Given the rise of genetic etiological beliefs regarding psychiatric disorders, a growing body of research has focused on trying to elucidate the effects that such explanatory frameworks might be having on how mental disorders are perceived by patients, clinicians, and the general public. Genetic and other biomedical explanations of mental disorders have long been seen as a potential tool in the efforts to destigmatize mental disorders, given the harshness of the widespread negative attitudes about them and the important negative clinical (...) and social impacts of this stigma. The conventional wisdom has appeared to be that because the effects of genes are seen as falling outside individual control, conceiving of mental disorders as caused by genes casts patients as blameless, thereby reducing stigmatization. Indeed, the results of experimental and correlational research have now robustly linked genetic and other biomedical explanations for mental disorders with reductions in the extent to which people are blamed for their psychiatric symptoms. However, research examining the impact of genetic and other biomedical explanations of mental disorders has also suggested that they can have significant downsides. The most consistently observed negative effect of these kinds of explanations is that they can apparently lead to the assumption that mental disorders are unlikely to improve or abate. Genetic and other biomedical explanations of mental disorders can also increase people’s confidence in the effectiveness of biomedical treatments (such as pharmacotherapy) but decrease their confidence in the effectiveness of “nonbiomedical” treatments (such as psychotherapy). (shrink)

Combining Marx's focus upon the totality (and its appearance as capitals in competition) with specific applications in political economy, 'Following Marx' ...

Learning programs that generalize from real‐world examples will have to deal with many different kinds of data. Continuous numeric data can cause problems for algorithms that search for examples with identical property values. These problems can be surmounted by categorizing the numeric data. However, this process has problems of its own. In this paper, we look at the need for categorizing numeric data and several methods for doing so. We concentrate on the use of generalization‐based memory, a memory organization where (...) actual examples are stored along with generalizations, which leads to a generalization‐based categorization algorithm. We also consider how to use a number heuristic, looking for gaps. These methods have been implemented in the UNIMEM computer system. Examples are presented of these algorithms categorizing data about the states of the United States. (shrink)

Family accommodation refers to the attempt of family members to prevent their child’s distress related to psychopathology. Family accommodation can limit meaningful participation in personal and social routines and activities. Accommodation has been studied extensively in the context of childhood anxiety and has been linked to greater impairment, and poor intervention outcomes. Like anxiety, sensory over-responsivity symptoms are associated with heightened distress and thus, may also be accommodated by family members. The current study describes the validation of a new pediatric (...) family accommodation scale for SOR. Parents of 301 children ages 3–13 years completed an online survey, of which 48 had medical or developmental conditions. The survey included the Child Sensory Profile 2 and the newly developed family accommodation scale for sensory over-responsivity. Three Sensory Profile 2 scores were analyzed: SOR, sensory under-responsivity and sensory seeking. The FASENS consists of 18 items; 12 describing the frequency of accommodation behaviors and 6 describing the impact of the accommodation on the wellbeing of the family and the child. Results indicated that the FASENS has high internal consistency as well as a significant 3-factor confirmatory model fit: accommodations, family impact, and child impact. FASENS scores significantly correlated with SOR symptoms. However, they also correlated with under-responsivity and seeking. Parents of children with health conditions reported significantly higher FASENS scores, which corresponded with their child’s significantly higher sensory scores. Family accommodations for SOR occur to some extent in the general population, but their prevalence and impact are significantly greater when the child has a health condition, in addition to SOR. Additional research is needed to explore whether these accommodations are adaptive and whether families and children would benefit from learning to reduce them, as with anxiety. (shrink)

The renewed interest in the foundations of quantum statistical mechanics in recent years has led us to study John von Neumann’s 1929 article on the quantum ergodic theorem. We have found this almost forgotten article, which until now has been available only in German, to be a treasure chest, and to be much misunderstood. In it, von Neumann studied the long-time behavior of macroscopic quantum systems. While one of the two theorems announced in his title, the one he calls the (...) “quantum H-theorem,” is actually a much weaker statement than Boltzmann’s classical H-theorem, the other theorem, which he calls the “quantum ergodic theorem,” is a beautiful and very non-trivial result. It expresses a fact we call “normal typicality” and can be summarized as follows: For a “typical” finite family of commuting macroscopic observables, every initial wave function ψ0 from a micro-canonical energy shell so evolves that for most times t in the long run, the joint probability distribution of these observables obtained from ψ is close to.. (shrink)

We give an explicit solution of a model Boltzmann kinetic equation describing a gas between two walls maintained at different temperatures. In the model, which is essentially one-dimensional, there is a probability for collisions to reverse the velocities of particles traveling in opposite directions. Particle number and speeds (but not momentum) are collision invariants. The solution, which depends on the stochastic collision kernels at the walls, has a linear density profile and the energy flux satisfies Fourier's law.

Karl Marx, philosopher of praxis — the theorist who rejected both the utopian socialists and the utopian putschists because of his core concept of the self-development of the working class through its own struggles. Was Marx necessarily limited because he lived and wrote in the nineteenth century – limited, not because capitalism was as yet ‘immature’, but because the proletariat was? Felton Shortall proposes that, able to observe neither the struggles for workers’ councils and Soviets nor ‘the limitations of the (...) workers’ council form of organisation’ as revealed by revolutionary experiences such as the ‘refusal to work’, Marx could not proceed beyond the dialectic of capital. (shrink)

Responding to comments by Ben Fine in relation to the concept of the degree of separation among workers, this article argues that Fine confuses Marx’s levels of analysis and thus cannot distinguish between necessity and contingency; fails to grasp the problematic character of Marx’s discussion of relative surplus-value once we remove the assumption of a given standard of necessity; and accordingly remains trapped in a ‘Ricardian Box’ that Marx himself was able to escape.

Not too long ago, Michael Burawoy commented that ‘two anomalies confront Marxism as its refutation: the durability of capitalism and the passivity of its working class'. So, has the time come, more than 125 years after the publication of Capital, to admit that the ‘facts’ simply do not support Marx's theory?

Fluctuation phenomena are the ''tip of the iceberg'' revealing the existence, behind even the most quiescent appearing macroscopic states, of an underlying world of agitated, ever-changing microscopic processes. While the presence of these fluctuations can be ignored in some cases, e.g. if one is satisfied with purely thermostatic description of systems in equilibrium, they are central to the understanding of other phenomena, e.g. the nucleation of a new phase following the quenching of a system into the co-existence region. This volume, (...) originally published several years ago, has stood the test of time well, as interest in fluctuation phenomena continues to grow. It contains a collection of review articles, some of them updated, written by experts in the field, on the subject of fluctuation phenomena. Some of the articles are of a very general nature discussing the modern mathematical formulation of the problems involved, while other articles deal with specific topics such as kinetics of phase transitions and conductivity in solids. The juxtaposition of the variety of physical situations in which fluctuation phenomena play an important role is novel and should give the reader a comprehensive and deeper insight into this fascinating subject. (shrink)

The ‘Bolivarian Revolution’ in Venezuela under Hugo Chávez has reignited debate in Latin America and internationally on the questions of socialism and revolution. This forum brings together six leading intellectuals from different revolutionary traditions and introduces their reflections on class-struggle, the state, imperialism, counter-power, revolutionary parties, community and communes, workplaces, economy, politics, society, culture, race, gender, and the hopes, contradictions, and prospects of ‘twenty-first-century socialism’ in contemporary Venezuela.