Attention In Press Research Articles

Readability of the 100 Most-Cited Neuroimaging Papers Assessed by Common Readability Formulae

Background: From time to time, neuroimaging research findings receive press coverage and attention by the general public. Scientific articles therefore should be written in a readable manner to facilitate knowledge translation and dissemination. However, no published readability report on neuroimaging articles like those published in education, medical and marketing journals is available. As a start, this study therefore aimed to evaluate the readability of the most-cited neuroimaging articles.Methods: The 100 most-cited articles in neuroimaging identified in a recent study by Kim et al. (2016) were evaluated. Headings, mathematical equations, tables, figures, footnotes, appendices, and reference lists were trimmed from the articles. The rest was processed for number of characters, words and sentences. Five readability indices that indicate the school grade appropriate for that reading difficulty (Automated Readability Index, Coleman-Liau Index, Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level, Gunning Fog index and Simple Measure of Gobbledygook index) were computed. An average reading grade level (AGL) was calculated by taking the mean of these five indices. The Flesch Reading Ease (FRE) score was also computed. The readability of the trimmed abstracts and full texts was evaluated against number of authors, country of corresponding author, total citation count, normalized citation count, article type, publication year, impact factor of the year published and type of journal.Results: Mean AGL ± standard deviation (SD) of the trimmed abstracts and full texts were 17.15 ± 2.81 (college graduate level) and 14.22 ± 1.66 (college level) respectively. Mean FRE score ± SD of the abstracts and full texts were 15.70 ± 14.11 (college graduate level) and 32.11 ± 8.56 (college level) respectively. Both items indicated that the full texts were significantly more readable than the abstracts (p < 0.001). readability was not associated with any factors under investigation. ANCOVAs showed that review/meta-analysis (mean AGL ± SD: 16.0 ± 1.4) and higher impact factor significantly associated with lower readability of the trimmed full texts surveyed.Conclusion: Concerning the 100 most-cited articles in neuroimaging, the full text appears to be more readable than the abstracts. Experimental articles and methodology papers were more readable than reviews/meta-analyses. Articles published in journals with higher impact factors were less readable.

Actively Managed Versus Passive Mutual Funds: A Horse Race of Two Portfolios

This paper demonstrates that the average investor would be better off by following a readily-implementable strategy of investing in a portfolio of the five largest active funds in U.S. equity, fixed income and international equity asset categories than investing in a corresponding portfolio of passive index funds. The active-fund-portfolio outperforms not only in terms of average returns, but also in risk-adjusted returns, providing far greater downside risk protection than the passive fund portfolio. This paper has important implications because its findings question the ‘wisdom’ of index investing, which has been receiving considerable attention in the financial press in the recent years.

Putting the ‘me’ in mechanical: lessons from the mechanical men of health 1928–1948

During the interwar years, health exhibitions and pavilions were commonplace in Europe and the USA. Within these exhibitions were a small number of life-sized or oversized mechanical men used to...

Lateral movement of the saddle relative to the equine spine in rising and sitting trot on a treadmill.

Saddle slip, defined as a progressive lateral displacement of the saddle during ridden exercise, has recently been given attention in the scientific press as a potential sign of lameness. The aim of this study was to objectively quantify the normal lateral movement (oscillations) of the saddle relative to the horse in non-lame horses, and associate this movement to the movements of the horse and rider. Data from seven Warmblood dressage horses competing at Grand Prix (n = 6) or FEI Intermediate (n = 1) level, ridden by their usual riders, were used. Simultaneous kinetic, kinematic and saddle pressure measurements were conducted during sitting and rising trot on a force-measuring treadmill. The maximum lateral movement of the caudal part of the saddle relative to the horse's spine (MAX) was determined for each diagonal step. A mixed model was applied, with MAX as outcome, and T6 and S3 vertical position, rigid body rotation angles (roll, pitch, yaw) of the horse’s and rider’s pelvis, vertical ground reaction forces, saddle force, and rider position (rising in rising trot, sitting in rising trot or sitting in sitting trot) as explanatory variables. The least square means for MAX were 14.3 (SE 4.7) mm and 23.9 (SE 4.7) mm for rising and sitting in rising trot, and 20.3 (SE 4.7) mm for sitting trot. A 10 mm increase in maximum pelvic height at push off increased MAX by 1.4 mm (p<0.0001). One degree increase in rider pelvis roll decreased MAX 1.1 mm, and one degree increase in rider pelvis yaw increased MAX 0.7 mm (both p<0.0001). The linear relationships found between MAX and movements of both horse and rider implies that both horse and rider movement asymmetries are reflected in the lateral movements or oscillations of the saddle in non-lame horses.

Cell-Based Therapy in Cardiac Regeneration: An Overview.

Although pioneering preclinical research on the use of cell therapy for cardiac regeneration was conducted in the last quarter of the 20th century,1,2 a preponderance of advances have occurred in the 21st century, making this a relatively young field. In the first important clinical trial of cardiac cell therapy, begun in 2001, Menasche et al3 implanted autologous skeletal myoblasts into postinfarct scar at the time of coronary artery bypass surgery. Although the transplanted cells remained viable and exhibited contraction, they formed the nidus for serious ventricular tachyarrhythmias, which led to premature discontinuation of the trial. Despite this outcome, the trial energized the field, accelerating both preclinical and clinical research, albeit not with skeletal myoblasts. The extensive progress in cardiac regeneration is reviewed in this Compendium, and as occurs frequently in science, important observations have led to more questions and challenges (Table). View this table: Table. Important Challenges to Cell Therapy for Cardiac Regeneration Many cell types have been evaluated as candidates for cardiac regeneration. Among the earliest clinical trials, Zeiher’s group infused autologous bone marrow-derived progenitor cells into the coronary arteries of patients with acute,4 as well as healed myocardial infarction (MI)5 and reported improvements in left ventricular (LV) function. However, these results have not been fully confirmed by later studies, as pointed out in the review in the Compendium by Banarjee, Bolli, and Hare.6 Pittenger et al7 were among the first to direct attention to bone marrow-derived (stromal) mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs), emphasizing that these cells proliferated extensively in culture and suggesting that they could be attractive candidates for transplantation. In 2004, Chen et al8 reported that intracoronary infusion of autologous bone marrow-derived MSCs improved cardiac function. Zimmet and Hare pointed out that MSCs lack histocompatibility type II markers and elude rejection by …

The determinants of Latin America’s news coverage in the German press

ABSTRACTThis article is based on a content analysis of 3.831 articles published between January 2000 and December 2014 in the market-leading national German press. Following papers and magazine were considered: ‘Süddeutsche Zeitung’ (SZ), ‘Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung’ (FAZ), ‘Der Spiegel’ and, additionally, the alternative newspaper ‘tageszeitung’ (taz). The research aims at analysing countries’ features as determinants of news selection towards Latin American. It concludes that ‘power status’, ‘economic proximity’ and ‘socioeconomic status’, respectively, have a positive correlation with press attention. These factors that played the most crucial role in the selection process were then used as a reference to identify the deviations, i.e., nations that received much more attention than expected according to their characteristics. In these cases, ideology or crisis and negativity can explain the deviations. Especially Cuba, Bolivia and Venezuela show an overrepresentation due to their position against the Washington Consensus. Argentina is also overrepresented because of its substantial correspondents’ network and previous economic crisis with an international dimension. Except for the top four most reported nations – Brazil, Argentina, Mexico and Cuba – there is, in general, a lack of interest in Latin America amidst German press.

How Local Media Coverage of Voter Fraud Influences Partisan Perceptions in the United States

AbstractExtant findings show that voter fraud is extremely rare and difficult to prove in the United States. Voter's knowledge about voter fraud allegations likely comes through the media, who tend to sensationalize the issue. In this study, we argue that the more voters are exposed to media coverage of voter fraud allegations, the more likely that they will perceive that voter fraud is a frequent problem. We merge the 2012 Survey of Performance of American Elections with state-level media coverage of voter fraud leading up to the 2012 election. Our results show that media coverage of voter fraud is associated with public beliefs about voter fraud. In states where fraud was more frequently featured in local media outlets, public concerns about voter fraud were heightened. In particular, we find that press attention to voter fraud has a larger influence on Republicans than Democrats and Independents. We further find that media coverage of voter fraud does not further polarize partisan perceptions of voter fraud. Rather, political interest moderates state media coverage on voter fraud beliefs only among Republicans. Last, our results provide no support that demographic changes, approval of election administration, or information concerning actual reported voting irregularities have any discernable effects on partisan perceptions.

Buyback Derangement Syndrome

Over the last few years, a lot of press, pundit, and political attention has been paid to share repurchases, much of it critical. Most repurchase critics assert that share repurchases are at historical highs and that dollars spent repurchasing shares would otherwise be directed toward profitable investment. Some also credit recent stock market gains to the “sugar high” of share repurchases. The authors show that most of these criticisms are without merit (at least, merit that can be demonstrated), sometimes glaringly so. Aggregate share repurchase activity has not been at historical highs when measured properly, and when netted against debt issuance it is almost a non-event: It does not mechanically create earnings growth, does not stifle aggregate investment activity, and has not been the primary cause for recent stock market strength. These myths should be discarded.

#LOLNothingMatters

Institutions matter in antitrust, at least as much as ideas. Most antitrust arguments, and especially the contretemps currently enjoying some attention in the popular press, imagine that antitrust problems are short- or medium-term matters, and that they can be corrected with local doctrinal steps. I suggest there is a deeper problem, a phenomenon more deeply inherent in the nature of competition itself. The problem will cyclically recur, so long as institutional brakes are unavailable to keep it at bay. Specifically, it seems that competitive markets are difficult to preserve without some prospective, no-fault rule to control concentration for its own sake. At least nominally, American antitrust has such a rule in its basic merger law, Clayton Act § 7, but the rest of it consists of retrospective, fault-based, law-enforcement rules that in their application are by nature somewhat piecemeal. A prospective concentration rule is needed because once markets become concentrated, situations are common in which neither disciplinary new entry nor retrospective conduct remedies can restore competition. The deeper problem inherent in competition policy, which demonstrates the significance of institutions as well as ideas, is that such a rule is also most difficult to enforce. That is so because markets in their ordinary operation are confusing and contradictory to watch, and the hardest interventions for government to defend to a skeptical public are those that are prospective. Finally, however, it so happens that one institutional correction currently on the legislative agenda could conceivably do some good in correcting for this problem—a specific plank in congressional Democrats’ “Better Deal” platform.

‘Playing Dead’ and Killing Off Amateurism: Bribery Scandals, Illegal Player Payments, Rule Expunging, and the Victorian Football League’s Authorization of Professionalism in 1911

Australian football is an indigenous game codified in 1859. In Melbourne, the code’s birthplace, the game remained officially committed to the amateur ideal for over a half-century. Illegal player payments nonetheless became increasingly commonplace. Moreover, periodically rumours swirled of champion footballers taking bribes to ‘play dead’. By the early 1900s, the code’s leading competition, the Victorian Football League (VFL), was derided with the ‘shamateurism’ label. Following a sensational match-fixing investigation that resulted in two players receiving five-year bans, in 1911 the VFL expunged its rule prohibiting player payments. Was the timing merely coincidental or was the League’s historic switch to professionalism a deliberate countermeasure to redirect press attention, renew public confidence, and restore the game’s integrity? By consulting the League’s official records and contemporary press articles, this work examines the overlooked yet discernible linkages between rising match-fixing allegations and the VFL’s decision to eschew amateurism and embrace professionalism. It argues that Australian football offers an instructive historical perspective of a sporting body tackling mounting concerns over corruption, taking back the ascendency by amending its rules to better govern over dishonest players and duplicitous club officials, thereby growing its popularity and restoring public perception of its integrity in the process.

In this issue of Weather

We begin February’s issue on p. 39, marking the 50th anniversary of a storm that caused serious damage in many northern and western parts of the British Isles. This storm has received relatively little attention in the scientific press and was hardly reported in national newspapers at the time. In ‘50 years on from the Great Glasgow Storm… What have we learned from powerful storms since then?’ Penny Tranter and the Editor of this journal describe the effects of the storm and the lessons we have learned from this and other similar storms, over the years.Many readers may remember the terrible droughts that caused serious famine in the monsoon zone of West Africa in the 1980s and Kwadwo Owusu’s paper on p. 46 ‘Rainfall changes in the savannah zone of northern Ghana 1961–2010’ shows how variable the rainfall was in this zone in the 50 years to 2010. Indeed, although serious drought has not been a main feature in recent years, rainfall remains below that seen in the 1960s and early 1970s.A recent UK storm features in the paper on p. 54. Warnings of poor weather can cause changes in behaviour, not least travel. In ‘Better by bus? Insights into public transport travel behaviour during Storm Doris in Reading, UK’ Hannah Budnitz, Lee Chapman and Emmanouil Tranos describe changes in travel patterns on 23 February 2017.Our final paper, on p. 60, looks at the change in temperature in recent years along the Mediterranean coast of Egypt. Kareem M. Tonbol, Tarek M. El‐Geziry and Mohamed Elbessa compare temperature changes over time and against both global and European temperatures in ‘Evaluation of changes and trends in air temperature within the Southern Levantine basin’..

Old jokes, new media – Online sexism and constructions of gender in Internet memes

The Internet is a space where the harassment of women and marginalised groups online has attracted the attention of both academic and popular press. Feminist research has found that instances of online sexism and harassment are often reframed as “acceptable” by constructing them as a form of humour. Following this earlier research, this present paper explores a uniquely technologically-bound type of humour by adopting a feminist, social-constructionist approach to examine the content of popular Internet memes. Using thematic analysis on a sample of 240 image macro Internet memes (those featuring an image with a text caption overlaid), we identified two broad, overarching themes – Technological Privilege and Others. Within the analysis presented here, complex and troubling constructions of gendered identity in online humour are explored, illustrating the potential for the othering and exclusion of women through humour in technological spaces. We argue that this new iteration of heteronormative, hegemonic masculinity in online sexism, couched in “irony” and “joking”, serves to police, regulate and create rightful occupants and owners of such spaces.

The New Oxford Shakespeare: Authorship Companion ed. by Gary Taylor and Gabriel Egan

Reviewed by: The New Oxford Shakespeare: Authorship Companion ed. by Gary Taylor and Gabriel Egan Heather Hirschfeld Gary Taylor and Gabriel Egan, editors. The New Oxford Shakespeare: Authorship Companion. oxford up, 2016 775 pp. michel foucault's celebrated query—"what is an author?"—has organized four decades of scholarship on the definition and function of the writer in relation to his or her contexts. Here, in assessing Gary Taylor and Gabriel Egan's imposing collection of essays, which serves as the third of the three interconnected print publications comprising the New Oxford Shakespeare, we should adjust Foucault's question slightly. "What is a companion?" we might ask. And to continue the quibble, "what is an authorship companion?" In the Shakespearean lexicon, a companion is distinctly human: an associate, an aide or comrade, or a rogue or rascal (David Crystal and Ben Crystal, Shakespeare's Words: A Glossary & Language Companion, Penguin Books, 2002, 86). Shakespeare's usage abbreviates a more expansive set of meanings available in the early modern period, including applications to objects rather than people. In 1533, a companion could be "an inanimate object, abstract quality, etc., regarded as company for a person," and, by 1621, it was understood as "a handbook or reference book" and, more particularly, as a vade mecum, "a book or manual suitable for carrying about with one" (OED II.9.b, 10.a). At more than 750 pages, the hefty Authorship Companion is unlikely to be carried about, even by the most dedicated scholars, who will surely wish to consult, if not necessarily adopt or endorse, its positions on the canon and chronology of Shakespeare's written work. (These positions, some of which have garnered the attention of the popular press, include the diminution of Shakespeare's hand and the introduction of Christopher Marlowe's in the three Henry VI plays, as well as the ascription to shakespeare of parts of The Tragedy of M. Arden of Faversham, Edward III, and Lewis Theobald's 1727 The Double Falsehood, reclaimed here as The History of Cardenio (see, for instance, Christopher D. Shea, "New Oxford Shakespeare Edition Credits Christopher Marlowe as a Co-author," New York Times, 24 October 2016). In its comprehensive articulation of these positions, the volume does [End Page 189] double duty: it serves not only as a guide to its readers but as the essential accompaniment to the other volumes of the New Oxford Shakespeare, particularly the Modern Critical Edition (hereafter, MCE; edited by Gary Taylor et al., Oxford UP, 2016). All twenty-five of its chapters, in other words, work to explain and justify the texts that comprise the MCE; they revolve around questions about who wrote, or who wrote which parts of, plays associated with Shakespeare's name since the 1590s. Attention to these questions distinguishes the 2016 Authorship Companion from Taylor and Stanley Wells's 1987 Textual Companion, the complementary volume to the 1986 Oxford Shakespeare: The Collected Works, which devoted more time and space to the history of editing shakespeare than to the history—and contemporary computational practices—of attributing works to him. The focus on the latter, according to Taylor and Egan, puts the "authorship" in the Authorship Companion, and the volume begins with a feisty chapter by Taylor on the nature of writing for the early modern stage. In it Taylor coins the term "artiginality," a neologism drawn from the vocabulary of the early modern guild and meant to capture both the inexorably material conditions of the Renaissance theater and the dramatist's agency and individuality in his work for it. Authorship in Shakespeare's time, Taylor explains, was a craft, one that "transform[ed] already-existing works, already-existing text-things, into recognizably new text-things" (25). The author (in another of Taylor's neologisms) was a "transformaker" (25), and like other early modern artisans or "wrights," he had had a proprietary interest in his labor. These definitions ground the rest of the volume, since they license—even mandate—the attribution of acts and scenes to the dramatists who crafted them. As Taylor writes, "The difference between one wrighter and another should matter to us because it mattered to them" (26). Thus, "modern editors and...

Review Essay: Israeli Attitudes on Civil Rights, Democracy and Arab-Jewish Relations

Israeli Attitudes on Civil Rights, Democracy and Arab-Jewish Relations Theodore Sasson (bio) Neha Sahgal and Alan Cooperman, Israel's Religiously Divided Society, Pew Research Center, 2016 (236 pp). Sammy Smooha, Still Playing by the Rules: Index of Arab-Jewish Relations in Israel (Haifa, 2017) (366 pp). Tamar Hermann, Israel Democracy Index, (Israel Democracy Institute, 2016) (307 pp). In March 2016, the Pew Research Center released "Israel's Religiously Divided Society", a much-anticipated report on the attitudes and practices of Israeli Jews, Muslims, Christians, and Druze. Although focused on religion and designed partly to enable comparison with the 2013 Pew report on American Jewry, the Israeli study captured press attention for its striking findings on the attitudes of Israeli Jews toward Arabs. The study reported that 48% of Israeli Jews favored expulsion of Arabs from Israel, and 79% believed Israeli Jews should enjoy preferential treatment. The British newspaper, The Independent, reported the story under the headline, "Nearly half of Israeli Jews believe in ethnic cleansing".1 The American Jewish newspaper The Forward led with the finding that "Almost half of all Israeli Jews are in favor of transferring or expelling the state's Arab population," a fact the newspaper described as "staggering".2 Writing in the Huffington Post, Arab American Institute president James Zogby summed up the study's main contribution: "With 8 in 10 Israeli Jews supporting [End Page 217] preferential treatment for themselves at the expense of the 20% of the population that is Arab and with almost one-half of Israeli Jews calling for Arab citizens to be expelled or transferred—we can only conclude that this is a society and a political culture that is in trouble."3 The news headlines fit neatly with the Pew Research Center's own framing of the survey results. In a "Fact Tank" blog published simultaneously with the study, Pew flagged the finding on expelling Arabs as one of the survey's "7 Key Findings".4 The Pew report and much of the press coverage duly noted that other surveys had reported discrepant findings, singling out, in particular, University of Haifa's Sammy Smooha's "Index of Arab-Jewish Relations" (IAJR) and Tamar Hermann's "Israel Democracy Index" (IDI). As it happens, both professors Smooha and Hermann fielded new surveys in the same year as Pew and reported their findings in book-length monographs. This review essay examines the findings of the three surveys on the topics of civil rights, democracy, and Arab-Jewish relations in Israel. Most years since 2003, Smooha surveyed Arab citizens and Jewish Israelis on their views of one another and the state. The 2017 report, Still Playing by the Rules, describes findings of a survey conducted during May, June, and July 2015.5 Smooha frames the report with an historical narrative of the development of Arab society in the state of Israel. During the first decades of Israeli statehood, Arabs who remained in Israel after 1948 were subjected to widespread confiscation of lands and military rule. In the years since, Arab citizens of the state developed as a linguistic, cultural, and religious minority. They held a subordinate class position, wielded limited political power, and were subject to governmental, housing, and employment discrimination. Despite this harsh history, Arab citizens generally avoided political violence. This is because, as Smooha has argued in numerous articles as well as the IAJR surveys, Israel's democratic institutions enabled the Arab minority to struggle for improved status through contentious politics rather than violence, and because Arabs recognized and appreciated the benefits of living in an advanced and stable country. In recent years, a complex balance of forces has shaped Arab-Jewish relations. On the one hand, the Gaza wars and the rhetoric of right wing politicians in the last election—including the prime minister's notorious plea to his voters to turnout at the polls to offset the Arab vote—have contributed to feelings of alienation. On the other, Arab citizens have increasingly viewed Israel as a stable country in a region upended by civil war, and they have achieved substantial upward mobility, through higher education and by moving into white-collar occupations. [End...

Competition Between Two-Sided Platforms Under Demand and Supply Congestion Effects

Problem definition: This paper explores the impact of competition between platforms in the sharing economy. Examples include the cases of Uber and Lyft in the context of ride-sharing platforms. In particular, we consider competition between two platforms that offer a common service (e.g., rides) through a set of independent service providers (e.g., drivers) to a market of customers. Each platform sets a price that is charged to customers for obtaining service provided by a driver. A portion of that price is paid to the driver that delivers the service. Both customers’ and drivers’ utilities are sensitive to the payment terms set by the platform and are also sensitive to congestion in the system (given by the relative number of customers and drivers in the market). We consider two possible settings. The first one, termed “single-homing,” assumes that drivers work through a single platform. In the second setting, termed “multi-homing” (or “multi-apping” as it is known in practice), drivers deliver service through both platforms. Academic/Practical Relevance: This is one of the first papers to study competition and multi-homing in the presence of congestion effects typically observed in the sharing economy. We leverage the model to study some practical questions that have received significant press attention (and stirred some controversies) in the ride-sharing industry. The first involves the issue of surge pricing. The second involves the increasingly common practice of drivers choosing to operate on multiple platforms (multi-homing). Methodology: We formulate our problem as a pricing game between two platforms and employ the concept of Nash equilibrium to analyze equilibrium outcomes in various settings. Results: In both the single-homing and multi-homing settings, we study the equilibrium prices that emerge from the competitive interaction between the platforms and explore the supply and demand outcomes that can arise at equilibrium. We build on these equilibrium results to study the impact of surge pricing in response to a surge in demand and to examine the incentives at play when drivers engage in multi-homing. Managerial Implications: We find that raising prices in response to a surge in demand makes drivers and customers better off than if platforms were constrained to charge the same prices that would arise under normal demand levels. We also compare drivers’ and customers’ performance when all drivers either single-home or all multi-home. We find that, while individual drivers may have an incentive to multi-home, all players are worse off when all drivers multi-home. We conclude by proposing an incentive mechanism to discourage multi-homing.

Evaluating the National Rifle Association’s “stranglehold on science”

Mass murder in Las Vegas reignites press attention to hobbled federal gun-violence research.

The effects of 'activating' almonds on consumer acceptance and gastrointestinal tolerance.

Recommendations to soak nuts prior to consumption to reduce phytate concentrations and improve gastrointestinal tolerance have received much attention in the popular press. This is despite no supporting scientific evidence for the practice. There is also a lack of information about how soaking nuts might affect consumer acceptability. This study primarily assessed the effects of soaking almonds on consumer acceptance and secondly assessed effects on gastrointestinal tolerance. In this 8-week randomised crossover trial, 76 participants were allocated in balanced order to receive 30g/day of four different preparations of almonds for 12days: whole unsoaked, whole soaked, sliced unsoaked, and sliced soaked. Ratings of overall liking, desire to consume, and likelihood of future consumption, and severity of gastrointestinal symptoms were measured daily on visual analogue scales. The phytate concentrations were measured in all four nut types using high-performance liquid chromatography. Mean acceptance ratings of all nut types were above the neutral point indicating they were acceptable. However, sliced soaked almonds were rated significantly lower overall for all three acceptance scales compared to the other treatments (all P≤0.003). The sliced unsoaked almonds were rated lower than both whole nut treatments (all P≤0.006), while there were no significant differences between the two whole nut treatments (all P≥0.511). Gastrointestinal symptoms were minimal, but flatulence was rated significantly higher for all time points combined for soaked whole nuts compared to unsoaked whole nuts (P=0.005). Compared to the whole unsoaked nuts (mean [SD]531[9]mg/100g), phytate concentration was higher for the whole soaked almonds (563[38]mg/100g, P=0.016), with no evidence of a difference for the sliced soaked almonds (548[27]mg/100g, P=0.197) and no difference between the soaked forms (P=0.262). This research supports previous results suggesting nuts, including different forms, are an acceptable food. They are also well tolerated gastrointestinally, but soaking does not improve gastrointestinal tolerance or acceptance as claimed in the lay literature.

Following Snowden around the World

PurposeA survey of the attitudes of students in eight countries towards the revelations of mass surveillance by the US’ NSA and the UK’s GCHQ has been described in an introductory paper and seven country-specific papers (The People’s Republic of China and Taiwan are combined in a single paper). This paper aims to present a comparison of the results from these countries and draws conclusions about the similarities and differences noted.Design/methodology/approachA questionnaire was deployed in Germany, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, The People’s Republic of China, Spain, Sweden and Taiwan. The original survey was in English, translated into German, Japanese and Chinese for relevant countries. The survey consists of a combination of Likert scale, Yes/no and free-text responses. The results are quantitatively analysed using appropriate statistical tools and the qualitative answers are interpreted (including, where appropriate, consolidated into quantitative results).FindingsThere are significant differences between respondents in the countries surveyed with respect to their general privacy attitudes and their willingness to follow Snowden’s lead, even where they believe his actions served the public good.Research limitations/implicationsOwing to resource limitations, only university students were surveyed. In some countries (Germany and New Zealand), the relatively small number of respondents limits the ability to make meaningful statistical comparisons between respondents from those countries and from elsewhere on some issues.Practical implicationsSnowden’s actions are generally seen as laudable and having had positive results, among the respondents surveyed. Such results should give pause to governments seeking to expand mass surveillance by government entities.Originality/valueThere have been few surveys regarding attitudes to Snowden’s revelations, despite the significant press attention and political actions that have flowed from it. The context of attitudes to both the actions he revealed and the act of revelation itself is useful in constructing political and philosophical arguments about the balance between surveillance activity for state security and the privacy of individual citizens.

SESAME physicists’ “indirect peacemaking” stirs little US interest

The opening of the new synchrotron light source in the Middle East got only limited American press attention.

Harmony Korine’s &lt;em&gt;Trash Humpers&lt;/em&gt;: From Alternative to Hipster

Harmony Korine’s &lt;em&gt;Trash Humpers&lt;/em&gt;: From Alternative to Hipster