Person‐specific evidence was developed as a grounded theory by analyzing 20 selected case descriptions from interventions using the guided self‐determination method with people with various long‐term health conditions. It explains the mechanisms of mobilizing relational capacity by including person‐specific evidence in shared decision‐making. Person‐specific self‐insight was the first step, achieved as individuals completed reflection sheets enabling them to clarify their personal values and identify actions or omissions related to self‐management challenges. This step paved the way for sharing these insights and (...) challenges in a relationship with a supportive health professional, who could then rely on person‐specific evidence instead of assumptions or a narrow disease perspective for shared decision‐making. Trust in the evidence encouraged the supportive health professional to transfer it to the interdisciplinary team. Person‐specific evidence then enhanced the ability of team members to apply general evidence in a meaningful way. The increased openness achieved by individuals through these steps enabled them to eventually share their new self‐insights in daily life with other people, decreasing loneliness they experienced in self‐management. Relational capacity, the core of the theory, is mobilized in both people with long‐term health conditions and healthcare professionals. Further research on person‐specific evidence and relational capacity in healthcare is recommended. (shrink)

This article documents a moment in history when poor and working-class white boys and men are struggling in their schools, communities, and workplaces against the “Other” as a means of framing identities. Drawing on two independent qualitative studies, the authors investigate distinct locations where poor and working-class boys and men invent, relate to, and distance from marginalized groups in an effort to create self. First the authors look at an ethnography of “the Freeway boys,” a community of urban white working-class (...) high school boys who must deal with the economic ravagement of their neighborhood and their insecure place in a world different than that of their fathers. Next, the authors draw from a large-scale survey of young adults to hear how a combined sample of urban poor and working-class white men narrate identities that are carved explicitly out of territory bordered by white women and African American men. Across sites, the authors theorize how high schools and workplaces both, in part, create white masculinities and interrupt them, at a time when white working-class boys and men feel under siege. (shrink)

"In Zeiten, in denen jahrzehntelang stabile Vertrauensverhältnisse global immer stärker erschüttert werden, suchen die Menschen nach neuen Vertrauensansätzen. Die libertäre Philosophie hinter Bitcoin nutzt einfache und verständliche Techniken aus der Mathematik, um ein Währungssystem ohne Banken und Staaten zu schaffen. Durch die Geschwindigkeit und die weltweite Verfügbarkeit von Kommunikationsnetzen findet somit ein völlig neuartiges gesellschaftliches Experiment statt. In times in which stable relationships of trust have been increasingly shaken around the globe for decades, people are looking for new approaches to (...) the ability to trust. The libertarian philosophy behind Bitcoin uses simple and understandable mathematical techniques to create a monetary system without banks and states. The speed and worldwide avail- ability of communication networks thus make for a completely new social experiment.". (shrink)

This paper argues that the main global critiques of scientism lose their punch because they rely on an uncharitable definition of their target. It focuses on epistemological scientism and divides it into four categories in terms of how strong (science is the only source of knowledge) or weak (science is the best source of knowledge) and how narrow (only natural sciences) or broad (all sciences or at least not only the natural sciences) they are. Two central arguments against scientism, the (...) (false) dilemma and self‐referential incoherence, are analysed. Of the four types of epistemological scientism, three can deal with these counterarguments by utilizing two methodological principles: epistemic evaluability of reliability and epistemic opportunism. One hopes that these considerations will steer the discussion on scientism to more fruitful pastures in the future. For example, there are interesting methodological considerations concerning what evaluability or reliability and epistemic opportunism entail. (shrink)

We hypothesize that aspects of animal multicellularity originated before the divergence of metazoans from fungi and social amoebae. Polarized epithelial tissues are a defining feature of metazoans and contribute to the diversity of animal body plans. The recent finding of a polarized epithelium in the non‐metazoan social amoeba Dictyostelium discoideum demonstrates that epithelial tissue is not a unique feature of metazoans, and challenges the traditional paradigm that multicellularity evolved independently in social amoebae and metazoans. An alternative view, presented here, is (...) that the common ancestor of social amoebae, fungi, and animals spent a portion of its life cycle in a multicellular state and possessed molecular machinery necessary for forming an epithelial tissue. Some descendants of this ancestor retained multicellularity, while others reverted to unicellularity. This hypothesis makes testable predictions regarding tissue organization in close relatives of metazoans and provides a novel conceptual framework for studies of early animal evolution.Editor's suggested further reading in BioEssays Searching for Eve: Basal metazoans and the evolution of multicellular complexity Abstract. (shrink)

Primary progressive aphasia is a clinical syndrome in which patients progressively lose speech and language abilities. Three variants are recognized: logopenic, associated with phonology and/or short-term verbal memory deficits accompanied by left temporo-parietal atrophy; semantic, associated with semantic deficits and anterior temporal lobe atrophy; non-fluent associated with grammar and/or speech-motor deficits and inferior frontal gyrus atrophy. Here, we set out to investigate whether the three variants of PPA can be dissociated based on error patterns in a single language task. We (...) recruited 21 lvPPA, 28 svPPA, and 24 nfvPPA patients, together with 31 healthy controls, and analyzed their performance on an auditory noun-to-verb generation task, which requires auditory analysis of the input, access to and selection of relevant lexical and semantic knowledge, as well as preparation and execution of speech. Task accuracy differed across the three variants and controls, with lvPPA and nfvPPA having the lowest and highest accuracy, respectively. Critically, machine learning analysis of the different error types yielded above-chance classification of patients into their corresponding group. An analysis of the error types revealed clear variant-specific effects: lvPPA patients produced the highest percentage of “not-a-verb” responses and the highest number of semantically related nouns ; in contrast, svPPA patients produced the highest percentage of “unrelated verb” responses and the highest number of light verbs. Taken together, our findings indicate that error patterns in an auditory verb generation task are associated with the breakdown of different neurocognitive mechanisms across PPA variants. Specifically, they corroborate the link between temporo-parietal regions with lexical processing, as well as ATL with semantic processes. These findings illustrate how the analysis of pattern of responses can help PPA phenotyping and heighten diagnostic sensitivity, while providing insights on the neural correlates of different components of language. (shrink)

Background: We aimed to determine the smallest changes in health-related quality of life (HRQoL) scores in the European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer Quality of Life Questionnaire core 30 and the Brain Cancer Module (QLQ-BN20), which could be considered as clinically meaningful in brain cancer patients. Materials and methods: World Health Organisation performance status (PS) and mini-mental state examination (MMSE) were used as clinical anchors appropriate to related subscales to determine the minimal clinically important differences (MCIDs) in HRQoL (...) change scores (range 0-100) in the QLQ-C30 and QLQ-BN20. A threshold of 0.2 standard deviation (SD) (small effect) was used to exclude anchor-based MCID estimates considered too small to inform interpretation. Results: Based on PS, our findings support the following integer estimates of the MCID for improvement and deterioration, respectively: physical (6, 9), role (14, 12), and cognitive functioning (8, 8); global health status (7, 4(star)), fatigue (12, 9), and motor dysfunction (4(star), 5). Anchoring with MMSE, cognitive functioning MCID estimates for improvement and deterioration were (11, 2(star)) and for communication deficit were (9, 7). Estimates with asterisks were <0.2 SD and were excluded from our MCID range of 5-14. Conclusion: These estimates can help clinicians evaluate changes in HRQoL over time, assess the value of a health care intervention and can be useful in determining sample sizes in designing future clinical trials. (shrink)

Reproduction has entered a new ice age: the ability to cryopreserve reproductive cells, tissue and embryos are fundamentally changing our understanding of what it means to be a reproductive citizen. This book explores the ways in which opinions of desirable reproductive futures are feared or are being welcomed by advances in freezing technologies, with the authors situating their discussions of cryo-fertility primarily within the Scandinavian region, asking: * How does cryopreservation help mobilize particular understandings of reproductive time, reproductive rights and (...) reproductive autonomy? * What values are embedded within Scandinavian laws that seek to regulate cryotechnologies? * How do men and women who freeze their gamets imagine the preservation of their material? -/- These questions demand a collaborative approach. The authors empirically cut across the areas of bioethics/law, practices/experiences and culture/commerce in order to pin down often comples and far-reaching answers. (shrink)

We examined if cancer patients' health-related quality of life (HRQoL) scores on the European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC) QLQ-C30 are affected by the specific time point, before or during treatment, at which the questionnaire is completed, and whether this could bias the overall treatment comparison analyses. A 'completion-time window' variable was created on three closed EORTC randomised control trials in lung (non-small cell lung cancer, NSCLC) and colorectal cancer (CRC) to indicate when the QLQ-30 was completed (...) relative to chemotherapy cycle dates, defined as 'before', 'on' and 'after'. HRQoL mean scores were calculated using a linear mixed model. Statistically significant differences (P < 0.05) were observed on 6 and 5 scales for 'on' and 'after' comparisons in the NSCLC and two-group CRC trial, respectively. As for the three-group CRC trial, several statistical differences were observed in the 'before' to 'on' and the 'on' to 'after' comparisons. For all three trials, including the 'completion-time window' variable in the model resulted in a better fit, but no substantial changes in the treatment effects were noted. We showed that considering the exact timing of completion within specified windows resulted in statistical and potentially clinically significant differences, but it did not alter the conclusions of treatment comparison in these studies. (shrink)

This pre-registered replication study explores the impact of perceived cuteness on the evolution of cultural artifacts, testing whether neotenic traits – eye size, forehead height, and head roundness – have increased in teddy bears over time. In previous research, Hinde & Barden (1980) found an increase in teddy bear neoteny while Gould (1985) found that Mickey Mouse’s features became more neotenic with time. However, both studies lacked statistical power (15 teddy bears and 3 Mickey Mouse drawings). We collected data from (...) eight major teddy bear manufacturers over nine decades (N = 250; 1900–1980). We found that the forehead height of teddy bears significantly increased over time. Conversely, our prediction that heads became rounder and eyes became bigger were not supported. We outline four key methodological limitations that future research should address to deepen our understanding of the cultural evolution of cuteness and of cultural artifacts more broadly – i.e., sampling bias, metadata inaccuracy, categorization ambiguity, and function ambiguity. (shrink)

The transport of messenger RNAs (mRNAs) from the nucleus to cytoplasm is an essential step in the gene expression program of all eukaryotes. Recent technological advances in the areas of RNA‐labeling, microscopy, and sequencing are leading to novel insights about mRNA biogenesis and export. This includes quantitative single molecule imaging (SMI) of RNA molecules in live cells, which is providing knowledge of the spatial and temporal dynamics of the export process. As this information becomes available, it leads to new questions, (...) the reinterpretation of previous findings, and revised models of mRNA export. In this review, we will briefly highlight some of these recent findings and discuss how live cell SMI approaches may be used to further our current understanding of mRNA export and gene expression. (shrink)

Este estudio presenta las evidencias psicométricas de la Escala de Aprendizajes Percibidos, basada en los elementos didácticos y pedagógicos del proceso de enseñanza-aprendizaje de una Experiencia Curricular en formulación y ejecución de «Programas de Intervención en Psicología». Investigación instrumental-psicométrica, de enfoque cuantitativo-transversal, con recolección de datos post-EC, en 117 estudiantes universitarios. Su contraste estadístico se realizó en el entorno R para Análisis Factorial Confirmatorio y Análisis Factorial de Componentes Principales, entre otros. Los resultados indican un adecuado ajuste orientado a 5 (...) factores, ratificado en análisis paralelos. Se concluye en la conformación de un constructo robusto, fiable y válido, que explora la conciencia de los aprendizajes en materia de promoción prevención en salud, y susceptible de adaptación. (shrink)

Having the ability to understand emotionally how other people feel and see things is an essential fabric for building and sustaining functional interpersonal relationships. Without such an ability, social interaction crumbles, engagement fails, and learning is eroded. Yet, empirical evidence on the relationship between study burnout and study engagement, and empathy between upper secondary school students is limited. We are tackling the challenge by exploring the association between empathy between peers and study engagement and study burnout among upper secondary school (...) students. Two hundred and eighty upper secondary education students took part in our cross-sectional study. Structural equation modeling was used to analyze the association between empathy, and study burnout and study engagement. The results showed that cognitive empathy contributed to affective empathy, which was further related to increased levels of study engagement, and decreased levels of cynicism, and sense of inadequacy. The role of cognitive empathy seemed to be more complicated: while cognitive empathy contributed directly to increased levels of cynicism, and inadequacy and decrease in study engagement, the indirect effects of cognitive empathy on cynicism and inadequacy were negative, and positive on study engagement. Neither of the empathy dimensions explained students’ emotional exhaustion. The results indicate that merely teaching students to recognize and identify their peers’ emotions is not sufficient to enhance study wellbeing, but they need to learn to share emotions and to tune into each other’s emotions. (shrink)

An educated healthcare professional or student is sensitive and able to make good judgements, understanding existential challenging issues. It is argued that the ideas within phenomenology and hermeneutics can function as a basis for comprehension. This article focuses on how choice of perspective and knowledge is of importance to what we do in practice. However, education does not consist of mere accumulation of knowledge and ways of explanation. We do not become competent practitioners by being able to reproduce philosophical ideas. (...) These are merely perspectives by means of which we can seek to go beyond what we take for granted, or what we assume to know, thus enabling us to take a new direction understanding problems and issues that until now may have been hidden to us. In other words, understanding is of an existential character, whereas an observing healthcare professional must be aware and open to the mental aspects of life. It is therefore important to attune ourselves to being sensitive to and aware of experiences from our lifeworld, understanding what they imply. It is argued that literature provides insight into human nature through the written depiction of real or imagined experiences. To develop such narrative imagination, it is suggested that literature should be part of the curriculum of various educations. This is relevant to healthcare professionals who thereby can get an important insight into human nature and begin to develop the self‐awareness and sensitivity to others that is so central to care. (shrink)

We have conducted an experimental study of V-type electromagnetically induced transparency in sodium. Its principles are elucidated by a simple model. Measurements show decreased fluorescence and absorption depending on the detuning of the driving and probe fields, which is in agreement with the results of numerical simulation.

In _The Eudaimonist Ethics of al-Fārābī and Avicenna_, Janne Mattila provides the first comprehensive account of the ethical thought of al-Fārābī and Avicenna.

Nudging refers to the subtle design of the context of choice in a way that mobilises the unconscious mind and alters human behaviour predictably. Nudging has been criticised for entailing numerous practical and ethical problems, including manipulation, elitism and cultural insensitivity. To respond to the problems, participatory and deliberative procedures have been proposed that would enable the questioning of the power relations embedded in behavioural governance. Yet participation and deliberation are themselves characterised by unconscious behavioural influences. I argue that awareness (...) of the prevalence of unconscious behavioural influences in environmental governance is a prerequisite for tackling the complex practical and ethical issues of nudging. I show that unconscious behavioural influences permeate environmental governance and outline analytical approaches for revealing them. (shrink)

In this article, I focus on possibly impaired self-determination in addiction. After some methodological reflections, I introduce a phenomenological description of the experience of being self-determined. I argue that being self-determined implies effectivity of agency regarding three different behavioural domains. Such self-referential agency shall be called ‘self-effectivity’ in this article. In a second step, I will use this phenomenological description to understand the impairments of self-determination in addiction. While addiction does not necessarily imply a basic lack of control over one’s (...) life, this can well be the case during certain periods of time or in special situations. Addiction is herein described as an embodied custom—highly effective with respect to changing one’s lived experience—which is learned and developed while becoming addicted. Such a repeatedly performed custom, called a ‘psychotropic technique’, implies deep changes in one’s personal identity and alters an agent’s ‘self-effectivity’. In the closing section, I discuss the possible implications of a phenomenological approach to personal responsibility. (shrink)

In this paper phenomenological descriptions of the experiential structures of suicidality and of self-determined behaviour are given; an understanding of the possible scopes and forms of lived self-determination in suicidal mental life is offered. Two possible limits of lived self-determination are described: suicide is always experienced as minimally self-determined, because it is the last active and effective behaviour, even in blackest despair; suicide can never be experienced as fully self-determined, even if valued as the authentic thing to do, because no (...) retrospective re-evaluation from some future vantage is possible. The phenomenological descriptions of the possible scope of lived self-determination in suicidality, presented in this paper, should prove to be extremely helpful in three different fields of interest: (a) ethical debates regarding the pros and cons of autonomous or heteronomous suicide; (b) clinical day-to-day practice with respect to treating suicidal people; (c) people who suffered a suicidal crisis, attempted suicide or lost loved ones through suicides. (155 words). (shrink)

Understanding the mental life of persons with psychosis/schizophrenia has been the crucial challenge of psychiatry since its origins, both for scientific models as well as for every therapeutic encounter between persons with and without psychosis/schizophrenia. Nonetheless, a preliminary understanding is always the first step of phenomenological as well as other qualitative research methods addressing persons with psychotic experiences in their life-world. In contrast to Rashed's assertions, in order to achieve such understanding, phenomenological psychopathologists need not necessarily adopt the transcendental-phenomenological attitude, (...) which, however, is often required if performing phenomenological philosophy. Additionally, in the course of these scientific endeavors, differences between persons with psychosis/schizophrenia and so-called normal people seem to have a methodological function and value driving the scientist in her enterprise. Yet, these differences do not extend to ethical dimensions, and therefore, do not by any means touch ethical equality. (shrink)

This study examines social desirability bias in the context of ethical decision-making by accountants. It hypothesizes a negative relation between social desirability bias and ethical evaluation. It also predicts an interaction effect between religiousness and gender on social desirability bias. An experiment using five general business vignettes was carried out on 121 accountants (63 males and 58 females). The results show that social desirability bias is higher (lower) when the situation encountered is more (less) unethical. The bias has religiousness and (...) gender main effects as well as an interaction effect between these two independent variables. Women who were more religious recorded the highest bias scores relative to less religious women and men regardless of their religiousness. (shrink)

The challenges of the Anthropocene are growing ever more complex and uncertain, underpinned by the emergence of systemic risks. At the same time, the landscape of risk governance has become compartmentalised and siloed, characterized by non-overlapping activities, competing scientific discourses, and distinct responsibilities distributed across diverse public and private bodies. Operating across scales and disciplines, actors tend to work in silos which constitute critical gaps within the interface of science, policy, and practice. Yet, increasingly complex and ‘wicked’ problems require holistic (...) solutions, multi-scalar communication, coordination, collaboration, data interoperability, funding, and stakeholder engagement. To address these problems in a real-world context, we present the Risk-Tandem framework for bridging theory and practice; to guide and structure the integration of disaster risk management (DRM), climate change adaptation (CCA) and systemic risk management through a process of transdisciplinary knowledge co-production. Advancing the frontiers of knowledge in this regard, The Risk-Tandem framework combines risk management approaches and tools with iterative co-production processes as a cornerstone of its implementation, in efforts to promote the co-design of fit-for-purpose solutions, methods and approaches contributing toward strengthened risk governance alongside stakeholders. The paper outlines how the framework is developed, applied, and further refined within selected case study regions, including Denmark, Germany, Italy and the Danube Region. (shrink)

This article develops a conceptual pattern of the reasons and scope of business responsibility for modern slavery. It introduces modern slavery as either relation or structure and designs an understanding of a broad and a narrow model of business responsibility, consisting of business power, internal and external realms of business conduct and public and private roles of companies. Crossing the two models of modern slavery with the two models of business responsibility, the article carves out the strengths and limits of (...) their junctions. The continuous pendulum between the junctions allows to discuss how and why companies can be responsible for modern slavery. It thus contributes analytically, practically and normatively to tackling modern slavery. (shrink)

This book aims to contribute to our understanding of one of the most pressing issues of modern international law: the relationship between the international legal order on the one hand and the domestic legal orders of over 190 sovereign states on the other handThe traditional and dominant understanding of this relationship is that there exists a strict separation between the international legal order and domestic legal orders. Processes of legal globalisation and internationalisation have made this relationship much more complex. Legal (...) authority has shifted away from the state in both vertical and horizontal directions. Forced by the pressures of interdependence, states have allowed international bodies to oversee and sometimes even implement and enforce domestic legislation. At the same time, private persons are more and more drawn into an internationalized order. Increasing cross-border flows of services, goods and capital, mobility, and communication have further undermined any stable notion of what is national and what is international.This book offers several partly complementary and partly competing perspectives that allow us understand and make sense of the complex interaction between the international and domestic sphere. (shrink)