OBJECTIVE: How outside factors affect physician decision making remains an open question of vital importance. We sought to investigate the importance of various influences on physician decision making when clinical guidelines differ from patient preference. -/- METHODS: An online survey asking 469 primary care providers (PCPs) across four practice sites whether they would order magnetic resonance imaging for a patient with uncomplicated back pain. Participants were randomized to one of four scenarios: a patient's preference for imaging (control), a patient's preference (...) plus a colleague's opinion against imaging (colleague), a patient's preference plus a professional society's recommendation against imaging (profession), or a patient's preference plus an accountable care organization's quality metric that measures physician use of imaging (ACO). Demographic information and the reasoning behind participants' decisions also were obtained. -/- RESULTS: A total of 168 PCPs completed the survey, yielding a 36% completion rate. A majority chose not to pursue imaging: control 68%, colleague 85%, profession 87%, and ACO 78%. Multivariate logistic regression revealed that participants were more likely not to order advanced imaging only when reminded of a professional society recommendation (P = 0.017). Regression also suggested that practice site exerted an effect on the primary outcome. Evidence-based medicine and clinical judgment were the most cited reasons for the decision. -/- CONCLUSIONS: Our results reinforce the potential to leverage professional societies to advance evidence-based medicine and reduce unnecessary testing. At the same time, practice site appeared to exert influence, suggesting that these recommendations must be part of local institutional culture to be effective. (shrink)

Accurately timing acoustic events in dynamic scenes is fundamental to scene analysis. To detect events in busy scenes, listeners must often identify a change in the pattern of ongoing fluctuation, resulting in many ubiquitous events being detected later than when they occurred. This raises the question of how delayed detection time affects the manner in which such events are perceived relative to other events in the environment. To model these situations, we use sequences of tone-pips with a time-frequency pattern that (...) changes from regular to random ('REG-RAND') or vice versa ('RAND-REG'). REG-RAND transitions are detected rapidly, but the emergence of regularity cannot be established immediately, and thus RAND-REG transitions take significantly longer to detect. Using a temporal order judgment task, and a light-flash as a temporal marker, we demonstrate that listeners do not perceive the onset of RAND-REG transitions at the point of detection (∼530 ms post transition), but automatically re-adjust their estimate ∼300 ms closer to the nominal transition. These results demonstrate that the auditory system possesses mechanisms that survey the proximal history of an ongoing stimulus and automatically adjust perception to compensate for prolonged detection time, allowing listeners to build meaningful representations of the environment. (shrink)

The sociology of science seeks to theorize the social conditioning of science. This theorizing seems to undermine the validity of scientific knowledge and lead to relativism. Bourdieu and Latour both attempt to develop a sociology of science that overcomes relativism but stipulate opposite conditions for the production of scientific truths: while Bourdieu emphasizes autonomy, Latour emphasizes associations. This is because they work with oppositional epistemological and ontological assumptions. In both theories, the notion of truth lacks an independent definition; it is (...) derived from the theorist’s position on rationalism and defined with reference to how it is produced. This interdependence creates a different problem in each case. Bourdieu’s assertion that truths produced in relatively autonomous scientific fields are “trans-historical” remains an epistemological assertion. Latour’s argument that truths are produced through associations fails to capture the different resources, distinctions and boundarie.. (shrink)

Biometrics is essentially a pattern recognition system that recognizes an individual using their unique anatomical or behavioral patterns such as face, fingerprint, iris, signature etc. Recent researches have shown that many biometric traits are vulnerable to spoof attacks. Moreover, recent works showed that, contrary to a common belief, multimodal biometric systems in parallel fusion mode can be intruded even if only one trait is spoofed. However, most of the results were obtained using simulated spoof attacks, under the assumption that the (...) spoofed and genuine samples are indistinguishable, which may not be true for all biometric traits. In addition, so far vulnerability of multimodal biometric systems in serial fusion mode against spoof attacks has not been investigated. These issues raise a demand to investigate the robustness of multimodal systems under realistic spoof attacks. In this paper, we empirically investigate the performance of serial and parallel biometric fusion modes under realistic spoof attacks. Preliminary empirical results on real biometric systems made up of face, fingerprint and iris confirm that multimodal biometric systems in both fusion modes are not intrinsically robust against spoof attacks as believed so far. In particular, multimodal biometric systems in serial fusion mode can be even less robust than systems in parallel mode. We also experimentally found that incorporating the biometric sample quality in biometric fusion increases the robustness of the multimodal systems against spoof attacks. In the end, we study the trade-off between performance and robustness of the biometric systems under spoof attacks. (shrink)

Study on the life and Hindu philosophical works of Hãsarāja Svāmī, 1805-1856, Marathi writer.

Despite strong evidence of the influence of implicit theories of emotion on mental health symptoms among adult samples, scant attention has been paid to this important relation during adolesc...

Higher levels of reliance on cognitive reappraisal to manage daily emotional events are commonly associated with lower levels of depressive symptoms. However, reappraisal is a cognitively demanding regulation strategy, and its efficacy may depend on how successfully an individual is able to employ it. Individual differences in the association between reappraisal use and depressive symptoms may be particularly evident during adolescence, when the cognitive skills required to implement this complex strategy are still in development. The current study sought to determine (...) whether the association between reappraisal use and subsequent depressive symptom development is contingent on perceived regulatory success when using reappraisal. At Wave 1, adolescents (n = 178, mean age = 13.92, 49.7% female) used an experience-sampling smartphone app to report on their reappraisal use and perceptions of regulatory success over the course of two weeks. Six, 12, and 18 months later, adolescents completed a self-report measure of their depressive symptoms. Results showed that a) reappraisal use was associated with both subsequent depressive symptoms and trajectories of depressive symptoms over time, b) these associations were moderated by perceptions of regulatory success. Higher levels of reappraisal use were associated with lower levels of depressive symptoms only for those who reported higher than average between-subject regulatory success when reappraisal was enacted. (shrink)

This study aims to explain the form of a traditional house made of bamboo in Makassar culture; the components of the traditional houses made of bamboo and their respective functions; and socio-cultural dimensions of the shape and structure traditional house constructed of bamboo in Makassar culture. To discuss these problems, we used the Saussure’s Structural Linguistics approach and Levi Strauss’ Structural Anthropology. Both are elaborated into cultural semiotics. The data collection methods used were field surveys accompanied by technical documentation, interviews, (...) and records. Data were analyzed qualitatively. Results of the research indicate that the traditional house form made of bamboo in Makassar culture is generally divided into three parts, either vertically or horizontally. Vertically, the upper part is called pammakkang ‘attic’; the middle part is called kale ballak ‘house body’; and the bottom is called siring ‘underneath.’ Horizontally, the front is called paddaserang ri dallekang ‘vestibule’; the middle section is called paddaserang ri tangnga ‘living room’; the backside is called paddaserang ri boko ‘back room.’ The components of the upper, middle, and lower houses show opposition to each other. However, these components are logically related and related to one another so as to form a meaningful social and cultural construction. The shape and structure of traditional houses in Makassar culture is influenced by socioeconomic and socio-cultural factors. (shrink)

Much of the developing world, including Kenya, is rapidly urbanizing. Rising food and fuel prices in recent years have put the food security of the urban poor in a precarious position. In cities worldwide, urban agriculture helps some poor people gain access to food, but urban agriculture is less common in densely populated slums that lack space. In the Kibera slums of Nairobi, Kenya, households have recently begun a new form of urban agriculture called sack gardening in which vegetables such (...) as kale and Swiss chard are planted into large sacks filled with topsoil. This paper examines relationships among sack gardening, social capital, and food security in Kibera. We used a mixed methods approach, combining qualitative interviews with a household survey, as well as focus group discussions with both farmers and non-farmers. We present evidence that sack gardening increases social capital, especially for those households that undertake sack gardening in groups. We also find that sack gardening in the Kibera slums has a positive impact on household food security by improving household dietary diversity and by reducing the need to resort to painful coping mechanisms that are used during food shortages. (shrink)

En el Nuevo Testamento griego, el término "kalós" (hermoso, bello) aparece 99 veces y el término "agathós" (bueno), 104. Casi con la misma frecuencia. Se ha traducido y se traduce "kalós" por bueno, lo cual no es exacto. Parece importante retener que Cristo hubiera utilizado tantas veces el concepto de belleza o hermosura, y que invitara al hombre a hacer obras hermosas, a realizar la belleza en su vida. Por eso, según el título de este libro (de 285 págs.), se (...) trata de la belleza no solo que corresponde a la persona de Cristo, sino también la que él comunica a las demás personas, la que se refiere a nosotros por ser obras suyas. Jesús habla de obras "kalá" (hermosas), de frutos "kaloùs" (hermosos) o de corazón "kalê kaì agathê" (hermoso y bueno). La Antigüedad griega también hablaba del hombre "kalòkagathós". Es verdad que todo lo bello es bueno, y viceversa, pero hay que matizar. El propio Jesús se autodenomina "kalós", hermoso, al hablar de sí mismo en el Evangelio diciendo que es el pastor bello. Una palabra clave del presente libro es “razonar”. Los Evangelios son muy escuetos, dicen solo lo imprescindible, fueron vertidos además en otro idioma distinto del que habló Jesús. Hay aspectos que no son comprendidos si no se tiene en cuenta lo razonable. Para comprender el Evangelio no basta con atender al estricto dato teológico contenido en sus textos, tan condensados, sino que es preciso hacer al mismo tiempo una sutil labor filosófica que permita descubrir lo que implícitamente se contiene en ellos. Esta necesaria tarea —liberada de todo fundamentalismo— muestra lo que es más razonable para saber quién y cómo es Cristo. Por ello el libro lleva como subtítulo "Una comprensión filosófica del Evangelio". Y lo hace sirviéndose principalmente de la filosofía de Marías y Ortega, lo cual —a pesar de ser el instrumento intelectual que mejor permite comprender el Cristianismo— no se había realizado todavía. Gracias a ese método, lo primero que se comprende es precisamente la extraordinaria belleza de Cristo y la que comunica a sus discípulos y a quien se hace su servidor, llamado por San Pablo "kalòs", hermoso. Circula la idea, incluso en algunos ambientes católicos, de que la razón y, por supuesto, la filosofía no son aptas para comprender el Evangelio. Este libro, más filosófico que teológico, reivindica el insoslayable papel de la razón, de la filosofía, de lo razonable, para comprender los Evangelios, y debe leerse como un "ensayo de Cristología según la razón vital". Sus consideraciones están hechas a la luz de la razón. No de la razón abstracta, propia del racionalismo, que poco o nada tiene que ver con ella, sino de la razón vital; de la razón sin más. De la razón que conduce a la fe; de la fe que conduce a la razón. El dato histórico, irrefragable, de los cuatro Evangelios postulaba que se estudiara iluminándolo con la razón, sin la cual la fe queda mutilada y coja, abstracta, sin luz propia. Pero la razón había sido frecuentemente vista en ámbitos clericales con malos ojos, con cierta sospecha, sin darse cuenta de que, si es auténtica —y no algo reduccionista—, ilumina, clarifica, disipa las tinieblas. Especialmente porque, en última instancia, la razón procede del Logos, Cristo, la Luz, la Razón por antonomasia, fuente y origen de ella. En el Prólogo de San Juan se unen la razón y la vida; se trata no de una razón abstracta, sino vital. El "Lógos" es entonces la Razón vital. Lejos de ser enemiga de la vida, como sostenían los irracionalistas, la razón es una función vital. Quien recibe al "Lógos" con fe fundada en el amor debe esforzarse por intentar entenderlo con la razón, por buscar su inteligencia. El "Lógos", Cristo, ilumina a quien lo recibe para que se produzca esa comprensión. Los griegos definían al hombre como "zôon lógon échon", el viviente que tiene logos, que tiene razón. Cristo se presenta como el Logos, la Vida ("Zoé") que ha creado a su imagen y semejanza a ese viviente que tiene logos. Luego la razón no se debe subestimar o despreciar, es algo divino; Dios, fuente y origen de toda razón, la Razón misma, desea ser comprendido mediante ella, depositada en cada hombre. «Si la Sabiduría es Dios, el verdadero filósofo es el que ama a Dios», escribe San Agustín. Porque el filósofo es el que ama la Sabiduría, Dios. Jesús dice que «la Sabiduría se ha justificado por sus obras», que «la Sabiduría se ha justificado por todos sus hijos». Los hijos de la Sabiduría, de Cristo, la aman, la justifican, la acreditan, la razonan porque son filósofos. Y la filosofía, el amor a la Sabiduría, es absolutamente necesaria e imprescindible para comprender a Cristo y su Evangelio, que siempre enseña lo razonable. (shrink)

İran’ın kuzeybatısında İslam coğrafya âlimlerinin Cibâl olarak tavsif ettikleri bölgede Sâsânîler döneminde kurulan Kazvin, İslâm orduları tarafından bölgede ele geçirilen ilk İran şehirlerinden biri olmuştur. Kuruluşundan itibaren Deylem cihetine yönelik saldırılarda askerî karargâh amaçlı kullanılan kent, İslâm fetihleriyle de bu hüviyetini korumuştur. Halkın İslâm’ı benimsemesinin zamanı ve niteliği hususunda ihtilaflar olmakla birlikte Kazvin'de kısa süre içinde İslâmlaşma tamamlanmıştı. Garnizon kent olmasından kaynaklı iskân ettirilen Arap askerler, diğer beldelerden sınıra cihada gelen Müslümanlar, âlimler ve şehre ayrı imtiyazlarda bulunan halifeler sebebiyle şehir (...) kısa süre içinde fizikî ve kültürel olarak İslâm şehrine dönüşmüştür. Çalışmamızda örnekleriyle somutlaştıracağımız bu unsurlardan ilk olarak Kazvin fatihi Berâ b. Âzib tarafından şehre yerleştirilen Arap askerlerinden aralarında âlim ve ravilerin de bulunduğu kimselerin askerî faaliyetler dışında şehrin İslâm kültür ve medeniyetine katkılarından bahsedeceğiz. Keza İslâm büyükleri ve halifeler tarafından sınırda cihat etmenin faziletine dair sözleri ile teşvik edilen gönüllü askerleri ve gerek evlerinde gerekse camilerde ilim faaliyetlerini sürdüren âlimleri de bu minvalde zikredeceğiz. Son olarak bu askerler için kale, sûr ve şehrin sınıra yakın bölgelerinde inşa edilen mahalleler ile fiziki ortamı sağlayan, şehirde sürekli cihat ortamı olması hasebiyle halkı vergilerden muaf tutan ve vakıflarla malî destekte bulunan halifeleri ve sair idarî amillleri de kentin İslamlaşmasındaki diğer unsurlar arasında ele alacağız. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Commentary on “Wilhelm Griesinger”Aaron L. Mishara (bio)Arens situates Wilhelm Griesinger in a historical context with which we are no longer familiar. In doing so, she has performed an important task for contemporary clinicians, philosophers, and historians. We find ourselves working and thinking (both in everyday clinical practice and in the construction of our models of mental disorder) with the same categories that Griesinger struggled to sort out and redefine; (...) we often do so, however, without awareness of their history or lack of permanence. Ackerknecht writes that all the dominant trends in modern psychiatry can be traced back to Griesinger; he states that Griesinger is the “founder of neuropsychiatry,” a “merging of the two disciplines” neurology and psychiatry. Griesinger presents us with a “systematic synthesis of the anatomical, physiological, psychological and clinical points of view” (Ackerknecht 1959, 63). Somewhat contrarily, Karl Jaspers, in his General Psychopathology, groups Griesinger with the great observers and describers of clinical experience rather than among the systematic analyzers (Jaspers 1963, 849–50). Although Griesinger is best known for his identification of mental disorders as a subset of brain diseases, Karl Bonhoeffer, a successor to Griesinger as director of the Charité Clinic in Berlin, cautions that Griesinger “continued to see in psychological causes the most frequent and abundant source of mental disorders” (Bonhoeffer 1911, 53). Kales, Kales, and Vela-Bueno, however, write, “Griesinger was representative of a clinical movement that minimized the value of psychological concepts in the understanding of mental diseases” (Kales, Kales, and Vela-Bueno 1990, 15). Precisely because of his importance, contention surrounds his legacy.If Griesinger is the pioneer of empirical approaches in biological neuropsychiatry (as Ackerknecht and others claim), he is also precursor to philosophical criticisms of their limits. It is not so easy to lump Griesinger to one side of the oppositions with which we think today: Griesinger’s scientific psychiatry (formed on the basis of the newly emergent empirical physiology) was meant to steer between the Scylla of the previously reigning overspeculative romantic medicine and the Charybdis of the antitheoretical and “positivistic” materialism of Magendie. As Arens suggests, even during the same generation of university psychiatry which Griesinger was critical in forming, he was posthumously denounced as belonging to the Hegelian idealists; later, he was proclaimed to be an empiricist. Griesinger’s work contained both idealism and empiricism in a fragile synthesis that soon broke asunder.Hermeneutic theory points out that we inevitably interpret an author, in this case, Griesinger, in terms of the prejudices of our own present context of understanding and our current problems of application to clinical practice (Gadamer 1993). On the one hand, we benefit from the advantage of seeing all that follows Griesinger’s work and are able to “understand the author [End Page 165] better than he understood himself.” We are able to see what he only anticipates but is still not able to explicitly articulate as the unpredicted effects of his work. On the other hand, our interpretations are encumbered by the sedimentations of the views of his successors: his work lies buried under the subsequent interpretations and vicissitudes of a reception with its own agendas, contexts of interpretation, and realms of application. It would be easier if we could simply assign him to one side of our current debates concerning mind/body, individual/culture, and explanation/understanding rather than seeing that our present quandaries in understanding, classifying, and treating mental disorder result precisely from a reading of Griesinger that is not careful enough. It is here that Arens can help us develop our present views further by reviewing their past.Although Griesinger is heralded as the pioneer of an empirical physiological approach which employs a natural scientific concept of mechanism (Ackerknecht, O. Marx, Verwey), Arens situates him in the tradition of Kant and German idealism. It is perhaps this solution of being both philosophical and empirical which seems hard for us, today, to understand. We have come to view these directions as contradictory, to be necessarily in a mutually exclusive relationship. (But that is rather the expression of the present impasse and not the way that Griesinger originally approached these problems.) Arens ambitiously retraces the genealogy of Griesinger’s model... (shrink)

The aim of the Nordic Network for the Archaeology and Archaeobotany of Gardening (NTAA), as it was phrased those first days in Alnarp in the beginning of March 2010, is to: ”bring researchers together from different disciplines to discuss the history, archaeology, archaeobotany and cultivation of gardens and plants”. We had no idea, then, how widely appreciated this initiative would become. The fifth seminar in five years was held on Visingsö June 1-3, 2014 and the sixth seminar will take place (...) in Kristiansand, Norway, June 12-14, 2015. We are very pleased to be able to publish this report, Sources to the History of Gardening: Four Interdisciplinary Seminars 2010–2013, Arranged By the Nordic Network for the Archaeology and Archaeobotany of Gardening (NTAA), based on the first four themes and seminars, in total 26 articles. Most of them origins from one of the seminar contributions 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013 respectively. However, the editorial group has taken the opportunity, with the aim of the network in mind, to add supplementing contributions on some subjects. The articles are arranged in four themes according to the themes of the seminars. The first theme Archaeological Sources to the History of Gardens and the Cultural Landscape is linked to the first seminar in Alnarp, Sweden, 2010 which had a focus on method, the important connections between archaeology and archaeobotany and the interesting progress within garden archaeology during the last decade. The second theme Cabbage Patches and Kitchen Gardens deals with the second seminar in Norrköping, Sweden, 2011. Its focus was on historical, cultural geographical, archaeological and archaeobotanical research concerning utility gardens or kitchen gardens as well as the concept ‘kålgård’ (cabbage patch or kale yard), its shape and content over time. The third theme Cultural and Garden plants: Under Ground, Above Ground, In Herbariums and Archives connects to the third seminar in Uppsala, Sweden, 2012. It focused on sources, source criticism and interdisciplinary research to gain knowledge on the history of garden cultivation and cultural plants. The articles discuss, among other things, herbariums, written sources, DNA and molecular markers, pollen analysis and georadar. The fourth theme for NTAA’s annual seminar was Cultural Relict Plants and was held on Bornholm, Denmark, 2013. The focus on the seminar was on research and conservation of cultural relict plants, that is cultural plants which have survived in the same place for a long time after the actual cultivation has ceased. We dedicate this report to Kjell Lundquist (1955-2011) who were one of the initiators to this network and we hope it will inspire continuous research and new methodological discussions. (shrink)

De l'essence du judaïsme aux figures de l'exil, de l'idée d'origine au destin de l'art, du concept romantique de critique aux interprétations de Nietzsche et de Kafka, c'est l'esprit d'une époque, celui de la modernité d'avant la catastrophe, qui se trouve ici restitué. Composé de textes représentatifs de la pensée de Stéphane Mosès, cet ouvrage, qui est bien plus qu'un recueil d'articles épars, reflète à la manière d'un kaléidoscope toute une série d'interrogations, étroitement reliées entre elles, s'inscrivant dans la perspective (...) théorique ouverte par le génie benjaminien. Un livre érudit, vif, brillant, indispensable à qui souhaite s'initier à l'une des pensées les plus fécondes du XXe siècle."--P. [4] of cover. (shrink)

In Plato's "Hippias Major" 292e6-7, we can find a self-predication sentence; "The fine is always fine." (We have similar expressions in "Protagoras" 330c4-6, 330d8-el, "Lysis" 220b6-7.) How should we interpret this sentence? We cannot give it any metaphysical meaning drawn from Plato's own theory of Form, which is explicit in his middle dialogues. "The fine" here should be the logical cause, not the one of the metaphysical essentials (cf. Paul Woodruff's "Plateo Hippias Major", p. 150). So taking a sentence like (...) "parthenos kale kalon" (287e4), we can safely paraphrase it in Woodruff's manner: "a fine girl is a fine thing." This can avoid reading the metaphysical meaning into the text. And I would like to make a new proposal for reading of 292e6-7: "the fine thing is what is to be called fine." This is to emphasize the unique character of the self-predication sentences in the early dialogues. In the Socratic way of discourse, Socrates and his partner get involved into "trial and error" during their pursuit of the knowledge. What they can do then is to give their opinions which seem to them true (so-called alethes doxa", cf. "Meno" 85c), and to get close examinations of them. And in this way they are getting closer to the knowledge. My interpretation well describes these activities. (shrink)