Western sociologies” nor equal to “de-westernized” or “anti-westernized” sociologies. Compared with concepts such as “de-Westernization” or even “indigenization,” the concept of “post-Westernization” is more inclusive.

Expert judgments on solar geoengineering (SG) inform policy decisions and influence public opinions. We performed face-to-face interviews using formal expert elicitation methods with 13 US and 13 Chinese climate experts randomly selected from IPCC authors or supplemented by snowball sampling. We compare their judgments on climate change, SG research, governance, and deployment. In contrast to existing literature that often stress factors that might differentiate China from western democracies on SG, we found few significant differences between quantitative judgments of US and Chinese experts. US and Chinese experts differed on topics, such as desired climate scenario and the preferred venue for international regulation of SG, providing some insight into divergent judgments that might shape future negotiations about SG policy. We also gathered closed-form survey results from 19 experts with >10 publications on SG. Both expert groups supported greatly increased research, recommending SG research funding of ~5% on average (10th–90th percentile range was 1–10%) of climate science budgets compared to actual budgets of

Although job availability in Japan is at its highest in 24 years, the unemployment rate has remained unchanged. On one hand, certain fields are saturated with employees while on the other hand, the rural areas of Hokkaido are in desperate need of agricultural workers. At the same time, the aging population in Japan is an emerging challenge. The flat unemployment rate in conjunction with the rapidly aging farmers’ population can possibly reduce the food self-sufficiency rate, raise Japan’s dependency for international food products and increase import expenses. Thus, these factors can tip the socio-economic balance of the struggling economy. For the present research, different surveys were conducted not only in various farming corporations of Hokkaido but also 20 farmers were directly contacted and interviewed. In addition, adolescents’ (aged 16–18 years) career choices were studied through questionnaires administered to 157 students at Hokkaido’s Sapporo Kaisei Secondary School. It was found that, in rural areas of Hokkaido, relocation of youth to the cities is probably the main cause of the shortage of workers. In Sapporo city, among adolescents who had already chosen a career path, around 76% wanted to enter the science and technology field. This trend can result in intense competition and “saturation” in science and technology fields and many vacant slots in the others related to agricultural farming. This behavior is probably maintaining the unemployment rate, regardless of the number of job vacancies. In addition, according to our survey, considering career paths, parents and teachers provide general guidance that has very little influence on adolescents’ career decisions. So, a more detailed career counseling is suggested.

The pandemic and efforts to control it are causing sharp reductions in global economic activity and associated fossil energy use, with unknown influence on longer-term efforts to limit greenhouse gas emissions under the Paris Climate Agreement. To explore this effect, estimates of economic recession and recovery in near-term months are extended to cover a return to full employment in future years, to be compared with an estimate of growth had COVID-19 not occurred. On the assumption that the Paris emissions pledges for 2020 will be met in any case, projection of global emissions with and without the pandemic show that, through its growth impact alone, it will yield only a small effect on emissions in 2030 and beyond. Other COVID legacies may include residual influences in patterns of consumption and travel, and the direction of recovery funds to low carbon investments. Most important, however, will be the effect of the economic shocks on the willingness of nations to meet (or augment) their existing Paris emissions pledges. The main effect of the pandemic on the threat of climate change, therefore, will be not its growth impact but its influence on national commitments to action.

Complex human movement patterns driven by a range of economic, health, social, and environmental factors influence communicable disease spread. Further, cross-border movement impacts disparate public health systems of neighboring countries, making an effective response to disease importation or exportation more challenging. Despite the array of quantitative techniques and social science approaches available to analyze movement patterns, there continues to be a dearth of methods within the applied public health setting to gather and use information about community-level mobility dynamics. Population Connectivity Across Borders (PopCAB) is a rapidly-deployable toolkit to characterize multisectoral movement patterns through community engagement using focus group discussions or key informant interviews, each with participatory mapping, and apply the results to tailor preparedness and response strategies. The Togo and Benin Ministries of Health (MOH), in collaboration with the Abidjan Lagos Corridor Organization and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, adapted and applied PopCAB to inform cross-border preparedness and response strategies for multinational Lassa fever outbreaks. Initially, the team implemented binational, national-level PopCAB activities in March 2017, highlighting details about a circular migration pathway across northern Togo, Benin, and Nigeria. After applying those results to respond to a cross-border Lassa fever outbreak in February 2018, the team designed an expanded PopCAB initiative in April 2018. In eight days, they trained 54 MOH staff who implemented 21 PopCAB focus group discussions in 14 cities with 224 community-level participants representing six stakeholder groups. Using the newly-identified 167 points of interest and 176 routes associated with a circular migration pathway across Togo, Benin, and Nigeria, the Togo and Benin MOH refined their cross-border information sharing and collaboration processes for Lassa fever and other communicable diseases, selected health facilities with increased community connectivity for enhanced training, and identified techniques to better integrate traditional healers in surveillance and community education strategies. They also integrated the final toolkit in national- and district-level public health preparedness plans. Integrating PopCAB in public health practice to better understand and accommodate population movement patterns can help countries mitigate the international spread of disease in support of improved global health security and International Health Regulations requirements.

Despite growing attention to gender disparities in higher education, women in academia still receive less research funding and recognition. Previous research on this gender gap has focused on biomedical, science, technology, engineering, and mathematics in the West—relatively silent on social sciences and Asia. This study examined how well staff gender, submission rate, success rate, and amount per award could predict annual changes in the number and amount of grant funding for academic years 2015/2016–2020/2021 in the Faculty of Social Science at the University of Hong Kong, a leading institution in social sciences in Asia. Decomposition analysis revealed that, compared to men, women had higher submission rates, which significantly contributed to an increase in the number of awards for the University in recent years in two major funding mechanisms (namely, General Research Fund and Early Career Scheme), especially from 2019/2020 to 2020/2021. Women also outperformed men in the success rate in the Early Career Scheme (i.e., within the first three years of faculty appointment). Both submission rate and success rate contributed to changes in award number and the total amount for the University over time. Overall, women had a higher submission rate, successful rate, and amount per award than their male counterparts. We have identified good practices and distinctive contextual factors in Hong Kong that likely contribute to the lack of gender bias for research grant application results in Social Sciences.