30472 research outputs found
Sort by
The Cambridge History of The Gothic, Volume II: Gothic in the Nineteenth Century ed. by Dale Townshend and Angela Wright (review)
No full textIntergenerational contact during and beyond COVID-19
No full textIntergenerational contact is crucial for promoting intergenerational
harmony and reducing ageism. However, the
COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted and changed the nature
and frequency of intergenerational contact. In addition,
research suggests that both ageism towards older adults
and intergenerational threat regarding succession and
consumption, have increased. Through the lens of the Temporally
Integrated Model of Intergroup Contact and Threat
(TIMICAT; Abrams & Eller, 2016), we explore the implications
of these changing dynamics on ageism towards older
adults during and beyond the COVID-19 pandemic. Our
review reveals that research into intergenerational contact
needs to articulate both the time course and salience
of contact and threats before making predictions about
their impacts on prejudice. The implications of understanding
how contact and threat combine to affect ageism
for policy and practice are discussed in relation to employment,
education, and intergenerational contact programs.
We highlight that policy makers play a key role in promoting
intergenerational harmony through the reduction
of narratives that inflame intergenerational tensions and
threat
Everyday activities
No full textThe ease with which humans usually perform everyday activities masks their inherit complexity. Tasks such as setting a table prior to a meal or preparing a hot beverage require the coordination of several cognitive abilities. At the same time, many everyday activities are simple enough to afford investigation in controlled lab settings. One main goal of this issue is to raise awareness of everyday activities as a topic and a field of study in its own right, which allows investigating (a) selected cognitive abilities with high ecological validity and (b) the interplay and integration of key cognitive abilities. To this end, this topic consists of eight papers that span different aspects of everyday activities, ranging from neuroscience through philosophical considerations and implications to lessons from robotics
William Blake’s “Fourfold Vision”: a practical antiquary’s visionary contemplations among the “Couches of the Dead”
Get PDFThis essay argues that the artisanal problems of the ‘practical antiquary’ shaped William Blake’s physiological aesthetics and his experience of ‘Fourfold Vision’. As a draftsman and engraver, Blake captured three-dimensional sepulchral monuments on the flat surface of the page, offering different perspectives on the sculptural object from changing points of view - from above, from the side, in horizontal or vertical orientations. In his time as an apprentice to James Basire, Blake produced drawings of the disinterment of Edward I (1774) and funerary monuments at Westminster for Richard Gough’s Sepulchral Monuments (1786) and Vetusta Monumenta (II, 1789). Building on Ruth Mack’s work on practical aesthetics, I will trace how the technical gaze of the draftsman resurfaces in Blake’s writings, from the ‘couches of the dead’ seen through the ‘eternal gates’ of The Book of Thel (1789) to the visionary contemplations around the death couches in The Four Zoas (c.1796-1807) and Milton (1804-11). As an engraver-poet who invented a medium for self-publication, Blake side-stepped the division of labour between the empirical field-worker and the gentleman author that Noah Heringman finds among the knowledge workers of antiquity. Yet the technical ways of seeing that Blake practiced during his antiquarian apprenticeship can be traced through his visionary contemplations. Thinking through technique, Blake crossed the threshold between engraver and poet and embraced a prophetic physiological aesthetics of “fourfold” vision
Slow phase-locked modulations support selective attention to sound
Get PDFTo make sense of complex soundscapes, listeners must select and attend to task-relevant streams while ignoring uninformative sounds. One possible neural mechanism underlying this process is alignment of endogenous oscillations with the temporal structure of the target sound stream. Such a mechanism has been suggested to mediate attentional modulation of neural phase-locking to the rhythms of attended sounds. However, such modulations are compatible with an alternate framework, where attention acts as a filter that enhances exogenously-driven neural auditory responses. Here we attempted to test several predictions arising from the oscillatory account by playing two tone streams varying across conditions in tone duration and presentation rate; participants attended to one stream or listened passively. Attentional modulation of the evoked waveform was roughly sinusoidal and scaled with rate, while the passive response did not. However, there was only limited evidence for continuation of modulations through the silence between sequences. These results suggest that attentionally-driven changes in phase alignment reflect synchronization of slow endogenous activity with the temporal structure of attended stimuli
Individual differences in dealing with classroom noise disturbances
Get PDFClassrooms are noisy: when children are engaged in solo work, they also hear background babble, noise from outdoor, people moving around. Few studies investigating the effects of noise on academic tasks use naturalistic stimuli. Questions also remain regarding why some children are more impaired by noise than others. This study compared primary school children’s performance at three academic tasks (text recall, reading comprehension, mathematics) in silence, and while hearing irrelevant verbal noise (storytelling, n =33) or mixed noise (outdoor noise, movement, babble, n =31). We found that noise does not impair overall performance. Children might use compensatory strategies (e.g. re-reading) to reach the same level of performance in silence and noise. Individual differences in selective attention and working memory were not related to the impact of noise, with one exception: children with lower working memory were more impaired by noise when doing mathematics. Replication on a larger sample is needed
Cross-border mergers and acquisitions, regional cultural diversity and acquirers’ corporate social responsibility: evidence from China listed companies
No full textDespite the abundant research on the effect of cross-border mergers and acquisitions (M&As), very few studies examined the effect of M&As on acquirers' corporate social responsibility (CSR), especially in the context of emerging economies. We used data of Chinese listed enterprises and the difference-in-differences (DID) approach to examine the effect of cross-border M&As on the CSR of Chinese acquirers. The results show that cross-border M&As have a positive and significant impact on Chinese acquirers’ CSR as well as four detailed dimensions of CSR (Corporate Governance, Employee Relations, Environment Protection, and Product). In addition, we use two indicators, the number of dialects and the proportion of the population using dialects in a particular region, to measure the regional cultural diversity. The results show that the positive relationship between overseas M&As and CSR is strengthened by higher cultural diversity in the region. Moreover, the positive effect of the aforementioned four dimensions of CSR is also stronger when the cultural diversity is more substantial
No modern Irrawaddy River until the late Miocene-Pliocene
Get PDFThe deposits of large Asian rivers with unique drainage geometries have attracted considerable attention due to their explanatory power concerning tectonism, surface uplift and upstream drainage evolution. This study presents the first petrographic, heavy mineral, Nd and Sr isotope geochemistry, and detrital zircon geochronology results from the Holocene Irrawaddy megadelta alongside modern and ancient sedimentary provenance datasets to assess the late Neogene evolution of the Irrawaddy River. Contrary to models advocating a steady post-middle Miocene river, we reveal an evolution of the Irrawaddy River more compatible with regional evidence for kinematic reorganization in Myanmar during late-stage India-Asia collision. Quaternary sediments are remarkably consistent in terms of provenance but highlight significant decoupling amongst fine and coarse fraction 87Sr/86Sr and εNd due to hydraulic sorting. Only well after the late Miocene do petrographic, heavy mineral, isotope geochemistry, and detrital zircon U–Pb results from the trunk Irrawaddy and its tributaries achieve modern-day signatures. The primary driver giving rise to the geometry and provenance signature of the modern Irrawaddy River was regional late Miocene (≤10 Ma) basin inversion coupled with uplift and cumulative displacement along the Sagaing Fault. Middle to late Miocene provenance signatures cannot be reconciled with modern river geometries, and thus require significant loss of headwaters feeding the Chindwin subbasin after ∼14 Ma and the northern Shwebo subbasin after ∼11 Ma. Large-scale reworking after ∼7 Ma is evidenced by modern Irrawaddy River provenance, by entrenchment of the nascent drainage through Plio-Pleistocene inversion structures, and in the transfer of significant sediment volumes to the Andaman Sea
Data sources:
Access Repository Dashboard
Do you manage Birkbeck Institutional Research Online? Access insider analytics, issue reports and manage access to outputs from your repository in the CORE Repository Dashboard!