This study explored the relationship between professional quality of life and emotion work and the major stress factors related to abortion care in Japanese obstetric and gynecological nurses and midwives. Between October 2011 and January 2012, questionnaires that included questions concerning eight stress factors, the Professional Quality of Life Scale, and the Japanese version of the Frankfurt Emotional Work Scale, were answered by 255 nurses and midwives working in abortion and childbirth services. Professional Quality of Life scores (compassion fatigue, compassion (...) satisfaction, burnout) were significantly associated with stress factors and emotion work. Multiple regression analysis revealed that of all the evaluated variables, the Japanese version of the Frankfurt Emotional Work Scale score for negative emotions display was the most significant positive predictor of compassion fatigue and burnout. The stress factors “thinking that the aborted fetus deserved to live” and “difficulty in controlling emotions during abortion care” were associated with compassion fatigue. These findings indicate that providing abortion services is a highly distressing experience for nurses and midwives. (shrink)

The key mutation of the schizophrenic psyche can be described as a disturbance of the first person-ness of the I-sense, i.e., of the sense of the "I" as personal subject of experience and of action. Under these circumstances, representations of things are not definitively experienced as "my" representations—with the self-evidence of belonging to me. This uncertainty of selfhood, specific to schizophrenia, cannot be reduced to a disability of intellect, logic, judgment, or memory. In the course of developing his argument, the (...) author criticizes philosopher Michel Henry's critique of Heidegger's (1961) interpretation of Descartes's cogito ergo sum. (shrink)

In this review, we describe some of the central philosophical issues facing origins-of-life research and provide a targeted history of the developments that have led to the multidisciplinary field of origins-of-life studies. We outline these issues and developments to guide researchers and students from all fields. With respect to philosophy, we provide brief summaries of debates with respect to (1) definitions (or theories) of life, what life is and how research should be conducted in the absence of an accepted theory (...) of life, (2) the distinctions between synthetic, historical, and universal projects in origins-of-life studies, issues with strategies for inferring the origins of life, such as (3) the nature of the first living entities (the “bottom up” approach) and (4) how to infer the nature of the last universal common ancestor (the “top down” approach), and (5) the status of origins of life as a science. Each of these debates influences the others. Although there are clusters of researchers that agree on some answers to these issues, each of these debates is still open. With respect to history, we outline several independent paths that have led to some of the approaches now prevalent in origins-of-life studies. These include one path from early views of life through the scientific revolutions brought about by Linnaeus (von Linn.), Wöhler, Miller, and others. In this approach, new theories, tools, and evidence guide new thoughts about the nature of life and its origin.We also describe another family of paths motivated by a” circularity” approach to life, which is guided by such thinkers as Maturana & Varela, Gánti, Rosen, and others. These views echo ideas developed by Kant and Aristotle, though they do so using modern science in ways that produce exciting avenues of investigation. By exploring the history of these ideas, we can see how many of the issues that currently interest us have been guided by the contexts in which the ideas were developed. The disciplinary backgrounds of each of these scholars has influenced the questions they sought to answer, the experiments they envisioned, and the kinds of data they collected. We conclude by encouraging scientists and scholars in the humanities and social sciences to explore ways in which they can interact to provide a deeper understanding of the conceptual assumptions, structure, and history of origins-of-life research. This may be useful to help frame future research agendas and bring awareness to the multifaceted issues facing this challenging scientific question. (shrink)

A challenge in human genome research is how to describe the populations being studied. The use of improper and/or imprecise terms has the potential to both generate and reinforce prejudices and to diminish the clinical value of the research. The issue of population descriptors has not attracted enough academic attention outside North America and Europe. In January 2012, we held a two-day workshop, the first of its kind in Japan, to engage in interdisciplinary dialogue between scholars in the humanities, social (...) sciences, medical sciences, and genetics to begin an ongoing discussion of the social and ethical issues associated with population descriptors. (shrink)

Recently, some studies revealed that transcranial direct current stimulation reduces dual-task interference. Since there are countless combinations of dual-tasks, it remains unclear whether stable effects by tDCS can be observed on dual-task interference. An aim of the present study was to investigate whether the effects of tDCS on dual-task interference change depend on the dual-task content. We adopted two combinations of dual-tasks, i.e., a word task while performing a tandem task and a classic Stroop task while performing a tandem task. (...) We expected that the Stroop task would recruit the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and require involvement of executive function to greater extent than the word task. Subsequently, we hypothesized that anodal tDCS over the DLPFC would improve executive function and result in more effective reduction of dual-task interference in the Stroop-tandem dual-task than in the word-tandem dual-task. Anodal or cathodal tDCS was applied over the DLPFC or the supplementary motor area using a constant current of 2.0 mA for 20 min. According to our results, dual-task interference and the task performances of each task under the single-task condition were not changed after applying any settings of tDCS. However, anodal tDCS over the left DLPFC significantly improved the word task performance immediately after tDCS under the dual-task condition. Our findings suggested that the effect of anodal tDCS over the left DLPFC varies on the task performance under the dual-task condition was changed depending on the dual-task content. (shrink)

The noted psychologist, Doreen Kimura, has argued that we should not expect to find equal numbers of men and women in various professions because there is a natural sexual inequality of intellect. In rebuttal I argue that each of these mutually supporting theses is insufficiently supported by the evidence to be accepted. The social and ethical dimensions of Kimura's work, and of the scientific study of the nature-nurture controversy in general, are briefly discussed.

The mental fatigue elicited by working and studying consumed mental resources, thereby eliciting a declined performance and an increased mental stress. The long-term continuous work and study, which is typical for modern workers and students, can increase mental fatigue and health risks. Previous studies reported that the natural environment has a restorative of mental resources and reducing stress. However, it is difficult for urban workers and students to take sufficient breaks in real natural environment. We conducted an experiment to examine (...) whether brief and indirect exposure to the natural environment elicits a restorative of attention and reducing stress. Twenty-five undergraduate and graduate students from the university of modern city participated in the experiment. The experiment involved measuring the changes in the task performance of the participants and the subjective mental workload, while the attention restoration was indexed from physiological response over time. The participants had two types of resting periods in the middle of the task, i.e., by looking at a blank display or by watching a nature video having scenes of, e.g., a forest, small waterfall, and rustling leaves. The results indicate that the natural environment indirectly depicted through the nature videos does not affect the task performance and the subjective mental workload but decreases the SCL. The results of the physiological response suggest that having rest periods depicting the natural environment, even if indirectly and briefly, can restore the directed attention for the task. This experiment revealed a useful method of resting for urban workers and students to restore their attention to a task. (shrink)

Reinforcement Learning (RL) handles policy search problems: searching a mapping from state space to action space. However RL is based on gradient methods and as such, cannot deal with problems with multimodal landscape. In contrast, though Genetic Algorithm (GA) is promising to deal with them, it seems to be unsuitable for policy search problems from the viewpoint of the cost of evaluation. Minimal Generation Gap (MGG), used as a generation-alternation model in GA, generates many offspring from two or more parents (...) selected from a population. Therefore, evaluating policies of generated offspring requires much trial and error (i.e. interaction between an agent and an environment). In this paper, we incorporate importance sampling into the framework of MGG in order to reduce the cost of evaluation on policy search. The proposed techniques are applied to Markov Decision Process (MDP) with multimodal landscape. The experimental results show that these techniques can reduce the number of interaction between an agent and an environment, and also mean that MGG and importance sampling are good for each other. (shrink)

The authors claim that disciplinary epistemologies—disciplinary habits of mind and ways of thinking—offer productive lenses for observing teaching practices. Furthermore, they argue that educational developers who draw from multiple epistemologies in combination provide rich evidence with regard to teaching and learning and can speak to academic colleagues from an array of disciplines. Clarity is provided for career paths in educational development for colleagues from academic disciplines who are contemplating part‐ or full‐time work in a teaching center. The authors hope that (...) this opening collection develops into a toolkit and area of inquiry about disciplinary approaches to the practice of educational development. (shrink)

In this study, complex dynamics of Briggs–Rauscher reaction system is investigated analytically and numerically. First, the Briggs–Rauscher reaction system is reduced into a new nonlinear parametric oscillator. The Melnikov method is used to derive the condition of the appearance of horseshoe chaos in the cases ω = Ω and ω ≠ Ω. The performed numerical simulations confirm the obtained analytical predictions. Second, the prediction of coexisting attractors is investigated by solving numerically the new nonlinear parametric ordinary differential equation via the (...) fourth-order Runge–Kutta algorithm. As results, it is found that the new nonlinear chemical system displays various coexisting behaviors of symmetric and asymmetric attractors. In addition, the system presents a rich variety of bifurcations phenomena such as symmetry breaking, symmetry restoring, period doubling, reverse period doubling, period-m bubbles, reverse period-m bubbles, intermittency, and antimonotonicity. On the contrary, emerging chaotic band attractors and period-1, period-3, period-9, and period-m bubbles routes to chaos occur in this system. (shrink)

A significant two-fold development in recent classical scholarship has been a revival of interest in, and respect for, post-Aristotelian Greek philosophy and Cicero's contribution to our knowledge of it. Of Cicero's major works in this field the Tusculan disputations is perhaps the most approachable.

Objectives To evaluate whether the requirement of “minimal risk and burden” for paediatric research without direct benefit to the subjects compromises the ability to obtain data necessary for improving paediatric care. To provide evidence-based reflections on the EU recommendation that allows for a higher level of risk. Design and setting Systematic analysis of the approval/rejection decisions made by the Dutch Central Committee on Research involving Human Subjects (CCMO). Review methods The analysis included 165 proposals for paediatric research without direct benefit (...) that were reviewed by the CCMO between January, 2000, and July, 2007. A separate, in-depth analysis of all drug studies included 18 early phase drug studies and nine other drug studies without direct benefit. Results 11 out of 165 studies were definitively rejected because the CCMO did not regard the risk and/or burden to be minimal. In three of these 11 cases (including two early phase drug studies) the requirement of minimal risk and burden was cited as the only reason for rejection. Four other early phase drug studies also involved risks and/or burdens that were not regarded to be minimal but were nevertheless approved. Conclusions The requirement of minimal risk and burden, aiming to protect research subjects, occasionally leads to rejection of protocols. Early phase drug studies relatively often do not comply with the requirement. Committees may find ways to approve important studies that formally should be rejected, but that is not a desirable solution. The regulatory framework should be revised to make such occasional exceptions to the requirement legitimate and transparent. (shrink)

High-frequency oscillations emerged as a neural code for both positive affect and fluent attentional processing from evolutionary simulations with artificial neural networks. Visual 50 Hz flicker, which entrains neural oscillations in the gamma band, has been shown to foster attentional switching, but can it also elicit positive affect? A three-faces display was preceded by a 50, 25, or 0 Hz flicker on the position of the odd-one-out . Participants decided on the gender or on the subjective valence of this neutral (...) target in an approach-avoidance task, which served as an implicit affective measure. Only the detection of 25 Hz flicker, but not of 50 Hz flicker, was above chance . Faces primed by invisible 50 Hz flicker were explicitly evaluated more positively than with 25 Hz or 0 Hz. This gamma flicker also facilitated approach reactions, and inhibited avoidance reactions relative to 25 Hz and 0 Hz flicker in Blocks 1 and 2. Attentional switching was, moreover, enhanced by the 50 Hz flicker. According to the Affect–Gamma hypothesis, also in biological neural networks, high-frequency gamma oscillations may code for positive affect. (shrink)

The numerous historical episodes of free banking have invariably ended in the establishment of central banking. Was the failure of free banking due to ?theory,? ?seignorage??the attempt by governments to use central banks for revenue purposes?or to ?crises?? Would a free banking system be stable, free of crises? This is the crux of the theoretical and historical debate.

A French "textbook" edition of the Pensées including, in addition to a fair selection of the Pensées themselves, a variety of editorial aids to the understanding and interpretation of Pascal: biography, bibliography, textual history, commentaries on some major themes, and "thèmes de réflexion."—A. E. J.

Both the author and the date of this five-volume poem, the first Western document to link the houses of the zodiac with the course of human affairs, are uncertain. The author's name may be Marcus Manilius, or Manlius, or Mallius, and the latest datable event mentioned in the books themselves is the disastrous defeat of Varus' Roman legions by the German tribes in 9 CE. The writing shows knowledge of the work of Lucretius, but the work is not referred to (...) by any subsequent writer, suggesting that it was never widely disseminated. A manuscript was rediscovered by Poggio Bracciolini in 1416 or 1417, and a version was published by the astronomer Regiomontanus in 1473. Editions were later produced by Scaliger and Bentley, but this immensely erudite edition of 1903–30 by the scholar and poet A. E. Housman is regarded as authoritative. (shrink)

OBJECTIVES: To report the outcome of applications to 43 research ethics committees. SETTING: Four regional health authorities in England. FINDINGS: The research ethics committees varied considerably in their practices. The time lapse until notification of the outcome of the approval ranged from just under one week to 23 weeks with a mean of 8.6 weeks. Four research ethics committees failed to notify the research team of an outcome of their request for approval. CONCLUSION: A national research ethics committee is needed (...) to review national and multi-location research studies in the light of the fragmented and variable practice of local research ethics committees. (shrink)

Kvantory kak vtoropori︠a︡dkovye predikaty: ot Frege k abstraktnym logikam -- Kvantory kak funkt︠s︡ii vybora: ot Pirsa k IF-logikam -- Kvantifikat︠s︡ii︠a︡ i ėkzistent︠s︡ii︠a︡ -- Ėkzistent︠s︡ii︠a︡ i negat︠s︡ii︠a︡.

This is a clear assessment of Hume's theories of the self and personal identity, including his famous Treatise on Human Nature . Pitson provides a critical exploration of his thinking, also examining the continuing relevance of Hume's theories for contemporary philosophy and relating it to his broader reflections on human nature itself. Divided into two parts, Pitson's study follows Hume's important distinction between two aspects of personal identity: the "mental" and the "agency". The first part discusses Hume's conception of the (...) mind as a "bundle" or "system" of perceptions and explores Hume's position on the traditional mind/body problem. In the second part Pitson examines a range of topics including Hume's treatment of character, the relationship between human and animal nature, and the nature of agency. (shrink)

Aeschines of Sphettus.--Parmenides, Zeno, and Socrates.--Forms and numbers: a study in Platonic metaphysics.--The philosophy of Proclus.--The analysis of Epistēmē in Plato's seventh epistle.--St. Thomas Aquinas as a philosopher.--Francis Bacon.--Some features of Butler's ethics.--David Hume and the miraculous.--Knowing and believing.--Is goodness a quality?