Provability, Computability and Reflection.

The Depression Anxiety Stress Scales is a set of psychometrically sound scales that is widely used to assess negative emotional states in adults. In this project, we developed the Depression Anxiety Stress Scales for Youth and tested its psychometric properties. Data were collected from 2,121 Australian children and adolescents aged 7–18. This sample was split randomly into a calibration group and a cross-validation group. First, we used Confirmatory Factor Analysis on the calibration group to test the 3-factor DASS model on (...) 40 items we had developed in previous exploratory studies. We then selected the best-performing 21 items based on both statistical and theoretical considerations, guided by the structure and item content of the adult DASS. We cross-validated this new 21-item model in the second half of the sample. Results indicated good fit for the final 21-item 3-factor DASS model in both groups of children and adolescents. Multiple regression analyses showed that when scores on the other DASS-Y scales were held constant, the DASS-Y Depression scale had a strong negative relationship with positive affect and life satisfaction, the DASS-Y Anxiety scale was strongly associated with physiological hyperarousal, and the DASS-Y Stress scale was associated with excessive worrying. However, the relationship between Stress and worrying was only evident from age 10 onwards. Our results show that the core symptoms that define depression, anxiety and stress in children and adolescents are similar to those previously found in adults. The DASS-Y is a public domain instrument that we hope will prove useful in both research and clinical contexts. (shrink)

There has been widespread academic and popular debate about the transformative potential of consumption choices, particularly food shopping. While popular food media is optimistic about “shopping for change,” food scholars are more critical, drawing attention to fetishist approaches to “local” or “organic,” and suggesting the need for reflexive engagement with food politics. We argue that reflexivity is central to understanding the potential and limitations of consumer-focused food politics, but argue that this concept is often relatively unspecified. The first objective of (...) this paper is to operationalize reflexivity and advance understanding of reflexivity as an important tool for understanding the lived experience of food shopping. Our second objective is to explore the range of reflexivity observed in a mainstream “shopping for change” market sector. To do this, we draw from in-depth interviews with shoppers at Whole Foods Market (WFM)—a retail venue with the stated goal of making consumers “feel good about where [they] shop.” This group is chosen because of our interest in investigating the reflexivity of consumer engagement with the corporatized arm of ethical consumption—a realm of concern to food scholars as alternative agricultural initiatives are absorbed (both materially and symbolically) into corporate institutions. Our analysis suggests that shopping at venues like WFM is primarily motivated by traditional consumer pleasures, even for politicized consumers, a finding that poses serious limitations for a consumer-regulated food system. (shrink)

Objectives: Mindful parenting, measured by the Interpersonal Mindfulness in Parenting scale, is beneficial for parents and children. However, the IMP has not been validated in English-speaking parents. Further, little is known about whether mindful parenting is similar in parents of children vs. infants, or how it reduces child internalizing problems. We sought to validate the IMP in English-speaking mothers of children and infants, and to examine relationships between the facets of mindful parenting, child internalizing problems and parent variables related to (...) internalizing.Methods: Using confirmatory factor analyses, we examined the fit of various models of mindful parenting in English-speaking community-recruited mothers of children aged 3–18 years and infants aged 0–2 years. We used regression analyses to investigate relationships between the facets of mindful parenting, child internalizing problems, and parent variables including parental experiential avoidance, unhelpful beliefs about child anxiety and accommodation of child anxiety.Results: Mindful parenting can be measured in English-speaking mothers, using either a 5- or 6-factor, 29-item version of the IMP. These versions of the IMP operate similarly for mothers of children and infants. Child internalizing problems and related parent variables were best predicted by non-judgmental acceptance of parenting in mothers of children, and emotional self-awareness and non-reactivity in mothers of infants.Conclusions: The IMP is a valid measure of mindful parenting in English-speaking mothers of children and infants. Mindful parenting predicts child internalizing problems and related parent variables, suggesting that mindful parenting programs could benefit families of children with internalizing problems, potentially by reducing parental experiential avoidance, unhelpful beliefs about or accommodation of child anxiety. (shrink)

In biological electron transport the spin, and thus the magnetic property of electrons, is neglected. Furthermore, no attention is paid to the fact that the great majority of biologically important molecules are chiral, and during excitation a magnetic moment is induced in them. It is shown, both theoretically and experimentally, that the magnetic moment of the electron and the magnetic transition moment of the optically active molecules may interact. The main consequences of such an interaction are a higher probability of (...) the occurrence of optically active molecules in triplet states, and the polarization of transported electrons. (shrink)

We introduce the notion of an alphabetic trace of a cut-free intuitionistic prepositional proof and show that it serves to characterize the equality of arrows in cartesian closed categories. We also show that alphabetic traces improve on the notion of the generality of proofs proposed in the literature. The main theorem of the paper yields a new and considerably simpler solution of the coherence problem for cartesian closed categories than those in [11, 14].

In his famous paper, An Unsolvable Problem of Elementary Number Theory, Alonzo Church identified the intuitive notion of effective calculability with the mathematically precise notion of recursiveness. This proposal, known as Church's Thesis, has been widely accepted. Only a few papers have been written against it. One of these is László Kalmár's An Argument Against the Plausibility of Church's Thesis from 1959. The aim of this paper is to present Kalmár's argument and to fill in missing details based on his (...) general philosophical thoughts on mathematics. (shrink)

There has been widespread academic and popular debate about the transformative potential of consumption choices, particularly food shopping. While popular food media is optimistic about “shopping for change,” food scholars are more critical, drawing attention to fetishist approaches to “local” or “organic,” and suggesting the need for reflexive engagement with food politics. We argue that reflexivity is central to understanding the potential and limitations of consumer-focused food politics, but argue that this concept is often relatively unspecified. The first objective of (...) this paper is to operationalize reflexivity and advance understanding of reflexivity as an important tool for understanding the lived experience of food shopping. Our second objective is to explore the range of reflexivity observed in a mainstream “shopping for change” market sector. To do this, we draw from in-depth interviews with shoppers at Whole Foods Market (WFM)—a retail venue with the stated goal of making consumers “feel good about where [they] shop.” This group is chosen because of our interest in investigating the reflexivity of consumer engagement with the corporatized arm of ethical consumption—a realm of concern to food scholars as alternative agricultural initiatives are absorbed (both materially and symbolically) into corporate institutions. Our analysis suggests that shopping at venues like WFM is primarily motivated by traditional consumer pleasures, even for politicized consumers, a finding that poses serious limitations for a consumer-regulated food system. (shrink)

Review by: Maté Szabó The Bulletin of Symbolic Logic, Volume 19, Issue 1, Page 110-112, March 2013.