Kosmic rhetoric: Reading democracy alongside Walt Whitman and the Bhagavad Gita*

Walt Whitman’s poetry challenges how rhetorical scholars are accustomed to studying democracy. Adopting an ontology similar to, and a vocabulary inspired by, the Bhagavad Gita, Whitman roots democracy squarely in concerns of soteriology, metaphysics, spiritual practice, and the care of the self. By recovering what I call Whitman’s “kosmic rhetoric,” my goal in this essay is to inspire rhetorical scholars to discuss, debate, and reconsider several of our most deeply held assumptions about democratic politics, including anti-foundationalism and the mechanics of dissent.     

Assertive Discipline in a school for pupils with emotional and behavioural difficulties

The management of difficult and disruptive behaviour continues to be an issue in many classrooms. In this article, Jeremy Swinson, a senior educational psychologist and honorary lecturer at Liverpool John Moores University, and Mike Cording, an education consultant working in Southport, consider the impact of in-service training on the use of Assertive Discipline in a school for pupils with emotional and behavioural difficulties (EBD). Swinson and Cording report improved rates of 'on-task' behaviour for pupils across the age range and reduction in numbers of disruptive incidents. These changes in pupil behaviour mirror an increase in teachers' use of positive feedback and praise. Swinson and Cording argue that these techniques are effective even for those pupils who are seen as being disaffected or very discouraged.     

Stochastic Einstein Locality Revisited

I discuss various formulations of stochastic Einstein locality(SEL), which is a version of the idea of relativistic causality,that is, the idea that influences propagate at most as fastas light. SEL is similar to Reichenbach's Principle of the CommonCause (PCC), and Bell's Local Causality. My main aim is to discuss formulations of SEL for a fixed backgroundspacetime. I previously argued that SEL is violated by the outcomedependence shown by Bell correlations, both in quantum mechanicsand in quantum field theory. Here I reassess those verdictsin the light of some recent literature which argues that outcomedependence does not violate the PCC. I argue that the verdictsabout SEL still stand. Finally, I briefly discuss how to formulate relativistic causalityif there is no fixed background spacetime.

1 Introduction

2Formulating Stochastic Einstein Locality

2.1 Events and regions

2.2 The idea of SEL

2.3 Three formulations of SEL

2.3.1The formulations

2.3.2Comparisons

2.4 Implications betweenthe formulations

2.4.1 Conditions forthe equivalence of SELD1and SELD2

2.4.2 Conditions for theequivalence of SELS andSELD2

3 Relativistic Causality in the Bell Experiment

3.1 The background

3.1.1 The Bell experiment reviewed

3.1.2My previous position

3.2 A common common cause? The Budapestschool

3.2.1 Resuscitatingthe PCC

3.2.2 Known proofs of aBell inequality need a strongPCC

3.2.3 Two distinctions

3.2.4Szabó's model

3.2.5A common common cause is plausible

3.2.6 Bell inequalitiesfrom a weak PCC: the Bern school

3.3 SEL in the Bell experiment

3.3.1 PCC and SEL are connectedby PPSI

3.3.2 The need forother judgments

3.3.3 Weak vs.strong SELD

4 SEL in Algebraic Quantum Field Theory

4.1 The story so far

4.2 Questions

4.2.1 Our formulations

4.2.2 The BudapestandBern schools

5 SEL in DynamicalSpacetimes

5.1 SEL for metric structure?

5.2 SEL for causalsets?

5.2.1 The causal set approach

5.2.2Labelled causalsets; general covariance

5.2.3 Deducing thedynamics

5.2.4The fate of SEL

     

老年人的体育锻炼与身心健康

本文回顾了近十年来国外有关老年人的体育锻炼与身心健康方面的研究成果,具体讨论了老年人体育锻炼的生理心理效应,老年妇女与体育锻炼,老年人参加体育锻炼的动机以及影响老年人参加和坚持体育锻炼的因素等四个问题。     

On the Meanings of Self‐Regulation: Digital Humanities in Service of Conceptual Clarity

Self‐regulation is of interest both to psychologists and to teachers. But what the word means is unclear. To define it precisely, two studies examined the American Psychological Association's system of controlled vocabulary—specifically, the 447 associated terms it presents—and used techniques from the Digital Humanities to identify 88 closely related concepts and six broad conceptual clusters. The resulting analyses show how similar ideas are interrelated: self‐control, self‐management, self‐observation, learning, social behavior, and the personality constructs related to self‐monitoring. A full‐color network map locates these concepts and clusters relative to each other. It also highlights some of the interests of different audiences, which can be described heuristically using two axes that have been labeled abstract versus practical and self‐oriented versus other‐oriented.     

A Campus-Wide Study of STEM Courses: New Perspectives on Teaching Practices and Perceptions

At the University of Maine, middle and high school science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) teachers observed 51 STEM courses across 13 different departments and collected information on the active-engagement nature of instruction. The results of these observations show that faculty members teaching STEM courses cannot simply be classified into two groups, traditional lecturers or instructors who teach in a highly interactive manner, but instead exhibit a continuum of instructional behaviors between these two classifications. In addition, the observation data reveal that student behavior differs greatly in classes with varied levels of lecture. Although faculty members who teach large-enrollment courses are more likely to lecture, we also identified instructors of several large courses using interactive teaching methods. Observed faculty members were also asked to complete a survey about how often they use specific teaching practices, and we find that faculty members are generally self-aware of their own practices. Taken together, these findings provide comprehensive information about the range of STEM teaching practices at a campus-wide level and how such information can be used to design targeted professional development for faculty.     

Development of an accelerometer-based multivariate model to predict free-living energy expenditure in a large military cohort

Abstract

This study developed a multivariate model to predict free-living energy expenditure (EE) in independent military cohorts. Two hundred and eighty-eight individuals (20.6 ± 3.9 years, 67.9 ± 12.0 kg, 1.71 ± 0.10 m) from 10 cohorts wore accelerometers during observation periods of 7 or 10 days. Accelerometer counts (PAC) were recorded at 1-minute epochs. Total energy expenditure (TEE) and physical activity energy expenditure (PAEE) were derived using the doubly labelled water technique. Data were reduced to n = 155 based on wear-time. Associations between PAC and EE were assessed using allometric modelling. Models were derived using multiple log-linear regression analysis and gender differences assessed using analysis of covariance. In all models PAC, height and body mass were related to TEE (P < 0.01). For models predicting TEE (r ² = 0.65, SE = 462 kcal · d^?1 (13.0%)), PAC explained 4% of the variance. For models predicting PAEE (r ² = 0.41, SE = 490 kcal · d^?1 (32.0%)), PAC accounted for 6% of the variance. Accelerometry increases the accuracy of EE estimation in military populations. However, the unique nature of military life means accurate prediction of individual free-living EE is highly dependent on anthropometric measurements.     

Using comparative genomics for inquiry-based learning to dissect virulence of Escherichia coli O157:H7 and Yersinia pestis

Genomics and bioinformatics are topics of increasing interest in undergraduate biological science curricula. Many existing exercises focus on gene annotation and analysis of a single genome. In this paper, we present two educational modules designed to enable students to learn and apply fundamental concepts in comparative genomics using examples related to bacterial pathogenesis. Students first examine alignments of genomes of Escherichia coli O157:H7 strains isolated from three food-poisoning outbreaks using the multiple-genome alignment tool Mauve. Students investigate conservation of virulence factors using the Mauve viewer and by browsing annotations available at the A Systematic Annotation Package for Community Analysis of Genomes database. In the second module, students use an alignment of five Yersinia pestis genomes to analyze single-nucleotide polymorphisms of three genes to classify strains into biovar groups. Students are then given sequences of bacterial DNA amplified from the teeth of corpses from the first and second pandemics of the bubonic plague and asked to classify these new samples. Learning-assessment results reveal student improvement in self-efficacy and content knowledge, as well as students' ability to use BLAST to identify genomic islands and conduct analyses of virulence factors from E. coli O157:H7 or Y. pestis. Each of these educational modules offers educators new ready-to-implement resources for integrating comparative genomic topics into their curricula.