The Western Tradition has long struggled to define and understand evil, yet definitive answers continue to elude us. So, too, the role of evil in Goethe's Faust remains problematic. With the help of Mephistopheles, Faust acquires a forbidden ,,knowledge of good and evil“, evoking the biblical story of the Fall. This study uncovers important layers of meaning in that story and reveals its special and unrecognized significance for Faust.
Task unrelated thought (TUT) refers to thought directed away from the current situation, for example a daydream. Three experiments were conducted on healthy participants, with two broad aims. First, to contrast distributed and encapsulated views of cognition by comparing the encoding of categorical and random lists of words (Experiments One and Two). Second, to examine the consequences of experiencing TUT during study on the subsequent retrieval of information (Experiments One, Two, and Three). Experiments One and Two demonstrated lower levels of (...) TUT and higher levels of word-fragment completion whilst encoding categorical relative to random stimuli, supporting the role of a distributed resource in the maintenance of TUT. In addition the results of all three experiments suggested that experiencing TUT during study had a measurable effect on subsequent retrieval. TUT was associated with increased frequency of false alarms at retrieval (Experiment One). In the subsequent experiments TUT was associated with no advantage to retrieval based on recollection, by manipulating instructions at encoding (Experiment Two), and/or at retrieval (Experiment Three). The implications of the results of all three experiments are discussed in terms of recent accounts of memory retrieval and conscious awareness. (shrink)
This paper reviews trends in rural/urban under-5 mortality differentials in Sub-Saharan Africa in historical perspective, with particular attention to the case of Kenya. The rural/urban mortality gap has narrowed within the last half-century, but while this was largely due to rapidly falling rural infant and childhood mortality over most of the period, in recent years it has been due primarily to a stalling and even upturn in urban under-5 mortality as urban economic and environmental conditions have sharply deteriorated in rapidly (...) growing cities. Policy attention and resources need to be directed to large urban areas to prevent further deterioration of urban mortality and associated health conditions. (shrink)
