The Austrian Academy of Sciences has taken the bold step of closing a successful institute in Salzburg and opening two new ones in Vienna with the aim of creating an internationally attractive critical mass of biological research activity in the capital. Graham Tebb reports.

Rural women in Pakistan, under a small holding system of farming, play a pivotal role in farming. They actively participate in a range of activities related to crop production and livestock management. Rural women remain busy from dawn to dusk in various agricultural activities, including pre-harvest, post-harvest and livestock management. Their participation is well dispersed but less perceive...

The programme follows a five year cycle of CPD activity in which 250 credits need to be accumulated. Participants are expected to accumulate 50 credits per year. The system allows doctors to record their educational activity which they are then able to present at their appraisal and revalidation. It supports them in specific changes in practice and career development. Points given by the Colleg...

BACKGROUND It is widely accepted that all medical graduates should understand the uses and methods of rigorous research, with a need to promote research to graduates who will pursue an academic career. This study aimed to explore, identify and explain what motivates and demotivates medical students to do research. METHODS A convergent parallel mixed methods study was conducted. Cross-sectiona...

Do non-human animals have rights? The answer to this question depends on whether animals have morally relevant mental properties. Mindreading is the human activity of ascribing mental states to other organisms. Current knowledge about the evolution and cognitive structure of mindreading indicates that human ascriptions of mental states to non-human animals are very inaccurate. The accuracy of h...

BACKGROUND Although clinical research is integral to the advancement of medical knowledge, physicians face a variety of obstacles to their participation as investigators in clinical trials. We examined factors that influence the participation of gastroenterologists and hepatologists in clinical research. METHODS We surveyed 1050 members of the American Association for the Study of Liver Disea...

“The mutual constitution of culture and mind is a topic of central importance across all of areas of psychology.” With this mission statement, Frontiers in Cultural Psychology declares mutual constitution— the process by which mind and culture “live together, require each other, and dynamically, dialectically, and jointly make each other up” (Shweder, 1990; p.1)—as the unifying theme of its oth...

OBJECTIVE This study tested the association between perceptions of personal control and quality of life among older persons. METHOD Two self-report instruments. The Quality of Life Rating (QOLR) and the Duncan Choice Index (DCI), were administered to 21 residents in a long-term-care facility. The DCI was developed for this study to measure the amount of choice available in 29 self-care and le...

With rapid progress in scientific research activities and growing competition for funding resources, it becomes critical to effectively evaluate an individual researcher's annual academic performance, or their cumulative performance within the last 3-5 years. It is particularly important for young independent investigators, and is also useful for funding agencies when determining the productivi...

Online petitions are an important avenue for direct political action, yet the dynamics that determine when a petition will be successful are not well understood. Here we analyze the temporal characteristics of online-petition signing behavior in order to identify systematic differences between popular petitions, which receive a high volume of signatures, and unpopular ones. We find that, in lin...