Novice designers produced a sequence of sketches while inventing a logo for a novel brand of soft drink. The sketches were scored for the presence of specific objects, their local features and global composition. Self‐assessment scores for each sketch and art critics' scores for the end products were collected. It was investigated whether the design evolves in an essentially random fashion or according to an overall heuristic. The results indicated a macrostructure in the evolution of the design, characterized by two (...) stages. For the majority of participants, the first stage is marked by the introduction and modification of novel objects and their local and global aspects; the second stage is characterized by changes in their global composition. The minority that showed the better designs has a different strategy, in which most global changes were made in the beginning. Although participants did not consciously apply these strategies, their self‐assessment scores reflect the stages of the process. (shrink)

Yarkoni's analysis clearly articulates a number of concerns limiting the generalizability and explanatory power of psychological findings, many of which are compounded in infancy research. ManyBabies addresses these concerns via a radically collaborative, large-scale and open approach to research that is grounded in theory-building, committed to diversification, and focused on understanding sources of variation.

In European science and technology policy, various styles have been developed and institutionalised to govern the ethical challenges of science and technology innovations. In this paper, we give an account of the most dominant styles of the past 30 years, particularly in Europe, seeking to show their specific merits and problems. We focus on three styles of governance: a technocratic style, an applied ethics style, and a public participation style. We discuss their merits and deficits, and use this analysis to (...) assess the potential of the recently established governance approach of ‘Responsible Research and Innovation’ (RRI). Based on this analysis, we reflect on the current shaping of RRI in terms of ‘doing governance’. (shrink)

Transcranial direct current stimulation over the contralateral primary motor cortex of the target muscle has been described to enhance corticospinal excitability, as measured with transcranial magnetic stimulation. Recently, tDCS targeting the brain regions functionally connected to the contralateral primary motor cortex was reported to enhance corticospinal excitability more than conventional tDCS. We compared the effects of motor network tDCS, 2 mA conventional tDCS, and sham tDCS on corticospinal excitability in 21 healthy participants in a randomized, single-blind within-subject study design. We (...) applied tDCS for 12 min and measured corticospinal excitability with TMS before tDCS and at 0, 15, 30, 45, and 60 min after tDCS. Statistical analysis showed that neither motor network tDCS nor conventional tDCS significantly increased corticospinal excitability relative to sham stimulation. Furthermore, the results did not provide evidence for superiority of motor network tDCS over conventional tDCS. Motor network tDCS seems equally susceptible to the sources of intersubject and intrasubject variability previously observed in response to conventional tDCS. (shrink)

Prenatal expectations about what children will be like after birth may provide a context for how parents perceive their infant's actual temperament. We examined how these expectations and perceptions are associated and together predict early parenting behavior, with parenting behavior in turn predicting changes in temperament. Reports of 125 families about their expectations of their unborn child's temperament, their infant's temperament at 4 and 12 months post-partum, and their hostile, responsive, warm, and overprotective parenting were included. We also included data (...) from an independent sample of 168 mothers, with the same measures, except that mothers reported on Big Five personality traits at T1. Results indicated that in both samples, parents' expectations were positively associated with perceptions of infant temperament. Prenatal expectations and newborn temperament independently predicted parenting behavior, and maternal and paternal parenting in turn predicted infant temperament at T3, controlling for infant temperament at T2. Although overall findings indicated associations between a more difficult temperament and more negative/less positive parenting, significant combinations of specific traits and parenting behaviors were sample-specific—indicating that more research is necessary to draw a conclusion about specific links. Both maternal and paternal expectations about their unborn child's temperament appear to carry over into the postpartum reality and provide a context for shaping early interactions between caregivers and their children, which may further shape the developing temperament of the child. (shrink)

The need for urgent, structural transformations to dominant food systems is increasingly recognized in research and policy. The direction these transformations take is in great part influenced by how the problem is framed and what future pathways become seen as plausible and desirable. Scientific knowledge and the organizations producing it hold considerable authority in suggesting what alternatives are or are not worth pursuing, ultimately shaping frames and in turn being shaped by them. This paper examines Brazil’s federal Agricultural Research Corporation (...) (Embrapa), a major contributor to technological advances that made Brazil into an agricultural powerhouse. We examine the ways in which Embrapa’s leadership has framed sustainable agriculture in its public communication and the wider implications for food systems transformation. Drawing from Embrapa news articles in the period 2015–2020, we identify four interrelated frames forming Embrapa’s prevalent position on sustainability. Our results show that while Embrapa promotes practices based on alternative approaches such as agroecology, its deeper framing often reflects the core assumptions driving dominant industrial food systems. This framing reinforces underlying logics of control, efficiency, and competition aligned with the productivist paradigm and excludes divergent perspectives that exist within the organization. (shrink)

Given its non-invasive nature, there is increasing interest in the use of transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation across basic, translational and clinical research. Contemporaneously, tVNS can be achieved by stimulating either the auricular branch or the cervical bundle of the vagus nerve, referred to as transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation and transcutaneous cervical VNS, respectively. In order to advance the field in a systematic manner, studies using these technologies need to adequately report sufficient methodological detail to enable comparison of results between (...) studies, replication of studies, as well as enhancing study participant safety. We systematically reviewed the existing tVNS literature to evaluate current reporting practices. Based on this review, and consensus among participating authors, we propose a set of minimal reporting items to guide future tVNS studies. The suggested items address specific technical aspects of the device and stimulation parameters. We also cover general recommendations including inclusion and exclusion criteria for participants, outcome parameters and the detailed reporting of side effects. Furthermore, we review strategies used to identify the optimal stimulation parameters for a given research setting and summarize ongoing developments in animal research with potential implications for the application of tVNS in humans. Finally, we discuss the potential of tVNS in future research as well as the associated challenges across several disciplines in research and clinical practice. (shrink)

Large‐scale characterization of the human microbiota has largely focused on Western adults, yet these populations may be uncharacteristic because of their diets and lifestyles. In particular, the rise of “Western diseases” may in part stem from reduced exposure to, or even loss of, microbes with which humans have coevolved. Here, we review beneficial microbes associated with pathogen resistance, highlighting the emerging role of complex microbial communities in protecting against disease. We discuss ways in which modern lifestyles and practices may deplete (...) physiologically important microbiota, and explore prospects for reintroducing or encouraging the growth of beneficial microbes to promote the restoration of healthy microbial ecosystems. (shrink)

In this paper we use a critically reflective research approach to analyze our efforts at transformative learning in food systems education in a land grant university. As a team of learners across the educational hierarchy, we apply scholarly tools to the teaching process and learning outcomes of student-centered inquiries in a food systems course. The course, an interdisciplinary, lower division undergraduate course at the University of California, Davis is part of a new undergraduate major in Sustainable Agriculture and Food Systems. (...) We provide an overview of the course’s core elements—labs, exams, assignments, and lectures—as they relate to social constructivist learning theory and student-centered inquiries. Then, through qualitative analysis of students’ reflective essays about their learning experiences in the course, we demonstrate important transformative outcomes of student-centered inquiries: (1) most students confronted the commodity fetish and tried to reconcile tensions between what the food system is and ought to be, and (2) students repositioned themselves, their thinking, and social deliberation in relation to the food system. Students’ reflections point to the power of learning that emerges through their inquiry process, including in the field, and from critical self-reflection. We also highlight the importance of reflective essays in both reinforcing experiential learning and in helping instructors to better understand students’ learning vis-à-vis our teaching. (shrink)

The multiple emergencies of global heating require bioethicists to embrace the dormant, comprehensive bioethics legacy of Van Rensselaer Potter, moving beyond the current narrower focus of the field on medicine and health care. We recommend readings that expand the core literature of bioethics to address key environmental issues. These are Jessica Pierce and Andrew Jameton's The Ethics of Environmentally Responsible Health Care; Dale Jamieson's Reason in a Dark Time; and David Wallace‐Well's The Uninhabitable Earth. Because efforts to mitigate climate (...) disasters are likely to be only partially successful, we also recommend the teachings of late Roman Stoicism and core texts of Buddhism, which provide ethical wisdom likely to be needed in the multiple crises of the Anthropocene. (shrink)

This article examines the consequences for the res publica of the simultaneous increase in state surveillance and the restriction of the right to take photographs in public ushered in by the War on Terror. We draw on Ariella Azoulay's theorization of what she terms the civil contract of photography, or the possibility for non-state civic interaction allowed by the invention of the camera. While Michel Foucault's studies of the role of constant surveillance in disciplinary societies help us to understand our (...) increasingly panoptical public spaces, Azoulay also draws on Giorgio Agamben's theorization of the state of exception, which enables us to better understand the restriction of established rights, including the right to take photographs, in the post-9/11 context. The article asks whether these developments signify an attempt to monopolize the decision as to who constitutes the citizenry of photography, and also considers artistic and political responses to surveillance and photography restrictions in Australia and the United Kingdom. (shrink)

As presidential campaigns and “Saturday Night Live” have repeatedly demonstrated, debate is an uninteresting mode of communication, imitating dialogue without engaging in it. Formally it encourages infinite regress: my misreading of your misreading of my misreading of your misreading. Intellectually its conclusions are in some ways predetermined. In the short run, the winner is whoever speaks last; in the long run, whoever has the greater power. Rather than occasion or remark on further “shifty moments” , then, I will try to (...) review some general areas of contention suggested in my exchange with Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick.Although Sedgwick and I value the personal and the theoretical both, we disagree on the lines of intersection. I am struck by her initial situation of “Van Leer” in the ranks of those who feel silenced. The complaint might just as easily have been that he has entirely too much to say. Nor, if autobiography is really the issue, do I in any way regret the notoriety of Sedgwick’s work? From what I take to be my point of view, Sedgwick’s book has opened up for me a far more visible space in the academy than has my own. And I attribute to myself at least enough self-consciousness to recognize the disingenuousness of “feeling silenced” in Critical Inquiry. David Van Leer is associate professor of English and American literature at the University of California, Davis. The author of Emerson’s Epistemology: The Argument of the Essays , he is currently examining the issue of contextualism in a book to be called The Queening of America. (shrink)

As a group, LGBTQ+ people experience food insecurity at a disproportionately high rate, yet food security scholars and practitioners are only beginning to uncover patterns in how food insecurity varies by subgroups of this diverse community. In this paper, we use data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey—which added measures of gender identity and sexuality for the first time in 2021—to analyze New Englanders’ food insufficiency rates by gender, sexuality, race, and ethnicity. We find that (1) in the (...) past seven days, 13.0 percent of LGB + (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and other non-heterosexual) New Englanders experience food insufficiency—which is nearly twice the rate of heterosexual people—and 19.8 percent of transgender+ (transgender, genderqueer, gender non-binary, and other non-cisgender people) New Englanders experience food insufficiency—which is two to three times the rate of cisgender men and women. (2) Whereas cisgender New Englanders experience food insufficiency at a _lower_ rate than their counterparts in the rest of the nation (about two percentage points lower for both cisgender men and women), transgender+ New Englanders experience no such New England advantage compared to transgender+ people in the country as a whole. (3) LGBTQ+ New Englanders of color experience devastatingly high rates of food insufficiency, with, for example, one in three Black transgender+ New Englanders not having enough food to eat in the past seven days. These findings suggest that addressing food insecurity in New England demands approaching the problem with an intersectional queer lens, with attention to the ways in which racism, cissexism, and heterosexism are creating a systemic, ongoing food crisis for LGBTQ+ New Englanders, especially those who are transgender+ and/or people of color. (shrink)

Le culte grandiose de Kali, la Mère, son incomparable symbolisme, ses litanies et ses chants, embrasse l'âme de l'univers qu'il glorifie comme aucune conception religieuse ne le fit jamais. La terrifiante déesse sème la peste et les pires ravages sur ses pas, tout en accordant sa grâce et sa clémence à ses enfants assez hardis pour soulever l'horrible masque derrière lequel elle se cache la figure. Ceux-là retrouveront les traits radieux qui ont enchanté leur enfance. La sublime conception de Kali, (...) la Mère, découle d'une philosophie moniste qui s'écarte pourtant sensiblement de la philosophie Védanta de Shankara. Tous deux partent, il est vrai, de la même idée. Ils admettent l'un et l'autre une substance une, indivisible et éternelle, que les Védantins appellent Brahma et les adorateurs de Kali, la Mère, Siva. Mais il y a divergence quant aux manifestations. Pour Shankara il n'y a qu'illusion. Il tranche le lien qui rattache le phénomène à l'absolu. Il se demande qui a pu susciter l'apparence. Mais, l'absolu étant la vérité même, il n'a pu engendrer l'apparence pas plus que la lumière n'aurait pu engendrer l'obscurité. Qu'y avait-il donc de commun entre les Brahmas et Maya? A première vue il semble qu'il n'y a aucun rapport. Pour Shankara il n'était besoin d'aucune relation, puisque Maya n'existe pas en réalité et que le monde n'est que mirage. Le monde n'existe que pour l'esprit qui est lui-même sujet aux hallucinations. Adorer la Mère, c'est accepter l'univers dans ses aspects les plus terrifiants. Cette philosophie est diamétralement opposée au christianisme dans son culte du Dieu d'amour, du Père plein de miséricorde. Le christianisme enseigne que tout se fait pour notre bien, tandis que pour les adorateurs de Kali, l'univers est féroce et hostile à l'homme, qui avant tout doit se montrer supérieur aux événements. Mais Kali n'est pas seulement la destructrice. Si elle démolit inexorablement toutes les formes vitales qui ont fait leur temps et qui se détériorent, elle en crée au fur et à mesure des nouvelles. C'est dans cette conception de la Mère qu'il faut chercher tout d'abord le mystère de l'esprit indien. Dans son essence la plus intime la mère du monde est l'absolu, est Siva même. Comme telle elle représente la connaissance, l'entité et la joie absolues. Pour les adorateurs de Kali les mots Mantram Saham (je suis elle) renferment la clef de la vie et dissipent crainte et tristesse. (shrink)

This article examines the relationship between the precautionary principle and the well-known Hill criteria of causation. Some have charged that the Hill criteria are anti-precautionary because the...

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BreathingLuk Van den Dries (bio)This text, "Breathing," was conceived for the book From Act to Acting: Fabre's Guidelines for the Performer of the 21st Century (2021). The book was conceived and designed by Jan Fabre, author, theatre artist, and visual artist, active since the 1970s. The book was written by Luk Van den Dries, dramaturg and theatre researcher of the University of Antwerp, in tight collaboration with Jan Fabre (...) and the three most important performers/teachers of the Belgian theatre company, Troubleyn (Annabelle Chambon, Cédric Charron, and Ivana Jozic). The book sheds new light on the physical, mental, and vocal training of the performer and furthermore gives insight into Fabre's revolutionary thoughts on contemporary theatre.1Breathing is the first of the ten performative principles that together create the basic grammar in which the language of the performers is grounded.Three-phased breathing (one part in, one part out, one part nothing) is a basic condition in the series of exercises Jan Fabre developed throughout his career. This respiration technique returns in all exercises. Also, it is the first principle that the performers are taught: by dividing breathing into three equal parts, energy is built up and stress or fatigue is canalized. It is a way to rebalance, to find a place of rest after a strenuous effort, or it can also be used as a springboard to a heightened performance. Very regularly during individual exercises, Fabre will refer to this respiration technique, especially in specific situations of high adrenaline, but of course the performers should learn to use this respiration technique autonomously. They should become so familiar with the rhythm of this breathing that they automatically fall back on it when necessary. Because this respiration technique is so crucial to Fabre's acting pedagogy, it is described in detail as the very first exercise in his book. Its basic principles are explained below as well, as the first performative principle.Breathing is a sign of life, and on this primal and essential level it needs to be understood that, through breathing, the performer gives life. He breathes life into the performance. Fabre himself has described this basic condition for the birth of theatre through breathing very precisely: [End Page 30]The most important weapon of the warrior of beauty is his respiration. When the performance starts, life stops. Life itself dies. The warrior of beauty is alive, but life itself is dead. The warrior of beauty remains with just his own breath. When he enters the stage, he needs to breathe life into deceased life. Like a god gives his breath to create life. In the same way he will create life with his breath. How will he achieve this? By breathing correctly: one-third inhaling through the nostrils, one-third exhaling through pursed lips, one-third without breathing. And then the miracle happens. The breath becomes imagination and the imagination breathes. The warrior of beauty is the master of breath and life.2Fabre's abdominal breathing differs from regular forms of breathing, such as techniques derived from Asian yoga techniques, Chi-kung or Tai-chi, as it stresses different parts. At the same time, it is closely related to it, because these practices also adopt the notion that breathing in the first place rouses vitality and spirit and that the right kind of breathing thus aims at controlling life currents and bringing about a clear mind. In yoga it is called pranayama: prana meaning spirit or force of life, ayama meaning 'control' or 'grasp.' Yoga knows many variants in directing the breath, depending on the asanas (yoga postures) in which they are bedded. Sometimes focusing mainly on the diaphragm and the flanks, sometimes on abdominal breathing. Also, suspending your breath (kumbhaka) is a yoga technique, applied at the end of inhalation as well as after exhalation and during taking breath.In Fabre's case, abdominal breathing is stressed: first, air is inhaled through the nose, subsequently sent in the direction of the peritoneal cavity and the flanks, and then again exhaled via a very precise blowing technique (a dosed flow of air through an imaginary straw). During the cycle the diaphragm remains... (shrink)

Studie over het politieke denken in de na-oorlogse Franse filosofie, met name de invloed van de Russische filosoof Kojève daarop.

Pleidooi om in een democratie naast of zelfs in plaats van verkiezingen een systeem van loting in te voeren.