Social Science

This paper covers a total of 82 bibliometric studies on single journals (62 studies cover unique titles) published between 1998 and 2008 grouped into the following fields; Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences (12 items); Medical and Health Sciences (19 items); Sciences and Technology (30 items) and Library and Information Sciences (21 items). Under each field the studies are described in accordance to their geographical location in the following order, United Kingdom, United States and Americana, Europe, Asia (India, Africa and Malaysia). For each study, elements described are (a) the journal's publication characteristics and indexation information; (b) the objectives; (c) the sampling and bibliometric measures used; and (d) the results observed. A list of journal titles studied is appended. The results show that (a)bibliometric studies cover journals in various fields; (b) there are several revisits of some journals which are considered important; (c) Asian and African contributions is high (41.4% of total studies; 43.5% covering unique titles), United States (30.4% of total; 31.0% on unique titles), Europe (18.2% of total and 14.5% on unique titles) and the United Kingdom (10% of total and 11% on unique titles); (d) a high number of bibliometrists are Indians and as such coverage of Indian journals is high (28% of total studies; 30.6% of unique titles); and (e) the quality of the journals and their importance either nationally or internationally are inferred from their indexation status.

Mining plays a key role in Zimbabwe’s economy, contributing 5% and 23% to the country’s gross domestic (GDP) and total exports, respectively. It also generates foreign currency and supplies raw materials to some industries. As a ‘robber’ industry, it extracts minerals from the earth without replacing them. It also creates deep shafts and ugly pits which damage the landscape. In addition it causes environmental pollution and is a threat to the tranquillity of the natural environment. Based on information that was collected in August 2017, this paper discusses various aspects of the mining industry. These include Zimbabwe’s mining legislation, environmental impacts of the mining industry at global level, in the SADC region and in Zimbabwe. Problems which confront the industry as well as their possible solutions in Zimbabwe are also examined. From a sustainable development (SD) point of view, mining poses a serious danger which should be addressed at both local and national levels. Since the early years of independence (1980-1984), several Zimbabwean mines have closed down either due to mineral depletion or dis-investment. Some of them have turned into ghost towns which have led to the decay of infrastructure. Little or nothing has been done to avert this crisis. Those mines which are still operational cause immense pollution to the natural environment thereby threatening SD at the national level. However, solutions to avert this crisis are hard to come by. Currently, there is a need to promote environmental education (EE) and education for sustainable development (ESD) at the national level. In this context, efforts should be directed at the establishment of EE centres throughout Zimbabwe as is the case in South Africa.

This paper provides a comprehensive review of the empirical literature in transaction cost economics (TCE) across multiple social science disciplines and business fields. We show how TCE has branched out from its economic roots to examine empirical phenomena in several other areas. We find TCE is increasingly being applied not only to business-related fields such as accounting, finance, marketing, and organizational theory, but also to areas outside of business including political science, law, public policy, and agriculture and health. With few exceptions, however, the use of TCE reasoning to inform empirical research in these areas is piecemeal. We find that there is considerable support of many of the central tenets of TCE, but we also observe a number of lingering theoretical and empirical issues that need to be addressed. We conclude by discussing the implications of these issues and outlining directions for future theoretical and empirical work.

This milestone text provides a comprehensive and state-of-the art overview of perfectionism theory, research, and treatment from the past 25 years, with contributions from the leading researchers in the field. The book examines new theories and perspectives including the social disconnection model of perfectionism and the 2 × 2 model of perfectionism. It also reviews empirical findings, with a special focus on stress, vulnerability, and resilience, and examines perfectionism in specific populations. Finally, it considers how perfectionism relates to physical health and psychophysiological processes and introduces new approaches to effective prevention and treatment. By increasing our understanding of perfectionism as a complex personality disposition and providing a framework for future explorations, this landmark publication aims to promote further research in this field. It will be invaluable reading for academics, students, and professionals in personality psychology, clinical and counselling psychology, applied psychology and related disciplines.

Amos Tversky investigated and explained a wide range of phenomena that lead to anomalous human decisions. His two most significant contributions, both written with Daniel Kahneman, are the decision-making heuristics-representativeness, availability, and anchoring-and prospect theory. Tversky's concepts have broadly influenced the social sciences. In economics, they gave rise to the burgeoning field of behavioral economics. This field, skeptical of perfect rationality, emphasizes validation of modeling assumptions, integration of micro-level data on decisions (including experimental evidence), and adoption of lessons from psychology. Tversky's contributions are reviewed, assessed using citation analysis, and placed in historical context. Fertile areas for behavioral economics research are identified.

Today, teachers are expected to develop complex skills, such as research skills, in their students while implementing new views on learning and teaching and using authentic assessment strategies. About these new assessment strategies there is much debate and teachers are vulnerable in using them. We studied upper secondary education natural and social science teachers' practices using two surveys and two rounds of expert panel judgement on teacher-submitted assessment-related material and information. Our study shows that there are grounds for concern regarding the clarity of teachers' assessment criteria, the consistency between teachers' goals, assignments, and criteria, and the validity and acceptability of teachers' assessment practices. The extent to which it is justifiable to judge teachers' assessment practice by professional quality criteria is discussed, and suggestions are given as to the main quality criteria for formative and summative assessment and as to ways in which teachers could improve their assessment practices.

This Paper explores and summarises the Director's Duties of the UK Companies Act 2006 with emphasis on "the duty to promote the success of the company.

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The massacre of almost 50 Maidan protesters on February 20, 2014 was a turning point in Ukrainian politics and a tipping point in the conflict between the West and Russia over Ukraine. This mass killing of the protesters and the mass shooting of the police that preceded it led to the overthrow of the pro-Russian government of Viktor Yanukovych and gave a start to a civil war in Donbas in Eastern Ukraine, Russian military intervention in Crimea and Donbas, and an international conflict between the West and Russia over Ukraine. A conclusion promoted by the post-Yanukovych governments and the media in Ukraine that the massacre was perpetrated by government snipers and special police units on a Yanukovych order has been nearly universally accepted by the Western governments, the media, and many scholars. The Ukrainian government investigation identified members of the special company of Berkut as responsible for killings of the absolute majority of the protesters, but did not release any evidence in support, with the exception of videos of the massacre.
              The question is which side organized the “snipers’ massacre.” This paper is the first academic study of this crucial case of the mass killing. It uses a theory of rational choice and a Weberian theory of instrumental rationality to examine actions of major actors both from the Yanukovych government, specifically various police and security forces, and the Maidan opposition, specifically its far right and oligarchic elements, during the massacre.
          The paper analyzes a large amount of evidence from different publicly available sources concerning this massacre and killings of specifics protesters. Qualitative content analysis includes the following data: about 1,500 videos and recordings of live internet and TV broadcasts from mass media and social media in different countries(some 150 gigabytes), news reports and social media posts by more than 100 journalists covering the massacre from Kyiv, some 5,000 photos, and nearly 30 gigabytes of publicly available radio intercepts of snipers and commanders from the special Alfa unit of the Security Service of Ukraine and Internal Troops, and Maidan massacre trial recordings. This study also employs field research on site of the massacre, eyewitness reports by both Maidan protesters and government special units commanders, statements by both former and current government officials, estimates of approximate ballistic trajectories, bullets and weapons used, and types of wounds among both protesters and the police. This study establishes a precise timeline for various events of the massacre, the locations of both the shooters and the government snipers, and the specific timeline and locations of nearly 50 protesters’ deaths. It also briefly analyzes other major cases of violence during and after the “Euromaidan.” This study includes two video appendixes.
            This academic investigation concludes that the massacre was a false flag operation, which was rationally planned and carried out with a goal of the overthrow of the government and seizure of power. It found various evidence of the involvement of an alliance of the far right organizations, specifically the Right Sector and Svoboda, and oligarchic parties, such as Fatherland. Concealed shooters and spotters were located in at least 20 Maidan-controlled buildings or areas. The various evidence that the protesters were killed from these locations include some 70 testimonies, primarily by Maidan protesters, several videos of “snipers” targeting protesters from these buildings, comparisons of positions of the specific protesters at the time of their killing and their entry wounds, and bullet impact signs. The study uncovered various videos and photos of armed Maidan “snipers” and spotters in many of these buildings. The paper presents implications of these findings for understanding the nature of the change of the government in Ukraine, the civil war in Donbas, Russian military intervention in Crimea and Donbas, and an international conflict between the West and Russia over Ukraine.

In the development of technology in the financial world, we are also now familiar with trading robots. This robot works to make it easier to trade in cyberspace. Trading robots do not offer a solution to generate instant profitable transactions. Profitable long-term forex trading is much more than just tactical analysis of forex trading and the use of trading robots. Have a special program that does all the work to look tempting. But this is how trading robot’s work. Trading robot sellers who prefer to see a decent trading robot. Such a system requires constant human adaptation and supervision. The general public who wants to use trading robots well must know the risks and systems of the trading robot and there is no guarantee that using a trading robot will be 100% profitable. It should be emphasized again that the trading robot will make decisions based on the conditions that have occurred and the right decisions at that time. Thus, no foreign trade organizer dares to give absolut...

The global COVID-19 pandemic is a health crisis, an economic crisis, and a justice crisis. It also brings to light multiple ongoing, underlying social crises. The COVID-19 crisis is actively revealing crises of energy sovereignty in at least four ways. First, there are many whose access to basic health services is compromised because of the lack of energy services necessary to provide these services. Second, some people are more vulnerable to COVID-19 because of exposure to environmental pollution associated with energy production. Third, energy services are vital to human wellbeing, yet access to energy services is largely organized as a consumer good. The loss of stable income precipitated by COVID-19 may therefore mean that many lose reliable access to essential energy services. Fourth, the COVID-19 crisis has created a window of opportunity for corporate interests to engage in aggressive pursuit of energy agendas that perpetuate carbon intensive and corporate controlled energy s...

In the second modernity the childhood participation is assumed as a fundamental principle to a large extent of the scientific speeches that are produced concerning childhood. The Sociology of Childhood, when considering the children as social actors and as citizens of rights, assumes the question of children's participation as central in the definition of a social statute of childhood and in the characterization of its scientific field. Consider children's participation in the research is a recurrent step in the construction of a discipline of social sciences that looks for listen children's voice, that is, that assumes children as full social actors, competent in the formularization of interpretations on its worlds of life and revealers of the social realities in which they are insert. The participative methodologies with children attribute to the youngest, a statute of knowledge citizens, and not of simple object, instituting collaborative forms of knowledge construction in social sciences, which are articulated with ways of pledged knowing production in the social transformation and in the extension of social rights. The participative research with children rises, however, special epistemological difficulties, related with the alterity of childhood and the diversity of its existence conditions. The perception of children as the "other" of the adult elapses from the recognition of the childhood cultures as a specific way, generationally constructed, of world's interpretation and representation. It is the translation work between the language of social sciences and the language of the children (with its distinct cultural grammars) that the participative methodologies are called to play, with the consequent refusal of the generational ethnocentrism and with the indispensable mobilization of a polyphonic speech, where the voice of the collaborative child-investigators keep up, side by side, with the interpretative work of the sociologists of childhood. The attention to childhood's diversity, elapsing from social categories as gender, religion, ethnics, health and age group, imposes the refusal of standardizing looks, defying the methodological imagination to an acceptance and respect for the differences and the diverse

A field experiment was conducted for two years at Bangalore, to study the influence of organic (vermicompost) and inorganic fertilizers (NPK) on growth, yield and nutrient uptake of patchouli (Pogostemon cablin) in a semi-arid tropical climate. The results revealed that application of vermicompost (5 t ha -1 ) + 50% NPK (100 : 25 : 25 kg ha -1 ) produced significantly higher herbage and oil yield (13.98 t ha -1 and 83.4 kg ha -1 ), respectively, which was on par with recommended dose of NPK (200 : 50 : 50 kg ha -1 ). Application of vermicompost (5 t ha -1 ) + 50% NPK (100 : 25 : 25 kg ha -1 ) increased the nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium uptake, respectively, which was at par with recommended dose of NPK (200 : 50 : 50 kg ha -1 ). Oil content was not influenced by organic and inorganic fertilizers.

Community public health interventions based on citizen and community participation are increasingly discussed as promising avenues for the reduction of health inequalities and the promotion of social justice. However, very few authors have provided explicit principles and guidelines for planning and implementing such interventions, especially when they are linked with research. Traditional approaches to public health programming emphasise expert knowledge, advanced detailed planning, and the separation of research from intervention. Despite the usefulness of these approaches for evaluating targeted narrow-focused interventions, they may not be appropriate in community health promotion, especially in Aboriginal communities. Using the experience of the Kahnawake Schools Diabetes Prevention Project, in Canada, this paper elaborates four principles as basic components for an implementation model of community programmes. The principles are: (1) the integration of community people and researchers as equal partners in every phase of the project, (2) the structural and functional integration of the intervention and evaluation research components, (3) having a flexible agenda responsive to demands from the broader environment, and (4) the creation of a project that represents learning opportunities for all those involved. The emerging implementation model for community interventions, as exemplified by this project, is one that conceives a programme as a dynamic social space, the contours and vision of which are defined through an ongoing negotiation process. r (L. Potvin). 0277-9536/03/$ -see front matter r 2002 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. PII: S 0 2 7 7 -9 5 3 6 ( 0 2 ) 0 0 1 2 9 -6

New Public Management (NPM) is an umbrella concept that men aungi range of meanings that organizational design and management, application of economic institutions over the management of the public and policy patterns. Implements concept of New Public Management in the preparation of the Budget in Indonesia a show a positive development, the effect on improving the performance of government, namely the implementation of the Performance-Based Budgeting. But the main difficulty in implementing performance-based budgets is the difficulty of agreeing on appropriate performance measures. Measuring an activity or output is easier than determining the size of the expected results or outcomes.

This article reformulates liberal international relations (IR) theory in a nonideological and nonutopian form appropriate to empirical social science. Liberal IR theory elaborates the insight that state-society relations—the relationship of states to the domestic and transnational social context in which they are embedded—have a fundamental impact on state behavior in world politics. Societal ideas, interests, and institutions influence state behavior by shaping state preferences, that is, the fundamental social purposes underlying the strategic calculations of governments. For liberals, the configuration of state preferences matters most in world politics—not, as realists argue, the configuration of capabilities and not, as institutionalists (that is, functional regime theorists)maintain, the configuration of information and institutions. This article codifies this basic liberal insight in the form of three core theoretical assumptions, derives from them three variants of liberal t...

Farmer Terms of Trade (FTT) in this study is the margin between changes (%) in prices paid by the farmers for required agricultural inputs and prices received for per units of products. Number of farmers’ suicides in Maharashtra state of the India (-0.58) and share in national figures (-0.6) is negatively associated with FTT and positively (0.76) with increasing input prices. Negative status of FTT is linked to increasing prices of agricultural inputs (-0.33) and profit is associated (0.60) with changes in prices of agricultural outputs. These, adverse economic conditions are major causes of indebtedness, deterioration of economical and social status, psychological depressions and suicides. Therefore, controlled prices of agricultural inputs and stabilized steadily growth in output prices matching to input prices are the key solutions in rescue the farmers and agriculture from its current stage.

The colonial structures that still stand today in India are the product of careful fabrication of British thought. The British government was afraid of what kind of legacy they would leave behind when exiting India in 1947. Today, years after the independence of India, one is still able to see such a legacy in stone: the colonial architecture and cities that are still in existence. The styles of architecture employed by the British Raj were systematically chosen, dependent on the location and utilization of a given city. The British were trying to consecrate their power through architectural representation. Trying to legitimize British rule, architects wanted to tie the architecture of the British with former Indian rulers, yet still create an effect of British grandeur. The examples illustrate that location and utilization were indeed crucial determinants of colonial style.

Despite active tobacco control efforts in Australia, smoking prevalence remains disproportionately high in pregnant Indigenous women. This study investigated the place of smoking in pregnancy and attitudes towards smoking within the broader context of Indigenous lives. Focus groups and in-depth interviews were used to collect data from 40 women, and ten Aboriginal Health Workers (AHWs) in Perth, Western Australia. The research process and interpretation was assisted by working with an Indigenous community reference group. Results demonstrated the impact of contextual factors in smoking maintenance, and showed that smoking cessation even in pregnancy was not a priority for most women, given the considerable social and economic pressures that they face in their lives. Overwhelmingly, smoking was believed to reduce stress and to provide opportunities for relaxation. Pregnancy did not necessarily influence attitudes to cessation, though women's understanding of the consequences of smoking during pregnancy was low. Reduction of cigarette intake during pregnancy was seen as an acceptable and positive behaviour change. The AHWs saw their role to be primarily one of support and were conscious of the importance of maintaining positive relationships. As a result, they were often uncomfortable with raising the issue of smoking cessation with pregnant women. The stories of Indigenous women and AHWs provided important insight into smoking during pregnancy and the context in which it occurs.

The application of formal research ethics and governance structures in social work research have lagged behind those applicable in health, although in the UK, social care has been deemed to be covered by those that were used in the NHS. Whilst this link is useful, it does not facilitate researcher involvement in the small-scale qualitative studies that feature in social work more than in health. Our exploration of the subject reveals that the dominance of the natural sciences paradigm in the social science is evident nationally, regionally and internationally. So, in this sense, the UK follows the usual paths that favour quantitative studies. In this article we explore the trajectory of governance structures in social work research in the UK to argue that social work needs its own ethics and governance structures, but that some agreement should be sought with other professions, particularly in those projects that cross professional and discipline boundaries so that social work research does not have to undergo dual processes for ethical approval. This implies a broader recognition of social work research ethics and governance structures than currently exist.

Abused class substances use as inhalant which includes volatile solvents is endemic worldwide. Nowadays, glue sniffing is like disease to children in primary and secondary school and this problem is shown by media like a “time bomb” for our future generation. Glue is easily available and cheaper than drugs and because of that, more teenagers is using it to get ‘high’. Children who abuse glue early in life are more likely to use other illicit drugs. Later, the method of delivery is inhalation of a solvent from its container, a soaked rag, or a bag. In this study the volatile substance in glue will be determined using Fourier Transform Infra Red (FTIR), Inductively Coupled Plasma Optical Emission Spectroscopy (ICP-OES) and Gas Chromatography Mass Spectroscopy Detector (GC-MSD) with headspace method. This study proved from the results obtain that toluene is the one of the major substance this confirmed by GC-MSD with head space method. FTIR analysis of glue showed that strong absorptio...

This study gives results of the first phase of the 12-18 year old Turkish students’ norm study of The Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ), which deveoped by Pintrich, Smith, Garcia & McKeachie (1993). The scale was administrated to 1114 students from 3 primary schools and 3 high schools in Ankara in Turkish language, science, mathematics and social science courses. After eliminating the questionnaires which have missing and extreme values, the analyses were done on 762 valid questionnaires for motivation subscale and 1100 valid questionnaires for learning strategies subscale. Results of the confirmatory factor analyses show that the first subscale, Motivation, has six factors, and the second subscale, Learning Strategies, has nine factors according to original scale’s factor structures. Depending on the results of the confirmatory factor analysis; 6 items from motivation subscale and 5 items from learning strategies subscale were removed due to their low factor lo...

The Singapore government has traditionally invested heavily in, and focused on, the development of the hard sciences since gaining independence in 1965. This bode well for the fate of sustainability studies as the state, in the initial decades, focused heavily on performance legitimacy, emphasising issues of survivability and economic progress. With the country now at the top of global charts on many rankings on economic prosperity, the city-state has steadily begun to examine issues of nation-building rather than state-building. This can be attributed, in part, to the paradox of soft authoritarian regimes that invest heavily in human capital, because in the long run, an educated electorate will want, as active and informed citizens, to participate effectively in politics. The social sciences are slowly evolving to look at the Singapore model from a comparative perspective, moving away from the dominant narrative of “Singaporean exceptionalism”, which overstates the uniqueness of the city-state.

This article explores the impact that schools have on their pupils' obesity and so identify those where targeted input is most needed. A modelling process was developed using data that had been collected over 2 years on a socio-economically and ethnically representative sample of 2367 school pupils aged 5 and 9 years old attending 35 Leeds primary schools. The three steps in the model involved calculating the ''Observed'' level of obesity for each school using mean body mass index standard deviation (BMI SDS); adjusting this using ethnicity and census-derived deprivation data to calculate the ''Expected'' level; and calculating the ''Value Added'' by each school from differences in obesity at school entry and transfer. We found there was significant variance between the schools in terms of mean BMI SDS (range À0.07 to þ0.78). Residential deprivation score and ethnicity accounted for only a small proportion of the variation. Expected levels of obesity therefore differed little from the Observed, but the Value Added step produced very different rankings. As such, there is variation between schools in terms of their levels of obesity. Our modelling process allowed us to identify schools whose levels differed from that expected given the socio-demographic make up of the pupils attending. The Value Added step suggests that there may be a significant school effect. If this is validated in extended studies, the methodology could allow for exploration of mechanisms contributing to the school effect, and identify schools with the highest unexpected prevalence. Resources could then be targeted towards those schools in greatest need.

Contemporary transportation systems and policies are discussed in terms of their relationship to sustainable development. The current situation is generally characterised by policies that favour motorisation and violate fundamental elements of sustainability. Accordingly, a new vision of sustainable transportation is required, one that incorporates intermodalism for both passengers and freight. Creating a sustainable intermodal system necessitates overcoming many obstacles and can be achieved only with appropriate policy and decision-making systems that incorporate genuine public participation. However, existing decision-making processes and public involvement mechanisms are inadequate. New approaches need to be developed and implemented if the new transportation paradigm is to be realised.

Psychosocial factors at work have been found to predict a range of health outcomes but their effect on mental health outcomes has not been extensively studied. This paper explores the relationship between psychosocial factors at work and depression in three countries of Central and Eastern Europe. The data come from a cross-sectional study of working men (n ¼ 645) and women (n ¼ 523) aged 45-64 years, randomly selected from population registers in Novosibirsk (Russia), Krakow (Poland) and Karvina-Havirov (Czech Republic). The questionnaire included questions on the effort and reward at work, job control, the full CES-D scale of depression, and a range of other characteristics. Linear regression was used to estimate the association between depression score and work characteristics: the logarithm of the effort-reward ratio, and continuous job control score. The means of the depression score were 10.5 for men and 14.2 for women. After controlling for age, sex and country, effort-reward ratio (logarithmically transformed) was strongly related to depression score; a 1 SD increase in the log transformed effort-reward ratio was associated with an increase in the depression of 2.0 points (95% CI 1.5; 2.4), and further adjustment did not materially change the effect. Job control was inversely associated with depression score in Poland and the Czech Republic (not in Russia) but the association was largely eliminated by controlling for socioeconomic characteristics. This study suggests that the effortreward imbalance at work is related to prevalence of depression in these central and eastern European populations. r

This paper examines the moderating eects of three psychological attributes (neuroticism, self-ecacy expectancies and mastery) on the association between functional limitations (motor and cognitive limitation, vision and hearing loss) and disability ((instrumental) activities of daily living, role function and social function) in a sample of 624 community-dwelling older persons. In contrast to our hypothesis, we did not ®nd any evidence for interaction eects. This means that low levels of psychological resources do not exacerbate the eect of functional limitation on disability in community-dwelling older persons. We found signi®cant unique contributions of the psychological attributes to disability. Even when all three psychological attributes were taken into account, neuroticism and mastery had unique eects on social and role function, and self-ecacy expectancies had unique eects on (instrumental) activities of daily living. We conclude that the eects of functional limitation and psychological attributes on disability can be considered as additive. Older persons with less psychological resources are particularly at risk in developing disability. #

Child care affordability is a problem for low-income families. Child care subsidies are intended to reduce child care expenses and promote parental employment for poor families. Yet many families fail to utilize the child care subsidies for which they are eligible. This research investigates barriers to utilizing child care subsidies. Found barriers include parentsÕ beliefs that they either did not need or were not eligible for subsidy. Knowingly eligible families avoided applying for subsidies because of hassles and restrictions, real or perceived, associated with accessing the subsidy system. Even families receiving subsidies were confused about subsidy regulations. The major predictors of subsidy use were prior welfare experience, single parenthood, family/household income, hours of employment, use of center care and in-home care, and receipt of court ordered child support. Policy recommendations include developing better methods for disseminating information about subsidy eligibility and reducing barriers associated with specific subsidy regulations.

Contemporary training in obstetrics and gynecology requires a delicate balance between teaching principles of basic science and clinical care and the technical skills required either in the delivery room or in surgical suites. 1 To accomplish this paradigm requires instruction not only in the core skills, such as basic suturing techniques, but also in a distinctive and new set of abilities not required in times past, ranging from interpretation of ultrasound images to advanced endoscopic surgery. However, changes in the clinical skill set are only part of the contemporary educational needs in our specialty. Changes in social awareness and the medicolegal environment demand competency in counseling and communication. 2 These issues require increasing emphasis on the development of communication and interpersonal skills in training programs. Circumstances in which unique communication skills are essential range from routine preoperative counseling and interviewing to more acute care situations that require intervention such as domestic violence. These newer needs require increasingly sophisticated formats and teaching tools to adequately train medical students and residents in the art of communication and interviewing. Technologies such as virtual reality (VR) that immerse participants into theoretical 3-dimensional (3-D) worlds, offer the opportunity for simulation of and interaction in any circumstance. Virtual reality constitutes a 3-D interface that puts an interacting subject in active exchange with a world recreated by computer programs. In this setting, the interaction is no longer unidirectional but bidirectional: a subject becomes not merely a passive observer of pictures in a text but can actively modify a 3-D virtual world. 3 Environments may be designed to simulate any interaction, whether personal or mechanical.

Objectives. Our objective is to examine spatial relationships between modeled criteria air pollutants (i.e., nitrous oxides, carbon monoxide, and ozone) and sociodemographics in metropolitan Phoenix, Arizona. Modeled air pollution offers environmental justice researchers a new and robust data source for representing chronic environmental hazards. Methods. We used multiple regression equations to predict criteria pollution levels using sociodemographic variables at the Census block group level. Results. We find that Census block groups with lower neighborhood socioeconomic status, higher proportions of Latino immigrants, and higher proportions of renters are exposed to higher levels of criteria air pollutants. Proportion African American, however, is not a significant predictor of criteria air pollution in the Phoenix metro area. Conclusions. These findings demonstrate clear social-class and ethnic-based environmental injustices in the distribution of air pollution. We attribute these patterns to the role of white privilege in the historical and contemporary development of industrial and transportation corridors in Phoenix in relation to racially segregated neighborhoods. Although all people are implicated in the production of criteria pollutants, lower-income and ethnic-minority residents are disproportionately exposed in metropolitan Phoenix. This article examines the environmental justice implications of spatial relationships between modeled criteria air pollutants (nitrous oxides, carbon monoxide, and ozone) and sociodemographics in metropolitan Phoenix (Maricopa County). The use of modeled air pollution data offers environn Direct correspondence to Sara Grineski, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University of Texas at El Paso, El Paso, TX 79968 hsegrineski@utep.edui. Sara Grineski will share all coding information and data with those wishing to replicate the study. We acknowledge the contributions of Dr. Yu-Jin Choi, an environmental engineer at Arizona State University. Dr. Choi shared her pollution models with us and patiently answered our questions about them. We also acknowledge the assistance of Carol Atkinson-Palombo and

With the ever-increasing amount of data, the world has stepped into the era of ''Big Data''. Presently, the analysis of massive and complex data and the extraction of relevant information, have been become essential tasks in many fields of studies, such as health, biology, chemistry, social science, astronomy, and physics. However, compared with the development of data storage and management technologies, our ability to gain useful information from the collected data does not match our ability to collect the data. This gap has led to a surge of research activity in the field of visual analytics. Visual analytics employs interactive visualization to integrate human judgment into algorithmic data-analysis processes. In this paper, the aim is to draw a complete picture of visual analytics to direct future research by examining the related research in various application domains. As such, a novel categorization of visual-analytics applications from a technical perspective is proposed, which is based on the dimensionality of visualization and the type of interaction. Based on this categorization, a comprehensive survey of visual analytics is performed, which examines its evolution from visualization and algorithmic data analysis, and investigates how it is applied in various application domains. In addition, based on the observations and findings gained in this survey, the trends, major challenges, and future directions of visual analytics are discussed.