Two interacting forces influence all populations: the Malthusian dynamic of exponential growth until resource limits are reached, and the Darwinian dynamic of innovation and adaptation to circumvent these limits through biological and/or cultural evolution. The specific manifestations of these forces in modern human society provide an important context for determining how humans can establish a...

Cultural neuroscience (CN) is an interdisciplinary field that investigates the relationship between culture (e.g., value and belief systems and practices shared by groups) and human brain functions. In this review we describe the origin, aims, and methods of CN as well as its conceptual framework and major findings. We also clarify several misunderstandings of CN research. Finally, we discuss t...

When instruction is to be delivered by any medium, whether in a traditional e-learning mode or through the use of a blended learning model, cross-cultural issues have a major impact. This paper focuses on the cultural characteristics of Asian e-learners and uses Hofstede’s cultural dimensions as the basis for the analysis. Asian learners face some clearly identified challenges. For example, in ...

A cross-cultural analysis of trust and cooperation networks in Northern Ghana (NGHA) and Oaxaca (OAX) was carried out by means of ego networks and interviews. These regions were chosen because both are inhabited by several ethnic groups, thus providing a good opportunity to test the cultural group selection hypothesis. Against the predictions of this approach, we found that in both regions coop...

Over the course of 30 years of academic work, the late educational anthropologist John Ogbu had an enormous influence on educational research, and on educational anthropology in particular. In this paper, I lay out the tenets of his cultural-ecological (CE) theory of minority student responses to schooling. I also offer critical commentary and point out ways in which CE theory can be sharpened ...

In this article we explore the theoretical limits of the inference of cultural transmission modes based on sparse population-level data. We approach this problem by investigating whether different transmission modes produce different temporal dynamics of cultural change. In particular, we explore whether different transmission modes result in sufficiently different distributions of the average ...

AIM This exploratory study set out to investigate the perceptions and practices of junior healthcare managers with regard to stress at work. BACKGROUND It has been suggested that cultural change is needed to accommodate a shift towards recognition of organizational responsibility for stress (Schulz et al. 1985). Logically, it can be argued that junior healthcare managers, as potential future ...

Since its creation, New York State Office of Children and Family Services (OCFS) has used child and family development research to bridge the chasm between child welfare and juvenile justice policy and practice. OCFS's major challenges have been to help the staff and stakeholders of the merged child welfare and juvenile justice agencies develop a common culture and design new financial and prog...

ARIATION in cultural characteristics, viability, and motility of bacV teria has been recognized almost from the beginning of their study in pure culture. Because of the influence of the Koch school, which emphasized cultural purity, early bacteriologists were prone to attribute changes in cultures to contamination. Thus, many of the earlier observations of bacterial variation probably were disc...

In this article, a multipopulation Cultural Algorithm (MP-CA) is proposed to solve Job Shop Scheduling Problems (JSSP). The idea of using multiple populations in a Cultural Algorithm is implemented for the first time in JSSP. The proposed method divides the whole population into a number of sub-populations. On each sub-population, a local CA is applied which includes its own population space as...