Much literature surrounding medical technology and adherence posits that technology is a mechanism for social control. This assumes that the medical establishment can take away patients' agency. Although power relationships and social control can play a key role, medical technology can also serve as an agentive tool to be utilized. We (1) offer the alternative framework of Actor Network Theory to view medical technology, (2) discuss the literature on medication adherence and technology, (3) delve into the ramifications of looking at (...) adherence as a network and (4) use Digital Pills as a case study of dispersed agency. (shrink)

Current scholarship on Clearchus’ Lives emphasizes a moralizing historiographical schema of pernicious luxury, in which truphē leads to koros, then to hybris, and finally to destruction. Yet all the fragments used to construct this theory are preserved in one late source, the Deipnosophistae of Athenaeus. A study of the diction and immediate context of these so-called fragments demonstrates that the moral themes are presented in language that is far more likely to originate in the cover text rather than in the (...) Lives. Furthermore, this moralizing schema that binds together acts both effeminate and hybristic – as if the one followed naturally from the other – cannot be found securely attested elsewhere in Greek thought before the Roman Era. Thus we argue that, based on the evidence that survives, it is anachronistic to suggest that Clearchus espoused this principle. In addition, those who study Hellenistic fragments need to scrutinize more carefully the exact phrasing and framework of the Deipnosophistae, and be more wary about Athenaeus’ attribution of contemporary values to his sources. (shrink)

At Quaestiones Graecae 32.298c–d, Plutarch raises the question, τίνες οἰ ειναται παρᾰ Μιλησίος, ‘Who were the Perpetual Sailors among the Milesians?’ he frames the circumstances of his answer using a genitive absolute clause: τν περ Θόαντα κα Δαμασήνορα τυράννων καταλυθέντων. In the absence of any other mention of these men in the extent sources, these words—especially the appellation τυράνων—have caused concern among editors and commentators of Plutarch. In the Teubner edition of 1935 Titchener changes τυράνων to the accusative τυράννους, while (...) Halliday in his Oxford commentary suggests that the word should be deleted as a gloss. Each of these suggested changes to the received text is motivated by the occurrence here of the common idiom οἵ πεί ⁺ Accus. nominis proprii. This expression is, from the time of Polybius on, frequently used by Greek historians to indicate succinctly a group or faction, especially one centred around an important personage. Furthermore, a rather odd periphrastic usage of this phrase has been identified by scholars of Greek grammar as common from at least the Roman period. In this usage, οἱ περί τινα I serves as the equivalent of the simple proper name. Thus τν περ Θόαντα κα Δαμασήνορα may be a periphrasis for Thoas and Damasenor alone. (shrink)

What political, economic, religious, and emotional factors are involved in a person's decision to kill civilians and military personnel through the sacrifice of his or her own life? Data for this research were secondary analyses of interviews with Islamic martyrs, as well as their leaders’ speeches. This investigation into the cultural-psychological explanations for Islamic martyrdom leads to a model explaining a person's decision to carry out the mission as resulting from a combination of four factors: the historical-cultural context, group processes, (...) immediate and anticipated rewards, and mechanisms to eradicate possible doubts and guilt regarding this decision. Compared to existing models, this model is more integrative and focused on the psychological processes involved. (shrink)

Frequency effects are pervasive in studies of language, with higher frequency words being recognized faster than lower frequency words. However, the exact nature of frequency effects has recently been questioned, with some studies finding that contextual information provides a better fit to lexical decision and naming data than word frequency ( Adelman et al., 2006 ). Recent work has cemented the importance of these results by demonstrating that a measure of the semantic diversity of the contexts that a word occurs (...) in provides a powerful measure to account for variability in word recognition latency ( Johns et al., 2012, 2015 ; Jones et al., 2012 ). The goal of the current study is to extend this measure to examine bilingualism and aging, where multiple theories use frequency of occurrence of linguistic constructs as central to accounting for empirical results ( Gollan et al., 2008 ; Ramscar et al., 2014 ). A lexical decision experiment was conducted with four groups of subjects: younger and older monolinguals and bilinguals. Consistent with past results, a semantic diversity variable accounted for the greatest amount of variance in the latency data. In addition, the pattern of fits of semantic diversity across multiple corpora suggests that bilinguals and older adults are more sensitive to semantic diversity information than younger monolinguals. (shrink)

© 2015 Elsevier Inc.Postnatal organogenesis occurs in an immune competent environment and is tightly controlled by interplay between positive and negative regulators. Innate immune cells have beneficial roles in postnatal tissue remodeling, but roles for the adaptive immune system are currently unexplored. Here we show that adaptive immune responses participate in the normal postnatal development of a non-lymphoid epithelial tissue. Since the mammary gland is the only organ developing predominantly after birth, we utilized it as a powerful system to study (...) adaptive immune regulation of organogenesis. We found that antigen-mediated interactions between mammary antigen-presenting cells and interferon-γ -producing CD4+ T helper 1 cells participate in MG postnatal organogenesis as negative regulators, locally orchestrating epithelial rearrangement. IFNγ then affects luminal lineage differentiation. This function of adaptive immune responses, regulating normal development, changes the paradigm for studying players of postnatal organogenesis and provides insights into immune surveillance and cancer transformation. Plaks et al. (shrink)

BackgroundPreprint usage is growing rapidly in the life sciences; however, questions remain on the relative quality of preprints when compared to published articles. An objective dimension of quality that is readily measurable is completeness of reporting, as transparency can improve the reader’s ability to independently interpret data and reproduce findings.MethodsIn this observational study, we initially compared independent samples of articles published in bioRxiv and in PubMed-indexed journals in 2016 using a quality of reporting questionnaire. After that, we performed paired comparisons (...) between preprints from bioRxiv to their own peer-reviewed versions in journals.ResultsPeer-reviewed articles had, on average, higher quality of reporting than preprints, although the difference was small, with absolute differences of 5.0% [95% CI 1.4, 8.6] and 4.7% [95% CI 2.4, 7.0] of reported items in the independent samples and paired sample comparison, respectively. There were larger differences favoring peer-reviewed articles in subjective ratings of how clearly titles and abstracts presented the main findings and how easy it was to locate relevant reporting information. Changes in reporting from preprints to peer-reviewed versions did not correlate with the impact factor of the publication venue or with the time lag from bioRxiv to journal publication.ConclusionsOur results suggest that, on average, publication in a peer-reviewed journal is associated with improvement in quality of reporting. They also show that quality of reporting in preprints in the life sciences is within a similar range as that of peer-reviewed articles, albeit slightly lower on average, supporting the idea that preprints should be considered valid scientific contributions. (shrink)

© 2017. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.We present new observations of the low-mass companion to HD 984 taken with the Gemini Planet Imager as a part of the GPI Exoplanet Survey campaign. Images of HD 984 B were obtained in the J and H bands. Combined with archival epochs from 2012 and 2014, we fit the first orbit to the companion to find an 18 au orbit with a 68% confidence interval between 14 and 28 au, an eccentricity (...) of 0.18 with a 68% confidence interval between 0.05 and 0.47, and an inclination of 119°with a 68% confidence interval between 114°and 125°. To address the considerable spectral covariance in both spectra, we present a method of splitting the spectra into low and high frequencies to analyze the spectral structure at different spatial frequencies with the proper spectral noise correlation. Using the split spectra, we compare them to known spectral types using field brown dwarf and low-mass star spectra and find a best-fit match of a field gravity M6.5 ±1.5 spectral type with a corresponding temperature of K. Photometry of the companion yields a luminosity of log=2.88 ± 0.07 dex with DUSTY models. Mass estimates, again from DUSTY models, find an age-dependent mass of 34 ±1 to 95 ±4 M Jup. These results are consistent with previous measurements of the object. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 41.1 (2003) 135-136 [Access article in PDF] Alastair Hannay. Kierkegaard: A Biography. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Pp. xvi + 496. Cloth, $39.95. In the opening pages of this carefully crafted biography, Hannay states that he has no intention of making matters easy for his reader. By this, he means that "final judgments" will not be forthcoming on a number of key (...) issues surrounding Kierkegaard and his works: the nature of his relation to Christianity, the motives leading him to collide with The Corsair, and the meaning and wisdom of his final attack on Bishop Jakob Mynster and the established Danish Church. This is not to say that Hannay presents Kierkegaard either through rose-colored lenses or through narrowly intellectualist ones. Indeed, one of the book's central virtues is that it combines a philosopher's long-standing interest in Kierkegaard's writings with other guiding passions: a fascination with the sources of human creativity, the twists and turns of nineteenth-century European intellectual history, and the drama of one man's sustained grappling with the meaning of (his) life and the degree to which this meaning could be forged and sustained in his own writing.Hannay raises the curtain on Kierkegaard's life at the intellectual debut of the latter. In his first public appearance before the Student Union at the University of Copenhagen, Kierkegaard took issue with a student colleague's espousal of liberal reform. Hannay sees in Kierkegaard's performance signs of things to come: (1) the attempt to gain the notice and approval of the leading cultural lights, such as Danish literary icon Johan Ludvig Heiberg, and (2) a habit of seeking unity and definition through opposition and controversy. In his subsequent discussion of Fear and Trembling, Hannay notes the inescapable fact that Kierkegaard's philosophic positions are often tailor-made justifications for his private [End Page 135] behavior. The classic example is de Silentio's celebration of Abraham's teleological suspension of the ethical, a celebration which would, as often noted, vindicate equally Isaac's sacrifice by Abraham and Regine's "sacrifice" by Kierkegaard. Already on the occasion of his address to the Student Union, Kierkegaard's thought lines up nicely with his self-interest. But Hannay's work is hardly a reductive exposé. His ear for the varied leitmotifs of the authorship, their development and integration, is unrivaled. Regarding Kierkegaard's first skirmish in the academic arena, Hannay alerts his reader to emergent themes: (1) the valorization of personal unity, and the assertion that such unity must emerge from a life rather than be imposed upon it, and (2) a corresponding respect for the power of lived experience and a critique of any life or movement which is either primarily reactive or abstracted from individual existence. While personal unity remains a desideratum throughout his life, the integrity of lived experience is ultimately placed in question by Kierkegaard's construal of Christianity, which he comes increasingly to see as opposed to the humanism which underlies both Enlightened and Romantic thought.Hannay's biography focuses primarily on the development of Kierkegaard's thought as expressed in his journals and published writings. As such, his biography tends to emphasize the continuity of the authorship over its internal tensions. Hannay views, for example, thehumanistic stance of Climacus's Religiousness A as propadeutic to the radical transcendenceof the godhead embraced by Religiousness B. This is a topic open to dispute, since Kierkegaard himself went out of his way to record, and perhaps exhibit, the offensiveness of Christian demands to (fallen) human nature. Hannay acknowledges Kierkegaard's lifelong ambivalencetoward Christianity, but he does not show how this ambivalence echoes in the authorship. Ifhis Kierkegaard is a less divided character than the original, Hannay nevertheless challenges those who would minimize either (1) the depth of Kierkegaard's breach with humanistic thought or (2) the degree to which "the religious life-view [is] persistently in the offing" (Hannay, "Something on Hermeneutics and Communication in Kierkegaard After All," forthcoming in Kierkegaard and the Word, Poul Houe and Gordon D. Marino... (shrink)

Management practitioners and scholars have worked diligently to identify methods for ethical decision making in international contexts. Theoretical frameworks such as Integrative Social Contracts Theory (Donaldson and Dunfee, 1994, Academy of Management Review 19, 252–284) and more recently the Global Business Citizenship Approach [Wood et al., 2006, Global Business Citizenship: A Transformative Framework for Ethics and Sustainable Capitalism. (M. E. Sharpe, Armonk, NY)] have produced innovations in practice. Despite these advances, many managers have difficulty implementing these theoretical concepts in daily (...) practice. Using the example of recent decisions by internet service providers Google, Yahoo, and MSN regarding censorship requirements in China, we offer six heuristic questions to help managers to resolve cross-cultural ethical conflicts in which the firm’s way of doing business differs from the practice in the host country. Recognizing that companies can take different approaches to law and ethics (Paine, 1994, Harvard Business Review 72(2), 107–117), our aim is to provide a management decision process to deal with demands or opportunities for engaging in questionable business practices in a host country. (shrink)

Western representation of countries from the Global South implies a dichotomist view of business ethics: on the one hand, universal ethics largely reproduces commonsensical views of the South as ‘less ethical’, and on the other hand, voices from the South are often conditioned to present themselves as substantially indigenous and unambiguous to be accepted as legitimate ethical subjects. We join the growing interest in bridging this gap by drawing on studies from human geography, and ask to what extent the materiality (...) of moral dilemmas bespeaks the disputed underpinning ethical values of a given space. Drawing on Henri Lefebvre’s perspective of the production of social space, we outline and apply the idea of ‘spatial ethics’ to organizations, in order to approach the entanglement between center and periphery. We analyze organizations in favelas, which are, for many authors, territories where experiences are extreme, and poverty and violence mix with vibrant culture and ingenuity. We critically approach the field of business ethics and suggest that one way of moving beyond the North–South debate is to consider that ethics cannot be transmitted or represented in empty milieus. (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss Jenefer Robinson’s personalist account of pictorial expression. [1] According to personalism, a picture possesses the expressive properties we attribute to it because we take it that someone expresses E in the work. Robinson’s particular strategy exploits the concept of an implied persona who ‘unifies’ and ‘specifies’ what is expressed. [2] Dominic Lopes challenges this view by attacking what he takes to be a flawed assumption motivating the personalist account: the priority of figure expression. [3] Once (...) we acknowledge this flaw, he argues, there is no good reason to prefer personalism to an impersonalist theory. I will argue that Robinson qua personalist can pre-empt this strike by clarifying the relation between (a) what a picture expresses and (b) what is depicted as expressing in the picture. Rather than leading with the idea that personalism unifies or determines the meaning, I argue that impersonalism diminishes it and that, should it be accepted, we would be left with an impoverished view of what specific art pieces can mean. (shrink)

Este trabajo surge a partir de la investigación general de las técnicas hidropónicas teniendo en cuenta sus ventajas y desventajas para de esta forma poder encontrar aquel factor determinante a través de una comparación de técnicas hidropónicas que permitan clasificarlas y escoger la mejor opción que genere menos impacto ambiental negativo y demuestre ser más productivo en los entornos urbanos. Adicionalmente, un factor determinante en las ciudades es su espacio limitado por lo que la mejor opción también deberá incluir un (...) óptimo manejo del espacio que permita a casi cualquier individuo poder aplicarlos desde su entorno sin recurrir a excesivas modificaciones. Como principal resultado se escogió a la Hidroponía recirculante como método predominante por los excelentes resultados que se obtienen con relación a los demás, adicionalmente, este puede ser fácilmente aplicado en los ambientes urbanos por su versatilidad y buen manejo de recursos. Palabras Clave: Hidroponia, ambiente, urbano, comparativa, técnicas, cultivo. Referencias [1]J. López, «La producción hidropónica de cultivos,» IDESIA, vol. 36, nº 2, pp. 139-141, 2018. [2]J. Lee, A. Rahman, J. Behrens, C. Brennan, B. Ham, H. Seok Kim, C. Won, S. Yun, H. Azam y M. Kwon, «Nutrient removal from hydroponic wastewater by a microbial consortium,» New Biotechnology, vol. 41, pp. 15-24, 2018. [3]H. Ku, C. Tiong, A. Suresh y B. Ong, «“Active” hydroponic greenhouse system to kick-start and augment reforestation program through carbon sequestration e an experimental and theoretical feasibility study,» Journal of Cleaner Production, vol. 129, pp. 637-646, 2016. [4]J. Beltrano y D. Gimenez, Cultivo en hidroponía, Buenos Aires: Universidad de la Plata, 2015. [5]L. Ramírez, M. Pérez, P. Jiménez, H. Giraldo y E. Gómez, «Evaluación preliminar de sistemas acuapónicos e hidropónicos en cama flotante para el cultivo de orégano,» Revista Facultad de Ciencias Básicas, vol. 7, nº 2, pp. 242-259, 2011. [6]S. Hosseinzadeh, D. Testai, M. BKheet y J. De Graeve, «Degradation of root exudates in closed hydroponic systems using UV/H2O2: Kinetic investigation, reaction pathways and cost analysis,» Science of the Total Environment, vol. 1, pp. 1-9, 2019. [7]N. Camarena, A. Rojas y M. Santos, «Fluoride bioaccumulation by hydroponic cultures of camellia,» Chemosphere, vol. 136, pp. 56-62, 2015. [8]W. Wang, Y. Ma, L. Fu, Y. Cui y M. Yaqoob, «Physical an mechanical properties of hydroponic lettuce for automatic harvesting,» Informatión processing in agriculture, vol. 1, pp. 2214-3173, 2020. [9]M. Zárate, Manual de Hidroponia, Coyoacán: Universidad Autónoma de Mexico, 2014. [10]S. Magwaza, L. Magwaza, A. Odindo y C. Buckley, «Partially treated domestic wastewater as a nutrient source for tomatoes grown in a hydroponic system: effect on nutrientabsorption and yield,» Heliyon, vol. 6, nº 12, pp. 2405-8440, 2020. [11]C. ARANO, «Hidroponía: Algunas paginas de historia,» Tecnología de Producción, nº 58, pp. 24-32, 2007. [12]G. Guzmán, Hidroponia en Casa: Una actividad familiar, Costa Rica: Ministerio de Agricultura y ganaderia, 2004. [13]J. Gilsanz, HIDROPONIA, Montevideo : Unidad de Comunicación y Transferencia de Tecnología, 2007. [14]C. Miller, «El debate de hidroponia orgánica: Perspectivas norteamericanas sobre si la producción hidropónica merece ser certificada como orgánica.,» Productores de Hortalizas, nº 6, pp. 36-38, 2017. [15]A. Herrera, «Manejo de la solución nutritiva en la producción de tomate en hidroponía,» Terra Latinoamericana, vol. 17, nº 3, pp. 221-229, 1999. [16]C. Espinal y D. Matulić, «Recirculating Aquaculture Technologies,» Biomedical and Life Sciences, pp. 35-76, 2020. [17]H. Resh, «Técnicas de cultivo con flujo laminar de nutrientes,» de Cultivos Hidroponicos, España, Mundi-Prensa, 2001, pp. 35-37. [18]P. Blanca y L. Teresa, «Sistemas recirculantes y su interés en el cutlivo de ornamentales,» Tecnología de producción, nº 35, pp. 34-36, 2006. [19]C. Magán, «Recirculación de las soluciones nutritivas, Manejo y Control Microbiologico,» InfoAgro, nº 2, pp. 1-2, 2016. [20]S. Goddek, A. Joyce, B. Kotzen y M. Dos-Santos, «Aquaponics and Global Food Challenges,» Aquaponics Food Production Systems. Springer, vol. 1, nº 1, pp. 3-17, 2019. [21]S. G. Verdoliva, D. Gwyn Jones, A. Detheridge y P. Robson, «Controlled comparisons between soil and hydroponic systems reveal increased water use efficiency and higher lycopene and β-carotene contents in hydroponically grown tomatoes,» Scientia Horticulturae, pp. 3002-4238, 2020. [22]A. Chaudhry y V. Mishra, «A Comparative Analysis of Vertical Agriculture Systems in Residential Apartments, » de 2019 Advances in Science and Engineering Technology International Conferences, Dubai, United Arab Emirates, United Arab Emirates, 2019. [23]T. Mazhar, G. Jianmin, L. Imran, S. Kashif, Q. Waqar, S. Sher y C. Jiedong, «Modern plant cultivation technologies in agriculture under controlled nvironment: a review on aeroponics,» Journal of Plant Interactions, vol. 13, nº 1, pp. 338-352, 2012. [24]K. Janiak, A. Jurga, J. Kuźma, W. Breś y M. Muszyński, «Surfactants effect on aeroponics and important mass balances of regenerative life support system – Lettuce case study,» Science of the Total Environment, vol. 718, nº137324, pp. 1-12, 2020. [25]F. Rahman, I. Jahan, R. Biplob, N. Farhin y J. Uddin, «Automated Aeroponics System for Indoor Farming using Arduino,» de 2018 Joint 7th International Conference on Informatics, Electronics & Vision and 2018 2nd International Conference on Imaging, Vision & Pattern Recognition, Kitakyushu, Japan, 2018. [26]M. Caldeyro Stajano, «La Hidroponía Simplificada como Tecnología apropiada, para implementar la Seguridad Alimentaria en la Agricultura Urbana.,» Cuadernos del CEAgro, nº 8, pp. 71-76, 2006. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Kierkegaard on Self, Ethics, and Religion: Purity or Despair by Roe FremstedalVanessa RumbleRoe Fremstedal. Kierkegaard on Self, Ethics, and Religion: Purity or Despair. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022. Pp. xiv + 280. Hardback, $99.99. Paperback, $32.99.Fremstedal’s impressive synthesis of the anthropological, ethical, and religious dimensions of Kierkegaard’s thought draws on the fruits of his earlier work, Kierkegaard and Kant on Radical Evil and the Highest Good (London: Palgrave (...) Macmillan, 2014). In each of the two volumes, Fremstedal argues for key points of agreement between Kant and Kierkegaard, and he proposes a precise and differentiated account of the way in which the anthropological assumptions of each thinker (a) undergird and shape their respective ethics and (b) pave the way for a religiosity that not only builds on but actively fortifies moral agency. The result, Fremstedal claims, is a rendering of Kierkegaard as by no means averse to the demands of systematic thought. Fremstedal’s Kierkegaard rejects the existence of “epistemic, objective evidence for or against faith” while nonetheless adducing “practical and subjective grounds” (252) for earnest ethical striving and religious faith. In addition to Fremstedal’s analysis of Kierkegaard’s debt to Kant, this book contains a finely drawn analysis of and response to the contemporary scholarship on ethical issues posed by (or to) Kierkegaard’s texts, drawing on the work of Rudd, Davenport, Helms, Stokes, Piety, and others, contributing thereby to the integration of Kierkegaardian ethics in larger discussions of moral psychology.Fremstedal’s stated aim is to provide both (i) the historical context for Kierkegaard’s authorship and (ii) a detailed consideration of Kierkegaard’s potential contribution to contemporary philosophical debates. With regard to (i), Fremstedal’s thirteen chapters offer considerably more than he is able to telegraph in the introduction. Fremstedal’s rough-and-ready appraisal of Kierkegaard’s relation to J. G. Fichte’s Ethics; his expert distillation of [End Page 513] the bearing of the Pantheism Controversy on the account of the “leap” in Postscript (173); and the alacrity with which he charts Kant’s, Jacobi’s, and Kiekegaard’s varying takes on the notion of “reason” (Vernunft/Fornuft) in its relation to “understanding” (Verstand/Forstand) all provide invaluable orientation and grist for further analysis. His discussion of the Pantheism Controversy lends support to his reading of the Postscript’s “leap” as indicating unavoidable discontinuities in “the transition from one normative domain to another” (179) rather than an espousal of fideism.What follows is a summary of Fremstedal’s central chapters on Kierkegaard’s ethics (chapters 2–9), with a particular focus on a key, contentious aspect of the former’s reading. Since the 1981 publication of Alasdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue, Kierkegaard scholars queued up to defend the Danish philosopher against MacIntyre’s claim that Kierkegaard depicts the commitment to moral existence as criterionless. In Davenport and Rudd’s anthology, Kierkegaard after MacIntyre, Peter Mehl’s essay encapsulates the standard response: “Kierkegaard is primarily concerned with providing a philosophical anthropology as a basis for a coherent and reasonable approach to moral praxis,” a concern that is hardly compatible with a conception of morality as pure subjectivism (“Kierkegaard and the Relativist Challenge to Practical Philosophy,” in Kierkegaard after MacIntyre, ed. John J. Davenport and Anthony Rudd [Chicago: Open Court, 2001], 4).Like Mehl, Fremstedal believes Kierkegaard’s philosophical anthropology offers the best defense against MacIntyre’s charge of irrationalism. He grounds his account of Kierkegaard’s anthropology in The Sickness unto Death, citing Anti-Climacus’s depiction of the synthesis of finitude and infinitude as establishing the “fundamental tension between facticity and freedom,... constitutive of our human nature” (20). He parses the supervening relational task placed on the self (Selvet) as twofold: (a) recognition of the conjunction of the given and the chosen in the actual self and, crucially, (b) the evaluation and ranking of the “first order” motivations and inclinations of the actual self with a view to forging a coherent self, namely, the “pure” or “whole-hearted” self that is to evade despair and guide ethical striving. (Fremstedal nods here to work by Davenport and Stokes.) Fremstedal highlights the limitations of the “given” self by reminding... (shrink)

A Sociologia é reintroduzida em nível nacional nos currículos escolares em 2008, o que tem fomentado a discussão em torno do seu ensino na Educação Básica, contudo, as realidades regionais são bastante diversas, e em alguns estados a introdução de seu anteriormente, como no caso de Alagoas que examinamos aqui. Realizamos uma análise considerando alguns eixos principais: a) a institucionalização das Ciências Sociais em Alagoas; b) a introdução da Sociologia no processo seletivo para o ingresso na Universidade Federal de Alagoas; (...) c) o currículo de Sociologia na rede estadual de ensino; d) as mudanças recentes na formação de professores de Sociologia. Almejamos com isso realizar um balanço necessário para a compreensão da dinâmica do Ensino desta ciência neste estado, entendida aqui não como um processo linear, mas sim contraditório, marcado por avanços e retrocessos. (shrink)

Research on mental health of non-professional caregivers has focused on caregivers of people with specific diseases, especially dementia. Less is known about caregivers of people with other diseases. The aims of this study were (a) to determine the caregivers’ emotional state in a random sample of caregivers of people in situations of dependency, (b) to analyze the association between each disease of the care-recipient (a variety of 23 diseases included in the International Classification of Diseases) and the emotional state of (...) the caregiver, and (c) based on the theoretical model, to analyze the relationship of the different study variables in the appearance of the emotional distress of the caregiver. A sample of 491 non-professional caregivers was selected randomly (89.0% women, average age 55.3 years). Trained psychologists collected sociodemographic and care-related characteristics and evaluated the global emotional distress, somatic symptoms, anxiety-insomnia, social dysfunction, depression, probable mental disorder case, self-esteem and social support. It was found that (a) the caregivers showed moderate emotional distress, and 33.8% presented a probable mental disorder. (b) Caring for a care-recipient with cat's cry syndrome or epilepsy was related to suffering from social dysfunction, and caring for a care-recipient with autism was related to having a probable mental health case. (c) Social support mediated the relationship between social class, daily hours of care, monthly family income, self-esteem and global emotional distress. There is an important impact on the emotional state of the caregivers. This impact was similar in caregivers of care-recipients with different diseases, except in caregivers caring for a care-recipient with cat's cry syndrome or epilepsy (related to social dysfunction), and in caregivers caring for a care-recipient with autism (related to having a probable mental health case). (shrink)

H.B.D. Kettlewell is best known for his pioneering work on the phenomenon of industrial melanism, which began shortly after his appointment in 1951 as a Nuffield Foundation research worker in E.B. Ford's newly formed sub-department of genetics at the University of Oxford. In the years since, a legend has formed around these investigations, one that portrays them as a success story of the 'Oxford School of Ecological Genetics', emphasizes Ford's intellectual contribution, and minimizes reference to assistance provided by others. The (...) following essay reviews the important influence Ford, E.A. Cockayne, and P.M. Sheppard played in Kettlewell's research, leading up to his most famous experiments in 1953. It documents several reasons for doubting that Ford was as intellectually involved in the design of these investigations as he has previously been portrayed. It clarifies Kettlewell's intellectual contribution to the investigations for which he is famous, as well as the pivotal roles Cockayne and Sheppard played in the design, execution and interpretation of these investigations. (shrink)

In Brazil, the high number of annual gestational losses constitutes a serious public health issue. Gestational loss can cause emotional trauma for mothers and their families due to society's lack of validation and the inadequate and unsympathetic support often provided by healthcare professionals. Thus, the objective of this research was to understand the role of healthcare professionals in cases of gestational loss, identifying their own feelings, those of women and their families, as well as the attitudes and resources used in (...) these cases. A qualitative descriptive exploratory research was conducted using semi-structured interviews with 10 healthcare professionals in Ribeirão Preto: 9 with degrees (5 nurses, 2 psychologists, and 2 doctors) and 1 nursing technician, all women. Three work in hospitals, 1 in domiciliary care, and 6 in private clinics. The research results were grouped into 3 categories: a) Perception of feelings: Professionals recognize the emotional complexity, encompassing their own feelings, those of women, and family reactions. b) Conducts: Despite facing emotional challenges, professionals strive for empathetic and humane care. c) Institutional resources: There is a notable lack of institutional resources, leading professionals to fill this gap with isolated projects, but these are not institutionalized. Therefore, it is essential to enhance the training of healthcare professionals, both theoretically and practically, to better handle emotional challenges and improve their services. Furthermore, greater availability of institutional resources and protocols ensuring empathetic care for mothers and families facing gestational loss is necessary. (shrink)

Die Sophisten waren und sind umstritten. In der Zeit des Perikles, der Hochblüte der griechischen Kultur, als Wanderlehrer in Griechenland tätig, bewirkten sie mit ihrer Lehrtätigkeit, welche die verschiedensten Wissensgebiete umfasste, einen grundlegenden Blickwandel: Ihre Befassung mit Erkenntnistheorie, Rhetorik und Politik lenkte den Blick vom Kosmos zurück auf den Menschen. Indem sie den Menschen in den Mittelpunkt ihres Denkens stellten, ja ihn sogar zum Maß aller Dinge erklärten, wendeten sie sich zugleich gegen die traditionelle Sittlichkeit, die in der Regel religiös (...) begründet war. So waren sie für die einen gefeierte Aufklärer, für die anderen jedoch Zerstörer der Tradition. Diese Ambivalenz in der Einschätzung ihres Wirkens ist bis heute geblieben. Was auch geblieben ist und von Moderne wie Postmoderne aufgenommen wurde, sind wesentliche Ansätze ihres Denkens: z. B. ihr erkenntnistheoretischer Relativismus, ihre Vertragstheorie und ihre Lehre vom Recht des Stärkeren. Weil ihr Denken so aktuell ist, untersucht der vorliegende Band nicht nur die antiken Sophisten, sondern vergleicht sie auch mit ihren modernen und postmodernen Wiedergängern wie bspw. Nietzsche, Butler und Foucault. Mit Beiträgen von Viktoria Bachmann, Thomas Buchheim, Bettina Fröhlich, Benjamin Hahn, Hendrik Hansen, Raul Heimann, Johannes Hoerlin, Vanessa Jansche, Christina Kast, Peter Kainz und Barbara Zehnpfennig. (shrink)

In 2004 Orlando Florida was hit with an almost unprecedented series of storms and hurricanes. Within two months, Hurricanes Charley, Frances, and Jeanne hit, and Hurricane Ivan made a near miss. Billions of dollars of damage resulted from these disasters, and several dozen lives were lost. It is tempting, in the case of extreme events, to either regard them as having no need of interpretation (that is, as simply given, material events shared by everyone), or as a kind of rare (...) window on the workings of a community.1 In this paper I want to examine the public construction of the meaning of the hurricane in Orlando, particularly as represented in reports at the time in the major newspaper, the Orlando Sentinel. I am especially interested in placemaking, that is, the ways in which places gain or fail to gain meaning in times of stress. I will suggest that opportunities for place-making were lost in Orlando because of the frame the events around Hurricane Charley were given. Hurricane Frances, though, was treated differently in the Orlando press, and the discourse around the hurricanes of 2004 provides a contrast to the kind of rhetorical response that circulated during the disastrous hurricane season of 2005. In the case of some disasters, community is reinforced, and the skills of place-making are exercised. The reaction to Hurricane Charley in Orlando, on the other hand, tended not to reinforce community, and tended not to contribute to place-making. While it is extremely difficult to measure sense of place or sense of community quantitatively, it is possible to make sense out of the interpretive tools people have at their disposal in a disaster. What comes out of all this, I think, is something I want to call “place-making imagination”. This is analogous to the 1 concept of “moral imagination” in ethics (Johnson). Our moral options extend as far as our imagination will allow. A person might boil the moral universe down to polarized options – fight or flight, kill or be killed, choose A or B – when in fact a more cultivated and aware imagination may have afforded other options, perhaps better ones than either polarized one.. (shrink)

[opening paragraph]: I have great respect for efforts by Francisco Varela, Jonathan Shear and company to create a systematic phenomenology. In support of their efforts it should be noted that there is no need to start from scratch. We already have a systematic study of human conscious experience, and it is called ‘psychology'. True, many academic psychologists deny this rather obvious fact, but if we look at what they do rather than what they say, we find that they are always (...) studying the things people can report with accuracy. But the things we humans can report accurately are the same things we experience as conscious! Reportability is the generally accepted index of consciousness. In point of fact, therefore, psychologists are always asking people about their conscious experiences. (shrink)