Purpose The purpose of this paper is to provide an updated and authoritative measure of individualism vs collectivism (IDV-COLL) as a dimension of national culture. Design/methodology/approach Rather than focus solely on Hofstede’s classic work, the authors review the main nation-level studies of IDV-COLL and related constructs to identify the salient cultural differences between rich societies and developing nations. The authors conceptualize and operationalize IDV-COLL on the basis of those differences and propose a new national IDV-COLL index, using new data from large probabilistic samples: 52,974 respondents from 56 countries, adequately representing the national cultures of all inhabited continents. Findings The proposed index is a new, valid measure of IDV-COLL as it is strongly correlated with previous measures of closely associated constructs. As a predictor of important cultural differences that can be expected to be associated with IDV-COLL, it performs better (yields higher correlations) than any known measure of IDV-COLL or a related construct. Research limitations/implications An important facet of IDV-COLL – in-group favoritism vs out-group neglect or exclusionism – does not transpire convincingly from the authors’ operationalization of IDV-COLL. The study relies on self-construals. Respondents are unlikely to construe their selves in terms of such concepts. Practical implications The new IDV-COLL measure can be used as a reliable, up-to-date national index in studies that compare the cultures of rich and developing nations. The new IDV-COLL scale, consisting of only seven items, can be easily used in future studies. Originality/value This is the first IDV-COLL measure based on the communalities of previous studies in this domain and derived from large probabilistic samples that approach national representativeness. The superior predictive properties of the authors’ new measure with respect to extraneous variables are another important strength and contribution.

Cigarette smoking is associated with impaired endothelium-dependent vasodilation and reduced nitric oxide (NO) in the exhaled air of smokers. To explore the mechanism for the impairment of NO-mediated vasodilation, we studied the effect of cigarette smoke extract (CSE) on NO synthase (eNOS) activity and content in pulmonary artery endothelial cells (PAEC). Incubation of PAEC with CSE resulted in a time- and dose-dependent decrease in eNOS activity. The inhibitory effect of CSE on eNOS activity was not reversible. Both gas-phase and particulate-phase extracts of CSE contributed to the inhibition of eNOS activity. The protein kinase c (PKC) inhibitors staurosporine and chelerythrine did not affect the CSE-induced inhibition of eNOS activity. Catalase, superoxide dismutase (SOD), vitamin C, vitamin E, glutathione, and dithiothreitol (DTT) also did not prevent the CSE-induced inhibition of eNOS activity, and incubation of PAEC with 3 mM nicotine did not change the activity of eNOS. Treatment of PAEC with CSE also caused a nonreversible, time-dependent decrease in eNOS protein content detected by Western blot analysis, and in eNOS messenger RNA (mRNA) detected by Northern blot analysis. Treatment of PAEC with CSE had no effect on cell protein or glutathione contents or on lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) release. These results indicate that exposure to CSE causes an irreversible inhibition of eNOS activity in PAEC, and suggest that the decreased activity is secondary to reduced eNOS protein mass and mRNA. The decrease in eNOS activity may contribute to the high risk of pulmonary and cardiovascular disease in cigarette smokers.

Hofstede's "long-term orientation" (LTO) may be one of the most important dimensions of national culture, as it highlights differences on a continuum from East Asia to Africa and Latin America, strongly associated with differences in educational achievement. However, LTO's structure lacks theoretical coherence. We show that a statistically similar, and theoretically more

Understanding why species richness peaks along the Andes is a fundamental question in the study of Neotropical biodiversity. Several biogeographic and diversification scenarios have been proposed in the literature, but there is confusion about the processes underlying each scenario, and assessing their relative contribution is not straightforward. Here, we propose to refine these scenarios into a framework which evaluates four evolutionary mechanisms: higher speciation rate in the Andes, lower extinction rates in the Andes, older colonization times and higher colonization rates of the Andes from adjacent areas. We apply this framework to a species-rich subtribe of Neotropical butterflies whose diversity peaks in the Andes, the Godyridina (Nymphalidae: Ithomiini). We generated a time-calibrated phylogeny of the Godyridina and fitted time-dependent diversification models. Using trait-dependent diversification models and ancestral state reconstruction methods we then compared different biogeographic scenarios. We found strong evidence that the rates of colonization into the Andes were higher than the other way round. Those colonizations and the subsequent local diversification at equal rates in the Andes and in non-Andean regions mechanically increased the species richness of Andean regions compared to that of non-Andean regions ('species-attractor' hypothesis). We also found support for increasing speciation rates associated with Andean lineages. Our work highlights the importance of the Andean slopes in repeatedly attracting non-Andean lineages, most likely as a result of the diversity of habitats and/or host plants. Applying this analytical framework to other clades will bring important insights into the evolutionary mechanisms underlying the most species-rich biodiversity hotspot on the planet.

The Pervasive Computing Laboratory at the University of Florida is dedicated to creating smart environments and assistants to enable elderly persons to live a longer and a more independent life at home. By achieving this goal, technology will increase the chances of successful aging despite an ailing Health Care system (e.g. Medicaid). One of the essential services required to maximize the intelligence of a smart environment is an indoor precision tracking system. Such system allows the smart home to make proactive decisions to better serve its occupants by enabling context-awareness instead of being solely reactive to their commands. This paper presents our hands-on experience and lessons learnt from our first phase work to build up a smart home infrastructure for the elderly. We review location tracking technology and describe the rational behind our choice of the emerging ultrasonic sensor technology. We give an overview of the House of Matilda (an in-laboratory mock up house) and describe our design of a precision in-door tracking system. We also describe an OSGi-based robust framework that abstracts the ultrasonic technology into a standard service to enable the creation of tracking based applications by third party, and to facilitate the collaboration among various devices and other OSGi services. Finally, we describe three pervasive computing applications that use the location-tracking system which we have implemented in Matilda's house.

In Medellín, Colombia, homicide has been the first cause of morbidity and mortality for 20 years. Medellín has the highest homicide rates of all major cities in Latin America. This study describes the victims, motives, and circumstances in homicides in Medellín from 1990 to 2002. The period included 55,365 homicides, of which 1,394 were randomly studied. Of this sample, 93.6% (95%CI: 92.2%-94.8%) were males, 77.0% (95%CI: 75.0%-79.5%) less than 35 years of age, one-fourth had consumed alcohol, and nine out of ten were killed with firearms. The main motives were revenge and armed robbery. 37.0% (95%CI: 34.0%-41.0%) of the victims lived in the lowest socioeconomic stratum of the city. Characteristics of homicides in Medellín have remained unchanged since the 1980s, when the most violent period in the city's history began. The most heavily affected groups are young males who live and die in poor neighborhoods, and the murders are individual acts that leave no wounded behind.

There are few large-scale studies that compare how parents socialize children across the globe and the implications of the different types of socialization. To fill this gap, the authors used data from a new study across 52,300 probabilistically selected respondents from 54 countries. They were asked what advice they would give to their children to instill desirable values and traits in them. Aggregated to the national level, the responses yield two main dimensions of national culture. The first (collectivism-individualism) captures differences approximately along the South-North geographic axis of the Earth and is strongly correlated with differences in economic and gender inequality. The second (monumentalism-flexibility) captures cultural differences approximately on the West-East geographic axis of the world and is strongly associated with national differences in educational achievement. Thus, some of the most important national differences worldwide are strongly related to cultural differences in parental ideologies for the socialization of their children, suggesting that culture has objective societal outcomes.

The study's aims were to empirically derive classes of disorders and dimensional syndromes within psychotic disorders on the basis of the three time frames of symptom assessment and to comparatively examine their external validity. The level of concordance among classes and among dimensions across the time frames was generally low. The external correlates of psychopathological syndromes differed as a function of both type of assessment and the dimensional or categorical approach used. The dimensional approach was more effective than the categorical approach in predicting a set of clinical variables, irrespective of the time frame used to assess the symptoms. It is concluded that classification of psychotic disorders is highly dependent upon the time frame considered to assess symptoms and that dimensional classifications do have higher predictive power than categorical ones.