W Cesarstwie Bizantyńskim wyłonienie żony cesarza odbywało się w formie konkursu piękności, który stanowił jeden z elementów ogólnej mistyki otaczającej władców Konstantynopola i ich dwór oraz zapobiegał zdobywaniu przez lokalne elity nadmiernych wpływów w otoczeniu władcy państwa. Konkursy te, organizowane wyłącznie dla pierwszych zaślubin pierworodnych synów cesarza, wyłaniały najpiękniejsze i najbardziej cnotliwe kobiety do roli przyszłej cesarzowej. Ceremoniał tego zwyczaju podnosił rangę cesarskich ślubów. Oryginalne źródła bizantyńskie wskazują, że konkursy te odbywały się w latach 788–882, a pierwszy z nich został (...) oficjalnie zorganizowany przez Irenę dla jej syna Konstantyna VI. Kryteria stosowane do wyłonienia zwycięzcy opierały się na kombinacji czynników: wieku, wyglądu, postawy, idealnych rysów twarzy, pełnych wdzięku ruchów i chodu oraz skromnej postawy. Rzymskiemu cesarzowi mogła dorównać jedynie kobieta posiadająca odpowiednie kwalifikacje, a przede wszystkim najbardziej cenioną cnotę tamtych czasów – urodę. Tylko najpiękniejsza kobieta miała przywilej stanąć u boku cesarza. Dwa symbole używane do przypieczętowania wyboru panny młodej to złote jabłko i złoty pierścień. Bizantyńskie konkursy piękności wywierały czarujący wpływ na poddanych cesarstwa w trakcie i po ich istnieniu. Nawet świat kościelny był urzeczony ich blaskiem, a najbardziej intrygujące informacje na ich temat można znaleźć w kronikach świętych. Celem artykułu jest zaprezentowanie sposobu przedstawiania tej ceremonii w oryginalnych źródłach bizantyńskich oraz we współczesnej historiografii. Ponadto zostaną omówione wpływy tego zwyczaju na politykę oraz okoliczności jego zniknięcia. (shrink)

This article investigates the aesthetic experience within telematic space, using terms introduced by kleinian psychoanalysis. We argue that the object of the aesthetic experience in multi-sensory interactive installations can be analysed within a spatial context of a dual nature, involving both the physical space of the installation and the virtual space of the participating subject’s perception, a hybrid space. Therefore, we discuss the aesthetic experience of interactive artworks as an intersubjective relationship between the artist and the audience, where the aesthetic (...) object becomes the subjective perceptual experience of this process of interaction. The space, where the visitor ‘meets’ the artist, is the place of the aesthetic experience. Aesthetic experience takes place in both the physical and the ‘potential’ world of our internal representations, the internalized, ‘mental space’ of projected fantasies: our unconscious. (shrink)

Objective: To compare the attitudes of patients with cancer toward making changes in lifestyle, according to their awareness of the diagnosis.Method: Personal interviews with 50 patients with breast cancer, 24 patients with prostate cancer and 50 patients with colorectal cancer were conducted in a cancer hospital in Athens, Greece.Analysis: Multiple logistic regression models were used to estimate the odds ratio as a measure of the association of the characteristics of participants with changes in lifestyle.Results: Overall, 22.6% of the patients were (...) not aware of the diagnosis. Among the changes in lifestyle, 41.1% reported changing their diet to a healthier one, 22.6% of the smokers reduced or stopped smoking and 13.7% added new physical activity. Compared with uninformed patients, those who were aware of the diagnosis, after adjusting for the confounding effect of educational status , were 2.5 times as likely to make dietary changes . Among the other characteristics under study, older patients were less likely to add new physical activity than younger ones , and newly diagnosed patients were more likely to stop or reduce smoking than patients with a diagnosis made more than 12 months previously.Conclusion: Patients with cancer are motivated to attempt changes in lifestyle and can benefit from more factual information about the diagnosis. (shrink)

Based on research on the increasingly popular unconscious thought effect (UTE), it has been suggested that physicians might make better diagnostic decisions after a period of distraction than after an equivalent amount of time of conscious deliberation. However, published attempts to demonstrate the UTE in medical decision making have yielded inconsistent results. In the present study, we report the results of a meta-analysis of all the available evidence on the UTE in medical decisions made by expert and novice clinicians. The (...) meta-analysis failed to find a significant contribution of unconscious thought to the accuracy of medical decisions. This result cannot be easily attributed to any of the potential moderators of the UTE that have been discussed in the literature. Furthermore, a Bayes Factor analysis shows that most experimental conditions provide positive support for the null hypothesis, suggesting that these null results do not reflect a simple lack of statistical power. We suggest ways in which new studies could usefully provide further evidence on the UTE. Unless future research shows otherwise, the recommendation of using unconscious thought to improve medical decisions lacks empirical support. (shrink)

This article explores and challenges notions and methodologies of conservation, including the use of blockchain technologies as a means of establishing provenance of a physical BioArtwork, of the artist’s documentation encapsulating their intentions and of the conservator’s records required for the artwork’s ongoing care. The exploration is done through a case study of an art project called ‘Unruly Objects and Biological Conservation’ created by Anna Dumitriu with support from Alex May. The artwork consists of three items containing RFID tags sealed (...) in resin – which point to the location of the artist’s documentation. Therefore, the works physically include instructions for maintaining their inherent concepts and materiality for the benefit of the conservators. Such instructions can often be difficult to track down, or become disassociated from the artwork while the digital preservation of this storage method also poses its own set of questions. The works also include biological material including mud from a bacterial ecosystem known as a Winogradsky Column, living plant material and SARS-CoV-2 (coronavirus) RNA from a plasmid construct. (shrink)