Constitutional Alchemy

2020 ◽  
pp. 019145372097474
Author(s):  
Nomi Claire Lazar

In ‘The End of Law’, Bill Scheuerman illustrates the ways normativity, context and decision interlace, putting the lie to Carl Schmitt’s claim that decision is pure will. In doing so, Scheuerman gestures toward a truth about the alchemical nature of constitutions. Like decisions, I argue, constitutions are alchemical mechanisms for actualizing norms and normativizing facts. They accomplish this in part through mediating between dynamic (individual and political) selves before and after the moment of decision or coming-into-force. Schmitt’s error – or perhaps his strategy – is to make static this dynamic process of political self-formation. Viewed as static, it is more difficult to discern the process of normativizing facts and concretizing norms. I show how contemporary populist authoritarians are particularly skilled at harnessing this strategy. Populist authoritarians often use constitutional change to consolidate not just power but constructed identity. They are able to do so because constitutions provide this strategy of dynamic identity formation, which, by generating new normative imperatives, in turn shores up legitimacy.

2017 ◽  
pp. 122-127
Author(s):  
Thi Luu Nguyen ◽  
Thi Tan Nguyen

Objectives: To assess the effect of electronic acupuncture combined with “Tam ty thang” remedy in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis by wind-cold-damp. Materials and methods: prospective study, comparing before and after treatment, including 43 patients who were diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis by wind-cold-damp according to traditional medicine. Results: good level occupied 69,8%, and fair good level occupied 30,2%.The improved motor function accounted for 95.3%, to relieve pain up to 95,3%, reducing inflammation of VSS in 1 hour at the moment No 31,65, N28 17,88. The improvement in the level of activity of the hand reached 48,8% for good level. Conclusions: The method of electronic acupuncture combined with “Tam ty thang” remedy have a good effect in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis by wind-cold-damp and it didn’t cause significantly side effects in clinic. Key words: rheumatoid arthritis, electronic acupuncture, “Tam ty thang” remedy


Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 36
Author(s):  
Kholoud Al-Ajarma

The Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca (Hajj) is one of the five pillars of Islam and a duty which Muslims must perform—once in a lifetime—if they are physically and financially able to do so. In Morocco, from where thousands of pilgrims travel to Mecca every year, the Hajj often represents the culmination of years of preparation and planning, both spiritual and logistical. Pilgrims often describe their journey to Mecca as a transformative experience. Upon successfully completing the pilgrimage and returning home, pilgrims must negotiate their new status—and the expectations that come with it—within the mundane and complex reality of everyday life. There are many ambivalences and tensions to be dealt with, including managing the community expectations of piety and moral behavior. On a personal level, pilgrims struggle between staying on the right path, faithful to their pilgrimage experience, and straying from that path as a result of human imperfection and the inability to sustain the ideals inspired by pilgrimage. By ethnographically studying the everyday lives of Moroccans after their return from Mecca, this article seeks to answer the questions: how do pilgrims encounter a variety of competing expectations and demands following their pilgrimage and how are their efforts received by members of their community? How do they shape their social and religious behavior as returned pilgrims? How do they deal with the tensions between the ideals of Hajj and the realities of daily life? In short, this article scrutinizes the religious, social and personal ramifications for pilgrims after the completion of Hajj and return to their community. My research illustrates that pilgrimage contributes to a process of self-formation among pilgrims, with religious and non-religious dimensions, which continues long after Hajj is over and which operates within, and interacts with, specific social contexts.


2017 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
pp. 539-554 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tom Roberts

The notion that the Earth has entered a new epoch characterized by the ubiquity of anthropogenic change presents the social sciences with something of a paradox, namely, that the point at which we recognize our species to be a geologic force is also the moment where our assumed metaphysical privilege becomes untenable. Cultural geography continues to navigate this paradox in conceptually innovative ways through its engagements with materialist philosophies, more-than-human thinking and experimental modes of ontological enquiry. Drawing upon the philosophy of Gilbert Simondon, this article contributes to these timely debates by articulating the paradox of the Anthropocene in relation to technological processes. Simondon’s philosophy precedes the identification of the Anthropocene epoch by a number of decades, yet his insistence upon situating technology within an immanent field of material processes resonates with contemporary geographical concerns in a number of important ways. More specifically, Simondon’s conceptual vocabulary provides a means of framing our entanglements with technological processes without assuming a metaphysical distinction between human beings and the forces of nature. In this article, I show how Simondon’s concepts of individuation and transduction intersect with this technological problematic through his far-reaching critique of the ‘hylomorphic’ distinction between matter and form. Inspired by Simondon’s original account of the genesis of a clay brick, the article unfolds these conceptual challenges through two contrasting empirical encounters with 3D printing technologies. In doing so, my intention is to lend an affective consistency to Simondon’s problematic, and to do so in a way that captures the kinds of material mutations expressive of a particular technological moment.


2016 ◽  
Vol 32 (6) ◽  
pp. 384-389 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rob HW Strijkers ◽  
Mark AF de Wolf ◽  
Cees HA Wittens

Postthrombotic syndrome is the most common complication after deep venous thrombosis. Postthrombotic syndrome is a debilitating disease and associated with decreased quality of life and high healthcare costs. Postthrombotic syndrome is a chronic disease, and causative treatment options are limited. Prevention of postthrombotic syndrome is therefore very important. Not all patients develop postthrombotic syndrome. Risk factors have been identified to try to predict the risk of developing postthrombotic syndrome. Age, gender, and recurrent deep venous thrombosis are factors that cannot be changed. Deep venous thrombosis location and extent seem to predict severity of postthrombotic syndrome and are potentially suitable as patient selection criteria. Residual thrombosis and reflux are known to increase the incidence of postthrombotic syndrome, but are of limited use. More recently developed treatment options for deep venous thrombosis, such as new oral factor X inhibitors and catheter-directed thrombolysis, are available at the moment. Catheter-directed thrombolysis shows promising results in reducing the incidence of postthrombotic syndrome after deep venous thrombosis. The role of new oral factor X inhibitors in preventing postthrombotic syndrome is still to be determined.


2021 ◽  
pp. 99-116
Author(s):  
D.J. Balanev ◽  

An iterated version of the game "Prisoner's Dilemma" is used as a model of cooperation largely due to the wide range of strategies that the subjects can use. The problem of the effec-tiveness of strategies for solving the Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma (IPD) is most often considered from the point of view of information models, where strategies do not take into account the relationship that arise when real people play. Some of these strategies are obvious, others depend upon social context. In our paper, we use one of the promising directions in the development of studying IPD strategies – the use of artificial neural networks. We use neural networks as a modeling tool and as a part of game environment. The main goal of our work is to build an information model that predicts the behavior of an individual person as well as group of people in the situation of solving of social dilemma. It takes into account social relationship, including those caused by experimental influence, gender differences, and individual differences in the strategy for solving cognitive tasks. The model demonstrates the transition of individual actions into socially determined behavior. Evaluation of the effect of socialization associated with the procedure of the game provides additional information about the effectiveness and characteristics of the experimental impact.The paper defines the minimum unit of analysis of the IPD player's strategy in a group, the identity with which can be considered as a variable. It discusses the influence of the experi-mentally formed group identity on the change of preferred strategies in social dilemmas. We use the possibilities of neural networks as means of categorizing the results of the prisoner's iterative dilemma in terms of the strategy applied by the player, as well as social factors. We define the patterns of changes in the IPD player's strategy before and after socialization are determined. The paper discusses the questions of real player's inclination to use IPD solution strategies in their pure form or to use the same strategy before and after experimental inter-ventions related to social identity formation. It is shown that experimentally induced socialization can be considered as a mechanism for increasing the degree of certainty in the choice of strategies when solving IPD task. It is found out that the models based on neural networks turn out to be more efficient after experi-mentally evoked social identity in a group of 6 people; and the models based on neural net-works are least effective in the case of predicting a subject's belonging to a gender group. When solving IPD problems by real people, it turns out to be possible to talk about generalized strategies that take into account not only the evolutionary properties of «pure» strategies, but also reflect various social factors.


Gesture ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 354-376 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dea Hunsicker ◽  
Susan Goldin-Meadow

All established languages, spoken or signed, make a distinction between nouns and verbs. Even a young sign language emerging within a family of deaf individuals has been found to mark the noun-verb distinction, and to use handshape type to do so. Here we ask whether handshape type is used to mark the noun-verb distinction in a gesture system invented by a deaf child who does not have access to a usable model of either spoken or signed language. The child produces homesigns that have linguistic structure, but receives from his hearing parents co-speech gestures that are structured differently from his own gestures. Thus, unlike users of established and emerging languages, the homesigner is a producer of his system but does not receive it from others. Nevertheless, we found that the child used handshape type to mark the distinction between nouns and verbs at the early stages of development. The noun-verb distinction is thus so fundamental to language that it can arise in a homesign system not shared with others. We also found that the child abandoned handshape type as a device for distinguishing nouns from verbs at just the moment when he developed a combinatorial system of handshape and motion components that marked the distinction. The way the noun-verb distinction is marked thus depends on the full array of linguistic devices available within the system.


Rev Rene ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 22 ◽  
pp. e62584
Author(s):  
Sergio Vital da Silva Junior ◽  
Aline Gomes Machado ◽  
Anny Michelle Rodrigues da Silva Alves ◽  
Katia Jaqueline da Silva Cordeiro ◽  
Maíra Bonfim Barbosa ◽  
...  

Objective: to understand the impact of music on the intensive care for COVID-19 as an instrument to humanize assistance from the perspective of nurses who work on assistance. Methods: qualitative study carried out with seven intensive care nurses working in the COVID-19 Intensive Care Unit of a public state hospital. Sample reached through theoretical saturation. Data were collected using interviews through the on-line application WhatsApp, guided by a semi-structured guide. Results: the following discursive categories emerged: Feelings of health professionals and humanized actions in intensive care; Music therapy to provide integral care for people with COVID-19 in the score of intensive care; Living in the moment; Music therapy as an instrument for spirituality in the intensive care environment. Conclusion: the nursing intensive care did not only carry out a biological treatment, but considered all aspects of the human being, using to do so humanization by music.


2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 52-57
Author(s):  
Ria Muji Rahayu

Tomato (Lycopersicum commune) contains potassium and lycopene which has the effect blood pressure. The study aims to understand the effect of tomato juice in menopause women with hypertension. This was a pre experimental research. The population was menopausal women and hypertension case amount 11 persons, using total sampling. The research instrument was observational paper dan sphigmanometer. The research result was analyzed by normality test of Shapiro-Wilk test. Statistical test with Wilcoxon test. The research result shown there is no difference mean value between blood pressure before and after treated by tomato juice. They are 6,00 mmHg (systole) and 1,82 mmHg (diastole). Data analyzed by It is 0,05. obtains p value systole 0,072 and diastole 0,334 where p value < α, this H0 is accepted and H1 is rejected. The analysis result shown there is no difference between blood pressure before and after treated by tomato juice at Posyandu Kantil sub-district of Mojoroto, Kediri. Based on the research result revealed there are still many shortcomings that research do so very influential on the final result, and is expected to be study in the future.


2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-27
Author(s):  
Милан Јовановић

In this paper we survey and analyse the results from the project dedicated to the question – do logic courses influence students attitude concerning logic, and if they do, in which way? Our main prediction was that the logic courses do significantly influence relevant students’ beliefs, and that influence (or the change) varies depending on the theoretical direction of the course in question. The method of our empirical inquiry was test-based examination of students’ attitudes towards specific claims. We conduct the testing twice, before and after students have went through the relevant courses, and then compared the tests. Results, although different from hypothesis to hypothesis, do generally support the conclusion that logic courses influence relevant students’ beliefs, and they typically do so in accordance to the theoretical direction of the given courses syllabuses.


PLoS ONE ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (12) ◽  
pp. e0244110
Author(s):  
Jonathan Charles Flavell ◽  
Bryony McKean

Recently, Flavell et al. (2019) demonstrated that an object’s motion fluency (how smoothly and predictably it moves) influences liking of the object itself. Though the authors demonstrated learning of object-motion associations, participants only preferred fluently associated objects over disfluently associated objects when ratings followed a moving presentation but not a stationary presentation. In the presented experiment, we tested the possibility that this apparent failure of associative learning / evaluative conditioning was due to stimulus choice. To do so we replicate part of the original work but change the ‘naturally stationary’ household object stimuli with winged insects which move in a similar way to the original motions. Though these more ecologically valid stimuli should have facilitated object to motion associations, we again found that preference effects were only apparent following moving presentations. These results confirm the potential of motion fluency for ‘in the moment’ preference change, and they demonstrate a critical boundary condition that should be considered when attempting to generalise fluency effects across contexts such as in advertising or behavioural interventions.


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