Humanism and the Human

Author(s):  
Joseph Winters

This chapter engages humanism and its fundamental assumptions by working through critical theory, black feminism, and black studies. It contends that there is a tension at the heart of humanism—while the ideal human appears to be the most widespread and available category, it has been constructed over and against certain qualities, beings, and threats. To elaborate on this tension, this chapter revisits the work of authors like Karl Marx and Michel Foucault. Marx acknowledges that the human is a site of conflict and antagonism even as his thought betrays a lingering commitment to progress and humanism. Foucault goes further than Marx by underscoring the fabricated quality of man and the ways in which racism functions to draw lines between those who must live and those who must die. In response to Marx and Foucault’s tendency to privilege Europe, this chapter engages black feminism and Afro-pessimism—Sylvia Wynter, Hortense Spillers, and Frank Wilderson—who show how the figure of the human within humanism is defined in opposition to blackness.

2020 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Maciej Ligaszewski ◽  
Przemysław Pol

AbstractThe aim of this study was to compare the quality of clutches and reproduction results of two groups of Roman snails (Helix pomatia) from the same local population, laying eggs simultaneously in semi-natural farm conditions and in a natural habitat. The study material were Roman snails aged 2 or more years which had entered the third phenological season of their life and thus the first season of sexual maturity. Observations were conducted at an earthen enclosure in a greenhouse belonging to the experimental farm for edible snails at the National Research Institute of Animal Reproduction in Balice near Kraków (Poland) as well as at a site where a local population naturally occurs in the uncultivated park surrounding the Radziwiłł Palace. In the June-July season, differences among such parameters as weight of clutch, number of eggs in clutch, mean egg weight, and hatchling percentage when compared to the total number of eggs in the clutch were compared. It was determined that clutches of eggs from the natural population laid in the greenhouse were of lesser weight (P<0.01), contained fewer eggs (P<0.05), and the mean weight of individual eggs was less (P<0.05) than in clutches laid simultaneously in a natural habitat. Both in the greenhouse and the natural habitat, in the first phase of laying eggs (June) the weight of the clutch and number of eggs its contained were greater than in the second phase (July). However, only for snails laying eggs in the greenhouse were these differences statistically significant (P<0.05) and highly significant (P<0.01), respectively. Statistically significant differences were not observed in hatchling percentage between eggs laid in the greenhouse and the natural habitat. The lower number of eggs laid in the farmed conditions of the greenhouse was successfully compensated for by the absence of mass destruction by rodents which occurred in the natural habitat.


2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Leonor Alexandra Rodríguez Álava

Este artículo está encaminado a caracterizar el proceso de formación continua del docente del nivel medio en ejercicio asociado a la formación y desarrollo de sus competencias docentes, para lo que fueron utilizados métodos como   el análisis y síntesis, inducción y deducción, abstracción y concreción, la entrevista, la encuesta y  el cuestionario, donde a partir de sus resultados se  llega a la consideración de que la formación continua es la vía idónea para la formación y desarrollo de competencias docentes en los profesores en ejercicio, donde se debe asumir un modelo que propicie la reflexión sobre la propia práctica del docente, un clima de colaboración   y el profesor como sujeto activo de ese proceso.   Palabras claves: calidad educativa,   competencias docentes,   educador, estudio, preparación continua,  ABSTRACT   This article aims to characterize the process of education for teachers of middle level associated with exercise training and development of their teaching skills, for which methods were used as analysis and synthesis, induction and deduction, abstraction and concreteness, interview and questionnaire survey, where from their results leads to the consideration that the training is the ideal way for the formation and development of teaching skills in practicing teachers, where they must assume a model that encourages reflection on own teaching practice, a climate of collaboration and the teacher as an active subject of that process Keywords: quality of education, teaching skills, teacher, study, continuous preparation


Author(s):  
Hem Borker

This ethnography provides a theoretically informed account of the educational journeys of students in girls’ madrasas in India. It focuses on the unfolding of young women’s lives as they journey from home to madrasa and beyond. Using a series of ethnographic portraits and bringing together the analytical concepts of community, piety, and aspiration, it highlights the fluidity of the essences of the ideal pious Muslim woman. It illustrates how the madrasa becomes a site where the ideals of Islamic womanhood are negotiated in everyday life. At one level, girls value and adopt practices taught in the madrasa as essential to the practice of piety (amal). At another level, there is a more tactical aspect to cultivating one’s identity as a madrasa-educated Muslim girl. The girls invoke the virtues of safety, modesty, and piety learnt in the madrasa to reconfigure conventional social expectations around marriage, education, and employment. This becomes more apparent in the choices exercised by the girls after leaving the madrasa, highlighted in this book through narratives of madrasa alumni pursuing higher education at a central university in Delhi. The focus on journeys of girls over a period of time, in different contexts, complicates the idealized and coherent notions of piety presented by anthropological literature on women’s participation in Islamic piety projects. Further, the educational stories of girls challenge the media and public representations of madrasas in India, which tend to caricature them as outmoded religious institutions with little relevance to the educational needs of modernizing India. Mapping madrasa students’ personal journeys of becoming educated while leading pious lives allows us to see how these young women are reconfiguring notions of Islamic womanhood.


Plants ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (5) ◽  
pp. 929
Author(s):  
Hanadi Sawalha ◽  
Rambod Abiri ◽  
Ruzana Sanusi ◽  
Noor Azmi Shaharuddin ◽  
Aida Atiqah Mohd Noor ◽  
...  

Nanotechnology is a promising tool that has opened the doors of improvement to the quality of human’s lives through its potential in numerous technological aspects. Green chemistry of nanoscale materials (1–100 nm) is as an effective and sustainable strategy to manufacture homogeneous nanoparticles (NPs) with unique properties, thus making the synthesis of green NPs, especially metal nanoparticles (MNPs), the scientist’s core theme. Researchers have tested different organisms to manufacture MNPs and the results of experiments confirmed that plants tend to be the ideal candidate amongst all entities and are suitable to synthesize a wide variety of MNPs. Natural and cultivated Eucalyptus forests are among woody plants used for landscape beautification and as forest products. The present review has been written to reflect the efficacious role of Eucalyptus in the synthesis of MNPs. To better understand this, the route of extracting MNPs from plants, in general, and Eucalyptus, in particular, are discussed. Furthermore, the crucial factors influencing the process of MNP synthesis from Eucalyptus as well as their characterization and recent applications are highlighted. Information gathered in this review is useful to build a basis for new prospective research ideas on how to exploit this woody species in the production of MNPs. Nevertheless, there is a necessity to feed the scientific field with further investigations on wider applications of Eucalyptus-derived MNPs.


Author(s):  
Chiwon Ahn ◽  
Seungjae Lee ◽  
Jongshill Lee ◽  
Jaehoon Oh ◽  
Yeongtak Song ◽  
...  

This study aimed to assess the effectiveness of a novel chest compression (CC) smart-ring-based feedback system in a manikin simulation. In this randomized, crossover, controlled study, we evaluated the effect of smart-ring CC feedback on cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR). The learnability and usability of the tool were evaluated with the System Usability Scale (SUS). Participants were divided into two groups and each performed CCs with and without feedback 2 weeks apart, using different orders. The primary outcome was compression depth; the proportion of accurate-depth (5–6 cm) CCs, CC rate, and the proportion of complete CCs (≤1 cm of residual leaning) were assessed additionally. The feedback group and the non-feedback group showed significant differences in compression depth (52.1 (46.3–54.8) vs. 47.1 (40.5–49.9) mm, p = 0.021). The proportion of accurate-depth CCs was significantly higher in the interventional than in the control condition (88.7 (30.0–99.1) vs. 22.6 (0.0–58.5%), p = 0.033). The mean SUS score was 83.9 ± 8.7 points. The acceptability ranges were ‘acceptable’, and the adjective rating was ‘excellent’. CCs with smart-ring feedback could help achieve the ideal range of depth during CPR. The smart-ring may be a valuable source of CPR feedback.


2020 ◽  
pp. 073346482096261
Author(s):  
Carol Opdebeeck ◽  
Michael A. Katsaris ◽  
Anthony Martyr ◽  
Ruth A. Lamont ◽  
James A. Pickett ◽  
...  

Pet ownership has been associated with positive outcomes in many populations, yet the associations with physical and psychological wellbeing in people with dementia remain unclear. The current study used baseline data from 1,542 people living at home with mild-to-moderate dementia from the Improving the experience of Dementia and Enhancing Active Life (IDEAL) programme. Regression analyses investigated associations of pet ownership and pet care with self-reports of walking, loneliness, depression, and quality of life (QoL). After adjusting for covariates, having any pet was associated with higher likelihood of walking over 3 hr in the last week. Those with a dog and who were involved in its care were less likely to be lonely than those with no dog. Having any pet but no involvement in its care was associated with increased depression and decreased QoL compared with those without a pet. The key factor in the associations was involvement in the care of the pet by the person with dementia.


Author(s):  
Olga S. Bezuglova ◽  
Artem E. Popov ◽  
Marina N. Dubinina ◽  
Pavel N. Skripnikov

The work deals with the study of the influence of humic preparation ‟BIO-Don” on indicators of soil fertility, the enzymatic activity of Сalcic Chernozem (Pachic) at the experimental site, as well as on the productivity and quality of fruit crops, for example, cherries varieties Talisman and Vasilisa in terms of work experience in the open ground in the territory of «Agrofirm “the Red garden”». Treatment of fruit trees was carried out once by drip irrigation in a dosage of 300 l/ha of working solution with a concentration of gp 0.008 g/l for carbon, soil samples were taken before treatment, two weeks and a month after the application of the humic preparation, a site without the use of “BIO-Don” was used as a control option. The treatment of plants with a humic preparation increases the activity of the enzymes catalase, invertase and phosphatase, especially during the period of mass ripening of fruits. Accordingly, at the same time, the content of mobile phosphorus and exchangeable potassium decreases, which is due to the increased removal of these elements by plants. Chemical analysis of fruit products for the content of soluble solids and titrated acidity revealed a statistically significant increase in these indicators in fruits from areas treated with humic preparation, which is manifested by their greater taste saturation.


2021 ◽  
Vol 3/2021 (2) ◽  
pp. 41-50
Author(s):  
Lucia Ludvigh Cintulová ◽  
Libuša Radková

This article presents an investigation into how primary-school pupils imagine a good teacher and what characteristics of teachers they appreciate. The teacher’s personality is a quality of central importance to the teaching process. Teachers find themselves in many diverse situations and they cannot always remain the same. Each situation requires different qualities, attitudes and knowledge. In different situations, the teacher can achieve the same educational outcome in various ways, by using a range of methods. No teacher can be expected to have the ideal personality and cannot possibly have all the desired qualities, so some qualities compensate for the lack of others. However, the crucial aspects of a good teacher’s personality is authenticity, naturalness and positive relationship with pupils.


Author(s):  
Gerry Mackie

Deliberative democracy arose in opposition to a reigning aggregative conception of democracy in political science, solely about voting. Not long ago, political scientists arduously believed, based on logical speculations, that democratic voting is arbitrary and meaningless and that democratic voting is irrational as well. Rather than challenge these mistaken views about voting, democratic theorists instead singled out and celebrated deliberation. We review how those views about voting failed and report democratic theory’s reconciliation with voting.. Deliberative theory often says that variation in quality of deliberation can shape voting for better or worse; we add the idea that choice of voting rule can shape the value of deliberation for better or worse, illustrated with three examples. Finally, we compare the ideal values of voting and discussion, which overlap but are not identical.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anca Hanea ◽  
David Peter Wilkinson ◽  
Marissa McBride ◽  
Aidan Lyon ◽  
Don van Ravenzwaaij ◽  
...  

Experts are often asked to represent their uncertainty as a subjective probability. Structured protocols offer a transparent and systematic way to elicit and combine probability judgements from multiple experts. As part of this process, experts are asked to individually estimate a probability (e.g., of a future event) which needs to be combined/aggregated into a final group prediction. The experts' judgements can be aggregated behaviourally (by striving for consensus), or mathematically (by using a mathematical rule to combine individual estimates). Mathematical rules (e.g., weighted linear combinations of judgments) provide an objective approach to aggregation. However, the choice of a rule is not straightforward, and the aggregated group probability judgement's quality depends on it. The quality of an aggregation can be defined in terms of accuracy, calibration and informativeness. These measures can be used to compare different aggregation approaches and help decide on which aggregation produces the "best" final prediction.In the ideal case, individual experts' performance (as probability assessors) is scored, these scores are translated into performance-based weights, and a performance-based weighted aggregation is used. When this is not possible though, several other aggregation methods, informed by measurable proxies for good performance, can be formulated and compared. We use several data sets to investigate the relative performance of multiple aggregation methods informed by previous experience and the available literature. Even though the accuracy, calibration, and informativeness of the majority of methods are very similar, two of the aggregation methods distinguish themselves as the best and worst.


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