“The Draft UNCITRAL Digest and Beyond” is one of the most useful single volumes available on the CISG. It includes the full text of the draft “UNCITRAL Digest” which catalogues the cases and arbitral awards to date that have interpreted and applied the CISG on an article by article basis. “The Digest and Beyond” includes also commentary by eminent CISG scholars that addresses issues not yet considered in the cases. With more than 1000 decisions applying the CISG in courts and (...) arbitral tribunals around the world, the UNCITRAL Secretariat charged five CISG experts from a variety of regions with the task of creating a digest of CISG case law. “The Digest and Beyond” includes the draft “UNCITRAL Digest”, even before it is released officially by UNCITRAL. It also goes where the authors of the Digest were not allowed to go, given the narrow mandate within which the drafters were asked to work. Its chapters build upon the work of the “UNCITRAL Digest”. The Digest describes the reasoning and results of existing CISG cases; in “The Digest and Beyond”, the Digest authors analyze those cases, and discuss issues that have not yet arisen in the case law. Thus, in many ways, “The Digest and Beyond” provides scholarship that can direct future cases in areas that have not yet been considered by courts and arbitrators as well as in areas in which contradictory court decisions exist. (shrink)

The notion of societal boundaries aims to enhance the debate on planetary boundaries. The focus is on capitalist societies as a heuristic for discussing the expansionary dynamics, power relations, and lock-ins of modern societies that impel highly unsustainable societal relations with nature. While formulating societal boundaries implies a controversial process – based on normative judgments, ethical concerns, and socio-political struggles – it has the potential to offer guidelines for a just, social-ecological transformation.

Images abound of women throughout the ages engaging in various activities. But why are there so few representations of childbirth in visual art? Feminist artist Judy Chicago once suggested that depictions of women giving birth do not commonly occur in Western culture but can be found in other contexts such as pre-Columbian art or societies previously considered "primitive." Chicago's own exploration of the theme resulted in the creation of The Birth Project (1980-85): an unprecedented series of eighty handcrafted works of (...) art created in a variety of needlework techniques by more than 130 artisans that celebrate the experience of birth and a woman's transformation into motherhood. But why is The Birth Project an aberration from today's norm? What are the reasons that childbirth remains a taboo subject in our visual culture? Why is the birthing experience--so pervasive for women--so infrequently celebrated, even by female artists? (shrink)

Sensory processing dysfunction is characterized by a behaviorally observed difference in the response to sensory information from the environment. While the cerebellum is involved in normal sensory processing, it has not yet been examined in SPD. Diffusion tensor imaging scans of children with SPD and typically developing controls were compared for fractional anisotropy, mean diffusivity, radial diffusivity, and axial diffusivity across the following cerebellar tracts: the middle cerebellar peduncles, superior cerebellar peduncles, and cerebral peduncles. Compared to TDC, children with SPD (...) show reduced microstructural integrity of the SCP and MCP, characterized by reduced FA and increased MD and RD, which correlates with abnormal auditory behavior, multisensory integration, and attention, but not tactile behavior or direct measures of auditory discrimination. In contradistinction, decreased CP microstructural integrity in SPD correlates with abnormal tactile and auditory behavior and direct measures of auditory discrimination, but not multisensory integration or attention. Hence, altered cerebellar white matter organization is associated with complex sensory behavior and attention in SPD, which prompts further consideration of diagnostic measures and treatments to better serve affected individuals. (shrink)

Since its inception, philosophy has struggled to perfect individual understanding through discussion and dialogue based in personal, poetic, or dramatic investigation. The positions of such philosophers as Socrates, Spinoza, Rousseau, Nietzsche, Foucault, and Derrida differ in almost every respect, yet these thinkers all share a common method of practicing philosophy--not as a detached, intellectual discipline, but as a worldly art. What is the love that turns into knowledge and how is the knowledge we seek already a form of love? Reading (...) key texts from Socrates to Derrida, this book addresses the fundamental tension between love and knowledge that informs the history of Western philosophy. LoveKnowledge returns to the long tradition of philosophy as an exercise not only of the mind but also of the soul, asking whether philosophy can shape and inform our lives and communities. (shrink)

The goal of this study was to determine whether it is possible to teach children with serious decoding problems four text comprehension strategies in listening contexts. The subjects were 9-11 year old students from special schools for children with learning disabilities. All the students were very poor at decoding; half of the group were also poor listeners, whereas the other half consisted of normal listeners. The experimental children were trained in strategies of clarifying, questioning, summarising and predicting through a combination (...) of reciprocal teaching and direct instruction. The results indicated significant programme effects on a strategic listening comprehension test. A transfer effect on general listening comprehension and general reading comprehension tests was not found. The poor listeners within the experimental group did not perform better than the normal listeners. (shrink)