This article examines the role the public imagination of the state has in maintaining the current political status quo in Burjatija, an east Siberian Republic. Based on a quantitative and interpretative analysis of Burjatija’s local newspapers, it uses the ‘centre-versus-periphery’ paradigm to identify varying representations of the Republic’s territorial community in government legitimization discourse, before discussing their assimilation into popular newspaper discourse. Multiple narratives of Burjatija and the Russian Federation exist in these newspapers, incorporating various centres and peripheries. I end (...) by discussing the nature of the state these newspapers reveal, and the function the dissemination of alternative centres and peripheries has within it. (shrink)

This paper is going to explore the adverse effects of exposure to combat death on medics’ holistic well-being, which, if ignored could decrease individual readiness and negatively impact the mission. We rely on the experience of United States Air Force Special Operation Surgical Teams (AF SOST) whose exposure to mass casualty scenarios in austere environments could serve as approximations of conditions of future battlefields. Over the past two decades, the ability to deliver advanced medical care on and off the battlefield (...) along with a rapid casualty evacuation platform has allowed for unprecedented survival rates exceeding 90%. While laudable, these medical achievements have also set up a casualty management paradigm in which medical decision-making singularly focuses on life-saving care. Confronting peer-peer adversaries in large scale combat operations (LSCO) on a multi-domain battlefield will make casualty management frighteningly more complex by introducing major infrastructural, personnel, and resource constraints. When considering the high number of casualties expected in LSCO alongside enormous limitations in medical resource and resupply capability, the current casualty management paradigm will not be sustainable. The resource constrained environment in LSCO will shift medical decision-making away from a singular focus on life-saving care to triage, which hinges on the ability to determine futile medical interventions—a skill that has been lost in the past two generation of combat medics. As such, a broad ethical challenge that arises in preparation for LSCO is the need to set new expectations concerning dying and death. However, medical decision-making focused on death and dying has not been explicitly addressed in military medical training, research, or policy. Relying on a body of literature known as terror management theory (TMT) and ethnographic data from our study with AF SOST medics, we are going to argue that it is important to expose medics to death in mass casualty and triage training. (shrink)

This study examined three main issues among 364 primary school children: (1) self?reported levels of perceived safety in classroom and playground, and relationship with teacher, (2) associations between perceived safety in the two contexts and peer reported levels of being bullied, and (3) if relationship with teacher moderated the associations between peer reported levels of being bullied and perceived safety in classroom and playground. Data were collected in individual and small group interviews. Overall, while most participants reported positive relationships with (...) their class teacher, and felt safe in their classroom and in the playground, a substantial minority did not. The correlations between level of being bullied and perceived safety in classroom and playground were significant but of modest size. Relationship with teacher did moderate the correlation for perceived safety in the classroom, but did not do so for perceived safety in the playground. No significant age or sex differences were obtained. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings were discussed. (shrink)

Growth mindset is an important aspect of children’s socioemotional development and is subject to change due to environmental influence. Orchestral music education may function as a fertile context in which to promote growth mindset; however, this education is not widely available to children facing economic hardship. This study examined whether participation in a program of orchestral music education was associated with higher levels of overall growth mindset and greater change in levels of musical growth mindset among children placed at risk (...) by poverty. After at least 2 years of orchestral participation, students reported significantly higher levels of overall growth mindset than their peers; participating students also reported statistically significant increases in musical growth mindset regardless of the number of years that they were enrolled in orchestral music education. These findings have implications for future research into specific pedagogical practices that may promote growth mindset in the context of orchestral music education and more generally for future studies of the extra-musical benefits of high-quality music education. (shrink)

Deleuze, The Dark Precursor is organized around three themes that critically overlap: dialectic, structure, and being.

The problem of the finite and the infinite.--Pragmatism and a theory of knowledge.

This book considers the intersection of music, politics and identity, focusing on music (genres) across the world as a form of political expression and protest, positive identity formations, but also how the criminalisation, censuring, policing and prosecution of musicians and fans can occur. All-encompassing in this book is analyses of the unique contribution of music to various aspects of human activity through an international, multi-disciplinary approach. The book will serve as a starting point for scholars in those areas where there (...) has been an uncertain approach to this subject, while those from disciplines with a more established canon of music analysis will be informed about what each perspective can offer. The approach is international and multi-disciplinary, with the contributing authors focusing on a range of countries and the differing social and cultural impact of music for both musicians and fans. Academic disciplines can provide some explanations, but the importance of the contribution of practitioners is vital for a fully rounded understanding of the impact of music. Therefore, this book takes the reader on a journey, beginning with theoretical and philosophical perspectives on music and society, proceeding to an analysis of laws and policies, and concluding with the use of music by educational practitioners and the people with whom they work. This book will appeal to students and scholars in subjects such as sociology, criminology, cultural studies, and across the wider social sciences. It will also be of interest to practitioners in youth justice or those with other involvement in the criminal justice system. (shrink)

This paper looks at the relationship between spacetime functionalism and Harvey Brown’s dynamical relativity. One popular way of reading and extending Brown’s programme in the literature rests on viewing his position as a version of relationism. But a kind of spacetime functionalism extends the project in a different way, by focussing on the account Brown gives of the role of spacetime in relativistic theories. It is then possible to see this as giving a functional account of the concept of spacetime (...) which may be applied to theories that go beyond relativity. This paper explores the way in which both the relationist project and the functionalist project relate to Brown’s work, despite being incompatible. Ultimately, these should not be seen as two conflicting readings of Brown, but two different directions in which to take his project. (shrink)

Gilles Deleuze is considered one of the most important French philosophers of the twentieth century. Eleanor Kaufman situates Deleuze in relation to others of his generation, such as Jean-Paul Sartre, Pierre Klossowski, Maurice Blanchot, and Claude Lévi-Strauss, and she engages the provocative readings of Deleuze by Alain Badiou and Slavoj ?i?ek. Deleuze, The Dark Precursor is organized around three themes that critically overlap: dialectic, structure, and being. Kaufman argues that Deleuze's work is deeply concerned with these concepts, even when (...) he advocates for the seemingly opposite notions of univocity, nonsense, and becoming. By drawing on scholastic thought and reading somewhat against the grain, Kaufman suggests that these often-maligned themes allow for a nuanced, even positive reflection on apparently negative states of being, such as extreme inertia. This attention to the negative or minor category has implications that extend beyond philosophy and into feminist theory, film, American studies, anthropology, and architecture. (shrink)

I argue that the best spacetime setting for Newtonian gravitation (NG) is the curved spacetime setting associated with geometrized Newtonian gravitation (GNG). Appreciation of the ‘Newtonian equivalence principle’ leads us to conclude that the gravitational field in NG itself is a gauge quantity, and that the freely falling frames are naturally identified with inertial frames. In this context, the spacetime structure of NG is represented not by the flat neo-Newtonian connection usually made explicit in formulations, but by the sum of (...) the flat connection and the gravitational field. 1 Introduction2 Newtonian Gravity: The Orthodox Approach3 Newtonian Gravity: Additional Symmetries4 Cosmological Considerations5 A Newtonian Equivalence Principle: Inertial Frames in Newtonian Gravitation6 Theory Equivalence?7 Conclusion. (shrink)

I argue that the need to understand spacetime structure as emergent in quantum gravity is less radical and surprising it might appear. A clear understanding of the link between general relativity's geometrical structures and empirical geometry reveals that this empirical geometry is exactly the kind of thing that could be an effective and emergent matter. Furthermore, any theory with torsion will involve an effective geometry, even though these theories look, at first glance, like theories with straightforward spacetime geometry. As it's (...) highly likely that there will be a role for torsion in quantum gravity, it's also highly likely that any theory of quantum gravity will require us to get to grips with emergent spacetime structure. (shrink)

Miranda Fricker’s influential concept of epistemic injustice has recently seen application to many areas of interest, with an increasing body of healthcare research using the concept of epistemic injustice in order to develop both general frameworks and accounts of specific medical conditions and patient groups. This paper illuminates tensions that arise between taking steps to protect against committing epistemic injustice in healthcare, and taking steps to understand the complexity of one’s predicament and treat it accordingly. Work on epistemic injustice is (...) therefore at risk of obfuscating legitimate and potentially fruitful inquiry. This paper uses Chronic Fatigue Syndrome/Myalgic Encephalomyelitis as a case study, but I suggest that the key problems identified could apply to other cases within healthcare, such as those classed as Medically Unexplained Illnesses, Functional Neurological Disorders and Psychiatric Disorders. Future work on epistemic injustice in healthcare must recognise and attend to this tension to protect against unsatisfactory attempts to correct epistemic injustice. (shrink)

Hobbes says a great deal about the rights of subjects, particularly in Leviathan, and yet, despite his apparent insistence on the importance of the rights of the subject, the prevailing view amongst modern Hobbes scholars has been that rights of Hobbesian subjects are weak. The dominant view of Hobbesian rights as weak and insignificant is the view of modern Hobbes scholarship, which analyses Hobbes's political theory at great distance from his intellectual milieu and from the dramatic political events of the (...) time. Hobbesian absolutism is understood to rule out rights of any strength or significance on the part of Hobbesian subjects and particularly, any rights held against the sovereign. The significance of defining subjects' rights as Hohfeldian liberty rights is that liberty rights lack any correlative duties on the part of others. The sovereign's authority and right to rule are made dependent on his ability and willingness to protect the subjects' aggregate right to self‐preservation. (shrink)

Several modern accounts of explanation acknowledge the importance of abstraction and idealization for our explanatory practice. However, once we allow a role for abstraction, questions remain. I ask whether the relation between explanations at different theoretical levels should be thought of wholly in terms of abstraction, and argue that changes of the quantities in terms of which we describe a system can lead to novel explanations that are not merely abstractions of some more detailed picture. I use the example of (...) phase transitions as described by statistical mechanics and thermodynamics to illustrate this, and to demonstrate some details of the relationship between abstraction, idealization, and novel explanation. (shrink)

Prelinguistic infants must find a way to isolate meaningful chunks from the continuous streams of speech that they hear. BootLex, a new model which uses distributional cues to build a lexicon, demonstrates how much can be accomplished using this single source of information. This conceptually simple probabilistic algorithm achieves significant segmentation results on various kinds of language corpora - English, Japanese, and Spanish; child- and adult-directed speech, and written texts; and several variations in coding structure - and reveals which statistical (...) characteristics of the input have an influence on segmentation performance. BootLex is then compared, quantitatively and qualitatively, with three other groups of computational models of the same infant segmentation process, paying particular attention to functional characteristics of the models and their similarity to human cognition. Commonalities and contrasts among the models are discussed, as well as their implications both for theories of the cognitive problem of segmentation itself, and for the general enterprise of computational cognitive modeling. (shrink)

Background People who are at elevated risk of suicide stand to benefit from internet-based interventions; however, research in this area is likely impacted by a range of ethical and practical challenges. The aim of this study was to examine the ethical issues and practical barriers associated with clinical studies of internet-based interventions for suicide prevention. Method This was a mixed-methods study involving two phases. First, a systematic search was conducted to identify studies evaluating internet-based interventions for people at risk of (...) suicide, and information pertaining to safety protocols and exclusion criteria was extracted. Second, investigators on the included studies were invited to complete an online survey comprising open-ended and forced-choice responses. Quantitative and qualitative methods were used to analyse the data. Results The literature search identified 18 eligible studies, of which three excluded participants based on severity of suicide risk. Half of the 15 suicide researchers who participated in the survey had experienced problems obtaining ethics approval, and none had encountered adverse events attributed to their intervention. Survey respondents noted the difficulty of managing risk in online environments and the limitations associated with implementing safety protocols, although some also reported increased confidence resulting from the ethical review process. Respondents recommended researchers pursue a collaborative relationship with their research ethics committees. Conclusion There is a balance to be achieved between the need to minimise the risk of adverse events whilst also ensuring interventions are being validated on populations who may be most likely to use and benefit from them. Further research is required to obtain the views of research ethics committees and research participants on these issues. Dialogue between researchers and ethics committees is necessary to address the need to ensure safety while also advancing the timely development of effective interventions in this critical area. (shrink)

As honey bee colonies continue to perish at high rates, beekeepers are divided on how best to keep bees healthy and productive. In this article, I describe the tensions between conventional beekeepers and a new wave of beekeepers hoping to “save the bees” through a more “natural” approach to beekeeping. Drawing on animal studies and multispecies literature, I show how beekeepers in both camps are constrained by the reality of the Anthropocene: novel ecologies, shifting baselines, and the hybridity of honey (...) bees themselves—part wild animal subject to environmental change, part industrial organism, embedded in circuits of migratory pollination. Beekeepers on both sides are investing in genetics as a solution to honey bee health problems. Thinking with bees helps deepen the literature on multispecies encounters and interrogate the idea of sustainability in agriculture, while thinking with the Anthropocene prompts us to ask what “saving the bees” even means in today’s changing world. (shrink)

Loneliness is often described as a deadly epidemic sweeping across the population, a silent killer. Loneliness, we are told, is a social disease that must be cured. But what does it mean to think of loneliness as a feminist issue, and what might a specifically feminist theorisation bring to conceptualisations of loneliness? In this paper, I argue that feminism helps us see that loneliness is not just personal but political. I trace how stories of loneliness surface, circulate, shift and compound (...) within the specificity of the present, centring on recent strategies proposed by the UK government in their ‘national mission to end loneliness’. I outline how this policy discourse upholds certain normative attachments as having the promise to alleviate loneliness: coupled love, the family, community. Such framings serve to depoliticise contemporary conditions of loneliness, positioning loneliness as a personal failure, with the cure for loneliness as the responsibility of individuals and communities. Absent in government depictions of the problem of loneliness are the wider mechanisms that condemn people to lonely lives, when infrastructures fail, when people find themselves violently cut off from the world. Finally, I speculate on what might happen if we were to challenge this framing of loneliness as always and only a problem in need of a cure. I seek to uncover some of the political potentials of loneliness, asking what can be learnt through reflecting upon shared experiences of loneliness? For, as feminist politics has shown us, feelings of disaffection and alienation can help us imagine other worlds. (shrink)

For centuries in the UK and elsewhere, charities have been widely regarded as admirable and virtuous organisations. Business corporations, by contrast, have been characterised in the popular imagination as entities that lack a capacity for moral judgement. Drawing on the philosophical literature on the moral agency of organisations, we examine how the law shapes the ability of charities and business corporations headquartered in England to exercise moral agency. Paradoxically, we find that charities are legally constrained in exercising moral agency in (...) ways in which business corporations are not. Implications for charities and business corporations are then explored. (shrink)

This investigation places recent research about changes in wives' and husbands' domestic labor in the context of well-known reporting differences between different kinds of housework surveys. An analysis of the “reporting gap” between direct-question reports of housework hours from the National Survey of Families and Households and time-diary reports from Americans' Use of Time, 1985, shows that both husbands and wives overreport their housework contributions. Furthermore, gender attitudes, total housework, class, education, income, family size, and employment status together significantly affect (...) the overreport, although the variables operate in different ways for wives and husbands. It is concluded that changing and uneven social perceptions of the appropriate domestic roles of women and men have resulted in reporting biases that do not necessarily correspond to actual changes in housework behavior. These findings cast doubt on claims that contemporary husbands are doing more housework than their predecessors. (shrink)

This article examines the rise of meta-commentary in US media, and considers the consequences it has for the social construction and the performance of intellectual expertise. Media meta-commentary is defined as critical reflection about media practices and performances, in which the primary basis for criticism is the comparison of different media formats. Meta-commentary began to emerge with the differentiation of the aesthetic sphere and the development of a new kind of expert, the cultural critic. Cultural criticism led to a proliferation (...) of expert performance styles, including a type of counter-performance that rejects the somber and serious nature of traditional intellectual practices. By the 1980s, these new styles of intellectual performance were being reinforced by important institutional and regulatory changes within the media industry, and ultimately by the proliferation of new digital technologies and DIY culture. By the twenty-first century, media meta-commentary had become a distinctive and peculiar form of expert discourse, which legitimates the act of criticism while also relativizing it. The current environment suggests two possible outcomes: a hopeful one that encourages greater reflexivity, and a more ominous one that points toward populism. (shrink)

ArgumentI argue through an analysis of spectacle that the relationship between wildlife documentary films’ entertainment and educational mandates is complex and co-constitutive. Accuracy-based criticism of wildlife films reveals assumptions of a deficit model of science communication and positions spectacle as an external commercial pressure influencing the genre. Using thePlanet Earth series as a case study, I describe spectacle's prominence within the recent blue-chip renaissance in wildlife film, resulting from technological innovations and twenty-first-century consumer and broadcast market contexts. I connect spectacle (...) in contemporary wildlife films to its relevant precursors within natural history, situating spectacle as a central feature of natural history display designed to inspire awe and wonder in audiences. I show that contemporary documentary spectacle is best understood as an opportunity for affective knowing rather than a constraint on accuracy; as a result, spectacle contributes to the virtuous inter-reinforcement of entertainment and education at work in blue-chip wildlife films. (shrink)

Cell communication is crucial for many aspects of growth and differentiation during the development of the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans. Two genes, glp‐1 and lin‐12, mediate a number of known cell–cell interactions. Genetic and molecular analyses of these two genes lead to the conclusion that they are structurally and functionally related. We summarize these studies as well as those involving the identification of other genes that interact with glp‐1 and / or lin‐12.

Functional imaging techniques, such as positron emission tomography and functional magnetic resonance imaging, present a unique opportunity to examine, in humans, the cerebral representation of space in vivo. Space is ubiquitous and not a unitary phenomenon, and the brain uses visual, vestibular and proprioceptive inputs to produce multiple representations of space subserving spatial cognition, ranging from gaze control to remembering multiple complex large-scale environments. Functional imaging studies have shown the importance of the parietal cortex in perceptual, motor, attention and working (...) memory aspects of body-centred human spatial cognition. Functional imaging has also revealed pathways in humans homologous to those found in monkeys for the separate processing of spatial location and object identity. There are further suggestions of similar differentiation in working memory. The importance of the medial temporal region in the recall of spatial location has been confirmed also and novel virtual reality paradigms are now providing insights into the cerebral representation of spatially-extended large-scale environments. We still have much to learn about the cerebral representation of space in the human brain and functional brain imaging, in concert with patient studies and animal models, will allow us to continue investigating. (shrink)