Introduction: Schools have become a primary setting for providing mental health care to youths in the U.S. School-based interventions have proliferated, but their effects on mental health and academic outcomes remain understudied. In this study we will implement and evaluate the effects of a flexible multidiagnostic treatment called Modular Approach to Therapy for Children with Anxiety, Depression, Trauma, or Conduct Problems on students' mental health and academic outcomes.Methods and Analysis: This is an assessor-blind randomized controlled effectiveness trial conducted across five (...) school districts. School clinicians are randomized to either MATCH or usual care treatment conditions. The target sample includes 168 youths referred for mental health services and presenting with elevated symptoms of anxiety, depression, trauma, and/or conduct problems. Clinicians randomly assigned to MATCH or UC treat the youths who are assigned to them through normal school referral procedures. The project will evaluate the effectiveness of MATCH compared to UC on youths' mental health and school related outcomes and assess whether changes in school outcomes are mediated by changes in youth mental health.Ethics and Dissemination: This study was approved by the Harvard University Institutional Review Board. We plan to publish the findings in peer-reviewed journals and present them at academic conferences.Clinical Trial Registration:ClinicalTrials.gov ID: NCT02877875. Registered on August 24, 2016. (shrink)

Neurocognitive and genetic approaches have made progress in understanding language-music interaction in the adult brain. Although there is broad agreement that learning processes affect how we represent, comprehend, and produce language and music, there is little understanding of the content and dynamics of the early language-music environment in the first years of life. A developmental-ecological approach sees learning and development as fundamentally embedded in a child’s environment, and thus requires researchers to move outside of the lab to understand what children (...) are seeing, hearing, and doing in their daily lives. In this paper, after first reviewing the limitations of traditional developmental approaches to understanding language-music interaction, we describe how a developmental-ecological approach can not only inform developmental theories of language-music learning, but also address challenges inherent to neurocognitive and genetic approaches. We then make suggestions for how researchers can best use the developmental-ecological approach to understand the similarities, differences, and co-occurrences in early music and language input. (shrink)

In 1826 Americans witnessed the spectacle of President John Quincy Adams and Vice-President John C. Calhoun taking to the press to debate the nature of power and liberty under the pseudonyms "Patrick Henry" and "Onslow". In the course of this exchange some of the most salient issues within American politics and liberty are debated, including the nature of political order, democracy, and the diffusion of political power.

As nation-states make greater efforts to regulate the flow of people on the move—refugees, economic migrants, and international travelers alike—advocates of DNA profiling technologies claim DNA testing provides a reliable and objective way of revealing a person’s true identity for immigration procedures. This article examines the use of DNA testing for family reunification in immigration cases in Finland, Germany, and the United States—the first transatlantic analysis of such cases—to explore the relationship between technology, the meaning of family, and immigration. Drawing (...) on our analyses of archival records, government documents, and interviews with immigration stakeholders, we argue that DNA testing is not conclusive about the meaning of family. While the technology may facilitate decision making for both would-be immigrants and state officials, our study shows hesitancy among the latter to let DNA testing make the final determination. We introduce the concept of social validity—whether the interpretation of test results matches social or political meanings in a given local context—in order to make sense of the complexities and challenges of DNA testing in practice. We show that DNA testing is not just a technology of belonging or a way to claim citizenship rights. It may also enable exclusion and denial of rights. (shrink)

Federal regulations in the United States have shaped Institutional Review Boards to focus on protecting individual human subjects. Health services research studies focusing on healthcare institutions such as hospitals or clinics do not have individual human subjects. Since U.S. federal regulations are silent on what type of review, if any, these studies require, different IRBs may approach similar studies differently, resulting in undesirable variation in the review of studies focusing on healthcare institutions. Further, although these studies do not focus on (...) individual human subjects, they may pose risks to participating institutions, as well as individuals who work at those institutions, if identifying information becomes public. (shrink)

This volume, first published in 2004, offers an interesting perspective on the discussion of weapons of mass destruction by broadening the terms of the debate to include both secular and religious investigations not normally considered. The volume contains a structured dialogue between representatives of the following ethical traditions: Buddhism, Christianity, Confucianism, feminism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, liberalism, natural law, pacifism, and realism. There are two introductory chapters on the technical aspects of WMD and international agreements for controlling WMD. A concluding essay (...) compares the different ethical traditions. All the authors address the same set of moral issues and this creates a dialogue both within and across traditions. The debate structure is particularly useful and appealing for pedagogical purposes. The introductory essays on the technical and legal aspects of WMD could easily be used to introduce the subject to students. (shrink)

We suggest that the linguistic characteristics of letters also need to be considered to fully understand how a reader processes printed words. For example, studies in Korean showed that unambiguity in the assignment of letters to their appropriate onset, vowel, or coda slot is one of the main sources of the letter-transposition effect. Indeed, the cognitive system that processes Korean is tuned to the structure of the Korean writing system.

Service of the Engine is a common local Chichewa-English expression in the Malawian fishing village where the author did her fieldwork. It refers to the practice of taking various pills--known locally as Ciba--in order to prevent and cure diseases associated with sex. This study explores the sensitive interface between the use of pharmaceuticals, available through an extensive informal distribution system, and self-treatment of sex-related diseases. The author examines morally sensitive situations in which men and women opt for Ciba, and evaluates (...) its efficacy, or effectiveness. The discussion not only covers physical and metaphorical aspects of efficacy, but also the possible social and moral effects of medication. It offers a fresh and empirically grounded perspective on the links between efficacy, sex-related diseases and moralities. Birgitte Bruun graduated from the Institute of Anthropology, University of Copenhagen, Denmark and is currently working with reproductive health projects for United Nations Population Fund in Jakarta, Indonesia. (shrink)

The counseling process involves attention, emotional perception, cognitive appraisal, and decision-making. This study aimed to investigate cognitive appraisal and the associated emotional processes when reading short therapists' statements of motivational interviewing (MI). Thirty participants with work injuries were classified into the pre-contemplation (PC,n= 15) or readiness stage of the change group (RD,n= 15). The participants viewed MI congruent (MI-C), MI incongruent (MI-INC), or control phrases during which their electroencephalograms were captured. The results indicated significant Group × Condition effects in the (...) frontally oriented late positive complex (P600/LPC). The P600/LPC's amplitudes were more positive-going in the PC than in the RD group for the MI congruent statements. Within the PC group, the amplitudes of the N400 were significantly correlated (r= 0.607–0.649) with the participants' level of negative affect. Our findings suggest that the brief contents of MI statements alone can elicit late cognitive and emotional appraisal processes beyond semantic processing. (shrink)

Executive control of attention refers to processes that detect and resolve conflict among competing thoughts and actions. Despite the high-level nature of this faculty, the role of awareness in executive control of attention is not well understood. In this study, we used interocular suppression to mask the flankers in an arrow flanker task, in which the flankers and the target arrow were presented simultaneously in order to elicit executive control of attention. Participants were unable to detect the flanker arrows or (...) to reliably identify their direction when masked. There was a typical conflict effect (prolonged reaction time and increased error rate under flanker-target incongruent condition compared to congruent condition) when the flanker arrows were unmasked, while the conflict effect was absent when the flanker arrows were masked with interocular suppression. These results suggest that blocking awareness of competing stimuli with interocular suppression prevents the involvement of executive control of attention. (shrink)

Originally published in 1936, this book presents the ancient Greek text of the paraphrases and quotations of Zeno's philosophical arguments, together with a facing-page English translation and editorial commentary. Detailed notes are incorporated throughout and a bibliography is also included. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in Zeno and ancient philosophy.

The paper describes an innovative structured workshop methodology in garden-based-learning called “Nature in Your Face” aimed at provoking a change in citizens behavior and engagement as a consequence of the emotional activation in response to disruptive artistic messages. The methodology challenges the assumption that the change needed to meet the carbon targets can be reached with incremental, non-invasive behavior engineering techniques such as nudging or gamification. Instead, it explores the potential of disruptive communication to push citizens out of their comfort (...) zones and into creative modes of re-creating futures. This is done by confronting us with consequences of consumption by means of art and eco-visualizations. The aim being to achieve awareness, mental flexibility, and spurring debate. Thus, we invite them to react – and act upon these reactions by communicating their feelings or thoughts. This is used as an entrance point for broader and/or deeper engagement in a structured three-step methodology; Framing: A disruptive element is introduced into the local environment. This triggers an emotional reaction, which then is taken up in a process of framing the problem and working with solutions. Twisting: in a guided process, the initial energy from the emotional confrontation is twisted into a creative exploration of innovative solutions, from the perspective of the children. Using: The last stage is using the developed solutions in the local social system. The methodology is being applied in cooperation with a primary school, and is iteratively adjusted and evaluated in a formative, action-research based approach scenario. NiYF is to stimulate societal engagement through deliberately confronting stakeholders with unexpected and potentially upsetting appearances of nature, climate effects, or carbon-neutral lifestyle scenarios. We have verified the practical usefulness and potential of the methodology and found that NiYF triggers societal engagement and transition, negotiating responsibilities and unlocking action potentials. We also found that eco-anxiety, denial, self-efficacy and cognitive dissonance form children’s understanding of plastic. The project marks a paradigm shift from creating knowledge to using knowledge to create action, and a focus on learning from evaluating and adapting the approach in the field. (shrink)

Science and Community: Ending Obesity Improving Health (S&C) aimed to reduce obesity in Houston by developing community partnerships to identify research priorities and develop a sustainable obesity reduction program. Partnership members were recruited from S&C events and invited to participate in in‐depth interviews to gain insight into obesity prevalence, causes, and solutions. Members (n = 22) completed a 60–90‐min in‐depth interview. The interview guide consisted of 30 questions about pressing health problems in the community, potential solutions to health problems and (...) obesity and how the environment has impacted obesity and health behaviors in the community. Interviewees (n = 12 women and 10 men) were mostly Hispanic/Latino (n = 9) and African American (n = 7). Common problems identified were childhood obesity, balancing a healthy diet and physical inactivity. Interviewees identified obesity as a major problem in their communities and cited access to quality food and physical activity resources as both a problem and a solution. Additional emergent themes focused on solutions, including increasing awareness and education, coordinated efforts among organizations and using an ecologic approach to combat obesity. Community insight gleaned from this study may be used to enhance relevance and sustainability of programs developed to reduce obesity and suggests possible avenues for participatory research and intervention. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic and its associated stressors have impacted the daily lives and sleeping patterns of many individuals, including university students. Dreams may provide insight into how the mind processes changing realities; dreams not only allow consolidation of new information, but may give the opportunity to creatively “play out” low-risk, hypothetical threat simulations. While there are studies that analyze dreams in high-stress situations, little is known of how the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted dreams of university students. The aim of this (...) study was to explore how the dream content of students was affected during the university COVID-19 lockdown period (March–July, 2020). Using online survey methods, we analyzed dream recall content (n= 71) using the Hall-Van de Castle dream coding system and Fisher's exact tests for sex comparisons. Preliminary results indicate that female students experienced more nightmares as compared to male students. Dream analysis found that, relative to normative American College Student (ACS) samples generated pre-COVID-19, women were more likely to experience aggressive interactions in their dream content, including increased physical aggression. Results indicate that university students did experience changes in dream content due to the pandemic lockdown period, with women disproportionally affected. These findings can aid universities in developing support programs for students by bringing forth an understanding of students' concerns and anxieties as they process the “new normal” of social distancing. (shrink)

In the United States, the IRS now requires charities to publicly disclose any significant asset diversion, which is the theft or unauthorized use of assets, that the charity identifies during the year. We use this new disclosure to investigate whether strong governance reduces the likelihood of a charitable asset diversion. Specifically, for a sample of 1528 charities from 2008 to 2012, we simultaneously examine eleven measures of governance that capture four broad governance constructs: board monitoring, independence of key individuals, tone (...) at the top, and capital provider oversight. We find consistent evidence that good governance across all four constructs is negatively associated with the probability of an asset diversion. Of the eleven governance measures, our results indicate that monitoring by debt holders and government grantors, audits, and keeping managerial duties in-house are most strongly associated with lower incidence of fraud. Our results also indicate that the likelihood of a fraud is negatively associated with a board review of the Form 990, the existence of a conflict of interest policy, and the presence of restricted donations. In addition, we document that the likelihood of an asset diversion is negatively associated with program efficiency and positively associated with growth and organizational complexity. (shrink)

William James, concerned with the issue of the applicability of traditional religious virtues to modern society, argues for the significance of ascetic virtues in general and voluntary poverty in particular, not least because of their contribution to the actualization of benevolence. Examining and evaluating his account uncovers the ways in which James is a virtue theorist, some distinctive characteristics of religious virtues, and both the possibilities and difficulties in any modern defense of a traditional virtue that appears as odd as (...) does voluntary poverty. (shrink)

Objectives To characterize the prevalence and content of pediatric triage policies.Methods We surveyed and solicited policies from U.S. hospitals with pediatric intensive care units. Policies were analyzed using qualitative methods and coded by 2 investigators.Results Thirty-four of 120 institutions (28%) responded. Twenty-five (74%) were freestanding children’s hospitals and 9 (26%) were hospitals within a hospital. Nine (26%) had approved policies, 9 (26%) had draft policies, 5 (14%) were developing policies, and 7 (20%) did not have policies. Nineteen (68%) institutions shared (...) their approved or draft policy. Eight (42%) of those policies included neonates. The polices identified 0 to 5 (median 2) factors to prioritize patients. The most common factors were short- (17, 90%) and long- (14, 74%) term predicted mortality. Pediatric scoring systems included Pediatric Logistic Organ Dysfunction-2 (12, 63%) and Score for Neonatal Acute Physiology and Perinatal Extensions-II (4, 21%). Thirteen (68%) policies described a formal algorithm. The most common tiebreakers were random/lottery (10, 71%) and life cycles (9, 64%). The majority (15, 79%) of policies specified the roles of triage team members and 13 (68%) precluded those participating in patient care from making triage decisions.Conclusions While many institutions still do not have pediatric triage policies, there appears to be a trend among those with policies to utilize a formal algorithm that focuses on short- and long-term predicted mortality and that incorporates age-appropriate scoring systems. Additional work is needed to expand access to pediatric-specific policies, to validate scoring systems, and to address health disparities. (shrink)

As scientific and engineering efforts become increasingly global in nature, the need to understand differences in perceptions of research ethics issues across countries and cultures is imperative. However, investigations into the connection between nationality and ethical decision-making in the sciences have largely generated mixed results. In Study 1 of this paper, a measure of biases and compensatory strategies that could influence ethical decisions was administered. Results from this study indicated that graduate students from the United States and international graduate students (...) studying in the US are prone to different biases. Based on these findings, recommendations are made for developing ethics education interventions to target these decision-making biases. In Study 2, we employed an ethics training intervention based on ethical sensemaking and used a well-established measure of ethical decision-making that more fully captures the content of ethical judgment. Similar to Study 1, the results obtained in this study suggest differences do exist between graduate students from the US and international graduate students in ethical decision-making prior to taking the research ethics training. However, similar effects were observed for both groups following the completion of the ethics training intervention. (shrink)

This paper presents a critical appraisal of the recent turn in comparative religious ethics to virtue theory; it argues that the specific aspirations of virtue ethicists to make ethics more contextual, interdisciplinary, and practice-centered has in large measure failed to match the rhetoric. I suggest that the focus on the category of the human and practices associated with self-formation along with a methodology grounded in “analogical imagination” has actually poeticized the subject matter into highly abstract textual studies on normative voices (...) within traditions, largely in isolation from considerations of socio-historical context, political and institutional pressures, and the lived ethics of non-elite moral actors. I conclude with some programmatic suggestions for how the field of comparative religious ethics can move forward. (shrink)

This reconsideration of the descriptive and normative components of my earlier comparisons of Mencius and Aquinas suggests that the strengths of Aquinas’s account were highlighted while some of his shortcomings and the corresponding strengths in Mencius were missing. This is made clear by considering the treatment of their respective ideas about optimal human fulfillment and even clearer by considering their understanding of the relationship between theoretical and literary accounts of that fulfillment. The third subject, their different treatments of people’s failure (...) to attain fulfillment, is more complicated, however, and involves a set of truly vexing issues. (shrink)

The low rates of regular exercise and overall physical activity (PA) in the general population represent a significant public health challenge. Previous research suggests that, for many people, exercise leads to a negative affective response and, in turn, reduced likelihood of future exercise. The purpose of this paper is to examine this exercise–affect–adherence relationship from an evolutionary perspective. Specifically, we argue that low rates of physical exercise in the general population are a function of the evolved human tendency to avoid (...) unnecessary physical exertion. This innate tendency evolved because it allowed our evolutionary ancestors to conserve energy for physical activities that had immediate adaptive utility such as pursuing prey, escaping predators, and engaging in social and reproductive behaviors. The commonly observed negative affective response to exercise is an evolved proximate psychological mechanism through which humans avoid unnecessary energy expenditure. The fact that the human tendencies toward negative affective response to and avoidance of unnecessary physical activities are innate does not mean that they are unchangeable. Indeed, it is only because of human-engineered changes in our environmental conditions (i.e., it is no longer necessary for us to work for our food) that our predisposition to avoid unnecessary physical exertion has become a liability. Thus, it is well within our capabilities to reengineer our environments to once again make PA necessary or, at least, to serve an immediate functional purpose. We propose a two-pronged approach to PA promotion based on this evolutionary functional perspective: first, to promote exercise and other physical activities that are perceived to have an immediate purpose, and second, to instill greater perceived purpose for a wider range of physical activities. We posit that these strategies are more likely to result in more positive (or less negative) affective responses to exercise, better adherence to exercise programs, and higher rates of overall PA. (shrink)

The object of this paper is to show the predominance of the influence of geometrical ideas in Aristotle's account of first principles in the Posterior Analytics— to show that his analysis of first principles is in its essentials an analysis of the first principles of geometry as he conceived them. My proof of this falls into two parts. I. A consideration of the parallel between Aristotle's and Euclid's account of first principles. II. A comparison between the general movement of thought (...) in the Aristotelian παγωγ and πδειξις and in the δινοια and νησις of the Platonic dialectic. (shrink)

A concern central to virtually all full-blooded instances of religious ethics is how persuasively to represent a world central to our fulfillment that far exceeds our normal understanding. The treatment of three kinds of language in an early Daoist text, the Zhuangzi (Chuang Tzu), contains an especially profound discussion and expression of such persuasive presentations in religious ethics. This study examines it and concludes by viewing Dante's Commedia through the perspectives Zhuangzi's ideas and practices present.

An ethics of bewilderment, which differs dramatically from the more familiar ethics of ease, is best understood through poetic presentations. Using examples drawn from Chinese and Western sources—notably Du Fu and Dante—this inquiry treats bewilderment as both an emotion and a virtue. Both these forms of bewilderment involve an acknowledgment of how minimal is the ethical confidence we have, given the feelings we have and the judgments we must make, but they also extend in productive ways the implications of that (...) acknowledgment. (shrink)