Employment relations and dismissal regulations: Does employment legislation protect the health of workers?

Sociologists have long acknowledged that being in a precarious labour market position, whether employed or unemployed, can harm peoples' health. However, scholars have yet to fully investigate the possible contextual, institutional determinants of this relationship. Two institutions that were overlooked in previous empirical studies are the regulations that set minimum compensation for dismissal, severance payments, and entitlements to a period of notice before dismissal, notice periods.

Overcoming public resistance to carbon taxes.

Carbon taxes represent a cost-effective way to steer the economy toward a greener future. In the real world, their application has however been limited. In this paper, we address one of the main obstacles to carbon taxes: public opposition.

Fine Particle Emissions From Tropical Peat Fires Decrease Rapidly With Time Since Ignition.

Southeast Asia experiences frequent fires in fuel-rich tropical peatlands, leading to extreme episodes of regional haze with high concentrations of fine particulate matter (PM) impacting human health. In a study published recently, the first field measurements of PM emission factors for tropical peat fires showed larger emissions than from other fuel types. Here we report even higher PM emission factors, measured at newly ignited peat fires in Malaysia, suggesting that current estimates of fine particulate emissions from peat fires may be underestimated by a factor of 3 or more.

Coresidence with a child and happiness among older widows in Europe: Does gender of the child matter?

Both coresidence patterns and the reported well-being of older people vary widely across Europe for a variety of economic, cultural, and historical factors. We investigate how far 2 indicators of well-being, happiness and life satisfaction, vary according to whether or not older women live with their children and, in particular, with son(s) or daughter(s). We compare outcomes for women who are unpartnered widows, the great majority of whom will have had children, so those with and without coresident children may be compared.

Standard comparison of local mental health care systems in eight European countries.

Aims: There is a need of more quantitative standardised data to compare local Mental Health Systems (MHSs) across international jurisdictions. Problems related to terminological variability and commensurability in the evaluation of services hamper like-with-like comparisons and hinder the development of work in this area. This study was aimed to provide standard assessment and comparison of MHS in selected local areas in Europe, contributing to a better understanding of MHS and related allocation of resources at local level and to lessen the scarcity in standard service comparison in Europe.

Does Language Matter? Exploring Chinese-Korean Differences in Holistic Perception.

Cross-cultural research suggests that East Asians display a holistic attentional bias by paying attention to the entire field and to relationships between objects, whereas Westerners pay attention primarily to salient objects, displaying an analytic attentional bias. The assumption of a universal pan-Asian holistic attentional bias has recently been challenged in experimental research involving Japanese and Chinese participants, which suggests that linguistic factors may contribute to the formation of East Asians' holistic attentional patterns. The present experimental research explores differences in attention and information processing styles between Korean and Chinese speakers, who have been assumed to display the same attentional bias due to cultural commonalities.

The Body That Speaks: Recombining Bodies and Speech Sources in Unscripted Face-to-Face Communication.

This article examines advances in research methods that enable experimental substitution of the speaking body in unscripted face-to-face communication. A taxonomy of six hybrid social agents is presented by combining three types of bodies (mechanical, virtual, and human) with either an artificial or human speech source. Our contribution is to introduce and explore the significance of two particular hybrids: (1) the cyranoid method that enables humans to converse face-to-face through the medium of another person's body, and (2) the echoborg method that enables artificial intelligence to converse face-to-face through the medium of a human body.

The Relationship between Ethnic Classroom Composition and Turkish-Origin and German Students' Reading Performance and Sense of Belonging.

Past research on ethnic composition effects on migrant and ethnic majority students' performance has reported inconclusive results: Some studies have found no relationship between the proportion of migrant students in school and students' performance, some revealed positive effects, whereas others showed negative effects of the proportion of migrant students. Most of the studies did not consider whether an increase in the proportion of migrant students in the classroom has different effects on migrant and ethnic majority students' performance. For this reason, the present study (N = 9215) extends previous research by investigating the cross-level interaction effect of the proportion of Turkish-origin students in classrooms on Turkish-origin and German students' reading performance with data based on the German National Assessment Study 2008/2009 in the school subject German.

Assessing the Role of Shape and Label in the Misleading Packaging of Food Imitating Products: From Empirical Evidence to Policy Recommendation.

Food imitating products are chemical consumer items used frequently in the household for cleaning and personal hygiene (e.g., bleach, soap, and shampoo), which resemble food products.

Digit ratio (2D:4D) and altruism: evidence from a large, multi-ethnic sample.

We look at the links between the Digit Ratio-the ratio of the length of the index finger to the length of the ring finger-for both right and left hands, and giving in a Dictator Game. Unlike previous studies with exclusively Caucasian subjects, we consider a large, ethnically diverse sample. Our main results are as follows.

Conspiracy theories as quasi-religious mentality: an integrated account from cognitive science, social representations theory, and frame theory.

Conspiracy theories (CTs) can take many forms and vary widely in popularity, the intensity with which they are believed and their effects on individual and collective behavior. An integrated account of CTs thus needs to explain how they come to appeal to potential believers, how they spread from one person to the next via communication, and how they motivate collective action. We summarize these aspects under the labels of stick, spread, and action.

Refinement of the Facility-Level Medical Technology Score to Reflect Key Disease Response Capacity and Personnel Availability.

This paper presents a second look at the computation of the Medical Technology Score (MTS), a metric designed to convey the relative technical competence of a health facility. Modification of the score to reflect local disease burden is discussed, as are its intended interpretations. Extensive data collection on up-to-date equipment and personnel resources must be undertaken before the MTS can become useful as a policy-relevant tool.