We now consider why stars shine with such extreme brightness. Over the long-term (i.e., millions of years), the enormous energy emitted comes from the energy generated (by nuclear fusion) in the stellar core, as discussed further in Chapter 18. But the more immediate reason stars shine is more direct, namely because their surfaces are so very hot. We explore the key physical laws governing such thermal radiation and how it depends on temperature.

This chapter reviews sociological theories and measurements of stratification and social class in the process of relating social inequality to mental disorder. Eaton and Muntaner argue that processes of stratification and periods of high vulnerability to mental disorder are related to different stages in the life course. Consequently, stratification and one’s place in the socioeconomic system have a complex relationship to the occurrence of mental disorder. Both individual and environmental factors must be taken into account. In general, researchers have found that socioeconomic position (SEP) is inversely related to mental disorder; that is, those in the “lower” classes experience higher rates of disorder. Two contrasting frameworks for understanding the relation of SEP to mental disorder are selection and drift on the one hand and social causation on the other hand. Selection refers to the idea that individuals who are predisposed to mental disorder have lower than expected educational and occupational attainment. Drift refers to the idea that those with mental disorders are likely to drift down the SEP ladder, after onset of the mental disorder, as they will have more trouble with employment and other means of attaining higher socioeconomic positions. In contrast, social causation explanations emphasize how the social experiences of members of different social classes influence their likelihood of becoming mentally ill or distressed. More research is needed on the specific ways in which social class affects mental disorder and how mental disorder affects the attainment of social status. Students should compare the selection and drift frameworks. Is it likely that an individual born of a wealthy family will drift down the socioeconomic ladder if they experience a mental health problem? Consider the role of stress and social resources in understanding the relationship between SEP and mental health.

Manning discusses the sociological approach to studying suicide and how it differs from biological and psychological approaches. After discussing the nature of suicide as human behavior, he addresses several social factors that predict and explain suicide, including social contagion, social integration, social mobility, and interpersonal conflict. Statistical and ethnographic evidence suggest these factors are important for shaping the frequency and distribution of suicide, and that sociological theory plays a crucial role in understanding self-destruction. How can we learn more about the impact of sociological variables on suicide? And how can taking account of them help us prevent suicide?

Most mental health care today takes place not in hospital settings, but rather in a range of community-based organizations. This chapter lays out the scope of contemporary mental health care and highlights major themes in sociological research in community care. While the average (non-office-based) specialty mental health care provider organization is private and nonprofit, public funds make up a large portion of the support for community mental health services. A range of workers provide services in community care, with psychiatrists continuing to play a prominent role in nonhospital settings and peer providers increasingly involved. Delivering services involves juggling competing demands from a variety of stakeholders, with calls for cost containment and accountability often crowding out other priorities and forcing adaptive responses from frontline workers. Community care is enmeshed in a complex social and policy context, in which mental health labels and mental health treatment help solve problems for policymakers and those from different sectors of society in addition to those receiving services. The arrival of COVID-19 changed the landscape of community mental health services, threatening resources and pushing much care online, exacerbating access issues for the most vulnerable. Students might discuss different settings and entry points of mental health care and how the experience of treatment might differ depending on where and how one enters care.

As a star ages, more and more of the hydrogen in its core becomes consumed by fusion into helium. Once this core hydrogen is used up, how does the star react and adjust? Stars at this post-main-sequence stage of life actually start to expand, eventually becoming much brighter giant or supergiant stars, shining with a luminosity that can be thousands or even tens of thousands that of their core-H-burning main sequence. We discuss how such stars reach their stellar end points as planetary nebulae or white dwarfs.

Mental illness stigma has long been an issue of both sociological and practical importance. Until recently, cross-national, comparative research on the prejudice and discrimination attached to mental illness has been primarily focused on Western, Global North and developed countries, failing to examine stigma in Eastern, Global South and developing nations. This has both left gaps in our theoretical knowledge and hindered our ability to reduce stigma globally. With recent calls to action from major stakeholders, including the Lancet Commission and the World Health Organization, more attention is being paid to mental illness, stigma, and their detrimental effects for those who experience it and societies that harbor it. Nonetheless, common myths about global stigma persist within and outside scholarly and medical communities about stigma cross-nationally. In this chapter, we leverage existing comparative research and data to describe some of what we know about the global profile of stigma through four cross-national myths about mental illness stigma. The four myths we debunk include the following: (1) stigma is lower in low- and middle-income countries; (2) cultural context doesn’t matter for individual experiences of stigma; (3) cultural context doesn’t matter for whether individuals seek mental health care; and (4) increasing contact with individuals with mental illness will continue to reduce stigma. For each myth, we trace its origin before using current, cross-national data to show how these widely held beliefs are inaccurate. Then, to push the sociological contributions of stigma further, we review two novel ideas at opposite ends of the research continuum – ethnographic investigation and complex systems models – that both suggest how the cultural elements of stigma can be rethought. Theory that leans toward ethnographic investigation includes the “What Matters Most” (WMM) model. This framework highlights the importance of stigma as a culturally and situationally embedded phenomenon. In other words, the WMM framework emphasizes the importance of local social worlds, and how there is a need to understand the specific cultural features that define the meaning of stigma in different communities. On the other end of the methodological spectrum, the Framework Integrating Normative Influences on Stigma (FINIS) model provides a complex systems model that leans toward survey and archival data. This model brings together insights from social structural and social psychological understandings of stigma to acknowledge how geography, history, politics, and economies shape the social construction of stigma. By detailing both of these frameworks, we provide contemporary maps for cross-national understandings of the potential paradox between the universality of stigma and its specific manifestations across the globe.

To understand ways we might infer stellar distances, we first consider how we intuitively estimate distance in our everyday world, through apparent angular size, and/or using our stereoscopic vision. We explain a practical, quite direct way to infer distances to relatively nearby stars, namely through the method of trigonometric parallax. This leads to the definition of the astronomical unit and parsec, and the concept of solid angles on the sky, measured in steradians or square degrees.

What are the key physical properties we can aspire to know about a star? In this chapter we consider the properties of stars, identifying first what we can directly observe about a given star: position on the sky, apparent brightness, color/spectrum. When these observations are combined with a clear understanding of some basic physical principles, we can infer many of the key physical properties of stars. We also make a brief aside to discuss ways to get our heads around the enormous distances and timescales we encounter in astrophysics.

Verna Keith and Diane Brown present a conceptual model for understanding the way in which the interrelationships among race, gender, and socioeconomic status (SES) influence mental well-being for Black American women. Mental well-being is affected by social, cultural, and psychological factors as well as by physical health and health behavior; in turn these factors are influenced by one’s social status (i.e., race, gender, SES). Black American women are subject to racism, sexism, and for some, heterosexism, which diminish their educational attainment, personal and household incomes, occupational status, wealth accumulation, and opportunities for socioeconomic advancement. Consequently, Black American women have fewer resources than their White counterparts and are far more limited in their capacity to cope with crises and adversities. Stressors such as poverty and economic hardship also challenge the adaptive abilities of many Black women. They are less likely to be married and, if married, more likely to be employed than White married women. Parenthood often is another source of stress as many Black women are single parents. A key argument made by Keith and Brown is that there is a strong connection between mental and physical health. Black women have poorer physical health with higher rates of diabetes, hypertension, HIV infection, and lupus, which lead to higher mortality rates than White women. Additionally, Black women are less likely to use health care, which may be due to a lack of access, among other factors. However, the extended social networks of Black women may provide important sources of social support. What other types of support would help Black women cope with the many sources of stress in their lives, and would immigrant and LGBT women need additional supportive resources?

In this chapter we present some of the most popular approaches to clustering, and discuss general techniques for evaluating and validating the quality of a data partition.

In this chapter we explore several aspects in portfolio allocation that go beyond the classical single-period mean/variance model discussed in Chapter 11.

This chapter introduces the basic formalism of representing text, and looks at widely used techniques in the analysis of textual data such as topic modeling, language modeling, and classification.

This chapter introduce a basic statistical models for static and dynamic data generation, and discusses classical Bayesian approach for the estimation of the parameters of the model.