Public support for government use of network surveillance: An empirical assessment of public understanding of ethics in science administration.

This article relies upon the recreancy theorem to empirically assess the extent to which people's desires for technology efficacy, personal security, and social justice affect their trust in and support for government use of network surveillance as it is applied to local law enforcement and homeland security. The recreancy theorem complements technology adoption models in that it focuses upon public assessments of innovations as they are managed by societal institutions, thereby providing conceptual congruity between technology adoption and public assessments of institutional competency and integrity. Based upon the results of a social survey of 1488 adults living in the contiguous United States, the article expands our conceptual understanding of public opinions of network surveillance and empirically documents public demand for network surveillance that fosters goals of social justice more so than goals of self-interest.

The Mental Map of National Hierarchy in Europe.

We theorize that people's perceptions of national hierarchy are aligned not only with longstanding cultural schemas of development but also with schemas of cultural wealth. We use data from the Nation Brands Index surveys to examine how European publics' evaluate their own country and other European countries across many attributes. We find that European publics rank northwest European countries highest on developmental attributes and southwestern European nations highest on cultural attributes, while they rank eastern European countries lowest in both categorizations. Moreover, we show that publics' rankings of countries load to two related yet distinct factors, the contents of which closely reflect schemas of development and cultural wealth. This evidence suggests that these two distinct schemas are simultaneously present in Europeans' perceptions of national hierarchy.

Sowing the seeds of skepticism: Russian state news and anti-GMO sentiment.

Biotech news coverage in English-language Russian media fits the profile of the Russian information warfare strategy described in recent military reports. This raises the question of whether Russia views the dissemination of anti-GMO information as just one of many divisive issues it can exploit as part of its information war, or if GMOs serve more expansive disruptive purposes. Distinctive patterns in Russian news provide evidence of a coordinated information campaign that could turn public opinion against genetic engineering. The recent branding of Russian agriculture as the ecologically clean alternative to genetically engineered foods is suggestive of an economic motive behind the information campaign against western biotechnologies.

Plant genetic resources for food and agriculture: opportunities and challenges emerging from the science and information technology revolution.

Contents Summary 1407 I. Introduction 1408 II. Technological advances and their utility for gene banks and breeding, and longer-term contributions to SDGs 1408 III. The challenges that must be overcome to realise emerging R&D opportunities 1410 IV. Renewed governance structures for PGR (and related big data) 1413 V. Access and benefit sharing and big data 1416 VI. Conclusion 1417 Acknowledgements 1417 ORCID 1417 References 1417 SUMMARY: Over the last decade, there has been an ongoing revolution in the exploration, manipulation and synthesis of biological systems, through the development of new technologies that generate, analyse and exploit big data. Users of Plant Genetic Resources (PGR) can potentially leverage these capacities to significantly increase the efficiency and effectiveness of their efforts to conserve, discover and utilise novel qualities in PGR, and help achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This review advances the discussion on these emerging opportunities and discusses how taking advantage of them will require data integration and synthesis across disciplinary, organisational and international boundaries, and the formation of multi-disciplinary, international partnerships. We explore some of the institutional and policy challenges that these efforts will face, particularly how these new technologies may influence the structure and role of research for sustainable development, ownership of resources, and access and benefit sharing. We discuss potential responses to political and institutional challenges, ranging from options for enhanced structure and governance of research discovery platforms to internationally brokered benefit-sharing agreements, and identify a set of broad principles that could guide the global community as it seeks or considers solutions.

Developmental Idealism: The Cultural Foundations of World Development Programs.

This paper extends theory and research concerning cultural models of development beyond family and demographic matters to a broad range of additional factors, including government, education, human rights, daily social conventions, and religion. Developmental idealism is a cultural model-a set of beliefs and values-that identifies the appropriate goals of development and the ends for achieving these goals. It includes beliefs about positive cause and effect relationships among such factors as economic growth, educational achievement, health, and political governance, as well as strong values regarding many attributes, including economic growth, education, small families, gender equality, and democratic governance. This cultural model has spread from its origins among the elites of northwest Europe to elites and ordinary people throughout the world. Developmental idealism has become so entrenched in local, national, and global social institutions that it has now achieved a taken-for-granted status among many national elites, academics, development practitioners, and ordinary people around the world. We argue that developmental idealism culture has been a fundamental force behind many cultural clashes within and between societies, and continues to be an important cause of much global social change. We suggest that developmental idealism should be included as a causal factor in theories of human behavior and social change.

Trends in Global Gender Inequality (Forthcoming, Social Forces).

This study investigates trends in gender inequality for the world as a whole. Using data encompassing a large majority of the world's population, we examine world trends over recent decades for key indicators of gender inequality in education, mortality, political representation, and economic activity. We find that gender inequality is declining in virtually all major domains, that the decline is occurring across diverse religious and cultural traditions, and that population growth is slowing the decline because populations are growing faster in countries where there is the greatest gender inequality.