Motor restrictions impair divergent thinking during walking and during sitting

Creativity, specifically divergent thinking, has been shown to benefit from unrestrained walking. Despite these findings, it is not clear if it is the lack of restriction that leads to the improvement. Our goal was to explore the effects of motor restrictions on divergent thinking for different movement states. In addition, we assessed whether spontaneous eye blinks, which are linked to motor execution, also predict performance. In experiment 1, we compared the performance in Guilford’s alternate uses task (AUT) during walking vs. sitting, and analysed eye blink rates during both conditions. We found that AUT scores were higher during walking than sitting. Albeit eye blinks differed significantly between movement conditions (walking vs. sitting) and task phase (baseline vs. thinking vs. responding), they did not correlate with task performance. In experiment 2 and 3, participants either walked freely or in a restricted path, or sat freely or fixated on a screen. When the factor restriction was explicitly modulated, the effect of walking was reduced, while restriction showed a significant influence on the fluency scores. Importantly, we found a significant correlation between the rate of eye blinks and creativity scores between subjects, depending on the restriction condition. Our study shows a movement state-independent effect of restriction on divergent thinking. In other words, similar to unrestrained walking, unrestrained sitting also improves divergent thinking. Importantly, we discuss a mechanistic explanation of the effect of restriction on divergent thinking based on the increased size of the focus of attention and the consequent bias towards flexibility.

The Impact of Cezanne in Early Cubism

The 1907 Salon d’Automne included a Cézanne retrospective. Comprising fifty-six of his works, most of them oils, it featured a group of late paintings, among them some nominally “unfinished.” It had not been until his final years that the painter had begun to have wider public appeal. Now he had become the focus of attention of the avant-garde. Leo Stein recounted this transformation: “Hitherto Cézanne had been important only for the few; he was about to become important for everybody. At the Salon d’Automne of 1905 people laughed themselves into hysterics before his pictures, in 1906 they were respectful, and in 1907 they were reverent. Cézanne had become the man of the moment.” And Picasso would say: “For us, Cézanne was like a mother who protects her children ... He was my one and only master ... I’ve spent years studying his pictures ... Cézanne! He was as you might say a father to us all. It was he who protected us.” The article explores the influence the Master of Aix had on both the Spaniard and his French colleague Georges Braque as they developed the ideas of what would become Cubism.

An Integrated Approach (Social and Health) in the Elderly With Diabetes

The research in question arises from the need to elaborate a work of reflection capable of contributing to one of the intervention responses with the focus of attention, integrated care in various areas of society (social and health), sensitivity to the older people, between health and the social sector, based on assertive interpersonal communication, clear and positive, which function in a holistic view of the older person, as a game of balance. This chapter aims to offer and promote some clues about the importance of the social sector's communion with the health sector in an integrated and inclusive logic for citizens. The model, Assertividade Clareza e Positivity, being an increase in health literacy, was the motto for the methodology of the chapter, in a perspective of communication facilitating the field of human relations. The results point to a better understanding and analysis of a strategy, focused on the integrated approach in the elderly with diabetes.

Cry Wolf!

The COVID-19 pandemic has challenged societies all around the world since the beginning of 2020. A state of alert was declared in Spain from March to June. The country came to a complete standstill, until restrictions gradually began to be eased. This study examines how the first wave of the pandemic was reflected by analysing 1,007 cartoons published in various Spanish newspapers between January and June. The results show that criticism of the political management of the public health crisis was the most extensively featured issue. Protection measures against the coronavirus, such as lockdown, hand hygiene, and social distancing were also important issues. Although the cartoonists at first minimised the risk, as soon as the state of alert was declared, the often contradictory measures and strained relations of the government and the opposition parties were the main focus of attention for cartoonists. The present analysis also shows that despite being the main victims of COVID-19, neither the elderly nor healthcare professionals are the most commonly depicted actors in the sample.

Unified Total Synthesis of the Brevianamide Alkaloids Enabled by Chemical Investigations into their Biosynthesis

The bicyclo[2.2.2]diazaoctane alkaloids are a vast group of natural products which have been the focus of attention from the scientific community for several decades. This interest stems from their broad...

The Instructions of Melanesian Cargo Cults for the Asia-Pacific Future

So-called cargo cults are new religious movements best known among the indigenous population of Oceania, especially Melanesia. Their focus of attention is the mystery surrounding the new goods brought by light-skinned strangers in awe-striking ocean-going vessels and (later) in great flying ‘bird-like’ containers. Various socio-religious movements arose in response to these European-style wares (later internationally-marketed commodities), or “the Cargo” (pidgin: Kago), often in agitated collective expectation of an extraordinary arrival of new riches. The Melanesian outbursts have been typically inspired by prophet-type leaders, with their messages reflecting a transition between indigenous traditions and more settled islander Christianities. This paper moves on from describing and explaining southwest Pacific cargo-type movements to the issue of the ethos out of which they arose, and addresses the sociology of hope for Cargo (or modern commodities in plenty) as a global issue, best described as “Cargoism.” Sets of beliefs in the coming bounty and changing power of Cargo have much more than ‘provincial’ or local-indigenous implications. They point to a worldwide plethora of expectations wherein material items define the essential comforts of life and capture the individual, family and collective imaginations about the preferred human future. Exploring some of the ‘universally human’ implications within the logic of cargo-cult thinking in its Pacific context, this paper introduces Cargoism as a transoceanic and intercontinental issue that has enormous environmental and politico-economic ramifications. Presages of environmental stress lie with globalizing cargoist dreams and pressures, including hopes for progress and technological solutions offered by trade and commercial expansions (proffered by powerful nations, including China, for the Asia-Pacific future).

The virtual education space: Concept, architecture, application

The e-learning environment known as VES (the Virtual Education Space) was created at the University of Plovdiv “Paisii Hilendarski” in Bulgaria step by step for years as each subsequent version was built on the previous one. Initially a learning system called DeLC (the Distributed e-Learning Center) has been implemented to support blended and independent learning at the Faculty of Mathematics and Informatics at the university. DeLC was a successful project, but we identified some problems, connected with interactions between the virtual and the physical world where in fact the learning process takes place. In the following period, we started the development of ViPS (the Virtual Physical Space) based on concepts of CPSS (Cyber-Physical-Social System) and IoT (Internet of Things). VES is the ViPS adaptation to education. VES is the successor to DeLC, it provides e-learning content and e-learning education services for planning, organizing, and conducting the learning process at the Faculty of Mathematics and Informatics of the University of Plovdiv.VES supports various forms of e-learning such as blended learning, self-paced learning, lifelong learning, inclusive and game-based learning (GBL). The following aspects of VES are essential: 1) users are the focus of attention; 2) physical “things” are virtualized; 3) there is integration between the virtual and the physical worlds. Since ViPS is developed as a CPSS ecosystem, users are the focus of attention. This determines the need to develop personal assistants to participate in the processes of the ViPS space on behalf of and in the interest of users. Three intelligent agents are modeled in VES: an internal educational agent, an external educational agent, and a career consultant. MATE (the Multi-Agent Testing Environment) is a component supported in the ViPS space for training and testing of students in a game-based manner. MATE is a set of autonomous agents, each one of which has responsibilities in the common architecture that arise from training and testing needs.As a CPSS space, VES introduces new approaches and scenarios to solve complex problems in the field of e-learning. VES provides a reference architecture, which can be adapted for various forms of education supported by information and communication technologies.

Criminological problems of countering the distribution of criminal subculture in youth environment

The subject of this research is the criminal subculture, as one of the main elements of modern destructive trends in the youth environment. The authors emphasizes that this phenomenon has been the focus of attention of researchers in various fields of knowledge at different times and has been actively studied not only by domestic scientists. The purpose of this article is to analyze the main modern trends in the spread of the criminal subculture in society, in particular among the youth. The scientific novelty of the work lies in the study of the characteristics of the criminal subculture in modern conditions of information dissemination through social networks, the Internet and other scientific achievements. The practical significance of the article is to familiarize the subjects of prevention of new knowledge in the course of activities to counter the spread of the negative influence of the criminal subculture in society. The study used a dialectical approach in the analysis of the above phenomena, which predetermined a set of scientific methods of cognition: comparative, systemic, historical and legal, documentary, sociological, etс.

Developmental Language Disorder and the Assessment of Signed Language

In recent years, deaf and/or hard of hearing (D/HH) children with atypical signed language abilities have become the focus of attention by researchers and educators, especially clinicians in programs that focus on bilingual (signed-written/spoken) education. Studies have shown that Deaf children with a language disorder present with a myriad of linguistic challenges, including struggles with fingerspelling comprehension, complex morphology, or lexical processing. This chapter highlights methods commonly used in assessing children suspected of having a developmental signed language disorder. In addition, it outlines issues that are critical for working with D/HH children, such as considering the possible role of co-occurring disabilities (such as attention deficits and autism) and obtaining information and support from parents and educators/clinicians. Finally, the chapter outlines suggestions for researchers and clinicians working together to identify and provide intervention for children suspected of having a developmental signed language disorder.