Mindfulness-based training programs are highly established in competitive and recreational sports. One of the best-known approaches is the Mindfulness-Acceptance-Commitment Approach by Gardner and Moore), which integrates mindfulness aspects of awareness, non-judgmental attitude, and focus. Based on these aspects, Thienot and colleagues developed and validated an English language sport-specific questionnaire, the so-called Mindfulness Inventory for Sport, for the assessment of mindfulness skills in athletes. The aim of this study is to psychometrically test a German language version of the MIS. To assess (...) the psychometric properties, the MIS-D was examined in an online survey with an integrated test–retest design for reliability, validity, and measurement invariance. The present results support the psychometric quality of the German language version of the MIS. Necessary replications should among others focus on checking the measurement invariance for further relevant subgroups. (shrink)

The elimination of child marriage is a goal that ranks high on the agendas of civil society organizations, national governments, and multilateral institutions. To date, however, there has been very little scholarship on the historical debates over the definition of child marriage. This article examines the history of age-restricted marriage as it was debated during the development of human rights instruments in the post-World War II era. Using archives of the United Nations and affiliated organizations, we detail how and why (...) efforts to establish a universal minimum age for marriage were repeatedly unsuccessful. We illustrate how the current, commonly used definition of child marriage—as marriage before the age of 18—has never been agreed upon in a legally binding international convention but was seemingly established through a discursive innovation that borrowed principles from the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child. (shrink)

This book offers a significant reinterpretation of the history of republican political thought and of Niccolo Machiavelli's place within it. It locates Machiavelli's political thought within enduring debates about the proper size of republics. From the sixteenth century onward, as states grew larger, it was believed only monarchies could govern large territories effectively. Republicanism was a form of government relegated to urban city-states, anachronisms in the new age of the territorial state. For centuries, history and theory were in agreement: constructing (...) an extended republic was as futile as trying to square the circle; but then James Madison devised a compound representative republic that enabled popular government to take on renewed life in the modern era. This work argues that Machiavelli had his own Madisonian impulse and deserves to be recognized as the first modern political theorist to envision the possibility of a republic with a large population extending over a broad territory. (shrink)

In contested areas of environmental research and policy, all stakeholders are likely to claim that their position is scientifically grounded but disagree about the relevant scientific conclusions or the weight of the evidence. In this article, I draw on a year of participant observation and over 110 in-depth interviews, with the case study of controversial chemicals used as flame retardants in consumer products. I develop the concept of strategic science translation, the process of interpreting and communicating scientific evidence to an (...) intended audience in order to advance certain goals and interests. Engaging in selective, interpretive, or inaccurate SST allows competing stakeholders to bolster their arguments, strengthen their authority, and inspire change regarding a policy-relevant issue. Because stakeholders deploy imbalanced resources when they participate in contested environmental fields, their actions in those fields and the resulting policy outcomes often reduce not to the settling of scientific truths but to power differentials. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Studies in Logic, Grammar and Rhetoric Jahrgang: 45 Heft: 1 Seiten: 69-86.

Under the sign of Libitina, the Roman goddess of burials and funerals invoked in Horace's Ode 3.30, this essay provides a celebratory introduction to the work of the Polish Jewish poet Zuzanna Ginczanka, situating her within the cultural history of commemoration and consecration of the dead in Poland and the painful confrontation with the unburied dead of the Holocaust, of whom Ginczanka is one. Her best-known poem, a bitter parody of Juliusz Słowacki's “My Testament,” turns the Horatian notion of poetry (...) as the most precious and enduring legacy on its head by construing the author's meager household possessions, looted after her denunciation to the Nazis in wartime, as the only offering her fellow citizens will cherish, while the text itself was actually brought as evidence in a postwar trial of the Polish woman she accuses in the poem and contributed to a conviction for collaboration. Using historian Thomas Laqueur's terms necro-sociability and necronominalism as competing impulses in a seemingly intractable struggle, this essay argues that it is possible to find in Ginczanka's joyful defiance of traditional accounts of body and spirit the point of departure for a poetics that claims a new freedom of imagination in the attempt to transcend the most stubborn of memory wars. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThomas Hobbes transforms fear and curiosity from primarily theological to anthropological concerns. Fear and curiosity go from being, most centrally, part of religiousness, or part of worsh...

_ Source: _Volume 30, Issue 2, pp 156 - 177 Using the example of ghosts and religion, this paper argues for the importance of social context and background operative in Hobbes’s account of social life and, in particular, the role of environment, education, and language in explaining much of what we think we know, and much of what we believe. The paper looks to aspects of Hobbes’s epistemology and his account of belief, to make the case that he recognizes how (...) a kind of social conditioning is required to sustain certain beliefs. The paper briefly concludes with a focus on the commonwealth itself and how the example of religion and religious belief extends to the commonwealth and the kinds of beliefs required for the commonwealth to sustain itself. (shrink)

The manuscripts in this issue of Perspectives in Biology and Medicine reflect the work of an international group of pediatric bioethicists and child rights advocates who convened in March 2014 to pursue several questions related to the intersection of pediatric bioethics and child rights. The prequel for the Symposium involved several years of dialogue between the editors of this volume—dialogue through which it became clear that there was much to be learned about our respective disciplines and how they might inform (...) our heretofore mutually exclusive work.The principles of pediatric bioethics have been used for decades to analyze and help resolve challenging clinical situations in pediatrics, but there has been.. (shrink)

In the fast-paced world of clinical medicine, recognizing and acknowledging differences in worldviews is often overlooked. When dealing with the delicate issues broached in advance care planning, such oversights can lead to deep rifts within the health care provider-patient relationship. By providing guidance to those engaged in such endeavors and setting advance care planning in a global context, health care practitioners will be better able to care for their patients and achieve the noble goal of advance care planning_giving volume to (...) the voice of the patient in the last chapter of her life. (shrink)

Born at 24 weeks gestation, Baby G now lies in a neonatal intensive care unit two months post-birth. He has pulmonary hypoplasia, congenital scoliosis, and swallowing issues that will require placement of a feeding tube, and bowel dystonia that interferes with his ability to absorb feedings. Shortly after birth, he experienced a cardiopulmonary arrest and now has obvious neurological impairments. As a result of incomplete development of his lungs and severe chronic lung disease, he cannot breathe on his own. Because (...) of his chronic respiratory failure, tracheostomy and long-term assisted ventilation was offered as an option that would allow him to be discharged from the acute care setting. However, his congenital.. (shrink)

In this article, we address the case of self-tracking as a practice in which two meaningful backgrounds play an important role as the spatial dimension of human practices. Using a phenomenological approach, we show how quantification multiplies backgrounds, while at the same time generating data about the user. As a result, we can no longer speak of a unified background of human activity, but of multiple dimensions of this background, which, additionally, is perceived as having no pivotal role in the (...) process, often being hidden, situated beyond human consciousness, or taken for granted. Consequently, the phenomenological experience of the background turns into a hermeneutic practice focused on the interpretation of representations and descriptions. By adopting a phenomenological approach, we show the problems and limitations of quantification of human activities occurring in self-tracking and the theoretical problems associated with the scheme of human-technology relations. (shrink)

Brain-computer interfaces are communication bridges between a human brain and external world, enabling humans to interact with their environment without muscle intervention. Their functionality, therefore, depends on both the BCI system and the cognitive capacities of the user. Motor-imagery BCIs rely on the users’ mental imagination of body movements. However, not all users have the ability to sufficiently modulate their brain activity for control of a MI-BCI; a problem known as BCI illiteracy or inefficiency. The underlying mechanism of this phenomenon (...) and the cause of such difference among users is yet not fully understood. In this study, we investigated the impact of several cognitive and psychological measures on MI-BCI performance. Fifty-five novice BCI-users participated in a left- versus right-hand motor imagery task. In addition to their BCI classification error rate and demographics, psychological measures including personality factors, affinity for technology, and motivation during the experiment, as well as cognitive measures including visuospatial memory and spatial ability and Vividness of Visual Imagery were collected. Factors that were found to have a significant impact on MI-BCI performance were Vividness of Visual Imagery, and the personality factors of orderliness and autonomy. These findings shed light on individual traits that lead to difficulty in BCI operation and hence can help with early prediction of inefficiency among users to optimize training for them. (shrink)

This paper analyzes the ethics of social science research employing big data. We begin by highlighting the research gap found on the intersection between big data ethics, SSR and research ethics. We then discuss three aspects of big data SSR which make it warrant special attention from a research ethics angle: the interpretative character of both SSR and big data, complexities of anticipating and managing risks in publication and reuse of big data SSR, and the paucity of regulatory oversight and (...) ethical recommendations on protecting individual subjects as well as societies when conducting big data SSR. Against this backdrop, we propose using David Resnik’s research ethics framework to analyze some of the most pressing ethical issues of big data SSR. Focusing on the principles of honesty, carefulness, openness, efficiency, respect for subjects, and social responsibility, we discuss three clusters of ethical issues: those related to methodological biases and personal prejudices, those connected to risks arising from data availability and reuse, and those leading to individual and social harms. Finally, we advance considerations to observe in developing future ethical guidelines about big data SSR. (shrink)

The main objective of this 2-week RCT study was to test the efficacy of the previously developed Noticing Nature Intervention to boost wellbeing during winter months. The NNI consists of noticing the everyday nature encountered in one’s daily routine and making note of what emotions are evoked. Community adults were randomly assigned to engage in the NNI or were assigned to one of two control conditions. Paired t-tests revealed significant increases pre- to post-intervention in the NNI group for positive affect, (...) elevation, nature connectedness, and hope agency, and a marginally significant increase in transcendent connectedness. No significant pre-post difference emerged for any aspect of wellbeing in the control conditions. Analysis of qualitative findings revealed that negative emotion themes were 2.13 times more likely to be associated with built photos than with nature photos. Feelings of peace, awe, happiness, humbleness, and hope were more likely to be associated with nature photos, while feelings of annoyance, loneliness, curiosity, uncertainty, anger, yearning, and comfortableness were more likely to be associated with built photos. Overall, results indicated that engaging in the NNI can provide a wellbeing boost, even in the cold of winter. This study is the first to test any nature-based wellbeing intervention during colder, winter months, and to directly assess the impact of a nature-based wellbeing intervention on levels of hope. (shrink)

This paper presents a literature review on the ethics of self-tracking technologies which are utilized by users to monitor parameters related to their activity and bodily parameters. By examining a total of 65 works extracted through a systematic database search and backwards snowballing, the authors of this review discuss three categories of opportunities and ten categories of concerns currently associated with self-tracking. The former include empowerment and well-being, contribution to health goals, and solidarity. The latter are social harms, privacy and (...) surveillance, ownership control and commodification of data, autonomy, data-facilitated harm, datafication and interpretability of data, negative impact on relation to self and others, shortcomings of design, negative impact on health perception, and regulation and enforcement of rules. The review concludes with a critical analysis of the existing literature and an overview of a future research agenda that could complement the current work on ethics of self-tracking. (shrink)

The "best interest of the child" standard is central to both pediatric bioethics and the child rights community. In pediatric bioethics in the United States, the best interest of the child standard is cited as the guidance principle for parental decision-making.1 Likewise, in the child rights community, the best interest of the child standard is "of paramount consideration" ). Both approaches also recognize parental rights and responsibilities and support a role for the maturing child in the decision-making process. Why, then, (...) do members of the pediatric bioethics community and the child rights communities not speak the same language?This article was developed out of... (shrink)

In this article, we address the case of self-tracking as a practice in which two meaningful backgrounds (physical world and technological infrastructure) play an important role as the spatial dimension of human practices. Using a (post)phenomenological approach, we show how quantification multiplies backgrounds, while at the same time generating data about the user. As a result, we can no longer speak of a unified background of human activity, but of multiple dimensions of this background, which, additionally, is perceived as having (...) no pivotal role in the process, often being hidden, situated beyond human consciousness, or taken for granted. Consequently, the phenomenological experience of the background turns into a hermeneutic practice focused on the interpretation of representations and descriptions. By adopting a (post)phenomenological approach, we show the problems and limitations of quantification of human activities occurring in self-tracking and the theoretical problems associated with the scheme of human-technology relations. (shrink)

Caretaking stability in the early life environment supports neurobehavioral development, while instability and neglect constitute adverse environments that can alter maturational processes. Research in humans suggests that different types of early life adversity can have differential effects on caretaker relationships and later cognitive and social development; however, identifying mechanistic underpinnings will require animal models with translational validity. Two common rodent models, maternal separation and limited bedding, influence the mother-infant relationship during a critical window of development. We hypothesized that these paradigms (...) may affect the development of communication strategies on the part of the pup. Ultrasonic vocalizations are a care-eliciting mechanism and ethologically relevant response to stressors in the rat pup. USV emission rates and acoustic parameters change throughout early development, presenting the opportunity to define developmental milestones in USVs that would reflect neurobehavioral aberrations if disrupted. This study investigated the effects of MS or LB on the dam-pup relationship by quantifying pup USVs, maternal behavior, and the relationship between the two. First, we used a generalized additive model approach to establish typical developmental trajectories of USV acoustic properties and determine windows of change in MS or LB rearing. Additionally, we quantified maternal behaviors and the predictability of maternal care sequences using an entropy rate calculation. MS and LB each shifted the developmental trajectories of USV acoustic parameters and call types in a sex-specific manner. MS more often impacted male USVs, while LB impacted female USVs. MS dams spent more time passive nursing, and LB dams spent more time on the nest. The predictability of maternal care was associated with the rate of USV emissions exclusively in females. Taken together, findings demonstrate sex- and model-specific effects of rearing environments on a novel developmental trajectory involving the mother-infant relationship, facilitating the translation of animal ELA paradigms to assess later-life consequences. (shrink)

Mobile health (mHealth) technologies for self-monitoring health-relevant parameters such as heart frequency, sleeping patterns or exercise regimes aim at fostering healthy behavior change and increasing the individual users to promote and maintain their health. We argue that this aspect of mHealth supports healthism, the increasing shift from institutional responsibility for public health toward individual engagement in maintaining health as well as mitigating health risks. Moreover, this healthist paradigm leads to a shift from understanding health as the absence of illness to (...) regarding health as the performance of certain rituals in order to project healthiness. By drawing from the analogy between healthiness and traditional virtues, we evaluate the promises made by proponents of mHealth technologies for self-monitoring. We argue that the implementation and use of mHealth risk entrenching existing inequalities and, more particularly, tend to exclude populations situated at the losing end of those inequalities from participating in the quasi-virtue of healthiness. Consequently, the implementation and use of mHealth technologies not only present challenges for social justice but also undermine their primary societal goal—to promote public health. Finally, we offer several suggestions on how to realize the potential benefit of mHealth. (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss the formation of habits with the help of self-tracking technologies. Although devices like Fitbit smart bands come with promises of empowerment through the means of increased control over users’ habits, existing literature does not provide conclusive findings about the validity of such claims. I contribute to the ongoing debate by relying on John Dewey’s pragmatist philosophy and its notion of intelligent habit. I demonstrate that from a pragmatist standpoint, habits that are the most likely to (...) accomplish users’ goals contribute to their flourishing need to be reflective (accompanied by adequate deliberation) and flexible (adaptable to the changing circumstances). On this basis I highlight some ethical-epistemic issues surrounding self-tracking technologies that inhibit the formation of habits desirable from a Deweyan standpoint. These include a lack of reflection on the part of the developers, difficulties for users to deliberate and consciously shape the habits developed by their devices, and dependence upon self-tracking tools that makes it difficult to adapt habits to individual needs and circumstances. I conclude the paper by discussing self-tracking’s general impact on flourishing, as well as placing my arguments in the context of the diversity of self-tracking practices and identifying how users attempt to alleviate the shortcomings of the technology and make it more suitable to their goals and needs. (shrink)