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Interworlds and inter-identities in Mémoires d’outre-mer and Scrabble
No full textMemoires d’outre-mer and Scrabble, a biography of Ferrier’s paternal grandfather and an autobiographical account of Ferrier’s childhood respectively, are two quite different works from the point of view of structure, setting and characters. But I propose to analyse them together in this article because I believe they have much in common; a particular attitude towards the natural world, a non-standard view of space and time as well as of human identity and memory, and a deep-seated belief in the power of language. In this essay I focus specifically on the theme of human identity within, and as part of, the external world, and will be making use of some conceptual frameworks from ecocriticism in order to look at these works from a new perspective
Intellectual humility and language attitudes: the case of Hebrew speakers’ views towards Arabic and multilingualism
Get PDFIntellectual humility (IH) remains a relatively novel concept, though past research indicates a relationship to open-mindedness, lower propensity towards political bias and amenability to engage with opposing viewpoints. Intellectual humility has shown mixed effects on foreign language learning (Moskowitz & Dewaele [2020]. The role of intellectual humility in foreign language enjoyment and foreign language classroom anxiety. Eurasian Journal of Applied Linguistics, 6, 521–541), though it has not been explored in relation to language attitudes. The current study investigates connections between IH and language attitudes among Hebrew L1 speakers. Treating multilingualism and Arabic as separate variables, a Hebrew survey was administered, adapted from the Comprehensive Intellectual Humility Scale (CIHS) (Krumrei-Mancuso & Rouse [2016]. The development and validation of the comprehensive intellectual humility scale. Journal of Personality Assessment, 98(2), 209–221.) and a questionnaire on multilingualism (Tannenbaum et al. [2020]. Toward a new multilingual educational policy in Israel: Attitudes and perceptions of teachers and students. The Modern Language Journal, 104(3), 581–600.). Statistical analyses found that openness to revising one’s viewpoints predicted attitudes towards multilingualism, and respect for others’ viewpoints predicted attitudes towards Arabic. Qualitative data explored the charged topic of the status of Arabic in Israel, finding that responses contained themes of intellectual humility such as prosociality and respect for others’ viewpoints, lending support to the quantitative findings
“The Worker's Party sold out the street vendors”: Revanchist populism and the crisis of labor in Belo Horizonte, Brazil
Get PDFIn this paper, I examine the links between revanchist populism and the labor crisis in Brazil, a country with a stratified labor market where informality is prevalent among low-income, racialized groups. I analyze the struggles of street vendors for accessing urban space in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, where the Worker’s Party (PT) played a key role in evicting vendors from public spaces and criminalizing their activity in the early 2000s. I focus on the connections between this initiative and a more recent “revitalization” policy that displaced street vendors from public spaces in the city center. In this context, I explore the political discourses of displaced workers during the 2018 elections that brought Bolsonaro to power. I show how the eviction stimulated antipetismo (anti-PT sentiment) among street vendors by triggering collective memories and rage against the party that “sold them out.” I argue that street vendors strongly identify as workers but are excluded from the unionized waged workingmen notion central to unions and Latin American left-wing parties. By discussing how street vendors reiterate their position as workers and not criminals, I highlight their identification with a moral notion of worker aligned with Bolsonaro’s conservative anti-crime agenda. I thus argue that support for Bolsonaro among street vendors was stimulated by the shortcomings of Brazil’s urban reform as well as the lack of appropriate policy responses to an increasingly heterogeneous and informalized workforce. I conclude by emphasizing the importance of supporting the collective struggles of non-waged workers as a path beyond revanchist populism
How do executive functions influence children’s reasoning about counterintuitive concepts in mathematics and science?
Get PDFMany scientific and mathematical concepts are counterintuitive because they conflict with misleading perceptual cues or incorrect naive theories that we build from our everyday experiences of the world. Executive functions (EFs) influence mathematics and science achievement, and inhibitory control (IC), in particular, might facilitate counterintuitive reasoning. Stop & Think (S&T) is a computerised learning activity that trains IC skills. It has been found effective in improving primary children’s mathematics and science academic performance in a large scale RCT trial (Palak et al., 2019; Wilkinson et al., 2020). The current study aimed to investigate the role of EFs and the moderating effects of S&T training on counterintuitive mathematics and science reasoning. A sample of 372 children in Years 3 (7- to 8-year-olds) and 5 (9- to 10-year-olds) were allocated to S&T, active control or teaching as usual conditions, and completed tasks assessing verbal and visuospatial working memory (WM), IC, IQ, and counterintuitive reasoning, before and after training. Cross-sectional associations between counterintuitive reasoning and EF were found in Year 5 children, with evidence of a specific role of verbal WM. The intervention benefited counterintuitive reasoning in Year 3 children only and EF measures were not found to predict which children would most benefit from the intervention. Combined with previous research, these results suggest that individual differences in EF play a lesser role in counterintuitive reasoning in younger children, while older children show a greater association between EFs and counterintuitive reasoning and are able to apply the strategies developed during the S&T training to mathematics and science subjects. This work contributes to understanding why specifically the S&T intervention is effective. This work was preregistered with the ISRCTN registry (TRN: 54726482) on 10/10/2017
Evolution of an Accretionary Complex (LeMay Group) and Terrane Translation in the Antarctic Peninsula
Get PDFThe LeMay Group accretionary complex of Alexander Island (Antarctic Peninsula) comprises
a 4 km thick succession of variably deformed turbidites associated with thrust slices of ocean floor basalts. The depositional age and provenance of the succession is uncertain with estimates ranging from Carboniferous to Cretaceous. The accretion history is also poorly established and whether the LeMay Group developed allochthonously and accreted during an episode of Cretaceous terrane translation. We have examined the geochronology and geochemistry of 22 samples from across the entire accretionary complex to determine
its depositional, provenance and accretion history. The accretionary complex has been subdivided into
four separate groups based on detrital zircon U-Pb age and Lu-Hf provenance analysis. Groups 1 and 2 are interpreted to be a continuation of the extensive Permian accretionary complexes of West Gondwana and
have a depositional age of c. 255 Ma, with volcaniclastic input from the extensive silicic volcanism of the Choiyoi Province. Accretion of the LeMay Group to the continental margin developed during the mid-Triassic, potentially related to the Peninsula Orogeny and an episode of flat-slab subduction of the proto-Pacific plate. Group 3 is only identified from an island to the west of Alexander Island and has a mid-Cretaceous depositional age and provenance akin to offshore sequences from Thurston Island. A para-autochthonous origin is suggested, with mid-Cretaceous accretion associated with the melange belts of central Alexander Island. Group 4 is also a distinct unit with an Early Jurassic depositional age and a source more closely related to the Antarctic Peninsula
A color-avoiding approach to subgraph counting in Bounded Expansion Classes
Get PDFWe present an algorithm to count the number of occurrences of a pattern graph H on h vertices as an induced subgraph in a host graph G. If G belongs to a bounded expansion class, the algorithm runs in linear time, if G belongs to a nowhere dense class it runs in almost-linear time. Our design choices are motivated by the need for an approach that can be engineered into a practical implementation for sparse host graphs. Specifically, we introduce a decomposition of the pattern H called a counting dag which encodes an order-aware, inclusion-exclusion counting method for H. Given such a counting dag and a suitable linear ordering of G as input, our algorithm can count the number of times H appears as an induced subgraph in G in time , where denotes the maximum size of the weakly h-reachable sets in . This implies, combined with previous results, an algorithm with running time which only takes H and G as input. We note that with a small modification, our algorithm can instead use strongly h-reachable sets with running time , resulting in an overall complexity of when only given H and G. Because orderings with small weakly/strongly reachable sets can be computed relatively efficiently in practice (Nadara et al.: in J Exp Algorithmics 103:14:1–14:16, 2018), our algorithm provides a promising alternative to algorithms using the traditional p-treedepth coloring framework (O’Brien and Sullivan in: Experimental evaluation of counting subgraph isomorphisms in classes of bounded expansion, CoRR, arXiv:1712.06690, 2017). We describe preliminary experimental results from an initial open source implementation which highlight its potential
Čas grobosti (Time of Rudeness)
No full textIndividualism brought society to a state where politeness replaced roughness. It may be that masks of politeness are just masks and that we mean all the worst about each other behind external polite behavior, but masks are a necessary condition for social cohesion. Maintaining civilisation in behavior, however played, is essential to ensure that society does not slip into widespread chaos and violence
The court - Emperors, empresses, eunochs, courtiers and entertainers
No full textBoook synopsis: Discover the stories of 100 women and men whose activities in the 19th century laid the foundations of modern China
Benefits of adaptive cognitive training on cognitive abilities in women treated for primary breast cancer: findings from a one-year randomised control trial intervention
Get PDFObjective: Evidence shows that adaptive cognitive training is beneficial for women with a breast cancer diagnosis. However, transfer effects of training benefits on perceived and objective measures of cognition are not substantiated. We investigated the transfer effects of online adaptive cognitive training (dual n-back training) on subjective and objective cognitive markers in a longitudinal design.
Methods: Women with a primary diagnosis of breast cancer completed 12 sessions of adaptive cognitive training or active control training over two weeks. Objective assessments of working memory capacity, as well as performance on a response inhibition task, were taken while electrophysiological measures were recorded. Self-reported measures of cognitive and emotional health were collected pre-training, post-training, 6-months, and at 1-year follow-up times.
Results: Adaptive cognitive training resulted in greater working memory capacity on the Change Detection Task and improved cognitive efficiency on the Flanker task together with improvements in perceived cognitive ability at 1-year post-training.
Conclusions: Adaptive cognitive training can improve cognitive abilities with implications for long-term cognitive health in survivorship
On fear of missing out, social networks use disorder tendencies and meaning in life
Get PDFMuch research has been conducted on the association between social networks use disorder tendencies (SNUD; i.e. problematic social media use) and well-being. In more detail, a meta-analysis and further research suggest an inverse association between higher SNUD tendencies and lower well-being. In existing studies on social media use and well-being, this association has often been investigated by asking participants about their life satisfaction and/or emotional well-being. A path that has only recently been used to shed further light on SNUD tendencies is the assessment of meaning in life. Against this background, the present study aimed to investigate both the search for and presence of meaning in life in the context of SNUD tendencies in 955 participants. To the best of our knowledge and beyond what has been mentioned, this study is the first to investigate the links between meaning in life variables and state/trait fear of missing out (FoMO), with FoMO being a critical variable known to be linked to the overuse of digital technologies. In a structural equation model, we observed that associations between FoMO and meaning in life variables was mediated by SNUD tendencies. Although the present study is of cross-cultural nature and cannot establish causality, it might be the case that proneness to FoMO might trigger SNUD tendencies and as a consequence, results in more search for meaning in life, while hindering presence of meaning in life
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