For years, both psychologists and the general public have been fascinated with the notion that there are gender differences in cognitive abilities; even now, flashy cover stories exploiting this idea dominate major news magazines, while research focuses on differences in verbal, mathematical, spatial, and scientific abilities across gender. This new volume in the Counterpoints series not only summarizes and addresses the validity of such research, but also questions its ideology and consequences. Why do we search so intently for these differences? (...) And what are the social and cultural implications of this relentless emphasis? Do biological mechanisms, in fact, contribute to the male-female differences in cognition? These are just a few of the questions generated by this controversial topic as it is debated throughout the book. (shrink)

Fibroblast growth factor receptors (FGFRs) have been implicated in many developmental and regenerative events, including axial organisation, mesodermal patterning, keratinocyte organisation and brain development. The consensus view that this reflects a role for one or other of the nine known members of the fibroblast growth factor family in these processes has recently been challenged by the suggestion that FGFRs might be directly activated by a much wider range of ligands, including heparan sulphate proteoglycans and neural cell adhesion molecules. In addition, (...) two novel soluble ligands for FGFRs have been identified using yeast two‐hybrid technology. Overall, the new findings suggest that in terms of ligand binding the FGFRs might be an even more promiscuous family of receptor tyrosine kinases than was already appreciated. (shrink)

Research on early-divergent angiosperms, including Amborella, the putative sister to all other extant angiosperms, is increasingly used as a yardstick to infer the nature of the hypothetical ancestral angiosperm. Some traits are relatively diverse (and hence relatively labile) in this phylogenetic grade, compared with the more derived eudicot clade, in which developmental patterns have become increasingly canalized. One of the many mysteries surrounding the origin of the angiosperms is the evolutionary origin of the Polygonum-type embryo sac (monosporic, eight-nucleate and seven-celled) (...) that occurs in the majority of flowering plants. Observations on the megagametophyte of Amborella are conflicting, but a recent report of a supernumerary synergid in this genus1 raises the question of whether the Polygonum-type embryo sac is derived by duplication of a four-nucleate structure or by reduction from a multicellular structure. BioEssays 28: 1067–1071, 2006. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

This book has its philosophical starting point in the idea that group-based social movements have positive implications for peace politics. It explores ways of imagining community, nation, and international systems through a political lens that is attentive to diversity and different lived experiences. Contributors suggest how groups might work toward new nonviolent conceptions and experiences of diverse communities and global stability.

Different styles of social interaction are one of the core characteristics of autism spectrum disorder. Social differences among individuals with ASD often include difficulty in discerning the emotions of neurotypical people based on their facial expressions. This review first covers the rich body of literature studying differences in facial emotion recognition in those with ASD, including behavioral studies and neurological findings. In particular, we highlight subtle emotion recognition and various factors related to inconsistent findings in behavioral studies of FER in (...) ASD. Then, we discuss the dual problem of FER – namely facial emotion expression or the production of facial expressions of emotion. Despite being less studied, social interaction involves both the ability to recognize emotions and to produce appropriate facial expressions. How others perceive facial expressions of emotion in those with ASD has remained an under-researched area. Finally, we propose a method for teaching FER [FER teaching hierarchy ] based on recent research investigating FER in ASD, considering the use of posed vs. genuine emotions and static vs. dynamic stimuli. We also propose two possible teaching approaches: a standard method of teaching progressively from simple drawings and cartoon characters to more complex audio-visual video clips of genuine human expressions of emotion with context clues or teaching in a field of images that includes posed and genuine emotions to improve generalizability before progressing to more complex audio-visual stimuli. Lastly, we advocate for autism interventionists to use FER stimuli developed primarily for research purposes to facilitate the incorporation of well-controlled stimuli to teach FER and bridge the gap between intervention and research in this area. (shrink)

ABSTRACTPrevious work on the contribution of family environments to adolescent emotion dysregulation has tended to focus on broad parenting characteristics ; however, it is possible that day-to-day variability in parenting may also relate to emotion dysregulation. The current study sought to test whether inconsistency in the quality of daily parent-youth interactions related to multiple indices of emotion dysregulation in adolescents. Two-hundred-twenty-two adolescents participated with one parent. Adolescents completed 14-days of diary reporting on the quality of interactions with their parent and (...) their emotion dysregulation experiences for each day. Analyses reveal that, beyond the effects of average interaction quality, adolescents with greater variability in the quality of their interactions with their parent reported greater average emotion dysregulation across the days of diary recording and demonstrated greater variability in thei... (shrink)

Can sentence comprehension impairments in aphasia be explained by difficulties arising from dependency completion processes in parsing? Two distinct models of dependency completion difficulty are investigated, the Lewis and Vasishth (2005) activation-based model and the direct-access model (DA; McElree, 2000). These models' predictive performance is compared using data from individuals with aphasia (IWAs) and control participants. The data are from a self-paced listening task involving subject and object relative clauses. The relative predictive performance of the models is evaluated using k-fold (...) cross-validation. For both IWAs and controls, the activation-based model furnishes a somewhat better quantitative fit to the data than the DA. Model comparisons using Bayes factors show that, assuming an activation-based model, intermittent deficiencies may be the best explanation for the cause of impairments in IWAs, although slowed syntax and lexical delayed access may also play a role. This is the first computational evaluation of different models of dependency completion using data from impaired and unimpaired individuals. This evaluation develops a systematic approach that can be used to quantitatively compare the predictions of competing models of language processing. (shrink)

Can sentence comprehension impairments in aphasia be explained by difficulties arising from dependency completion processes in parsing? Two distinct models of dependency completion difficulty are investigated, the Lewis and Vasishth (2005) activation‐based model and the direct‐access model (DA; McElree, 2000). These models' predictive performance is compared using data from individuals with aphasia (IWAs) and control participants. The data are from a self‐paced listening task involving subject and object relative clauses. The relative predictive performance of the models is evaluated using k‐fold (...) cross‐validation. For both IWAs and controls, the activation‐based model furnishes a somewhat better quantitative fit to the data than the DA. Model comparisons using Bayes factors show that, assuming an activation‐based model, intermittent deficiencies may be the best explanation for the cause of impairments in IWAs, although slowed syntax and lexical delayed access may also play a role. This is the first computational evaluation of different models of dependency completion using data from impaired and unimpaired individuals. This evaluation develops a systematic approach that can be used to quantitatively compare the predictions of competing models of language processing. (shrink)

Facial expressions of emotion play an important role in human social interactions. However, posed expressions of emotion are not always the same as genuine feelings. Recent research has found that facial expressions are increasingly used as a tool for understanding social interactions instead of personal emotions. Therefore, the credibility assessment of facial expressions, namely, the discrimination of genuine (spontaneous) expressions from posed (deliberate/volitional/deceptive) ones, is a crucial yet challenging task in facial expression understanding. With recent advances in computer vision and (...) machine learning techniques, rapid progress has been made in recent years for automatic detection of genuine and posed facial expressions. This paper presents a general review of the relevant research, including several spontaneous vs. posed (SVP) facial expression databases and various computer vision based detection methods. In addition, a variety of factors that will influence the performance of SVP detection methods are discussed along with open issues and technical challenges in this nascent field. (shrink)

Antonio Gramsci is one of the major social and political theorists of the 20th century whose work has had an enormous influence on several fields, including educational theory and practice. Gramsci and Education demonstrates the relevance of Antonio Gramsci's thought for contemporary educational debates. The essays are written by scholars located in different parts of the world, a number of whom are well known internationally for their contributions to Gramscian scholarship and/or educational research. The collection deals with a broad range (...) of topics, including schooling, adult education in general, popular education, workers' education, cultural studies, critical pedagogy, multicultural education, and the role of intellectuals in contemporary society. (shrink)

The college hookup scene is a profoundly gendered and heteronormative sexual field. Yet the party and bar scene that gives rise to hookups also fosters the practice of women kissing other women in public, generally to the enjoyment of male onlookers, and sometimes facilitates threesomes involving same-sex sexual behavior between women. In this article, we argue that the hookup scene serves as an opportunity structure to explore same-sex attractions and, at least for some women, to later verify bisexual, lesbian, or (...) queer sexual identities. Based on quantitative and qualitative data and combining queer theory and identity theory, we offer a new interpretation of women’s same-sex practices in the hookup culture. Our analysis contributes to gender theory by demonstrating the utility of identity theory for understanding how non-normative gender and sexual identities are negotiated within heteronormatively structured fields. (shrink)

The concepts of health and disease play pivotal roles in medicine and the health professions This volume brings together the requisite literature for understanding current discussions and debates these concepts. The selections in the volume attempt to present a wide range of views concerning the nature of the concepts of health and issues using both historical and contemporary sources -- Back cover.

The implementation of new methods of treating and preventing disease raises many question of both technical and moral character. Currently, many studies focus on developing a screening test for preeclampsia (PE), a disease complicating 2–8% of pregnancies, potentially causing severe consequences for pregnant women and their fetuses. The purpose is to develop a test that can identify pregnancies at high risk for developing PE sufficiently early in pregnancy to allow for prophylaxis. However, the question of implementing a screening test for (...) PE does not only involve an evaluation of technical feasibility and clinical efficacy, it also requires an analysis of how the test influences the conditions and choices for those tested. This study evaluates state-of-the-art techniques for preeclampsia screening in an ethical framework, pointing out the central areas of moral relevance within the context of such screening activity. Furthermore, we propose ethical guidelines that a screening programme for PE should meet in order to become an uncontroversial addition to prenatal health care. (shrink)

Patients have received experimental pharmaceuticals outside of clinical trials for decades. There are no industry-wide best practices, and many companies that have granted compassionate use, or ‘preapproval’, access to their investigational products have done so without fanfare and without divulging the process or grounds on which decisions were made. The number of compassionate use requests has increased over time. Driving the demand are new treatments for serious unmet medical needs; patient advocacy groups pressing for access to emerging treatments; internet platforms (...) enabling broad awareness of compelling cases or novel drugs and a lack of trust among some that the pharmaceutical industry and/or the FDA have patients’ best interests in mind. High-profile cases in the media have highlighted the gap between patient expectations for compassionate use and company utilisation of fair processes to adjudicate requests. With many pharmaceutical manufacturers, patient groups, healthcare providers and policy analysts unhappy with the inequities of the status quo, fairer and more ethical management of compassionate use requests was needed. This paper reports on a novel collaboration between a pharmaceutical company and an academic medical ethics department that led to the formation of the Compassionate Use Advisory Committee. Comprising medical experts, bioethicists and patient representatives, CompAC established an ethical framework for the allocation of a scarce investigational oncology agent to single patients requesting non-trial access. This is the first account of how the committee was formed and how it built an ethical framework and put it into practice. (shrink)

Health, Disease, and Illness brings together a sterling list of classic and contemporary thinkers to examine the history, state, and future of ever-changing "concepts" in medicine.

Gathers medical and legal documents, opinions from various perspectives, and a timeline of events in the Terri Shiavo case to provide a resource for examining the moral and ethical issues surrounding end-of-life decisions.

Can parents who choose not to vaccinate their children be held legally liable for any harm that results? The state of laboratory and epidemiological understanding of a disease such as measles makes it likely that a persuasive causal link can be established between a decision to not vaccinate, a failure to take appropriate precautions to isolate a non-vaccinated child who may have been exposed to measles from highly vulnerable persons, and a death. This paper argues that, even if a parent (...) chooses to not vaccinate a child under a state law permitting exemptions, that decision does not create complete protection against liability for the adverse consequences of that choice. (shrink)

Consider this hypothetical scenario involving a choice not to vaccinate a child. Ms. S has a niece who is autistic. The girl's parents are suspicious that there is some relationship between her autism and her Measles Mumps and Rubella vaccination. They have shared their concerns with Ms. S. She then declines to have her own daughter, Jinny S., vaccinated with the MMR vaccine. To bypass the state's mandatory vaccination requirement, Ms. S claims a state-legislated philosophical exemption, whereby she simply attests (...) to the fact that she is opposed to vaccinating her daughter due to a conscientiously held belief. At the age of four, Jinny goes on a trip by airplane to Germany with her mother. After returning to the United States, she attends daycare despite having some mild cold symptoms. Subsequently, she develops a classic measles rash, at which point her mother brings her to a pediatrician and keeps her home from daycare. (shrink)

In this article, we explore ethical perceptions of three product packaging issues as viewed by packaging professionals, brand managers, and ethically-interested consumers. We examine, differences between business practitioners and consumers with respect to ethical sensitivity, perceived consequences of business practices, and perceived industry norms. Additionally, we explore the prevalence of two types of values, pragmatic and moral, to determine if the use of these value-types differs among the three groups. We find that business practitioners exhibit less ethical sensitivity. Businesspeople also (...) feel that the likelihood and severity of negative consequences resulting from a packaging practice is lower than do ethically-interested consumers. Finally, business practitioners do not differ from consumers with respect to moral values. (shrink)

Corporations and investors are responding to recent major ethical scandals with increased attention to the social impacts of business operations. In turn, business colleges and their international accrediting body are increasing their efforts to make students more aware of the social context of corporate activity. Business education literature lacks data on student attitudes toward such education. This study found that postscandal business students, particularly women, are indeed interested in it. Their interest is positively related to their past donation, volunteerism, and (...) non-profit organization membership activities, whether limited or extensive. Some evidence supports the proposition that education can modify internal principles over time. We offer suggestions for classroom and program uses of these findings in hopes of enriching the vision of future business managers. (shrink)

In this paper, the authors describe an aspect of a program of research around grief and clinical practice. The first phase of the study involves examination of experiences of grief with attention to troublesome or problematic beliefs that fuel the extent of suffering in the bereaved. The data, obtained from a review of videotaped clinical interviews with families seen in the Family Nursing Unit at the University of Calgary, were analyzed according to philosophical hermeneutic tradition. Findings suggest that grief is (...) an experience that is ongoing, that changes in nature over time, but that involves a continuing relationship with the deceased; it is a graceful, periodic, deliberate walk backwards while keeping a sure foot in living forward. (shrink)

Corporations and investors are responding to recent major ethical scandals with increased attention to the social impacts of business operations. In turn, business colleges and their international accrediting body are increasing their efforts to make students more aware of the social context of corporate activity. Business education literature lacks data on student attitudes toward such education. This study found that postscandal business students, particularly women, are indeed interested in it. Their interest is positively related to their past donation, volunteerism, and (...) non-profit organization membership activities, whether limited or extensive. Some evidence supports the proposition that education can modify internal principles over time. We offer suggestions for classroom and program uses of these findings in hopes of enriching the vision of future business managers. (shrink)

_341_ _Objectives: _In patients with multivessel disease both the detection of the culprit lesion and the exact allocation are important preconditions for sufficient treatment and improved outcome. In a vessel based approach the combination of quantitative coronary angiography and fractional flow reserve measured by a pressure wire should be advantageous compared to myocardial SPECT, as morphological and functional information is delivered simultaneously. Therefore our aim was to evaluate MS in the detection and allocation of hemodynamically significant stenoses obtained by the (...) combined gold standard QCA plus FFR in patients with multivessel disease. _Methods: _FFR and QCA of 95 vessels in 80 patients have been evaluated. Hemodynamically significant target lesions were defined as intermediate stenoses between 50 and 75% with an FFR. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe negativity bias is the tendency for individuals to give greater weight, and often exhibit more rapid and extreme responses, to negative than positive information. Using the Deese-Roediger-McDermott illusory memory paradigm, the current study sought to examine how the negativity bias might affect both correct recognition for negative and positive words and false recognition for associated critical lures, as well as how trait neuroticism might moderate these effects. In two experiments, participants studied lists of words composed of semantic associates of (...) an unpresented word. Half of the lists were comprised of positive words and half were comprised of negative words. As expected, individuals remembered negative list words better than positive list words, consistent with a negativity bias in correct recognition. When tested immediately, individuals also exhibited greater false memory for negative versus positive critical lures. When tested after a 24-hr delay... (shrink)

This handbook presents a much-needed and comprehensive exploration of the rapidly growing fields of animal welfare and law. In recent years there has been increasing attention paid to our complex, multifaceted relationships with other animals, and in particular, the depth and breadth of various societal uses of animals. This has led to a reconsideration of their moral and social status, which has sometimes challenged the interests of those who use animals. In such a contested domain, sound evidence and reasoning become (...) particularly important. Through firm commitment to such principles, this book explores the biological foundations for the moral consideration of animals, and for evolving conceptualisations of animal welfare. It reviews in detail the welfare concerns associated with numerous forms of animal use. The inclusion of key recent developments such as climate change, pandemics and antimicrobial resistance, ensure this text is among the most current in its field. The ethical implications of the various uses of animals by society are considered, and chapters provide important recommendations for reforms of practice, law or policy. The status of animal law internationally, and in major world regions, is reviewed. Finally, the book considers human behavioural change, and strategies for improving stakeholder communication and education. The handbook is essential reading for students and scholars of animal welfare, animal law and animal ethics everywhere, and for policymakers and other professionals working in the animal welfare sector. (shrink)

The aim of this study was to analyze the psychometric properties of the Eating Disorder Inventory (EDI)-3 test to evaluate eating disorders in young Chilean population. Methods: The sample consisted of 1,091 Chilean adolescents and young people (i.e., 476 men and 615 women) between 15 and 28 years old, from the metropolitan region, and four regions from the coast and south-central zone of the country. The reliability and factorial structure of the instrument were analyzed, replicating the confirmatory factor analyses ofBrookings (...) et al. (2020), evaluating four additional models that included bifactor exploratory structural equation modeling (ESEM), bifactor, and two-bifactor. Results: A majority of the subscales presented alphas and omegas equal to or greater than 0.70, with the exception of asceticism (α = 0.543, ω = 0.552) and interpersonal alienation (α = 0.684, ω = 0.695) scales, which are consistent with the values of the Spanish and Mexican non-clinical samples. The best fit indices were obtained by the ESEM two-bifactor model, with twelve specific factors corresponding to the EDI-3 subscales and two general orthogonal factors (i.e., risk subscales and psychological subscales), consistently with the theoretical basis. (shrink)

Although research has found that long-term mindfulness meditation practice promotes executive functioning and the ability to sustain attention, the effects of brief mindfulness meditation training have not been fully explored. We examined whether brief meditation training affects cognition and mood when compared to an active control group. After four sessions of either meditation training or listening to a recorded book, participants with no prior meditation experience were assessed with measures of mood, verbal fluency, visual coding, and working memory. Both interventions (...) were effective at improving mood but only brief meditation training reduced fatigue, anxiety, and increased mindfulness. Moreover, brief mindfulness training significantly improved visuo-spatial processing, working memory, and executive functioning. Our findings suggest that 4 days of meditation training can enhance the ability to sustain attention; benefits that have previously been reported with long-term meditators. (shrink)