The article is devoted to the little-studied component of architectural creativity - architectural graphics. At the same time, the purpose of the article is three-dimensional: to consider the categorical, historical and postmodern problems of architectural graphics, which will allow to outline a holistic picture of this cultural phenomenon. The article uses the methods of typological, historical and synchronous-cult analysis of both specific architectural artifacts and trends in the development of architectural graphics in general. It has been proven that architectural graphics, (...) as a unique type of graphics, are a means of expressing the creative ideas of an architect. They define, define and correct the direction of his professional searches. Graphics influence the creativity of a design as it serves as a graphical visualization of an architecture. Architectural graphics are the line between the design calculation and the creative imagination of the author. He performs artistic and engineering tasks at the same time. The article deals with the problem of architectural graphics as a specific creative activity, which, as a result of historical development, has formed into a separate genre direction. A number of conceptual and terminological issues are touched upon, including the definition of the very concept of «architectural graphics». The priority features of architectural graphics and variants of its stylistic solutions by different architects and designers have been identified. (shrink)

The insight phenomenon is thought to comprise two components: cognitive and affective. The exact nature of the Aha! experience remains unclear; however, several explanations have been put forward. Based on the processing fluency account, the source of the Aha! experience is a sudden increase in processing fluency, associated with emerging of a solution. We hypothesized that in a situation which the Aha! experience accompanies the solution in, the problem would be judged as less difficult, regardless of the objective difficulty. We (...) also planned to confirm previously discovered associations between the Aha! experience and accuracy, confidence, and pleasure. To test the proposed hypothesis, during the preliminary stage of the study, we developed a set of 100 remote associate problems in Russian and asked 125 participants to solve problems and indicate the Aha! moment, confidence, difficulty, and likability of each problem. As expected, the Aha! experience often accompanied correct solutions and correlated with confidence judgments. We also found a positive correlation between the Aha! experience and problem likability. As for the main hypothesis, we confirmed that the Aha! experience after the presentation of the solution was associated with a decrease in subjective difficulty. When participants could not solve a problem but experienced the Aha! moment after the solution was presented to them, the problem was perceived as easier than one without the Aha! experience. We didn’t find the same effect for the Aha! after solution generation. Thus, our study partially supports the processing fluency account and demonstrates the association between the Aha! experience and metacognitive judgments about the accuracy and difficulty of problems. (shrink)

This paper reports on an experimental study investigating the acquisition of grammatical gender in Russian by heritage speakers living in Norway. The participants are 54 Norwegian-Russian bilingual children (4;0-10;2) as well as 107 Russian monolingual controls (3;0-7;0). Previous research has shown that grammatical gender is problematic for bilingual speakers, especially in cases where gender assignment is opaque (Schwartz et al., 2015; Polinsky, 2008; Rodina and Westergaard, 2017). Furthermore, factors such as proficiency and family type (one or two Russian-speaking parents) have (...) been argued to be important. Interestingly, previous findings differ with respect to the kind of errors children make: restructuring to a two-gender system (masculine-feminine, see Polinsky, 2008) or defaulting to masculine (see Rodina and Westergaard, 2017). It is also not clear to what extent children are sensitive to gender cues or whether certain agreement patterns are simply memorized. To investigate this, we used both existing nouns and nonce words and tested both transparent and opaque gender cues. The results were checked against a number of background factors measuring exposure, proficiency, and dominance. Our findings show that bilingual children are clearly sensitive to morphophonological cues for gender assignment. The most common and robust error pattern for all bilinguals involved overgeneralization to masculine (especially affecting neuter and opaque nouns). At the same time, children from families with two Russian-speaking parents and monolinguals also occasionally overused feminine with vowel-final nouns. The following variables were found to be the most reliable predictors of accuracy on grammatical gender tasks: cumulative length of exposure (CLoE) and consistency of input in Russian, as well as the presence of older siblings, with CLoE to Russian being by far the most robust and important predictor. Furthermore, we show that a lexical diversity measure (number of different words in a Russian narrative) is also correlated significantly with the children’s performance on the gender tasks. At the same time, our results indicate that relative measures of dominance (e.g., the difference in exposure between the two languages or the difference in narrative scores) may be redundant when more robust absolute measures are present (CLoE and lexical diversity in the heritage language). (shrink)

Most studies investigating the relationship between cultural constructs and ethical perception have focused on individual- and societal-level values without much attention to other type of cultural constructs such as social beliefs. In addition, we need to better understand how social beliefs are linked to ethical perception and the level of analysis at which social beliefs may best predict ethical perceptions. This research contributes to the cross-cultural ethical perception literature by examining the relationship of individual-level social cynicism belief, one of five (...) universally endorsed social beliefs, together with individual social dominance orientation and the perception of unethical behavior. By means of two studies, we examine these relationships across societies that significantly differ on societal-level social cynicism belief. Using 371 business students from Russia and the U.S. in Study 1 and 268 professionals from Portugal and the U.S. in Study 2, we found that individual-level social cynicism belief was positively associated with social dominance orientation. Social dominance orientation, in turn, mediated the relationship between individual social cynicism belief and the perception of unethical behavior. Although we found significant societal-level differences in social cynicism belief in both studies, the relationships between individual-level social cynicism belief, social dominance orientation, and the perception of unethical behavior were structurally equivalent across societies in both studies, suggesting that societal-level differences did not significantly affect these relationships. Implications for cross-cultural business ethics research and practice are discussed. (shrink)

Background: The prevalence of anxiety and depression in young students is associated with biosocial factors and scholastic stress. However, few studies have evaluated emotional-affective symptoms that are related to the immune system and antioxidant parameters in young individuals without diagnoses of affective disorders.Aim: This study aims to assess the relationship between emotional-affective symptoms and glutathione concentrations and CD4 and CD8 lymphocyte counts in college students.Methods: College students completed standardized psychometric instruments, including the Perceived Stress Scale, Hamilton Anxiety Scale, Beck Depression (...) Inventory, Familiar Social and Friends Support Scale, and Rosenberg Scale. Blood samples were biochemically analyzed. Analyses of variance were conducted between four groups according to symptom severity.Results: A considerable prevalence of stress, anxiety, and depression symptoms was observed and negatively correlated with self-esteem and socio-familiar support. Perceived stress was sexually dimorphic. Although biochemical parameters were within reference ranges, glutathione, CD4, and CD8 tended to be lower in participants with anxiety and depression symptoms, which may be of predictive value.Conclusion: The relationship between antioxidant/immune parameters and socio-affective scores is latent in undiagnosed college students who might develop affective disorders. The findings suggest that during the initial development of affective disorders, stress management strategies should be implemented to help college students cope with the academic load and monitor negative changes in their physiological state. (shrink)

Dans le champ de la linguistique francaise, Olga Galatanu est de ceux qui ont muni l'analyse du discours et des interactions verbales d'un modele semantique de description. La Semantique des Possibles Argumentatifs qu'elle developpe depuis une vingtaine d'annees adhere aux visions argumentative, stereotypique, referentielle, cognitiviste de la langue, et s'attache a rendre compte de la construction des representations en langue et en discours.<BR> Les articles que ses collaborateurs et amis lui offrent dans ce volume se rapportent de pres ou (...) de loin a la SPA. Certains en partagent les postulats: sens referentiel et denomination, interfaces semantique-syntaxe et semantique-pragmatique, construction discursive du sens, valeurs; d'autres reprennent et developpent des elements specifiques de la SPA: possibles argumentatifs, deploiements argumentatifs, modalites; d'autres encore montrent les convergences et complementarites entre la SPA et des theories voisines.<BR> Les analyses portent notamment sur l'attitude metalinguistique des locuteurs, la malleabilite semantique des mots, la negociation des sens et des valeurs, les principes et strategies discursives qui regulent la communication, l'heterogeneite discursive, la presentation de soi, la construction d'objets discursifs, les actes de langage indirects, etc.". (shrink)

Background: Adolescence is a period with physical, psychological, biological, intellectual, and social changes in which there is usually little perception of risk. COVID-19 has generated constant situations of change and uncertainty worldwide. During the pandemic, the acquisition of preventive behaviors has been relevant. Various studies carried out with adults associate risk perception and the implementation of preventive behaviors with knowledge about the COVID-19 and with age, but there are not many studies with adolescents. Therefore, the objective is to validate, in (...) Spanish, the questionnaire of the knowledge, attitudes, risk perceptions, and practices of adolescents toward the pandemic, and analyze it according to sociodemographic characteristics.Method: This study was a descriptive cross-sectional study, which included adolescents between the ages of 12–18. First, a translation and a back-translation of the questionnaire were performed. The questionnaire was presented in several high schools chosen by convenience sampling and following a non-probabilistic snowball sampling. Reliability and validity analyses were then carried out and the relationships between the different sociodemographic variables were analyzed.Results: The reliability of the questionnaire is acceptable. Knowledge was higher in women, and in those with a higher level of education; and were lower in those who lived in smaller towns, as well as in those who had a member of their family receiving financial aid. In terms of attitudes and risk perceptions, younger adolescents had higher scores, and those who had a member of their family receiving financial aid, lower.Conclusion: The questionnaire is a reliable tool in the Spanish adolescent population. Knowledge was influenced by gender, place of residence, level of education, and financial aid. Attitudes and risk perceptions were influenced by age and financial aid. For practices, no predictors were found. In general, adolescents scored lower on knowledge about COVID-19, but they scored higher on COVID-19 safety practices. (shrink)

External economic aid has played an important role in Northern Ireland’s peacebuilding process, particularly by funding community-based intervention projects.As a consequence of the Troubles, Northern Ireland suffered from severe socioeconomic inequality. These locally funded projects have fostered social cohesion by encouraging cross community interaction aimed at reducing violence and sectarianism. The NGO projects also promote social justice, reduce inequality, and provide the means to meet people’s basic human needs. The field research for this article was conducted during the summer of (...) 2010 and explores the perceptions of 120 civil society leaders and funding agency development officers on the effectiveness of the aid from the IFI and EU Peace III Fund in creating local social-economic NGOs to promote equity, equality, and social justice. The findings of this study reveal significant diversity in the respondents’ descriptions of the aids’s role in promoting equality, equity, and social justice as well as their expressed hopes and frustrations regarding its overall effectiveness. (shrink)

En las actuales sociedades avanzadas cada ciudadano genera a diario una ingente cantidad de datos sobre su persona. La masiva utilización de esta información por las tecnologías Big Data suscita profundos y justificados recelos en muchas personas. Sobre todo por la incidencia que podría tener en derechos humanos como la privacidad, la libertad, la igualdad y la justicia social y porque el formidable poder que representa BD es controlado por un número cada vez más anónimo y reducido de personas. La (...) utilización de herramientas tecnológicas en todos los niveles del aprendizaje podría reportar grandes ventajas, a pesar de los recelos que suscita en algunas personas. En sí mismos, los conoci-mientos no tienen connotaciones éticas, sino que su moralidad radica en el uso que de ellos se haga. Los ángeles y los demonios no están en la técnica, sino en el corazón de quienes se sirven de ella. Será muy difícil enfrentarse a problemas como los arriba mencionados, si los principios morales de que partimos en nuestros debates no son distintos de los habituale. (shrink)

Background Informed consent prior to nursing care procedures is an established principle which acknowledges the right of the patient to authorise what is done to him or her; consent prior to nursing care should not be assumed. Nursing care procedures have the potential to be unwanted by the patient and hence require an appropriate form of authorisation that takes into consideration the relationship between the nurse and patient and the ongoing nature of care delivery. Research question How do nurses obtain (...) consent from patients prior to nursing care?. Design Critical incident technique and the collection of critical happenings. Participants 17 participants who were all qualified nurses took part in in-depth interviews Ethical considerations Ethical approval was obtained from the university ethics committee. Findings Information giving is a key component prior to nursing care procedures. Nurses provide information to patients as a routine aspect of care delivery, and do so even when the patient is unable to communicate themselves. Whilst some participants described how information giving might be rushed or overlooked at times, it is clearly an established part of nursing care and is provided to ensure the patient knows what to expect when care is delivered. What is less clear is the extent to which information is given in order to seek the consent – rather than merely inform the patient – about nursing care. Conclusion Implied consent is often an appropriate way in which consent is obtained prior to nursing care procedures. It takes into account the ongoing care provision and the relationship that exists between the nurse and patient. However implied consent should not be assumed. Nurses need to ensure that information is given not only to inform the patient about a procedure but to enable the patient to give his or her consent and to find an alternative way forward if the patient withholds their consent. (shrink)

Immanuel Kant’s Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime is examined in the context of the emergence of the epistemological practice of scientific observation. By focusing on the genre-stylistic and semantic-structural features of the text the authors demonstrate the mechanisms of observation as well as the methods of describing the results characteristic of mid-eighteenth century science. The authors consider Kant’s treatise to be a hybrid text: on the one hand, it attests to the importance of the natural (...) science paradigm and the degree of its influence on the humanities in the modern period; and, on the other hand, it bears witness to the multi-genre character of philosophical treatises, combining as they do the considered and serious wisdom of philosophy, the precision of scientific terminology and the figurativeness of a work of fiction. Kant is perceived not only as a researcher and philosopher capable of bringing out the essence of the particular and changeable captured in observation, but as a writer with a consummate command of the apparatus for keeping the reader’s attention through linguistic devices and practices of image-creating. The authors demonstrate how the categories of the “beautiful” and “sublime” become a general framework for the description of the moral and mental properties of human nature. The authors show that Kant’s use of “aesthetic” wording in the title of his treatise does not announce that his aim is analysis of artistic perception and practices, but mainly refers to the form of his anthropological study and conceptualisation of scientific knowledge. Kant has transferred the technique of visualisation from natural sciences to the objects of philosophical inquiry, thus contributing to the development in the humanities of representative practices, the scientific method of observation as well as the corresponding epistemic and literary genre. (shrink)

This book analyzes unobvious relations between historical definitions of the face and its contemporary usage in popular culture and social media, like Facebook or Instagram. Bringing together a wide range of methodologies, it includes essays from manifold disciplines of the humanities such as philosophy, literary and art criticism, media and television studies, game studies, sociology and anthropology. The authors focus on both metaphorical and material meanings of the face. They grapple with crucial questions about modernity, modern and postmodern subjectivity, as (...) well as with origins of certain linguistic terms and popular, colloquial phrases based on the concept of the face. (shrink)

Boghossian’s (2003) proposal to conditionalize concepts as a way to secure their legitimacy in disputable cases applies well, not just to pejoratives – on whose account Boghossian first proposed it – but also to thick ethical concepts. It actually has important advantages when dealing with some worries raised by the application of thick ethical terms, and the truth and facticity of corresponding statements. In this paper, I will try to show, however, that thick ethical concepts present a specific case, whose (...) analysis requires a somewhat different reconstruction from that which Boghossian offers. A proper account of thick ethical concepts should be able to explain how ‘evaluated’ and ‘evaluation’ are connected. (shrink)

In transitional societies, a search for ethnic identity becomes the most common form of personal response to the destruction of customary forms of social life. The sense of ethnic unity can arise spontaneously or be formed by ideologists. Ethnic stereotypes play a crucial role in embedding national myths into people's consciousness, and the effectiveness of their influence is practically independent of their accuracy. The system of perception stereotypes of a nation almost always adds up to a holistic myth of that (...) nation that includes mythologems of different levels (from routine perceptions to historical-philosophical theories). Thus, one can say that turning mass consciousness towards a national myth is the main method of the formation of national identity. (shrink)

The paper analyses and evaluates the linguistic policy of the Court of Justice of the European Union against the background of other multilingual courts and in the light of theories of legal interpretation. Multilingualism has a direct impact upon legal interpretation at the Court, displacing traditional approaches with a hermeneutic paradigm. It also creates challenges to the acceptance of the Court’s case-law in the Member States, which seem to have been adequately tackled by the Court’s idiosyncratic translation policy.

This paper was motivated by reflections on what makes our argument convincing and persuasive. The substantive answer in my view suggests the examination of the cognitive grounds of argumentation. In the introductory section, I consider various approaches to identifying the cognitive component in argumentation. That way, I briefly observe recent relevant publications, which I classify into two groups: those directly addressing cognitive grounds of argumentation; and papers on formal models of argumentation that take cognitive nature of persuasion as a premise. (...) In the second section, I argue for phenomenologicaly inspired approach to cognitive activity as one which provides an adequate cognitive interpretation of the latter. In so doing, I touch upon key some phenomenological concepts and focuses on an analogizing apperception (appresentation). The third section accumulates all the above. I proceed from the interpretation of the argumentation as discursive activity aimed at a deliberate change in an opposite party’s position, which may not be explicitly presented in the course of arguing. It makes us turn to cognitive procedure of appresentation as it was presented by Husserl for an adequate interpretation of transfer and grasping of argumentative message’s meaning. (shrink)

Introduction. The inadequacy of the support measures provided to children with orphan diseases is exacerbated by the trend towards an increase in the number of children with such a diagnosis. Orphan diseases also include diseases caused by primary immunodeficiency or congenital errors of immunity, which are life-threatening. However, these people are part of society and require attention from it, and social and economic measures from the state. Most of them, with proper treatment, socialization and appropriate government support, can lead a (...) normal life and live a full life. Scientific novelty of the research. On the basis of the study results, the authors contribute to clarifying the principles used in the implementation of the security function of the social state. The targeting of social support measures must be supplemented with the principles of social justice and freedom to choose ways to meet the needs of specific categories of citizens, understood as follows. The welfare state supports those citizens who need it most of all, namely, the poor. Specific categories of citizens can satisfy their needs, while having the opportunity to choose. This opportunity arises thanks to the receipt of targeted assistance in the form of monthly or annual subsidies. Families with children with orphan diseases should also be included in these categories. If they have the right to receive annual government subsidies, they will be able to spend these funds depending on the current needs due to the state of health of their children with orphan diseases (for the purchase of socially important food products; medicines, medical nutrition, and various services). The aim of the work is to study the problems of providing support measures to children with orphan diseases in the context of the current model of the welfare state. The article analyzes the satisfaction of patients with congenital immunity errors with various types of state support, identifies problems that reduce their satisfaction. Methods. The authors use methods such as comparative analysis, study of regulatory legal acts, sociological analysis. Results. On the basis of the study results the effectiveness of measures of state support for children with orphan diseases, studying the best experience of foreign countries, proposals were made to clarify the principles used to implement the security function by the social state, to expand the composition of the subjects involved in providing support measures analyzed in the article. Conclusions. The results obtained make it possible to assert that the targeted approach, which is basic in the model of the welfare state, does not cover most of the problems of children with innate immunity errors and, accordingly, the families that represent their interests. (shrink)

The author represents Averintsev’s thought as a response to, and commentary on, Russia’s Silver Age, and describes his particular method of seeing and understanding. The article considers his response to the cultural context in which he worked, focusing mainly on Averintsev’s language, style and syntax, and linking it with his ideal of equilibrium. Finally, the article moves on to Averintsev’s criticism of thinking in polarities.

Drawing on the Second Discourse and the Social Contract and Notes from Underground and “The Dream of a Ridiculous Man,” this essay examines the striking similarities and fundamental differences between Dostoevskij’s and Rousseau’s treatment of the problem of individual vs. society and their notions of ideal social relations. The essay investigates Rousseau’s attempt to absorb morality into politics and “to concretize” Diderot’s universal moral man into citizen. It also suggests that Dostoevskij takes Rousseau’s attempt at concretization a step further by (...) exposing humanist conceptions of man and society in general as fiction and creating a model of ideal society that absorbs morality, not into politics (as does Rousseau’s model), but into the sanctity of the Word. (shrink)

The issue of benefits in international clinical research is highly controversial. Against the background of wide recognition of the need to share benefits of research, the nature of benefits remains strongly contested. Little is known about the perspectives of research populations on this issue and the extent to which research ethics discourses and guidelines are salient to the expectations and aspirations existing on the ground. This exploratory study contributes to filling this void by examining perspectives of people in low-income South (...) African communities on benefits in international clinical research. Twenty-four individuals with and without experience of being involved in clinical research participated in in-depth interviews. Respondents felt that ancillary care should be provided to clinical research participants, while a clinical study conducted in particular community should bring better health to its members through post-trial benefits. Respondents' perspectives were grounded in the perception that the ultimate goal of international clinical research is to improve local health. We argue that perspectives and understandings of the respondents are shaped by local moral traditions rather than clinical research specificities and require attention as valid moral claims. It is necessary to acknowledge such claims and cultural worlds from which they emerge, thus building the foundation for equal and embracing dialogue to bridge different perspectives and handle contradicting expectations. (shrink)

Although epidemiology as a scientific study of disease in populations claimed an independent disciplinary status already in the mid–nineteenth century, its history in the twentieth century can be seen as a continuous and often contentious attempt to define the field’s social and intellectual boundaries vis-à-vis a variety of neighboring scientific fields and public health practices. In a period dominated by laboratory biomedical sciences, epidemiologists repeatedly tried to spell out how their discipline met the requirements of scientificity despite its focus on (...) disease as a collective phenomenon and its reliance on nonlaboratory methods. This article asks about the relationship between the changing institutional and intellectual contexts of British epidemiological practice and the epidemiologists’attempts to define both science in general and epidemiology in particular. An examination of the epidemiologists’boundary-making endeavors is also used to reflect on the circumstances in which scientists engage in the discourse of disciplinary demarcations. (shrink)

At the bedside, nurses are expected to be precise when they read indications on screens and on the bodies of patients and decide on the meaning of words framed by the context of acute care. In academia, although there is no incident report to fill when we misread or misrepresent complex philosophical ideas, the consequences of inaccurate reading include misplaced epistemological claims and poor scholarship. A long and broad convention of nursing phenomenological research, in its various forms, claims a philosophical (...) grounding in the ideas of Husserl, Heidegger, and other thinkers. But for nearly two decades, nurse phenomenologists' knowledge claims have been challenged by well‐informed criticisms, most notably by John Paley. At the heart of criticism lies an observation that Continental phenomenological thought is misrepresented in many nursing sources and that nursing phenomenology, both descriptive and interpretive, cannot appeal to the authority of either Husserl or Heidegger. Taking these criticisms seriously, I am asking, Is phenomenology after Paley possible? If misreading seems to be an issue, how can – or should – we read rigorously? My thinking through these questions is influenced by the ideas of Jacques Derrida. Under a condition of a play of language, of Derridian différance, when meaning is never self‐identical and never fully arrives, I suggest that one has to negotiate meanings through reading for differences. I develop this idea in relation to the methodological conventions of phenomenological nursing research and argue for a careful rereading of the whole field of phenomenological nursing research. Such rereading presupposes and necessitates interdisciplinary engagement between nursing and the humanities and interpretive social sciences. Greater familiarity with research practices of those disciplines that stress theoretical and writing rigour might make visible the limits of nursing research approaches and their quality criteria. An understanding of philosophical and theoretical works – a condition of quality scholarship – depends on our reading of both originary texts and contemporary literature from the humanities and the social sciences. This understanding, far from obliging researchers to always trace (often erroneously) their work to its philosophical roots, opens other, often more sound, methodological possibilities. (shrink)

The main indicators of assistance activity in the insurance market in Ukraine have been analyzed. Beneficial and negative trends of its development have been shown. The dynamics of the insurers' liquidation expenses structure and the payment of services expenses of the assistance establishments have been highlighted. Their structure has been shown due to the types of voluntary and compulsory insurance. The main problems hindering the effective development of the assistance services market have been characterized and the prospects of its development (...) have been offered. The aim of the research is to carry out comprehensive analysis of the current market of assistance services, to identify the main problems of their implementation and to point out the prospects of insurance market development. The dynamics of insurance bonuses and benefits including insurance compensation and services and the insurers' operating expenses concerning the payment of services of the assistance establishments has been analyzed on the basis of a sample survey of the main indicators of insurance market development due to the statistic data of National Committee of Financial Services. It has been revealed that majority of the insurance services provide settlement of insurance claims by offering assistance service. Alongside increasing of the share of insurance payment due to the contract providing the insurance service, allows the majority of insurance claims to be settled due to the payment of insurance compensation. Expenses on assistance services were the highest and the court expenses were the lowest in the structure of the insurer's liquidation expenses during 2011-2014. Expenses on services of the non-residential assistance establishments are low but they are increasing. It shows that emergency assistance to our citizens in the country and outside is being increased. Structure of assistance services in the voluntary and compulsory insurance market has been analyzed; main trends of assistance activity development according to the separate insurance services have been highlighted. In particular it was found out that the greatest amount of assistance services were provided due to the voluntary medical insurance, medical costs insurance, land transport insurance and compulsory insurance of civil liability of the owners of vehicles. On the basis of conducted analysis, we can draw a conclusion about the low level of assistance services market development. It is affected by negative trends of economic and political crisis, low solvency of insurers and the quality of insurance services, a lack of guaranties to provide emergency assistance in time, imperfect state regulation of assistance services provision, and a low level of institutional support. We offer to intensify the interaction between the insurers and assistance companies while providing insurance services including additional ones, insurance compensation, and settlement of insurance claims by ensuring emergency assistance in monetary and natural-material form. This will promote the increasing of quality of the insurance protection. (shrink)

In common law jurisdictions, legal professionals cite facts and legal principles from precedent cases to support their arguments before the court for their intended outcome in a current case. This practice stems from the doctrine of stare decisis, where cases that have similar facts should receive similar decisions with respect to the principles. It is essential for legal professionals to identify such facts and principles in precedent cases, though this is a highly time intensive task. In this paper, we present (...) studies that demonstrate that human annotators can achieve reasonable agreement on which sentences in legal judgements contain cited facts and principles. We further demonstrate that it is feasible to automatically annotate sentences containing such legal facts and principles in a supervised machine learning framework based on linguistic features, reporting per category precision and recall figures of between 0.79 and 0.89 for classifying sentences in legal judgements as cited facts, principles or neither using a Bayesian classifier, with an overall κ\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\kappa$$\end{document} of 0.72 with the human-annotated gold standard. (shrink)

Avicenna’s distinction between essence and existence was—and sometimes still is—read in the sense of a priority of essence. My analysis will focus on an important example of such a reading: Beatrice Zedler’s interpretation of one of the most important texts for Thomas’s discussion of Avicenna’s philosophy, the Quaestiones de Potentia. Independently of its consistency, Zedler’s interpretation gives me the opportunity to discuss Avicenna’s supposed “essentialism”. My aim is to show that Avicenna is very well aware of the aporia that an (...) essence existing independently of existence would represent. If essentialism is a risk of Avicenna’s metaphysics, this is not because of the essence-existence distinction. It is because of the ethical dimension that creation perforce implies, that Avicenna seems in fact to posit an “independent order of possibles” before God’s creative action. (shrink)

This article examines the discourse competence of high-functioning children with autistic spectrum disorders to participate in narrative introduction sequences with family members. The analysis illuminates the children’s own efforts to launch narratives, as well as their ability to build upon the contributions of others. Ethnographic, discourse analytic methodology is integrated with the theory of discourse organization and the weak central coherence account of autism. Introductions of both personal experience narratives as well as fictional narratives are examined. The children were especially (...) competent in the use of stable introductory practices when launching fictional narratives, pre-organized by the media of expression. Their challenge was not in the introduction, but in the narrative co-telling, which often was not globally organized over an extended course of propositions. The heterogeneity of the ASD children’s discourse competence and its implications for discourse analysis are discussed. (shrink)

The myth that women had equal rights and were emancipated in the Soviet Union masks the reality that the Soviet state, like all totalitarian states, is a manifestation of patriarchal ideology. The true democratization of Russian society requires the rejection of masculinist ideology and constitutes one of the most important social and cultural challenges.

Since the beginning of signed language research, the linguistic units have been divided into conventional, standard and fixed signs, all of which were considered as the core of the language, and iconic and productive signs, put at the edge of language. In the present paper, we will review different models proposed by signed language researchers over the years to describe the signed lexicon, showing how to overcome the hierarchical division between standard and productive lexicon. Drawing from the semiotic insights of (...) Peirce we proposed to look at signs as a triadic construction built on symbolic, iconic, and indexical features. In our model, the different iconic, symbolic, and indexical features of signs are seen as the three sides of the same triangle, detectable in the single linguistic sign. The key aspect is that the dominance of the feature will determine the different use of the linguistic unit, as we will show with examples from different discourse types. (shrink)

Confronted with an unprecedented scale of human-induced environmental crisis, there is a need for new modes of theorizing that would abandon human exceptionalism and anthropocentrism and instead focus on developing environmentally ethical projects suitable for our times. In this paper, we offer an anti-anthropocentric project of an ethos for living in the Anthropocene. We develop it through revisiting the notion of sustainability in order to problematize the linear vision of human-centric futurity and the uniform ‘we’ of humanity upon which it (...) relies. We ground our analyses in posthumanism and material feminism, using works by posthumanist and material feminist thinkers such as Stacy Alaimo, Rosi Braidotti, Donna Haraway and Jane Bennett, among others. In dialogue with them, we offer the concept of posthuman sustainability that decenters the human, re-positions it in its ecosystem and, while remaining attentive to difference, fosters the thriving of all instances of life. (shrink)

The role of bacterial variation in the waxing and waning of epidemics was a subject of lively debate in late nineteenth and early twentieth-century bacteriology and epidemiology. The notion that changes in bacterial virulence were responsible for the rise and fall of epidemic diseases was an often-voiced, but little investigated hypothesis made by late nineteenth-century epidemiologists. It was one of the first hypotheses to be tested by scientists who attempted to study epidemiological questions using laboratory methods. This paper examines how (...) two groups of experimental epidemiologists, the British group led by W. W. C. Topley and Major Greenwood, and an American group directed by Leslie T. Webster at the Rockefeller Institute, studied the role of variations in bacterial virulence in the course of laboratory epidemics of mouse typhoid. Relying on Ludwik Fleck’s concept of thought styles and thought collectives, the paper analyzes the fundamental conceptual differences between these two groups of researchers and analyzes the kinds of innovations they introduced as they attempted to integrate bacteriological and epidemiological approaches. The paper shows that the stylistic differences between the two groups can be understood better in the context of the institutional histories and disciplinary relations of epidemiology and bacteriology in the two countries. (shrink)

This paper attempts to be a contribution to the epistemological project of explaining complex conceptual structures departing from more basic ones. The central thesis of the paper is that there are what I call “functionally structured concepts”, these are non-harmonic concepts in Dummett’s sense that might be legitimized if there is a function that justifies the tie between the inferential connection the concept allows us to trace. Proving this requires enhancing the russellian existential analysis of definite descriptions to apply to (...) functions and using this in proving the legitimacy of such concepts. The utility of the proposal is shown for the case of thick ethical terms and an attempt is made to use it in explaining the development of natural numbers. This last move could allow us to go one step lower in explaining the genesis of natural numbers while maintaining the notion of abstract numbers as higher order entities. (shrink)

While the implementation of digital technology in psychiatry appears promising, there is an urgent need to address the implications of the absence of ethical design in the early development of such technologies. Some authors have noted the gap between technology development and ethical analysis and have called for an upstream examination of the ethical issues raised by digital technologies. In this paper, we address this suggestion, particularly in relation to digital healthcare technologies for patients with schizophrenia spectrum disorders. The introduction (...) of digital technologies in psychiatry offers a broad spectrum of diagnostic and treatment options tailored to the health needs and goals of patients’ care. These technologies include wearable devices, smartphone applications for high-immersive virtual realities, smart homes, telepsychiatry and messaging systems for patients in rural areas. The availability of these technologies could increase access to mental health services and improve the diagnostics of mental disorders.Additional Instruction AbstractIn this descriptive review, we systematize ethical concerns about digital technologies for mental health with a particular focus on individuals suffering from schizophrenia. There are many unsolved dilemmas and conflicts of interest in the implementation of these technologies, such as (1) the lack of evidence on efficacy and impact on self-perception; (2) the lack of clear standards for the safety of their daily implementation; (3) unclear roles of technology and a shift in the responsibilities of all parties; (4) no guarantee of data confidentiality; and (5) the lack of a user-centered design that meets the particular needs of patients with schizophrenia. mHealth can improve care in psychiatry and make mental healthcare services more efficient and personalized while destigmatizing mental health disorders. To ensure that these technologies will benefit people with mental health disorders, we need to heighten sensitivity to ethical issues among mental healthcare specialists, health policy makers, software developers, patients themselves and their proxies. Additionally, we need to develop frameworks for furthering sustainable development in the digital technologies industry and for the responsible usage of such technologies for patients with schizophrenia in the clinical setting. We suggest that digital technology in psychiatry, particularly for schizophrenia and other serious mental health disorders, should be integrated into treatment with professional supervision rather than as a self-treatment tool. (shrink)