Deep brain stimulation of the subthalamic nucleus for the treatment of Parkinson’s disease can lead to the development of neuropsychiatric symptoms. These can include harmful changes in mood and behaviour that alienate family members and raise ethical questions about personal responsibility for actions committed under stimulation-dependent mental states. Qualitative interviews were conducted with twenty participants following subthalamic DBS at a movement disorders centre, in order to explore the meaning and significance of stimulation-related neuropsychiatric symptoms amongst a purposive sample of persons (...) with PD and their spousal caregivers. Interview transcripts underwent inductive thematic analysis. Clinical and experiential aspects of post-DBS neuropsychiatric symptoms were identified. Caregivers were highly burdened by these symptoms and both patients and caregivers felt unprepared for their consequences, despite having received information prior to DBS, desiring greater family and peer engagement prior to neurosurgery. Participants held conflicting opinions as to whether emergent symptoms were attributable to neurostimulation. Many felt that they reflected aspects of the person’s “real” or “younger” personality. Those participants who perceived a close relationship between stimulation changes and changes in mental state were more likely to view these symptoms as inauthentic and uncontrollable. Unexpected and troublesome neuropsychiatric symptoms occurred despite a pre-operative education programme that was delivered to all participants. This suggests that such symptoms are difficult to predict and manage even if best practice guidelines are followed by experienced centres. Further research aimed at predicting these complications may improve the capacity of clinicians to tailor the consent process. (shrink)

We conducted a rapid review and quantitative summary of meta-analyses that have examined interventions which can be used by individuals during quarantine and social distancing to manage anxiety, depression, stress and subjective well-being. A literature search yielded 34 meta-analyses (total number of studies k = 1,390, n = 145,744) that were summarized. Overall, self-guided interventions showed small to medium effects in comparison to control groups. In particular, self-guided therapeutic approaches (including cognitive-behavioral, mindfulness, and acceptance-based interventions), selected positive psychology interventions, and (...) multi-component and activity-based interventions (music, physical exercise) showed promising evidence for effectiveness. Overall, self-guided interventions on average did not show the same degree of effectiveness as traditional guided individual or group therapies. There was no consistent evidence of dose effects, baseline differences and differential effectiveness of eHealth interventions. More research on the effectiveness of interventions in diverse cultural settings is needed. (shrink)

Artificial intelligence is poised to eliminate millions of jobs, from finance to truck driving. But artisanal products are valued precisely because of their human origins, and thus have some inherent “immunity” from AI job loss. At the same time, artisanal labor, combined with technology, could potentially help to democratize the economy, allowing independent, small-scale businesses to flourish. Could AI, robotics and related automation technologies enhance the economic viability and environmental sustainability of these beloved crafting professions, perhaps even expanding their niche (...) to replace some job loss in other sectors? In this paper, we compare the problems created by the current mass production economy and potential solutions from an artisanal economy. In doing so, the paper details the possibilities of utilizing AI to support hybrid forms of human–machine production at the microscale; localized and sustainable value chains at the mesoscale; and networks of these localized and sustainable producers at the macroscale. In short, a wide range of automation technologies are potentially available for facilitating and empowering an artisanal economy. Ultimately, it is our hope that this paper will facilitate a discussion on a future vision for more “generative” economic forms in which labor value, ecological value and social value can circulate without extraction or alienation. (shrink)

The concept of care has occupied a central place in nursing philosophy and scholarship since the modern formation of the profession. Perhaps the defining character of the scholarship has been the recognition not only of the complexity of the concept of care, its elusiveness and ambiguity, but also the lack of consensus or agreement regarding its meaning and value. I will make two interconnected arguments: first, I will argue that disputes around care are not an accidental feature or an unfortunate (...) condition of its applicability. Rather, care is an example of what I will call, following W.B. Gallie (1956), an “essentially contested” concept. Secondly, I will employ insights from the French philosopher Henri Bergson (1859‐1941) to explore the concept of care and argue that the essentially contested processual nature of care is the source of its meaning and value. (shrink)

This article interprets Foucault's life-long involvement with transgressive experiences as an art of not being oneself, an effort to escape identity and become other. By bringing together Foucault's own theoretical practices with those drawn from Deleuze and Blanchot, and linking these with biographical material, I show how Foucault's `encounters' with passion and pleasure in film, philosophy, S/M, drugs, the Greeks and suicide amount to an `art of living', an intensification of the power to affect oneself and others in processes of (...) `subjectivation', creating new possibilities of life. This is what Foucault more precisely called an `ethics' - an immanent ethics in which one becomes worthy of what happens to oneself by becoming a work of art. (shrink)

The economy for artisanal products, such as Navajo rugs or Pashmina shawls are often threatened by mass-produced fakes. We propose the use of AI-based authentication as one part of a larger system that would replace extractive economies with generative circulation. In this case study we examine initial experiments towards the development of a cell phone-based authentication app for kente cloth in West Africa. We describe the context of weavers and cloth sales; an initial test of a machine learning algorithm for (...) distinguishing between real and fake kente, and an outline of the next stages of development. (shrink)

Throughout all of Deleuze’s work one finds an extended encounter with the Event of Difference. Deleuze’s extraordinary work on Leibniz is no exception. In the ‘later’ work, and regarding Leibniz, Deleuze remarks, “no philosophy has ever pushed to such an extreme the affirmations of one and the same world, and of an infinite difference and variety in this world”. This positive identification with Leibniz is not found in the ‘earlier’ wave of Deleuzian texts from the sixties where Leibniz is captured (...) hesitating over the possible and the virtual. Any such hesitation over the possible and the virtual is “disastrous” for a philosophy of the event and difference since it abolishes the reality of the virtual and subordinates it to the identical, replacing pure immanence with a ‘theological model’ of creation. Is the Leibniz of Deleuze’s early texts compossible with the later? What is the significance of the event of difference or fold that joins and separates Deleuze’s continuing encounter with Leibniz? We will examine what is at stake in these differing understandings of Leibniz to Deleuze’s philosophy of events of difference. (shrink)

Deleuze, Whitehead, Bergson: Rhizomatic Connections is the first book length collection of essays exploring the relations between the work of Gilles Deleuze, Alfred North Whitehead and Henri Bergson. With contributions by established international scholars from cultural studies, philosophy and theology, Deleuze, Whitehead, Bergson examines the articulation between their concepts, methods and modes of doing philosophy and how their thought relates to different disciplines. Organized thematically, each essay examines the section themes in the context of the contrasts, differences and conjunctions--the rhizomatic (...) connections--between their shared concepts. Deleuze, Whitehead, Bergson will make a significant impact upon and contribution to the scholarship on these philosophers, challenging many of the preconceptions, the "images of thought," through which they are all too often read and interpreted. (shrink)

I came to utopia by accident, having painted myself into a corner with an idea for a trilogy: three science fiction novels consisting of an after-the-fall novel, a dystopia, and a utopia, all set in the same place and about the same distance into the future. The idea came to me in 1972, and I didn’t know how to write a novel then, so the plan needed brooding on. Some sixteen years later, the time came for the utopia. I had (...) written the after-the-fall novel, The Wild Shore, and the dystopia, The Gold Coast. The utopia was the only one left.By that time many aspects of it had been determined by the previous two books. I needed it to be in Orange County, California; I needed it to be fifty years in the future; and I.. (shrink)

A fundamental aspect of biological systems is their spatial organization. In development, regeneration and repair, directional signals are necessary for the proper placement of the components of the organism. Likewise, pathogens that invade other organisms rely on directional signals to target vulnerable areas. It is widely understood that chemical gradients are important directional signals in living systems. Less well recognized are electrical fields, which can also provide directional information. Small, steady electrical fields can directly guide cell movement and growth and (...) can generate chemical gradients of charged macromolecules against the leveling action of diffusion. At the site of a lesion in an ion‐transporting epithelium, for example, a substantial electrical field is instantly generated and may extend over many cell diameters. There are numerous other situations in which relatively long‐range electrical fields have been shown to exist naturally. Recently, there has been substantial progress in identifying specific processes that are controlled, to some extent, by these endogenous electrical fields. This review highlights these recent data and discusses possible mechanisms by which the fields might affect biological processes. BioEssays 25:759–766, 2003. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

We argue that environmental aesthetics, and specifically the concept of aesthetic integrity, should play a central role in a public environmental philosophy designed to communicate about environmental problems in an effective manner. After developing the concept of the “aesthetic integrity” of the environment, we appeal to empirical research to show that it contributes significantly to people’s sense of place, which is, in turn, central to their well-being and motivational state. As a result, appealing to aesthetic integrity in policy contexts is (...) both strategically and morally advisable. To provide a concrete illustration of the ways in which such appeals can play a role in policy making, we examine a specific case study in which attention to aesthetic integrity contributed to blocking a proposed development. The case yields at least four lessons: (1) aesthetic integrity can be a practically effective framing device; (2) local deliberative settings are particularly conducive for addressing it; (3) it can serve as an umbrella under which multiple other issues can be brought to the fore; and (4) judgments about aesthetic integrity need not be entirely objective in order for them to play a productive role in the policy sphere. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that Deleuze's ‘thinking with’ Whitehead gives access to a range of novel conceptual resources that offer a route out of phenomenology and back to life, a movement beyond intentionality and back to things ‘in their free and wild state’. I lay out four conceptual and methodological markers (there are many more) – creativity, event, prehension, empiricism – that characterise Deleuze's metaphysics and provide a guide for showing how these develop through a sustained becoming with Whitehead. (...) I conclude by looking at Deleuze and Guattari's use of the term most famously associated with Whitehead: the concept of ‘process’. (shrink)

The European Clinical Trials Directive was issued in 2001 and aimed to simplify and harmonise the regulatory framework of clinical trials throughout Europe, thus stimulating European research. However, significant complexity and inconsistency remains due to disparate interpretation by EU member states. Critical care research has been particularly impacted due to variable and often restrictive consenting procedures for incapacitated subjects, with some countries requiring a court-appointed representative, while others recognise consent from family members and occasionally professional representatives. Furthermore, the absence of (...) a waiver of consent threatened to put an end to emergency research in Europe and was met with varied responses. Approval procedures by ethics committees are equally inconsistent, particularly those relating to provision of a single opinion for multi-centre trials. Although evidence is somewhat mixed, this complexity as well as a general increase in administrative and financial burden following the Directive has been shown to cause a reduction in clinical trial activity in Europe, particularly academic trials. We aim to clarify some of these inconsistent procedures, particularly those relating to informed consent of incapacitated subjects, as well as discussing some general weaknesses and possible improvements of the Directive ahead of its planned revision in 2011. (shrink)

Throughout all of Deleuze’s work one finds an extended encounter with the Event of Difference. Deleuze’s extraordinary work on Leibniz is no exception. In the ‘later’ work, and regarding Leibniz, Deleuze remarks, “no philosophy has ever pushed to such an extreme the affirmations of one and the same world, and of an infinite difference and variety in this world”. This positive identification with Leibniz is not found in the ‘earlier’ wave of Deleuzian texts from the sixties where Leibniz is captured (...) hesitating over the possible and the virtual. Any such hesitation over the possible and the virtual is “disastrous” for a philosophy of the event and difference since it abolishes the reality of the virtual and subordinates it to the identical, replacing pure immanence with a ‘theological model’ of creation. Is the Leibniz of Deleuze’s early texts compossible with the later? What is the significance of the event of difference or fold that joins and separates Deleuze’s continuing encounter with Leibniz? We will examine what is at stake in these differing understandings of Leibniz to Deleuze’s philosophy of events of difference. (shrink)

Residents living in the vicinity of lead smelters are subjected to particularly high levels of contamination from the toxic process of smelting. Yet, public health strategies currently promoted by state health authorities in Australia do not focus their major attention on stopping the contamination at its source. This article focuses on housecleaning regimes, largely implemented by women, aimed at stopping the toxic material from being ingested by children. Because the residential areas surrounding the smelters are degraded, their property value is (...) low and, by and large, working-class families live there. As this article shows, the recommended cleaning regimes are embedded in social class and gender relations. Analysis of the implementation of the strategy and the historical context within which it is administered provides an example of a state gender regime, the state “doing” gender and class, and a lens through which to view contemporary gender and class relations. (shrink)

Kim Stanley Robinson a toujours interrogé l’exploration spatiale comme moyen d’émancipation. Mais sur cette aventure extraterrestre, il est devenu de moins en moins optimiste au fil de ses livres. Il croit encore en sa dimension utopique, mais à condition qu’elle devienne modeste et cède la place, en termes de priorité, à la préservation des conditions d’habitabilité de la Terre, au cœur de son dernier roman Le Ministère du futur.

The average age of women nursing students in Australia is rising. With this comes the likelihood that more now begin university with family responsibilities, and with their lives structured by the roles of mother and partner. Women with more traditionally gendered ideas of these roles, such as nurturing others and self‐sacrifice, are known to be attracted to nursing as a profession; once at university, however, these students can be vulnerable to gender role stress from the competing demands of study. A (...) qualitative research design, guided by Gadamer's hermeneutic philosophy, explored the gendered behaviours and experiences of 22 women nursing students, all of whom had children and began university in a heterosexual intimate relationship. The findings reveal traditional ideas of gender were almost universal among participants, and these ideas had a significant influence on the nursing degree experience. Participants commonly prioritised family over the university and practiced maternal gatekeeping (prevention of male partner involvement in domestic work). These traditionally gendered behaviours, coupled with experiences of gender role stress, had a detrimental impact on participants' capacity to study and their personal wellbeing. The importance of these findings to the burgeoning nursing workforce shortage nursing is considered in terms of student retention and the supply of graduates into the profession. The implications to the nursing profession are also explored against the evidence that nursing students with traditional gender beliefs are less likely to develop as autonomous, critical thinking nurses compared to their gender‐egalitarian peers. The introduction of gender theory via critical pedagogy in the undergraduate nursing degree curriculum is recommended to enlighten and empower women nursing students and promote the competence, agility, and sustainability of the nursing profession. (shrink)

How do we understand the roots of modern identities and subjectivities (citizen, labour migrant, artist, member of a global faith community) and the cosmopolitan imaginaries and practices embraced and generated in the Asia Pacific region? Writing from a range of disciplines, and diverse sites, the authors explore the ways in which identities are recognized and contested, subjectivities dislodged and reconstituted in the contemporary world, and the role of dialogic scholarly practices in engaging, stimulating and promoting emergent subjectivities and identities.

In questo articolo sostengo che Deleuze, Whitehead e Bergson condividono un simile approccio riguardo all'astrazione, un approccio che fondamentalmente è "pragmatista" (in senso ampio, vicino al pragmatismo "fantastico" di James Williams). Appoggiandosi a William James, un nome per questo approccio metodologico condiviso è empirismo radicale, meglio compreso, nella mia visione, nel contesto della filosofia del processo. Benché quegli autori condividano un approccio simile, evidenzierò alcune differenze tra gli empiristi radicali nel modo in cui essi pensano alle loro astrazioni chiave, che (...) coinvolgono i temi della relazione, del divenire e dello spazio-tempo. Tutti e tre i pensatori ci offrono astrazioni per pensare la vita come creazione del nuovo. (shrink)

Aim: Participation in classroom physical activity breaks may improve children’s cognition, but few studies have involved adolescents. The primary aim of this study was to examine the effects of classroom-based resistance training with and without cognitive training on adolescents’ cognitive function.Methods: Participants were 97 secondary school students. Four-year 10 classes from one school were included in this four-arm cluster randomized controlled trial. Classes were randomly assigned to the following groups: sedentary control with no cognitive training, sedentary with cognitive training, resistance (...) training without cognitive training, and resistance training with cognitive training. Sessions varied in levels of both cognitive demand and resistance training and were administered three times per week for 4 weeks. Inhibition, cognitive flexibility, episodic memory, on-task behavior, and muscular fitness were assessed at baseline and post-test. Linear mixed models were used to examine changes within and between groups.Results: In comparison with the control group, episodic memory improved significantly in the resistance training without cognitive training group. There were no group-by-time effects for inhibition or cognitive flexibility. Classroom activity breaks both with and without cognitive demand improved participants’ on-task behavior in comparison with the control and sedentary group. The resistance training programs did not lead to improvements in muscular fitness.Conclusion: Participation in body weight resistance training without cognitive training led to selective improvements in episodic memory. No training effects were found for inhibition or cognitive flexibility. A longer study period may be necessary to induce improvements in muscular fitness and associated changes in inhibition and cognitive flexibility.Clinical Trial Registration:https://www.anzctr.org.au/ACTRN12621001341819.aspx, Australian New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry—ACTRN12621001341819. (shrink)

Isabelle Stengers’ work on Whitehead is amongst the most important in Europe today. The contributors here—Isabella Palin, Stephen Meyers, DidierDebaise, and Andrew Goffey—offer a range of perspectives on Stengers’ effort to “think with” Whitehead. Stengers’ detailed response is included.

Terraformer les planètes lointaines pour les rendre aptes à porter des vies humaines nourrit sans doute des imaginations littéraires, mais ce que nous appelons « vie » reste pour le moment étroitement attaché à notre planète Terre.

In Chapter One it is argued that three famous epistemologies, labeled foundationalism, radical skepticism and mitigated skepticism, all presuppose metaphysical realism, or the ontological division between mind and world . Then it is argued that each of these three epistemologies is false and that metaphysical realism cannot be made comprehensible apart from one or the other of them. If this is true then it follows that truth cannot be a matter of correspondence between sentences, statements, propositions, judgments, etc. and some (...) absolutely independent reality. This, however, leaves the author with the task in Chapter Two of developing the basics of a new epistemology--one that does not presuppose metaphysical realism, yet which allows for the possibility of a genuine truth and knowledge that are in a particular way dependent on conceptualization. The phrase "genuine truth and knowledge" is crucial because part of the task is to present a view that does not reduce truth and knowledge to mere belief by relativizing them to conceptual schemes. In Chapter Three it is argued that a unique form of metaphysical realism, which I call the objectification of ideas, is present in the philosophies of Descartes, Hume and Kant, simultaneously creating for them a need to account both for the external world and personal identity, and making them impotent to do so. (shrink)

Asia is increasingly entering into the Australian imaginary as the nation grapples with the issue of ‘Australian identity’. This article examines two instances in which the idea of Asia has been taken up in debates about marriage and relations between men and women. Asia is a site of fantasy for men in an era when they feel that ‘traditional’ values of male pre-eminence in the family are being undermined. In this fantasy, ‘Asia’ is known through stereotypic representations, the stereotypes underlying (...) the nature of the response in the popular media. (shrink)

Menstruation leave for women workers brings into the public domain of mining ongoing debates around protective legislation for women. It brings into focus the presumed tensions between gender equity and gender difference with regard to women's economic citizenship. Large-scale mining in East Kalimantan in Indonesia has offered some opportunities to poor and unskilled rural women to find formal jobs in the mines as truck and heavy equipment operators. This paper presents a case study of women in mining occupations, considers the (...) implications of current menstruation leave provisions on the employment of women in the mines and raises serious issues related to gender equity in the workplace. The involvement of women in a non-conventional workplace such as the mine pits, providing a novel site for contestation over the rights of women workers, illuminates a less-debated area in feminist studies, especially in view of the significant ongoing changes in the Indonesian framework for industrial relations. (shrink)

In this article I shall give a brief account of psychoanalytic listening. I shall then consider the ontology of such listening to a session and compare it to the ontology of attending to paintings and poems. Psychoanalysts are interested not merely in what is understood through listening but in the process of listening. I shall proceed to ask how possible it is to represent that process. Finally, I raise some questions about how the capacity to listen psychoanalytically might be taught (...) or passed on. (shrink)

Leaders are faced with ethical and moral dilemmas daily, like those within the military who must span from large-scale combat operations to security cooperation and deterrence. For businesses, these dilemmas can include social and environmental impact such as those in mining; and for governments, the social and economic impact of their decision-making in their response to COVID-19. The move by Western defence forces to align their foundational principles, policies, and “soldier” dispositions with the changing values of the countries they serve (...) are starkly illustrative of challenges faced by all leaders. While admirable, such changes face the apparent contradiction of enhancing individual moral agency within a hierarchical organization that maintain enforceable codes of conduct. Ethical leadership theory provides aspirational goals, but lacks empirically based guidance on how to implement policies that facilitate values-based behavior. Using a discourse theory analysis of a moral dilemma vignette with Royal Australian Air Force personnel, this research identifies important aspects of agency and subject position that must be addressed if such policies are to succeed. These findings show that the potential contradiction can be addressed by acknowledging the contrasting tendency to bureaucratic process by leaders at upper levels, while lower-level leaders address moral issues by incorporating their subjectivity and making a conscious deontological choice between humanity and comrade loyalty. (shrink)