Male provisioning ability may have evolved as a “good dad” indicator through sexual selection, whereas male creativity may have evolved partly as a “good genes” indicator. If so, women near peak fertility (midcycle) should prefer creativity over wealth, especially in short-term mating. Forty-one normally cycling women read vignettes describing creative but poor men vs. uncreative but rich men. Women’s estimated fertility predicted their short-term (but not long-term) preference for creativity over wealth, in both their desirability ratings of individual men (r=.40, (...) p<.01) and their forced-choice decisions between men (r=.46, p<.01). These preliminary results are consistent with the view that creativity evolved at least partly as a good genes indicator through mate choice. (shrink)

I will here apply the classical Indian model of the dramatic actor as a methodology for interpreting the soteriological psychology of the Bhagavad Gītā, paying special attention to the usefulness of this approach for clarifying Kṛṣṇa's rationale in showing his divine form in Chapter 11. I argue that the Gītā advocates creative role-play as both the means and the end of liberation. Further, while Kṛṣṇa's teachings can be understood in terms of orthodox Hindu soteriologies that have in view an overcoming (...) of the emotions, I argue that Kṛṣṇa looks to transform Arjuna into an ‘athlete of emotion’, much like traditional Indian-based training methods do for theatrical actors. (shrink)

This purely theoretical paper examines the relationship between the pursuit of entrepreneurial opportunity and environmental impact. Specifically, we attempt to more effectively define environmentally-relevant entrepreneurship through comparisons of different extant definitions in the literature, and to extend Schumpeterian theory through the inclusion of environmental entrepreneurship within his framework. By doing so, we contribute to the entrepreneurship literature through a more encompassing and specified definition of environmental entrepreneurship, and by incorporating environmental entrepreneurship into Schumpeter’s (1934) theoretical framework. We propose that (1) (...) Waste-Equals-Food, (2) Public Goods, and (3) Externalities each demonstrate thatenvironmental entrepreneurship is the act of creating future goods and services with positive environmental consequences. Finally, we assert that Schumpeter would likely characterize the pursuit of any such opportunity as “opening up a new source of supply.”. (shrink)

Preface -- Introduction: dialectics and social thought -- Marx and the dialectic of capital -- Freud and the dialectic of psychology -- Peirce, Mead, Goffman, and interactional social science -- Culture and society -- Critical theories -- Rebellion -- The phenomenologists -- Contemporary social thought: Agamben to Zizek -- Dialectics of contemporary society and the present crisis -- References -- Index.

Terrorism is a notoriously plastic word, depending on user, audience, and political context. This paper focuses on shifts in its meanings since the early 1970s. As federal statutes made terrorism a criminal offense, common usage changed from a broad meaning to one that specified terrorism as a political crime. The argument is that the state shapes meaning and public discourse through law. Peircean semiotics and the semiotic philosophy of Russian linguist Vološinov provide a framework to explore relationships among politics, law, (...) and civil life. Applied to the events of September 11, 2001 such an analysis further allows better understanding of certain interpreters of the September 11 attacks, notably Jean Baudrillard, Jacques Derrida, and Jürgen Habermas. (shrink)

This methodological essay describes and advocates using certain psychoanalytic techniques for ethnography. It focuses on the self analysis of the ethnographer using evenly hovering attention, dream analysis, and free association. It presents an argument that using those techniques enhances the goal of ethnography as a human science and of social research. Fear of crime serves as a point of departure for the methodological argument. Finally, it links psychoanalytic ethnography to a fractal model of society and the self with reference to (...) C. S. Peirce’s theory of semiotics as a link between the individual and society. (shrink)

The statements and arguments based on experimental evidence used to support the claim that the 3d sub-level is below the 4s sub-level in scandium are examined. The flaw in all the arguments is that they assume the order in which the 3d and 4s sub-levels arrange remains the same in both the neutral atom and in its ions. Analysis of the ground and excited states of atomic spectra shows that as the number of electrons relative to the nuclear charge increases, (...) the 3d level moves higher in energy relative to the 4s level. It is perfectly possible that in a neutral scandium atom the 3d sub-level is above the 4s sub-level and that when it ionizes the energy levels simultaneously rearrange during the process. (shrink)

Soil is fragile and nonrenewable but the most basic of natural resources. It has a capacity to tolerate continuous use but only with proper management. Improper soil management and indiscriminate use of chemicals have contributed to some severe global environmental issues, e.g., volatilization losses and contamination of natural waters by sediments and agricultural fertilizers and pesticides. The increasing substitution of energy for labor and other cultural inputs in agriculture is another issue. Fertilizers and chemicals account for about 25% of the (...) production energy investment in agriculture. An additional 60% is accounted for by machinery, gasoline, electricity, and power-related inputs. Fertilizer additions to cropland are not utilized fully and significant amounts, depending on conditions, are either lost in surface runoff or leached into the ground water. The annual discharge of dissolved solids from agricultural lands to the waterways in the USA is substantial. The increasing use of herbicides in agriculture is a threat to the quality of surface and ground water, although this threat is dependent upon both the chemistry of the compound and the ecosystem in which it is used. Especially within the Third World, development of an environmental ethic and environmental laws have not kept pace with the increase in pesticide use. Above all is the severe and global problem of soil degradation currently occurring at the rate of five to seven million hectares per year. The policy and moral aspects of these issues are discussed. (shrink)

Ethical guidelines for conducting clinical trials have historically been based on a perceived therapeutic obligation to treat and benefit the patient-participants. The origins of this ethical framework can be traced to the Hippocratic oath originally written to guide doctors in caring for their patients, where the overriding moral obligation of doctors is strictly to do what is best for the individual patient, irrespective of other social considerations. In contrast, although medicine focuses on the health of the person, public health is (...) concerned with the health of the entire population, and thus, public health ethics is founded on the societal responsibility to protect and promote the health of the population as a whole. From a public health perspective, research ethics should be guided by giving due consideration to the risks and benefits to society in addition to the individual research participants. On the basis of a duty to protect the population as a whole, a fiduciary obligation to realise the social value of the research and the moral responsibility to distribute the benefits and burdens of research fairly across society, how a public health perspective on research ethics results in fundamental re-assessments of the proper course of action for two salient topical issues in research ethics is shown: stopping trials early for reasons of efficacy and the conduct of research on less expensive yet less effective interventions. (shrink)

Hird, G.R., Recursive properties of relations on models, Annals of Pure and Applied Logic 63 241–269. We prove general existence theorems for recursive models on which various relations have specified recursive properties. These capture common features of results in the literature for particular algebraic structures. For a useful class of models with new relations R, S, where S is r.e., we characterize those for which there is a recursive model isomorphic to on which the relation corresponding to S remains r.e., (...) while that corresponding to R is not r.e.; immune; hyperimmune. The results are applied to vector spaces, Boolean algebras and abelian groups. In the case of vector spaces, this leads to a new kind supermaximal subspace of V∞. (shrink)

The two-phase study reported here examined the content and communication function served by electronic bumper stickers. EBSs consist of the sayings that are included in an e-mail signature file following personal identifiers such as one's name, phone number, and postal address. In the first phase, 334 EBSs were gathered and content analyzed into one of five message categories. In order of frequency they were: wisdom, humor, advice, religious, and socio-political commentary. In the second phase, open-ended responses from 134 EBS users (...) were coded into one of six motives for interpersonal communication. The relationship between one's motive for using an EBS and the content of one's EBS was not statistically significant. The implications of EBSs and e-mail use for mediated communication competence are considered. (shrink)

As a natural example of a 1-random real, Chaitin proposed the halting probability Ω of a universal prefix-free machine. We can relativize this example by considering a universal prefix-free oracle machine U. Let [Formula: see text] be the halting probability of UA; this gives a natural uniform way of producing an A-random real for every A ∈ 2ω. It is this operator which is our primary object of study. We can draw an analogy between the jump operator from computability theory (...) and this Omega operator. But unlike the jump, which is invariant under the choice of an effective enumeration of the partial computable functions, [Formula: see text] can be vastly different for different choices of U. Even for a fixed U, there are oracles A =* B such that [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text] are 1-random relative to each other. We prove this and many other interesting properties of Omega operators. We investigate these operators from the perspective of analysis, computability theory, and of course, algorithmic randomness. (shrink)

The literature on self-driving cars and ethics continues to grow. Yet much of it focuses on ethical complexities emerging from an individual vehicle. That is an important but insufficient step towards determining how the technology will impact human lives and society more generally. What must complement ongoing discussions is a broader, system level of analysis that engages with the interactions and effects that these cars will have on one another and on the socio-technical systems in which they are embedded. To (...) bring the conversation of self-driving cars to the system level, we make use of two traffic scenarios which highlight some of the complexities that designers, policymakers, and others should consider related to the technology. We then describe three approaches that could be used to address such complexities and their associated shortcomings. We conclude by bringing attention to the “Moral Responsibility for Computing Artifacts: The Rules”, a framework that can provide insight into how to approach ethical issues related to self-driving cars. (shrink)

Conservatives and liberals disagree sharply on matters of morality and public policy. We propose a novel account of the psychological basis of these differences. Specifically, we find that conservatives tend to emphasize the intrinsic value of actions during moral judgment, in part by mentally simulating themselves performing those actions, while liberals instead emphasize the value of the expected outcomes of the action. We then demonstrate that a structural emphasis on actions is linked to the condemnation of victimless crimes, a distinctive (...) feature of conservative morality. Next, we find that the conservative and liberal structural approaches to moral judgment are associated with their corresponding patterns of reliance on distinct moral foundations. In addition, the structural approach uniquely predicts that conservatives will be more opposed to harm in circumstances like the well-known trolley problem, a result which we replicate. Finally, we show that the structural approaches of conservatives and liberals are partly linked to underlying cognitive styles. Collectively, these findings forge a link between two important yet previously independent lines of research in political psychology: cognitive style and moral foundations theory. (shrink)

In prior papers the following question was considered: which classes of computable sets can be learned if queries about those sets can be asked by the learner? The answer depended on the query language chosen. In this paper we develop a framework for studying this question. Essentially, once we have a result for queries to [S,<]2, we can obtain the same result for many different languages. We obtain easier proofs of old results and several new results. An earlier result we (...) have an easier proof of: the set of computable sets cannot be learned with queries to the language [+,<] . A new result: the set of computable sets cannot be learned with queries to the language [+,<,POWa] where POWa is the predicate that tests if a number is a power of a. (shrink)

In “Revive and Refuse,” Marshall et al. (2024) argue that many individuals who are revived from opioid overdoses have diminished decision-making capacity (DMC), given that so many of them have opio...

BackgroundSarcomas are a diverse group of neoplasms that vary greatly in clinical presentation and responsiveness to treatment. Given the differences in the sites of involvement, rarity, and treatment modality, a multidisciplinary approach is required. Previous literature suggests patients with sarcoma suffer from poorer quality of life especially physical and functional wellbeing. Adolescent and young adult patients are an underrepresented population in cancer research and have differing factors influencing QoL.MethodsRetrospective analysis of Young Adult patients enrolled in the Sarcoma Tissue Repository at (...) University of Iowa. QoL was assessed using the self-report FACT-G questionnaire at enrollment and 12 months post-diagnosis; overall scores and the 4 wellbeing subscales were calculated. Linear mixed effects models were used to measure the association between the rate of change in FACT-G subscale scores and baseline clinical, comorbidity, and treatment characteristics.Results49 patients were identified. 57.1% of patients had a malignancy involving an extremity. Mean FACT-G scores of overall wellbeing improved from baseline to 12 months. Social and emotional wellbeing did not differ significantly between baseline and 12 months. Physical wellbeing and functional wellbeing scores improved from baseline to 12 months. No difference was seen for FACT-G overall scores for age, sex, laterality, marital status, performance status, having children, clinical stage, limb surgery, chemotherapy, or tumor size. A difference was demonstrated in physical wellbeing scores for patients with baseline limitation compared to those with no baseline limitation. A difference was demonstrated in social wellbeing based on anatomical site.ConclusionYoung adults with sarcoma treated at a tertiary center had improvements in overall reported QoL at 12 months from diagnosis. Overall baseline QoL scores on FACT-G were lower than the general adult population for YA patients with sarcoma but at 12 months became in line with general population norms. The improvements seen merit further investigation to evaluate how these change over the continuum of care. Quality of life changes may be useful outcomes of interest in sarcoma trials. (shrink)