The meaning of material artifacts that remain unchanged in form can change through spatial references and through changes in context. In this volume, spatial, historical, topographical, and discursive contextual changes are analyzed in case studies, and their meanings and intersections are critically reflected upon.

The significant roles played by eunuchs (castrated slaves) in Rasūlid Yemen have thus far escaped scholarly scrutiny. A systematic study of the historiographic and biographical writings of ʿAlī b. al-Ḥasan al-Khazrajī, chronicler of the Rasūlid court at the turn of the 9th/15th century, reveals that eunuchs figured prominently both in the highest ranks of the dynasty’s political, administrative, and military hierarchy, as well as in the most intimate realms of royal households. The author, however, remains silent on the origins of (...) these men and on the capture, castration, and deracination they suffered as young boys. In order to reconstruct the slave trading practices that supplied the Rasūlids with eunuchs, a late 7th/13th-century collection of administrative documents known as Nūr al-maʿārif shall be drawn upon. This source names an African export hub from which slaves were shipped across the Red Sea to Yemen, lists prices and taxes paid for eunuchs, and reveals that the Rasūlids actively interfered in the Yemeni slave trade in order to secure the most desirable eunuchs for themselves. Taken together, these narrative and administrative sources shed light on the eunuch institution in Rasūlid Yemen and on its role in sustaining the dynasty. (shrink)

Este estudio tuvo como objetivo caracterizar investigaciones sobre representaciones sociales de docentes y estudiantes acerca de la escritura en la educación superior. La revisión sistemática se efectuó siguiendo la metodología propuesta por la Declaración PRISMA. La búsqueda, que fue realizada en las bases de datos WOS, Scopus, Scielo y ERIC, permitió identificar 20 artículos entre los que predomina el enfoque cualitativo. Como elementos recurrentes se destacan la necesidad de que en la universidad se enseñe explícitamente a escribir y la persistencia (...) de representaciones, que vinculan la escritura con la evaluación. (shrink)

La genèse de la construction médicale de la ménopause est ici appréhendée en croisant des approches empruntées à l’histoire sociale des savoirs. Cela conduit en premier lieu à revenir sur la variété des termes employés pour désigner la « cessation des règles ». Ces évolutions doivent être examinées en regard des nouvelles échelles de la vie humaine élaborées au cours de la période. Est-ce qu’une sexuation des âges de la vie, absente jusque-là, y transparaît? L’expression « âge de retour » (...) désigne-t-elle un âge propre aux femmes comme le laissent penser certains auteurs? La médicalisation de la ménopause peut ainsi être remise en perspective, avant d’étudier de plus près les temps forts de sa construction au cours de la période considérée (1770-1836). Enfin, un dernier volet questionne l’existence d’un discours sur l’âge de retour au masculin et analyse la fabrique des asymétries sexuées dans les dispositifs hygiénistes destinés aux quarantenaires et aux cinquantenaires des deux sexes. (shrink)

October 14, 2007: Studying how a broker's brain works. swissinfo. "To help maintain its competitive edge, the Swiss banking industry is investing heavily in financial engineering. Its latest recruit is economist Peter Bossaerts. swissinfo talked to Bossaerts, a leading expert in neuroeconomics – the study of how we make financial choices - about his recent appointment as professor at the Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne.... swissinfo: So what exactly is neuroeconomics? Peter Bossaerts: It's a mixture of decisional theory - (...) mathematical theories applied in risk-based decision-making - and neuroscience.... Neurofinance, therefore, tries to understand how choices are made in a risky world. It looks closely at the workings of the brain while taking into account human emotions.... swissinfo: What is the aim of your work? P.B.: Firstly, to make progress on how people make choices when dealing with risk.... Neuroeconomics should also help improve decisional theory, which doesn't work in the real world where rules are vague and probabilities are unknown. The aim is to build up artificial intelligence based on a theory where decision-making is repeated." >>> Neuroscience, Cognitive Science, Finance & Investing, Applications. (shrink)

Résumé Loin d’être un programme de recherche tourné uniquement vers l’abstraction, la physiocratie comporte une dimension empirique tout à fait centrale dans sa constitution et dans son développement. L’étude de cette dimension permet de mettre au jour les liens généalogiques et méthodologiques qui ont uni le mouvement physiocratique et les traditions anglaise et française de l’arithmétique politique. En outre, une attention portée à l’inventaire des différentes activités agricoles et à la mesure de leurs productions respectives témoigne d’une autre influence importante (...) dans la construction de l’économie politique de Quesnay, à savoir l’agronomie, alors en plein renouveau sous l’impulsion de Duhamel du Monceau. (shrink)

Im Gegensatz zum drei Jahre jüngeren Schelling, dem er sein Leben lang verbunden blieb, wird Steffens nach seinem Tod nahezu vergessen; in der landläufigen Überlieferung hat er als der Überbringer der Romantik nach Dänemark überlebt. Erst mit Beginn des 21. Jahrhunderts wird er als Naturforscher, als Philosoph und Universitätsreformer wiederentdeckt, nicht zuletzt auch im Diskurs-Zusammenhang um das Anthropozän. Steffens-Forscherinnen und Forscher aus Norwegen, Dänemark und Deutschland setzen sich mit dem romantischen Denken der Zeit, mit den Aspekten der nationalen Wiedergeburt in (...) Kultur, Politik und Wissenschaft auseinander, mit Naturgeschichte und Kunst: Marit Bergner, Marie-Theres Federhofer, Bernd Henningsen, Lore Hühn, Daniel Fulda, Norman Kasper, Jesper Lundsfryd Rasmussen, Jessika Piechocki, Anna Lena Sandberg und Elisabeth Décultot. (shrink)

Human presencing explores how people’s past encounters with others shape their present actions. In this paper, I present an alternative perspective on human embodiment in which the re-evoking of the absent can be traced to the intricate interplay of bodily dynamics. By situating the phenomenon within distributed, embodied, and dialogic approaches to language and cognition, I am overcoming the theoretical and methodological challenges involved in perceiving and acting upon what is not perceptually present. In a case study, I present strong (...) and weak dimensions of human presencing. In the former, a person uses their body in distinct ways and shapes their immediate ecology to make others present to them. In contrast, in the latter, a person’s past encounter with others powerfully shapes the projections they make onto written digital inscriptions. These findings have implications for how people act in online learning environments and how human activity shapes the machines we use every day. In this way, the paper highlights the complexity of a person as a social being and allows for different approaches to human embodiment in technology. (shrink)

This paper takes a step back from considering expertise as a social phenomenon. One should investigate how people become knowers before assigning expertise to a person’s actions. Using a temporal-sensitive systemic ethnography, a case study shows how undergraduate students form a social system out of necessity as they fabricate knowledge around an empty wording like ‘conscious living’. Tracing the engagement with students and tutor to recursive moments of coaction, I argue that, through the subtleties of bodily movements, people incorporate the (...) actions of others as they become knowers. Knowing for a person solidifies as they imbue concepts, terms, facts, etc. with their own understanding. While coaction refers to the interlocking of actions in a specific moment, the fabrication of knowledge resides in temporally distributed moments of coaction where students deliberately incorporate and build on past occurrences in a present moment. In so doing, people cannot be separated from their systemic embedding. Linking coaction with systemic cognition, people fabricate knowledge within wider systemic structures. Within these boundaries, knowers come to fabricate knowledge for themselves and a wider system. Thus, knowing must be seen as an active, embodied, dialogical and multiscalar activity. (shrink)

La genèse de la construction médicale de la ménopause est ici appréhendée en croisant des approches empruntées à l’histoire sociale des savoirs. Cela conduit en premier lieu à revenir sur la variété des termes employés pour désigner la « cessation des règles ». Ces évolutions doivent être examinées en regard des nouvelles échelles de la vie humaine élaborées au cours de la période. Est-ce qu’une sexuation des âges de la vie, absente jusque-là, y transparaît? L’expression « âge de retour » (...) désigne-t-elle un âge propre aux femmes comme le laissent penser certains auteurs? La médicalisation de la ménopause peut ainsi être remise en perspective, avant d’étudier de plus près les temps forts de sa construction au cours de la période considérée (1770-1836). Enfin, un dernier volet questionne l’existence d’un discours sur l’âge de retour au masculin et analyse la fabrique des asymétries sexuées dans les dispositifs hygiénistes destinés aux quarantenaires et aux cinquantenaires des deux sexes. (shrink)

A wide array of species throughout the animal kingdom has shown the ability to distinguish between quantities. Aside from being important for optimal foraging decisions, this ability seems to also be of great relevance in group-living animals as it allows them to inform their decisions regarding engagement in between-group conflicts based on the size of competing groups. However, it is often unclear whether these animals rely on numerical information alone to make these decisions or whether they employ other cues that (...) may covary with the differences in quantity. In this study we used a touch screen paradigm to investigate the quantity discrimination abilities of two closely related group-living species, wolves and dogs, using a simultaneous visual presentation paradigm. Both species were able to successfully distinguish between stimuli of different quantities up to 32 items and ratios up to 0.80, and their results were in accordance with Weber's law (which predicts worse performances at higher ratios). However, our controls showed that both wolves and dogs may have used continuous, non-numerical cues, such as size and shape of the stimuli, in conjunction with the numerical information to solve this task. In line with this possibility, dogs' performance greatly exceeded that which they had shown in other numerical competence paradigms. We discuss the implications these results may have on these species' underlying biases and numerical capabilities, as well as how our paradigm may have affected the animals' ability to solve the task. (shrink)

Research FocusThe promotion of domain-specific knowledge is a central goal of higher education and, in the field of medicine, it is particularly essential to promote global health. Domain-specific knowledge on its own is not exhaustive; confidence regarding the factual truth of this knowledge content is also required. An increase in both knowledge and confidence is considered a necessary prerequisite for making professional decisions in the clinical context. Especially the knowledge of human physiology is fundamental and simultaneously critical to medical decision-making. (...) However, numerous studies have shown difficulties in understanding and misconceptions in this area of knowledge. Therefore, we investigate how preclinical medical students acquire knowledge in physiology over the course of their studies and simultaneously gain confidence in the correctness of this knowledge as well as the interrelations between these variables, and how they affect the development of domain-specific knowledge.MethodIn a pre–post study, 169 medical students’ development of physiology knowledge and their confidence related to this knowledge were assessed via paper-pencil questionnaires before and after attending physiology seminars for one semester. Data from a longitudinal sample of n = 97 students were analyzed using mean comparisons, regression analyses, and latent class analyses. In addition, four types of item responses were formed based on confidence and correctness in the knowledge test.ResultsWe found a significant and large increase in the students’ physiology knowledge, with task-related confidence being the strongest predictor. Moreover, a significantly higher level of confidence at t2 was confirmed, with the level of prior confidence being a strong predictor. Furthermore, based on the students’ development of knowledge and confidence levels between measurement points, three empirically distinct groups were distinguished: knowledge gainers, confidence gainers, and overall gainers. The students whose confidence in incorrect knowledge increased constituted one particularly striking group. Therefore, the training of both knowledge and the ability to critically reflect on one’s knowledge and skills as well as an assessment of their development in education is required, especially in professions such as medicine, where knowledge-based decisions made with confidence are of vital importance. (shrink)

In Being There, Andy Clark weaves these several threads into a pleasing whole and goes on to address foundational questions concerning the new tools and..