“Red tide” has become a familiar shorthand for unusual changes in the color of ocean waters. It is intimately related both to blooms of creatures like dinoflagellates and to the devastating effects they pose to coastal fisheries. This essay tracks the early twentieth century emergence of discolored water as an aquacultural problem, known in Japan as akashio, and its trans-oceanic transformation into the terms and practices of “red tide” in the post-World War II United States. For Japan’s “Pearl King” Mikimoto (...) Kōkichi and his contacts in diverse marine scientific communities, the years-long cycle of guarding and cultivating a pearl oyster went together with the ascription of moral qualities to tiny creatures that posed a threat to farmed bayscapes of pearl monoculture. As akashio, discolored water went from curiosity to marine livestock pest, one that at times left dead pearl oysters in its wake. Red tide arose from the sustained study of the mechanisms by which changes in the biological and chemical composition of seawater might become deadly to exclusively-claimed shellfish along Japanese coastlines, but came to be seen as a way to understand aquatic manifestations of harm in other parts of the littoral world. (shrink)

When information activated in memory involves emotional associations, the ability to shift attention away from an emotional cue is impaired compared to an emotionally neutral cue. The purpose of the present study was to investigate how emotional stimuli modulate attentional processes, and how this is reflected in localised brain electrical activity. Eight emotion and eight neutral words served as cues in a covert attention spatial orienting task. The cues were either valid or invalid indicators of which hemifield the target would (...) be presented to. In the remaining trials, no cue was presented prior to the target. Twenty subjects were instructed to manually respond to the target as fast as possible. Event-related potentials (ERPs) showed an enhanced P3 component to the emotion words. The ERPs to the target showed enhanced P1 and P3 components on invalid trials, with emotional cues. There were faster reaction times (RTs) to validly cued targets, but only when the emotion words served as cues. The results demonstrated that the emotional cues elicited sustained focused attention, facilitating an engage mechanism of spatial orienting. (shrink)

I present an analysis of Free Choice Items (FCIs), based on Scandinavian, where FCIs are complex and distinct from polarity sensitive items. Scandinavian FCIs are argued to have two components. One is a universal quantifying into modal contexts. The other is an operator mapping a type (s,t) expression onto itself, adjoining to the closest type t or (s,t) expression. Thus invoking Intensional Functional Application, this operator requires the presence of a modal in the scope of the universal quantifier. Facts concerning (...) ‘essential connections’ and ‘existential import’ are accounted for by assuming that the FC determiner has the option of acting like a quantifier. (shrink)

The intellectual relationship between Carl Schmitt and Max Weber has been a point of controversy for at least half a century. At the 1964 convention of the German Sociological Association, in honor of Weber's centenary, Schmitt was famously referred to as Weber's ?legitimate student.? This article uses the chapter Schmitt specifically wrote for an edited volume in Weber's memory, published in 1923, as the starting point for juxtaposing the two scholars, and then expands the analysis to encompass a range of (...) sources and commentaries. The comparison focuses on the approach of each of the two scholars to methodology and didactics, theory and conceptual use, as well as to the society/social science nexus. The article concludes by arguing that Schmitt performed a double rhetorical move: while styling himself as Weber's student, he then drew on that authority to assault Weber's liberalism and concept of scientific integrity. (shrink)

The article describes the founding principles, work program, and accomplishments of a Reference Group with both expert and layperson stakeholders for the corrosion of copper canisters in a proposed deep repository in Sweden for spent nuclear fuel. The article sets the Reference Group as a participatory effort within a broader context of stakeholder and public participation. It is argued that for the future it will be necessary to more precisely define the roles of different approaches to public participation in relation (...) to the actual societal decision-making procedures, and the issue is raised whether an increasing level of their institutionalization is required. In particular, the focus is set on the safe-space approach to stakeholder participation designed to suit situations where independence and autonomy are crucial elements for the participants. To illustrate this we compare experiences from Sweden and the Czech Republic. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to use an anaphoric notion of presupposition for solving the problem of zero argument anaphora. Since Shopen (1973) it has been known that many missing arguments have an anaphoric interpretation, but it has not been known how this interpretation arises. I argue that these arguments are involved in presuppositions. On an anaphoric account of presuppositions as in van der Sandt (1992) or Kamp and Roßdeutscher (1992), it can be shown that the zero arguments acquire (...) an anaphoric interpretation through the presuppositions. The analysis rests on the principle that the Discourse Representation Structure for the presupposition is proper, so that the discourse referents for the zero arguments are in its universe and must be anchored to discourse referents in the context. (shrink)

Plastic changes in spinal cord function like neuronal wind-up and increased receptive field are too short-lived to explain chronic pain without structural changes. It is possible that learning could be a mechanism for longlasting changes in nociceptive regulation. A learning process localized to the spinal cord has been shown to be important for the development of tolerance to the analgetic effect of ethanol, suggesting that nociceptive control systems may be changed by learning. Long term potentiation (LTP) is regarded as a (...) useful model of learning and memory. LTP-like changes have been observed in invitro preparations from the spinal cord and in spinal cord field potentials. Recently a long term increase in spinal A-[beta] and C-fibre evoked responses after painful stimulation has been observed. [coderre & katz, dickenson, wiesenfeld-hallin et al.]. (shrink)

The sociology of research and knowledge use, argue the authors, could be a way of linking important parts of sociology, such as organization studies, the sociology of science to each other. In the article, they discuss the idea that organizational responses to environments are related to research utilization. Based upon an empirical investigation of city welfare departments, four empirical “utilization strategies” are presented and shown to be related to power and control patterns. While negative utilization strategies are hostile to uncontrolled (...) research utilization and enhance the formation of bureaucratic expertise, conflict-oriented strategies are discursively productive and reinforce research use and alliance formation with social scientists to control the environment. (shrink)

In the pursuit of a dramaturgy of telematics as a compositional practice, the author builds a position on technology as externalized technique, develops a dramaturgic strategy with notions of an extended theatre practice and reports on a realized telematized performance where a practical implementation was explored. The theatrical site is viewed as a construct of attention, generated by the performers through the performance composition. The composition determines the audience experience, orchestrated by how the construction of the site manages their perspectives, (...) and how the performers are situated in the consciousness site of the audience. In the performed event the performers articulate as a collective extended entity, incorporating the transformation of the performance site via the articulation strategies implemented in the staging. Telematics is argued to be a technology facilitating specific modes of thinking, generating specific modes of actions and presence, which enable new performance sites and new modes of situating performance. (shrink)

It is suggested how one can imaginatively use a design strategy utilizing performers as tools in the creation of augmented, performative artwork. In order to establish meaningful constructions of performative and augmentative technology, one can use the formal methodologies of advanced formal body language as a tool in the creation process, and thereby have ‘the actual experience’ present in the process as a monitor and a constructive tool. To use a human being as a design tool is a method that (...) uses the skilled performer as a ‘super-’ or ‘extra-’ human tool to investigate through action and analysis. It is a way to test how realities occur under fluid and dynamic conditions within a controlled environment of time and space. This ‘technical’ use of the body as an extra-human behavioural entity, involves the total complex spectrum of intellect, emotions, desires, memory, actions, etc. as a formalized ‘machine’. (shrink)

The aim of this observational longitudinal cohort study was to describe relationships over time between degrees of stress of conscience, perceptions of conscience, burnout scores and assessments of person-centred climate and social support among healthcare personnel working in municipal care of older people. This study was performed among registered nurses and nurse assistants (n = 488). Data were collected on two occasions. Results show that perceiving one’s conscience as a burden, having feelings of emotional exhaustion and depersonalization and noticing disturbing (...) conflicts between co-workers were positively associated with stress of conscience. No significant changes were observed during the year under study, but degrees of stress of conscience and burnout scores were higher than in previous studies, suggesting that downsizing and increased workloads can negatively affect healthcare personnel. Following and expressing one’s conscience in one’s work, and perceiving social support from superiors are of importance in buffering the effects of stress of conscience. (shrink)

Scarcity sharpens the conflict between short term gains and long term sustainability. Psychological research documents that decision makers focus on immediate needs under scarcity and use available resources more effectively. However, decision makers also borrow too much from future resources and overall performance decreases as a consequence. Using an online experiment, we study how scarcity affects borrowing decisions in groups. We first document that scarcity affects groups in a similar way as individuals. Then, we go on to show that the (...) negative effect of scarcity is weaker for groups than for individuals. Even in a minimal design that excludes direct interaction or communication, the fact that participants know that their own behavior affects and can be partly observed by another participant disciplines their use of scarce resources. Our results thus highlight the benefit of groups as units of human organization. (shrink)

Humanitarian aid professionals frequently encounter situations in which one is conscious of the morally appropriate action but cannot take it because of institutional obstacles. Dilemmas like this are likely to result in a specific kind of stress reaction at the individual level, labeled as moral stress. In our study, 16 individuals working with international humanitarian aid and rescue operations participated in semistructured interviews, analyzed in accordance with a grounded theory approach. A theoretical model of ethical decision making from a moral (...) stress perspective was developed. The practical implications of the study are discussed. (shrink)

This article analyzes rent seeking with multiple additive efforts for each of two players. Impact on rent seeking occurs even when a player exerts only one effort. This contrasts with models of multiplicative efforts with impact on rent seeking only when a player exerts all its available efforts. An analytical solution is developed when the contest intensities are below one, and equal to one for one effort. Then, additional efforts causing interior solutions give players higher expected utilities and lower rent (...) dissipation, which contrasts with earlier findings for multiplicative efforts. Players cut back on the effort with contest intensity equal to one, and exert alternative efforts instead. Accounting for solutions which have to be determined numerically, a Nash equilibrium selection method is provided. For illustration, an example with maximum two efforts for each player is provided. Equilibria are shown where both players choose both efforts, or one player withdraws from its most costly effort. Both players may collectively prefer to exclude one of their efforts, though in equilibrium, they may prefer both efforts. When all contest intensities are equal to one or larger than one, only the one most cost-effective effort is exerted, due to the logic of linear or convex production. Rent dissipation increases in the contest intensity, and is maximum when the players are equally advantaged determined by unit effort cost divided by impact. (shrink)

Axelord’s [(1970), Conflict of Interest, Markham Publishers, Chicago] index of conflict in 2 × 2 games with two pure strategy equilibria has the property that a reduction in the cost of holding out corresponds to an increase in conflict. This article takes the opposite view, arguing that if losing becomes less costly, a player is less likely to gamble to win, which means that conflict will be less frequent. This approach leads to a new power index and a new measure (...) of stubbornness, both anchored in strategic reasoning. The win probability defined as power constitutes an equilibrium refinement which differs from Harsanyi and Selten’s [(1988), A General Theory of Equilibrium Selection in Games, MIT Press, Cambridge] refinement. In contrast, Axelrod’s approach focuses on preferences regarding divergences from imaginary outmost rewards that cannot be obtained jointly. The player who is less powerful in an asymmetric one-shot game becomes more powerful in the repeated game, provided he or she values the future sufficiently more than the opponent. This contrasts with the view that repetition induces cooperation, but conforms with the expectation that a more patient player receives a larger share of the pie. (shrink)

Recensie van: Geert Jan Blanken, Kierkegaard. Een inleiding in zijn leven en werk (Amsterdam: Ambo, 2012).

Background: Conscience is an important concept in ethics, having various meanings in different cultures. Because a growing number of healthcare professionals are of immigrant background, particularly within the care of older people, demanding multiple ethical positions, it is important to explore the meaning of conscience among care providers within different cultural contexts. Research objective: The study aimed to illuminate the meaning of conscience by enrolled nurses with an Iranian background working in residential care for Persian-speaking people with dementia. Research design: (...) A phenomenological hermeneutical method guided the study. Participants and research context: A total of 10 enrolled nurses with Iranian background, aged 33–46 years, participated in the study. All worked full time in residential care settings for Persian-speaking people with dementia in a large city, in Sweden. Ethical considerations: The study was approved by the Regional Ethical Review Board for ethical vetting of research involving humans. Participants were given verbal and written study information and assured that their participation was voluntary and confidential. Findings: Three themes were constructed including perception of conscience, clear conscience grounded in relations and striving to keep a clear conscience. The conscience was perceived as an inner guide grounded in feelings, which is dynamic and subject to changes throughout life. Having a clear conscience meant being able to form a bond with others, to respect them and to get their confirmation that one does well. To have a clear conscience demanded listening to the voice of the conscience. The enrolled nurses strived to keep their conscience clear by being generous in helping others, accomplishing daily tasks well and behaving nicely in the hope of being treated the same way one day. Conclusion: Cultural frameworks and the context of practice needed to be considered in interpreting the meaning of conscience and clear conscience. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 9.3 (2002) 285-286 [Access article in PDF] Depersonalization and Feelings of Unreality:Significant Symptoms With a Variety of Meanings Kjell Modigh Evaluations and diagnostic procedures in clinical psychiatry depend mainly on how the patient communicates his or her subjective experiences and on the psychiatrist's ability to understand that message. This is critical not only for understanding and offering proper treatment, but also for developing diagnostic (...) classifications. Hence the paper by Radovic and Radovic deals with an important topic, aiming to clarify the variety of meanings of the closely related terms unreality and depersonalization. The latter occurs as a symptom in connection to some psychiatric disorder and also constitutes a separate syndromeI agree with the authors that the rather intense renewing of the diagnostic criteria is seldom balanced by corresponding ambitions to analyze and improve the distinctness of the words for the experiences and symptoms which define the diagnoses.It is indeed a difficult task to demarcate what should be included in the concepts feelings of unreality and depersonalization and even to decide whether they are synonyms or distinguishable. There is at least one clear agreement in the different diagnostic systems: psychotic, delusional experiences are excluded. The border between unreality feelings with largely intact reality-testing ability and psychotic disorders with grossly disturbed reality-testing is, however, not absolute and patients with psychotic disorders may of course experience feelings of unreality or depersonalizationThe authors present a useful scheme by which different meanings of derealization are separated and that also points out the differences between depersonalization and derealization, although they are mutually dependant. Category (a), which come closest to depersonalization, includes experiences related to the self, whereas category (c) refers to impressions that the external world is unreal. Category (b), in their scheme, refers to altered bodily sensations: "the body part of the self" (Are there any body parts of the self? Perhaps all psychoanalysts would not agree).In my view, this scheme is useful and corresponds to clinical realities. Symptoms belonging to category (a) can, for instance, occur in affective disorders of almost psychotic depth, due to a [End Page 285] pathologically changed self-esteem. Symptoms belonging to category (b)—experiences of having moved outside one's own body—mainly belong to the diagnostic category dissociative disorders and can be understood as defense reactions to earlier traumatic experiences. The self escaped from the body during repeated experiences of sexual abuse. The diagnosis of depersonalization disorder consequentlybelongs to the group of dissociative disorders. Conditions where the outer world seems unreal (category [c]) can occur when the amount of internal stimuli is increased beyond what is possible to handle and therefore the capacity to recognize the environment is limited. So is the case in severe panic anxiety. Feelings of unreality as part of grief reactions may also belong, at least partly, to category (c): when dramatic and emotionally unacceptable events occur in the environment. As the authors point out, expressions of unreality feelings during grief more often can be understood as metaphors or existential reflections. In conclusion, categories -(a) and (c) can serve to separate depersonalization experiences with different psychopathologic origin, although they are closely related.As a second step, the authors examine how the terms unreal and feels unreal can be understood. Two interpretations of unreal, "nonexistent" and "artificial," have high psychiatric relevance; a third meaning, relating to "quality," mainly has linguistic connections to the experiences on unreality and depersonalization. The word feels communicates the experience of something that appears unreal although the subject has an intact ability of reality testing.The authors propose an additional interpretation, which they describe as a quasisensory experience. They give the example that dreams with unrealistic contents in some meaning, probably related to their intensity, appear "real." A further connection to dreams is that a situation, when awake, may have dreamlike qualities because of intensity or similarities to fragments of dreams. Events that occur in an unusual sequences, for example, corresponding to ones aims and wishes ("to good to be true") perhaps have similarities to dreamlike experiences. One may... (shrink)

Different types of well-being are likely to be associated with different kinds of behaviors. The first objective of this study was, from a subjective well-being perspective, to examine whether harmony in life and satisfaction with life are related differently to cooperative behaviors depending on individuals’ social value orientation. The second objective was, from a methodological perspective, to examine whether language-based assessments calledcomputational language assessments(CLA), which enable respondents to answer with words that are analyzed using natural language processing, demonstrate stronger correlations (...) with cooperation than traditional rating scales. Participants reported their harmony in life, satisfaction with life, and social value orientation before taking part in an online cooperative task. The results show that the CLA of overall harmony in life correlated with cooperation (all participants:r= 0.18,p 0.05). No significant correlations (measured by the CLA or traditional rating scales) were found between satisfaction with life and cooperation. In conclusion, our study reveals an important behavioral difference between different types of subjective well-being. To our knowledge, this is the first study supporting the validity of self-reported CLA over traditional rating scales in relation to actual behaviors. (shrink)

The Perceptions of Conscience Questionnaire (PCQ) and the Stress of Conscience Questionnaire (SCQ) have previously been developed and validated within the ‘Stress of Conscience Study’. The aim was to revalidate these two questionnaires, including two additional, theoretically and empirically significant items, on a sample of healthcare personnel working in direct contact with patients. The sample consisted of 503 healthcare personnel. To test variation and distribution among the answers, descriptive statistics, item analysis and principal component analysis (PCA) were used to examine (...) the underlying factor structure of the questionnaires. Support for adding the new item to the PCQ was found. No support was found for adding the new item to the SCQ. Both questionnaires can be regarded as valid for Swedish settings but can be improved by rephrasing some of the PCQ items and by adding items about private life to the SCQ. (shrink)

The quest for causes behind health and sickness proposes deeper causes like per- sonality and general view of life. Two such concepts have been shown to associate with health indicators in a systematic way, sense of coherence and view of life. Sense of coherence is defined as the sum of three factors, comprehensibility, manage- ability, and meaningfulness. View of life consists of three components, general theories of man and the world, a central value system, and a basic attitude. Two em- (...) pirical studies are summarized where the concepts are related to bereavement and health, respectively. It is concluded that there are many similarities between the two concepts. They both emphasize integration and coherence and connote basic struc- tures in belief systems. They can be related to personality structure and the coping process. The concepts differ in scope and depth. SOC can be considered as part of the connotation of VOL. SOC is quantitatively measurable while VOL presumes qualitative methods of assessment. In studies of health, where factors pertaining to world view or sense of coherence are not in focus, but studied rather as possible confoun- ders, methodological simplicity points to use of the SOC concept. In studies of health where the deeper causal structures are in focus, VOL should also be used, since it per- mits greater depth of analysis. Ideally, both concepts should be applied for a full un- derstanding between man's inner processes and health. (shrink)

Troubled conscience may jeopardize the health of healthcare personnel and, hence, the quality of care provided. Learning more about how personnel deal with their troubled conscience therefore seems important. The aim of this study was to describe personnel’s experiences of how they deal with troubled conscience generated in their daily work in municipal care of older people. Interviews were conducted with 20 care providers and analysed with a thematic content analysis. The findings show that in order to deal with troubled (...) conscience, personnel dialogued with themselves and with others. They took measures in a direction they perceived to be correct, and they expressed a need for distancing and re-energizing. It is of importance to share situations that generate troubled conscience in order to find ways to deal with them. Reconsidering one’s ways of dealing with troubled conscience may give care providers an opportunity to reach consensus within themselves. (shrink)

Ao longo desse artigo pretende-se demonstrar de que maneira a questão da hospitalidade se apresenta nas obras políticas de Jean Jacques Rousseau e, principalmente, qual é sua relação com a linguagem. Para tanto, começa-se demonstrando como a linguagem é a essência da hospitalidade e como ela opera tanto como obstáculo ao acolhimento do outro e como obstáculo a possibilidade da hospitalidade; tanto como tentativa de aproximação e reconhecimento e, portanto, como possibilidade à hospitalidade. Dessa maneira, será apresentado também o pensamento (...) de Derrida como intérprete e crítico de Rousseau, principalmente quando este analisa como se deu a formação da linguagem, a consequente formação da sociedade civil e as saídas possibilitadas pelo Contrato Social para que um acolhimento – mesmo que condicional – fosse possível. Conclui-se então, que na visão rousseauniana, a hospitalidade está sempre entre a entre a lei e o sentimento, a fala e a justiça sendo, entretanto, impossível um retorno a uma origem mais pura. (shrink)