PurposeTo evaluate the relationship between intraocular straylight perception and: (i) contrast sensitivity (CS), (ii) halo size, and (iii) hazard recognition distance, in the presence and absence of glare.Subjects and methodsParticipants were 15 (5 female) ophthalmologically healthy adults, aged 54.6–80.6 (median: 67.2) years. Intraocular straylight (log s) was measured using a straylight meter (C-Quant; Oculus GmbH, Wetzlar, Germany). CS with glare was measured clinically using the Optovist I device (Vistec Inc., Olching, Germany) and also within a driving simulator using Landolt Cs. (...) These were presented under both static or dynamic viewing conditions, and either with or without glare. Hazard detection distance was measured for simulated obstacles of varying contrast. For this, the participant was required to maintain a speed of 60 km/h within a custom-built nighttime driving simulator. Glare was simulated by LED arrays, moved by cable robots to mimic an oncoming car’s headlights. Halo size (“halometry”) was measured by moving Landolt Cs outward originating from the center of a static glare source. The outcome measure from “halometry” was the radius of the halo (angular extent, in degrees visual angle).ResultsThe correlation between intraocular straylight perception, log s, and hazard recognition distance under glare was poor for the low contrast obstacles (leading/subdominant eye: r = 0.27/r = 0.34). Conversely, log CS measured with glare strongly predicted hazard recognition distances under glare. This was true both when log CS was measured using a clinical device (Optovist I: r = 0.93) and within the driving simulator, under static (r = 0.69) and dynamic (r = 0.61) conditions, and also with “halometry” (r = 0.70). Glare reduced log CS and hazard recognition distance for almost all visual function parameters.ConclusionIntraocular straylight was a poor predictor of visual function and driving performance within this experiment. Conversely, CS was a strong predictor of both hazard recognition and halo extent. The presence of glare and motion lead to a degradation of CS in a driving simulator. Future studies are necessary to evaluate the effectiveness of all above-mentioned vision-related parameters for predicting fitness to drive under real-life conditions. (shrink)

Hastings Center Report, Volume 51, Issue 5, Page 30-41, September‐October 2021.

This article establishes the benefits of applying renewable energy and analyzes the main difficulties that have stood in the way of more widely successful renewable energy for rural areas in the developing world and discusses why outcomes from these technologies fall short. Although there is substantial recognition of technological, economic, institutional, and other supply-side barriers that have generally interfered with success, the household and other stake-holders have been left outside the scope of evaluation. This article first discusses the usefulness of (...) renewable energy for encouraging sustainability in rural, poor areas, analyzes barriers that have often interfered with the promotion and delivery of expected outputs of installed modern energy technology in remote communities, and finally presents findings from a survey on the actual performance state of the renewable energy technology and degree of satisfaction with it. (shrink)

"As novelist and poet Andrei Codrescu points out in the essay that accompanies this selection of photographs from the Getty Museum's collection, Evans's photographs are the work of an artist whose temperament was distinctly at odds with Beals's impassioned rhetoric. Evans's photographs of Cuba were made by a young, still maturing artist who - as Codrescu argues - was just beginning to combine his early, formalist aesthetic with the social concerns that would figure prominently in his later work."--Jacket.

Job characteristics play an essential role for the well-being of employees. When job characteristics are unfavorable, the experienced exchange relationship with one’s supervisor may become relevant to weaken negative consequences. We conducted a diary study over ten consecutive working days with 112 academics. Based on conservation of resources theory, we assumed that daily LMX constitutes a resource for employees that moderates the link between job characteristics and job satisfaction as well as emotional exhaustion. Additionally, we proposed lagged-effects of morning job (...) characteristics and LMX on next-day morning job satisfaction and emotional exhaustion. Findings from hierarchical linear modeling demonstrated that on the day-level higher perceived levels of job control in the morning were associated with higher perceived job satisfaction and lower perceived emotional exhaustion in the afternoon. The experience of increased time pressure in the morning was negatively related to perceived day-level afternoon job satisfaction and positively to perceived day-level afternoon emotional exhaustion. Within one day, perceived LMX moderated the relationship between perceived job control and perceived job satisfaction in the afternoon. We only found lagged effects of the interaction between afternoon job control and afternoon LMX on next-day morning job satisfaction. We discuss daily LMX as a resource for employees both within one day and from day-to day, along with future research directions on the buffering role of LMX. (shrink)

For a very long time, the scientific and animal welfare communities have faced each other across a seemingly unbridgeable divide. Each side tends to view the other in simplistic and distorted terms. Animal welfare advocates see scientists as, at worst, sadists who enjoy torturing animals, and at best, as self-interested careerists intent on building careers out of publishing more papers and getting more grants, irrespective of the cost to animals. Scientists committed to research see the animal movement as consisting of, (...) at best, ignorant, simple-minded people awash in emotion and sensationalism, and at worst, violent and dangerous fanatics who claim to care for animals but are indifferent to human suffering. (shrink)

We live and thrive in a global society and economy where education and training is essential to a nation’s competitiveness and to the standard of living of its people. Opening the doors of higher or further education beyond the enrollments in elite or select universities has become a greater necessity. This has spawned a movement to develop or expand institutions that are more affordable, accessible, flexible, and tied to business and industry. Take a look at the systems that have been (...) developed in 20 countries worldwide that were designed to meet these needs. Historical development of each system, as well as the strategies for addressing national mandates for preparing a workforce for the global economy, are described throughout each chapter. (shrink)

A workshop in Philosophy for Children was offered this summer at Viterbo College with generous support from the Wisconsin Humanities Committee. Dr. Ronald Reed and the author conducted the week long workshop. The workshop was promoted primarily by distribution of brochures to regional schools. Four questions were addressed in the brochure: What is Philosophy for Children?, How will Philosophy for Children work in your classroom?, Why teach Philosophy for Children?, and Who should attend?. This approach was taken as part of (...) an effort at making teachers, principals and parents informed about the basic nature fo a Philosophy for Children program. (shrink)

: New genetic technologies continue to emerge that allow us to control the genetic endowment of future children. Increasingly the claim is made that it is morally "irresponsible" for parents to fail to use such technologies when they know their possible children are at risk for a serious genetic disorder. We believe such charges are often unwarranted. Our goal in this article is to offer a careful conceptual analysis of the language of irresponsibility in an effort to encourage more care (...) in its use. Two of our more important sub-claims are: A fair judgment of genetic irresponsibility necessarily requires a thick background description of the specific reproductive choice; and there is no necessary connection between an act's being morally wrong and its being irresponsible. These are distinct judgments requiring distinct justifications. (shrink)

In 2006, Shinya Yamanaka and colleagues discovered how to reprogram terminally differentiated somatic cells to a pluripotent stem cell state. The resulting induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) made a paradigm shift in the field, further nailing down the disproval of the long‐held dogma that differentiation is unidirectional. The prospect of using iPSCs for patient‐specific cell‐based therapies has been enticing. This promise, however, has been questioned in the last two years as several studies demonstrated intrinsic epigenetic and genomic anomalies in these (...) cells. Here, we not only review the recent critical studies addressing the genome integrity during the reprogramming process, but speculate about the underlying mechanisms that could create de novo genome damage in iPSCs. Finally, we discuss how much an elevated mutation load really matters considering the safety of future therapies with cells heavily cultured in vitro. (shrink)

BackgroundIn many Western countries like Germany, the social integration of children with an immigrant background has become an urgent social tasks. The probability of them living in high-risk environments and being disadvantaged regarding health and education-related variables is still relatively higher. Yet, promoting language acquisition is not the only relevant factor for their social integration, but also the support of earlier developmental processes associated with adequate early parenting in their first months of life. The Emotional Availability Scales measure the quality (...) of caregiver-child-interactions as an indicator of the quality of their relationship and thus of such early parenting, focusing on mutual and emotional aspects of their interaction.MethodThis pilot study examined in a randomized controlled trial the effects of the prevention project First Steps regarding the hypothesis that the Emotional Availability improved to a greater extent in “difficult-to-reach” immigrant mother-child dyads in a psychoanalytically oriented early intervention compared to a usual care intervention offered by paraprofessionals with an immigrant background. A sample of N = 118 immigrant women in Germany from 37 different countries and their children was compared with regard to the parental EA-dimensions sensitivity, structuring, non-intrusiveness and non-hostility and the child dimensions responsiveness to and involvement of the caregiver in the pre-post RCT design.Results and ConclusionDifferent from what was expected, repeated ANOVAs revealed no significant pre-post group differences for the parental dimensions. For the child dimensions the effect of time of measurement was highly significant, which can be interpreted as mostly natural developmental effects. Still, on the level of simple main effects for each intervention, only in the FIRST STEPS groups child responsiveness significantly improved. When controlled for confounding variables, a significant interaction effect for maternal sensitivity in favor of the FIRST STEPS intervention was found. The systematic group differences indicate that the more extensive and professional intervention, focusing on the individual needs of the participants, is more suitable to support the quality of the mother-child-relationship amongst immigrant mother-child dyads than usual care. The results are discussed taking into account the context of the maternal migration process and potential maternal traumatization.Clinical Trial Registration[https://clinicaltrials.gov], identifier [DRKS00004632]. (shrink)

The “reproductive suppression hypothesis” states that the strong desire of adolescent girls in our culture to control their weight may reflect the operation of an adaptive mechanism by which ancestral women controlled the timing of their sexual maturation and hence first reproduction, in response to cues about the probable success of reproduction in the current situation. We develop a model based on this hypothesis and explore its behavior and evolutionary and psychological implications across a range of parameter values. We use (...) the process of model development to identify assumptions implicit in the reproductive suppression hypothesis and variables that need to be measured in order to investigate it more fully. In addition, because costs were probably associated with weight control, an important part of this analysis is the specification of situations in which the benefits of adaptive adjustment of the maturation schedule could have outweighed the costs of achieving that adjustment by slowing adolescent weight gain. (shrink)

Existe un auge en la colocación de implantes dentales, dispositivos que mejoran la salud del paciente y restauran su estética y función, lo cual motivó la realización de este trabajo con el objetivo de argumentar la importancia del servicio de implantes dentales en Camagüey desde el enfoque de ciencia, tecnología y sociedad. Cuba es el único país que tiene un servicio de implantología social, que se ha convertido en una herramienta complementaria de los tratamientos protésicos. Desde 2006 se desarrolla en (...) la provincia para mejorar la calidad de vida de la población. There is a huge tendency to put dental implants, devices that increase the patient's health and restore his esthetic and function, and this was the motivation to carry out this study with the aim of supporting the importance of dental implant services from a science technology and society focus. Cuba is the only country that has a service of social implantology, which has become a complementary tool in prosthetic treatments. This has been taking place since 2006 to improve the quality of life of the population. (shrink)

This Handbook considers Christian thought in the long nineteenth century, encompassing not only doctrine and theology, but also Christianity's mutual influence on literature and the arts, political and economic thought, and the natural and social sciences.

Innovation, Wachstum und Optimierung sind normative Grundlagen des Designs, der Technologie, der Wirtschaft, der Gesellschaft und der Kultur. Unter dem Vorzeichen der Digitalisierung zeichnen sich neue ›Optima‹ ab, in denen Menschen zum Bestandteil entgrenzter Netzwerkstrukturen werden. Die in Würzburg entstandenen Aufsätze des vorliegenden Bandes gehen ambivalenten Aspekten dieser Entwicklung mit wissenschaftlichen und gestalterischen Methoden nach. Der Gastbeitrag geht der Frage nach, was dialektisches Denken in Diskurs und Praxis der Gestaltung bedeutet.

I want to thank Marybeth Carlson and Rudolf Dekker. Their careful readings of the article have contributed much to the form and content of the article.

Chronic pain is a common disorder with enormous sociomedical importance. A major part of primary and secondary costs of illness is caused by the various pain syndromes. Nociception – the sensory perception of a painful stimulus – is a complex process relying on an intricate system of anatomical, neurophysiological and biochemical networks. This applies even more so to pain – the state of experiencing a nociceptive event, of interpreting it in terms of meaning for the affected individual and of suffering (...) a range of emotions it elicits. This intricacy renders it obvious, that the empirical medical sciences alone cannot explain all aspects of pain. Hence, it has also become a focus of phenomenological research. One aspect of these investigations is the interaction of pain and the perception of the lived body’s spatiality. The focus of this article will build on these concepts to develop a construct of the alteration of temporality caused by chronic pain and the effects this spells out for the affected subject. To this end, I will primarily draw on Merleau-Ponty’s ideas of the lived body as well as on theories of enactivism and embodiment. I will also point out parallels to neuroscientific data, thereby demonstrating the proximity of phenomenology and neuroscience. A possible partial solution to the pain dilemma may be derived from psychology: techniques relying on cognitive behavioural intervention, awareness training, and existential analysis may provide alleviation to patients suffering from chronic pain. (shrink)

High profile breaches of data security in government and other organizations are becoming an increasing concern amongst members of the public. Academic researchers have rarely discussed data security issues as they affect research, and this is especially the case for qualitative social researchers, who are sometimes disinclined to technical solutions. This paper describes 14 guidelines developed to help qualitative researchers improve the security of their digitally-created and stored data. We developed these procedures after the theft of a laptop computer containing (...) highly sensitive data from the home of a fieldworker. This paper introduces the ‘principle of proliferation’: digitally-created and stored files (like voice recordings of interviews and text files of their transcriptions) tend to proliferate during the course of a research project by virtue of fact that they can and are copied and shared as research progresses from data collection through to analysis and archive. Our guidelines were designed as concrete strategies that researchers embarking on a project can employ, particularly researchers working in teams, to accommodate this proliferation and reduce it where possible. (shrink)

Background: The aim of this study was to investigate associations between demographic and clinical variables and duration of untreated psychosis (DUP) in a sample of cases of psychosis across an adult early intervention in psychosis service and a child and adolescent community team. Method: Cross-sectional baseline data for cases of psychosis across the two teams on the caseload at a given time point were collected, including age of onset, gender, ethnicity, referral route, and DUP. Results: The median DUP across the (...) entire sample was 91 days, while those patients with initial treatment for psychosis from the child and adolescent team had a median DUP of 69 days. Using multiple linear regression, there were two variables that showed a significant association with DUP: referral route (p < .001), and age of onset, with earlier age of onset associated with shorter DUP (p = .015). Conclusion: These findings are discussed in relation to possible explanatory factors, with particular focus on service-level variables and pathways to care. It is suggested that the involvement of child and adolescent teams is vital to the work of early intervention in psychosis services. (shrink)

“The potential dangers of ignoring ethical issues exist for all business computer professionals”. Drs Langford and Wusteman, of the Computing Laboratory, The University, Canterbury, Kent CT2 7NF, reflect on their experience of teaching ethics to computer scientists and on the problems to be encountered in this new field of applied ethics.

In the contemporary world, voices are caught up in fundamentally different realms of discourse, practice, and culture: between sounding and nonsounding, material and nonmaterial, literal and metaphorical. In The Voice as Something More, Martha Feldman and Judith T. Zeitlin tackle these paradoxes with a bold and rigorous collection of essays that look at voice as both object of desire and material object. Using Mladen Dolar’s influential A Voice and Nothing More as a reference point, The Voice as Something More (...) reorients Dolar’s psychoanalytic analysis around the material dimensions of voices—their physicality and timbre, the fleshiness of their mechanisms, the veils that hide them, and the devices that enhance and distort them. Throughout, the essays put the body back in voice. Ending with a new essay by Dolar that offers reflections on these vocal aesthetics and paradoxes, this authoritative, multidisciplinary collection, ranging from Europe and the Americas to East Asia, from classics and music to film and literature, will serve as an essential entry point for scholars and students who are thinking toward materiality. (shrink)