BACKGROUND This paper considers the role of teaching primary care trusts (tPCTs) at the turn of the century. A retrospective evaluation of a complex intervention is used. The evaluation has three perspectives. These are (1) a commentary on tPCTs in health policy in England, (2) the authors' reflections as senior members of a tPCT in Northern England and (3) a look-back exercise with tPCT member...

Archaeologists argue that the replacement of Neanderthals by modern humans was driven by interspecific competition due to a difference in culture level. To assess the cogency of this argument, we construct and analyze an interspecific cultural competition model based on the Lotka-Volterra model, which is widely used in ecology, but which incorporates the culture level of a species as a variable...

OBJECTIVE To test the cultural invariance of the Impact-on-Family Scale in order to make cross-cultural comparisons. METHODS The Italian version of the scale was administered to mothers of children with chronic illnesses. Factorial invariance was examined to investigate whether the four factors found with the original United States (U.S.) scale could be replicated. RESULTS The results clear...

This meta-analysis offers an updated set of national cultural scores along the dimensions of Hofstede's cultural framework. The meta-analytic national cultural indices have two advantages. First, they are based on a larger and more representative sample than that used in Hofstede's or any other cross-cultural comparison study. The data come from 451 empirical studies representing over 2000 samp...

Culture pervades human lives and has allowed our species to create niches all around the world and its oceans, in ways quite unlike any other primate. Indeed, our cultural nature appears so distinctive that it is often thought to separate humanity from the rest of nature and the Darwinian forces that shape it. A contrary view arises through the recent discoveries of a diverse range of disciplin...

This paper presents a review of characteristics that might be appropriate factors to predict job success, followed by a preliminary model that could be incorporated into a more specific model once data becomes available for testing the model. The eventual model could add value to the process of making software testing task assignments by considering certain employee traits that would lead to an...

Historical evolution and cross-cultural differences in spatial abilities are analyzed. Spatial abilities have been found to be significantly associated with the complexity of geographical conditions and survival demands. Although impaired spatial cognition is found in cases of, exclusively or predominantly, right hemisphere pathology, it is proposed that this asymmetry may depend on the degree ...

Schedule Received 31 Revised 32 Accepted 33 Abstract Recent debates about memetics have revealed some widespread misunderstandings about Darwinian approaches to cultural evolution. Drawing from these debates, this paper disputes five common claims: (1) mental representations are rarely discrete, and therefore models that assume discrete, gene-like particles (i.e., replicators) are useless; (2) ...

This essay suggests that institutional theory has much to offer the SoTL movement by identifying the specific forces that oppose teaching and learning initiatives and offering solutions for nudging cultural change towards the desired outcomes.

BACKGROUND Recent cross-cultural comparisons between Asian and Western cultures have shown that ageism arises more from the lack of availability of social and economic resources for older adults than from the culture itself. We tested this assumption by conducting a survey among people living in a least developed country compared with those living in a developed country. PARTICIPANTS AND METH...