New directions in the history of modern science in China: global science and comparative history

These essays collectively present new perspectives on the history of modem science in China since 1900. Fa-ti Fan describes how science under the Republic of China after 1911 exhibited a complex local and international character that straddled both imperialism and colonialism. Danian Hu focuses on the fate of relativity in the physics community in China after 1917. Zuoyue Wang hopes that a less nationalist political atmosphere in China will stimulate more transnational studies of modern science, which will in turn reveal the underlying commonalities in different national contexts. Sigrid Schmalzer compares the socialist and the capitalist contexts for science in China and reopens the sensitive question of the "mass line" during the Cultural Revolution. Grace Shen describes the tensions early Chinese scientists felt when choosing between foreign models for modem geology and their own professional identities in China. Taken together, these accounts present us with a comparative history of modern science in China that is both globally and locally informed.     

Using DNA From Mothers and Children to Study Parental Investment in Children’s Educational Attainment

This study tested implications of new genetic discoveries for understanding the association between parental investment and children’s educational attainment. A novel design matched genetic data from 860 British mothers and their children with home-visit measures of parenting: the E-Risk Study. Three findings emerged. First, both mothers’ and children’s education-associated genetics, summarized in a genome-wide polygenic score, were associated with parenting—a gene–environment correlation. Second, accounting for genetic influences slightly reduced associations between parenting and children’s attainment—indicating some genetic confounding. Third, mothers’ genetics were associated with children’s attainment over and above children's own genetics, via cognitively stimulating parenting—an environmentally mediated effect. Findings imply that, when interpreting parents’ effects on children, environmentalists must consider genetic transmission, but geneticists must also consider environmental transmission.     

Participatory Graffiti as Invitational Rhetoric: The Case of O Machismo

This article engages the Brazilian O Machismo graffiti project as an example of invitational visual rhetoric. Although most understandings of graffiti as communication consider it to be a persuasive artistic form, O Machismo invites viewers to respond to its invitation to help complete the art project and collectively share in co-creating its message. Through an examination of the responses to the invitation that emerge to resist machismo and promote non-patriarchal understandings, the article offers some ideas about how an invitational visual rhetoric expands our previous understandings of graffiti.     

Reproducing Traditional Femininities? The Social Relations of 'Special Educational Needs' in a Girls' Comprehensive School

The charity/tragedy discourse of disability and traditional versions of femininity bear some striking resemblances. Both are associated with dependence and helplessness, and with resultant practices that are implicated in the enduring reproduction of social and material inequalities. This article looks at the 'identity work' of a group of girls, all of whom had been identified as having 'special educational needs', in a mainstream school in the UK. Using findings from an ethnographic study, the article explores how the girls position themselves in relation to the subject 'special needs student'. The findings suggest that historical meanings associated with femininity and disability combine with contemporary schooling practices to produce a constrained range of subject positions around which the girls have limited room for manoeuvre.     

A Multifactor Approach to Candidate Image

Decades of communication research have demonstrated that political candidate images are important predictors of electoral success and that campaign communication influences these image perceptions. However, questions remain about the relative importance of various facets of candidate image, how electoral context and partisanship influence the salience of these facets, and whether privileged classes enjoy presumption in image facets that reinforce their dominant position in politics. These questions require a new approach to image research. We propose a multifactor approach that explores the relative importance of six image traits: character, intelligence, leadership, benevolence, homophily, and charm. The benefits of this approach are illustrated through application to two electoral contexts, the 2012 U.S. presidential election and the 2014 U.S. midterm elections.     

Perception of effort in Exercise Science: Definition,measurement and perspectives

Perception of effort, also known as perceived exertion or sense of effort, can be described as a cognitive feeling of work associated with voluntary actions. The aim of the present review is to provide an overview of what is perception of effort in Exercise Science. Due to the addition of sensations other than effort in its definition, the neurophysiology of perceived exertion remains poorly understood. As humans have the ability to dissociate effort from other sensations related to physical exercise, the need to use a narrower definition is emphasised. Consequently, a definition and some brief guidelines for its measurement are provided. Finally, an overview of the models present in the literature aiming to explain its neurophysiology, and some perspectives for future research are offered.