Local food has become the rising star of the sustainable agriculture movement, in part because of the energy efficiencies thought to be gained when food travels shorter distances. In this essay I critique four key assumptions that underlie this connection between local foods and energy. I then describe two competing conclusions implied by the critique. On the one hand, local food systems may need a more extensive and integrated transportation infrastructure to achieve sustainability. On the other hand, the production, transportation, (...) and consumption of local foods are fundamentally as reliant on fossil fuels as are long distance foods. A more holistic approach to energy use in the food system is needed to determine which particular sociotechnical factors optimize energetic sustainability. (shrink)

The trajectory of the public discourse on agriculture in the twentieth century presents an interesting pattern:shortly after World War II, the manner in which farming and farmers were discussed underwent a profound shift. This rhetorical change is revealed by comparing the current debate on farmland preservation with a tradition of agricultural discourse that came before, known as “agrarianism.” While agrarian writers conceived of farming as a rewarding life, a public good, and a source of moral virtue, current writers on farmland (...) preservation speak of farming almost entirely in utilitarian terms describing its productive capacity and its economic returns. Proponents of farmland preservation use essentially the same underlying framework as critics of preservation:n “economic utilitarian” paradigm that purports to eschew normative values and evaluate land use decisions based on economic criteria only. I argue that, despite their good intentions, farmland preservationists are doomed to piecemeal victories at best, because their arguments, which rely on a utilitarian justification and disregard the agrarian ethic, are inadequate. Without expanding its focus beyond farmland to encompass farming and farmers, the movement risks losing both integrity and effectiveness. (shrink)

As volunteer engagement in non-governmental organizations vary between individuals, it is vital to get to know its predictors. It can be of profit to volunteers and the ones who profit from their activities. The aim of present study was to examine a model explaining volunteer engagement examining volunteer self-efficacy as a mediator and personality traits, job resources as its predictors. Respondents were asked to fill in questionnaires accessible online. Those consisted of demographic questions as well as Ten-item Personality Inventory, and (...) three measures adjusted to volunteer environment: Work Design Questionnaire, General Self-Efficacy Scale, and Work Engagement Scale. Results. Results of hierarchical regression analyses showed that conscientiousness, skill variety and self-efficacy are statistically significant predictors of volunteer engagement. It was shown that the effects of conscientiousness and skill variety on volunteer engagement are mediated by volunteer self-efficacy. (shrink)

The study of hyperidentities is a growing field of research. While hyperidentities hark back to before 1965, they have found a rebirth in the late seventies and early eighties. It is being expanded in several directions, from connections with clone theory, to finite basis problems, to semigroup theory, to classification of M-solid varieties. Applications to digital logic, formal languages, and hypertext systems have been suggested. The concept of a P-compatible equation, where P is a partition on the set of operation (...) symbols, is a good tool to study the structure of identities. In [4] we asked for P-compatible hyperidentities. In this paper we will consider hypersubstitutions which are compatible with the partition P and will develop a generalized equational theory for certain P-compatible hyperidentities. (shrink)

Present, as Manuel Castells (1996) notes, we live in the information age. Knowledge and the way it is acquired and processed are the driving forces of the economy, and information processing systems are the strength of economies. The aim of this article is to identify the key role of the information supply phenomenon in contemporary socio-economic processes. The initial part of the article will define such concepts as: information, infodemia, information market, in the further part examples of the use of (...) information in the process of forming social behaviour in the market context will be presented. For this purpose, three major economic crises from the turn of the 20th and 21st century will be used cross-sectionally. The first will be described as the dot-com crisis, i.e. the first global Internet players, which led to the collapse or loss of value of many global Internet platforms through the creation and bursting of a speculative bubble. The second crisis described below was related to the collapse of Lehman Brothers, a leading US bank, and the US housing crisis. In the above case, both supply and concealment of information in the public sphere could be observed. The last crisis described is the crisis related to the SARS-COV2 pandemic, in which dis- and mis- information activities proved to be crucial. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The history of Latin America, the history of disease, medicine, and public health, and global history are deeply intertwined, but the intersection of these three fields has not yet attracted sustained attention from historians. Recent developments in the historiography of disease, medicine, and public health in Latin America suggest, however, that a distinctive, global approach to the topic is beginning to emerge. This essay identifies the distinguishing characteristic of this approach as an attentiveness to transfers of contagions, cures, and (...) medical knowledge from Latin America to the rest of the world and then summarizes a few episodes that demonstrate its promise. While national as well as colonial and neocolonial histories of Latin America have made important contributions to our understanding, works taking the global approach have the potential to contribute more directly to the decentering of the global history of disease, medicine, and public health. (shrink)

The aim of our study was to test the effectiveness of the “three good things for others” intervention. We used the randomized controlled trial method, with four measurements (pretest, posttest, follow-up after 2 weeks, follow-up after 4 weeks) and with random assignment of participants to experimental and placebo control groups. We investigated the effects of the intervention on prosocial behavior, and in addition on positive and negative affect, and positive orientation (a general tendency to approach reality in a positive way). (...) The results showed an increase in positive affect and a decrease in negative affect in the experimental group a day after the intervention. These effects, however, did not endure over the next 2 or 4 weeks. We also observed a statistically significant increase in prosocial behavior in the placebo control group, in which participants were engaged in a task of recalling childhood memories. The results are discussed and recommendations for future studies are proposed. (shrink)

W pracy przedstawiono wyniki badań dotyczących przydatności zawodowej inży­nierów ochrony wód. Stwierdzono, że więk­szość absolwentów pracuje zgodnie z ukończonym kierunkiem studiów. Absolwenci wysoko ocenili swoje przygotowanie z technologii, niżej z techniki i ekonomiki. Znacznie lepsze było ich przygotowanie do zawodu teoretyczne niż praktyczne.

In this paper, the author offers an interpretation of the present day philosophical significance of the Scottish Enlightenment. After a broad review of the main characteristics of that movement and of the thought of major Scottish figures of the 18th century, the author proposes that contemporary debates concerning the nature and perspectives of progress in history could derive benefit from a critical reconsideration of some views put forth by the Scottish literati.

The paper reports two studies exploring the relationship between scholars’ self-reported publication pressure and their self-reported scientific misconduct in research. In Study 1 the participants...

A sense of success, perception of economic crisis and the form of occupational activity The studies presented attempt to outline a relationship between a feeling of success, the perception of economic crisis and the form of occupational activity. The article shows the results of empirical research conducted among 341 economically active people and concerns the psychological differences between them in Poland. The theoretical basis of the research is the new model of success by Dej, Stephan, Gorgievsky. This research has proven (...) the existence of significant statistical differences in a sense of success between entrepreneurs, employees in private companies, and employees in state-owned companies, but there are no differences in perception of economic crisis. People who scored a high general result in a feeling of success perceive economic crisis as harmless. The results show that being an entrepreneur is the most beneficial activity from a mental health standpoint. (shrink)

GESTALT PSYCHOTHERAPY AND ITS ONTOLOGICAL BASES The article is an attempt to describe the ontological bases of Gestalt psychotherapy, both known and unknown to authors of Gestalt. Gestalt is inspired by the ancient, the modern and the contemporary philosophy. The ontological principles underlying Gestalt are holism, monism, harmony of opposites, process, cyclicality, present time and the paradoxical theory of change.

Type 2 diabetes has been considered a public health threat due to its growing prevalence, particularly in the older population. It is important to know the effects of psychosocial stress and its potential consequences for some basic cognitive processes that are important in daily life. Currently, there is very little information about how people with T2D face acute psychosocial stressors, and even less about how their response affects working memory, which is essential for their functionality and independence. Our aim was (...) to characterize the response to an acute laboratory psychosocial stressor and its effects on WM in older people with T2D. Fifty participants with T2D from 52 to 77 years old were randomly assigned to a stress or control condition. Mood and physiological responses to tasks were measured. In addition, participants completed a WM test before and after the stress or control task. Our results showed that the TSST elicited higher negative affect and greater C and sAA responses than the control task. No significant differences in WM were observed depending on the exposure to stress or the control task. Finally, participants who showed higher C and sAA responses to the stressor had lower WM performance. Our results indicate that medically treated older adults with T2D show clear, typical mood and physiological responses to an acute psychosocial stressor. Finally, the lack of acute psychosocial stress effects on WM suggests that it could be related to aging and not to this disease, at least when T2D is adequately treated. (shrink)

In the article, I address the issues of the transformation of subjectivity, to which it is subject in the face of changes in the political and cultural status of knowledge in post-modernity. I am trying to identify and define the post-modern deficits of political culture as a consequence of these changes. Looking at the links between subjectivity and politics, I reach out to Charles Taylor, who characterizes the crisis of the ethos of authenticity, Anthony Giddens, who analyses the process of (...) disembedding of a subject, and Michel Foucault describing modern technologies of the self-creation in the context of a concept of politics understood as praxis by Hannah Arendt. (shrink)

v. 1. De natura legis -- v. 2. De legis obligatione -- v. 3. De lege naturali -- v. 4. De iure gentium -- v. 5. De civili potestate -- v. 6. De politica obligatione -- v. 7-8. De lege positiva canonica.

Science is popularly understood as being an ideal of impartial algorithmic objectivity that provides us with a realistic description of the world down to the last detail. The essays collected in this book—written by some of the leading experts in the field—challenge this popular image right at its heart, taking as their starting point that science trades not only in truth, but in fiction, too. With case studies that range from physics to economics and to biology, _Fictions in Science_ reveals (...) that fictions are as ubiquitous in scientific narratives and practice as they are in any other human endeavor, including literature and art. Of course scientific activity, most prominently in the formal sciences, employs logically precise algorithmic thinking. However, the key to the predictive and technological success of the empirical sciences might well lie elsewhere—perhaps even in scientists’ extraordinary creative imagination instead. As these essays demonstrate, within the bounds of what is empirically possible, a scientist’s capacity for invention and creative thinking matches that of any writer or artist. (shrink)

In the modern era rationality, intersubjectivity and objectivity are primarily conceived as epistemological categories. They characterize knowledge or subjects ofknowledge, or even the function of knowledge—cognition. Epistemocentrism (in P. Bourdieu’s view a typical feature of modern thinking) supported by epistemological fundamentalism is nothing else but a limitation of this category’s meaning. Epistemocentrism was useful in the past but is now anachronic in view of the modern functions of knowledge in societies and the progress in social sciences. Today the sciences and (...) their contribution to society are not what they once were. This calls for a revision of epistemocentrism and the filling of the “epistemological gap” which emerged in result of the collapse of epistemological fundamentalism. I think that there is room today for a new “philosophical partition of reality” emancipated from the Cartesian despotism of ego cogito, and a recovery of the intuitional insights into social life typical of ancient thinkers like Aristotle. In the present paper I strive to show that epistemocentrism is anepistemological obstacle in the social sciences and the source of its crises. (shrink)

[1]. Liber V, De varietate legum humanarum et praesertim de odiosis --- [2]. Liber VI, de interpretatione, cessatione et mutatione legis humanae.

This is the first German volume for more than one century, dealing with the two main subjects that have dominated the present reception of the Spanish philosopher and theologian Francisco Suárez (1548-1617): metaphysics and law theory. The contributors discuss both Suárez as an influential thinker of modern European school metaphysics and as a representant of a global law philosophy and ethics. They also debate on the combination of theory and praxis in the light of the question which commitment a universal (...) First Philosophy could have today. The volume is complimented by an introduction to Suárez's works and vita, an overview and guide to recent primary and secondary literature, as well as a name register.--publlisher's desciption. (shrink)

The “scarred villain” trope, where facial differences like scars signify moral corruption, is ubiquitous in film (e.g., Batman’s The Joker). Strides by advocacy groups to undermine the trope, however, suggest cinematic representations of facial differences could be improving with time. This preregistered study characterized facial differences in film across cultures (US vs. India) and time (US: 1980-2019, India: 2000-2019). Top-grossing films by country and decade were screened for characters with facial differences. We found that the scarred villain trope has actually (...) worsened with time, although in tandem with progress in also representing non-villainous characters with facial anomalies. Country of origin did not predict the presence of facial differences in villains or heroes. “Action” and “fantasy” movies were the most likely genres to depict villains with facial differences. Finally, villains’ facial differences crossed more facial subunits and were more likely to involve lips, chin, and mandible than when present in heroes. Our findings underscore the need for critical reflection on the role of cultural practices—even when seemingly innocuous—in shaping and maintaining negative biases against already stigmatized groups. (shrink)

'Unit of selection' is a polysemic expression, meaning interactor, replicator/reproducer or manifestor of adaptation/type-1 agent in today's biological research. This Element presents each of these concepts and demonstrates the necessity of their isolation.

This is the first time that the Disputations 20-22 have been translated into English. They deal with the divine action of creation, conservation and concurrence.

Este libro está integrado por las aportaciones de diferentes especialistas sobre un tema interdisciplinar de interés creciente, que incluye, además de los conceptos de estar sano o sentirse enfermo, también los que se recogen desde antiguo en la expresión pathos y que alberga, en general, formas de existencia del ser humano, las disposiciones afectivas que son vividas y los sentimientos en que se manifiestan. Las pasiones humanas entendidas, en suma, como los diversos modos de encontrarse o de ser comprometidos en (...) las diferentes formas de autocomprensión inherentes a la relación con los otros y el mundo. Aportaciones, en definitiva, sobre la afectividad y su relevancia para dilucidar lo específico del ser humano, un tema en el que actualmente se da un fecundo diálogo con otras áreas de investigación afines a la antropología filosófica, como son la fenomenología, la psico(pato)logía, la filosofía de la cultura, la hermenéutica, la antropología médica o la antropología cultural, tal como queda de manifiesto en este volumen colectivo. (shrink)