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Biofunctionalized gold and silver nanoparticles synthesized using different plant extracts of guava and clove in vitro anti-cancer efficacy against four different cancer cell lines human colorectal adenocarcinoma, human kidney, human chronic myelogenous, leukemia, bone marrow, and human cervix have been studied and reported. The present experimental study suggests that flavonoids functionalized gold nanoparticles synthesized using aqueous clove buds extract are more potential than guava leaf extract towards anti-cancer activities. The study revealed that the free radicals generated by gold nanoparticles are responsible for anti-cancer effect. To confirm the free-radical scavenging efficacy of gold nanoparticle, nitric oxide assay is followed. We observed that the gold nanoparticles swabbed the free radicals in dose-dependent manner. With continued improvements, these nanoparticles may prove to be potential anti-cancer agents.
We demonstrate that human Treg cells isolated from healthy donors express the HIV-coreceptor CCR5 and are highly susceptible to HIV infection and replication. Targeting and disruption of the T-cell regulatory system by HIV may contribute to hyperactivation of conventional T-cells, a characteristic of HIV disease progression. Moreover, the ability to reprogram human T-cells into Treg cells in vitro will greatly aid in decoding their mechanism of suppression, their enhanced susceptibility to HIV infection, and the unique markers expressed by this subset.
This paper considers the masculine views of a cross-section of Nigerian youths or, more precisely, undergraduates, to determine the forms of masculinity among youths. Drawn from different ethnic groups the masculine notions of the category of young men represented in this study show both similarities and differences. Influenced by the university environment, which promotes cross-cultural mingling and exchange of ideas, the views of the study participants are combinations of indigenous and non-indigenous masculine notions but reshaped by the economic and social changes that have taken place in the last two to three decades in the country. Youths aspire to project an ideal masculine identity as they grow older. They regard their educational pursuits as a preparatory phase for actualizing their dream personality. A pointer from this study is that masculine gender expressions cannot be generalized. Individual views can vary widely and are strongly affected by traditional practice as well as environmental and other realities.
Tissue engineering has been a promising field of research, offering hope for bridging the gap between organ shortage and transplantation needs. However, building three-dimensional (3D) vascularized organs remains the main technological barrier to be overcome. Organ printing, which is defined as computer-aided additive biofabrication of 3D cellular tissue constructs, has shed light on advancing this field into a new era. Organ printing takes advantage of rapid prototyping (RP) technology to print cells, biomaterials, and cell-laden biomaterials individually or in tandem, layer by layer, directly creating 3D tissue-like structures. Here, we overview RP-based bioprinting approaches and discuss the current challenges and trends towards fabricating living organs for transplant in the near future
Histopathological examination of liver, kidney, spleen, pancreas, duodenum, jejunum, skeletal muscle, and bursa of Fabricius samples, collected from broiler chickens, laying hens, fattening pigs, and calves fed genetically modified corn MON 810 and soybean meal MON-40-3-2 (Roundup Ready, RR), was performed. The examination showed no significant differences between the control animals fed diets containing no genetically modified feeds and animals fed genetically modified feeds. In some cases, congestion of parenchyma and focal lymphoid cell infiltrations were observed in all dietary groups, including controls, and therefore, it was assumed that the lesions were not associated with the feeding transgenic feed.
When the earliest humans mastered the art of conceptualising, creating and storing items that enhanced their lives, such as tools or physical ornamentation, a milestone in our evolution was reached. That milestone appears to have been passed far earlier than we thought, and not in Europe, but in Africa.
Venus is often overlooked as a target for settlement or terraforming because of its extreme environment, which is the result of a massive and dense super-greenhouse atmosphere. This paper presents a scenario in which Venus could be made habitable and ready for settlement in only a few centuries, based primarily on ideas put forward by Paul Birch in 1991.
Shale gas is a novel source of fossil fuel which is extracted by induced hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking”. In this article, we examine the emergence of and inter-relations between competing social representations, discuss the dynamics of threat positioning and show how threat can be re-construed in order to serve particular socio-political ends in the debate on fracking.
Bio-electrospraying is fast becoming an attractive tool for in situ cell delivery into scaffolds for tissue engineering applications, with several cell types been successfully electrosprayed. Bone marrow derived mesenchymal progenitor/stem cells (BMSC), which are an important cell source for tissue engineering, have not been explored in detail and the effect of electrospraying on their “stemness” is not known. This study therefore investigates the effects of electrospraying on BMSC viability, proliferation, and multi-lineage differentiation potential.
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Serguei Alex. Oushakine’s close reading of Soviet economic theory offers the prospect of a paradigm shift in how we view the Soviet economy. The standard view, encapsulated in the works of Janos Kornai, is that the socialist economy is characterized by shortage and scarcity. This excess of demand over supply is not corrected by the price mechanism, since this has been disengaged by the central planners. Oushakine reminds us that the Soviets actually produced too much of many goods—from unwanted consumer products to unusable weapons systems, and posits an economy of storage as opposed to an economy of shortage. The warehouses full of hoarded goods should join the fabled queue as a central symbol of the Soviet-style economy.
Kant’s example of lying to the murderer at the door has been a cherished source of scorn for thinkers with little sympathy for Kant’s philosophy and a source of deep puzzlement for those more favorably inclined. The problem is that Kant seems to say that it is always wrong to lie—even to a murderer asking for the whereabouts of his victim—and that if one does lie and despite one’s good intentions the lie leads to the murderer’s capture of the victim, then the liar is partially responsible for the killing of the victim. If this is correct, then Kant’s account seems not only to require us to respect the murderer more than the victim,but also that somehow we can be responsible for the consequences of another’s wrongdoing. After World War II our spontaneous, negative reaction to this apparently absurd line of argument is made even starker by replacing the murderer at the door with a Nazi officer looking for Jews hidden in people’s homes. Does Kant really mean to say that people hiding Jews in their homes should have told the truth to the Nazis, and that if they did lie, they became co-responsible for the heinous acts committed against those Jews who, like Anne Frank, were caught anyway? Because this is clearly what Kant argues, the critics continue, his discussion of lying to the murderer brings out the true, dark side not only of Kant’s universalistic moral theory but also of Kant himself. In this paper, I argue that Kant’s discussion of lying to the murderer at the door has been seriously misinterpreted. My suggestion is that this is primarily a result of the fact that the Doctrine of Right with its conception of rightful, external freedom has been given insufficient attention in Kant interpretation.
According to Chell & Ozkan, (2010), an entrepreneur is someone who is willing to bear the risk of a business venture where there is a significant chance for making profit. Entrepreneurship is basically the practice of starting a business in order to earn profit on new found opportunities. Entrepreneurship is a challenging task as many businesses which start fail to take off. Entrepreneurship has many uncertainties especially when new products are created for which there is no existing market. Entrepreneurship affects economic growth in various ways. It is through entrepreneurship that important innovations enter the market leading to new products or production process which eventually increases efficiency through bringing competition in the market. This paper discourses the impact of entrepreneurship on economic growth. Ideas and concepts that emerge from entrepreneurs increase our knowledge and what consumers may prefer through introducing variations of existing products and services in the market.
One of the most popular and recognized platforms used on the Internet are social networking sites (SNS hereafter) such as MySpace and Facebook. The quick rise in popularity of SNS began in the second half of the last decade partly because of their extensive usage by school and university students. It is becoming difficult to ignore the fact that there might be a direct correlation between SNS usage and student academic performance shown at schools and universities. Since the problem is relatively new, several attempts have been made for an idea of answering this question. The main objective of this paper is to evaluate the degree of the negative impact of SNS extensive usage on academic performance of students as well as propose several solutions to them.
In this paper we propose a novel method for the prediction of a person’s success in an academic course. By extracting log data from the course’s website and using network analysis, we were able to model and visualize the social interactions among the students in a course. For our analysis we extracted a variety of features by using both graph theory and social networks analysis. Finally, we successfully used several regression and machine learning techniques in order to predict the success of student in a course. An interesting fact uncovered by this research is that the proposed model has a shown a high correlation between the grade of a student and that of his “best” friend.
During the last two decades, the performance of the Grameen Bank (Yunus, 2003) has promoted microfinance as one of the most important tools to combat poverty through financing microenterprises’ start-up capital. This strategy, coupled with greater economic development at community level and through women empowerment, has been endorsed by the World Bank and other international organizations that directly or indirectly support microfinance institutions (MFIs). The merit of the microfinance schemes is to provide an avenue to credit and savings services to those people who have no access to the formal financial sector. Some recent studies critique MFIs commercial lending and point out the limitations of these schemes because of their large-scale implementation that seems to respond to an inertial phenomenon rather than being based on rigorous evidence. Also, MFIs when seeking their financial sustainability through services’ commercialization can end up harming clients, because of the spillover effects and aggressive marketing techniques. That is to say, predatory lending practices implemented by some MFIs have led clients to a debt trap, sometimes with tragic consequences.
In this paper, we explore the ways in which race plays a role in the lives of Mexican Americans by examining how education, racial characteristics, social interactions, relate to racial outcomes. First, we found that darker Mexican Americans, therefore appearing more stereotypically Mexican, report more experiences of discrimination. Second, darker men report much more discrimination than lighter men and than women overall. Third, more educated Mexican Americans experience more stereotyping and discrimination than their less educated counterparts, which is partly due to their greater contact with whites. Lastly, having greater contact with whites leads to experiencing more stereotyping and discrimination. Our results are indicative of the ways in which Mexican Americans are racialized in the United States.
King Lear (1604 to 1605) is widely regarded as one of the greatest works of world literature, but also as one of the most challenging. The challenge is not just in the complexity of the language and the need for notes explaining obsolete terms and idioms—those problems are common to all of William Shakespeare’s plays. Instead, King Lear is exceptionally demanding emotionally and imaginatively. An evolutionary perspective can help readers meet these challenges in three main ways: first, by offering a metaphysial vision that corresponds with that of the play; second, by providing ideas about human motives and values concordant with those in the play; and third, by integrating an awareness of universal aspects of human nature with a recognition of the historically specific features of the play.
The purpose of this study is to analyze the customer service effects on customer satisfaction and customer loyalty. The field study is applied by using survey method on a face-to-face and electronic mail basis as interview methods including four hundred shopping mall customers who live in Izmir city, Turkey. The research model is formed for measuring customer service effects on customer satisfaction and customer loyalty. The research model is tested by three hypotheses via regression analyses. According to the research results, customer services which comprise 8 factors can explain 13.9 % of variance in customer satisfaction, 12.5 % of variance in customer loyalty and also customer satisfaction can explain 43.2 % of variance in customer loyalty. As a result, customer services can explain both customer satisfaction and customer loyalty and it must be improved by retailers
On how open access to scientific research can cure diseases.
The rate at which academic papers are being published can hinder scientific progress. On This Week In Startups, our founder, Richard Price, discusses with Jason Calacanis why open access to scientific research is so important.
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One of the most important issues in a modern and developed society is providing sufficient welfare for people and food could be very crucial in this area. Having decent estimation of food and other environmental sources would be essential for our future to help us to make any important decision for next generation as well.
Using General Social Survey data from 1972 to 2008, we found that Americans were on average happier in the years with less national income inequality than in the years with more national income inequality. We further demonstrated that this inverse relation between income inequality and happiness was explained by perceived fairness and general trust. That is, Americans trusted other people less and perceived other people to be less fair in the years with more national income inequality than in the years with less national income inequality.
Previous review studies have suggested that computer games can serve as an alternative or additional form of treatment in several areas (schizophrenia, asthma or motor rehabilitation). Although several naturalistic studies have been conducted showing the usefulness of serious video games in the treatment of some abnormal behaviours, there is a lack of serious games specially designed for treating mental disorders. The purpose of our project was to develop and evaluate a serious video game designed to remediate attitudinal, behavioural and emotional processes of patients with impulse-related disorders. In this article, we present a description of the video game used, rationale, user requirements, usability and preliminary data, in several mental disorders.
Bitcoin is a digital currency that was launched in 2009, and it has attracted much attention recently. This article reviews the mechanics of the currency and offers some thoughts on its characteristics. What precisely is digital money?
Effortful Persistence and Body Mass as Predictors of Running Achievement in Children and Youth
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Schools often include running in their physical education and health curriculum to increase physical activity and reduce childhood overweight. But having students run around may not be enough to sustain physical activity habits if motivational factors are not well understood. This study examined effortful persistence as a predictor of running.
The Relationship Between Sexual Quality of Life, Happiness, and Satisfaction with Life
Total Views: 970
Happiness can be described as the one of the most important life purpose for humans’ actions and behavior. Indeed, sexuality is an important and powerful aspect of human life with regards to happiness; therefore the quality of an individual’s sexual life is directly related to their happiness and satisfaction with life. This study aimed to analyze the relationship between sexual quality of life, happiness, and satisfaction with life.
Recently, the Facebook Data Team released a novel metric based on automated sentiment analysis called Facebook Gross National Happiness. Facebook’s Gross National Happiness (FGNH) indexes the positive and negative words used in the millions of status updates submitted daily by Facebook users. FGNH has face validity: it shows a weekly cycle and increases on national holidays. Also, happier individuals use more positive words and fewer negative words in their status updates. We examined the validity of FGNH in measuring mood and well-being by comparing it with scores on Diener’s Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS).
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Terrestrial mining is ethically problematic by virtue of its directly destructive impact and by virtue of its contribution to both the depletion of fossil fuels and (through the use of the latter) to the raising of C02 levels in the atmosphere. Extraction of helium-3 (3He) from the lunar regolith would share two of these same problems, i.e. resource depletion (which I will suggest is the soft problem of lunar mining) and destructive impact (which I will suggest is the hard problem). In response to the hard problem, in spite of the fact that the Moon is a lifeless place, I will argue that we do nonetheless have reasons for lunar protection.
Hip-hop and country music stem from two distinct delineations of blackness and whiteness, most often positioned as diametrically opposed and mutually constitutive. How then do we understand the emergence of what the Wall Street Journal calls “hick hop”, country music with hip hop verses, hip hop language, hip hop posturing and even occasionally actual hip hop artists rapping in country songs? I argue that to be astonished by the hip-hop country crossover is to not understand the history of “race” music or the contemporary reality of poverty among rural whites. White poverty may be invisible to policy and dominant culture but it is increasingly visible to poor whites. Hick-hop represents the contestation and navigation of this invisibility.
Winning a democratic election makes you a democrat no more than eating lettuce makes you a rabbit. The media should focus on the core of events rather than the form when they report on Democracy in Egypt.
This paper addresses some residual misunderstandings about the effects of compulsory voting and, in particular, the effectiveness of compulsory voting laws as a mechanism to stimulate voting turnout. We address studies in which the effectiveness of compulsory voting is either underplayed or miscalculated due to an inappropriate use of atypical cases or a methodological error known as the ‘ecological fallacy’. Specifically, treating all compulsory voting regimes as a synthetic group can give rise to inaccurate perceptions of the performance of individual regimes like Australia’s. This paper also compares the efficacy of compulsory voting with alternative turnout-raising mechanisms.
Comparing and contrasting the physician assistant and nurse practitioner on the front lines of U.S. health care, how are the two professions uniquely positioned to serve the millions of uninsured Americans? This chapter explores the differences between these two professions.
Out of the Norwegian Glaciers: Lendbreen- A Tunic from the Early First Millennium AD
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As the temperature rises each year, the assemblages of prehistoric hunters emerge from the ice. Archaeologists in Norway are now conducting regular surveys in the mountains to record the new finds. A recent example presented here consists of a whole tunic, made of warm wool and woven in diamond twill. The owner, who lived in the late Iron Age (third–fourth centuries AD), was wearing well-worn outdoor clothing, originally of high quality.
Cultural Change and Diffusion: Geographical Patterns, Social Processes, and Contact Zones
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Cultures develop and change both through spontaneous, local invention and the adoption of ideas, customs, and objects from other cultural groups. As early as the 1930s, scholars suggested that “no more than 10% of all of the cultural items found in any culture— including our own— orginated in that culture” (Ferraro, 2006). The diffusion or spread of culture from a point of origin to other places and people can occur through personal contact, migration, trade, war, or mass communications. Diffusion is important to studying history, but it is also part of the trajectory of the future.
In a much-publicized paper, Zhong and Liljenquist (2006) reported evidence that feelings of moral cleanliness are grounded in feelings of physical cleanliness: a threat to people’s moral purity leads them to seek, literally, to cleanse themselves. In an attempt to replicate and build upon these findings, we conducted a pilot study in which we unexpectedly failed to replicate the original results from the second study of Zhong and Liljenquist’s report. We used the authors’ original materials and methods; we investigated samples that were more representative of the general population than in the original experiments; we investigated samples from different countries and cultures; and we substantially increased the power of our statistical tests. Nevertheless, we still failed to replicate Zhong and Liljenquist’s initial reported findings.
Growth, Age and Size of the Jurassice Pachycormid Leedsichthys Problematicus (Osteichthyes: Actinopterygii)
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The Jurassic pachycormid osteichthyan Leedsichthys problematicus is renowned for having been able to achieve prodigious size for a bony fish. Building on work of Martill (1986a), a thorough examination of all known material was conducted in order to constrain estimates of the size of this animal and examine its rate of growth. Important specimens of Leedsichthys are described for the first time. The histology of Leedsichthys is reviewed, and the presence of growth annuli is used to establish ages for five specimens.
Horsemen in Forts or Peasants in Villages? Remarks on the Archaeology of Warfare in the 6th to 7th C. Balkans
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Conspicuously absent from 6th to early 7th c. fortified sites in the Balkans are stirrups and other elements of equipment signalling the presence of cavalry troops. Hoards of iron implements containing stirrups have been wrongly dated to Late Antiquity; they are in fact a much later date (9th-11th c. A.D.). Those hoards which can be dated to the 6th c. with some degree of certaintly lack agricultural tools associated with large-scale cultivation of fields. As most such hoards found in Early Byzantine hill-forts typically include tools for the garden-type cultivation of small plots of land, they show that no agricultural occupations could be practised inside or outside 6th c. forts, which could satisfy the needs of existing populations.
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Contemporary scholarship does not pay enough attention to stigma in relation to its temporal status; i.e. whether the stigma is temporary and changeable, or is it permanent? The present article links the study of sociology of time, of destigmatization strategies and of narrative resistance, through a case study of individuals who are stigmatized on the basis of an attribute perceived as temporary and changeable—fatness. Conducting a comparative analysis of Before-and-After weight-loss articles appearing in an Israeli online health magazine, I examine how these narratives marginalize fat people by presenting fatness as temporary and changeable. I then compare these narratives to life narratives produced by Israeli-Jewish women, who self-identify as fat.
Robert Kraut has proposed an analogy between valuing a loved one as irreplaceable and the sort of “rigid” attachment that (according to Saul Kripke’s account) occurs with the reference of proper names. We wanted to see if individuals with Kripkean intuitions were indeed more likely to value loved ones (and other persons and things) as irreplaceable. In this empirical study, 162 participants completed an online questionnaire asking them to consider how appropriate it would be to feel the same way about a perfect replica of a loved one, as well as other questions about replaceability.
Many Students of Color have encountered cultural disrespect within their K-12 education relating to their names. While the racial undertones to the mispronouncing of names in schools are often understated, the authors argue that these incidents are racial microagressions- subtle daily insults that, as a form of racism, support a racial and cultural hierarchy of minority marginalization. Furthermore, enduring these subtle experiences with racism can have a lasting impact on the self-perceptions and worldviews of a child. Using a Critical Race Theory (CRT) framework and qualitative data, this study was designed to explore the racial microaggressions and internalized racial microaggressions of Students of Color in K-12 schools, as it relates to their names.
The growth of the business process outsourcing and knowledge process outsourcing within ASEAN contributes significantly to the economic development within the region. With an increasing number of qualified individuals amongst ASEAN member states and the economic turbulence in the west, ASEAN stands to lead in these services. The growth of these industries, however, is not only driven by favorable business conditions but is also highly dependent on infrastructure security – particularly that of information systems. While efforts have been made to address these issues in the form of policies, legislation, and regulations, these continue to be, at best, sporadic and reactive in nature, and non-existent at worse. This paper aims to provide a framework for developing a cyber defense strategy that could be embedded in economic regulations using the Philippines as a model given the large number of BPO and KPOs within its borders.
This examines the resettlement experiences of women who entered New Zealand through the Women at Risk category or who became sole heads of households as a consequence of their resettlement experiences. Funded by the Lotteries Community Sector Research Fund and jointly undertaken by Refugee Services and AUT University
The spectre of rising prices of food articles, vegetables in particular, is haunting Indian policymakers again. A little relief from inflation felt by the consumer during October and early November 2010 was temporary; the prices of onion and a few other vegetables shot up thereafter. The food inflation rate crossed the double-digit mark for the week ending on 11 December due to a sharp rise in the prices of onions, other vegetables and food grains. With the astronomical rise in onion prices in the second and third weeks of December, there is a worrying situation that food inflation could rise further.
Provoking Lactation by the Insufflation Technique as Documented by the Rock Images of the Sahara
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The Saharan rock art iconography shows that the first diffusion of cattle in Africa came with several milking techniques, which contradicts for this continent Sherratt’s hypothesis which considered milking as a “secondary revolution” which would have allowed a better exploitation of animals in arid zones.
'The Art of Art History' is a collection of resources for constructing a critical history of art history. It is not organized as a conventional 'histor of art history' in its own right, nor is it a historical novel with a beginning, middle, and end. It is rather more of an assemblage, or a cabinet of provacative things to think with, each of which has multiple connections to others, both within this anthology and elsewhere. It is also an 'anthology' in the older sense of the word— an accounting of things which in their variety and allure might resemble a garden of flowers; a collection of texts that, in some cases, have been appreciated as fine works of art in their own right.
Rural-Urban Interactions: Influences on the Rural Development Process in the North-East Region of Romania
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This paper aims to present the interactions that occur between urban and rural, realizing a strict separation of these two areas, their populations and their activities here. This thing is being reflected in the division of policies on spatial and sectorial criteria, urban planners usually concentrating on the importance of urban centers as commerce and transportation nods in the regional policy giving little attention to agricultural or rural-led development.
The end of this century has been a period of great transformation for Zimbabwe. As many other developing countries in this period, the nation has gone through a demographic transition, particularly evident during the eighties. This kind of transition is characterized by a sharp decrease in fractional death rates, due the rapid improvement in life conditions, and a slow corresponding decrease in fractional birth rates, which are strongly related to sexual habits and traditions. Zimbabwean demographic transition, however, has been, and actually is very atypical and dramatic, due to the enormous HIV/AIDS epidemic. The fractional death rates have begun to re-increase during the nineties, while birth rates kept on decreasing, due to cultural factors and to the reduction of reproduction capacity of the population, related to the erosion of the fertile population and to the AIDS kids generation caused by the epidemic.
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In recent years, the increase in near-surface global annual mean temperatures has emerged as considerably smaller than many had expected. We investigate whether this can be explained by contemporary climate change scenarios. In contrast to earlier analyses for a ten-year period that indicated consistency between models and observations at the 5% confidence level, we find that the continued warming stagnation over fifteen years, from 1998 -2012, is no longer consistent with model projections even at the 2% confidence level. Of the possible causes of the inconsistency, the underestimation of internal natural climate variability on decadal time scales is a plausible candidate, but the influence of unaccounted external forcing factors or an overestimation of the model sensitivity to elevated greenhouse gas concentrations cannot be ruled out. The first cause would have little impact of the expectations of longer term anthropogenic climate change, but the second and particularly the third would.
Tree Rings Reveal Extent of Exposure to Ionizing Radiation in Scots Pine Pinus sylvestris
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Tree growth has been hypothesized to provide a reliable indicator of the state of the external environment. Elevated levels of background ionizing radiation may impair growth trajectories of trees by reducing the annual groth. Such effects of radiation may depend on the individual phenotype and interact with other environmental factors, such as temperature and drought.
Free to Choose but Liable for the Consequences: Should Non-Vaccinators be Penalized for the Harm they Do?
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Is there a case for holding non-vaccinators legally liable for harm caused to others by their inaction? This will depend on the answers to two questions. First, does the scientific capability exist to prove that Jinny infected Michael with measles? If so, are there legal grounds for either criminal or civil liability?
Previous research suggests that low self-esteem and increased levels of depression are associated with a variety of risky sexual behaviours including poor contraception use, a high number of sexual partners and sexual partners with a risky history. Although previous studies have primarily focused on the effects of risky sexual behaviour on adolescents, this research aims to analyse its relationship in adulthood. So far no research into risky sexual behaviour and its mental health consequences has been carried out in Britain, a gap which this study aims to fill.
For more than five centuries the industrial era has operated on the basis of market exchanges as a means of allocating resources and distributing income. The input market, if efficient, provides those who have some resources (such as labour) to trade it for other resources (such as money) so that other goods could be purchased. Demand for goods at lower prices justify the need for the firm, a consolidator of resources, including labour, but also investing in technology and capital to produce such goods in exchange for money with some profit. Globalization didn’t change the nature of the game, merely the players, and with the different players came the political agendas. The last 30 years, however, have seen a subtle shift in the way the economy has been operating, much of it spurred by the Internet, which started as a medium to reach out to unserved markets with the message or product largely unchanged.
Intersubjective-Systems Theory: A Phenomenological-Contextualist Psychoanalytic Perspective
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In this article I outline the essentials of my phenomenological-contextualist psychoanalytic perspective as it has been applied to a wide range of clinical phenomena, including development and pathogenesis, transference and resistance, forms of unconsciousness, emotional trauma, and therapeutic change. I characterize the therapeutic comportment entailed by these formulations as a kind of emotional dwelling
This project uses visual performance-based research methods to connect communities for mental health and well-being. Although visual methods are becoming increasingly widely accepted as a social science research method, performance-based methods are less well established, and the intersection between different methods is an exciting area for current inquiry.
On Nehemiah’s City Wall and the Size of Jerusalem during the Persian Period: An Archaeologist’s View
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The borders and the size of Jerusalem in the Persian period have been discussed and debated by many scholars since modern research of Jerusalem started in the 19th century C.E. The scholarly discussion on these subjects focused on the reconstruction of the course of the city wall that, as is generally assumed, surrounded Jerusalem during this period. The debate on these questions is based on sources of two kinds. On the one hand, the written biblical sources, in particular the book of Nehemiah, include much information on the city wall and its course, as well as on the topography of Jerusalem. Indirect data are also to be found in the descriptions of Josephus. On the other hand, we have the vast corpus of archaeological data accumulated during 150 years of continuous field research. In my view, the archaeological data should be the starting point for the study of Jerusalem and its borders, history, and material culture in the biblical period.
The Role of Nigeria in Peace Building, Conflict Resolution and Peacekeeping in Africa since 1960
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Conflict management encompasses a wide range of issues such as peace building, conflict resolution, and peacekeeping. To undertake an analysis of Nigeria’s role in conflict management since 1960 therefore is to focus on its various efforts towards building, supporting,and enforcing peace across Africa and the rest of the world. Such efforts are grounded concretely not only in the availability of material resources and military capabilities and how they are or should be deployed in the pursuit of our national interest; they are also historically grounded in our commitment to peace, justice, and equality of all peoples, as well as in the belief in, and respect for the right of all peoples to collectively determine their destiny. It is these commitments that have informed our role in peace building regionally, continentally, and globally
Contemporary geographical thought is constrained by a political economic imagination rooted in binarism, which is exemplified in debates surrounding neoliberalism. Neoliberal proponents call for decentralization and increased capital flows, while Marxists respond by pairing centralization with capitalism’s abrogation. The latter view considers hierarchy necessary, a position that promotes authority and regards horizontal politics as propitious to neoliberalism. Anarchism’s coupling of decentralization with anti-capitalism is dismissed because Marxism cannot accommodate the processuality of prefigurative politics. Marxism demands a revolution with a masterplan, considering horizontality a future objective. Such a temporality ignores the insurrectionary possibilities of the present and implies a politics of waiting.
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Here’s what captured the curiosity of Academia.edu users this week:
This article investigates a mass-mediated campaign against a perceived increase in suicides among gay (or presumed-to-be-gay) youth in the United States since September 2010. “It Gets Better” (IGB) became a rallying cry for “anti-bullying” activists, politicians, celebrities and ordinary people who created YouTube videos addressed to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) youth who might be considering suicide. A critical discourse analysis of a sample of IGB videos reveals a neoliberal frame that places the burden of a “better” life onto the emotional lives of LGBT youth, who are instructed to endure suffering in the interest of inevitable happiness. Drawing on Foucault and Orr’s work on the construction and management of mental illness, we use the concept of “psychopower” to explore how these IGB videos render queer youth suicide both a psychological disorder and a sociological crisis for which the only viable solution is “homonormative” subjectivity.
As new media is transforming culture, we transform ourselves into digital identities in the information age. Digital identities are who we say we are, when we are online. They can be a subtype of a public persona, an extension of our ‘true’selves, or they can be completely fabricated and fantastical, to function as a mask to hide the identity of an Internet user from rest of the world. A digital identity can spin intricate, interconnected webs utilising creative, social and interactive platforms that enable them to share and perform to an open or closed audience. Both online identities and online communities are part of a virtual reality; simply put, a reality or existence that in most cases will only exist on the Internet and not ‘offline’ in real life.
Cultured meat is produced in vitro by using tissue engineering techniques. It is being developed as a potentially healthier and more efficient alternative to conventional meat. The goal of this study was to estimate energy use, land requirements, and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for large-scale cultured meat production. Life cycle assessment (LCA) research method was used for assessing the environmental impacts along the production chain. Cyanobacteria hydrolysate was assumed to be used as the nutrient and energy source for muscle cell growth. The results showed that cultured meat production involves approximately 35-60% lower energy use, 80-95% lower GHG emissions and 98% lower land use compared to conventionally produced meat products in Europe. Conventionally produced poultry had slightly lower energy use than cultured meat. It is concluded that the overall environmental impacts of cultured meat production are substantially lower than those of conventionally produced meat.
This article reviews direct water consumption in tourism from both quantitative and qualitative viewpoints, and with a perspective on climate change, to assess the current water demand of the tourism sector and to identify current and future management challenges. The article concludes that even though tourism increases global water consumption, direct tourism-related water use is considerably less than 1% of global consumption, and will not become significant even if the sector continues to grow at anticipated rates of around 4% per year (international tourist arrivals). The situation is different at the regional level of analysis, however, because tourism concentrates traveller flows in time and space, and often in dry regions where renewable water reserves are limited. Furthermore, the understanding of tourism’s indirect water requirements, including the production of food, building materials and energy, remains inadequately understood, but is likely to be more substantial than direct water use. The article concludes that with expected changes in global precipitation patterns due to climate change, it is advisable in particular for already water scarce areas to engage in water management. Recommendations for managing tourism’s water footprint are made.
Re-Examining the ‘Out of Africa’ Theory and the Origin of Europeoids (Caucasoids) in Light of DNA Genealogy
Total Views: 945
Seven thousand five hundred fifty-six (7556) haplotypes of 46 subclades in 17 major haplogroups were considered in terms of their base (ancestral) haplotypes and timespans to their common ancestors, for the purposes of designing of time-balanced haplogroup tree. It was found that African haplogroup A (originated 132,000 ± 12,000 years before present) is very remote time-wise from all other haplogroups, which have a separate common ancestor, named β-haplogroup, and originated 64,000 ± 6000 ybp. The finding that the Europeoid haplogroups did not descend from “African” haplogroups A or B is supported by the fact that bearers of the Europeoid haplogroups, as well as all non-African haplogroups do not carry either SNPs M91, P97, M31, P82, M23, M114, P262, M32, M59, P289, P291, P102, M13, M171, M118 (haplogroup A and its subclades SNPs) or M60, M181, P90 (haplogroup B), as it was shown recently in “Walk through Y” FTDNA Project (the reference is incorporated therein) on several hundred people from various haplogroups.
The aim of this paper is to discuss, with no pretense of being exhaustive, some of the main epistemological shortcomings of Eritrean historiography and, at the same time, to suggest possible alternative frameworks, mainly on the basis of my own research and teaching experience carried out both in Eritrea and in Italy over the past 15 years.
Neoliberalism as Discourse: Between Foucauldian Political Economy and Marxian Poststructuralism
Total Views: 7,837
Contemporary theorizations of neoliberalism are framed by a false dichotomy between, on the one hand, studies influenced by Foucault in emphasizing neoliberalism as a form of governmentality, and on the other hand, inquiries influenced by Marx in foregrounding neoliberalism as a hegemonic ideology. This article seeks to shine some light on this division in an effort to open up new debates and recast existing ones in such a way that might lead to more flexible understandings of neoliberalism as a discourse. A discourse approach moves theorizations forward by recognizing neoliberalism is neither a ‘top down’ nor ‘bottom up’ phenomena, but rather a circuitous process of socio-spatial transformation.
Although Breaking Bad (AMC, 2008-2013) is one of the most critically acclaimed TV Series of the last decade, it has been the subject of little academic research. This paper aims to figure out the motivations fueling Walter White’s behavior, one of the most compelling characters in contemporary popular culture. The discovery of Walter White’s cancer serves as a catalyst (a particularly appropriate chemical term) for him to unveil his true ‘inner self’. As we will explore, the progressive moral and criminal decline of Walter White is spurred on by the contradictory tension between two radical emotions that become ‘rationalized’ in order to justify his actions, which become increasingly less defensible: an increasing pride, and the guilt that fades as the narrative unfolds.
Two Denials of Liberty: Morality, Authority and Obedience in the “Milgram Experiments”
Total Views: 1,087
This paper re-analyzes Stanley Milgram’s own account of his widely known experiments on obedience to authority. It will focus on the conceptual apparatus that Milgram constructed to interpret his findings and the way his crucial concepts – morality, authority and obedience – were empirically operationalized. The ultimate argument of this paper will not be that Milgram’s findings (according to his own account) are null and void. Rather, it raises the possibility that what is of interest in the experiments is not the fact that a majority of people continued to push levers under conditions of coercion, but that a substantial minority somehow managed to extricate themselves. From an indictment of humanity, thus, the “Milgram experiments” will become the demonstration of the resources humans may draw upon to become everyday heroes in rebelling against meaningless, arbitrary and destructive oppression.
From Alpha to Omega: A Practical Solution to the Pervasive Problem of Internal Consistency Estimation
Total Views: 252
Coefficient alpha is the most popular measure of reliability (and certainly of internal consistency reliability) reported in psychological research. This is noteworthy given the numerous deficiencies of coefficient alpha documented in the psychometric literature. We present a brief review of the psychometric literature on coefficient alpha, followed by a practical alternative in the form of coefficient omega. To facilitate the shift from alpha to omega, we also present a brief guide to the calculation of point and interval estimates of omega using a free, open source software environment.
Trending Papers on Academia.edu
This Week’s Most Viewed Papers
Each day thousands of Academia.edu users scour the site, discovering new research topics and catching wind of trending papers.
Here’s what sparked the curiosity of Academia.edu users this week:
Life-Cycle Economic Analysis of Distributed Manufacturing with Open-Source 3-D Printers
Total Views: 1,512
The recent development of open-source 3-D printers makes scaling of distributed additive-based manufacturing of high-value objects technically feasible. These self-replicating rapid prototypers (RepRaps) can manufacture approximately half of their own parts from sequential fused deposition of polymer feedstocks. RepRaps have been proposed and demonstrated to be useful for conventional prototyping and engineering, customizing scientific equipment, and appropriate technology-related manufacturing for sustainable development. However, in order for this technology to proliferate like 2-D electronic printers have, it must be economically viable for a typical household. This study found that 3-D printers could cut household costs by up to $2000 per year. It appears clear that as RepRaps improve in reliability, continue to decline in cost and both the number and assumed utility of open-source designs continues growing exponentially, open-source 3-D printers will become a mass-market mechatronic device.
In this paper, we will focus on the Qanat underground irrigation system that has been developed 3,000 years ago in ancient Iran (Persia). The Qanat system is one of the most ecologically balanced water recovery methods available for arid regions. The rise and dispersal of the Islam is mirrored in the ascent of ‘the Empire of Qanats’ in the Old World – from the Iberian Peninsula to central Asia. But around the middle of the previous century ‘the Age of Qanats’ came to an end. One cause was the introduction and widespread use of the pumped tube well. Electric and diesel-pumped wells offer advantages over Qanat irrigation by allowing water to be brought to the surface on command, but over-pumping has caused water tables to fall, aquifers to be depleted and Qanats to be abandoned at an accelerating pace. The new water resources management regime of deep wells and large dams is more in tune with a mechanistic worldview than with the traditional religious framework. These modern technologies have drastically altered the public perception and appreciation of water, which is now seen as a sheer endless resource.
In this study we provide a basic test of a niche-specialization hypothesis of the Dark Triad (i.e.,narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism). We propose that in order to best enact a “cheater strategy” those high on the Dark Triad traits should have optimal cognitive performance and, thus, have a night-time chronotype. Such a disposition will take advantage of the low light, the limited monitoring,and the lessened cognitive processing of morning-type people. The Dark Triad composite was correlated with an eveningness disposition. This link worked through links with the “darker” aspects of the Dark Triad (i.e., Machiavellianism, secondary psychopathy, and exploitive narcissism); correlations that were invariant across the sexes. While we replicated sex differences in the Dark Triad, we failed to replicate sex differences in chronotype, suggesting eveningness may not be a sexually selected trait as some have argued but is a trait under natural selective pressures to enable effective exploitations of conspecifics by both sexes.
A Medieval Welfare State? Welfare Provision in a Twelfth-Century Icelandic Law Code
Total Views: 1,004
The history of law in Iceland is remarkable for both the respect with which the Icelanders held the law and the attention to detail and concern for the well-being of the population as a whole which the law showed in its canons. Several of the law coders were published in the era of the Icelandic commonwealth in the tenth to twelfth centuries. Particularly outstanding is Icelandic law’s concern with the care of the elderly and for those in need. The detailed nature of the law’s definition of the rights and responsibilities of children to their parents and its concern for the maintenance of the needy goes much further than any other law code in contemporary Europe. It is the purpose of this paper to present an outline of the rules for social welfare contained in the twelfth-century Icelandic law code, the Grágás, which appear to also be unique early rules for welfare provision in medieval Europe.
Early Mediaval Detroit: The Motor City as a Mirror for Illuminating Urban Shrinkage in the Late Antique West
Total Views: 743
Detroit’s population has fallen by half from a high of about 1.9 million in 1950. Postwar racial tensions, the growing difficulties of the U.S. auto industry, and the destruction of the 1967 riots are among the factors that are widely acknowledged to have contributed to the city’s population decline, the effects of which are readily evident in Detroit’s urban fabric. Entire sections of the city have been depopulated, leaving a hash of abandoned buildings, vacant or overgrown lots, and crumbling infrastructure. Wildlife not seen in Detroit since preindustrial times has begun to reappear. Some remaining residents of these areas have taken up semi-agrarian lifestyles, hunting raccoons or raising crops in formerly urban spaces and selling their goods in ad-hoc markets. Police and other agents of municipal authority are regarded as either ineffectual or irrelevant. Many of those who remain in the urban core do so because no other option is available to them. These developments may hold clues for revealing the form of changes in western Europe during the 5th and 6th centuries, when similar shrinkage of the urban footprint took place in many cities and towns. Do modern Detroit and its residents, with their various adaptations to the changing circumstances of their environment, provide, to any extent, a model for shrinking post-Roman cities?
Post-globalisation India has seen the rise of several moral panics around questions of sexuality and safety. In this paper, I ask how women who see themselves as feminist mothers in urban India reflect on a variety of concerns, including clothing, fashion, consumption, sexualisation, sexuality education and sexual choices. I reflect on the complex ways in which young women are exercising choices around sexuality and how feminist mothers reflect on these choices in relation to questions around risk and morality. This paper represents the beginning of an inquiry into the question: what does it mean to be a feminist mother raising daughters in twenty-first-century urban India?
The year 2011 was one of incredible, worldwide revolutionary activity. Shortly after the completion of this book the largest global occupation movement in history crystallised in October 2011. This occupation movement is the practical and theoretical heir to the political strategies developed by Deleuze, Guattari and the Zapatistasas articulated in the chapters of this book. Inspired by the Arab Spring, the occupations in Wisconsin, the riots against austerity measures in Europe and the UK, and the occupations by the Spanish indignados and the Greeks at Syntagma Square, the Occupy movement has spread to over 2,556 cities across eighty-two countries,and over 600 communities in the United States.
Role Models for Young People: What Makes an Effective Role Model Program? A Report to the National Youth Affairs Research Scheme
Total Views: 9,134
The ‘What makes an effective role model program?’research project was commissioned by the National Youth Affairs Research Scheme (NYARS) to explore the extent and use of role model programs and their effectiveness, and to inform the development of role model programs for young people. This report undertakes a literature search and an audit of role model programs targeting young people, aged 12-25, delivered by various groups in educational and community settings, in both Australia and overseas, in order to explain what makes a role model program effective or not in stimulating the changes for young participants.
The Early Neolithic central place at Herxheim is defined by a perimeter of elongated pits containing fragments of human bone, together with pottery imported from areas several hundred kilometres distant. This article offers a context for the centre, advancing strong evidence that the site was dedicated to ritual activities in which cannibalism played an important part.
Imagine a scenario where some set of individuals witness an extraordinary event which impels them to communicate regarding that event to other individuals, who in turn will communicate with yet others. In this scenario, it is possible for an external observer to witness the fact of communication, but not the content. How might that observer effectively make the inference that an extraordinary event has occurred?
From the Back Burner to the Front Burner: How Analytics Re-ignite Ideas
SPOTLIGHT ON RONALD FAULSEIT, DePAUL UNIVERSITY
Archaeologist Ronald Faulseit of DePaul University no longer has to feel guilty when he indulges in his pet project— Mayan astronomy. Rather, exposure on Academia.edu has justified his endeavors and has even given him something to write about.
"I’m surprised by how much interest one of my papers gets," says Ronald. "It’s a very technical paper on Mayan astronomy.”
Usually only drawing a small crowd at conferences, Ronald’s side pursuit of Mayan astronomy had all the signs and symptoms of a small topic lost in the expansive sea of archaeology. Consequently, Ronald thought his audience was narrow, and rarely went beyond presenting his ideas at conferences, that is until he started checking his Academia.edu analytics.
“Honestly I thought that there were only a few people who were interested in that work,” says Ronald. “But seeing that there’s a wider interest in it and that there are actually a lot more people who are looking at these things shows me that it’s worthwhile to keep pursuing this topic.”
So then rather keep his ideas simmering on the back burner, Ronald decided to move forward and put the flame on high. Presenting a paper on Mayan astronomy last year, interest sparked by Academia.edu encouraged Ronald to write up his abstract into an article, which will be published in an edited volume later this year.
The popularity of his Mayan pursuits has made Ronald reflect on the interest generated by some of his other papers, which, as the main topics of research, account for the majority of his academic endeavors.
“One of my first publications was in a very small journal that’s not widely available. Maybe 10 people had read the paper in this little journal, and I knew all of them!” says Ronald. “But then I put it on Academia.edu and now it’s my most-viewed paper. People from all over the world have read it, or at least looked at it. It’s pretty cool to see that you can have this broader communication with Academia.edu.”
And with this broader communication, Ronald anticipates more interaction and discussion, ultimately helping his own career.
“Academia.edu gives you a lot of access to a lot of different things and keeps you up-to-date on whatever people are posting. So obviously if you have this kind of interaction, and if you’re building on ideas and sharing them in this way, it will definitely get you more exposure and people will begin to know who you are when you’re applying for jobs. Then, I think that it will become even more important as you’re going for tenure— people will be exposed to your academic record and see what kind of contribution you’re making. I think career-wise, it’s a really positive thing.”
Recognizing the fruits of exposure through Academia.edu, Ronald actually thinks the perks will be even greater for the field itself.
“Nowadays there are so many researchers focusing on so many different things and Academia.edu helps weed out all of the noise. It’s like a filter,” says Ronald. “You can look at who is writing about what you’re doing, create a bibliography of work, and then build on that rather than reinvent the wheel— you can move to the next step.”
Thinking about his own next move once his article on Mayan astronomy is published later this year, Ronald plans to post it on Academia.edu with the hopes that it will be shared and discussed, helping others take their next step as well.
“It’s more likely more people will read it on Academia.edu then will even know it exists in the edited volume!” says Ronald.
Academic Bio:
Ronald Faulseit is an Adjunct Professor of Anthropology at DePaul University and post-doc at Southern Illinois University- Carbondale where his research centers around Mesoamerican archaeology. His current fieldwork takes place in the Oaxaca Valley in Mexico where he investigates changes and continuities in behavioral patterns at the household and community level before and after the collapse of the Monte Albán state during the Classic period (A.D. 200 - 900).
Ronald’s work can be viewed here.
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