In this paper, we investigate the self-affirmation effect on formation of public opinion in a directed small-world social network. The system presents a non-equilibrium phase transition from a consensus state to a disordered state with coexistence of opinions. The dynamical behaviors are very sensitive to the density of long-range-directed interactions and the strength of self-affirmation. When...

This paper examines the relationship between witchcraft beliefs, a deep-rooted cultural phenomenon, and various elements of social capital. Using novel survey data from nineteen countries in Sub-Saharan Africa we establish a robust negative association between the prevalence of witchcraft beliefs and multiple measures of trust which holds after accounting for country fixed effects and potential...

The research finds justification given the incidence and magnitude they currently have in human social sphere framework of so-called Society 2.0. Derived from this framework, approach must specially consider education as a vital process. same happens with information communication technologies since are frequently increasingly used mediation educational contexts because their undeniable interac...

The success of social robots in achieving natural coexistence with humans depends on both their level of autonomy and their interactive abilities. Although many robotic architectures have been suggested and many researchers have focused on human-robot interaction, a robotic architecture that can effectively combine interactivity and autonomy is still unavailable. In this paper a robotic archite...

OBJECTIVE To present, in an essay form, two distinct views on well-child care. METHODS Using several different methods of historical analysis, the two most common views on well-child care are presented: the positivist one, whose foundation is essentially based upon historical facts, and that of social criticism, concerned with how historical facts are inserted in society at different levels. ...

We analyze the strategic decision of firms to voluntarily certify corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices in a context where other firms can falsely pretend to be socially responsible. Equilibrium outcomes are crucially determined by consumers' beliefs about the credibility of firms' CSR claims, which depend in turn on the (expected) fines for fraud. First, we show that an increase in s...

The aim of the Project is to develop a Virtual Platform of e -Learning using New Technologies, offering a qualityeducation and a social inter-relationship with resident children and their educational centers, colleagues, etc. Children that reside in hospitals have a mayor predisposition towards school failure because, among other reasons, they are somehow excluded from their natural environment...

Patch occupancy theory predicts that a trade-off between competition and dispersal should lead to regional coexistence of competing species. Empirical investigations, however, find local coexistence of superior and inferior competitors, an outcome that cannot be explained within the patch occupancy framework because of the decoupling of local and spatial dynamics. We develop two-patch metapopul...

We report a case of a 68-year-old female who was a known case of diabetes mellitus and chronic liver disease and presented with complaints of dry cough and other constitutional symptoms since one month. During initial investigations, the patient was found to have peripheral blood eosinophilia. Upon investigating further,the patient was found to have mediastinal lymphadenopathy and fine-needle a...

Investigating the biological bases of social phenotypes is challenging because social behavior is both high-dimensional and richly structured, and biological factors are more likely to influence complex patterns of behavior rather than any single behavior in isolation. The space of all possible patterns of interactions among behaviors is too large to investigate using conventional statistical m...