The philosophical foundation -- Using the environment as a teaching tool -- Assessing the pillars of the physical environment for academic learning -- The physical environment to support meaningful learning -- The physical environment to support social learning -- The physical environment to support purposeful learning -- The physical environment to support responsible learning -- The physical environment to support continuous learning -- The physical environment to support in-depth learning -- Using the APPEAL for professional development and research -- General (...) procedures for administering the APPEAL. (shrink)

It is unclear whether the regulatory distinction between non-identifiable and identifiable information—information used to determine informed consent practices for the use of clinically derived samples for genetic research—is meaningful to patients. The objective of this study was to examine patients' attitudes and preferences regarding use of anonymous and identifiable clinical samples for genetic research. Telephone interviews were conducted with 1,193 patients recruited from general medicine, thoracic surgery, or medical oncology clinics at five United States academic medical centers. Wanting to know (...) about research being done was important to 72% of patients when samples would be anonymous and to 81% of patients when samples would be identifiable. Only 17% wanted to know about the identifiable scenario but not the anonymous scenario. Curiosity-based reasons were the most common among patients who wanted to know about anonymous samples. Of patients wanting to know about either scenario, approximately 57% would require researchers to seek permission, whereas 43% would be satisfied with notification only. Patients were more likely to support permission in the anonymous scenario if they had more education, were Black, less religious, in better health, more private, and less trusting of researchers. The sample, although not representative of the general population, does represent patients at academic medical centers whose clinical samples may be used for genetic research. Few patients expressed preferences consistent with the regulatory distinction between non-identifiable and identifiable information. Data from this study should cause policy-makers to question whether this distinction is useful in relation to research with previously collected clinically derived samples. (shrink)

This article is made available under Creative Commons licence CC BY-NC-ND, which permits non-commercial reproduction and distribution of the work, in any medium, provided the original work is not altered or transformed in any way, and that the work is properly cited.

The coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic is altering dynamics in academia, and people juggling remote work and domestic demands – including childcare – have felt impacts on their productivity. Female authors have faced a decrease in paper submission rates since the beginning of the pandemic period. The reasons for this decline in women’s productivity need to be further investigated. Here, we analyzed the influence of gender, parenthood and race on academic productivity during the pandemic period based on a survey answered by (...) 3,345 Brazilian academics from various knowledge areas and research institutions. Productivity was assessed by the ability to submit papers as planned and to meet deadlines during the initial period of social isolation in Brazil. The findings revealed that male academics – especially those without children – are the least affected group, whereas Black women and mothers are the most impacted groups. These impacts are likely a consequence of the well-known unequal division of domestic labor between men and women, which has been exacerbated during the pandemic. Additionally, our results highlight that racism strongly persists in academia, especially against Black women. The pandemic will have long-term effects on the career progression of the most affected groups. The results presented here are crucial for the development of actions and policies that aim to avoid further deepening the gender gap in academia. (shrink)

Caring for critically ill and dying patients often triggers both professional and personal growth for physician trainees. In pediatrics, the neonatal intensive care unit is among the most distressing settings for trainees. We used longitudinal narrative writing to gain insight into how physician trainees are challenged by and make sense of repetitive, ongoing conflicts experienced as part of caring for very sick and dying babies. The study took place in a 45-bed, university-based NICU in an urban setting in the United (...) States. From November 2009 to June 2010 we enrolled pediatric residents and neonatology fellows at the beginning of their NICU rotations. Participants were asked to engage in individual, longitudinal narrative writing about their “experience in the NICU.” Thematic narrative analysis was performed. Thirty-seven physician trainees participated in the study. The mean number of narratives per trainee was 12; a total of 441 narratives were available for analysis. Conflict was the most pervasive theme in the narratives. Trainees experienced conflicts with families and conflicts with other clinicians. Trainees also described multiple conflicts of identity as members of the neonatology team, as members of the medical profession, as members of their own families, and as members of society. Physician trainees experience significant conflict and distress while learning to care for critically ill and dying infants. These conflicts often led them to question their own morals and their role in the medical profession. Physician trainees should be educated to expect various types of distress during intensive care rotations, encouraged to identify their own sources of distress, and supported in mitigating their effects. (shrink)

Peer interaction has been found to be conducive to learning in many settings. Knowledge co-construction has been proposed as one explanatory mechanism. However, KCC is a theoretical construct that is too abstract to guide the development of instructional software that can support peer interaction. In this study, we present an extensive analysis of a corpus of peer dialogs that we collected in the domain of introductory Computer Science. We show that the notion of task initiative shifts correlates with both KCC (...) and learning. Speakers take task initiative when they contribute new content that advances problem solving and that is not invited by their partner; if initiative shifts between the partners, it indicates they both contribute to problem solving. We found that task initiative shifts occur more frequently within KCC episodes than outside. In addition, task initiative shifts within KCC episodes correlate with learning for low pre-testers, and total task initiative shifts correlate with learning for high pre-testers. As recognizing task initiative shifts does not require as much deep knowledge as recognizing KCC, task initiative shifts as an indicator of productive collaboration are potentially easier to model in instructional software that simulates a peer. (shrink)

Down syndrome (DS), the most common genetic cause of intellectual disability, results from the partial or complete triplication of chromosome 21. Individuals with DS are impaired at using a high-resolution, allocentric spatial representation to learn and remember discrete locations in a controlled environment. Here, we assessed the capacity of individuals with DS to perform low-resolution spatial learning, depending on two competing memory systems: (1) the place learning system, which depends on the hippocampus and creates flexible relational representations of the environment; (...) and (2) the response learning system, which depends on the striatum and creates fixed stimulus-response representations of behavioral actions. Individuals with DS exhibited a preservation of the low-resolution spatial learning capacities subserved by these two systems. In place learning, although the average performance of individuals with DS was lower than that of typically-developing (TD) mental age-matched children and TD young adults, the number of individuals with DS performing above chance level did not differ from TD children. In response learning, the average performance of individuals with DS was lower than that of TD adults, but it did not differ from that of TD children. Moreover, the number of individuals with DS performing above chance level did not differ from TD adults, and was higher than that of TD children. In sum, whereas low-resolution place learning appears relatively preserved in individuals with DS, response learning appears facilitated. Our findings are consistent with the hypothesis that the neural pathways supporting low-resolution place learning and response learning are relatively preserved in DS. (shrink)

Recent studies reported the development of psychological distress symptoms in patients who recovered from COVID-19. However, evidence is still scarce and new data are needed to define the exact risk and protective factors that can explain the variability in symptoms manifestation. In this study, we enrolled 257 patients who recovered from COVID-19 and we evaluated the levels of psychological distress through the Symptoms Checklist-90-R scale. Data concerning illness-related variables were collected from medical records, while the presence of subjective cognitive difficulties, (...) both before and after the illness, as well as the level of the cognitive reserve, were assessed over a clinical interview. Results revealed that being female and reporting the presence of subjective cognitive difficulties after COVID-19 were associated with higher levels of psychological distress. At the same time, being admitted to the hospital and having a high CR were protective factors. Adding new information to this emerging research field, our results highlight the importance of a complete psychological and cognitive assessment in patients with COVID-19. (shrink)

As part of Project Theophrastus this volume covers the material related to Theophrastus’ work on logic. As Aristotle’s pupil, he largely followed his master, but made important changes in modal logic, and some of his innovations passed into medieval logic.

Online gaming creates unique public spaces of interaction. These spaces are both highly controlled but also able to slip through the regulatory net, as domestic legislation struggles to respond to fast-changing interjurisdictional environments. Inter- and transdisciplinary research hold potential to respond to questions surrounding the regulation of these online spaces, by exploring multiple perspectives. The authors of this paper each come from a unique starting point in their exploration of these issues. The paper will examine three spaces of regulation in (...) online game world environments. It will look at (1) rules and regulations that governs online interaction in virtual spaces, (2) the ‘code’ that controls behaviour through game architecture, and (3) the laws that are developed by players inside the game world. The first part will analyse whether domestic law can be adequate to regulate a space that is not geographically fixed. The second will discuss how the coding of the game and its architecture regulate behaviours within the space. The last is a “bottom-up” regulatory system, originating within the gaming community. Where do these three layers of regulation interact with each other? What are the unique languages of these spaces? This paper is a starting point for further investigation into the regulation of online behaviours through interwoven rule systems. (shrink)

A good number of people currently thinking and writing about reasons identify a reason as a consideration that counts in favor of an action or attitude.1 I will argue that using this as our fundamental account of what a reason is generates a fairly deep and recalcitrant ambiguity; this account fails to distinguish between two quite different sets of considerations that count in favor of certain attitudes, only one of which are the “proper” or “appropriate” kind of reason for them. (...) This ambiguity has been the topic of recent discussion, under the head “the wrong kind of reasons problem.”2 I will suggest that confusion about “the wrong kind of reason” will be dispelled by changing our account of what a reason is. While I agree both that reasons are considerations and that certain.. (shrink)

Anderson (philosophy, U. of Sunderland, England) presents an exegetical, restorative, and critical account of French philosopher Ricoeur's early work on human will, seeing in it a dual-aspect perspective of people that helps make sense of his later complex writings. Emphasizes the important impact of Kant on his original thinking. (Editor's note: this review corrects a misleading one appearing in the December 1993 issue.) Paper edition (837-0), $19.95. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

Barrett, Pamela My name is Lucky and I am, because I'm a dog..

Many assume that we can be responsible only what is voluntary. This leads to puzzlement about our responsibility for our beliefs, since beliefs seem not to be voluntary. I argue against the initial assumption, presenting an account of responsibility and of voluntariness according to which, not only is voluntariness not required for responsibility, but the feature which renders an attitude a fundamental object of responsibility (that the attitude embodies one’s take on the world and one’s place in it) also guarantees (...) that it could not be voluntary. It turns out, then, that, for failing to be voluntary, beliefs are a central example of the sort of thing for which we are most fundamentally responsible. (shrink)

There seems to be widespread agreement that to be responsible for something is to be deserving of certain consequences on account of that thing. Call this the “merited-consequences” conception of responsibility. I think there is something off, or askew, in this conception, though I find it hard to articulate just what it is. The phenomena the merited-consequences conception is trying to capture could be better captured, I think, by noting the characteristic way in which certain minds can rightly matter to (...) other such minds—the way in which certain minds can carry a certain kind of importance, made manifest in certain sorts of responses. Mattering, not meriting, seems to me central. However, since I cannot yet better articulate an alternative, I continue in the merit-consequences framework. I focus on a particular class of consequences: those that are non-voluntary, in a sense explained. The non-voluntariness of these reactions has two important upshots. First, questions about their justification will be complex. Second, they are not well thought of as consequences voluntarily imposed upon the wrongdoer by the responder. By focusing on merited consequences and overlooking non-voluntariness, we risk misunderstanding the significance of moral criticism and of certain reactions to moral failure. (shrink)

I hope to show that, although belief is subject to two quite robust forms of agency, "believing at will" is impossible; one cannot believe in the way one ordinarily acts. Further, the same is true of intention: although intention is subject to two quite robust forms of agency, the features of belief that render believing less than voluntary are present for intention, as well. It turns out, perhaps surprisingly, that you can no more intend at will than believe at will.

Aeneas' encounter with Deiphobus forms a critical juncture in Vergil's "Aeneid". In the underworld Aeneas retraces his past to its beginning; so too Vergil's audience returns to its starting point: the fall of Troy. Deiphobus himself is a metonym of Troy, embodying her guilt and punishment. But Aeneas is frustrated in his attempt to reconcile himself to this past. Aeneas attempts the Homeric rites of remembrance-heroic tumulus and epic fama-but these prove to be empty gestures. The aition of Deiphobus' tomb (...) is revealed to have miscarried. Rhoeteum was known as the tomb and shrine of Telamonian Ajax, not Deiphobus, and Octavian's recent restoration of the Rhoetean memorial would have strengthened the already close association between Rhoeteum and Ajax in the mind of Vergil's audience. Vergil exploits Rhoeteum's resonance with Telamonian Ajax and Odysseus, Antony and Octavian, to reflect on the process of constructing national memory, a process of which epic is an integral part. Vergil suggests that one hero's memorial frequently involves the appropriation and effacement of another. In a similar vein, the heroic fama of Deiphobus which Aeneas had heard in Troy is proven false. Deiphobus' narrative of his death is replete with Odyssean allusions which critique both Homeric heroism and Homeric kleos. Evocative allusions to Catullus' laments for his brother suggest eternal elegiac mourning as an alternate generic model for memorial and reconciliation with the past. But Aeneas is denied this option. At the center of the epic, at high noon, on a cosmic crossroads, Aeneas is poised between past and future, between mourning and hope, between Deiphobus and Deiphobe, between epic and elegiac. The Sibyl interrupts and moves Aeneas forward. Aeneas is not purged of his past, but rather denied the opportunity for true reconciliation, which is bestowed not by forgetting but by remembrance. (shrink)

Examining both why and how Emerson evades the ancient quarrel between literature and philosophy, this book entirely rethinks the nature of Emerson's radical individualism and its relation to the possibility of an ethics and a politics. The author argues that the quarrel between literature and philosophy never took place in America, and that instead traditional philosophical work staged itself here as a form of literary praxis and cultural therapeutics, epitomized in the work of Emerson. A revisionary study of some of (...) Emerson's central essays, Less Legible Meanings also invites the reader to reconsider the nature of Emerson's influence on contemporary American culture and to discover new ways in which we might continue to understand his work. Interdisciplinary in scope, the book makes equal use of the history of philosophy, psychoanalytic theory, and cultural history. (shrink)

In this rich cultural history, Pamela Robertson Wojcik examines America's ambivalent and shifting attitude toward homelessness through a close study of film cycles from five distinct historical moments that show characters as unhomed and placeless, mobile rather than fixed: failing, resisting, or opting out of the mandate for a home of one's own. From the tramp films of the Silent Era to the Oscar-winning Nomadland in 2021, Wojcik shows how film cycles reveal a tension in the American imaginary between (...) viewing homelessness as, on the one hand, deviant or threatening, and, on the other, emblematic of freedom and independence. Blending social history with insights drawn from a complex array of films, both canonical and fringe, Wojcik effectively 'unhomes' dominant narratives that cast aspirations for success and social mobility as the focus of American cinema, reminding us that genres of precarity have been central to the American cinema (and American story) all along. (shrink)

I will argue that making a certain assumption allows us to conceptualize more clearly our agency over our minds. The assumption is this: certain attitudes (most uncontroversially, belief and intention) embody their subject’s answer to some question or set of questions. I will first explain the assumption and then show that, given the assumption, we should expect to exercise agency over this class of attitudes in (at least) two distinct ways: by answering for ourselves the question they embody and by (...) acting upon them in ways designed to affect them according to our purposes—in roughly the way we exercise agency over most ordinary objects. (shrink)

In this paper I consider fairness of blaming a wrongdoer. In particular, I consider the claim that blaming a wrongdoer can be unfair because blame has a certain characteristic force, a force which is not fairly imposed upon the wrongdoer unless certain conditions are met--unless, e.g., the wrongdoer could have done otherwise, or unless she is someone capable of having done right, or unless she is able to control her behavior by the light of moral reasons. While agreeing that blame (...) has a characteristic force, I am skeptical of this charge of unfairness. My skepticism concerns itself less with the particular conditions of fairness proposed than with the idea that blame can be rendered unfair by its characteristic force. If to blame a person were simply to perform certain intentional actions, then, as we will see, blame could be rendered unfair by its force. But to blame a person is not just to act in certain ways. It is, at least in large part, to make certain judgments or adopt certain attitudes. However, it is unclear how these attitudes or judgments carry "force"? and also unclear whether they can be rendered unfair by their force. Examining these issues, I will suggest that much of the force of blame is found in a set of judgments--most centrally, the judgment that one person failed to show proper regard for others. But, I will argue, once it is granted that such judgments are true, their characteristic force cannot render them unfair. (shrink)

I first pose a challenge which, it seems to me, any philosophical account of forgiveness must meet: the account must be articulate and it must allow for forgiveness that is uncompromising. I then examine an account of forgiveness which appears to meet this challenge. Upon closer examination we discover that this account actually fails to meet the challenge—but it fails in very instructive ways. The account takes two missteps which seem to be taken by almost everyone discussing forgiveness. At the (...) end, I sketch an alternative account of forgiveness, one that I think meets the challenge and avoids the missteps. (shrink)

Author of "Kubla Khan" and the epic "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," Samuel Taylor Coleridge is remembered principally for his contributions as a romantic poet. This innovative reconsideration of Coleridge's thought and career not only demonstrates his importance as a philosopher but also recovers romanticism as both an aesthetic and a political movement. Pamela Edwards radically departs from classic theories of Coleridge's development and reads his writing within the framework of a constantly shifting political and social landscape. Drawing (...) on the ideology, rhetoric, and institutional theory at the turn of the late British Enlightenment, Edwards unearths the fundamental continuities in Coleridge's writing during the revolutionary period of 1794 to 1834, paying particular attention to the rhetoric of Coleridge's pamphlet and miscellaneous writings, the journalism of the Napoleonic years, his philosophical and ultimately political treatises within the contexts of his notebooks and letters, and his readings and intellectual friendships. What emerges is a clearer understanding of Coleridge's political philosophy and his contributions to the origins and ideology of British Liberalism. Coleridge's interest in history, nature, and law as inherently interconnected projects producing an ideal or scientific reading of society reveals a developed progressive social and cultural state theory anchored in individual conscience, moral autonomy, and a civic and participatory human agency. If the Statesman could understand and finally master this scientific view of the world, he would be able not only to adjust political and social institutions to comprehend the historical contingencies of the moment but to see through the problem of the moment to the dynamic of change itself. (shrink)

Photography began almost 150 years ago with the nearly simultaneous invention of two types of photographic processes, the daguerreotype and the Talbotype or calotype. On January 7, 1839, Louis Daguerre announced his discovery of a way to reproduce images on coated copper plate. Shortly thereafter, on January 31, William Talbot explained how shadows of objects could be chemically recorded on salted paper sensitized with silver nitrate. With the advent of photography, the people, architecture, and natural beauty of Chester County, Pennsylvania, (...) made worthy subject matter for many professional and amateur photographers. Photographers in Chester County, many of whom were also skilled artisans and craftsmen, were fortunate in that they lived near Philadelphia, a center of photographic activity. The first photographers in the county were itinerant tradesmen who traveled from place to place, taking photographs, portraits mainly, for a fee. Later, as photography developed and became more widely known, many photographers opened their own studios. Reflected Light: A Century of Photography in Chester County offers an overview of the development of the photographic medium and traces the progress of photography by examining the work of ten Chester County photographers. In the text by Pamela Powell and in striking photographs of the county and its people, the story of photography in its earliest years is deftly told. (shrink)

I argue to a conclusion I find at once surprising and intuitive: although many considerations show trust useful, valuable, important, or required, these are not the reasons for which one trusts a particular person to do a particular thing. The reasons for which one trusts a particular person on a particular occasion concern, not the value, importance, or necessity of trust itself, but rather the trustworthiness of the person in question in the matter at hand. In fact, I will suggest (...) that the degree to which you trust a particular person to do a particular thing will vary inversely with the degree to which you must rely, for the motivation or justification of your trusting response, on reasons that concern the importance, or value, or necessity of having such a response. (shrink)

A common line of thought claims that we are responsible for ourselves and our actions, while less sophisticated creatures are not, because we are, and they are not, self-aware. Our self-awareness is thought to provide us with a kind of control over ourselves that they lack: we can reflect upon ourselves, upon our thoughts and actions, and so ensure that they are as we would have them to be. Thus, our capacity for reflection provides us with the control over ourselves (...) that grounds our responsibility. I argue that this thought is subtly, but badly, confused. It uses, as its model for the control that grounds our responsibility, the kind of control we exercise over ordinary objects and over our own voluntary actions: we represent to ourselves what to do or how to change things, and then we bring about that which we represent. But we cannot use this model to explain our responsibility for ourselves and our actions: if there is a question about why or how we are responsible for ourselves and our actions, it cannot be answered by appeal to a sophisticated, self-directed action. There must be some more fundamental account of how or why we are responsible. I replace the usual account with a novel but natural view: responsible mental activity can be modeled, not as an ordinary action, but as the settling of a question. This shift will require abandoning the tempting but troublesome thought that responsible activity involves discretion and awareness—which, I argue, we must abandon in any case. (shrink)

Although theoretically rigorous, the book is comprehensible to the beginning qualitative researcher.

Many think of reasons as facts, propositions, or considerations that stand in some relation (or relations) to attitudes, actions, states of affairs. The relation may be an explanatory one or a “normative” one—though some are uncomfortable with irreducibly “normative” relations. I will suggest that we should, instead, see reasons as items in pieces of reasoning. They relate, in the first instance, not to psychological states or events or states of affairs, but to questions. That relation is neither explanatory nor “normative.” (...) If we must give it a label, we could call it “rational”—but that will mean, I think, only that the consideration bears on the question. By thus putting reasoning first, we not only avoid a handful of difficulties that have plagued thinking about reasons, but we also bring back to center-stage the importance of rational agency. (shrink)

Donald Davidson opens ‘Actions, Reasons, and Causes’ by asking, ‘What is the relation between a reason and an action when the reason explains the action by giving the agent's reason for doing what he did?’ His answer has generated some confusion about reasons for action and made for some difficulty in understanding the place for the agent's own reasons for acting, in the explanation of an action. I offer here a different account of the explanation of action, one that, though (...) minimal and formal, preserves the proper role for the agent's own reasons for acting. (shrink)

In this paper, I will demonstrate via reductio ad absurdum that a resolute reading of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus should reconsider their equation of “throwing away the ladder” with the “end of philosophy.” To do this, I will show that an inconsistency arises in Wittgenstein’s view regarding the relationship of philosophy and science since he associates “the correct method of philosophy” with the propositions of science at the end of the aforementioned text. Due to this, I will maintain that it is reasonable (...) to posit that the sharp distinction that Wittgenstein makes between philosophy and science in the Tractatus is merely illusory. An interesting consequence of this is that if this interpretation holds then this provides sufficient grounds to maintain that what some scholars refer to as “the end of philosophy” may actually be the beginning of “Wittgenstein’s naturalism.”. (shrink)

This work examines the dynamics through which women are marginalized and impoverished, and offers a constructive proposal for addressing women's socio-economic vulnerability. Part One surveys the economic status of women globally and discerns both common threads of subordination and significant differences among women. Part Two reviews the social-justice positions of the Roman Catholic church and the World Council of Churches in light of this survey. Part Three identifies theoretical resources that adequately address women's socio-economic vulterability. Brubaker advances her own theoretical (...) approach, which illuminates and engages women's impoverishment. She concludes with a discussion of how placing women's economic condition at the center of Christian economic ethics would affect social analysis, economic policy, and social vision. (shrink)

In this project I claim that Dewey's version of pragmatism leads to an approach to identifying and addressing conflicts between human and nonhuman interests which help bridge the gap between practice and theory in environmental ethics. I claim that traditional arguments in environmental ethics often give little or no guidance to resolving conflicts faced by those involved with environmental practice. After describing traditional arguments in environmental ethics, I argue that Dewey's philosophy offers an alternative to those arguments which gives direction (...) to practitioners for resolving conflicts so that all parties to a conflict "grow" as a result of the conflict. ;In my examination of Dewey's philosophy I focus on the notions of inquiry, experience, growth, the idea of character in moral judgment, and Dewey's concept of the "good". I show how the focus which comes from an examination of those concepts directs us to focus on particular difficulties faced by particular people as they move around in their lives and come in conflict with different views, their own and others, about what is the "right" course of action. I also show how a Deweyan approach to environmental ethics lends support to major claims of the ecofeminists. (shrink)

The present work proposes to explore the discourse on migration in Arabic language media outlets. Present scientific literature in discourse analysis studies consistently analyzed discourses on migration and displayed the consistency of its features. In this paper, we will analyze how the Arabic discourse on migration in the Mediterranean area, either inbound or outbound, are realized and if they are shaped by the European discourse, in order to add an Arabic language contribution to the scientific discussion. The research showed that, (...) while most established categories typical of discourses of racism were present, others were put into discussion, and a context-bound system of representation emerged, with its specificities concerning the reality of migration into and from Arabic countries. However, the European discourse resulted a strong presence, even in the representation of outbound migration of the specific ingroup. (shrink)

The research purpose is to find out if signs of a real estate bubble are shown at the austrian real estate market right now. Lending rates are composed of different factors: the base rate is the price that the customer is willing to pay. The risk premium is given to compensate the lenders risk of full or partial failure of repayment. The inflation adjustment takes into account the impairment of money over the term of a loan. The liquidity premium increases (...) with extension of the term of the loan. The European Central Bank influences the interest rate policy by varying the interest for money saved there by the banks. At the moment there are used negative interest rates, i.e. penalty interest. The methodology used was that recently the ECB lowered the interest rates which might cause real estate bubbles and, subsequently, banks and economic crises may follow, if interest rates were to be increased again sooner or later. Therefor the author studied the amount of sales and the connection to the interest rates and the interest rate policy of the banks right now. Summarizing it can be seen that in Kittsee, an Austrian area with a lot of real estate sales, as an example, 565 real estate properties were sold in the years 2005 to 2015, the median prices increased in relation to the buyers residence in Austria or non- Austrians at about 375% to 490%, this might indicate signs of change on the market. (shrink)