Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Investing In Entrepreneurship: The Sustainable Solution To Tunisia’S Youth Unemployment Crisis?, Hussein Noureldin

All Reports

Since the Jasmine Revolution of 2011, Tunisia’s youth unemployment crisis has worsened. As of 2020, it has the tenth highest youth unemployment rate in the world at 36.5%. Experts have long identified this as the main challenge to overcoming Tunisia’s economic woes, and reform – from the education and vocational training systems on the supply-side to the job market on the demand-side – must follow the democratic gains achieved since 2011. The failed approach in reducing regional inequality under Ben Ali had an adverse effect, creating unemployment disparities between Tunisia’s affluent coastal cities and its poorer interior regions. As such, …

Impact Of Covid-19 On The Italian And American Healthcare Systems : A Comparative Assessment, Bita Pejam, Jennifer Lam

All Reports

This report aims to examine and assess the impact of the COVID-19 global pandemic on the healthcare systems of the United States of America and Italy; two of the most heavily affected nations. Using data from December 2019 to January 2021, several consultations, and policy reviews, we identify risks and notable areas of issue in each nations’ approach to combating the virus. We focus our report particularly on the health policies and the governmental structures in place that contributed to each nations’ initial method of alleviating the impact of COVID-19. Our report compares the two healthcare systems and proposes a …

Bengal Rising: Why Bangladesh & Pakistan’S Growth Trajectories Are Diverging, Sartaj Javed

All Reports

50 years after Henry Kissinger derided the nascent state of Bangladesh as an economic basket case, the country has emerged as the newest claimant to the mantle of being an Asian tiger economy. Borne out of a genocidal civil war with Pakistan, Bangladesh’s rise and Pakistan’s decline over a tumultuous half-century period necessitates a review of foreign policy orthodoxy as South Asia’s populace starts to assert its economic and political might.

What Does A Pandemic Sound Like? The Emergence Of Covid Verbal Art, Karen E. Pennesi

Anthropology Publications

In times of social upheaval, people create and engage with verbal art for entertainment and a feeling of connection. While millions of people were forced to stay home to reduce the spread of COVID‑19 from March to July 2020, verbal artists posted recorded performances online and viewers had more time than usual to watch and share them. COVID verbal art refers to songs, poems, and comedy skits that mention social and physical distancing, quarantine and isolation, hygiene and cleaning practices, everyday experiences during the pandemic, as well as social and political critiques of policies and practices that explicitly mention COVID‑19 …

The Importance Of Social Connectedness: From Interpersonal Schemas In Depression To Relationship Functioning And Well-Being, David J. A. Dozois

Psychology Publications

In this article, a program of research is described, which began with a focus on depression. A number of studies have demonstrated that negative self-schemas, particularly for interpersonal content, are well organized and appear to represent stable vulnerability factors for depression. Fortunately, this negative interpersonal structure is also modifiable through effective treatments (both psychological and pharmacological). An important extension of this research has involved investigating the impact of schemas on interpersonal phenomena (e.g., excessive reassurance seeking) and the formation of schemas about others (e.g., romantic partners). The dyadic partner-schema model, which articulates how self- and partner-schemas impact relationship functioning, is …

Critical Notice Of Words And Contents, Robert Stainton, Arthur Sullivan

Philosophy Publications

Full review of Richard Vallee's 2018 book Words and Thoughts. The article focuses on the explication and critique of John Perry's "pluri-propositional" or "reflexive referential" view, which Vallee applies to a range of context sensitive expressions.

Linguistic Prescriptivism, Alex Barber, Robert Stainton

Philosophy Publications

No abstract provided.

Understanding Stability In Cognitive Neuroscience Through Hacking's Lens, Jacqueline A. Sullivan

Philosophy Publications

Ian Hacking instigated a revolution in 20th century philosophy of science by putting experiments (“interventions”) at the top of a philosophical agenda that historically had focused nearly exclusively on representations (“theories”). In this paper, I focus on a set of conceptual tools Hacking (1992) put forward to understand how laboratory sciences become stable and to explain what such stability meant for the prospects of unity of science and kind discovery in experimental science. I first use Hacking’s tools to understand sources of instability and disunity in rodent behavioral neuroscience. I then use them to understand recent grass-roots collaborative initiatives aimed …

Quantifying The Archives: Leveraging The Norms And Tools Of Data Science To Conduct Ethical Research On The Holocaust, Alexis M. Lerner

Political Science Publications

Holocaust archives have traditionally been the scholarly territory of the arts and humanities. However, given the tremendous increase in the number of testimonies and documents available, especially since the mid-1990s with the advent of the USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive and in the 2000s with the opening of the Arolsen Archives, it is necessary to evaluate the applicability of a numerate approach. Statistical methods, data science, and machine learning have the capacity to handle large, messy, and disparate bodies of information about human behavior. Not only could a quantitative lens disrupt traditional ways of housing, organizing, and analyzing data …

Global Technological Trend In Academic Libraries, Oluwabunmi Dorcas Bakare Dr, Babajide Mike Bakare Dr

FIMS Publications

The advent of Social Media Technologies (SMTs) has remodelled contemporary academic libraries in unprecedented ways as developed countries are metamorphosing from providing library services from the conventional labour-intensive systems to embrace some easy dynamic technologically SMT driven systems which is the global trend in service delivery. But the reverse is the case in Africa and likewise in Nigeria where there is a dearth of research on SMT culture, cognizance of these technologies, acceptance, and implementation in academic libraries. It is on this premise that this study examined the use of SMTs for a globalised library services in the University of …

Spatial Thinking, Gender And Immaterial Affective Labour In The Post-Fordist Academic Library, Karen P. Nicholson

FIMS Publications

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to use spatial thinking (space-time) as a lens through which to examine the ways in which the socio-economic conditions and values of the post-Fordist academy work to diminish and even subsume the immaterial affective labour of librarians even as it serves to reproduce the academy. Design/methodology/approach – The research question informing this paper asks, In what ways does spatial thinking help us to better understand the immaterial, invisible and gendered labour of academic librarians’ public service work in the context of the post-Fordist university? This question is explored using a conceptual approach …

Documenting Multiple Temporalities, Pam Mckenzie, Elisabeth Davies

FIMS Publications

Purpose: This article explores the varied ways that individuals create and use calendars, planners, and other cognitive artifacts to document the multiple temporalities that make up their everyday lives. It reveals the hidden documentary time work required to synchronize, coordinate, or entrain their activities to those of others.

Design/methodology/approach: We interviewed 47 Canadian participants in their homes, workplaces, or other locations, and photographed their documents. We analyzed qualitatively; first thematically to identify mentions of times, and then relationally to reveal how documentary time work was situated within participants’ broader contexts.

Findings: Participants’ documents revealed a wide variety of temporalities, some …

Are Workers Musicians? Kesha Sebert, Johanna Wagner And The Gendered Commodification Of Star Singers, 1853–2014, Matt Stahl

FIMS Publications

The legal history of pop singer-songwriter Kesha Sebert has brought to light serious problems of gender and power in the US recording industry: it remains male dominated to its core. These contemporary problems have specific historical origins. Contextualising the 2008–2014 lawsuit between two rival producers over the exclusive right to Kesha's labour power suggests that elements of Victorian gender relations and class war were baked into the doctrine on which that 21st century case turned. Drawing empirically on court documents, and analytically on perspectives from history and sociology as well as feminist legal scholarship, this paper explains the persistent vitality …

A Thematic Analysis Of Library Association Policies On Services To Persons With Disabilities, Heather Hill

FIMS Publications

Purpose

Library association policies and guidelines are important to study because they reflect consensus values of the profession. As such, they can shape the association, itself, and set the tone for the values of its individual members in their professional practice. From the titles alone, these documents proclaim themselves to be guides for the development of individual library policy. Additionally, as library and information science (LIS) graduate education programs are accredited by national associations, LIS schools pay attention to association policies and guidelines to help shape professional and continuing education. In these ways, they have a role in shaping professional …

The Global Engagement Of Museums In Canada, Jeffrey Brison, Sarah E.K. Smith, Elyse Bell, Antoine Devroede, Simge Erdogan, Christina Fabiani, Kyle Hammer, Bronwyn Jaques, Sebastian De Line, Katie-Marie Mcneill, Vanessa Runions, Tyler Russell, Ben Schnitzer

FIMS Publications

The Global Engagement of Museums in Canada examines Canadian museum diplomacy, assessing the international activities of Canadian museums to consider the ways these institutions act as cultural diplomats on the global stage. The report presents the results of a multi-partner collaborative research project addressing the work of ten institutions, including the Art Gallery of Alberta; Aga Khan Museum; Canadian Museum of History; Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21; Montreal Museum of Fine Arts; Museum of Anthropology at UBC; National Gallery of Canada; Ottawa Art Gallery; Pointe-à-Callière, Montréal Archaeology and History Complex; and the Royal Ontario Museum. Focusing on the …

Bed Particle Displacements And Morphological Development In A Wandering Gravel-Bed River, Ryan Mcqueen, Peter Ashmore, T Millard, N Goeller

Geography & Environment Publications

Bed particles were tracked using passive integrated transponder tags in a wandering reach of the San Juan River, British Columbia, Canada, to assess particle movement around three major bars in the river. In-channel topographic changes were monitored through repeat LiDAR surveys during this period and used in concert with the tracer data set to assess the relationship between particle displacements and changes in channel morphology, specifically, the development and re-working of bars. This has direct implications for virtual velocity and morphologic based estimates of bedload flux, which rely on accurate estimates of the variability and magnitude of particle path lengths …

2021-1 Four Decades Of Canadian Earnings Inequality And Dynamics Across Workers And Firms, Audra Bowlus, Emilien Gouin-Bonenfant, Huju Liu, Lance Lochner, Youngmin Park

Centre for Human Capital and Productivity. CHCP Working Papers

No abstract provided.

2021-2 Why Do Couples And Singles Save During Retirement?, Mariacristina De Nardi, Eric French, John Bailey Jones, Rory Mcgee

Centre for Human Capital and Productivity. CHCP Working Papers

No abstract provided.

2021-3 Wages, Skills, And Skill-Biased Technical Change: The Canonical Model Revisited, Audra J. Bowlus, Lance Lochner, Chris Robinson, Eda Suleymanoglu

Centre for Human Capital and Productivity. CHCP Working Papers

No abstract provided.

2021-4 Innis Lecture: Return On Student Loans In Canada, Lance Lochner, Qian Liu, Martin Gervais

Centre for Human Capital and Productivity. CHCP Working Papers

This paper uses new administrative data with detailed borrower information and lengthy repayment histories from the Canada Student Loans Program (CSLP) to measure rates of return on undergraduate student loans. We document substantial heterogeneity in returns based on information available at the time loans were disbursed, including province of residence, field of study, and institution of attendance. Field of study is a particularly important determinant of rates of return, explaining 22% of the variation in predicted returns across borrowers. We explore the implications of this variation for CSLP cross-subsidization across borrowers and potential risk-based loan limits. Given the variation in …

Tea With Nancy: Lessons About First Nations Libraries, Community Building, And Creative Librarianship, Sara Clarke

Creative and Reflexive Projects

No abstract provided.

New Frontiers In Translational Research: Touchscreens, Open Science, And The Mouse Translational Research Accelerator Platform, Jacqueline A. Sullivan, Julie R. Dumont, Sara Memar, Miguel Skirzewski, Jinxia Wan, Maryam H. Mofrad, Hassam Zafar Ansari, Yulong Li, Lyle Muller, Vania F. Prado, Marco A.M. Prado, Lisa M. Saksida, Timothy J. Bussey

Brain and Mind Institute Researchers' Publications

© 2020 International Behavioural and Neural Genetics Society and John Wiley & Sons Ltd Many neurodegenerative and neuropsychiatric diseases and other brain disorders are accompanied by impairments in high-level cognitive functions including memory, attention, motivation, and decision-making. Despite several decades of extensive research, neuroscience is little closer to discovering new treatments. Key impediments include the absence of validated and robust cognitive assessment tools for facilitating translation from animal models to humans. In this review, we describe a state-of-the-art platform poised to overcome these impediments and improve the success of translational research, the Mouse Translational Research Accelerator Platform (MouseTRAP), which is …

Effects Of Mp2rage B1+ Sensitivity On Inter-Site T1 Reproducibility And Hippocampal Morphometry At 7t, Roy A.M. Haast, Jonathan C. Lau, Dimo Ivanov, Ravi S. Menon, Kâmil Uludağ, Ali R. Khan

Brain and Mind Institute Researchers' Publications

Most neuroanatomical studies are based on T -weighted MR images, whose intensity profiles are not solely determined by the tissue's longitudinal relaxation times (T ), but also affected by varying non-T contributions, hampering data reproducibility. In contrast, quantitative imaging using the MP2RAGE sequence, for example, allows direct characterization of the brain based on the tissue property of interest. Combined with 7 Tesla (7T) MRI, this offers unique opportunities to obtain robust high-resolution brain data characterized by a high reproducibility, sensitivity and specificity. However, specific MP2RAGE parameter choices – e.g., to emphasize intracortical myelin-dependent contrast variations – can substantially impact image …

Normative Analysis Of Individual Brain Differences Based On A Population Mri-Based Atlas Of Cynomolgus Macaques, Qiming Lv, Mingchao Yan, Xiangyu Shen, Jing Wu, Wenwen Yu, Shengyao Yan, Feng Yang, Kristina Zeljic, Yuequan Shi, Zuofu Zhou, Longbao Lv, Xintian Hu, Ravi Menon, Zheng Wang

Brain and Mind Institute Researchers' Publications

The developmental trajectory of the primate brain varies substantially with aging across subjects. However, this ubiquitous variability between individuals in brain structure is difficult to quantify and has thus essentially been ignored. Based on a large-scale structural magnetic resonance imaging dataset acquired from 162 cynomolgus macaques, we create a species-specific 3D template atlas of the macaque brain, and deploy normative modeling to characterize individual variations of cortical thickness (CT) and regional gray matter volume (GMV). We observed an overall decrease in total GMV and mean CT, and an increase in white matter volume from juvenile to early adult. Specifically, CT …

Symbols Are Special: An Fmri Adaptation Study Of Symbolic, Nonsymbolic, And Non-Numerical Magnitude Processing In The Human Brain, H Moriah Sokolowski, Zachary Hawes, Lien Peters, Daniel Ansari

Brain and Mind Institute Researchers' Publications

How are different formats of magnitudes represented in the human brain? We used functional magnetic resonance imaging adaptation to isolate representations of symbols, quantities, and physical size in 45 adults. Results indicate that the neural correlates supporting the passive processing of number symbols are largely dissociable from those supporting quantities and physical size, anatomically and representationally. Anatomically, passive processing of quantities and size correlate with activation in the right intraparietal sulcus, whereas symbolic number processing, compared with quantity processing, correlates with activation in the left inferior parietal lobule. Representationally, neural patterns of activation supporting symbols are dissimilar from neural activation …

Spinal Cord Compression Is Associated With Brain Plasticity In Degenerative Cervical Myelopathy., Alicia E Cronin, Sarah A Detombe, Camille A Duggal, Neil Duggal, Robert Bartha

Brain and Mind Institute Researchers' Publications

The impact of spinal cord compression severity on brain plasticity and prognostic determinates is not yet fully understood. We investigated the association between the severity of spinal cord compression in patients with degenerative cervical myelopathy, a progressive disease of the spine, and functional plasticity in the motor cortex and subcortical areas using functional magnetic resonance imaging. A 3.0 T MRI scanner was used to acquire functional images of the brain in 23 degenerative cervical myelopathy patients. Patients were instructed to perform a structured finger-tapping task to activate the motor cortex to assess the extent of cortical activation. T

High-Contrast, Moving Targets In An Emerging Target Paradigm Promote Fast Visuomotor Responses During Visually Guided Reaching, Rebecca A. Kozak, Brian D. Corneil

Brain and Mind Institute Researchers' Publications

Humans have a remarkable capacity to rapidly interact with the surrounding environment, often by transforming visual input into motor output on a moment-to-moment basis. But what visual features promote rapid reaching? High-contrast, fast-moving targets elicit strong responses in the superior colliculus (SC), a structure associated with express saccades and implicated in rapid electromyographic (EMG) responses on upper limb muscles. To test the influence of stimulus properties on rapid reaches, we had human subjects perform visually guided reaches to moving targets varied by speed (experiment 1) or speed and contrast (experiment 2) in an emerging target paradigm that has recently been …

Intelligibility Benefit For Familiar Voices Does Not Depend On Better Discrimination Of Fundamental Frequency Or Vocal Tract Length, Emma Holmes, Ingrid Johnsrude

Brain and Mind Institute Researchers' Publications

Speech is more intelligible when it is spoken by familiar than unfamiliar people. Two cues to voice identity are glottal pulse rate (GPR) and vocal tract length (VTL): perhaps these features are more accurately represented for familiar voices in a listener’s brain. If so, listeners should be able to discriminate smaller manipulations to perceptual correlates of these vocal parameters for familiar than unfamiliar voices. We recruited pairs of friends who had known each other for 0.5–22.5 years. We measured thresholds for discriminating pitch (correlate of GPR) and formant spacing (correlate of VTL; ‘VTL-timbre’) for voices that were familiar (friends) and …

C-Dem Annual Report 2021, Allison Harell, Laura Stephenson

Annual Reports

No abstract provided.

What Moves You?: Georges Didi-Huberman’S Arts Of Passage And Pittsburgh Stories Of Migration, Alexandra Irimia

Languages and Cultures Publications

Contemporary art historian, critic, and theorist Georges Didi-Huberman thinks of images not as static objects, but as movements, passages, and gestures of memory and/or desire. For the French “historian of passing images,” as he has been called, “all images are migrants. Images are migrations. They are never simply local” (D2017). His book, Passer, quoi qu'il en coûte ("To Pass at Any Price"), co-written with the Greek poet and director Niki Giannari, takes on precisely the visual dynamics of passages, passengers, and passageways in the context of contemporary migration flows. In April 2018, only several months after the launching of the …