The aim of the study was to develop a new comprehensive reading assessment battery for multi-ethnic and multilingual learners in Malaysia. Using this assessment battery, we examined the reliability, validity, and dimensionality of the factors associated with reading difficulties/disabilities in the Malay language, a highly transparent alphabetic orthography. In order to further evaluate the reading assessment battery, we compared results from the assessment battery with those obtained from the Malaysian national screening instrument. In the study, 866 Grade 1 children from (...) multi-ethnic and multilingual backgrounds from 11 government primary schools participated. The reading assessment battery comprised 13 assessments, namely, reading comprehension, spelling, listening comprehension, letter name knowledge, letter name fluency, rapid automatized naming, word reading accuracy, word reading efficiency, oral reading fluency, expressive vocabulary, receptive vocabulary, elision, and phonological memory. High reliability and validity were found for the assessments. An exploratory factor analysis yielded three main constructs: phonological-decoding, sublexical-fluency, and vocabulary-memory. Phonological-decoding was found to be the most reliable construct that distinguished between at-risk and non-at-risk children. Identifying these underlying factors will be useful for detecting children at-risk for developing reading difficulties in the Malay language. In addition, these results highlight the importance of including a range of reading and reading-related measures for the early diagnosis of reading difficulties in this highly transparent orthography. (shrink)

Background Although the importance of clinical ethics in contemporary clinical environments is established, development of formal clinical ethics services in the Australia health system has, to date, been ad hoc. This study was designed to systematically follow and reflect upon the first 18 months of activity by a newly established service, to examine key barriers and facilitators to establishing a new service in an Australian hospital setting. Methods: how the study was performed and statistical tests used A qualitative case study (...) approach was utilised. The study gathered and analysed data using observations of service committee meetings, document analysis of agendas and minutes, and semi-structured interviews with committee members to generate semantic themes. By interpreting the thematic findings in reference to national capacity building resources, this study also aimed to provide practice-based reflections for other health agencies. Results: the main findings An overarching theme identified in the data was a strong commitment to supporting clinicians facing difficult patient care decisions and navigating difficult discussions with patients and families. Another key theme was the role of the new clinical ethics support service in providing clinicians with a pathway to raise system-wide issues with the organisation Executive. While there was strong clinical engagement, consumer and community participation remained a challenge, as did unresolved governance issues and a need for clearer policy relationship between the service and the organisation. Conclusions: brief summary and potential implications Considering these themes in relation to the national capacity building resources, the study identifies three areas likely to require ongoing development and negotiation. These are: the role of the clinical ethics support service as a link between the workforce and the Executive; the incorporation of consumers and patients; and ethical reasoning. To improve the effectiveness of the service, it is necessary to increase clarity on the service’s role at the governance and policy level, as well as develop strategies for engaging consumers, patients and families. Finally, the capacity of the service to reflect on complex cases may be enhanced through explicit discussions of various different ethical frameworks and ways of deliberating. (shrink)

Introduction -- Direct algorithms of decompositions of matrices by non-orthogonal transformations -- Direct algorithms of decompositions of matrices by orthogonal transformations -- Direct algorithms of solution of linear equations -- Iterative algorithms of solution of linear equations -- Direct algorithms of solution of eigenvalue problem -- Iterative algorithms of solution of eigenvalue problem -- Algorithms of solution of singular value decomposition.

This collection contributes to current debates and explores new topics of engagement between Feminism and Confucius’s teachings, variously interpreted. Besides care ethics and role ethics, questions of gender oppression and education, it includes essays on epistemology and environmental ethics.

In this essay I examine how compulsory military service and the Roman Catholic Church uphold and perpetuate an inadequate notion of masculinity in South Korea. I argue that the militaristic and Catholic definitions of masculinity significantly and pejoratively affect Korean culture. To unlearn these definitions, I propose an educational "readjusting" program that denounces any unjust discrimination on the basis of sex and gender.

Angelaki, Volume 17, Issue 2, Page 123-144, June 2012.

Despite contemporary Confucianism’s aspirations to be a world philosophy, there is an ethnocentric strand within the Confucian tradition, most glaringly exemplified in Han Yu’s attacks on Buddhism. This paper re-assesses Confucian ethnocentrism in the context of contrary practices that indicate a more pragmatic attitude among Confucians toward cross-cultural interactions. It argues that while the ethnocentric tendency serves as constant reminder of the need for vigilance, and recognition of the difficulties of crossing cultural boundaries, there are nevertheless resources within Confucianism for (...) constructing an ethics of communication that is urgently needed to deal with the moral problems of cultural pluralism. The paper analyses the role of various common Confucian virtues such as ren, yi, li, zhi in communication, and argues that a virtue of flexibility is implicit in Confucius’s insistence of bugu and could contribute significantly to a Confucian ethics of communicative virtues. (shrink)

This study examined the mediating role of meaning in life in the effect of calling on posttraumatic stress disorder and posttraumatic growth among navy soldiers of the Republic of Korea deployed to the Gulf of Aden, Somalia. Participants responded to the questionnaire survey three times at 4-month intervals. From the first, second, and third surveys, data were collected for 223, 195, and 103 respondents, respectively. Results showed that calling had a negative effect on PTSD, fully mediated by meaning in life, (...) whereas calling had a positive effect on PTG, partially mediated by meaning in life. Our findings suggest that calling acts as a positive psychological resource for maintaining the meaning in life throughout stressful events experienced during deployment, thereby reducing posttraumatic stress symptoms and promoting post-deployment psychological growth. Finally, theoretical and practical implications and the need for follow-up studies are discussed. (shrink)

This article provides information about Berne's financial situation at the time the Economic Society was founded. The canton was in an exceptionally fortunate position, having accumulated a sizeable cash reserve that was in part used for loans and investments on the London capital market. Throughout the century, the Bernese government followed a very cautious investment strategy. The main reason for purchasing overseas securities was that they helped the patricians to become independent from tax-paying subjects. Economic imperatives ruled out increases of (...) the cash reserve or further involvement in the overcrowded domestic capital market. However, by investing abroad Berne became increasingly dependent on the goodwill of its debtors, for which it was criticised by the Economic Patriots amongst others. (shrink)

ArgumentThis paper aims to show how a nineteenth-century Korean scholar's mathematical study reflects the Korean intellectual environment of his time by focusing on the rule of false double position and the method of root extraction. There were two major trends in Korean mathematics of the early nineteenth century: the first was “Tongsan,” literally “Eastern Mathematics,” which largely depended on Chinese mathematics of the Song and Yuan period adopting counting rod calculation; the second trend was Western mathematics, which was transmitted by (...) the Jesuits and their Chinese collaborators from the late sixteenth century. There was also an intellectual transition in late eighteenth-century Korea when mathematics, which had been of only minor interest for Confucian scholars, became an important part of Confucian pursuits. We can gain an insight into the history of mathematics in Korea by examining and understanding Hong Kil-chu's mathematical studies and the context of the academic world of his time. (shrink)

This paper explores how undergraduate students understood the social relevance of their engineering course content knowledge and drew broader social and ethical implications from that knowledge. Based on a three-year qualitative study in a junior-level engineering class, we found that students had difficulty in acknowledging the social and ethical aspects of engineering as relevant topics in their coursework. Many students considered the immediate technical usability or improved efficiency of technical innovations as the noteworthy social and ethical implications of engineering. Findings (...) suggest that highly-structured engineering programs leave little room for undergraduate students to explore the ethical dimension of engineering content knowledge and interact with other students/programs on campus to expand their “technically-minded” perspective. We discussed the issues of the “culture of disengagement” :42–72, 2014) fueled by disciplinary elitism, spatial distance, and insulated curriculum prevalent in the current structure of engineering programs. We called for more conscious effort by engineering educators to offer meaningful interdisciplinary engagement opportunities and in-class conversations on ethics that support engineering students' holistic intellectual growth and well-rounded professional ethics. (shrink)

Open Dialogue is an approach to working with mental health problems that emphasises promoting dialogue between multiple perspectives within an individual person and between all the people present, including the therapists. Therapists’ own perspectives are often introduced during conversations called reflections, which present a potential source of different perspectives. Using conversation analysis we analysed 14 hours of video-recorded Open Dialogue sessions with a focus on therapists’ reflections. We noticed that therapists did not display explicit agreement with each other’s reflections. This (...) absence of explicit agreement was displayed through a variety of verbal and non-verbal forms. Eliding agreement facilitated deference to the epistemic authority of the client, assertion of epistemic rights from second position, emphasis of a positive perspective or to voice multiple perspectives. Therapists avoided consensus and thus presented multiple perspectives to the family while also attending to issues of contingency. The implications of epistemic primacy and asymmetry connected to sequential structures in talk pose a challenge to the generation of collaborative reflective dialogues. (shrink)

Throughout the twentieth century, psychoanalysis and feminism were the practico-intellectual fields most systematic and subversive in demonstrating that humanity is sexually fissured. More recently, further advances in the philosophy of difference and renewed emphases on embodiment, materiality and life offer possibilities for attending to dimensions of gender and sexuality that were previously underdeveloped. This collection examines these possibilities insofar as they can either deepen or displace the traditional centrality of psychoanalysis in matters sexual. The authors come from a wide range (...) of backgrounds and defend their approaches to the problem of sexual difference in a variety of idioms, drawing on key thinkers such as Lacan, Irigaray, Deleuze, Foucault and Badiou. It is rare to come across these thinkers together; but sex is too crucial a site for critical thought not to mobilize every conceptual power available. This book was originally published as a special issue of the journal Angelaki: The Journal of the Theoretical Humanities. (shrink)

Throughout the twentieth century, psychoanalysis and feminism were the practico-intellectual fields most systematic and subversive in demonstrating that humanity is sexually fissured. More recently, further advances in the philosophy of difference and renewed emphases on embodiment, materiality and life offer possibilities for attending to dimensions of gender and sexuality that were previously underdeveloped. This collection examines these possibilities insofar as they can either deepen or displace the traditional centrality of psychoanalysis in matters sexual. The authors come from a wide range (...) of backgrounds and defend their approaches to the problem of sexual difference in a variety of idioms, drawing on key thinkers such as Lacan, Irigaray, Deleuze, Foucault and Badiou. It is rare to come across these thinkers together; but sex is too crucial a site for critical thought not to mobilize every conceptual power available. This book was originally published as a special issue of the journal _Angelaki: The Journal of the Theoretical Humanities._. (shrink)

For decades, Martti Koskenniemi has not just been an influential writer in international law; his work has caused a significant shift in the direction of the field. This book engages with some of the core questions that have animated Koskenniemi's scholarship so far. Its chapters attest to the breadth and depth of Koskenniemi's oeuvre and the different ways in which he has explored these questions. Koskenniemi's work is applied to a wide range of functional areas in international law and discussed (...) in relation to an even broader range of theoretical perspectives, including history, political theory, sociology and international relations theory. These invaluable insights have been expertly brought together by the volume editors, who identify the key and common themes of many of the book's contributions. This volume demonstrates the importance of critical legal scholarship in the ways international law is enacted, shaped and reshaped over time. (shrink)

The ethics of Wolfhart Pannenberg has a nomological dimension at its center. Based on the history of the natural law tradition, Pannenberg maintains the possibility of the natural law theory on the following five grounds. -/- The theological ground is his understanding of the Decalogue, the Sermon on the Mount, and the Pauline interpretation of the law. For its historical ground, Pannenberg articulates the natural law theories of Patristic theology and the theologies of Troeltsch and Brunner. The ontological ground is (...) the order of the world, which God established in the process of history. The anthropological ground is the mutuality of human society. The latter two dimensions are related to the epistemological ground, which is based on the hermeneutics of universal history. -/- Pannenberg attempts to combine the law, the gospel, and love in relation to the Kingdom of God. Thus, Pannenberg’s Kingdom ethics is nomological as well as eschatological. (shrink)

Although companies recognize the importance of social responsibility and community engagement, conflicts between companies and communities have been noticeably increasing. To better understand the role of institutional environments in company–community conflicts, we analyze two mining conflicts—Minera Yanacocha's Minas Conga extension project in Peru and Minera Los Pelambres' El Mauro Tailings Dam in Chile. Our findings imply that, to prevent negative consequences and alleviate company–community conflicts, mining companies should address underlying structural causes and pursue informal approaches in order to obtain and (...) maintain their social license. We find that better formal institutional environments not only alleviate conflict intensity but also facilitate informal approaches through which companies and communities can cooperate to resolve conflicts. The best practice would be to start and continue dialogs between communities and companies, mediated by impartial governments, to understand the concerns of the counterparty and find means by which to address the causes. (shrink)

Although many scholars take parsimony for granted today, Elliott Sober shows in his latest book, Ockham’s Razors, that they might not be rationally justified to do so. In particular, he claims that the famous Ockham’s Razor, the heuristic that says one should not postulate more entities than necessary, rests on some implicit assumptions that go back to Newton and his rules of reasoning. The problem is that Newton justified those basic rules on theological grounds, that is, the world is parsimonious (...) because God is orderly. All is not lost : Sober suggests that two contemporary perspectives from probability theory do justify parsimony. The first one is related to Bayesianism, and the fact that Ockham’s Razor is embedded in Bayes’ theorem. Sober criticizes this view and argues for an alternative, one in which predictive accuracy is more fundamental. I suggest that Sober might be right about the unseen role of predictive accuracy, but that this does not entail that Bayesians should adhere to Sober’s framework. It is my contention that Sober’s case against Bayesian model selection has more to do with the Bayesian worldview than the methodology per se. (shrink)

Researchers have reported that companion robots have had positive effects on older adults with depression. However, there has been little quantitative analysis on the relationship between robot design and depression. To address this, we surveyed 191 older adults and investigated the impact of age, gender and depression level on design preferences for companion robots. We focused on toy-sized companion robots and evaluated three design elements: type, weight and material. The findings show that baby-type robots were the most preferred by older (...) adults. They favoured the lightest weights and microfibre materials, regardless of the independent variables. Moreover, robot weight preferences varied significantly with the level of depression. Highly depressed older adults disliked heavy robots. These preliminary findings suggest that companion robots need to be designed with careful consideration of their physical characteristics and potential psychological effects. (shrink)

Terry Lectures. A religious philosopher's exploration of the nature and history of the word argues that the word is initially and always sound, that it cannot be reduced to any other category, and that sound is essentially an event manifesting power and personal presence. His analysis of the development of verbal expression, from oral sources through the transfer to the visual world and to contemporary means of electronic communication, shows that the predicament of the human word is the predicament of (...) man himself. (shrink)

In the 1920s, John Dewey's followers in China, led by his student Hu Shih, attempted to put his pragmatism into practice in their quest for democracy. This essay compares Hu Shih's thought, especially his emphasis on pragmatism as method, with Dewey's philosophical positions and evaluates Hu's achievement as a pragmatist in the context of the tumultuous times he lived in. It assesses Hu's claim that the means to democracy lies in education rather than politics, since democracy as a way of (...) life requires a cultural renewal beyond institutional changes. It argues that a problem‐centered approach to social change does not preclude radical action, even revolution. But pragmatism is against gratuitous use of violence in the service of wholesale and abstract ideals advocated by various “isms.” While Hu's experiment of democracy in China is a significant episode in the history of pragmatism, its “failure” does not prove that there are inherent flaws in the pragmatist method, that pragmatism is unviable for China. The failure needs to be understood in the context of the pragmatist conception of experiment, in which failures are to be expected; what is important is to learn from them to achieve better results in the next stage of inquiry. Hu Shih's pragmatism contains lessons for pragmatists and for those interested in the continued quest for democracy in China—the experiment continues. (shrink)

Considered the most important work of Walter Ong's career, Ramus, Method, and the Decay of Dialogue is an elegant review of the history of Ramist scholarship ...

A model of corporate ethics and social responsibility (CESR) was developed and empirically tested among Chinese business undergraduates in Hong Kong and Singapore. As predicted, it was found that CESR beliefs were negatively related to Machiavellianism and two Confucian concepts, guanxi (interpersonal connections) and mianzi (face). CESR beliefs were also lower among Hong Kong than Singaporean youths. The negative effects of guanxi, mianzi, and Machiavellianism were more pronounced for the Hong Kong than Singapore sample. Implications of these findings are discussed (...) and directions for future research suggested. (shrink)

In Interfaces of the World, Walter J. Ong explores the effects on consciousness of the word as it moves through oral to written to print and electronic culture.