The emerging concept of systems medicine (or ‘P4 medicine’—predictive, preventive, personalized and participatory) is at the vanguard of the post-genomic movement towards ‘precision medicine’. It is the medical application of systems biology, the biological study of wholes. Of particular interest, P4 systems medicine is currently promised as a revolutionary new biomedical approach that is holistic rather than reductionist. This article analyzes its concept of holism, both with regard to methods and conceptualization of health and disease. Rather than representing a medical (...) holism associated with basic humanistic ideas, we find a technoscientific holism resulting from altered technological and theoretical circumstances in biology. We argue that this holism, which is aimed at disease prevention and health optimization, points towards an expanded form of medicalization, which we call ‘holistic medicalization’: Each person’s whole life process is defined in biomedical, technoscientific terms as quantifiable and controllable and underlain a regime of medical control that is holistic in that it is all-encompassing. It is directed at all levels of functioning, from the molecular to the social, continual throughout life and aimed at managing the whole continuum from cure of disease to optimization of health. We argue that this medicalization is a very concrete materialization of a broader trend in medicine and society, which we call ‘the medicalization of health and life itself’. We explicate this holistic medicalization, discuss potential harms and conclude by calling for preventive measures aimed at avoiding eventual harmful effects of overmedicalization in systems medicine (quaternary prevention). (shrink)

Systems medicine, which is based on computational modelling of biological systems, is emerging as an increasingly prominent part of the personalized medicine movement. It is often promoted as ‘P4 medicine’. In this article, we test promises made by some of its proponents that systems medicine will be able to develop a scientific, quantitative metric for wellness that will eliminate the purported vagueness, ambiguity, and incompleteness—that is, normativity—of previous health definitions. We do so by examining the most concrete and relevant evidence (...) for such a metric available: a patent that describes a systems medicine method for assessing health and disease. We find that although systems medicine is promoted as heralding an era of transformative scientific objectivity, its definition of health seems at present still normatively based. As such, we argue that it will be open to influence from various stakeholders and that its purported objectivity may conceal important scientific, philosophical, and political issues. We also argue that this is an example of a general trend within biomedicine to create overly hopeful visions and expectations for the future. (shrink)

Given the growing importance of issue competition and the growing use of social media during elections, this study seeks to create a better understanding of how issue dynamics relating to political parties play out on social media. It tests whether issue ownership theory can explain how parties and issues are being discussed on Twitter and to what extent a mediated form of issue ownership aligns with citizens’ perceptions of issue ownership. The results indicate that perceptions of issue ownership as measured (...) in representative surveys correlate with variations of what issues parties are linked with on Twitter. Some deviations also emerged, which possibly reflect short-term changes in parties’ issue competition. Understanding how issue ownership mediates through social media platforms is important in order to evaluate the role of social media in contemporary opinion forming processes and sheds light on the issue competition among political parties in online fora. (shrink)

Agrifood scholars have long investigated the relationship between farm size and a wide variety of social and ecological outcomes. Yet neither this scholarship nor the extensive research on farmworkers has addressed the relationship between farm size and job quality for hired workers. Moreover, although this question has not been systematically investigated, many advocates, popular food writers, and documentaries appear to have the answer—portraying precarious work as common on large farms and nonexistent on small farms. In this paper, we take on (...) this question by describing and explaining the relationship between farm size and job quality for hired farm workers. To do so, we draw on data from two independently conducted, mixed-methods case studies—organic fruit and vegetable production in California, and dairy farming in Wisconsin—each of which offers a different set of insights into the farm size-job quality relationship. In both cases, larger farms fared better than or no worse than their smaller-scale counterparts for most job quality metrics investigated, though many of the advantages of working on large farms accrue disproportionately to white, U.S.-born workers. We explain that these patterns stem from economies of scale, industrialization, firm size itself, the dominant class identities and aspirations of farmers and their peers, as well as farmers’ and immigrant workers’ fears of immigration enforcement. (shrink)

Throughout the 3-year war in Lebanon (1982-1985) and throughout the 7 years of the first Intifada (1987-1994), about 170 objecting reservists chose to adopt an unconventional mode of moral resolution for their dilemma about service in the conflict: they disobeyed the order to serve in the war zone when their unit was called up. They argued that such service would contradict the dictates of their conscience. At the outset, the intention of most of these reservists was to comply with orders (...) for general military service. They asked to serve within the Green Line. When their request was overruled and they continued to disregard their call-up, they were charged with a disciplinary offense (Israel has no legal provision for selective conscientious objection). They subsequently were tried by court-martial and were sentenced to 14-35 days in military prison, some of them more than once when they refused additional drafts. Their major conscientious claims revolve around two major constraints: resisting the unfair physical load of military reserve service and resisting the obligation to face morally no-win situations. I would further argue that even though most of the public and the senior army echelons were familiar with these two types of moral voices, they preferred to remove the conscientious soldiers from their posts, or to ignore the claims themselves. (shrink)

Jürgen Habermas's theories have received enormous attention in the public sphere as well as in political science. It is therefore surprising that his method, rational reconstruction, is not more debated. In political science the method is of particular interest because of its ambition to bridge the gap between empirical and normative approaches. In this article the author traces Habermas's interest in rational reconstruction by going back to his writings on theory and practice and subsequently shows what the method's main principles (...) are. He then specifies how this methodological conception is used in Habermas's political theory. Finally, the introduction of an empirical design allows the author to discuss one of the fundamental tensions in Habermas's approach: the hypotheses arrived at through rational reconstruction are empirical hypotheses but cannot be tested by empirical means. (shrink)

Background: No studies have examined the underlying structure or predictive validity of the Cognitive Therapy Adherence and Competence Scale. Examining the structure of the CTACS is of great relevance because it could provide information on what constitutes competence in CBT, and whether some underlying factors are more important for predicting treatment outcomes than others. This study investigates the psychometric properties of the Norwegian version of CTACS and its associations with treatment outcomes in a sample of primary care clients who received (...) CBT for anxiety and/or depression.Method: Independent assessors rated audiotaped therapy sessions in a sample of 132 primary care clients, participating in the Prompt Mental Health Care trial. Outcomes were symptoms of anxiety and depression assessed by patient self-report questionnaires. Structural validity was examined by means of confirmatory and exploratory factor analyses, whereas longitudinal associations with treatment outcome were explored by adopting multilevel modeling.Results: No evidence was found for the divergent validity of the constructs competence and adherence as indicated by a very high correlation between these two subscales in CTACS. Regarding reliability, ICCs for the mean score of the full competence scale and its associated subscales were generally good to excellent, although the subscale measuring the quality of the therapeutic relationship was relatively low. Internal consistency was overall acceptable, but our CFA models did not provide an acceptable fit for the pre-specified one-factor and four-factor solutions. EFA results were difficult to interpret, with a sub-optimal three-factor solution providing best model fit and only two meaningful factors [CBT specific skills and session structure ]. Overall, the results indicated no evidence for the scales' predictive validity.Conclusion: Our findings point to several psychometric problems of the CTACS that may limit both its research and clinical utility. The importance of providing empirical evidence for both reliability and validity aspects of scales are discussed and suggestions for future research are provided. (shrink)

Learn mystical methods for clearing and uplifting the energy in your home! Space clearing is the art of cleansing and harmonizing the energy within an environment. This ancient practice has the power to not only make your home feel good but also help those within to feel more positive and energetic, to bring balance to relationships, and to remove blocks for increased abundance, creativity, and well-being. In this comprehensive guide to space clearing, internationally best-selling author Denise Linn distills more (...) than 50 years of experience as a leading authority in energy healing to guide you through sacred ceremonies and modern techniques for regaining control of the energy in any environment, including your home and your body. You'll learn how to transform any space using feng shui, clutter clearing, prayer, crystals, essential oils, mystic mudras, holy water, pendulums, and more! (shrink)

A unique Middle English text on the seven liberal arts survives in Cambridge, Trinity College, MS R. 14.52, a manuscript of ca. 1458–85. Latin texts on the seven liberal arts were certainly in circulation in medieval England, but this text is, to my knowledge, the earliest one written in English. It thereby offers evidence of the vernacular English reader's knowledge of the arts that were the foundation of medieval university education. This text is also unique in that it includes in (...) its chapter on grammar an attempt to describe the phonetic production of the letters of the alphabet, providing the only surviving contemporary approximation of the pronunciation of medieval English, and in that it adds a chapter on the mechanical sciences, relating them as no other medieval author to the English craft guilds. (shrink)

The stereotype content model defines warmth and competence as basic dimensions of social judgment, with warmth often dominating perceptions; it also states that many group-related stereotypes are ambivalent, featuring high levels on one dimension and low levels on the other. Persuasion theories feature both direct and indirect source effects. Combining both the approaches, we studied the persuasiveness of ambivalently stereotyped sources. Participants read persuasive arguments attributed to groups stereotyped as either low in competence but high in warmth or vice versa. (...) In Study 1, high competence/low warmth sources were more persuasive than low competence/high warmth sources. In Study 2, this pattern replicated when an accuracy motive had been induced, whereas it reversed when a connectedness motive had been induced. These source effects were direct, that is, independent of message processing. We discuss our findings in terms of the persuasiveness of warmth vs. competence of the source as being dependent on recipient motivation; we also consider theoretical implications and perspectives for future research. (shrink)

We examine topological dynamical systems on the Cantor set from the point of view of the continuous model theory of commutative C*-algebras. After some general remarks, we focus our attention on the generic homeomorphism of the Cantor set, as constructed by Akin, Glasner, and Weiss. We show that this homeomorphism is the prime model of its theory. We also show that the notion of “generic” used by Akin, Glasner, and Weiss is distinct from the notion of “generic” encountered in Fraïssé (...) theory. (shrink)

Research heuristics—implicit rules used to guide work on a scientific problem—are explored for their role in guiding psychological research. Work on the psychology of creativity is used to illustrate how heuristics have guided research. We examine the influence of three heuristics: the trilogy-of-mind heuristic, the emotions-as-moods heuristic, and the analysis-of-variance heuristic. This analysis of multiple heuristics provides a new way to understand the state of research on creativity. In the discussion, the analysis is extended to other heuristics and to how (...) heuristics may help as well as hinder innovative research. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to examine how multinational enterprises and their subsidiaries (MNEs) can respond to violent conflict in the host countries where they operate, and how the characteristics of the conflict affect the types of intervention strategies that MNEs may adopt. Drawing on insights from the research on conflict resolution and the risk that violent conflict poses to the firm, we develop a framework and several propositions that provide guidance to MNEs confronting violent conflict with respect to (...) existing projects or facilities. (shrink)

Opposition within the organic agriculture community to a state regulatory initiative intended to close a loophole on the prohibition of stoop labor in California agriculture illuminates critical tensions around the “labor question” underpinning California's rapidly expanding organic sector. Through an exploration of the contradictions between the political economic realities of organic agriculture, the lived realities of farm workers, and the ideological framework of “agricultural exceptionalism” espoused in the organic community, this article challenges widely held assumptions that organic agriculture embodies a (...) more socially sustainable form of production. We conclude that these tensions must be confronted if any progress is to be made toward the incorporation of social justice into definitions of agro-food system sustainability. (shrink)

Since the end of the Cold War, there has been a substantial increase in the number of intrastate conflicts around the world. During the last two decades, there have been more than 125 violent conflicts resulting in 7 million deaths (Smith, 2003). Given the prevalence of these conflicts, the inability of some governments to resolve them, and the reluctance of multilateral institutions to intervene, multinational enterprises (MNEs) engaged in international ventures may find themselves in situations where they must respond to (...) violent conflict to minimize investment risk and to promote stability in countries where they operate. Research on business response to violent conflict has tended to treat conflict as a homogeneous problem, when in fact conflicts vary on several dimensions. The purpose of this article is to extend the research with a focus on how the characteristics of the conflict affect MNE intervention strategies. Drawing on insights from the research on conflict resolution and the risk that violent conflict poses to the firm, we develop a framework and propositions that provide guidance to MNEs confronting violent conflict with respect to existing projects or facilities. (shrink)

In this paper we highlight the racialized effects of agricultural labor laws on Southeast Asian family farmers in California’s Central Valley. We show how agricultural labor laws intended to protect farmworkers on industrial farms discriminate against and challenge small Southeast Asian refugee farmers. Hmong, Iu-Mien and Lao family farmers rely on cultural practices of labor reciprocity and unpaid help from extended family and clan networks to sustain the economic viability of their farms. This kind of labor sharing, a central tenet (...) of their customary farming practices, and a cornerstone of the American family farm ideal, is illegal in California agriculture. We examine the historical context that gave rise to agricultural labor regulations in California and the ways in which these regulations are both under-enforced and unevenly enforced, differentially impacting immigrant family farms, while failing to protect those for whom the laws were originally intended. In highlighting how employment and labor laws and their enforcement or lack thereof discriminate against Southeast Asia farms, this study illustrates how other “small family farms” reliant on volunteerism or labor-sharing arrangements, part of the emergent “sharing economy,” may be confronting similar legal conundrums to those faced by Southeast Asian farms. (shrink)

Bribery in international business has become a priority concern among business, government, and community leaders. While discussions among philosophers often emphasize the ethical justification for banning bribery, policy-makers around the world are challenging it on the basis of its effects for economic development. In this paper we define bribery, trace recent efforts by the public, private, and civil society sectors to curb it, and attempt to answer the question: Will bribery become less common?

An audiovisual correspondence (AVC) refers to an observer’s seemingly arbitrary yet consistent matching of sensory features across the two modalities; for example, between an auditory pitch and visual size. Research on AVCs has frequently used a speeded classification procedure in which participants are asked to rapidly classify an image when it is either accompanied by a congruent or an incongruent sound (or vice versa). When, as is typically the case, classification is faster in the presence of a congruent stimulus, researchers (...) have inferred that the AVC is automatic and bottom-up. Such an inference is incomplete because the procedure does not show that the AVC is not subject to top-down influences. To remedy this problem, we devised a procedure that allows us to assess the degree of “bottom-up-ness” and “top-down-ness” in the processing of an AVC. We did this in studies of AVCs between pitch and five visual features: size, height, spatial frequency, brightness, and angularity. We find that all the AVCs we studied involve both bottom-up and top-down processing, thus undermining the prevalent generalization that AVCs are automatic. (shrink)

"Healing the past helps restructure the present, which then becomes the hope for the future." As we approach a new millennium, many of us are fearing for the future while hungering for a vision of our place in a sacred whole. The immense changes of the last hundred years have severed our sense of connection to a spiritual lineage that gave past generations the strength to meet life's challenges and bequeath wisdom to their descendants. In this inspirational yet down-to-earth book, (...) renowned healer and lecturer Denise Linn draws on her own story, as well as her Native American heritage and other ancient cultures, to guide you through acts of personal power that can reopen the wellspring of ancestral wisdom within you. By finding your roots and honoring your forebears--biological or adoptive, ethnic, cultural, mythological, and spiritual--you take your place as both a descendant and an ancestor. Defining who your ancestors are is a journey of self-discovery. Discovering who you are helps you break free from negative family patterns, embrace the positive, and create your own unique traditions. By fashioning a spiritual legacy through loving acts, you create energy to empower your future descendants. This fascinating guide teaches you to - Get in touch with the strength and spirit of your ancestors - Explore your personal myth - Restructure your past - Heal the family tree - Speak to your descendants through the art of giving - Revive rituals and create traditions for the twenty-first century With real-life stories and practical, easy-to-use exercises and meditations, Sacred Legacies shows how the choices we make in our own lives--however small--can forge a link with the future and help create a powerful new reality for all humanity and the planet. (shrink)

The globalism objection poses two distinct challenges to Aristotelian views of virtue. On the one hand, the consistency thesis demands that a virtue is behaviorally expressed in a wide range of trait-relevant situations. On the other hand, the evaluative integration thesis suggests that the presence of one virtue increases the probability of other, similar virtues, posing a problem for Aristotle’s reciprocity of the virtues thesis. I show that, by contrast to contemporary Aristotelian views and views attributed to Aristotle, Aristotle’s own (...) theory of virtue escapes the globalism objection. I address the consistency thesis by showing that each of Aristotle’s moral virtues are narrower than commonly assumed. I then address the evaluative integration thesis through a discussion of practical wisdom, showing that Aristotle believed one could fall short of perfect virtue, while still being fully virtuous. The upshot is that, despite idealizations of virtue throughout the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle held a realistic account of virtue, one that is different from contemporary Aristotelian views, and one that is empirically adequate insofar as it allows for more than a few virtuous people. (shrink)

Aristotle often describes virtue in an idealized way, indicating that the virtuous person will never err or have a bad desire. Yet, drawing from empirical work on character and personality, many philosophers and psychologists believe that most people’s behavior stems from situational factors and that good behavior often stems from the wrong motives, such as maintaining a good mood or relieving feelings of guilt. Further, some suggest that the variability in most people’s behavior raises a challenge to traditional categories of (...) character such as virtue, vice, continence, and incontinence. Thus, it may seem impossible to develop virtue and that people lack character as Aristotle conceived of it. Drawing from Aristotle’s Rhetoric and Politics, I develop accounts of actual virtue and the character of ordinary people and respond to these two concerns. (shrink)

This article addresses a curatorial position on specific bioart projects dealing with the topic of interspecies relationships of humans and other mammals, insects and plants through three works by Slovenian authors Saša Spačal, Špela Petricˇ and Maja Smrekar. All the artworks are based on a posthumanist perspective, strongly advocating possibilities of equality in interspecies relations and coexistence, and yet also bear a potential for monstrosity. The subjects, modes and procedures of the artworks analysed are compatible with a curatorial practice able (...) to contribute to and facilitate the development of the concepts of life and species. Representing provocative projects is a challenge not only for the artists but also for the curators who are in the position of having to find adequate production, presentation and promotion support for fringe artistic experiments that infiltrate meaningful topics. Curating that involves taking on the responsibility of endorsing risk-taking artistic practices and posthumanist ideas, dealing with ethical, legal and conceptual challenges is referred to as intense curating. (shrink)

We present a theory of sequential information processing in persuasion. It extends assumptions of the heuristic-systematic model, in particular the idea that information encountered early in a persuasion situation may affect the processing of subsequent information. SIP also builds on the abstraction from content-related dichotomies in accord with the parametric unimodel of social judgment. SIP features one constitutional axiom and three main postulates: Persuasion is the sequential processing of information that is relevant to judgment formation. Inferences drawn from initial information (...) may bias the processing of subsequent information if they are either activated rules or valence expectations that are relevant to the subsequent information. Inferences drawn from initial information are resistant to change. Thus, the interpretation of subsequent information is assimilated to inferences drawn from the initial information. Or, if assimilation is impossible, contrast effects occur. The overall effect of a persuasion attempt corresponds to the recipient’s judgment at the moment the processing of information is terminated. We illustrate how our predictions for assimilation and contrast effects may be tested by presenting results from an experiment in which we presented exactly the same arguments but varied the processing sequence. We discuss theoretical and applied implications of sequence effects for persuasion phenomena, as well as challenges for further research developing and testing the theory. (shrink)

Television news crews justify the staging of events for filming purposes in three main categories. All three are dangerous ethically, but they are arranged here in a hierarchy of seriousness of ethical transgression. Materials shot for editing convenience, for example, are more justifiable than staging events for the convenience of a story. All three justifications are examined.

This article seeks to find attitudes and judgments elite Romans made based on a person’s bed. It culls written sources from a diverse range of genres to argue that elite Roman men saw beds as transformative and reflective items. Through long-lasting and frequent contact, a bed’s qualities seeped into bodies and characters. Consequently, as a powerful part of the built environment, beds could strengthen or weaken soldiers as well as help or harm a person’s health. Furthermore, beds’ transformative power meant (...) elite Romans thought where a man slept revealed who he was: his social status, moral fiber, and civilization. In short, beds marked a person’s identity. Examining how Roman elites conceptualized beds informs us on the larger issue of the history of the body, in general, and the sense of touch, in particular. Scholarship on the history of touch tends not analyze the effects of sustained and repetitive contact with a mundane object. (shrink)