Peoples’ perceptions of healthy eating are influenced by the cultural context in which they occur. Despite this general acceptance by health practitioners and social scientists, studies suggest that there remains a relative homogeneity around peoples’ perceptions that informs a hegemonic discourse around healthy eating. People often describe healthy eating in terms of learned information from sources that reflect societies’ norms and values, such as the Canada Food Guide and the ubiquitous phrase “fruits and vegetables”. Past research has examined how built (...) environments shape people’s access to healthy living options, such as distribution of grocers versus convenience stores and fast food restaurants. Often overlooked is an in-depth understanding of how social contexts interact with built environments, molding peoples’ perceptions of healthy eating. This paper reports on perceptions of healthy eating in four communities across Alberta, Canada. A photovoice methodology was employed to elicit perceptions of healthy eating with 35 participants. This study illustrates how participants’ photographs and their stories convey multiple meanings about healthy eating within their own lives and communities. Findings suggest that a ‘local’ context is an important part of the discourse centered around the promotion of healthy eating practices in these and potential other communities. (shrink)

Theories of grounded and embodied cognition offer a range of accounts of how reasoning and body‐based processes are related to each other. To advance theories of grounded and embodied cognition, we explore the cognitive relevance of particular body states to associated math concepts. We test competing models of action‐cognition transduction to investigate the cognitive relevance of directed actions to students’ mathematical reasoning in the area of geometry. The hypotheses we test include (1) that cognitively relevant directed actions have a direct (...) effect on performance (direct cognitive relevance hypothesis), (2) that cognitively relevant directed actions lead to more frequent production of gestures during explanations, which leads to improved performance (mediated cognitive relevance hypothesis), and (3) that performance effects of directed actions are influenced by the presence or absence of gesture production during mathematical explanations (moderated cognitive relevance hypothesis). We explore these hypotheses in an experiment where high school students (N = 85) evaluated the truth of geometry conjectures after performing cognitively relevant or cognitively irrelevant directed actions while playing a movement‐based video game. Contrary to the direct and mediated cognitive relevance hypotheses, we found no overall differences in performance or gesture production between relevant and irrelevant conditions. Consistent with the moderated cognitive relevance hypothesis, cognitive relevance influenced mathematical performance, as measured by the accuracy of students’ intuitions, insights, and the validity of their proofs, provided that students produced certain kinds of gestures during mathematical explanations (i.e., with explanatory gestures as the moderator). Implications for theories of grounded and embodied cognition and the design of embodied forms of educational interventions are discussed. (shrink)

This paper opens with first‐hand accounts of critical care medical interventions in which detainees, in the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), are brought to the emergency department for treatment. This case dramatizes the extent to which the provision of ethical and acceptable nursing care is jeopardized by federal law enforcement paradigms. Drawing on the scholarship of Michel Foucault and Giorgio Agamben, this paper offers a theoretical account of the power dynamics that inform the health care of patients (...) who find themselves caught in the custodial scaffolding of a vast immigration and detention apparatus. It offers an analysis of the display of sovereign and biopolitical power over the lives (and deaths) of detainees (Foucault), as well as the ways these individuals are reduced to “bare life” under the political pretext of an emergency or “state of exception” (Agamben). Our purpose here is both theoretical and practical: to better understand the often hidden agency or impersonal “will” exercised by the immigrant detention system, but also to equip clinicians in these and cognate facilities (e.g., prisons) with the critical tools by which they might better navigate incommensurable paradigms (i.e., care vs. custody) in order to deliver the best care while upholding their ethical duties as a care provider. This is all the more pressing because hospitals are not sanctuaries and given the incursion of federal law enforcement agents, nurses may find themselves conscripted as de facto agents of the state. (shrink)

It is shown by means of a simple example that a good explanation of an event is not necessarily corroborated by the occurrence of that event. It is also shown that this contention follows symbolically if an explanation having higher "explicativity" than another is regarded as better.

Review of Mark Wynn's book, Renewing the Senses: A Study of the Philosophy and Theology of the Spiritual Life.

The causal propensity of an event F to cause another event E is explicated as the weight of evidence against F if E does not occur, given the state of the universe just before F occurred. This definition, first given in 1961, is sharpened, defended, and applied to several examples. In this definition the concept of weight of evidence in favor of a proposition, provided by another one, is to be understood in a technical sense that is intended to capture (...) its most customary informal meaning. (shrink)

The form of argument used by Popper and Miller to attack the concept of probabilistic induction is applied to the slightly different situation in which some evidence undermines a hypothesis. The result is seemingly absurd, thus bringing the form of argument under suspicion.

Nanotechnology-enabled cosmetic products have been accessible in the market for the last 30 years. More than 250 products have been commercialized in the global market potentially exposing two billion people. These products are present in all formulations including creams, powders, lotions, and sprays. These involve contact with all body especially skin and mucosae; other tissues like airways and gastrointestinal tract can be reached by accidental exposure. Due to the size, NCPs exhibit an increased surface area volume ratio and biodistribution that (...) potentially augments their reactivity compared with bulk materials, which raises concerns for consumer’s safety. Consumers are attracted by the novel properties and functions of nano-enabled products but expose to technologies where no legal frameworks have been implemented to prevent potential side effects. Here, we review the current gaps between the commercialization process of NCPs and the regulatory frameworks to assess these products in USA, Europe, Japan, and Latin America prior and after commercialization. We identify the requirements for a proper assessment of the potential hazard of nanomaterials in cosmetics considering the nanomaterial properties. (shrink)