THE AMERICAN DREAM INCLUDES OWNING A HOME, ANDTHE BIGGER THE better. Christian responses to homelessness and housing vary. Some Christian organizations focus on fixing the person and the behaviors that contribute to homelessness. Others promote home ownership for low-income households. Employing aspects of Traci West's feminist liberationist ethical methodology, I will assess how these approaches buy into our culture's dominant ideology on housing or offer prophetic disruption. Then I will outline an advocacy approach that addresses the multiple causes of homelessness (...) and prophetically aims to make a home for all in God's compassionate community. (shrink)

The fifth edition of this classic introduction to Christian ethics via the case method approach, utilizing case studies of contemporary ethical issues.

The relationship between construal and redundancy has not been previously explored empirically. Russian aspect allows speakers to construe situations as either Perfective or Imperfective, but it is not clear to what extent aspect is determined by context and therefore redundant. We investigate the relationship between redundancy and open construal by surveying 501 native Russian speakers who rated the acceptability of both Perfective and Imperfective verb forms in complete extensive authentic contexts. We find that aspect is largely redundant in 81% of (...) uses, and in 17% of contexts aspect is relatively open to construal. We contend that anchoring in redundant contexts likely facilitates the independence of construal in contexts with less redundancy. However further research is needed to discover what makes contexts redundant since known cues for aspect are absent in the majority of such contexts. Native speakers are fairly consistent in giving the original aspect high ratings, but less consistent in rating the non-original aspect, indicating potential problems in testing the reactions of speakers to non-authentic data. (shrink)

Recent trends in linguistics and cognitive science reflect an increasing interest to explore the relationship between culture and language on the one hand, and the human mind and body on the other....

This paper defends a direct reference view of names including empty names. The theory says that empty names literally have no meaning and cannot be used to express truths. Names, including empty names, are associated with accompanying descriptions that are implicated in pragmati‐cally imparted truths when empty names are used. This view is defended against several important objections having to do with differences in names, descriptions associated with the names, and considerations of modality. The view is shown to be superior (...) to an alternative theory treating empty names as the “descriptive names” of Kripke and Evans. (shrink)

These two quotations encapsulate stories told on the same day, within hours of one another, to commissioners at an inquest into the sanctity of the itinerant Dominican preacher Vincent Ferrer . Both Katherina Guernezve and Oliverius Bourric had come before the commission in order to testify to Vincent Ferrer's miraculous resurrection of Johannes Guerre, an archer employed by the duke of Brittany. Both told how Guerre had been wounded in a fight with a fellow archer, how he had been tended (...) in the Guernezve household, how Bourric had been summoned to hear the dying man's confession, how Guerre had lost consciousness and died before confessing, and how he had returned to life following a vow to Vincent Ferrer. There are two key differences in their stories, however, apparent in the passages quoted above. First, Katherina Guernezve believed that the priest had left her house after finding Guerre unable to speak. Bourric, the priest, maintained that he was present throughout the drama that ensued. Second, Katherina asserted that she herself had urged bystanders to pray to Vincent Ferrer. Bourric insisted that this prayer had been his alone. These same differences are found in the testimony of other witnesses to the miracle. Women who were present remembered the events along the lines of Katherina's narrative; men's stories followed the priest's. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Fault LinesLaura A. KatersI first meet Shawn in person on the 46th day of his most recent hospitalization. We sit outside of a community hospital on a wooden bench dedicated as a place to “sit, pause, and reflect.” It’s a biting cold November afternoon and I try to keep my shivering at bay by thinking of warm things. Shawn is wearing only a thin hospital gown and socks, but (...) the cold doesn’t seem to bother him. I’m his self-appointed chaperone so he can sit outside and vape.“I hope you don’t think you’re doing me a favor,” he says. “I should be able to do this in my room.”What Shawn doesn’t realize is that I’ve turned my day upside down for him and this vape. He is off balance and at high risk for falls and so he can’t leave his room without someone watching him. I yearned to do something human for Shawn and so I spent hours chasing for permission from his primary medical team. We etch out an agreement that just because I am offering to take Shawn outside, he shouldn’t expect the same from others.Shawn is gaunt and toxic appearing, and visitors stare at us as they enter the hospital with one patron mouthing to me, “Are you alright?” as if I’m there against my will, but I see what they see. I watch as a stringy mess of brown hair falls away from his upturned face; his eyes are closed against the sunlight. I’m overwhelmed by the odor of urine and feces and staleness because he refuses to let anyone help him bathe. We sit in an awkward silence initially, but nothing about Shawn is straightforward. After yet another prolonged hospital admission, he’s already made the clearest decision of his life. He’s 32 years old.I learn that Shawn was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease, an inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), only two years prior. Such were the ravages of his illness and its lack of response to conventional medications and treatment modalities that he lost sight of himself, literally. His body morphed from strong and athletic to cachectic, his skin turned translucent. The first surgery after his diagnosis was an emergent one for a perforated bowel that nearly killed him and was rife with complications. Afterward, Shawn was frequently admitted to various hospitals with complex abdominal pain, followed by more surgeries.This admission is different, however, because Shawn also has an abdominal infection so severe that it limits his ability to eat or drink. The nurses placed a peripherally inserted central catheter, or PICC line, which allows for intravenous delivery of nutrition and fluids, and he is made terminally NPO. Nothing by mouth.Shawn’s abdominal infection also coincides with terrific pain that is never adequately alleviated. One night, out of a desperate attempt to momentarily escape his illness and reality, Shawn crushed the opioids he is given every few hours, mixed them with tap water, and injected them directly into his PICC line. He later admitted to doing this for years every time he had a PICC or IV access outside the hospital, which was often. Unbeknownst to him was that the nondigestible parts of the pills such as talc and cellulose—the bits that hold the pills together—end up in the veins as wells. These fragments travel to the lungs where they lodge in the alveoli and create an irreversible condition called “excipient lung disease,” leading to pulmonary hypertension, inflammation, and early mortality. Shawn had experienced increasing shortness of breath over the last year, and ground glass opacities on his chest [End Page 26] CT-imaging could reflect this rare phenomenon. Most notable, however, was how upset he became that no one warned him that injecting crushed pills into his PICC line could result in such damage.“You see how desperate I’ve become,” he earnestly told his medical team. “Why wouldn’t you help me protect myself?”From what I know, it’s evident that Shawn needs a PICC line to survive outside the hospital, yet because of his misuse of the... (shrink)

Volume 19, Issue 7, July 2019, Page 59-61.

Strategies for Successful Animal Shelters is the first book to assess the relationship between shelter traits, activities and critical outcome variables, such as live release or save rates. This book provides a data-based evaluation of shelter processes and practices with explicit recommendations for improved shelter activities. Using a survey of licensed animal shelters, case studies, and data on state inspections, complaints, and save rates, this book provides an assessment of the activities, processes, and procedures that are most likely to lead (...) to positive outcomes for a variety of animal shelters. The book also contributes to community debate around animal sheltering and provides best practices, methods and means to assess local shelters to ensure the highest level of animal welfare. It is a valuable resource for animal shelter professionals and rescue groups, as well as students in disciplines such as animal science, animal welfare and shelter medicine."--Back cover. (shrink)

Previous studies have shown that multiple reference frames are available and compete for selection during the use of spatial terms such as “above.” However, the mechanisms that underlie the selection process are poorly understood. In the current paper we present two experiments and a comparison of three computational models of selection to shed further light on the nature of reference frame selection. The three models are drawn from different areas of human cognition, and we assess whether they may be applied (...) to a reference frame selection by examining their ability to account for both existing and new empirical data comprising acceptance rates, response times, and response time distributions. These three models are the competitive shunting model, the leaky competing accumulator model, and a lexical selection model. Model simulations show that only the LCA model satisfactorily accounts for the empirical observations. The key properties of this model that seem to drive its success are its bounded linear activation function, its number and type of processing stages, and its use of decay. Uncovering these critical properties has important implications for our understanding not only of spatial term use, in particular, but also of conflict and selection in human cognition more generally. (shrink)

Two central assumptions of current models of language acquisition were addressed in this study: (1) knowledge of linguistic structure is "mapped onto" earlier forms of non-linguistic knowledge; and (2) acquiring a language involves a continuous learning sequence from early gestural communication to linguistic expression. The acquisition of the first and second person pronouns ME and YOU was investigated in a longitudinal study of two deaf children of deaf parents learning American Sign Language (ASL) as a first language. Personal pronouns in (...) ASL are formed by pointing directly to the addressee (YOU) or self (I or ME), rather than by arbitrary symbols. Thus, personal pronouns in ASL resemble paralinguistic gestures that commonly accompany speech and are used prelinguistically by both hearing and deaf children beginning around 9 months. This provides a means for investigating the transition from prelinguistic gestural to linguistic expression when both gesture and language reside in the same modality.\nThe results indicate that deaf children acquired knowledge of personal pronouns over a period of time, displaying errors similar to those of hearing children despite the transparency of the pointing gestures. The children initially (ages 10 and 12 months) pointed to persons, objects, and locations. Both children then exhibited a long avoidance period, during which one function of the pointing gesture (pointing to self and others) dropped out completely. During this period their language and cognitive development were otherwise entirely normal, and they continued to use other types of pointing (e.g., to objects). When pointing to self and others returned, it was marked with errors typical of hearing children; one child exhibited consistent pronoun reversal errors, thinking the YOU point referred to herself, while the other child exhibited reversal errors inconsistently. Evidence from experimental tasks conducted with the first child revealed that pronoun errors occurred in comprehension as well. Full control of the ME and YOU pronouns was not achieved until 25-27 months, around the same time when hearing children master these forms. Thus, the study provides evidence for a discontinuity in the child's transition from prelinguistic to linguistic communication. It is argued that aspects of linguistic structure and its acquisition appear to involve distinct, language-specific knowledge. (shrink)

: Although "brain death" and the dead donor rule—i.e., patients must not be killed by organ retrieval—have been clinically and legally accepted in the U.S. as prerequisites to organ removal, there is little data about public attitudes and beliefs concerning these matters. To examine the public attitudes and beliefs about the determination of death and its relationship to organ transplantation, 1351 Ohio residents ≥18 years were randomly selected and surveyed using random digit dialing (RDD) sample frames. The RDD telephone survey (...) was conducted using computer-assisted telephone interviews. The survey instrument was developed from information provided by 12 focus groups and a pilot study of the questionnaire. Three scenarios based on hypothetical patients were presented: "brain dead," in a coma, or in a persistent vegetative state (PVS). Respondents provided personal assessments of whether the patient in each scenario was dead and their willingness to donate that patient's organs in these circumstances. More than 98 percent of respondents had heard of the term "brain death," but only one-third (33.7%) believed that someone who was "brain dead" was legally dead. The majority of respondents (86.2%) identified the "brain-dead" patient in the first scenario as dead, 57.2 percent identified the patient in a coma as dead (Scenario 2), and 34.1 percent identified the patient in a PVS as dead (Scenario 3). Nearly one-third (33.5%) were willing to donate the organs of patients they classified as alive for at least one scenario, in seeming violation of the dead donor rule. Most respondents were not willing to violate the dead donor rule, although a substantial minority was. However, the majority of respondents were unaware, misinformed, or held beliefs that were not congruent with current definitions of "brain death." This study highlights the need for more public dialogue and education about "brain death" and organ donation. (shrink)

La autora de esta obra desarrolla un estudio en el que se analizan los derechos del individuo en contraposición con los del profesional de las ciencias de la vida, parte de los preceptos de la bioética, que ofrece el sustento ético-teórico, y el Derecho, que constituye el sistema normativo. Contempla temas referentes a cuestiones bioéticas y jurídicas relacionadas con el tratamiento y manipulación del embrión, apropiación indebida de material genético, responsabilidad civil en la transmisión de enfermedades congénitas y genéticas derivadas (...) de la reproducción asistida, anencefalia, clonación, entre otros aspectos relacionados con el genoma humano. (shrink)

There are both externalist and internalist theories of the phenomenal content of conscious experiences. Externalists like Dretske and Tye treat the phenomenal content of conscious states as representations of external properties. Internalists think that phenomenal conscious states are reducible to electrochemical states of the brain in the style of the type-type identity theory. In this paper, we side with the representationalists and visit a dispute between them over the test case of Swampman. Does Swampman have conscious phenomenal states or not? (...) Dretske and Tye disagree on this issue. We try to settle the dispute in favor of Dretske's theory. (shrink)

In this article we apply one of the key concepts in cognitive linguistics, the radial category, to inflectional morphology. We advance the Paradigm Structure Hypothesis, arguing that inflectional paradigms are radial categories with internal structure primarily motivated by semantic relationships of markedness and prototypicality. It is possible to construct an expected structure for a verbal paradigm, facilitating an empirical test for our hypothesis. Data tracking an on-going morphological change in Russian documents the distribution of conservative vs. innovative forms across the (...) cells of the verbal paradigm. A logistic regression model that takes into account the sources of variation (the frequencies of individual verbs and paradigm slots, and individual verb preferences) shows that the language change is implemented differently across the paradigm forms, confirming the expected structure. In addition to markedness and prototypicality, we investigate the impact of frequency and show that there is a good, albeit not perfect match between the expected hierarchy and frequency. We conclude that the diachronic change analyzed in this article gives evidence for the structure of paradigms modeled on the radial category. (shrink)

In the dominant metaphor for organ transplantation, the organ is the ultimate gift, the dying donor's life‐giving bequest, conveyed and made possible by a heroic transplant team. The metaphor encourages donation and enforces recipients’ compliance with post‐transplant treatment. It is also inaccurate and sometimes deeply damaging for the recipient.

Medical advances in transplantation techniques have driven an exponential increase in the demand for transplantable organs. Unfortunately, policy efforts to bolster the organ supply have been less than effective, failing to provide a stopgap for ever-increasing numbers of patients who await organ transplantation. The number of registrations on waiting lists exceeded 65,245 in early 1999, a 325% increase over the 20,000 that existed 11 years earlier in 1988. Regrettably, more than 4,000 patients die each year while awaiting transplantation.

Background Intensivists must provide enough analgesia and sedation to ensure dying patients receive good palliative care. However, if it is perceived that too much is given, they risk prosecution for committing euthanasia. The goal of this study is to develop consensus guidelines on analgesia and sedation in dying intensive care unit patients that help distinguish palliative care from euthanasia. Methods Using the Delphi technique, panelists rated levels of agreement with statements describing how analgesics and sedatives should be given to dying (...) ICU patients and how palliative care should be distinguished from euthanasia. Participants were drawn from 3 panels: 1) Canadian Academic Adult Intensive Care Fellowship program directors and Intensive Care division chiefs (N = 9); 2) Deputy chief provincial coroners (N = 5); 3) Validation panel of Intensivists attending the Canadian Critical Care Trials Group meeting (N = 12). Results After three Delphi rounds, consensus was achieved on 16 statements encompassing the role of palliative care in the intensive care unit, the management of pain and suffering, current areas of controversy, and ways of improving palliative care in the ICU. Conclusion Consensus guidelines were developed to guide the administration of analgesics and sedatives to dying ICU patients and to help distinguish palliative care from euthanasia. (shrink)

This article examines a genetic ancestry testing program called the Living History Project that was jointly organized by a nonprofit educational institute and a for-profit genealogy company in South Africa. It charts the precise mechanisms by which the LHP sought to shape a postapartheid genome through antiracist commitments aimed at contesting histories of colonial and apartheid rule in varied ways. In particular, it focuses on several tensions that emerged within three modes of material-discursive practice within the production of the LHP: (...) subject recruitment, informed consent, and participant reflections. In the end, it argues that several contradictory tensions were central to the making of the LHP’s postapartheid genome and that it should be understood as nonracial rather than antiracist. (shrink)

I propose that human experience of matter provides the source domain for the metaphor that motivates the grammatical category of aspect in Russian. This model is a version of the universal TIME IS SPACE metaphor, according to which SITUATIONS ARE MATERIAL ENTITIES, and, more specifically, PERFECTIVE IS A DISCRETE SOLID OBJECT versus IMPERFECTIVE IS A FLUID SUBSTANCE. The contrast of discrete solid objects with fluid substances reveals a rich array of over a dozen properties; the isomorphism observed between those properties (...) and the complex uses of aspect in Russian is compelling. This model presents a more finely articulated account of Russian aspect than feature analysis can achieve. Although some of these properties overlap significantly with the count versus mass distinction often associated with aspect, the properties provide more detail and ground the metaphor to concrete experience. Properties of matter can be divided into three groups: inherent properties such as edges, shape, and integrity (which correspond to inherent situation aspect); interactional properties such as juxtaposition, dynamism, and salience (which correspond to discourse phenomena of aspect); and human interactional properties such as graspability and impact (which correspond to pragmatic phenomena of aspect). The interactional and human interactional properties can be used to motivate subjective construal, whereas the inherent properties serve as default motivators. The model will be demonstrated in detail using Russian data, followed by a survey comparing Russian with the other Slavic languages, which will show that deviations consist of either non-implementation of a given property, or the implementation of an inherent (default) property in place of an interactional or human interactional property. This model will be contrasted with a brief discussion of a selection of non-Slavic languages. The specific metaphor in this model does not apply beyond Slavic, but perhaps it will encourage investigation into the source domain of aspect in other languages. There appears to be a correlation between the relatively heavy morphological investment Slavic languages make in nominal individuation and the individuation of situations presented in this metaphorical model. (shrink)

Through examination of a case study of Liberian refugee participation in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Liberia, this article highlights concerns about the lack of opportunity for refugee participation in peacebuilding generally. The experience of the authors working with refugees in the Buduburam Settlement near Accra, Ghana, demonstrates the overwhelming desire of refugees to participate in the processes that directly impact their lives, as well as the future of their home and host countries. The article concludes with the suggestion (...) that the Liberian Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s work with refugees can serve as a model of how refugee participation can be enhanced in similar processes in the future. (shrink)

: This paper reviews current and suggested policies designed to increase organ donation in the United States and indicates the problems inherent to these approaches for increasing organ donation by African Americans. Data from a population-based study assessing attitudes and beliefs about organ donation among white and African-American respondents are presented and discussed. We pose the question of whether it is reasonable to maintain the existing system or whether we should institute a system that uses policies based on the attitudes (...) and beliefs of a minority group that is in greater need than the majority. In light of the discussion, we suggest that the current policies guiding the organ procurement system are not adequate to address existing concerns within the African-American community and that a different set of assumptions may be needed to drive organ procurement policy. (shrink)

We propose the “grammatical profile” as a means of probing the aspectual behavior of verbs. A grammatical profile is the relative frequency distribution of the inflected forms of a word in a corpus. The grammatical profiles of Russian verbs provide data on two crucial issues: a) the overall relationship between perfective and imperfective verbs and b) the identification of verbs that characterize various intersections of aspect, tense and mood (TAM) with lexical classes. There is a long-standing debate over whether Russian (...) aspectual “pairs” are formed only via suffixation (the Isacenko hypothesis) or whether they are formed via both suffixation and prefixation (the traditional view). We test the Isacenko hypothesis using data on the corpus frequency of inflected forms of verbs. We find that the behavior of perfective and imperfective verbs is the same regardless of whether the aspectual relationship is marked by prefixes or suffixes; our finding thus supports the traditional view. Introspective descriptions of Russian aspect have often connected the use of particular inflectional forms with certain uses of aspect; for example, the use of imperative forms with the imperfective aspect to produce expressions that are very polite. Grammatical profiles make it possible to identify verbs that behave as outliers, presenting unusually large proportions of usage in parts of the paradigm. This analysis both gives substance to and extends previous introspective descriptions by identifying the verbs most involved in certain TAM-category interactions. On a methodological level, this study contributes to current discussions on the use of inflected forms vs. lemmas in corpus studies. Newman (Aiming low in linguistics: Low-level generalizations in corpus-based research: National Chiao Tung University, 2008) finds valuable information at the level of the inflectional form, and Gries (forthcoming) argues that inflectional forms do not necessarily provide a better basis for analysis than lemmas. We agree with them that the appropriate level of granularity is determined by both the language and the linguistic phenomenon under analysis. (shrink)

Transplantation experiments have shown that developing metazoan organs carry intrinsic information about their size and shape. Organ and body size are also sensitive to extrinsic cues provided by the environment, such as the availability of nutrients. The genetic and molecular pathways that contribute to animal size and shape are numerous, yet how they cooperate to control growth is mysterious. The recent identification and characterization of several mutations affecting growth in Drosophila melanogaster promises to provide insights. Many of these mutations affect (...) the extrinsic control of animal size; others affect the organ‐intrinsic control of pattern and size. In this review, we summarize the characteristics of some of these mutations and their roles in growth and size control. In addition, we speculate about possible connections between the extrinsic and intrinsic pathways controlling growth and pattern. BioEssays 24:54–64, 2002. © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (shrink)

Gendered barriers to women’s advancement in STEM disciplines are subtle, often the result of gender practices, gender stereotypes, and gendered occupational cultures. Professional socialization into scientific cultures encourages and rewards gender practices that help to maintain gendered barriers. This article focuses more specifically on how individual women scientists’ gender practices potentially sustain gender barriers. Findings based on interview data from thirty women in academic STEM fields reveal that women draw on gendered expectations and norms within their disciplines to discursively distance (...) themselves from other women they perceive as having deviated from such norms and expectations. The types of distancing in which these respondents engage reflect and support gendered structures, cultures, and practices that ultimately disadvantage women and obscure gender inequality. I conclude by discussing the implications of women scientists’ distancing practices for efforts to change the gendered cultures of STEM disciplines. (shrink)

Journal Name: Cognitive Linguistics Issue: Ahead of print.

What insights into Church teaching can be drawn from the biblical account of Abraham and Sarah’s experience with surrogate pregnancy? When Sarah’s maid, Hagar, conceives Abraham’s son Ishmael, negative conse­quences ensue. Hagar’s contempt for Sarah incites Sarah’s jealousy. Sarah’s abuse of Hagar leads Hagar to run away. Abraham is forced to banish Hagar and his son Ismael. These unhappy repercussions arise from the fact that surrogacy violates God’s plan for marriage and for the dignity of the human person. Although reproductive (...) technologies continue to advance, human nature remains the same. The lessons learned from Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Hagar, and Ishmael’s experience with surrogacy can be profitably applied to Church teaching on marriage and reproductive technologies. National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 11.3 (Autumn 2011): 443–451. (shrink)