Theoretical Concepts in Magnetobiology after 40 Years of Research

This review contains information on the development of magnetic biology, one of the multidisciplinary areas of biophysics. The main historical facts are presented and the general observed properties of magnetobiological phenomena are listed. The unavoidable presence of nonspecific magnetobiological effects in the everyday life of a person and society is shown. Particular attention is paid to the formation of theoretical concepts in magnetobiology and the state of the art in this area of research. Some details are provided on the molecular mechanisms of the nonspecific action of a magnetic field on organisms. The prospects of magnetobiology for the near and distant future are discussed.

Intention regulates conflicting desires in human decision making

It is an ancient insight that human actions are driven by desires. This insight inspired the formulation that a rational agent acts to maximize expected utility (MEU), which has been widely used in psychology for modeling theory of mind and in artificial intelligence (AI) for controlling machines’ actions. Yet, it's rather unclear how humans act coherently when their desires are complex and often conflicting with each other. Here we show desires do not directly control human actions. Instead, actions are regulated by an intention — a deliberate mental state that commits to a fixed future rather than taking the expected utilities of many futures evaluated by many desires. Our study reveals four behavioral signatures of human intention by demonstrating how human sequential decision-making deviates from the optimal policy based on MEU in a navigation task: “Disruption resistance” as the persistent pursuit of an original intention despite an unexpected change has made that intention suboptimal; “Ulysses-constraint of freedom” as the proactive constraint of one’s freedom by avoiding a path that could lead to many futures, similar to Ulysses’s self-binding to resist the temptation of the Siren’s song; “Enhanced legibility” as an active demonstration of intention by choosing a path whose destination can be promptly inferred by a third-party observer; “Temporal leap” as committing to a distant future even before reaching the proximal one. Our results showed how the philosophy of intention can lead to discoveries of human decision-making, which can also be empirically compared with AI algorithms. The findings showing that to define a theory of mind, intention should be highlighted as a distinctive mental state in between desires and actions, for quarantining conflicting desires from the execution of actions.

Desafios para professores no século 21

Dentro da sociedade, a escola tem desempenhado um papel muito importante, sendo uma instituição que contribui para que os alunos se tornem pessoas que num futuro não muito distante se tornem adultos responsáveis; capaz de contribuir para a construção de um mundo melhor, no qual os direitos humanos sejam respeitados e os valores éticos aplicados para a manutenção de uma sociedade harmoniosa. Within society, the school has played a very important role, being an institution that helps students become people who, in the not-too-distant future, will become responsible adults; capable of contributing to the construction of a better world, in which human rights are respected and ethical values ​​applied to the maintenance of a harmonious society.

Pay Now or Pay Later: The Impact of Time on Payment Preference in Hotel Booking

The “book now, pay later” phenomenon is one form of payment which has flow-on effects such as increasing last-minute cancelations. To encourage prepayment, some hotels have been offering a price discount or free upgrade for choosing the “pay now” option, but little is known about which incentives can generate better outcomes. This study aims to examine what types of payment options are preferable based on the time between booking and check-in (i.e. temporal distance), and to investigate how the payment options and temporal distance jointly influence perceived risks. The findings demonstrate that while people prefer the pay now with monetary incentive option when traveling time is in the near future, they mostly prefer the pay later option when traveling time is distant. In addition, people planning a trip in the distant future perceive significantly higher risks from the pay now with non-monetary and monetary incentive options than from the pay later option.

Alastair White, RUNE, Tête à Tête Festival, Round Chapel, Hackney, London, 17 August 2021.

The setting is Khye-Rell, part of a web of worlds in our universe's distant future. In this society, history is forbidden. A young girl, Kes'Cha'Au’, crosses a series of ‘transdimensional canals’, journeying back through our own time and our looming ecological collapse. She reveals, at the heart of everything, the universe creating itself out of nothing: it inscribes itself like a rune.

Future Movement Future – REJECTED

In a not-too-distant future, an anonymous researcher and their team applied for funding to develop their newest invention: a new algorithmic model for smart cameras that would allow people to analyze the movement of cars at a previously unheard-of scale. This system was said to enable new forms of predictive capabilities to emerge: the algorithm would be able to, for example, predict the route drivers wanted to take but had not yet taken—including, for example, their occult inner desires for getting away with a secret lover. A panel of academic reviewers from three different universities audited and reviewed the proposed system. All that is left are segments of the video-report resulting from this meeting, which became an urban legend among technology researchers. The short film “Future Movement Future – REJECTED” is the story of a dystopian surveillance future that was barred by institutional refusal. It importantly reminds us about how total surveillance, the “almighty algorithmic eye,” may end up seeing-predicting much less than imagining-dreaming.

Twice American: Hispanic Writers in the United States

Taking as a starting point the most traditional experience of exile, this paper encourages a debate about the expatriation experience that has affected many Latin American intellectuals residing in and producing their works in the United States of America. Most have decided to write in Spanish in a country that, according to the dominant narrative, is based on a pluralist and tolerant society. But racism and discrimination are still rooted there, and all those who do not ‘belong’ are literally treated as ‘aliens’, especially if they are part of the Latino/Hispano community. This study aims to emphasise the cultural and literary impact that this wave of transnational and extraterritorial writers may have in the future. Moreover, it highlights the use of Spanish language as a political stance in a context which, in a not-so-distant future, will be increasingly influenced by Spanish-speaking people, who are still wrongly considered a minority.

Metafizika biblioteke = Metaphysics of the Library

Bibliotekarstvo kao nauka i vještina organizacije znanja i njegovih produkata evoluira te je, kao i sve ostale naučne ili praktične discipline, prisiljeno prilagođavati se vremenu. Na tom svom evolucijskom putu, općeprihvaćene teorije i poimanje biblioteke i bibliotekarstva kao struke se mijenjaju te se sve više udaljavaju od tradicionalnih predstava – gotovo do granice naučne fantastike. Pa ipak, do juče fikcijske, književnoumjetničke predstave, danas se posmatraju na krajnje konstruktivan i racionalan način. Jedan od najzanimljivijih primjera je doživljaj i vizija biblioteke u fikcijskom svijetu Jorgea Luisa Borgesa. Na tragu njegovih profetskih zapažanja utkanih u njegov književni univerzum, mnogi naučnici današnjice iz različitih oblasti kroz multidisciplinarni pristup pokušavaju rekonstruirati i kreirati sliku biblioteke budućnosti preoblikovane na način da može odgovoriti zahtjevima novog vremena. Ponajviše zahvaljujući enormnom tehnološkom razvoju i izazovima koje on sobom nosi, vizije sveopšte ili univerzalne biblioteke, biblioteke bez zidova, čine se izvodive i vode ka preispitivanju postojećih i stvaranju novih teorija o budućoj ulozi biblioteke i suštini bibliotečke prakse. Interesantno je i izazovno iz današnje perspektive struke promišljati na koji način će se poimati biblioteka u bližoj ili daljoj budućnosti, kako će izgledati i koja će od postojećih vizija, naučna ili literarna, biti bliže realizaciji u stvarnosti. = Librarianship as a science and skill of the organization of knowledge and its products is evolving and, like all other scientific or practical disciplines, it is forced to keep up with the times. In this evolutionary path, traditional theories and notions of libraries and librarianship as professions are changing and reaching far beyond the traditional ones – almost to the limits of science fictions. Nevertheless, theories which were until recently considered fictional literary and artistic performances are today already seen from an extremely constructive and rational perspective. One of the most interesting examples is the experience and vision of the library in the fictional world of Jorge Luis Borges. Following his prophetic observations woven into his literary universe, many scholars from various fields, are trying through a multidisciplinary approach to reconstruct and create an image of the library of the future reshaped in a way that can respond to demands of modern times. Mostly thanks to the enormous technological development and challenges it brings, visions of a Universal Library seem feasible and lead to rethinking of existing and creating new theories about the future role of the library and the essence of library practice. It is interesting and challenging from today’s professional perspective to think about the way that library will be understood in the near or distant future, what it will look like and which of the existing visions – scientific or literary – will be closer to realization in reality.

Let's play with emojis! How to make emojis more effective in social media advertising using promocodes and temporal orientation

PurposeThe authors aim to examine how the construal level, either as an individual temporal orientation or temporal distance of promotion, moderates the effects of emojis' emotional intensity on consumers' purchase intentions in social media advertising.Design/methodology/approachTwo experiments are used to test four hypotheses.FindingsThe results of two experimental studies show that present-oriented participants reveal greater purchase intentions when low (vs high) emotionally intense emojis are embedded in a social media ad; but future-oriented consumers showed no difference when viewing ads with the two different emojis. In Study 2, participants indicate greater purchase intentions when a social media ad includes a distant-future promocode and high (vs low) emotionally intense emojis and an ad with a near-future promocode and low (vs high) emotionally intense emojis.Originality/valueThe current study advances our understanding how emojis with different emotional intensities can be effectively used in social media ads. This study also provides theoretical implications to construal level theory (CLT) by examining how emojis interact with construal level, either as a chronic tendency or simulated by psychological distance, can influence consumer response.