Computational models of semantic memory exploit information about co-occurrences of words in naturally occurring text to extract information about the meaning of the words that are present in the language. Such models implicitly specify a representation of temporal context. Depending on the model, words are said to have occurred in the same context if they are presented within a moving window, within the same sentence, or within the same document. The temporal context model (TCM), which specifies a particular definition of (...) temporal context, has proved useful in the study of episodic memory. The predictive temporal context model (pTCM) uses the same definition of temporal context to generate semantic memory representations. Taken together pTCM and TCM may prove to be part of a general model of declarative memory. (shrink)

Gap junctions are ubiquitous plasma membrane specializations that allow cells to exchange small molecules and ions directly. The isolation, biochemical characterization and molecular cloning of the major protein of rat liver gap junctions lead to a clearer view of these membrane zones that allow cells to ‘talk’ to each other and co‐ordinate their activities in tissues and organs.

Gap junction intercellular communication channels permit the exchange of small regulatory molecules and ions between neighbouring cells and coordinate cellular activity in diverse tissue and organ systems. These channels have short half‐lives and complex assembly and degradation pathways. Much of the recent work elucidating gap junction biogenesis has featured the use of connexins (Cx), the constituent proteins of gap junctions, tagged with reporter proteins such as Green Fluorescent Protein (GFP) and has illuminated the dynamics of channel assembly in live cells (...) by high‐resolution time‐lapse microscopy. With some studies, however, there are potential short‐comings associated with the GFP chimeric protein technologies. A recent report by Gaietta et al., has highlighted the use of recombinant proteins with tetracysteine tags attached to the carboxyl terminus of Cx43, which differentially labels ‘old’ and ‘new’ connexins thus opening up new avenues for studying temporal and spatial localisation of proteins and in situ trafficking events.1 BioEssays 24:876–880, 2002. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

In their recent article "Ideology in Action" in this journal, Alan Fine and Kent Sandstrom (1993) offer a theoretical account of ideology informed by pragmatism and symbolic interactionism. The authors provide compelling reasons for understanding ideology not simply as beliefs but as situated social action. Their effort to retrieve the analysis of ideology from the realm of the noosphere is a welcome departure from more traditional conceptions. Moreover, they provide a convincing case for bringing ideological analysis back into many of (...) our analyses of social life. In the following pages I wish to engage the authors on the terrain they have laid out. Drawing on the linguistic turn in recent social theory, I offer a few friendly critiques of their interactionist conception of ideology. After reviewing these problems I discuss how a dialogic analysis of ideology can build on Fine and Sandstrom's important account of ideology, as well as offering additional insights into its nature and dynamics. I begin, however, with a capsule review of the authors' conception of ideology in action. (shrink)

ABSTRACTOther people’s emotional reactions to a third person’s behaviour are potentially informative about what is appropriate within a given situation. We investigated whether and how observers’ inferences of such injunctive norms are shaped by expressions of anger and disgust. Building on the moral emotions literature, we hypothesised that angry and disgusted expressions produce relative differences in the strength of autonomy-based versus purity-based norm inferences. We report three studies using different types of stimuli to investigate how emotional reactions shape norms about (...) potential norm violations, and contexts. Consistent with our theoretical argument, the results indicate that observers use others’ emotional reactions not only to infer whether a particular behaviour is inappropriate, but also why it is inappropriate: because it primarily violates auto... (shrink)

In many mammalian cell types, increases in the level of nonpolymerized tubulin cause an inhibition in tubulin synthesis which is accompanied by a decrease in tubulin mRNA levels. To see whether inhibition is caused by nuclear or cytoplasmic events, two groups have recently examined the ability of enucleated cells to autoregulate tubulin synthesis.1,2 These experiments have demonstrated that transcription, processing, and transport of tubulin mRNAs from the nucleus to the cytoplasm are not major sites of autoregulation. Instead, monomeric tubulin must (...) reduce, either directly or indirectly, the translatability of its own message. (shrink)

Although convergence in emotion expressions within small groups is well documented, the motives that explain why members converge are rarely explicated. We approach expressive convergence from a conformity perspective and introduce the Emotional Conformity Framework, in which we posit that members match their groupmates’ emotion expressions because they are motivated to gain an accurate understanding of reality (informational conformity motive) or to form and maintain social relationships (normative conformity motive). These motives determine members’ standards for correctness, social responses, and plausible (...) convergence mechanisms, while members’ personalities and situational properties shape the relative strength of the two motives. By explicating these motivational underpinnings, the Framework improves our capacity to understand, predict, and regulate expressive convergence and emphasizes its functionality. (shrink)

McKeon was a pragmatist who developed a heuristic that outlined the philosophical roots behind the tensions created by the paradox of pluralism. This heuristic was based on the four main schools of ancient Greek philosophy and allowed McKeon to map out how different philosophical perspectives create different understandings of foundational concepts such as freedom, history and motion. This paper applies that heuristic to the concept of communication and demonstrates how different philosophical approaches create tension over the definition of communication. Scholars (...) can use this application to both better approach McKeon’s pragmatism as well as gain insight into the philosophical foundations of our own perspectives of communication. (shrink)

The present study applies a new method for investigating dynamic unconscious processes. The method consists of selection of words from patient interview and test protocols that in the clinicians' judgments capture the patients' conscious symptom experience and the hypothetical unconscious conflict related to the symptom, subliminal and supraliminal presentation of these words, signal analysis of event-related potentials obtained to the word presentations. Eight phobics and three patients suffering from pathological grief reactions served as subjects. A time-frequency ERP analysis revealed that (...) subjects' ERPs classified the unconscious conflict words better subliminally than supraliminally, while the reverse was true for the conscious symptom words = 2.82, p = .011). The relationship between frequency and latency revealed a similar mirror image pattern for the unconscious conflict and conscious symptom words . This method demonstrated that objective, brain-based evidence for unconscious conflict can be obtained. (shrink)

Proposals for a universal basic income have reemerged in public discourse for a variety of reasons. Marx’s critique of exploitation suggests two apparently opposed positions on a basic income. On the one hand, a basic income funded from taxes on labor would appear to be exploitative of workers. On the other hand, a basic income liberates everyone from the vulnerable condition in which one is forced to sell one’s labor in order to survive, and so seems to be one way (...) of abolishing exploitation at its root. This paper will develop a conception of exploitation that resolves the conflict in favor of basic income. The conception of exploitation is grounded in a liberal egalitarian conception of justice rather than in Marx’s labor theory of value or an exclusive focus on the worker-capitalist relation. This position is not premised on an acceptance of the basic institutions of capitalism, but rather is a standpoint from which to evaluate them. It is not necessary to downsize our ideas of freedom and equality. But it is less obvious than it appeared in classic Marxist formulations that socialism is necessary for social justice. To quote the title of a famous article, there could be a ‘capitalist road to communism’, if a substantial basic income is feasible in a capitalist society. (shrink)

Several issues are raised concerning the notion that a single strategy explains Fitts' law and the linear speed/accuracy trade-off. Two additional concerns are discussed: (1) distance is programmed, (2) the fact that movements produced without the aid of vision obey Fitts' law does not mean that sighted movements must be explained without regard to vision.

This collection of 24 readings is the first comprehensive treatment of important topics by leading figures in the rapidly growing interdisciplinary field of...

Our approach is based on a tri-partite method of integrating psychodynamic hypotheses, cognitive subliminal processes, and psychophysiological alpha power measures. We present ten social phobic subjects with three individually selected groups of words representing unconscious conflict, conscious symptom experience, and Osgood Semantic negative valence words used as a control word group. The unconscious conflict and conscious symptom words, presented subliminally and supraliminally, act as primes preceding the conscious symptom and control words presented as supraliminal targets. With alpha power as a (...) marker of inhibitory brain activity, we show that unconscious conflict primes, only when presented subliminally, have a unique inhibitory effect on conscious symptom targets. This effect is absent when the unconscious conflict primes are presented supraliminally, or when the target is the control words. Unconscious conflict prime effects were found to correlate with a measure of repressiveness in a similar previous study (Shevrin et al., 1992, 1996). Conscious symptom primes have no inhibitory effect when presented subliminally. Inhibitory effects with conscious symptom primes are present, but only when the primes are supraliminal, and they did not correlate with repressiveness in a previous study (Shevrin et al., 1992, 1996). We conclude that while the inhibition following supraliminal conscious symptom primes is due to conscious threat bias, the inhibition following subliminal unconscious conflict primes provides a neurological blueprint for dynamic repression: it is only activated subliminally by an individual's unconscious conflict and has an inhibitory effect specific only to the conscious symptom. These novel findings constitute neuroscientific evidence for the psychoanalytic concepts of unconscious conflict and repression, while extending neuroscience theory and methods into the realm of personal, psychological meaning. (shrink)

Experiential evidence shows that pain is associated with common meanings. These include a meaning of threat or danger, which is experienced as immediately distressing or unpleasant; cognitive meanings, which are focused on the long-term consequences of having chronic pain; and existential meanings such as hopelessness, which are more about the person with chronic pain than the pain itself. This interdisciplinary book - the second in the three-volume Meanings of Pain series edited by Dr Simon van Rysewyk - aims to better (...) understand pain by describing experiences of pain and the meanings these experiences hold for the people living through them. The lived experiences of pain described here involve various types of chronic pain, including spinal pain, labour pain, rheumatic pain, diabetic peripheral neuropathic pain, fibromyalgia, complex regional pain syndrome, endometriosis-associated pain, and cancer-related pain. Two chapters provide narrative descriptions of pain, recounted and interpreted by people with pain. Language is important to understanding the meaning of pain since it is the primary tool human beings use to manipulate meaning. As discussed in the book, linguistic meaning may hold clues to understanding some pain-related experiences, including the stigmatisation of people with pain, the dynamics of patient-clinician communication, and other issues, such as relationships between pain, public policy and the law, and attempts to develop a taxonomy of pain that is meaningful for patients. Clinical implications are described in each chapter. This book is intended for people with pain, their family members or caregivers, clinicians, researchers, advocates, and policy makers. (shrink)

The unique context of the rural setting provides special challenges to furnishing ethical healthcare to its approximately 62 million inhabitants. Although rural communities are widely diverse, most have the following common features: limited economic resources, shared values, reduced health status, limited availability of and accessibility to healthcare services, overlapping professional–patient relationships and care giver stress. These rural features shape common healthcare ethical issues, including threats to confidentiality, boundary issues, professional–patient relationship and allocation of resources. To date, there exists a limited (...) focus on rural healthcare ethics shown by the scarcity of rural healthcare ethics literature, rural ethics committees, rural focused ethics training and research on rural ethics issues. An interdisciplinary group of rural healthcare ethicists with backgrounds in medicine, nursing and philosophy was convened to explore the need for a rural healthcare ethics agenda. At the meeting, the Coalition for Rural Health Care Ethics agreed to a definition of rural healthcare ethics and a broad-ranging rural ethics agenda with the ultimate goal of enhancing the quality of patient care in rural America. The proposed agenda calls for increasing awareness and understanding of rural healthcare ethics through the development of evidence—informed, rural-attuned research, scholarship and education in collaboration with rural healthcare professionals, healthcare institutions and the diverse rural population. (shrink)