Gonzaga University Repository
Not a member yet
2718 research outputs found
Sort by
Reducing the Impact of Geographic Dispersion on the Practice of Servant-Leadership: The Role of Technology in Leading from Afar
Get PDFHermann Hesse’s (1956) novel, The Journey to the East, serves as Greenleaf’s (1970) inspiration for the concept of servant-leadership. In Hesse’s novel, he describes the adventures of the League, a secretive group of both real life and fictional characters. A small element of the League departs from Europe on an eastward pilgrimage. While the other travelers are focused on their own reasons for embarking on this trek, Leo, introduced as the group’s servant, happily embraces his role of carrying luggage, serving the travelers, performing menial tasks, and keeping the organization on track. Suddenly and without warning, Leo disappears from the group. With Leo absent, the group quickly dissolves and the mission fails. Much to the narrator’s surprise, he later discovers that Leo was not the servant, rather the leader of the entire League
High Temperature Co-pyrolysis Thermal air Activation Enhances Biochar Adsorption of Herbicides from Surface Water
No full textRecent interest has arisen in the use of biochar as a low-cost adsorbent for control of organic micropollutants in water. However, compared with activated carbon (AC), biochar adsorption capacity is typically one to two orders of magnitude lower. This study reports batch mode adsorption of anionic (2,4-D, C0 100 μg/L) and neutral (simazine [SZN], C0 1.5 μg/L) herbicides from surface water containing dissolved organic matter at 4 mg/L total organic carbon concentration. Enhanced adsorption was observed by biochars generated from updraft gasifiers under conditions of simultaneous co-pyrolysis thermal air activation (CPTA). 2,4-D adsorption by ≥850°C CPTA biochars was more than 10 times greater on a mass basis compared with biochars generated from a conventional anoxic pyrolysis (CAP) reactor and was equivalent to AC reference adsorbents on a surface area normalized basis. Biochars generated at ≥850°C under CPTA conditions had similar micropore surface area to CAP biochars (∼330 m2/g) but about 2.5 times the mesopore surface area (∼110 m2/g CPTA, ∼40 m2/g CAP), suggestive of increased pore accessibility generated by thermochemical widening of pores and/or removal of pyrolysis tars by CPTA. 2,4-D adsorption from surface water was shown to correlate strongly with biochar H:C molar ratio within but not between biochars grouped by CAP and CPTA generation conditions. Comparing adsorption of 2,4-D and SZN by biochars generated from CAP and CPTA conditions suggested that herbicide interaction with biochar surface functional groups through formation of charge-assisted H-bonds did not play a significant role in herbicide uptake from surface water
From Sensorimotor Dependencies to Perceptual Practices: Making Enactivism Social
Get PDFProponents of enactivism should be interested in exploring what notion of action best captures the type of action–perception link that the view proposes, such that it covers all the aspects in which our doings constitute and are constituted by our perceiving. This article proposes and defends the thesis that the notion of sensorimotor dependencies is insufficient to account for the reality of human perception and that the central enactive notion should be that of perceptual practices. Sensorimotor enactivism is insufficient because it has no traction on socially dependent perceptions (SDPs), which are essential to the role and significance of perception in our lives. Since the social dimension is a central desideratum in a theory of human perception, enactivism needs a notion that accounts for such an aspect. This article sketches the main features of the Wittgenstein-inspired notion of perceptual practices as the central notion to understand perception. Perception, I claim, is properly understood as woven into a type of social practices that includes food, dance, dress, and music. More specifically, perceptual practices are the enactment of culturally structured, normatively rich techniques of commerce of meaningful multi- and intermodal perceptible material. I argue that perceptual practices explain three central features of SDP: attentional focus, aspects’ salience, and modal-specific harmony-like relations
Laudato Si, Marx, and a Human Motivation for Addressing Climate Change
Get PDFIn the face of climate change, moral motivation is central: why should individuals feel compelled to act to combat this problem? Justice-based responses miss two morally salient issues: that the key ethical relationship is between us and the environment, and there is something in it for us to act to aid our environment. In support of this thesis there are two seemingly disparate sources: Pope Francis’ encyclical Laudato Si and the early Marx’s account of human essence as species-being. Francis argues we must see nature as an “other” with whom we have a relationship, rather than dominating nature. Marx considers how we currently interact with “others,” and the harms these interactions cause to us. In both contexts, we harm our environment by not acting to meet its needs, and harm ourselves by making it less likely to develop ourselves as more fully human persons. It is the avoidance of these harms that can motivate us to act against climate change
Alternative Facts and Fake News: Digital mediation and The Affective Spread of Hate in the Era of Trump
Get PDFThe role of negative affects such as fear and hate, their manifestation in atmospheres, manipulability, and mobilization as a response to threat perception play a pivotal role in the current political conjuncture. This essay traces the dissemination of fake news and the role of affective labor in its digital spread through the example of the recent Pizzagate phenomenon. This particular viral story and its real world fallout speak to the turn to a ‘post-truth’ politics, which has been embraced by President Trump and his surrogates, through the appropriation of the term ‘fake news’ and rhetoric of ‘alternative facts’, to describe all forms of dissent and justification for executive actions, respectively. By examining the circulation and coalescence of negative affects such as fear and hate, and their utility in a moment of political uncertainty defined by divisive populist rhetoric, it becomes clear that a reorientation to affective engagements with digital media and facticity is necessary and pressingly urgent
Hate, Conflict, and Public Space: Stand Your Ground Laws and Potential Immunity for Hate Crimes
Get PDFStatistics reveal that hate crimes in the United States have increased for the past two years in a row. From 2014 to 2016, the number of reported hate crimes has increased from 5,479 in 2014, to 5,850 in 2015, to 6,121 in 2016. These numbers do not include crimes that were not shared with the FBI by local law enforcement, or crimes that were not reported to the police at all. Early indicators reveal that the number of hate crimes in 2017 is expected to further continue this upward trend. The current social and political climate has raised much concern regarding the reported increase in hate crimes, and the safety of persons who may be the targets of bias-motivated crime. One concern that has not received much attention in the scholarly literature or otherwise is the intersection of hate crimes and Stand Your Ground laws. Stand Your Ground laws remove the “duty to retreat” requirement in claims of self-defense, and permit a person to use any force necessary to protect oneself when in a public place that the person has a right to occupy. Empirical research on Stand Your Ground laws indicates that these laws contributed to an increase in homicide rates in states that offer Stand Your Ground as a legal defense, and that these laws have an implicit racial bias that affects the outcome of Stand Your Ground criminal cases. As written, these laws offer much subjectivity to the person employing the Stand Your Ground defense. This study examines the use of Stand Your Ground laws as a legal defense and suggests that, given the current social and political climate, these laws need to be modified to ensure that violence against others because of bias or prejudice cannot be translated into fear for one’s safety, and therefore, a justifiable defense for hate crimes
NOW 2019-03 March
No full textCorpus of News on the Web data for March 2019.
The TAR folder contains linguistic data in three formats: Database: This is the format allows for the most robust searches and allows for powerful JOINs across corpus, lexicon, and source tables but requires knowledge of SQL. See Full-text corpus data for more information on how to use the database format. Linear Text: This format provides a textID for each text, and then the entire text on the same line. In this format, words are not annotated for part of speech or lemma. In addition, contracted words like can\u27t are separated into two parts (ca n\u27t) and punctuation is separated from words (eye level . As her). Word, Lemma, Part of Speech: Texts are separated by a line with ## and the textID
Sustainability in the Anthropocene
No full textWe are facing an environmental crisis that some say is ushering a new geological epoch, the Anthropocene, one that threatens not only a great deal of life on the planet but also our understanding of who we are and our relation to the natural world. In the face of this crisis it has become clear that we need a more sustainable culture. In fact the language of sustainability has become pervasive in our culture and has deeply ingrained itself in our understanding of what living a good life would entail. “Sustainability,” however, is a contested word, and it carries with it, often implicitly and unacknowledged, deep philosophical claims that are entangled with all kinds of assumptions and power relations, some of them very problematic. This book attempts to set this urgent goal of sustainability free from its more reductive and harmful interpretations and to thereby apply a more thoughtful environmental ethics to current and emerging technologies, particularly those involving reproduction and the harnessing of energy that dominate our elemental relations to sun and air, wind and water, earth and forest.
The book is divided into 4 sections: (1) Sustainability: A Contested Term, (2) Sustainability and Renewable Technologies: Sun, Air, Wind, Water, (3) Sustainability and Design, and (4) Sustainability and Ethics. The first section sets the context for our studies and opens a space for thinking sustainability in a more thoughtful way than is often the case in contemporary discussions. The next two sections are the heart of our contribution to postphenomenology and technoscience, and the essays, here, turn to concrete examinations of particular technologies and questions of technological design in the light of our environmental crisis. The fourth section closes the book by drawing some more general implications for ethics from the intersection of the foregoing themes
Walking with Head-Mounted Virtual and Augmented Reality Devices: Effects on Position Control and Gait Biomechanics
Get PDFWhat was once a science fiction fantasy, virtual reality (VR) technology has evolved and come a long way. Together with augmented reality (AR) technology, these simulations of an alternative environment have been incorporated into rehabilitation treatments. The introduction of head-mounted displays has made VR/AR devices more intuitive and compact, and no longer limited to upper-limb rehabilitation. However, there is still limited evidence supporting the use of VR and AR technology during locomotion, especially regarding the safety and efficacy relating to walking biomechanics. Therefore, the objective of this study is to explore the limitations of such technology through gait analysis. In this study, thirteen participants walked on a treadmill in normal, virtual and augmented versions of the laboratory environment. A series of spatiotemporal parameters and lower-limb joint angles were compared between conditions. The center of pressure (CoP) ellipse area (95% confidence ellipse) was significantly different between conditions (p = 0.002). Pairwise comparisons indicated a significantly greater CoP ellipse area for both the AR (p = 0.002) and VR (p = 0.005) conditions when compared to the normal laboratory condition. Furthermore, there was a significant difference in stride length (ppp\u3e0.082), except for maximum ankle plantarflexion (p = 0.001). These differences in CoP ellipse area indicate that users of head-mounted VR/AR devices had difficulty maintaining a stable position on the treadmill. Also, differences in the gait parameters suggest that users walked with an unusual gait pattern which could potentially affect the effectiveness of gait rehabilitation treatments. Based on these results, position guidance in the form of feedback and the use of specialized treadmills should be considered when using head-mounted VR/AR devices