Understanding Sexual Objectification: A Comprehensive Approach Toward Media Exposure and Girls' Internalization of Beauty Ideals,Self‐Objectification,and Body Surveillance

The relationship between exposure to sexually objectifying music television, primetime television programs, fashion magazines, and social networking sites and the internalization of beauty ideals, self‐objectification, and body surveillance was examined among adolescent girls (N = 558). A structural equation model showed direct relationships between sexually objectifying media and the internalization of beauty ideals, and indirect relationships between sexually objectifying media and self‐objectification, and body surveillance through the internalization of beauty ideals. The direct relationships between sexually objectifying media and the internalization of beauty ideals, self‐objectification, and body surveillance differed across the types of sexually objectifying media. The discussion focuses on the implications of these findings to explain self‐objectification among girls.     

Cultivating the Herb Garden of Scandinavian Mathematics: The Congresses of Scandinavian Mathematicians, 1909–1925

As a reaction to the changed political landscape in Scandinavia following the dissolution of the union between Norway and Sweden in 1905, the prominent Swedish mathematician Gösta Mittag‐Leffler extended ‘a brotherly hand,’ calling for Scandinavian colleagues to meet for a congress of mathematicians in Stockholm in 1909. This event became the first in a series of biannual meetings which proved to be an important institution for Scandinavian mathematics. During the first decades after 1909, the congresses would form and consolidate themselves through the construction of a new Scandinavian identity for mathematicians which developed alongside and in relation to both international and national contexts and developments. In this paper, we shall demonstrate that these meetings served a complex set of agendas at the individual, national, and international level. In particular, they reflect a changing conception of cooperation in science for mutual cultural gain combined with a flexible institutionalisation that allowed the Scandinavian mathematicians to use the congresses for various diplomatic ambitions. We base our analyses of the Scandinavian Congresses of Mathematics on the notion of a shared ‘conational’ identity developed adjacent to national identities. We then analyse the formation, consolidation, delineation, and reflections of this institution in order to demonstrate how the efforts to unite Scandinavian mathematicians were contingent on and influenced by simultaneous currents of internationalisation and shared history, culture, and language in the Scandinavian region.     

Statistical characterization of the sea ice extent during different winter scenarios in the Gulf of Riga (Baltic Sea) using optical remote-sensing imagery

This study focuses on the statistical characterization of ice conditions (extent, sea ice occurrence probability (SIOP), and length of ice season) in the Gulf of Riga, Baltic Sea, using remote-sensing data. The optical remote-sensing data with 250 m resolution acquired by a Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) during 2002–2011 were used for statistical characterization of sea ice. A method based on bimodal histogram analysis of remote-sensing reflectance data was developed to discriminate ice from water. In general, ice extent information obtained from MODIS data agrees with the official ice chart data (synthetic aperture radar (SAR) and in situ measurements) and multi-sensor product containing data from microwave and infrared instruments (R² >0.83). However, in case of severe winters and extremely mild winters there are differences in the dates when maximum ice extent is registered. MODIS data can be used for detailed analysis of ice extent in specific basins of Baltic Sea. Depending on the year, the ice season length in the Gulf of Riga ranged from 68 to 146 days, and the maximum ice extent varied greatly from 329 to 15,350 km². SIOP and number of ice days increased significantly in areas where the depth is less than 15 m. Based on negative-degree days and ice cover characteristics (SIOP and ice season length), three winter scenarios were defined: severe (2003, 2006, 2010, and 2011), medium (2004 and 2005), and mild (2007, 2008, and 2009).     

Subspace Procrustes Analysis

Procrustes analysis (PA) has been a popular technique to align and build 2-D statistical models of shapes. Given a set of 2-D shapes PA is applied to remove rigid transformations. Later, a non-rigid 2-D model is computed by modeling the residual (e.g., PCA). Although PA has been widely used, it has several limitations for modeling 2-D shapes: occluded landmarks and missing data can result in local minima solutions, and there is no guarantee that the 2-D shapes provide a uniform sampling of the 3-D space of rotations for the object. To address previous issues, this paper proposes subspace PA (SPA). Given several instances of a 3-D object, SPA computes the mean and a 2-D subspace that can model rigid and non-rigid deformations of the 3-D object. We propose a discrete (DSPA) and continuous (CSPA) formulation for SPA, assuming that 3-D samples of an object are provided. DSPA extends the traditional PA, and produces unbiased 2-D models by uniformly sampling different views of the 3-D object. CSPA provides a continuous approach to uniformly sample the space of 3-D rotations, being more efficient in space and time. We illustrate the benefits of SPA in two different applications. First, SPA is used to learn 2-D face and body models from 3-D datasets. Experiments on the FaceWarehouse and CMU motion capture (MoCap) datasets show the benefits of our 2-D models against the state-of-the-art PA approaches and conventional 3-D models. Second, SPA learns an unbiased 2-D model from CMU MoCap dataset and it is used to estimate the human pose on the Leeds Sports dataset.     

Comprehensive characterization of the functional activities of pressurized liquid and ultrasound-assisted extracts from Chlorella vulgaris

Chlorella vulgaris has been referred as a potential source of bioactive compounds (carotenoids and fatty acids). In this work, the ability of an environmentally friendly extraction technique such as Pressurized Liquid Extraction (PLE) and a traditional extraction technique such as Ultrasound-Assisted Extraction (UAE) to obtain functional compounds from C. vulgaris, at analytical scale, has been demonstrated. Seeked bioactivities were antioxidant and antimicrobial, for their interest in the food industry. Therefore, a methodology including analytical extraction, in-vitro assays and chemical characterization via HPLC-DAD and GC–MS has been used to determine the interest of Chlorella as a source of functional food ingredients. Results demonstrated that PLE provide higher yields than UAE while similar bioactivities were obtained. Important concentration of carotenoids (lutein, neoxanthin, β-carotene, etc.), chlorophylls, sterols, phytols, and fatty acids (among others) have been found in Chlorella extracts that could be correlated to the observed biological activity.     

Recommendations for dispatching emergency vehicles under multitiered response via simulation

Emergency medical service (EMS) systems provide medical care and transportation. While many real‐world systems use multiple vehicle types to attend different call priorities, few guidelines exist about which vehicles to allocate in multitiered responses where more than one vehicle is sent per call. This paper makes recommendations for multiple‐unit dispatch to multiple call priorities based on simulation optimization and heuristics. The objective is to maximize the overall expected survival probability of patients classified as “life‐threatening”. We assume two types of medical units and three call priorities; and that information may be updated when the medical unit arrives on‐scene. First, we study the optimal dispatching policies through several examples. Numerical results show that dispatching while considering call priorities, rather than dispatching the closest units, improves EMS system effectiveness. A heuristic algorithm is developed for large‐scale problems. A comparison between the heuristic and closest policy is demonstrated using real‐world data.     

Supply chain configurations: a model to evaluate performance in customised productions

This paper describes an approach used to evaluate the performance of different supply chain configurations in customised contexts. Based on historical data collected from the supply chain of a shoe producer, different configurations are evaluated based on a discrete-event simulation by highlighting the performance of the supply chain (in terms of supply chain order lead-time and inventory volume) when the production switched from standard production (characterised by batches of large quantities of the same product) to customised production (characterised by a small of series batches with high product variability). The simulation approach relies on experimentation through executable configurations, which enables the creation of different scenarios, and is then applied to the case of an actual firm in the footwear industry. The managerial implications of these findings are discussed.