Social media platforms offer convenient, instantaneous social sharing on a mass scale with tremendous impact on public perceptions, opinions, and behavior. There is a need to understand why information spreads including the human motivations, cognitive processes, and neural dynamics of large-scale sharing. This study introduces a novel approach for investigating the effect social media messaging and in-person discussion has on the inter-brain dynamics within small groups of participants. The psychophysiological impact of information campaigns and narrative messaging within a closed social (...) media environment was assessed using 24-channel wireless EEG. Data were acquired from three- or four-person groups while subjects debated contemporary social issues framed by four scenarios of varying controversy: investing in ethical vs. unethical corporations, selecting travel destination based on social awareness, determining verdict in a murder trial and the punishment of life in prison or death penalty, and decision to vaccinate. Pre-/post-scenario questionnaires assess the effects of the social media information. Inter-brain coherence between subject pairs on each social issue discussed by subjects was analyzed by concordance, agreement vs. disagreement, and by group unanimity, unanimous vs. not unanimous. Subject pairs that agreed on the social issues raised in the scenarios had significantly greater inter-brain coherence in gamma frequency range than disagreeing pairs over cortical regions known to be involved in social interactions. These effects were magnified when comparing groups where subject pairs were unanimous in their stance on the social issues for some but not all scenarios. While there was considerable overlap between scenarios in what EEG channels were significant, there was enough variability to indicate the possibility of scenario-specific effects on inter-brain coherence. (shrink)

We present and defend the Australian Plan semantics for negation. This is a comprehensive account, suitable for a variety of different logics. It is based on two ideas. The first is that negation is an exclusion-expressing device: we utter negations to express incompatibilities. The second is that, because incompatibility is modal, negation is a modal operator as well. It can, then, be modelled as a quantifier over points in frames, restricted by accessibility relations representing compatibilities and incompatibilities between such points. (...) We defuse a number of objections to this Plan, raised by supporters of the American Plan for negation, in which negation is handled via a many-valued semantics. We show that the Australian Plan has substantial advantages over the American Plan. (shrink)

The allocation of scarce health care resources such as flu treatment or organs for transplant presents stark problems of distributive justice. Persad, Wertheimer, and Emanuel have recently proposed a novel system for such allocation. Their “complete lives system” incorporates several principles, including ones that prescribe saving the most lives, preserving the most life-years, and giving priority to persons between 15 and 40 years old. This paper argues that the system lacks adequate moral foundations. Persad and colleagues' defense of giving priority (...) to those between 15 and 40 leaves them open to the charge that they discriminate unfairly against children. Second, the paper contends that the complete lives system fails to provide meaningful practical guidance in central cases, since it contains no method for balancing its principles when they conflict. Finally, the paper proposes a new method for balancing principles of saving the most lives and maximizing life-years. (shrink)

This study invited curates and training incumbents attending a 3-day residential programme to function as a hermeneutical community engaging conversation between the Lucan post-resurrection narrative concerning the Road to Emmaus and the learning relationship in which they were engaged. Building on the SIFT approach to biblical hermeneutics the participants were invited to work in type-alike groups, structured first on the basis of the perceiving process and second on the basis of the judging process. This approach facilitated rich and varied insights (...) into the Emmaus Road narrative and into the theme of learning relationships. (shrink)

This study explores the connection between dominant psychological type preferences and reader interpretations of biblical texts. Working in type-alike groups, a group of 40 Anglican clergy were invited to employ their strongest function to engage conversation between Mark’s account of Jesus sending out the disciples and the experience of ministry in today’s world. The data supported the hermeneutical theory proposed by the SIFT approach to biblical interpretation and liturgical preaching by demonstrating the four clear and distinctive voices of sensing, intuition, (...) feeling and thinking. (shrink)

This qualitative study was positioned within an emerging scientific field concerned with the interaction between biblical text and the psychological profile of the preacher. The theoretical framework was provided by the sensing, intuition, feeling and thinking (SIFT) approach to biblical hermeneutics, an approach rooted in reader-perspective hermeneutical theory and in Jungian psychological type theory that explores the distinctive readings of sensing perception and intuitive perception, and the distinctive readings of thinking evaluation and feeling evaluation. The empirical methodology was provided by (...) developing a research tradition concerned with applying the SIFT approach to biblical text. In the present study, a group of 17 Anglican clergy were invited to work in psychological type-alike groups to explore two of the biblical passages identified by Year B of the Revised Common Lectionary for the Feast of Christ the King. Dividing into three workshops, according to their preferences for sensing and intuition, the clergy explored Psalm 93. Dividing into three workshops, according to their preferences for thinking and feeling, the clergy explored John 18:33–37. The rich data gathered from these workshops supported the hypothesis that biblical interpretation and preaching may be shaped by the reader’s psychological type preference and suggested that the passages of scripture proposed for the Feast of Christ the King may be a joy for intuitive thinking types, but a nightmare for sensing feeling types. Contribution: Situated within the reader perspective approach to biblical hermeneutics, the SIFT method is concerned with identifying the influence of the psychological type of the reader in shaping the interpretation of text. Employing this method, the present study contributes to the fields of homiletics and hermeneutics by demonstrating how some readers (sensing types) may struggle more than others (intuitive types) to interpret the scripture readings proposed by the lectionary for the Feast of Christ the King. (shrink)

Psalm 139 provides both great opportunities and huge challenges for the preacher. It is a Psalm crafted in four parts: part two is an imaginative and poetic affirmation of God’s omnipresence that engages the Jungian perceiving process; part four is a fierce and uncompromising diatribe against God’s enemies that engages the Jungian judging process. Interpretations of these two sections of the Psalm are explored among a sample of 30 Anglican deacons and priests serving as curates who were invited to work (...) in small hermeneutical communities, structured according to psychological type theory and designed to test the sensing, intuition, feeling and thinking (SIFT) approach to biblical hermeneutics and liturgical preaching. The findings from the hermeneutical communities demonstrated that the poetic power of part two was perceived quite differently by sensing types and by intuitive types. The judgement against God’s enemies in part four was evaluated quite differently by feeling types and by thinking types. The implications of these different readings of sacred text are discussed in relation both to hermeneutical theory and to homiletic practice. (shrink)

This study is situated within the newly emerging interest in the concept of grace as a legitimate topic for empirical enquiry, and draws on the theoretical framework provided by the SIFT approach to biblical hermeneutics, an approach rooted in reader-perspective hermeneutical theory and in Jungian psychological type theory. Data were draw from two one-day workshops with Anglican Readers (lay ministers). On each occasion the participants were invited to divide into three separate groups according to their preferences for sensing or intuition (...) (the two perceiving functions) and within these groups to explore the messages of grace in Matthew 6: 25–30 (Jesus’ invitation to look at the birds and to consider the lilies). The rich data gathered from these workshops generated insights into contemporary theologies of grace and also confirmed the hypothesis that biblical interpretation is shaped by the reader’s psychological type preference for sensing or for intuition. (shrink)

"AGM members lunch." Ethos: Official Publication of the Law Society of the Australian Capital Territory, (198), pp. 13.

This stunning new edition retains the book's broad aims, intended audience, and multidisciplinary approach. New chapters take into account the more current backdrop of globalization, particularly events such as 9/11, and attendant developments that make a reconsideration of race relations in education quite urgent.

Consider this situation: Here are two envelopes. You have one of them. Each envelope contains some quantity of money, which can be of any positive real magnitude. One contains twice the amount of money that the other contains, but you do not know which one. You can keep the money in your envelope, whose numerical value you do not know at this stage, or you can exchange envelopes and have the money in the other. You wish to maximise your money. (...) What should you do?1 Here are three forms of reasoning about this situation, which we shall call.. (shrink)

Rutherford and Lindell (2011) review an extensive literature on lateralization of emotion. As they note, an important issue surrounding this question is the nature of emotion, which bears on what, precisely, is lateralized. The present comments are intended to broaden the context of the review, by considering lateralization from the standpoint of a bivariate model of evaluative processes and a neuroevolutionary perspective.

Striking photographs by Kennedy and engaging essays by outdoor writer and fisherman Breining capture the quirky world of ice fishing--its natural beauty and solitary subzero vigils, along with its oddball practices and practitioners.

This article explores how the type of consent given for organ donation should affect the judgement of a patient's overall benefit with regards to donation of their organs and the pre-mortem interventions required to facilitate this. The findings of a qualitative study of the views of 10 healthcare professionals, combined with a philosophical analysis inform the conclusion that how consent to organ donation is given is a reliable indicator only of the strength of evidence about views on donation and subsequent (...) willingness to undergo pre-mortem interventions. It is not an indicator of the strength of actual desire to donate. Clinical management of living patients prior to donation after circulatory death must therefore respect the values, wishes and beliefs of the potential donation after circulatory death donor. Our participants, however, suggested that the information currently provided is sufficient to authorise donation and that this consent, however provided, was sufficient to proceed with pre-mortem interventions. Respect for autonomy underpinned this ‘all or nothing’ approach. Although the legal requirements for donation authorisation and the protection of patients without capacity are clear, practice and policy regarding consent in donation after circulatory death may be based on donation following brainstem death where the patient is already dead when the family is approached. Custom and practice in donation after circulatory death may need to be revised to protect the interests of the dying potential donor. (shrink)

This paper consists of commentaries about and the reprint of an autobiographical essay authored by Italian medium Eusapia Palladino and published in 1910. The details of the essay are discussed in terms of the writings of other individuals about the life and performances of the medium. The essay conveys a view of Palladino as a person who has suffered much in life and has a mission to help scientific research into mediumship. Typical of the positive emphasis in autobiographies in general, (...) the medium did not discuss negative aspects of her performances. Due to the fact that the essay appeared during Palladino's visit to New York City in which many authors branded her as a fraud, it may be speculated that the purpose of this autobiography was to elicit sympathy from the American public. While some of the statements that Palladino made about phenomena are consistent with the statements of other authors who have written about her, there are several statements that show alternate or incomplete versions of particular events in her life. The differences suggests that Palladino's essay and other discussions about the medium's life are not reliable when it comes to specific details and to biographical accuracy. (shrink)

Physical activity and sedentary behaviour have been linked to the mental health of children and adolescents, yet the timing of behaviours may play a role in this relationship and clarifying this could inform interventions. We explored cross-sectional associations of PA and SED in varying time segments throughout the school day with the mental health of school-aged children and adolescents from rural Northeastern Ontario, Canada. A total of 161 students wore accelerometers for 8 days and completed a self-report survey. Mental health (...) was measured using the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire. Accelerometer-measured SED, light PA, and moderate and vigorous PA were estimated in the time-segments before school, school time, after school, and evenings. Associations were tested with multilevel linear regressions while adjusting for confounding factors. Students spent 72.6 min in MVPA, 209.0 min in LPA, and 621.0 min in SED per day. Daily SED was associated with less conduct problems. Evening LPA was inversely associated with hyperactivity, while SED was associated with hyperactivity and with peer problems before school, and during school. No associations were observed for MVPA, emotional symptoms, or prosocial behaviour. In conclusion, displacing SED with LPA in some specific periods of the day may benefit the mental health of students; taking this into account could strengthen interventions. (shrink)

In many countries, such as Canada, the USA, England, and Australia, to graduate from a regulated profession such as nursing, students must complete a set of work‐integrated learning (WIL) hours and demonstrate their ability to safely perform physical skills and apply knowledge in relation to professional standards. For a disabled nursing student (DNS) undergoing training in higher education institutions (HEI), securing proper accommodations to participate effectively in WIL experiences has been difficult due to concerns related to risks to self and (...) patient safety. This study used critical discourse analysis to investigate the framing of risk and safety in association with providing DNS with accommodation in WIL. Our data were collected from an intensive codesign (group‐based discussion) session with participants (n = 16), including clinicians and DNS, from four institutions (two WIL‐sites and two HEI organizations). Using an iterative thematic approach based on Foucauldian framework, our analysis revealed three ways in which health professionals discursively framed risk and safety: (a) beliefs that a lack of disclosure by disabled students decreases patient safety and indicates poor self‐reflection, (b) concerns that accommodating students poses a risk to institutions offering WIL experiences and to the relationships between HEI and institutions offering WIL‐sites, and (c) a framing which challenges the dominant discourse by thinking about safety and risk more expansively. Our findings suggest the first two of these framings are ableist and function to enact barriers to access for DNSs in WIL, whereas the third framing serves the goal of inclusion. Recommendations to address the current ableist discourse within the Canadian nursing context are provided, which may also be applicable across other regulated health professions. (shrink)

In this paper, we investigate the link between audit committees and earnings management providing a more comprehensive simultaneous analysis of the influence of audit committee features using a sample of 485 firm-years from Singapore's publicly traded firms during the 2000 2001 calendar period. Empirical findings indicate firms with a higher proportion of independent audit committee members are more effective at constraining earnings management. Firms with audit committees that are more diligent and/or lack the presence of independent directors serving simultaneously on (...) a substantial number of boards and committees are more effective at constraining earnings management. These findings are robust to alternative income-incentives facing corporate management. Overall, our findings have implications for stakeholders, regulators, and corporate governance. For example, our findings infer policymakers may need to focus on other audit committee characteristics to strengthen the committee's ability to constrain earnings management rather than continue the present fixation with independence. (shrink)

Food Problems and Economic Problems in America, Africa, the Middle East and Asia : Struggles and Resignation What are the various dynamics of crisis, revolt, and resignation currently operating on the American and African continents, in the Middle East and in Asia. What effects do they have on the policies adopted to “get out of the crisis”? These are the issues which Greg Albo, Kako Nubukpo, Rhina Roux, Marie Noëlle Abiyaghi and Son Youg Woo address in this article. They (...) examine the consequences of neo-liberal capitalism and the succession of crises in food, oil, finance, and in the economy, before going on to explain how they emerge in their regional contexts where they take on their specific guises. (shrink)

SmartData is a research program to develop web-based intelligent agents that will perform two tasks: securely store an individual’s personal and/or proprietary data, and protect the privacy and security of the data by only disclosing it in accordance with instructions authorized by the data subject. The vision consists of a web-based SmartData agent that would serve as an individual’s proxy in cyberspace to protect their personal or proprietary data. The SmartData agent (which ‘houses’ the data and its permitted uses) would (...) be transmitted to, or stored in a database, not the personal data itself. In effect, there would be no personal or proprietary raw data out in the open—it would instead be housed within a SmartData agent, much like we humans carry information in our heads; extending the analogy, it would be the human-like clone that would be transmitted or stored, not the raw data. The binary string representative of a SmartData agent would be located in local or central databases. Organizations requiring access to any of the data resident within the agent would query it once it had been activated. In this paper, we provide a preliminary overview of the SmartData concept, and describe the associated research and development that must be conducted in order to actualize this vision. (shrink)

(2013). A review of “Smith, Nicholas J. J., Logic: The Laws of Truth. Australasian Journal of Philosophy: Vol. 91, No. 3, pp. 629-629. doi: 10.1080/00048402.2013.794849.

“I shall attempt the analysis of memory … because memory in some form is presupposed in almost all other knowledge.”Bertrand Russell, The Analysis of Mind (1921)“Beginning with homo sapiens, the formation of an apparatus of social memory stands out as the foremost problem of human evolution.”André Leroi-Gourhan, Le Geste et la Parole (1965)Meme, Mneme, Mnemosyne: two neologisms, one dating from 1976 and the other from 1904, and the mythical figure personifying Memory from the time of the Titans - a strange (...) primordial deity that the imagination brought forth even before the time of mortal men began. Her name is all that survived through the ages, yet this fleeting presence among the gods was just as consequential as a major figure like Prometheus. Could she have been conceived of as an indispensable condition for human beings to usher in the reign of culture? (shrink)

Research studies demonstrate wide variation in how physicians diagnose and treat patients with similar medical conditions and suggest that at least some of the variation reflects inefficiencies and unnecessary medical costs. Health care researchers are actively examining ways to reduce variations in practice through standardization of medicine to reduce the cost of treatment and ensure the quality of outcomes. The most widely accepted form of this standardization is Evidence Based Best Practices. Furthermore, financial health care providers such as hospitals and (...) managed care organizations are investigating methods to tie resource usage to medical protocols in their efforts to monitor and control health care costs. Such proposals are contentious because they report on physicians' medical practice behaviors and such reports could potentially be used to influence their clinical behaviors. The intent of this exploratory study was to examine physicians' perceptions about linking a standard costing system to EBBP guidelines. The authors interviewed nine practicing physicians asking each physician to respond to the question, 'As a physician working in a hospital environment, what are your reactions to and concerns with combining standard costing techniques with EBBP?' The interviews were in-depth and free form in nature. The physicians' responses were recorded and analyzed using Grounded Theory Methodology. Using this methodology the field data was categorized into two major themes. The most important theme centered on ethics and the second theme was concerned with the implementation and use of a standard cost system in regard to EBBP. If physicians' worries about ethical dilemmas and implementation issues are not resolved, then it is likely that doctors would be unwilling to participate in any efforts to develop or use a standard cost-reporting system in medicine. While this study was exploratory in nature, it should provide future guidance to accountants, health care researchers and health care providers about physicians' issues with the use of standard costing methods in medicine. (shrink)

Gendlin's Philosophy of the Implicit offers root concepts, and a schema derived from them, for thinking about living and experiencing in very general terms, in ways that build bridges for thinking about human experience and animal experience together. He describes living as occurring into implying - what occurs is happening into implying something helpful - and when what occurs actually is helpful he describes this as living carrying forward. His term “the implicit” points towards the complexity involved in being helpful, (...) from the standpoint of a life appreciated as a whole. His concepts support disciplined thick description of animals’ lives. Looking, for example, at passages of kangaroo mothers' living, reveals their concurrent, crossed sensitivity to grass and other food, to their young's behavior, to predators, and to what other members of their group are doing. Standard methods for researching behavior hide this complexity. Looking at animal lives from the perspective of implying creates opportunities for describing animals’ lives holistically. This creates new research opportunities, and provides new tools for practical problems like designing conservation strategies so they work from animals' perspectives. (shrink)

Something has been going wrong on many college campuses in the last few years. Speakers are shouted down. Students and professors say they are walking on eggshells and are afraid to speak honestly. Rates of anxiety, depression, and suicide are rising--on campus as well as nationally. How did this happen? First Amendment expert Greg Lukianoff and social psychologist Jonathan Haidt show how the new problems on campus have their origins in three terrible ideas that have become increasingly woven into (...) American childhood and education: What doesn't kill you makes you weaker; always trust your feelings; and life is a battle between good people and evil people. These three Great Untruths contradict basic psychological principles about well-being and ancient wisdom from many cultures. Embracing these untruths--and the resulting culture of safetyism--interferes with young people's social, emotional, and intellectual development. It makes it harder for them to become autonomous adults who are able to navigate the bumpy road of life. Lukianoff and Haidt investigate the many social trends that have intersected to promote the spread of these untruths. They explore changes in childhood such as the rise of fearful parenting, the decline of unsupervised, child-directed play, and the new world of social media that has engulfed teenagers in the last decade. They examine changes on campus, including the corporatization of universities and the emergence of new ideas about identity and justice. They situate the conflicts on campus within the context of America's rapidly rising political polarization and dysfunction. This is a book for anyone who is confused by what is happening on college campuses today, or has children, or is concerned about the growing inability of Americans to live, work, and cooperate across party lines. (shrink)

The European Legacy, Volume 17, Issue 3, Page 399-400, June 2012.

Dallas Willard’s reliance on Edmund Husserl’s early works, especially The Logical Investigations, grounded his direct realism, which allowed for an epistemology that made knowledge of mind-independent reality possible. Representationalism, idealism, phenomenalism, Kantianism, and skepticism were challenged because each posits an account of experience that makes such knowledge impossible. Willard’s ontology of knowing is centered on the intentionality of consciousness wherein acquaintance with things-in-themselves allows open rational inquiry into life’s ultimate questions. This cleared the way for him to describe how one (...) can know that God exists and how one’s character can be transformed into the character of Jesus of Nazareth. (shrink)