Social sciences

The quest for the ideal COVID-19 policies to contain outbreaks without border closures that harm the travel industry led researchers to one protocol.

Titled “Youth in the Digital Space”, the study uncovered their views on topics such as financial planning/goals, education and employment, and the impact of digital communications on youth behaviour, personal beliefs and principles.

Lingnan’s Team 404, with members (pictured, from left) Lau Lok-tin (Year 3 BBA-Finance), Lee Cheuk-wun (Year 4 BBA-Human Resource Management), Chong Yuen-yau (Year 3 BBA-Human Resource Management) and Aaron Cheuk Hiu-fung (Year 3 BBA-Marketing), has won the Global Business Challenge 2022 (North Asia).

Researchers from Osaka University found that when viewing photos of strangers, ratings of trustworthiness were correlated with facial similarity as calculated by an artificial neural network. However, facial similarity was only a factor in trustworthiness when the observer and stranger were the same sex.

New research reveals what kind of employees headhunters contact, how they find them, and why relying on them to fill vacancies can drive up resignations.

An international forum hosted by the Global Strategy Institute (GSI) at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) will examine two of the most difficult issues to fight in human history, inequality and injustice. World-renowned experts will provide new insights on how to understand the major forces behind increasing inequalities and social injustice and explore solutions to these intractable problems that are still affecting our world to this day. The 7th of its kind, KAIST GSI’s international forum will be held online on July 6th, 2022 from 9:00 until 10:30 am Korea Standard Time (KST) and livestreamed on KAIST’s YouTube Channel. The theme of the forum is “The Science of Inequality and Injustice.”

I am pleased to announce that a Regular Issue, JUL 2022 of the Journal of Humanities & Social Sciences Research, Vol. 4 (1) Jul. 2022 has been published ahead of time on 15 Jun 2022 and is now live at the Journal’s webpage. Explore this Issue at https://www.horizon-jhssr.com/current-issue.php

Commercially available transparent face masks allow for the perception of facial expressions while suppressing the dispersion of respiratory droplets that spread the SARS-CoV-2 virus, and thus have a clear advantage over surgical face masks.

A research team has studied how humans react to the introduction of AI decision making. Specifically, they explored the question, “is society ready for AI ethical decision making?” by studying human interaction with autonomous cars.

Division of Electronics & Information System Principal Researcher (and guest professor at Seoul National University) Jinhyo Joseph Yun’s team at DGIST conducted joint research with the Nanjing University of Science and Technology’s Professor Lei Ma’s team and the UK Cardiff Metropolitan University’s Professor Zheng Liu’s team on the delivery platform industry, which is becoming a new issue for the 21st century market economy. The teams published an international joint research paper in the ‘European Planning Studies,’ which will be out in May of 2022 in the UK.

Recent studies have demonstrated that character strengths, including a group of individual characteristics that have moral value and lead to ‘good virtues,’ play a crucial role in students’ participation in society and achievement of success. Kindness, which is a significant aspect of character strength, has been considered essential for school programmes to improve students’ mental health and foster positive well-being. As a key social context, schools influence students’ academic, psychological, and social well-being, providing mastery of knowledge and shaping their whole-person development. Numerous studies have highlighted the social aspects of school functions and recognised the effects of schooling on students’ academic and psychological outcomes.

A recent infant study suggests that the visual experience in daily life contributes to the emergence of upper visual field bias for faces.

The academy will develop SUSS students to become ethical and compassionate leaders, and aims to raise another SGD4 million to sustain these efforts and initiatives.

In line with globally recommended practices to reduce the dietary risk of non-communicable diseases (NCDs), the Sri Lankan government implemented a traffic-light labelling (TLL) system for sugar-sweetened beverages (SSB) in August 2016. The purpose of the regulations was to educate the public on the sugar content in SSBs to promote healthy diets in Sri Lanka and reduce NCDs associated with a high sugar intake. It is timely to assess the effectiveness of TLL in encouraging healthier food choices. Based on an ongoing IPS study, this blog discusses consumers’ knowledge of TLL and how it impacts their SSB choices.

A team of international researchers, led by Associate Professor Masaki Eda of the Hokkaido University Museum, have discovered that the oldest type of poultry ever domesticated may have been geese. The study involved interdisciplinary research of bones excavated from Tianluoshan site in the lower Yangtze River valley, Zhejiang Province, China.

The small-scale, community-led Shiosai art fair embodies a revitalizing tourism approach that has breathed new life into the aging island village of Mitarai.

Myanmar’s military coup has created new challenges for the country’s researchers.

Policy-makers should engage more closely with social scientists to understand the socio-economic, cultural and political contexts behind the behaviours we need to change in response to global crises.

The tourism industry’s performance was hampered first by the Easter Sunday bomb explosions in 2019 and then the COVID-19 pandemic. Sri Lanka saw a decline in tourist arrivals from 1,913,702 in 2019 to 194,495 in 2021. It is estimated that revenue declined from USD 3600 million to USD 261 million during 2019-2021, reflecting a staggering 92.75% reduction due to a fall in arrivals.

A recent study conducted by Lingnan University and the University of Oxford proposes finds that university graduates retain rewards despite their diminishing scarcity as long as they possess good cognitive skills.

A great deal of discussion is underway on what appears to be the latest wave of migration from Sri Lanka. While the exact scale and nature of youth migration remain unclear, the costs of brain drain dominate these discussions. The brain drain concern is valid, yet focusing on it alone can limit our understanding of the complex implications of migration. This blog argues that apart from its challenges, youth migration can also present some surprising opportunities for socio-economic development if strategically managed.

An international team of researchers respond to criticisms on previous work that demonstrated Mirror Self-Recognition (MSR) in the cleaner fish Labroides dimidiatus, by 1) successfully repeating the mark test with a larger sample size, 2) showing the MSR behaviour to be the visual result of the mark not a physical response to it, and 3) showing that MSR-trained fish do not show aggression to spatially varied mirror images of themselves. Additionally, they further demonstrate potential self-awareness in L. dimidiatus by showing that they do not demonstrate MSR behaviour when visually presented with the mark on other fish and solidify the importance of ecologically relevant marks presented in previous work by showing MSR behaviour of L. dimidiatus with brown marks, meant to resemble a main food source of the fish, as opposed to no such behaviour in fish with green or blue marks.

Despite enhanced trade partnerships in South Asia, intra-regional trade is far from reaching its theoretical potential. Similar production patterns and competitive sectors can be the causes. However, bilateral discussions to further lower trade costs continue. The ongoing Bangladesh-Sri Lanka discussions on a preferential trade agreement (PTA) will benefit from knowing the potential gains from reducing bilateral trade costs. In addition, knowledge of products with a higher potential for export gains will help optimise the economic benefits from a trade deal.

Sovereign debt restructuring can be pre-emptive or post-default. A default is inherently costly as it can result in a sustained loss of access to capital markets. That leaves pre-emptive restructuring when a country deems itself unable to service outstanding debt.

Despite ongoing antagonism between the peoples of China, Japan and South Korea, support for regional cooperation on issues such as climate, pandemics and pollution exists if such cooperation mechanisms are mutually managed rather than dominated by any one nation.

Giants in History: U Hla Myint (1920 – 2017) was a celebrated economist from Myanmar. Considered a prodigy, he was admitted to Rangoon University to study economics when he was just 14 years old.

We are pleased to announce that the DEC 2021 issue of the Journal of Humanities & Social Sciences Research (JHSSR), Vol. 3 (2) Dec. 2021 has been published ahead of time on 30 Nov 2021 and is now live at the Journal’s web page. We invite you to explore the seventh issue of our Journal of Humanities & Social Sciences Research with excellent essays.

The lockdowns introduced in 2020 to curb the spread of COVID-19 saw the narrative “nature is healing” gain prominence. However, the notion that nature, in the absence of people, was healing fizzled out fairly quickly with the emergence of fresh environmental challenges, most notably, the resurgence of single-use plastics. This blog examines the ecological fallout of the pandemic and suggests policy options for Sri Lanka to avert the looming environmental disaster.

Micro-plastics cross blood brain barrier, Stomach cancer atlas, Omicron variant isolated, 120-year-old reaction turned on its head and Reporting through the coup, all in the December Editor's Choice. Plus our latest podcast: Decentralization and Democracy in Myanmar.

The University launches Node for Inclusive Fintech (NiFT) as thought leader in fintech sector that champions inclusivity issues to meet the United Nation’s 2030 Sustainable Development Goals.