Gender stereotypes of personality : universal and accurate?

Numerous studies have documented subtle but consistent sex differences in self-reports and observer-ratings of five-factor personality traits, and such effects were found to show well-defined developmental trajectories and remarkable similarity across nations. In contrast, very little is known about perceived gender differences in five-factor traits in spite of their potential implications for gender biases at the interpersonal and societal level. In particular, it is not clear how perceived gender differences in five-factor personality vary across age groups and national contexts and to what extent they accurately reflect assessed sex differences in personality. To address these questions, we analyzed responses from 3,323 individuals across 26 nations (mean age = 22.3 years, 31% male) who were asked to rate the five-factor personality traits of typical men or women in three age groups (adolescent, adult, and older adult) in their respective nations. Raters perceived women as slightly higher in openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness as well as some aspects of extraversion and neuroticism. Perceived gender differences were fairly consistent across nations and target age groups and mapped closely onto assessed sex differences in self- and observer-rated personality. Associations between the average size of perceived gender differences and national variations in sociodemographic characteristics, value systems, or gender equality did not reach statistical significance. Findings contribute to our understanding of the underlying mechanisms of gender stereotypes of personality and suggest that perceptions of actual sex differences may play a more important role than culturally based gender roles and socialization processes.

The prevention of childhood anxiety and promotion of resilience among preschool-aged children : a universal school based trial

This study is the first to examine the effectiveness of the Fun FRIENDS programme, a school-based, universal preventive intervention for early childhood anxiety and promotion of resilience delivered by classroom teachers. Participants (N = 488) included children aged 4–7 years attending 1 of 14 Catholic Education schools in Brisbane, Australia. The schools were randomly allocated to one of three groups, the intervention, active comparison and waitlist control group. Parents completed standardized measures of anxiety and behavioural inhibition (BI), resilience, social and emotional functioning and behaviour difficulties in addition to parental stress and anxiety, at pre- and post- and 12-month follow-up. Teachers also completed a parallel measure of social and emotional strength at the three time points. Comparable results were obtained for the intervention and comparison groups; however, the intervention group (IG) achieved greater reductions in BI, child behavioural difficulties and improvements in social and emotional competence. In addition, significant improvements in parenting distress and parent–child interactions were found for the IG, with gains maintained at 12-month follow-up. Teacher reports revealed more significant improvement in social and emotional competence for the IG. Clinical implications of the findings are discussed, along with limitations and directions for future research.

A qualitative investigation of adolescents’ perceived mechanisms of change from a universal school-based depression prevention program

A recent meta-analysis provides evidence supporting the universal application of school-based prevention programs for adolescent depression. The mechanisms underlying such successful interventions, however, are largely unknown. We report on a qualitative analysis of 109 Grade 9 students’ beliefs about what they gained from an evidence-based depression prevention intervention, the Resourceful Adolescent Program (RAP-A). Fifty-four percent of interviewees articulated at least one specific example of program benefit. A thematic analysis of responses revealed two major themes, improved interpersonal relationships and improved self-regulation, both stronger than originally assumed. A more minor theme also emerged—more helpful cognitions. It is postulated that both improved interpersonal relationships and improved self-regulation are likely to enhance one another, and more helpful cognitions may express its contribution through enhanced self-regulation. These findings broaden our understanding of the impact of depression prevention programs, beginning to illuminate how such programs benefit participants.

eHealth-as-a-Service (eHaaS) : towards universal stakeholder engagement

With the introduction of the Personally Controlled Health Record (PCEHR), the Australian public is being asked to accept greater responsibility for their healthcare by taking an active role in the management of personal health information. Although well designed, constructed and intentioned, policy and privacy concerns have resulted in an eHealth model that may impact future health sharing requirements. Hence, as a case study for a consumer eHealth initative in the Australian context, eHealth-as-a-Service (eHaaS) serves as a disruptive step in in the aggregation and transformation of health information for use as real-world knowledge. The strategic value of extending the community Health Record Bank (HRB) model lies in the ability to automatically draw on a multitude of relevant data repositories and sources to create a single source of the truth and to engage market forces to create financial sustainability. The opportunity to transform the beleaguered Australian PCEHR into a realisable and sustainable technology consumption model for patient safety is explored. Moreover, the current clerical focus of healthcare practitioners acting in the role of de facto record keepers is renegotiated to establish a shared knowledge creation landscape of action for safer patient interventions. To achieve this potential however requires a platform that will facilitate efficient and trusted unification of all health information available in real-time across the continuum of care. eHaaS provides a sustainable environment and encouragement to realise this potential.

Universal codes from switching strategies

We discuss algorithms for combining sequential prediction strategies, a task which can be viewed as a natural generalisation of the concept of universal coding. We describe a graphical language based on Hidden Markov Models for defining prediction strategies, and we provide both existing and new models as examples. The models include efficient, parameterless models for switching between the input strategies over time, including a model for the case where switches tend to occur in clusters, and finally a new model for the scenario where the prediction strategies have a known relationship, and where jumps are typically between strongly related ones. This last model is relevant for coding time series data where parameter drift is expected. As theoretical contributions we introduce an interpolation construction that is useful in the development and analysis of new algorithms, and we establish a new sophisticated lemma for analysing the individual sequence regret of parameterised models.

Higher order universal one-way hash functions from the subset sum assumption

Universal One-Way Hash Functions (UOWHFs) may be used in place of collision-resistant functions in many public-key cryptographic applications. At Asiacrypt 2004, Hong, Preneel and Lee introduced the stronger security notion of higher order UOWHFs to allow construction of long-input UOWHFs using the Merkle-Damgård domain extender. However, they did not provide any provably secure constructions for higher order UOWHFs. We show that the subset sum hash function is a kth order Universal One-Way Hash Function (hashing n bits to m < n bits) under the Subset Sum assumption for k = O(log m). Therefore we strengthen a previous result of Impagliazzo and Naor, who showed that the subset sum hash function is a UOWHF under the Subset Sum assumption. We believe our result is of theoretical interest; as far as we are aware, it is the first example of a natural and computationally efficient UOWHF which is also a provably secure higher order UOWHF under the same well-known cryptographic assumption, whereas this assumption does not seem sufficient to prove its collision-resistance. A consequence of our result is that one can apply the Merkle-Damgård extender to the subset sum compression function with ‘extension factor’ k+1, while losing (at most) about k bits of UOWHF security relative to the UOWHF security of the compression function. The method also leads to a saving of up to m log(k+1) bits in key length relative to the Shoup XOR-Mask domain extender applied to the subset sum compression function.

Efficient extension of standard Schnorr/RSA signatures into Universal Designated-Verifier Signatures

Universal Designated-Verifier Signature (UDVS) schemes are digital signature schemes with additional functionality which allows any holder of a signature to designate the signature to any desired designated-verifier such that the designated-verifier can verify that the message was signed by the signer, but is unable to convince anyone else of this fact. Since UDVS schemes reduce to standard signatures when no verifier designation is performed, it is natural to ask how to extend the classical Schnorr or RSA signature schemes into UDVS schemes, so that the existing key generation and signing implementation infrastructure for these schemes can be used without modification. We show how this can be efficiently achieved, and provide proofs of security for our schemes in the random oracle model.

Universal designated-verifier signatures

Motivated by privacy issues associated with dissemination of signed digital certificates, we define a new type of signature scheme called a ‘Universal Designated-Verifier Signature’ (UDVS). A UDVS scheme can function as a standard publicly-verifiable digital signature but has additional functionality which allows any holder of a signature (not necessarily the signer) to designate the signature to any desired designated-verifier (using the verifier’s public key). Given the designated-signature, the designated-verifier can verify that the message was signed by the signer, but is unable to convince anyone else of this fact. We propose an efficient deterministic UDVS scheme constructed using any bilinear group-pair. Our UDVS scheme functions as a standard Boneh-Lynn-Shacham (BLS) signature when no verifier-designation is performed, and is therefore compatible with the key-generation, signing and verifying algorithms of the BLS scheme. We prove that our UDVS scheme is secure in the sense of our unforgeability and privacy notions for UDVS schemes, under the Bilinear Diffie-Hellman (BDH) assumption for the underlying group-pair, in the random-oracle model. We also demonstrate a general constructive equivalence between a class of unforgeable and unconditionally-private UDVS schemes having unique signatures (which includes the deterministic UDVS schemes) and a class of ID-Based Encryption (IBE) schemes which contains the Boneh-Franklin IBE scheme but not the Cocks IBE scheme.

Towards universal search design

For people with cognitive disabilities, technology is more often thought of as a support mechanism, rather than a source of division that may require intervention to equalize access across the cognitive spectrum. This paper presents a first attempt at formalizing the digital gap created by the generalization of search engines. This was achieved through the development of a mapping of cognitive abilities required by users to execute low- level tasks during a standard Web search task. The mapping demonstrates how critical these abilities are to successfully use search engines with an adequate level of independence. It will lead to a set of design guidelines for search engine interfaces that will allow for the engagement of users of all abilities, and also, more importantly, in search algorithms such as query suggestion and measure of relevance (i.e. ranking).

On the symbiosis of law and truth in Christian theology: Reconciling universal and particular through the Pauline law of love

This article argues that the secular liberal and positivist foundations of the modern Western legal system render it violent. In particular, the liberal exclusion of faith and subjectivity in favour of abstract and universal reason in conjunction with its privileging of individual autonomy at the expense of the community leads to alienation of the individual from the community. Similarly, the positivist exclusion of faith and theology from law, with its enforced conformity to the posited law, also results in this violence of alienation. In response, this article proposes a new foundation for law, a natural law based in the truth of Trinitarian theology articulated by John Milbank. In the Trinity, the members exist as a perfect unity in diversity, providing a model for the reconciliation of the legal individual and community: the law of love. Through the law of love as the basic norm, individuals love their neighbours as themselves, reconciling the particular and the universal, and providing a community of peace rather than violence.

Countering disablism: An alternative universal income support system based on egalitarianism

The long-term vision of economic security and social participation for people with a disability held by disability activists and policy-makers has not been realised on a global scale. This is despite the implementation of various poverty alleviation initiatives by international and national governments. Indeed within advanced Western liberal democracies, the inequalities and poverty gaps have widened rather than closed. This article is based on findings from a historical-comparative policy and discourse analysis of disability income support system in Australia and the Basic Income model. The findings suggest that a model such as Basic Income, grounded in principles of social citizenship, goes some way to maintaining an adequate level of subsistence for people with a disability. The article concludes by presenting some challenges and a commitment to transforming income support policy.

Universal crack closure integral for SIF estimation

Numerical analysis of cracked structures often involves numerical estimation of stress intensity factors (SIFs) at a crack tip/front. A newly developed formulation called universal crack closure integral (UCCI) for the evaluation of potential energy release rates (PERRs) and the corresponding SIFs is presented in this paper. Unlike the existing element dedicated forms of crack closure integrals (MCCI, VCCI) with application limited to finite element analysis, this new numerical SIF/PERR estimation technique is independent of the basic stress analysis procedure, making it universally applicable. The second merit of this procedure is that it avoids the generally error-producing zones close to the crack tip/front singularity. The UCCI procedure, based on Irwin's original CCI, is formulated and explored using a simple 2D problem of a straight crack in an infinite sheet. It is then applied to some three-dimensional crack geometries with the stresses and displacements obtained from a boundary element program.

Logic as the Universal Science : Bertrand Russell's Early Conception of Logic and Its Philosophical Context

Bertrand Russell (1872 1970) introduced the English-speaking philosophical world to modern, mathematical logic and foundational study of mathematics. The present study concerns the conception of logic that underlies his early logicist philosophy of mathematics, formulated in The Principles of Mathematics (1903). In 1967, Jean van Heijenoort published a paper, Logic as Language and Logic as Calculus, in which he argued that the early development of modern logic (roughly the period 1879 1930) can be understood, when considered in the light of a distinction between two essentially different perspectives on logic. According to the view of logic as language, logic constitutes the general framework for all rational discourse, or meaningful use of language, whereas the conception of logic as calculus regards logic more as a symbolism which is subject to reinterpretation. The calculus-view paves the way for systematic metatheory, where logic itself becomes a subject of mathematical study (model-theory). Several scholars have interpreted Russell s views on logic with the help of the interpretative tool introduced by van Heijenoort,. They have commonly argued that Russell s is a clear-cut case of the view of logic as language. In the present study a detailed reconstruction of the view and its implications is provided, and it is argued that the interpretation is seriously misleading as to what he really thought about logic. I argue that Russell s conception is best understood by setting it in its proper philosophical context. This is constituted by Immanuel Kant s theory of mathematics. Kant had argued that purely conceptual thought basically, the logical forms recognised in Aristotelian logic cannot capture the content of mathematical judgments and reasonings. Mathematical cognition is not grounded in logic but in space and time as the pure forms of intuition. As against this view, Russell argued that once logic is developed into a proper tool which can be applied to mathematical theories, Kant s views turn out to be completely wrong. In the present work the view is defended that Russell s logicist philosophy of mathematics, or the view that mathematics is really only logic, is based on what I term the Bolzanian account of logic . According to this conception, (i) the distinction between form and content is not explanatory in logic; (ii) the propositions of logic have genuine content; (iii) this content is conferred upon them by special entities, logical constants . The Bolzanian account, it is argued, is both historically important and throws genuine light on Russell s conception of logic.