According to a growing body of studies, people’s ability to forecast future emotional experiences is generally biased. Nonetheless, the existing literature has mainly explored affective forecasting in relation to specific events, whereas little is still known about the ability to make general estimations of future emotional states. Based on existing evidence suggesting future-oriented disposition as a key factor for mental health, the aims of the current study were (1) to investigate the relationship between negative (NA) and positive (PA) affective forecasting (...) biases and perceived psychological well-being, and (2) to explore whether positively biased predictions are associated with resilience and foster one’s skills to cope with stressful events. To do so, we asked 85 undergraduate students to forecast PA and NA over two weeks, as well as to report their daily affect through a web-based Ecological Momentary Assessment. According to the results, positively biased PA forecasting (i.e., overestimating positive emotional states) was associated with greater perceived psychological well-being and higher resilience. When high levels of stress were experienced, participants holding an optimistic, yet biased, estimation of future PA were more likely to successfully manage stressors, thus maintaining lower levels of NA and higher levels of positive emotions. We suggest that positively biased PA forecasting is an adaptive cognitive distortion that boosts people’s resilience and mental health, thus opening new avenues for the promotion of psychological well-being. (shrink)

Francisco Fernández-Zarza Pérez conocido como Jano, fue un artista polifacético dentro del mundo publicitario y cinematográfico. Destacó por su versatilidad a la hora de retratar a las estrellas cinematográficas pertenecientes al “star-system” nacional e internacional durante la época de la posguerra y la transición española.Partiendo de la importancia del cartel como medio de transmisión del mensaje, pretendemos descubrir si sus carteles, entre los años 1940 y 1970, además de actuar como reclamo para dar a conocer las películas también actuaron (...) como reflejo de los estereotipos sociales mediante la representación de los roles femeninos. (shrink)

Background: The castor bean is a large grassy or semi-wooden shrub or small tree. Any part of the castor plant parts can suffering from a disease that weakens the ability to grow and eliminates its production. Therefore, in this paper will identify the pests and diseases present in castor culture and detect the symptoms in each disease. Also images is showing the symptom form in this disease. Objectives: The main objective of this expert system is to obtain appropriate diagnosis of (...) the disease. Methods: In this paper, the expert system is designed for the ability of agricultural engineers to detect and diagnose disease of castor like as: seeding blight, alternaria blight, cercospora leaf spot, powdery mildew and wilt. This system presents the disease symptoms, survival and spread, favorable conditions and image for each disease. Clips and Delphi expert system languages are used for designing and implementing the proposed expert system. Results: The expert system in the diagnosis of castor diseases was assessed by farmers and agricultural engineers and they were satisfied and accepted with its quality of performance. Conclusions: The expert system is easy for farmers and people have experience in the plant of castor to detect and diagnosis the symptoms that may face this plant from several disease. (shrink)

O presente artigo propõe refletir sobre a vivência ético-política-afetiva na comunidade. Discute-se três pontos principais: 1. Como se dá a ética, a política e os afetos em uma comunidade a partir da Filosofia de Espinosa. 2. Partindo-se da compreensão da dinâmica dos afetos como se pode compreender a liberdade e a servidão na vivência comunitária. Como a comunidade age ou não de tal forma que a liberdade ou a servidão, respectivamente, passam a ser vivenciadas no ambiente comunitário? O que poderá (...) favorecer a liberdade ou a servidão? 3. Proposta de uma ação compartilhada dos profissionais. O objetivo dessa análise é revisitar a reflexão sobre ética, política e afetos na comunidade e, a partir de Baruch de Espinosa, proporcionar uma análise que reatualize o que seja comunidade na perspectiva essa revisitação. O conceito de comunidade que esse artigo se refere diz respeito ao conjunto de pessoas que convivem no mesmo território ou no mesmo bairro e que, no quotidiano, vivenciam diversas experiências. Tem-se como reflexões principais que, mediante a compreensão da dinâmica instável dos afetos, os profissionais que ‘atuam’ em comunidades, poderão ter uma visão mais ampla sobre suas práticas e se as mesmas fomentam ou aumentam estados de servidão ou se, ao contrário, contribuem para a liberdade da comunidade e dos indivíduos. (shrink)

The precise nature of microaggression purposely obscures the exploration of the intentionality of perpetrator and the quantification of the harm committed. The act fits neatly into a system that privileges some and validates their reality to themselves and to us. This paper explores microaggression and recommends strategies for avoiding its harms.

How do we know that what has happened to us is a microaggression? I claim in this chapter that our understanding about how we perceive microaggression is grounded in the cultivation and critical reflection about experiences of people who occupy marginalized social locations. My aim is to explore the nature of epistemic harms of microaggression in order to highlight how they diminish the microaggressed’s ability to generate and participate in making knowledge claims. I differentiate between the primary (direct) harm of (...) microaggressive acts, and the secondary epistemic harms that occur in the aftermath of the microaggression, particularly when the microaggressed attempts to convey their experience to others. I conclude with an analysis of the two secondary harms in hopes that it helps us explore a possible avenue of resistance to the epistemic harms of microaggression. (shrink)

Madness, Language, Literature (2019) brings together a series of unpublished works on literature that belong to Michel Foucault’s first stage of production. This article focuses on those works that express a concept of madness as social partition or outside, and also on those that elucidate the concept of the ‘extralinguistic’ of literature. The combined reading of these texts sheds light on a concept of the extralinguistic outside of literature that enables Foucault to overcome a concept of ontological outside and, therefore, (...) using literature, think on this discourse’s historical possibilities of resistance. As a result of this new reading, I analyse some fundamental aspects of this early Foucault. First, his development of a politics of literary form in the 1960s. Second, I propose that Foucault’s studies on literature in the 1960s were a kind of laboratory in which he was already raising some questions concerning his political history of truth. And, lastly, I examine the capacity of literature to make visible a part of reality that remains hidden (the excluded), the processes by which literature creates (language’s mechanism of self-representation), the possible forms of subjectivation that the fiction of every episteme allows (what Foucault calls verisimilitude), and the formulation of novel forms of being (that he later developed as aesthetics of existence). (shrink)

Dans cet article nous proposons une définition de l’éthique de la gestion et nous en identifions les conditions à travers une revue de la littérature. Nous postulons par la suite que l’éthique de la gestion diffère selon qu’il s’agit d’organisations publiques ou d’organisations privées. Nous montrons en effet que pour l’organisation privée, l’éthique est un engagement subjectif qui permet de pallier les lacunes d’une gestion instrumentale sans remettre en question les finalités premières de l’organisation. Tandis que pour l’organisation publique, l’éthique (...) a une essence positive et se trouve orientée vers la recherche de compromis sur les finalités mêmes de l’organisation. (shrink)

My aim in this paper is to carve out a political understanding of the Muslim identity. The Muslim identity is shaped within a religious mold. Inseparable from this religious understanding is a political one that is valuable in its own right in order to secure any sustainable possibility of participating politically as Muslims within a democratic liberal democracy, such as the United States. Here I explore not the historical or theological formation of the Muslim identity, rather a metaphysical understanding of (...) it, in order to mobilize politically while avoiding the traps of essentialism. I begin with a brief overview of the early understandings of the term “identity politics” in the United States. Moving beyond interest-based movements I explore María Lugones' particular understanding of the self as multiplicitous. I then offer examples of the Muslim identity within the context of a social movement and individualist claims, in order to draw out the political aspects of the Muslim identity. In the final section I argue that the theological criteria that define “who counts as a Muslim” is a crucial aspect of how many Muslims may understand their identity as Muslims. However, I claim that in order to avoid the traps of marginalization of Muslim minorities, one must understand oneself as a multiplicitous political agent and that, furthermore, such an understanding is not at odds with Islam or one's own understanding of their identity as Muslim. (shrink)

One distinguishing feature of vertebrate oocyte meiosis is its discontinuity; oocytes are released from their prophase I arrest, usually by hormonal stimulation, only to again halt at metaphase II, where they await fertilization. The product of the c‐mos proto‐oncogene, Mos, is a key regulator of this maturation process. Mos is a serine‐threonine kinase that activates and/or stabilizes maturation‐promoting factor (MPF), the master cell cycle switch, through a pathway that involves the mitogen‐activated protein kinase (MAPK) cascade. Oocytes arrested at prophase I (...) lack detectable levels of Mos, which must be synthesized from a pool of maternal mRNAs for proper maturation. While Mos is necessary throughout maturation in Xenopus, it seems to be required only for meiosis II in the mouse. The translational activation of c‐mos mRNA at specific times during meiosis requires cytoplasmic polyadenylation. Cis‐ and trans‐acting factors for polyadenylation are, therefore, essential elements of maturation. (shrink)

The studies presented here apply the concept of entitativity in order to understand how belonging to a particular geographical area – neighborhood - can determine the way others organize information and form impressions about area’s residents. In order to achieve this objective, three studies were carried out. The first study aims to verify if a neighborhood varies in terms of perceived entitativity, and identify the physical and social characteristics of the neighborhoods that are more strongly associated with the perception of (...) entitativity. The Study 2 and 3 used an experimental paradigm to explore how people’s perceptions of neighborhoods’ entitativity influenced their impressions of residents. To activate stereotypes, Study 2 used the name of real neighborhoods, and Study 3 employed only a set of pictures of unknown neighborhoods. The results show that the neighborhoods vary significantly with the regard to the perception of entitativity, and a set of physical attributes of place were strongly related with entitativity. The results showed that, independent of stimuli, the neighborhoods perceived as highly entitative, the supposed residents were subject to more extreme and quicker trait judgments, supported by greater confidence on the part of perceivers. Study 3 also reported that in highly entitative neighborhoods, the perceivers transferred more traits from the group to individual members. These results provide strong evidence that physical structure of neighborhoods imply different entitatity judgments that influences the way in which residents are perceived. (shrink)

RESUMO Este artigo procura mostrar como a linguagem e o estilo empregados por Dostoiévski já em seu romance de estreia, Gente pobre, contribuíram para a grande inovação realizada por ele na forma literária. Ao tomar como objeto de representação a realidade prática de camadas inferiores da sociedade e adotar em sua obra uma linguagem também considerada de nível inferior, própria à maneira de se expressar dessas camadas sociais, Dostoiévski não só transcende todas as regras literárias estabelecidas como também as já (...) transgredidas até então, porque ele leva a sério não só a realidade cotidiana como a linguagem, o nível de estilo próprio a elas. Com isso ele se aproxima da representação séria e elevada da realidade cotidiana sem mudar as regras de estilo, como fizeram os franceses. O que ele muda é o ponto de vista, o foco narrativo, de um modo que não encontra precedente nem mesmo na literatura Ocidental. ABSTRACT This article seeks to show how the language and style employed by Dostoevsky since his debut novel, Poor Folk, contributed to the great innovation that he introduced into literary form. By adopting the practical reality of the lower strata of society as his object of representation and, accordingly, a low-style language, Dostoevsky transcended all established literary rules, as well as others that were already being transgressed. He took seriously both the reality of everyday life and its language, the style level proper to it. In so doing, he approached the serious and elevated representation of everyday reality without changing the rules of style, as the French did. What he changed is the point of view, the narrative focus, and he did so in a way that had no precedent even in Western literature. (shrink)

This paper is a critique of the present mode of capitalist democracy from the ethico-moral viewpoint. The crisis of values is identified as the great bane of free market-led globalization. This trend has aggravated worldwide inequality, promoted terrorism and violence, created psychological anomie and triggered eco logical disasters. Only a few business interests in the wealthier economies are gaining at the expense of humankind. The moral dimension of the government's role has been undermined by such profit-making free market gospel. The (...) author contends that more than beingjust secular, democracy is a pre-social moral force and, as such, is perceived more proximately in the religious temper of a non-industrial society than in a mass industrial society. In the latter democracy is almost a farce with the periodic ritual of public voting as its main act. The paper castigates the global economy and global media which cleverly mastermind our lives, and pleads for a change of values which will make humans self-conscious and will restore their autonomy. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This paper explores the alarming phenomenon of violent extremism in university campuses. It probes why education fails to prevent violent extremism in this case? Drawing on Robert Cox’s distinction of problem solving and critical theories, the paper examines policy discourses that aim to prevent violent extremism through education. It is observed that dominant policy discourses take up problem solving approaches to prevent/counter violent extremism and fail to take into account the broader structural violence that feeds extremist ideologies. The counter (...) violent extremism policies largely view education as a means to control thinking rather than develop it. Such policies hinder the development of critical consciousness in students that can provide effective defence against extremism. Hence, there is a need to rethink education to counter extremism. Subsequently, the paper shifts its focus to Pakistan, where education has remained a central concern of counter extremism policies since 9/11. Based on 13 expert interviews, I explore higher education practices in Pakistan from practitioners’ perspective. The practitioners point out multiple problems of educational status quo that need to be addressed to counter extremism on campus effectively. (shrink)

This article posits that in Foucault’s later work we find not a forgetting of literature, but a reformulation of the role that literature had come to occupy in his work, and that, in this later work, there is a trace of the texts on literary thought that he wrote from the 1960s to the mid-1970s. Drawing upon Foucault’s later work, I reconsider the key question: What relationship does literature, as literature, have with the political dimension of discourses? This necessarily goes (...) hand-in-hand with the classic question concerning the truth of literature: How does literature tell the truth? (shrink)

The underlying objective of this project is to examine the ways in which the exclusionary status of Muslim Americans remains unchallenged within John Rawls’s version of political liberalism. Toward this end, I argue that the stipulation of genuine belief in what is reasonably accessible to others in our society is an unreasonable expectation from minorities, given our awareness of how we are perceived by others. Second, using the work of Lisa Schwartzman, I show that Rawls’s reliance on the abstraction of (...) a closed society legitimizes the exclusion of citizens with marginal social locations. And finally, applying Charles Mills’s critique of ideal theory, I argue that Rawls’s idealization of a posture of civic friendship detracts from a discussion of equally significant societal values while sustaining existing social hierarchies. (shrink)

The political posture often encouraged in liberatory movements is that of urgency. Urgency is based on the idea that if oppressed peoples do not act “now,” then their fate is forever sealed as subordinates within social and political power hierarchies. This paper focuses on a contrasting political posture, termed presence of mind, motivated by the current political atmosphere of distrust and disenfranchisement in which some Muslim-Americans find themselves. Presence of mind is defined as the ability to critically unpack visceral affective (...) responses to injustice—giving special consideration to power structures, one’s social location, and relationships—and then to asses an appropriate response in virtue of that consideration that best upholds our commitments. This paper argues that cultivating presence of mind acknowledges the complexities of the Muslim-Americans’ identity while providing a posture that allows the resistor to best represent their political commitments. (shrink)

Restorativeness is defined as the potential of the environment to re-establish certain cognitive capacities related to human information processing. The most frequently used instrument for evaluating the restorativeness of places is the Perceived Restorativeness Scale, proposed by Hartig and colleagues (1991). Later on, shorter versions of the Perceived Restorativeness Scale were proposed. The aim of this work is to evaluate the discriminatory capacity of the original and of a shorter Spanish version of the PRS, considering urban settings previously selected for (...) having different level of restorativeness, according to expert’s criteria. The study involved 244 students and used a 3 x 2 mixed experimental design, with two independent variables: Restorativeness of a place (between-subjects), which was manipulated by showing pictures of settings selected with varying levels of restorativeness (high, medium, low), and length of the scale (within-subjects), which was manipulated by asking subjects to fill in both the original and a shorter version of the PRS. The order of presentation of the two scales was counterbalanced. Results show an appropriate reliability for both version of the scale. Items of being-away, fascination, and coherence of the shorter scale correlate more strongly with the corresponding factor of the original scale, compared to the others factors. Both scales produce similar values for the perceived restorativeness of the different places, except for places with low restorativeness. (shrink)

How well can institutional guidelines help ensure the dignity, rights, safety and well being of research participants in an underdeveloped country? In this paper I describe the limits of informed consent as an instrument for the protection of participants in the context of the Philippines. I bring to this paper my experiences as an advocate of rights, a member of an ethics review board, a researcher on the ethics of research and as an observer of the dynamics of clinical practice (...) in an academic public teaching hospital of the University of the Philippines where I am professor. (shrink)