When we reach to pick up an object, our actions are effortlessly informed by the object’s spatial information, the position of our limbs, stored knowledge of the object’s material properties, and what we want to do with the object. A substantial body of evidence suggests that grasps are under the control of “automatic, unconscious” sensorimotor modules housed in the “dorsal stream” of the posterior parietal cortex. Visual online feedback has a strong effect on the hand’s in-flight grasp aperture. Previous work (...) of ours exploited this effect to show that grasps are refractory to cued expectations for visual feedback. Nonetheless, when we reach out to pretend to grasp an object (pantomime grasp), our actions are performed with greater cognitive effort and they engage structures outside of the dorsal stream, including the ventral stream. Here we ask whether our previous finding would extend to cued expectations for haptic feedback. Our method involved a mirror apparatus that allowed participants to see a “virtual” target cylinder as a reflection in the mirror at the start of all trials. On “haptic feedback” trials, participants reached behind the mirror to grasp a size-matched cylinder, spatially coincident with the virtual one. On “no-haptic feedback” trials, participants reached behind the mirror and grasped into “thin air” because no cylinder was present. To manipulate haptic expectation, we organized the haptic conditions into blocked, alternating, and randomized schedules with and without verbal cues about the availability of haptic feedback. Replicating earlier work, we found the strongest haptic effects with the blocked schedules and the weakest effects in the randomized uncued schedule. Crucially, the haptic effects in the cued randomized schedule was intermediate. An analysis of the influence of the upcoming and immediately preceding haptic feedback condition in the cued and uncued random schedules showed that cuing the upcoming haptic condition shifted the haptic influence on grip aperture from the immediately preceding trial to the upcoming trial. These findings indicate that, unlike cues to the availability of visual feedback, participants take advantage of cues to the availability of haptic feedback, flexibly engaging pantomime, and natural modes of grasping to optimize the movement. (shrink)

Much attention has been focused in recent years on the ethical acceptability of physicians receiving gifts from drug companies. Professional guidelines recognize industry gifts as a conflict of interest and establish thresholds prohibiting the exchange of large gifts while expressly allowing for the exchange of small gifts such as pens, note pads, and coffee. Considerable evidence from the social sciences suggests that gifts of negligible value can influence the behavior of the recipient in ways the recipient does not always realize. (...) Policies and guidelines that rely on arbitrary value limits for gift-giving or receipt should be reevaluated. (shrink)

We develop an evidence-based theoretical account of how widely shared cultural beliefs about gender, race, and class intersect in interpersonal and other social relational contexts in the United States to create characteristic cultural “binds” and freedoms for actors in those contexts. We treat gender, race, and class as systems of inequality that are culturally constructed as distinct but implicitly overlap through their defining beliefs, which reflect the perspectives of dominant groups in society. We cite evidence for the contextually contingent interactional (...) “binds” and freedoms this creates for people such as Asian men, Black women, and poor whites who are not prototypical of images embedded in cultural gender, race, and class beliefs. All forms of unprototypicality create “binds,” but freedoms result from being unprototypical of disadvantaging rather than advantaging statuses. (shrink)

Much attention has been focused in recent years on the ethical acceptability of physicians receiving gifts from drug companies. Professional guidelines recognize industry gifts as a conflict of interest and establish thresholds prohibiting the exchange of large gifts while expressly allowing for the exchange of small gifts such as pens, note pads, and coffee. Considerable evidence from the social sciences suggests that gifts of negligible value can influence the behavior of the recipient in ways the recipient does not always realize. (...) Policies and guidelines that rely on arbitrary value limits for gift-giving or receipt should be reevaluated. (shrink)

Historically, male sexual fitness was framed by a patriarchal politics of life centred on regeneration, population and nation. In the later 20th century, as successful ageing became promoted by the lifestyle practices of an idealized healthy and active senior citizenry, traditional gerontocratic power over the sexual risks of youth gave way to a medical sexology concerned with sexual functionality across the lifecourse; in particular, erectility. Recently, erectile dysfunction has expanded to become a population-wide health problem with increasingly refined diagnoses based (...) on `phases', `early warning signs' and preventative regimes, especially as Viagra has become so widely available. This article explores a new bodily configuration in the making; arising, on the one hand, from the pharmacological and scientific technologization of male sexuality, and, on the other, from a contemporary politics of life that both contests the late-life ageism of the past and fosters a mid-life ageism in the present. (shrink)

Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerfulRita Dove(David Streitfeld, Washington Post, “Laureate for a New Age,” March 19, 1993).The genesis for this special issue arose in a rethin...

This article raises the question of ‘normality’ today and the fracturing of health ideals along new lines of enablement and function. In particular the study asks if ‘functional’ and ‘dysfunctional’ are displacing ‘normal’ and ‘pathological’ as master biopolitical binarisms, and if so, what distinctions can be drawn between them. The discourse of ‘function’ and ‘dysfunction’ is certainly ubiquitous in two areas of research and practice: gerontology and sexology. In the former case ‘functional health’ is linked to successful aging represented by (...) technical tests around activities of daily living (ADLs) and risk-assessment profiles. In the latter case, sexual function and dysfunction have become all-encompassing markers of heterosexual competence, now largely detached from reproductive imperatives, but refashioned as integral to responsible and successful self-management. Presenting examples from both cases, the article concludes that functionality, circulating under the signs of ‘normal’, ‘natural’ and ‘healthy’, furnishes economic, technological, educational, professional, pharmacological and policy fields with a rich intellectual, practical and regulatory resource. (shrink)

Throughout his life, John Tyler Bonner contributed to major transformations in the fields of developmental and evolutionary biology. He pondered the evolution of complexity and the significance of randomness in evolution, and was instrumental in the formation of evolutionary developmental biology. His contributions were vast, ranging from highly technical scientific articles to numerous books written for a broad audience. This historical vignette gathers reflections by several prominent researchers on the greatness of John Bonner and the implications of his work.

For at least the past 15 years, food safety stakeholders across all levels of government have recognized the critical role that state and local agencies play in our nation's food safety system. State and local agencies are the first responders to foodborne outbreaks and have primary responsibility for keeping their residents safe from foodborne disease through effective surveillance and rapid response to outbreaks. They also conduct the vast majority of food safety inspections across the nation's restaurants, grocery stores, and other (...) food service and food retail establishments.Recent efforts among industry and government officials alike have focused on creating a more integrated, prevention-oriented food safety system. The Food Safety Modernization Act, the first major overhaul of the nation's food safety laws since the 1930s, now mandates that most sectors of the food industry put preventive controls in place, changing the emphasis of what the FDA does from response to prevention. (shrink)

In this tribute to Steven T. Katz on the occasion of his seventieth birthday, Michael Zank and Ingrid Anderson present sixteen original essays written by senior and junior scholars in comparative religion, philosophy of religion, modern Judaism, and theology after the Holocaust, fields of inquiry where Steven Katz made major contributions over the course of his distinguished scholarly career. The authors of this volume, specialists in Jewish history, especially the modern experience, and Jewish thought from the Bible to (...) Buber, offer theoretical and practical observations on the value of the particular. Contributions range from Tim Knepper's reevaluation of the ineffability discourse to the particulars of the Settlement Cookbook, examined by Nora Rubel as an American classic. (shrink)

After decades of single issue movements and identity politics on the U.S. left, the series of large demonstrations beginning in 1999 in Seattle have led many to wonder if activist politics can now come together around a common theme of global justice. This book pursues the prospects for progressive political movements in the 21st century with case studies of ten representative movements, including the anti-globalization forces, environmental interest groups, and new takes on the peace movement.

_Disaster Psychiatry: Intervening When Nightmares Come True_ captures the state of disaster psychiatry in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. This emergent psychiatric specialty, which is increasingly separated from trauma and grief psychiatry on one hand and military psychiatry on the other, provides psychotherapeutic assistance to victims during, and in the weeks and months following, major disasters. As such, disaster psychiatrists must operate in the widely varying locales in which natural and man-made disasters occur, and they (...) must establish their role among the chaotic array of organizations involved in direct disaster response. Editors Anand Pandya and Craig Katz have captured the challenge and promise of disaster psychiatry through first-person narratives. We hear from psychiatrists who have encountered disasters at various stages of their career and in widely varying social, political, and personal contexts. Accounts of psychiatric involvement with adults and children during and after 9/11 have understandable pride of place in this collection. But they are balanced by richly informative narratives about other domestic and international disasters. Fraught with the drama attendant to the events they describe, these essays delineate the dizzying array of challenges that confront the disaster psychiatrist. They range from the intense emotional responses that are part of the aftermath of any disaster, to the need to legitimize a psychiatric presence within diverse cultural and medical contexts, to the subtle task of providing therapeutic boundaries at a time when all rules seem to be suspended. Special attention is given to the daunting task of working with children whose parents' are disaster victims. What emerges from these testimonies is compelling documentation of skilled and compassionate psychiatrists at the outer limits of their specialty, pursuing their calling into uncharted realms of therapeutic engagement. (shrink)

This discussion focuses on two important trends in American childbirth that have emerged in the past 30 years, the demand for a perfect baby and the desire for a perfect birth. These two trends are particularly important in the subgroup of middle-class women who have decided on delayed childbearing. Tremendous technological innovations, such as ultra-sound, prenatal genetic analysis, and fetal monitoring, have promoted the perception that physicians can control the prenatal environment and predict the pregnancy outcome. This expectation may lead (...) to bitterness and anger in the event of an adverse pregnancy outcome. In contrast, women and their families have also come to desire more control over the birth experience. If the parents’ birth plan is not achieved and their expectations not fulfilled, many parents feel they have not performed well. When the physician acts as a guide in the birth process, parents and physicians together may transcend the conflict to achieve a more satisfactory birth experience. (shrink)

On January 1, 2020, I (the first author), started my term as the new Editor in Chief of Metaphor and Symbol. I wanted to inaugurate that moment with a short editorial piece in the journal seeking t...

The authors of this article are previous or current members of the Clinical Ethics Consultation Affairs (CECA) Committee, a standing committee of the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities (ASBH). The committee is composed of seasoned healthcare ethics consultants (HCECs), and it is charged with developing and disseminating education materials for HCECs and ethics committees. The purpose of this article is to describe the educational research and development processes behind our teaching materials, which culminated in a case studies book called (...) A Case-Based Study Guide for Addressing Patient-Centered Ethical Issues in Health Care (hereafter, the Study Guide). In this article, we also enumerate how the Study Guide could be used in teaching and learning, and we identify areas that are ripe for future work. (shrink)

The central conflicts of the world today are closely related to cultural, traditional, and religious differences between nations. As we move to a globalized world, these differences often become magnified, entrenched, and the cause of bloody conflict. Growing out of a conference of distinguished scholars from the Middle East, Europe, and the United States, this volume is a singular contribution to mutual understanding and cooperative efforts on behalf of peace. The term paideia, drawn from Greek philosophy, has to do with (...) responsible education for citizenship as a necessary precondition for effective democracy. (shrink)

The central conflicts of the world today are closely related to cultural, traditional, and religious differences between nations. As we move to a globalized world, these differences often become magnified, entrenched, and the cause of bloody conflict. Growing out of a conference of distinguished scholars from the Middle East, Europe, and the United States, this volume is a singular contribution to mutual understanding and cooperative efforts on behalf of peace. The term paideia, drawn from Greek philosophy, has to do with (...) responsible education for citizenship as a necessary precondition for effective democracy. (shrink)

Each contributor to this book has used personal experience as the basis from which to frame his individual sociological perspectives. Because they have personalized their work, their accounts are real, and recognizable as having come from 'real' persons, about 'real' experiences. There are no objectively-distanced disembodied third person entities in these accounts. These writers are actual people whose stories will make you laugh, cry, think, and want to know more.

Despite their diversity and ecological importance, many areas of the SAR—Stramenopila, Alveolata, and Rhizaria—clade are poorly understood as the majority of SAR species lack molecular data and only 5% of species are from well-sampled families. Here, we review and summarize the state of knowledge about the three major clades of SAR, describing the diversity within each clade and identifying synapomorphies when possible. We also assess the “dark area” of SAR: the morphologically described species that are missing molecular data. The majority (...) of molecular data for SAR lineages are characterized from marine samples and vertebrate hosts, highlighting the need for additional research effort in areas such as freshwater and terrestrial habitats and “non-vertebrate” hosts. We also describe the paucity of data on the biogeography of SAR species, and point to opportunities to illuminate diversity in this major eukaryotic clade. See also the video abstract here: https://youtu.be/_VUXqaX19Rw. Despite their diversity, abundance, and importance, fewer than 10% of the species within the SAR—Stramenopila, Alveolata, and Rhizaria—clade have been assessed using molecular tools. Only a small percentage of the molecular records contain information on ecology or have associate location data, indicating a tremendous dark area. (shrink)

The inaugural collection in an exciting new exchange between philosophers and geographers, this volume provides interdisciplinary approaches to the environment as space, place, and idea. Never before have philosophers and geographers approached each other's subjects in such a strong spirit of mutual understanding. The result is a concrete exploration of the human-nature relationship that embraces strong normative approaches to environmental problems.