Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is currently defined as a cognitive/behavioral developmental disorder where all clinical criteria are behavioral. Inattentiveness, overactivity, and impulsiveness are presently regarded as the main clinical symptoms. The dynamic developmental behavioral theory is based on the hypothesis that altered dopaminergic function plays a pivotal role by failing to modulate nondopaminergic (primarily glutamate and GABA) signal transmission appropriately. A hypofunctioning mesolimbic dopamine branch produces altered reinforcement of behavior and deficient extinction of previously reinforced behavior. This gives rise to delay (...) aversion, development of hyperactivity in novel situations, impulsiveness, deficient sustained attention, increased behavioral variability, and failure to “inhibit” responses (“disinhibition”). A hypofunctioning mesocortical dopamine branch will cause attention response deficiencies (deficient orienting responses, impaired saccadic eye movements, and poorer attention responses toward a target) and poor behavioral planning (poor executive functions). A hypofunctioning nigrostriatal dopamine branch will cause impaired modulation of motor functions and deficient nondeclarative habit learning and memory. These impairments will give rise to apparent developmental delay, clumsiness, neurological “soft signs,” and a “failure to inhibit” responses when quick reactions are required. Hypofunctioning dopamine branches represent the main individual predispositions in the present theory. The theory predicts that behavior and symptoms in ADHD result from the interplay between individual predispositions and the surroundings. The exact ADHD symptoms at a particular time in life will vary and be influenced by factors having positive or negative effects on symptom development. Altered or deficient learning and motor functions will produce special needs for optimal parenting and societal styles. Medication will to some degree normalize the underlying dopamine dysfunction and reduce the special needs of these children. The theory describes how individual predispositions interact with these conditions to produce behavioral, emotional, and cognitive effects that can turn into relatively stable behavioral patterns. Key Words: catecholamine; clumsiness; dopamine; hyperkinesis; hyperkinetic disorder; impulsivity; monoamine; neuromodulator; overactivity; pollutants; reinforcement; reward; verbally governed behavior; soft signs; variability. (shrink)

Background:Textbooks are central for the education of professionals in the health field and a resource for practitioners already in the field.Objectives:This article focuses on how 12 textbooks in psychiatric nursing and psychiatry, published in Norway between 1877 and 2012, describe and present people with psychosis.Research design:We used qualitative content analysis.Ethical considerations:The topic is published textbooks, made available to be read by students, teachers and professionals, and no ethical approval was required.Findings:The analysis shows that all 12 textbooks describe and present people (...) who are considered as psychotic from a ‘perspective from above’. In this perspective, the readers are learning about psychosis in the professional’s language and from the author’s viewpoint. Most often the textbooks communicate a universal image of people with psychosis, a description that fits with the diagnostic criteria. The analysis also shows that two textbooks in psychiatric nursing combined this perspective with a ‘perspective from within’. Here, the readers are learning about psychosis from the patients’ own viewpoint. The authors communicate a personal, psychotic universe that differs from various people, even if they have the same diagnosis, and the descriptions are focusing on the patient as a whole person.Discussion and conclusion:Drawing partly on Rita Charon’s writings about narrative knowledge in the health field, and partly on insights from Martha Nussbaum and her concept of narrative imagination, we argue that mental health professionals need to learn about, understand and fathom what patients go through by reading, listening to and acknowledging the patients’ own stories and experiences. Cultivating the capacity for empathy and compassion are at the very heart of moral performance in the mental health field. A valuable moral resource in that regard is leading textbooks and how they describe and present people with severe mental illness. (shrink)

Neoliberal educational reforms include extensive use of standardized tests. We examine the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) initiated and developed by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Examining previous research on teachers’ reactions to neoliberal reforms altering their work context, we have identified three theoretical frameworks in use: labour process theory, derived from structural Marxism; post-structuralism, relying primarily on Foucault’s conceptualizations; and ‘new professionalism’, which has emerged from the theory of professions. A major weakness in these frameworks (...) is their inability to account for different reactions to the same structural and cultural conditions. Therefore, we suggest utilizing Archer’s theories of reflexivity and reflexive modes to understand these reactions. Presenting one Norwegian lower secondary school teacher’s reflexive engagement with PISA in the Norwegian school context as an example, our mixed methods case study indicates autonomous reflexivity as the prevailing mode. Meta-reflexivity rates second in prevalence. (shrink)

Summary This paper examines the second generation of British air pumps, covering the period 1700–1750. The air pump originated in the 1650s and 1660s thanks to the work of Otto von Guericke in Magdeburg, Robert Boyle in Oxford and London, and Accademia del Cimento in Florence. While these first models were often seen as unreliable and temperamental, and available to a small group only, the next period saw the air pump transformed into a publicly accessible device for use in public (...) and private demonstrations, in practical applications, as well as in the production of new knowledge. In England, the instrument maker Francis Hauksbee and his followers played a decisive role in this process, which was connected, among other things, to popular medicine, anatomy and health. In this period, pneumatics (the field of air pumps and air-pump practice) reached a state where the pump came to be regarded as an unproblematic tool; and where a ‘vacuum’ came to be thought of and handled as an object. (shrink)

The article depicts the traditional fishing, the outdoor drying of Stockfish, and its cultural and culinary uses in a historic context and today. The fishing of the North East Arctic cod (Gadus morhua) is a sustainable coastal fishery for millennia in the North of Norway, but climate change challenges the outdoor drying of stockfish. The article follows the stockfish history during the hanseatic office in Bergen until the present trade. The early commercial production of stockfish was due to urban expansion, (...) fasting rules and the need to provide nutritious food to the poor in Northern Europe and beyond. The article follows the traces of stockfish expansion as a staple food, first to Northern Europe, later to central Europe and the Mediterranean countries, before ending up as an important food supply to West-African countries in the nineteenth century. The article explains the early Greek and Renaissance concerns for eating fish and for stockfish in particular due to dietetic and medical beliefs. Then the cultural impact of stockfish is explained by showing some examples of both living and disappearing culinary traditions. The use of lye for soaking stockfish is not only a Scandinavian tradition but a little known shared European craft and culinary practice. Battering the stockfish with a wooden hammer, the use of lye for durability and water for softening the hard fish texture was practiced for preparing stockfish. Finally, the article touches upon rules, regulations and organisations that can help strengthening and preserve the traditional craft and culinary uses of stockfish today. (shrink)

It is the aim of this article to identify possible sources of additional texts for October in the many Slavonic copies of the October menologion, and also to show how the pre-metaphrastic Byzantine October menologion once might have looked, based on the evidence of the Slavonic translated menologia.

Digital texts have for decades been a challenge for reading research, creating a range of questions about reading and a need for new theories and concepts. In this paper, we focus on materialities of texts and suggest an embodied, enacted, and extended approach to the research on digital reading. We refer to findings showing that cognitive activities in reading are grounded in bodily and social experiences, and we explore the cognitive role of the body in reading, claiming that–influenced by tacit (...) knowledge and the task at hand–textual meaning is enacted through a mental and physical engagement with text. Further, applying the concept of affordances, we examine how digital technologies have induced new ways of physically handling and mentally interpreting text, indicating that brain, body, text, and technologies are integrated parts of an extended process of reading. The aim of the paper is to encourage empirical research on the interplay between body, text, and text materialities, a focus we argue will deepen our understand of the current transformation of reading. (shrink)

In Norway, research ethics committees in medicine are organized as interdisciplinary regional committees. Since 1999, Norway requires that one member of each ethics committee be a psychologist. Competence in psychology is considered relevant not only when evaluating psychology projects. As discussed in this article, a competence in psychology is also relevant for evaluating a number of issues common to all research involving human subjects as well as in the evaluation of protocols where other professionals have employed psychological methodologies.

Translators as members of a certain culture, generally that of the target culture, base their translation-relevant decisions on their own culture, while the decisions are motivated by the source culture. In the translation process, cultural differences may lead to various decision-making conflicts and the translator has to find a compromise between the author of the source text, the target recipient and finally, of course, the translator him/herself. In this article, proceeding from functionalist approaches to translation, the discussion focuses on the (...) decision conflicts related to translating culturespecific elements. Culture-related decision conflicts, as considered here, refer to the translator's inner indecision with reference to his/her goals, interests, values, beliefs, methodological approach, or any consequences thereof, attributable to the different cultural embeddings of the source text and the target text. In general, decision conflicts are perceived as subjective translation problems. The translator has to be able to constantly act between separate perspectives, continuously see things from different viewpoints. The conflicts arise when the translator attempts to bring together two incongruent cultures without prejudice to any of the parties involved in the process. Acting within the interface of two different cultures, bearing in mind the interests of several participants, is what makes translation-relevant decisions a highly complex matter. (shrink)

Translators as members of a certain culture, generally that of the target culture, base their translation-relevant decisions on their own culture, while the decisions are motivated by the (alien) source culture. In the translation process, cultural differences may lead to various decision-making conflicts and the translator has to find a compromise between the author of the source text, the target recipient and finally, of course, the translator him/herself. In this article, proceeding from functionalist approaches to translation, the discussion focuses on (...) the decision conflicts related to translating culturespecific elements. Culture-related decision conflicts, as considered here, refer to the translator’s inner indecision with reference to his/her goals, interests, values, beliefs, methodological approach, or any consequences thereof, attributable to the different cultural embeddings of the source text and the target text. In general, decision conflicts are perceived as subjective translation problems. The translator has to be able to constantly act between separate perspectives, continuously see things from different viewpoints. The conflicts arise when the translator attempts to bring together two incongruent cultures without prejudice to any of the parties involved in the process. Acting within the interface of two different cultures, bearing in mind the interests of several participants, is what makes translation-relevant decisions a highly complex matter. (shrink)

Translators as members of a certain culture, generally that of the target culture, base their translation-relevant decisions on their own culture, while the decisions are motivated by the (alien) source culture. In the translation process, cultural differences may lead to various decision-making conflicts and the translator has to find a compromise between the author of the source text, the target recipient and finally, of course, the translator him/herself. In this article, proceeding from functionalist approaches to translation, the discussion focuses on (...) the decision conflicts related to translating culturespecific elements. Culture-related decision conflicts, as considered here, refer to the translator’s inner indecision with reference to his/her goals, interests, values, beliefs, methodological approach, or any consequences thereof, attributable to the different cultural embeddings of the source text and the target text. In general, decision conflicts are perceived as subjective translation problems. The translator has to be able to constantly act between separate perspectives, continuously see things from different viewpoints. The conflicts arise when the translator attempts to bring together two incongruent cultures without prejudice to any of the parties involved in the process. Acting within the interface of two different cultures, bearing in mind the interests of several participants, is what makes translation-relevant decisions a highly complex matter. (shrink)

Classifying different meditation techniques is essential for the progress of meditation research, as this will enable discerning which effects are associated with which techniques, in addition to supporting the development of increasingly effective and efficient meditation-based training programs and clinical interventions. However, both the task of defining meditation itself, as well as defining specific techniques, faces many fundamental challenges. Here we describe problems involved in this endeavor and suggest an integrated model for defining meditation. For classifying different meditation techniques, we (...) draw on classical, contemporary, and holistic systems of classification. We analyze different techniques and propose that all meditation techniques are based on a specific set of activities, that is: focusing, releasing, imagining, and moving in relation to an object of meditation, including fields of experience. Meditative activities can be combined and unified in the activities of observing, producing, and being aware. All meditative activities are unified in awareness of awareness. Defining specific meditation techniques may be done by specifying which activities and objects are involved. The advantage of our approach is that it can potentially account for the inner workings of all current systems of classification and hence it lays the foundation for formulating an overarching system of meditation that can guide future research and practice. (shrink)

In Hegel’s Conception of the Determinate Negation , Terje Sparby develops a comprehensive account of the three forms of the determinate negation in Hegel’s philosophy.

On October 4, 1937, Zermelo composed a small note entitled “Der Relativismus in der Mengenlehre und der sogenannte Skolemsche Satz” in which he gives a refutation of “Skolem's paradox”, i.e., the fact that Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory—guaranteeing the existence of uncountably many sets—has a countable model. Compared with what he wished to disprove, the argument fails. However, at a second glance, it strongly documents his view of mathematics as based on a world of objects that could only be grasped adequately by (...) infinitary means. So the refutation might serve as a final clue to his epistemological credo.Whereas the Skolem paradox was to raise a lot of concern in the twenties and the early thirties, it seemed to have been settled by the time Zermelo wrote his paper, namely in favour of Skolem's approach, thus also accepting the noncategoricity and incompleteness of the first-order axiom systems. So the paper might be considered a late-comer in a community of logicians and set theorists who mainly followed finitary conceptions, in particular emphasizing the role of first-order logic. However, Zermelo never shared this viewpoint: In his first letter to Gödel of September 21, 1931, he had written that the Skolem paradox rested on the erroneous assumption that every mathematically definable notion should be expressible by a finite combination of signs, whereas a reasonable metamathematics would only be possible after this “finitistic prejudice” would have been overcome, “a task I have made my particular duty”. (shrink)

Brouwer and Weyl recognized that the intuitive continuum requires a mathematical analysis of a kind that set theory is not able to provide. As an alternative, Brouwer introduced choice sequences. We first describe the features of the intuitive continuum that prompted this development, focusing in particular on the flow of internal time as described in Husserl's phenomenology. Then we look at choice sequences and their logic. Finally, we investigate the differences between Brouwer and Weyl, and argue that Weyl's conception of (...) choice sequences is defective on several counts. (shrink)

From the reviews: "A good textbook can improve a lecture course enormously, especially when the material of the lecture includes many technical details. Van Dalen's book, the success and popularity of which may be suspected from this steady interest in it, contains a thorough introduction to elementary classical logic in a relaxed way, suitable for mathematics students who just want to get to know logic. The presentation always points out the connections of logic to other parts of mathematics. The (...) reader immediately see the logic is "just another branch of mathematics" and not something more sacred." Acta Scientiarum Mathematicarum, Hungary. (shrink)

Rudolf Steiner’s work contains many different claims about human freedom spread out in over three hundred books. A basic challenge for the research on Steiner is to create an overview of his idea of freedom, but also to consider potential conflicting claims. One of the main tensions in Steiner’s work is the one between his early philosophical and later anthroposophical accounts of freedom. The former focuses on individual freedom while the latter puts the emphasis on the greater whole in which (...) the human being exists. Hegel’s idea of freedom can be used to create a comprehensive and coherent understanding of Steiner’s different perspectives on freedom. In particular, using Hegel’s notion of being-with-oneself in otherness, the freedom that the individual can experience within the whole can be seen as an immanent development of the individual itself. (shrink)

Empirical analyses of the ethics of corporations with the aim to improve the state of corporate ethics are rare. This paper develops an integrated, normative model of corporate ethics by conceptualizing the ethical quality of organizations and by relating this contextual quality to various expressions of immoral behavior. This so-called Ethics Qualities Model for organizations, which contains 21 ethical qualities, allows one to assess the ethical content of institutional groups of individuals. A proper conceptualization is highly relevant both for the (...) empirical corroboration of business ethics theories and for managerial purposes, such as judging individual and group performance or informing external stakeholders. The empirical applicability of the model is illustrated by an explorative case study of a large, globally operating financial institution. This case-study demonstrates that the corporate ethical qualities differ with respect to their perceived optimality as well as to their estimated impact on (un)ethical conduct. The various results provide managers with many clues to understand their organization and to take effective measures to improve the ethical content of their organization. (shrink)

This article presents and discusses the method of micro-phenomenological self-inquiry. Micro-phenomenology is usually performed with two persons, one interviewer and one interviewee. Micro-phenomenological self-inquiry consists of one person investigating their own experience. The different aspects of the regular micro-phenomenological interview are reviewed in relation to the process of self-inquiry. Examples of recent studies that apply micro-phenomenological self-inquiry are presented. Finally, there is a discussion of some methodological problems and objections. Advantages and disadvantages of micro-phenomenological self-inquiry are considered. Suggestions are given (...) for what kind of research and research contexts that micro-phenomenological self-inquiry may be particularly suitable for. (shrink)

Conducting research in a prison setting is ethically challenging. Because history is full of unethical research conducted in prison settings, researchers are often afraid of doing research in this area. It is argued that too much emphasis has been put on the protection of prison inmates as a vulnerable population. Consequently, too little research is being conducted where the focus is on those factors which serve to make the prison population vulnerable. In this paper ethical questions, emerging when conducting a (...) study on literacy and mental health among Norwegian prison inmates, are presented and discussed. Relevant questions relate to topics which include ethical clearance of the research protocol, the consent procedure, clarification of roles and the publication of the results. The ethical questions are discussed in relation to the four principles of ‘respect for the client's rights and dignity’, ‘competence’, ‘responsibility’ and ‘integrity’ set out in the meta-code of ethics, formulated by the European Federation of Professional Psychologists Associations. The wider relationships between ethics in society, research ethics in general, and ethics when conducting research in a prison setting are also considered. (shrink)

Beth models of analysis are used in model theoretic proofs of the disjunction and (numerical) existence property. By glueing strings of models one obtains a model that combines the properties of the given models. The method asks for a common generalization of Kripke and Beth models. The proof is carried out in intuitionistic analysis plus Markov's Principle. The main new feature is the external use of intuitionistic principles to prove their own preservation under glueing.

This article analyzes the pediatric material in the Arabic commentaries (written tenth–fifteenth centuries) on the Hippocratic Aphorisms by exploring the traces of its late-antique origins and highlighting the influences of contemporary Islamic sources. This study demonstrates, first, how the commentaries assimilate Galenic pediatric theory through intricate elaborations and innovations; and second, that the commentators on the Aphorisms exhibit a strict theoretical interest in the causes and nature of childood diseases as opposed to their remedies. Consequently, it shows that therapeutic pediatric (...) material was restricted to other nonexegetical genres, such as the encyclopedias of Ibn Sīnā and Ibn Rabban al-Ṭabarī. The commentary material is thus a unique example of medieval Islamic theoria or theoretical medicine, which transmitted and transformed Galenic and early medieval theoretical explanations of childhood illnesses through the centuries. (shrink)

There are two main aspects of the problem of higher knowledge in Hegel's philosophy. Firstly, how exactly does Hegel appropriate Kant's conception of higher knowledge in the shape ofintellectual intuitionandintuitive understanding? Secondly, how does Hegel envision the connection of higher knowledge to empirical reality? Recent attempts at answering these questions pull in opposite directions. According to Eckart Förster, Hegel claims knowledge of a supersensible reality, while others, such as James Kreines and Sally Sedgwick, deny this, focusing rather on Hegel's claims (...) to knowledge of nature. I suggest an interpretation where Hegel makes a modest claim to supersensible knowledge but at the same time is unable to provide a satisfactory account of the connection of higher knowledge to empirical reality.1. (shrink)