The HealthyFood program offers members up to 25% cash back monthly on healthy food purchases. In this randomized controlled trial, we tested the efficacy of financial incentives combined with text messages in increasing healthy food purchases among HF members. Members receiving the lowest cash back level were randomized to one of six arms: Arm 1 : 10% cash back, no weekly text, standard monthly text; Arm 2: 10% cash back, generic weekly text, standard monthly text; Arm 3: 10% cash back, (...) personalized weekly text, standard monthly text; Arm 4: 25% cash back, personalized weekly text, standard monthly text; Arm 5: 10 + 15%NET cash back, personalized weekly text, standard monthly text; and, Arm 6: 10 + 15%NET cash back, personalized weekly text, unbundled monthly text. In the 10 + 15%NET cash back, the cash back amount was the baseline 10% plus 15% of the net difference between healthy and unhealthy spending. The generic text included information on HF and healthy eating, while the personalized text had individualized feedback on purchases. The standard monthly text contained the cash back amount. The unbundled monthly text included the amount lost due to unhealthy purchases. The primary outcome was the average monthly percent healthy food spending. Secondary outcomes were the percent unhealthy food spending, and the percent healthy and unhealthy food items. Of the members contacted, 20 opted out, and 2841 met all inclusion criteria. There were no between-arm differences in the examined outcomes. The largest mean difference in percent healthy spending was between Arm 1 and Arm 2, and the largest mean difference in percent unhealthy spending was also between Arm 1 and Arm 2, but no differences were statistically significant after correction for multiple comparisons. None of the tested financial incentive structures or text strategies differentially affected food purchasing. Notably, more than doubling the cash back amount and introducing a financial disincentive for unhealthy purchases did not affect purchasing. These findings speak to the difficulty of changing shopping habits and to the need for innovative strategies to shift complex health behaviors. NCT02486588 Increasing Engagement with a Healthy Food Benefit. The trial was prospectively registered on July 1, 2015. (shrink)

In “Missing the Forest for the Trees: Aduhelm, Accelerated Approvals & the Agency,” Dr. Matthew Herder argues that agency capture and politicized discretion drive delays in confirmatory trials of accelerated approval drugs amongst other concerns at US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). In highlighting this important problem and offering nuanced insight into agency workings based in part on interviews with twenty-three unnamed FDA officials and a three-drug case study, Dr. Herder suggests two innovative solutions. However, amidst broader debates balancing agency (...) expertise, data, and delegation, these proposed policy solutions would benefit from more corroborative evidence and consideration of institutional advantages within constitutional limits. (shrink)

Heart disease is the leading cause of death amongst adult Americans and has recently become a top killer worldwide. The direct costs of cardiovascular disease are projected to triple in the next 20 years, from $272.5 billion to $818.1 billion (Heidenreich et al. 2011). Although there has been a decreased incidence and prevalence of ischemic heart disease over the past several decades in the United States, heart failure remains a major cause of morbidity and mortality. In the United States, approximately (...) 500,000 to 700,000 new cases are identified each year (Lloyd-Jones et al. 2009). Heart failure is now the number one diagnosis leading to hospitalization. As such, it is an increasingly heavy economic burden on .. (shrink)

Language experience clearly affects the perception of speech, but little is known about whether these differences in perception extend to non-speech sounds. In this study, we investigated rhythmic perception of non-linguistic sounds in speakers of French and German using a grouping task, in which complexity was manipulated. In this task, participants grouped sequences of auditory chimeras formed from musical instruments. These chimeras mimic the complexity of speech without being speech. We found that, while showing the same overall grouping preferences, the (...) German speakers showed stronger biases than the French speakers in grouping complex sequences. Sound variability reduced all participants’ biases, resulting in the French group showing no grouping preference for the most variable sequences, though this reduction was attenuated by musical experience. In sum, this study demonstrates that linguistic experience, musical experience, and complexity affect rhythmic grouping of non-linguistic sounds and suggests that experience with acoustic cues in a meaningful context is necessary for developing a robust grouping preference that survives acoustic variability. (shrink)

The didactic proposal of the post-constructivist (Grossi, 2005), takes into account the relationship between the subject, reality, others and the Other interior and considers the learning potential of all students. Its theoretical foundation is, among other things, the principle that learning is a social phenomenon, and that the spatial organization of the class, in groups of adults, promotes the teaching-learning process. Post-constructivism is a didactic proposition that allows us to respond to the purpose of teaching all students. This article on (...) group work in post-constructivism aims to analyze the change in posture of teachers, and the professional development that follows, and which demonstrates a break with the traditional form of education. The trick of the identified researcher is then to take up in a teacher training, through the aulic groups in the Geempa class and the weekly study group, the scientific approach of post-constructivism. (shrink)

Yoga is a popular and beneficial evidence-based health practice. This book addresses the origins, explores yoga's evolution, and outlines current scientific research as well as contemporary discussions related to the possibilities as well as the politicization of this ancient Indian practice.

Business ethics researchers and practitioners are interested in understanding the temporal mechanisms of various managerial activities, processes, and policies. In this direction, I borrow notions of time from Virginia Woolf’s _Mrs. Dalloway_ to examine how social time intersperses with the paid and (unpaid) care work of female employees during the pandemic. I explore how discussions of social time in connection to care work appear in newspaper discourses of “shecession”, i.e. the large-scale job/income losses experienced by women during the COVID-19 pandemic. (...) Since shecession is a byproduct of the pandemic times, exploring the role of time in it is crucial. In fact, my findings show that the macro social time of the pandemic affects working women with care responsibilities who are situated at the intersection of multiple vulnerable social categories by simultaneously being a penalizer and a lost opportunity. Similarly, I also find that the micro social times of working women embed, stratify, and synchronize differently during the pandemic when compared to normal times. Working women with care responsibilities are thus adversely affected by both micro and macro social time changes. My findings, therefore, could be instrumental in developing and implementing inclusive policies and processes in business organizations and labor markets. In so doing, my study also indicates how a consideration of social time enriches the application of care ethics in work contexts. Ultimately, this article is also about developing caring organizations, societies, and families which care for the caregivers (working women), since receiving care is a precondition of giving care. (shrink)

In this essay, the author presents the Martinican intellectual Edouard Glissant's Poétique de la Relation in a new frame by reading his text as it accomplishes a type of grand-scale theorizing. The notion of Relation in Glissant is followed in its various connections to a Marxian notion of dynamic totality. The Marxian/Hegelian subtext of Poétique is seen as productively revealing for reading Glissant both historically and theoretically. Glissant's theorizing of difference is shown to be an important contribution to contemporary revisions (...) of Marxian-informed thought. (shrink)

The half-century, which is the time that has elapsed since the publication of Wretched of the Earth , seems such a short period when one imagines its author in all his intellectual magnificence, his anguish, and the many details we all know of his short-lived reality. Dare one say, after the concept has long been declared “dead” that we imagine him as having been a live “author”? As I write this, the idea of various notable intellectuals and revolutionary movements could (...) come to mind in order for them to serve as interesting comparisons as we discuss and remember Fanon, his analyses of the colonial aftermath, and his many predictions, both explicit and implicit. However, the “death” of the author is, in fact, as Barthes’ polemical essay showed, a premise that empowers the text in its full potentiality well beyond the deism by which the identity of the author becomes the authority. Here, the liberation of the text joins up the enunciation with its “content” so to speak, or in Barthes’ words, reveals how Fanon “made of his very life a work for which his book was a model.” It is from this idea that I wish to see Fanon as incomparable. The reason to do so does not stem from some esoteric form of admiration, but rather a conviction that Fanon’s narration itself is both indicative and exemplary of a process of thinking that, for me, remains unparalleled in theorizing the role of the intellectual. Such a conviction requires us to read beyond the content of Wretched and be “reborn” in the Barthesian sense as readers. In essence, it is to simply follow the way Fanon himself allows us to actually trace how he dreams of “the native” or “the people” and thus accomplishes an affective leap, arguably, more completely than any other intellectual. This reading is, thus, an invitation to dream – even momentarily – of Fanon. (shrink)

While mass spectrometry (MS)‐based quantification of small molecules has been successfully used for decades, targeted MS has only recently been used by the proteomics community to investigate clinical questions such as biomarker verification and validation. Targeted MS holds the promise of a paradigm shift in the quantitative determination of proteins. Nevertheless, targeted quantitative proteomics requires improvisation in making sample processing, instruments, and data analysis more accessible. In the backdrop of the genomic era reaching its zenith, certain questions arise: is the (...) proteomic era about to come? If we are at the beginning of a new future for protein quantification, are we prepared to incorporate targeted proteomics at the benchside for basic research and at the bedside for the good of patients? Here, an overview of the knowledge required to perform targeted proteomics as well as its applications is provided. A special emphasis is placed on upcoming areas such as peptidomics, proteoform research, and mass spectrometry imaging, where the utilization of targeted proteomics is expected to bring forth new avenues. The limitations associated with the acceptance of this technique for mainstream usage are also highlighted. (shrink)

This study examines how meritocracy as a collective social imaginary promoting social justice and fairness reproduces class and caste inequalities and fosters ethical violence. We interrogate discourse of merit in the narratives of the professional–managerial class-in-making at an Indian business school. Empirically, we draw on interviews, full-text responses to a qualitative questionnaire, and a student’s poem. We describe how business school students articulate merit as a neoliberal ethic, emphasizing prudential, enterprising attitudes, and responsibility. However, this positive, aspirational façade of merit (...) masks practices of ethical violence, wherein individuals invoke an ethical principle as grounds for moral condemnation and linguistic injuries. These practices of ethical violence desubjectify disadvantaged students and result in silence as a form of inequality. We contribute to organizational research on inequalities by foregrounding ethical violence and desubjectification. We detail the possibilities of discursive agency in contesting and interrupting ethical violence. (shrink)

What parameters determine brain size? This question is of particular interest for humans because our large brains confer outstanding cognitive abilities. The answer has long been sought in comparative analyses of brain size relative to body size (herein termed ‘brain size’) in our fellow homeothermic vertebrates – namely other mammals and birds. Unfortunately, brain size is an idiosyncratic trait corresponding to a seemingly miscellaneous collection of traits ranging from gestation length to deception behaviour. Some order can be established by attributing (...) brain size correlates to categories of constraint (‘what traits permit or limit increased brain sizes?’) and selection (‘what traits select for increased brain sizes?. Even so, the vast number of potential correlates has lead to a plethora of (frequently mutually exclusive) hypotheses regarding avian and mammalian brain size evolution. This confusion has recently prompted calls for better integration of brain size correlates. In this article we argue that the latest advances in the field of brain size constraints, combined with modern techniques for tracing brain development, put an integrated framework of brain size evolution within our reach. (shrink)

We thank the authors of commentaries for their thoughtful discussion of our target article. Here we briefly summarize the points made in the target article (Nair-Collins and Joffe 2023). Then we em...

Some patients who have been diagnosed as “dead by neurologic criteria” continue to exhibit certain brain functions, most commonly, neuroendocrine functions. This preservation of neurologic function after the diagnosis of “brain death” or “brainstem death” is an ongoing source of controversy and concern in the medical, bioethics, and legal literatures. Most obviously, if some brain function persists, then it is not the case that all functions of the entire brain have ceased and hence, declaring such a patient to be “dead” (...) would be a false positive, in any nation with so-called “whole brain death” laws. Furthermore, and perhaps more concerning, the preservation of any brain function necessarily entails the preservation of some amount of brain perfusion, thereby raising the concern as to whether additional areas of neural tissue may remain viable, including areas in the brainstem. These and other considerations cast significant doubt on the reliability of diagnosing either “brain death” or “brainstem death.”. (shrink)

The dissociation between statistical prediction and scientific explanation advanced by Bowers et al. for studies of vision using deep neural networks is also observed in several other domains of behavior research, and is in fact unavoidable when fitting large models such as deep nets and other supervised learners, with weak theoretical commitments, to restricted samples of highly stochastic behavioral phenomena.

Despite a growing focus on processes to promote gender equity, women remain significantly underrepresented in leadership positions in the Global South. In the present study we focus on the role of familial experiences in shaping and contesting gender ideologies of Pakistani women in the workplace. We specifically examine the reciprocal ways in which women leaders and their family members shape each other’s gender ideologies regarding the workplace. Data collected and analyzed for this study were semi-structured interviews with eight women in (...) positions of leadership in Lahore, Pakistan, and interviews with one family members of each of the women leaders. Using thematic narrative analysis, we identified three thematic phases: learning gender expectations, resistance, and familial transformation. These phases reflect the progression of developing, resisting, and influencing individual and familial gender ideologies. We document the manifestation of these phases in three specific domains: education, marriage and motherhood, and the workplace. We then discuss how these findings contribute to understanding the experiences of women leaders and perceptions of their family members regarding women’s role in the workplace. Findings from our research provide novel insights into the ways globalization and capitalism continue to shape the socio-cultural context for women leaders in the Global South. (shrink)

People who habituate to stress show a repetition-induced response attenuation—neuroendocrine, cardiovascular, neuroenergetic, and emotional—when exposed to a threatening environment. But the exact dynamics underlying stress habituation remain obscure. The free energy principle offers a unifying account of self-organising systems such as the human brain. In this paper, we elaborate on how stress habituation can be explained and modelled using the free energy principle. We introduce habituation priors that encode the agent’s tendency for stress habituation and incorporate them in the agent’s (...) decision-making process. Using differently shaped goal priors—that encode the agent’s goal preferences—we illustrate, in two examples, the optimising behaviour of agents. We show that habituation minimises free energy by reducing the precision of goal preferences. Reducing the precision of goal priors means that the agent accepts adverse states. Acceptance or tolerance of adverse outcomes may explain why habituation causes people to exhibit an attenuation of the stress response. Given that stress habituation occurs in brain regions where goal priors are encoded, i.e., in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and that these priors are encoded as sufficient statistics of probability distributions, our approach seems plausible from an anatomical-functional and neuro-statistical point of view. The ensuing formal and generalisable account—based on the free energy principle—further motivate our novel treatment of stress habituation. Our analysis suggests that stress habituation has far-reaching consequences, protecting against the harmful effects of toxic stress, but on the other hand making the acceptability of precarious living conditions and the development of the obese type 2 diabetes mellitus phenotype more likely. (shrink)

Perceptual grouping is fundamental to many auditory processes. The Iambic–Trochaic Law (ITL) is a default grouping strategy, where rhythmic alternations of duration are perceived iambically (weak‐strong), while alternations of intensity are perceived trochaically (strong‐weak). Some argue that the ITL is experience dependent. For instance, French speakers follow the ITL, but not as consistently as German speakers. We hypothesized that learning about prosodic patterns, like word stress, modulates this rhythmic grouping. We tested this idea by training French adults on a German‐like (...) stress contrast. Individuals who showed better phonological learning had more ITL‐like grouping, particularly over duration cues. In a non‐phonological condition, French adults were trained using identical stimuli, but they learned to attend to acoustic variation that was not linguistic. Here, no learning effects were observed. Results thus suggest that phonological learning can modulate low‐level auditory grouping phenomena, but it is constrained by the ability of individuals to learn from short‐term training. (shrink)

The essay looks into the pedagogical role of philosophy in shaping the practice of dissent. Drawing on Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s radical understandings of philosophy as a machinic assemblage, it redeploys philosophy as a pedagogical tool which gathers traction from social events and remains invested in a dissensual politics. As a machinic assemblage committed to a dissensual politics philosophy works alongside collective modalities of enunciation that operate outside conventional structures of the academia. Such assemblages of enunciation often inhabit a (...) zone of critical inarticulacy brimming with the promise of new kinds of knowledge. How does philosophy critically interact with spaces of dissent along lines of gender, caste, ethnicity and nationalism to enable novel critical interventions? Deleuze and Guattari’s answer redirects us to a pragmatic engagement with philosophy which involves the manufacture of new pedagogical concepts as part of a schizoanalytic apparatus of protest. These concepts often emerge out of a visceral response to events unfolding around us. Needless to emphasize that such a philosophy which emerges out of a praxial encounter with life cannot be framed as an institutional staple, but takes shape as part of a visceral politics of the now. What then is the role of pedagogy in shaping an ethics of dissent and how can such a pedagogy mobilize plebeian acts of resistance in the sphere of the everyday? (shrink)

Since at least the 1960s, deontic logicians and ethicists have worried about whether there can be normative systems that allow conflicting obligations. Surprisingly, however, little direct attention has been paid to questions about how we may reason with conflicting obligations. In this paper, I present a problem for making sense of reasoning with conflicting obligations and argue that no deontic logic can solve this problem. I then develop an account of reasoning based on the popular idea in ethics that reasons (...) explain obligations and show that it solves this problem. (shrink)

How do multiple reasons combine to support a conclusion about what to do or believe? This question raises two challenges: How can we represent the strength of a reason? How do the strengths of multiple reasons combine? Analogous challenges about confirmation have been answered using probabilistic tools. Can reductive and nonreductive theories of reasons use these tools to answer their challenges? Yes, or more exactly: reductive theories can answer both challenges. Nonreductive theories, with the help of a result in confirmation (...) theory, can answer one, and there are grounds for optimism that they can answer the other. (shrink)

Reasons can interact in a variety of ways to determine what we ought to do or believe. And there can be cases where two reasons to do an act or have a belief are individually worse than a reason to not do that act or have that belief, but the reasons together are better than the reason to not do that act or have that belief. So the reasons together―which we can call the accrual of those reasons—can have a strength (...) that is an increasing function of the strengths of the individual reasons. In this paper, we will look at how reasons determine what we ought to do and believe in cases where the accrual of reasons is relevant. Our focus will not primarily be on questions about the nature of individual reasons and their weight. Instead, we will at the outset rely on our pretheoretical grip on what reasons there are and how weighty they are individually and ask the more formal or structural question of how to determine the strength of their accrual based on these facts. In looking at these issues, my goal will not be anything as ambitious as developing a full theory of the accrual of reasons. Rather, my goal will be more modest: I will introducing some of the challenges for providing an adequate model and argue that a promising approach to resolving these challenges involves making use of the familiar distinction in moral philosophy between derivative and non-derivative normative notions. (shrink)