scholarly journals Examining Fuel Use in Antiquity: Archaeobotanical and Anthracological Approaches in Southwest Asia

2015 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 192-195 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexia Smith ◽  
Krista Dotzel ◽  
Joyce Fountain ◽  
Lucas Proctor ◽  
Madelynn Von Baeyer

This article considers the study of wood and dung fuel use in antiquity across Southwest Asia by anthracologists and archaeobotanists. In recent years, the socially conditioned nature of fuel use has been highlighted and many scholars are stressing the central importance of fuel to pre-modern societies as on par with subsistence and tool use. By elevating and unifying the study of ancient fuel through anthracological, archaeobotanical, geochemical, and micromorphological studies, detailed insights into cultural practices, decision making, and resource use in the past can be gained. We provide a brief review of studies examining ancient fuel use and reflect on the integration of wood and seed data where seed assemblages are indicative of dung fuel use.

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eugenia Isabel Gorlin ◽  
Michael W. Otto

To live well in the present, we take direction from the past. Yet, individuals may engage in a variety of behaviors that distort their past and current circumstances, reducing the likelihood of adaptive problem solving and decision making. In this article, we attend to self-deception as one such class of behaviors. Drawing upon research showing both the maladaptive consequences and self-perpetuating nature of self-deception, we propose that self-deception is an understudied risk and maintaining factor for psychopathology, and we introduce a “cognitive-integrity”-based approach that may hold promise for increasing the reach and effectiveness of our existing therapeutic interventions. Pending empirical validation of this theoretically-informed approach, we posit that patients may become more informed and autonomous agents in their own therapeutic growth by becoming more honest with themselves.


Author(s):  
Harvey Siegel

`How should public education in democratic states deal with the cultural diversity brought about by contemporary globalization? My suggestion is that key to democratic public education is the obligation to foster in students the skills and abilities, and attitudes and dispositions, needed to participate fully in democratic decision-making. Of central importance are the abilities and dispositions required for critical thinking and rational argumentation: evaluating arguments of others, constructing arguments of one’s own that might rationally persuade one’s fellow citizens, etc. Without these abilities and dispositions, full participation in democratic decision-making is impossible. But fostering them is problematic when students are members of cultures in which argumentation is frowned upon. In this paper I address this tension, and argue that while respecting cultural differences is of the first importance, in democracies it cannot override the requirements of democracy itself. When these two clash, the requirements of democratic participation must take precedence.


Author(s):  
Bryan G. Norton

Today, six out of ten Americans describe themselves as "active" environmentalists or as "sympathetic" to the movement's concerns. The movement, in turn, reflects this millions-strong support in its diversity, encompassing a wide spectrum of causes, groups, and sometimes conflicting special interests. For far-sighted activists and policy makers, the question is how this diversity affects the ability to achieve key goals in the battle against pollution, erosion, and out-of-control growth. This insightful book offers an overview of the movement -- its past as well as its present -- and issues the most persuasive call yet for a unified approach to solving environmental problems. Focusing on examples from resource use, pollution control, protection of species and habitats, and land use, the author shows how the dynamics of diversity have actually hindered environmentalists in the past, but also how a convergence of these interests around forward-looking policies can be effected, despite variance in value systems espoused. The book is thus not only an assessment of today's movement, but a blueprint for action that can help pull together many different concerns under a common banner. Anyone interested in environmental issues and active approaches to their solution will find the author's observations both astute and creative.


Author(s):  
John Hunsley ◽  
Eric J. Mash

Evidence-based assessment relies on research and theory to inform the selection of constructs to be assessed for a specific assessment purpose, the methods and measures to be used in the assessment, and the manner in which the assessment process unfolds. An evidence-based approach to clinical assessment necessitates the recognition that, even when evidence-based instruments are used, the assessment process is a decision-making task in which hypotheses must be iteratively formulated and tested. In this chapter, we review (a) the progress that has been made in developing an evidence-based approach to clinical assessment in the past decade and (b) the many challenges that lie ahead if clinical assessment is to be truly evidence-based.


2021 ◽  
Vol 42 (02) ◽  
pp. 191-195

Good reviewers are essential to the success of any journal and peer review is a major pillar of science. We are grateful to those mentioned below to have dedicated their time and expertise to help our authors improve and refine their manuscripts and support the Editor(s) in the decision making process in the past year.


2020 ◽  
Vol 114 ◽  
pp. 242-245
Author(s):  
Jootaek Lee

The term, Artificial Intelligence (AI), has changed since it was first coined by John MacCarthy in 1956. AI, believed to have been created with Kurt Gödel's unprovable computational statements in 1931, is now called deep learning or machine learning. AI is defined as a computer machine with the ability to make predictions about the future and solve complex tasks, using algorithms. The AI algorithms are enhanced and become effective with big data capturing the present and the past while still necessarily reflecting human biases into models and equations. AI is also capable of making choices like humans, mirroring human reasoning. AI can help robots to efficiently repeat the same labor intensive procedures in factories and can analyze historic and present data efficiently through deep learning, natural language processing, and anomaly detection. Thus, AI covers a spectrum of augmented intelligence relating to prediction, autonomous intelligence relating to decision making, automated intelligence for labor robots, and assisted intelligence for data analysis.


2020 ◽  
Vol 51 (6) ◽  
pp. 670-684 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rodney Turner

Research on the governance of project management suggests governmentality and governance are associated with improved project performance. However, the mechanism is unknown. We propose that they influence decision making, which, in turn, improves performance. Few articles on governance comment directly on how governance influences decision making. We identify six areas of organizational psychology that influence decision making, and study what research on the governance of project management suggests about how governance influences those six areas. We review 36 articles on the governance of project management published in the past six years in the three main journals in project management.


2021 ◽  
Vol 31 (6) ◽  
pp. R303-R306
Author(s):  
Bharath Chandra Talluri ◽  
Anke Braun ◽  
T.H. Donner

PEDIATRICS ◽  
1982 ◽  
Vol 70 (1) ◽  
pp. 78-78
Author(s):  

Paediatricians responsible for neonatal care have been increasingly involved in, and aware of, the importance of parent infant interactions. These interactions are of major importance when concerned with the dying newborn. Over the past few years parental involvement in decision making related to life and death of newborn babies is becoming increasingly accepted ... more and more parents are opting to take their baby home to die. As changing patterns of birthing increasingly involve fathers and children, so death is once again becoming a family affair.


1976 ◽  
Vol 21 (7) ◽  
pp. 453-460 ◽  
Author(s):  
Esther R. Greenglass

Summary The majority of one hundred and eighty-eight women interviewed after having legal, therapeutic abortions did not experience psychiatric disturbance. While women with a psychiatric history were more likely than their more mentally healthy counterparts to experience some psychiatric disturbance afterwards, the majority of those with psychiatric problems in the past appeared to be coping reasonably well afterwards. It was pointed out that factors and circumstances other than the abortion itself, but occurring around the same time, may constitute reasons for the subsequent appearance of psychiatric disturbance, such as suicide attempts. Finally, the grounds for legal abortion in Canada were questioned — particularly the artificial practice of compartmentalizing and labeling reasons for abortion as psychiatric and non-psychiatric. While such practices may facilitate the decision-making processes involved in reviewing applications for abortion, they do not take account of the full range of human and social need.


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