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Portraying improvement in the management of chronic pain: a multi-modal longitudinal interpretative phenomenological analysis study
Get PDFChronic pain is a common, profoundly disabling and complex condition whose effects on identity may explain the distress experienced by those affected by it. This paper concerns a study exploring how the relationship with pain and sense of self evolved following participation in a pain management program (PMP). Participants were interviewed at three timepoints: before attending a PMP, 1 month after the PMP and 6 months after the PMP. To facilitate a deep experiential description of pain and its effects, interviews were guided by participant-generated drawings of pain and Self. Interviews and drawings were analyzed longitudinally using interpretative phenomenological analysis. The evolving experience of participants was outlined through different trajectory types. Here we describe the upward and positive trajectory of three female participants who were able to regain control over their lives. From a state of psychological stress where pain was represented as an aggressive and oppressive presence, participants' drawings, their narratives and indeed their lives, changed for the best. Pain stopped being the main feature, they were able to integrate it into their lives, make important changes and find a new balance. The results demonstrate the idiosyncratic nature of chronic pain and offer a nuanced account of its links to the lifeworld of those living with it
Small sums, big impact: corruption and microfinance institutions
Get PDFMicrofinance Institutions (MFIs) have been promoted worldwide as developmental platforms that can help eliminate some of the major global challenges such as poverty and economic development. The effectiveness of using MFIs to fulfil such expectations depends on their performance, which can be
affected by a range of institutional factors such as corruption, rule of law and financial sector development. However, there is a lack of clarity on whether these factors are performance inhibitors or
promoters. Using gender as a mediating factor, this study develops and tests these relationships on MFI performance, with the aim of contributing to research on institutions and corruption in the Global South. Drawing on the MFI performance model, the study uses data on MFIs operating in 33 African countries. The results reveal that the control of corruption reduces MFIs’ operating expenditure, while the control of corruption increases MFIs’ operating income. Drawing from the essentialist perspective of the theory of Social Construction of Gender, it is argued that female borrowers from MFIs are shown to have a mediating impact on the relationship between the variables tested (such as control of corruption) and MFI performance. The study also has public policy relevance for nations seeking to use MFIs as means of fostering entrepreneurship and economic development
Dramatic irony: a case study in the mutual benefit of combining social neuroscience with film theory
Get PDFHow do we understand the experiences of characters in a movie? Similar to real life, viewers attribute mental states to characters through a process known as Theory of Mind (ToM). Filmmakers commonly use Dramatic Irony, a narrative device where the audience knows something that at least one characters does not. From a social neuroscience perspective, understanding the cognitive mechanisms that underlie dramatic irony can provide a remarkable opportunity to study ToM in a more ecologically relevant context. While descriptive narrative theories of dramatic irony exist, these have never been studied in relation to contemporary social neuroscience. In this opinion piece, we aim to bring together these two traditionally isolated disciplines to propose a cross-disciplinary research roadmap for investigating the social neuroscience of dramatic irony in cinema
Colonial exceptions: The International Labour Organization and child labour in British Africa, c.1919–1940
Get PDFFrom 1919, the International Labour Organization sought to improve protections for workers globally. Concurrently, the organization was dominated by colonial powers whose economies relied on the exploitation of colonized workers. This article explores how the International Labour Organization navigated this contradictory situation during the interwar period, focussing on its approach to child labour in British Africa. The introduction of a universal minimum employment age and the abolition of child labour were founding goals of the International Labour Organization. However, colonial powers wanted to maintain the extensive employment of children and the use of child labour in their colonies. Britain used its influence within the International Labour Organization to promote racialized constructions of childhood and to pluralize working children’s rights in International Labour Organization instruments. While the International Labour Organization’s tripartite structure did also provide a forum through which colonial labour practices could be challenged, Britain and its supporters ultimately succeeded in constructing a two-tier system of international labour law which rendered colonized children less protected than children in the industrialized West. In creating colonial exceptions, the International Labour Organization pursued and promoted a hierarchical and exclusionary form of internationalism. Overall, the article provides new insights into the development of the International Labour Organization and its legislation, as well as broader histories of childhood and of internationalism
Executive functions in aging: an experimental and computational study of the Wisconsin Card Sorting and Brixton Spatial Anticipation tests
Get PDFIn order to explore the effect of normal aging on executive function, we tested 25 younger adults and 25 neurologically healthy older adults on the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST) and the Brixton Spatial Anticipation Test (BRXT), two classic tests of executive function. We found that older participants were more likely than younger participants to err on both tasks, but the additional errors of older participants tended to be related to task set maintenance and rule inference rather than perseveration. We further found that the tendency to perseverate (across all participants) on the WCST was related to the tendency to produce stimulus or re- sponse perseverations on the BRXT, rather than any tendency to perseverate on BRXT rule application. Finally, on both tasks, older participants were also slower, particularly on trials following an error, than younger participants. To explore the neurocomputational basis for the observed behaviours we then extended an existing model of schema-modulated action selec- tion on the WCST to the BRXT. We argue on the basis of the model that the performance of older participants on both tasks reflects a slower update of schema thresholds within the basal ganglia, coupled with a decrease in sensitivity to feedback
Walling In and Walling Out: Why are We Building New Barriers to Divide Us? Edited by Laura McAtackney and Randall H. McGuire
No full textState complicity in the extralegal killing of Ahmadi Muslims in Pakistan: a case for brutalisation
Get PDFSince 1984, at least 274 Ahmadi Muslims have been extralegally killed in Pakistan on account of their faith. Despite these killings being committed almost exclusively by non-state actors, this paper probes the extent to which such violence can be traced back to the state. We employ the brutalisation thesis to demonstrate how two landmark shifts in the law — the formal declaration of Ahmadis as ‘non-Muslim’ and the introduction of the death penalty for blasphemy — have, in conjunction with discriminatory policy and inflammatory rhetoric, shaped the sociocultural landscape so profoundly as to inspire anti-Ahmadi violence. By mapping data on the extralegal killing of Ahmadi Muslims against these pivotal events, we argue that the state’s curation of an environment in which anti-Ahmadi violence is both enabled and condoned renders the extralegal killing of Ahmadi Muslims by non-state actors so indivisible from the state as to be deemed state sanctioned
Machine learning for trust, security, and privacy in computing and communications
Get PDFFog computing, as a new distributed computing framework, extends the tasks originally done in the cloud data center to the edge of the network and brings more serious security challenges while providing convenience. Abnormal network traffic detection is an effective means to defense malicious behavior, can detect a variety of known attacks. Although the application of deep learning method in the field of network abnormal traffic detection is easier than traditional machine learning methods, there are still problems of poor recognition accuracy and false alarm rate. In this paper, we use the semi-supervised network anomaly detection model (NADLA) that combines the long-short-term memory neural network method and the self-encoder method to solve this problem. NADLA analyzes network traffic through the time characteristics and behavior characteristics of traffic, and optimizes the accuracy and false alarm rate of network traffic classification. In addition, we improved the preprocessing method to improve the sensitivity of the trained model to network abnormal traffic. The NADLA model is tested on NSL-KDD dataset, and the results show that the proposed model can improve the accuracy and F1-value of network anomaly traffic detection
Interpersonal mindfulness in leadership development: a Delphi study
Get PDFMindfulness is increasingly being used within leadership development to enhance managers’ wellbeing and leadership capability. Given the relational nature of leadership, we posit that an interpersonal form of mindfulness has the potential to offer benefits over and above those provided by personal or internal mindfulness. We therefore chose a Delphi research methodology to consult and achieve consensus among expert practitioners, exploring if and how interpersonal mindfulness, in the specific form of the Interpersonal Mindfulness Program (IMP), can contribute to leadership development. Our aims were, firstly, to identify the necessary components of an IMP-based leadership development program and, secondly, to create guidelines for practitioners. Through four phases of data-gathering and feedback, we achieved consensus among 39 experts on guidelines for how to develop a leadership development program based on the IMP, contextual factors that will act as facilitators or barriers, and selection and screening of participants. The intention is that the resulting guidelines will support the implementation of coherent, consistent IMP-based leadership development, sensitive both to its origins and to the context
NGLP: The Janeway Pilot
No full textAn update on the progress of the Janeway Next Generation Library Publishing project pilot
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