Henry Foe's dilemma

In 1722, Daniel Defoe published A Journal of the Plague Year – a supposed account of the ‘great plague’ of 1665. It is commonly thought to be one of his most incisive pieces of ‘realist’ fiction. And, in our moment, one of his most prescient. The purpose of this paper is to revisit Defoe's Journal in order to stimulate reflection on our present experience of living through the ‘plague year’ of 2020. There is much, as we shall see, about governance during a plague that is resonant – but much also about ‘hearts melted into tears’, about suffering, how it is felt and how it is perceived. The purpose of the Journal, according to Defoe at least, was to inform ‘those who come after’, so that they might be better prepared, so that they would not make the same mistakes. We will see.

Mindfulness Promotes Control of Brain Network Dynamics for Self-Regulation and Discontinues the Past from the Present

Mindfulness is characterized by attentiveness to the present experience with nonjudgmental awareness and acceptance. Practicing mindfulness alters brain function to support the executive regulation of thoughts, feelings, and behavior. While early stages of practice are thought to require greater "neural effort" for later efficiency, current evidence relies on circular definitions of effort based on functional activity magnitude. Here we used network control theory as a model of how external control inputs, which operationalize effort, can distribute changes in neural activity across the macro-scale structural brain network. Further, we inferred the intrinsic timescale of activity to operationalize present-centered activity as shorter momentary timescales that discontinue the past and update the present. To explain effects of mindful regulation on alcohol consumption, we applied these methods to a randomized controlled intervention study with resting-state and task fMRI data. The task primed participants to either mindfully respond or naturally react to alcohol cues. Mobile text interventions and measurements of alcohol consumption were administered using ecological momentary assessments during the subsequent 4 weeks. We hypothesized that neural states of mindfulness require greater effort to enact and sustain. This effort may support deautomatized habitual natural reactions, discontinued processing, and updated present-centered neural dynamics. We found that mindful regulation of alcohol cues, compared to the natural reactions of the benchmark group, involved more effortful control of neural dynamics across cognitive control and attention networks. This effort persisted in the natural reactions of the mindful group compared to the benchmark group. Using resting-state fMRI, we found that more effortful neural states tended to occur over shorter timescales than less effortful states. Our findings provide an explanation for how neural dynamics with altered effort and stability, such as mindful states, tend to center the present experience.

Dispositional Mindfulness and Stress Coping Amid the COVID-19 Pandemic: An Exploration of Problem-Focused Mediators

The psychological phenomenon of mindfulness - nonjudgmental attention to and awareness of one's present experience - has been linked to effective coping with a range of situational stressors. The potential mediating role of problem-focused strategies in predicting stress-related outcomes has not been sufficiently addressed.

Internationalization in Engineering Education in English in Slovakia

The aim of this paper is to present experience with engineering education of Slovak and foreign students from various countries from Europe, Asia and Africa. The courses in English language are focused on terminologies of 20 different departments of Faculty of Civil Engineering Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava, Slovak Republic. The new ways of engineering education is a part of research realised at Faculty of Art, Comenius University in Bratislava as well. In the frame of the research the following aspects are investigated in practice: internationalization of teaching, teaching innovation and evaluation of the possible teaching improving. The details of teaching are presented and the proposals for research design are outlined. Complete evaluation of these experiments in practice will be published after collecting and processing all necessary data.

Architectural "Constants" from Toni Gironès

The presence of Mankind on Earth is marked by the continuous conquest of space. The ground we walk on has long witnessed our passage or permanence in certain places. Hence it is on that ground that we encounter the traces of those who preceded us and where, at the same time, we build contemporary projects. Caring for the place we inhabit implies acknowledging these time frames. Architecture mediates them in the present, providing them with a renewed condition of habitability. This can be perceived in the work of Catalan architect Toni Gironès, particularly in the context of archaeological remains. Using his lesson of the constants as a starting point, potentially in parallel with Fernando Távora, this paper uses these as mechanisms for triggering sensorial experience, also drawing on Peter Zumthor and Luis Barragán. Then, through the memory(ies) of the ruins of Vilassar de Dalt and Seró, the place is considered here as a means of enabling individual perception and collective, perhaps even global, identity. Finally, some questions are put forward to problematise Toni Gironès’s habitability over the porosity of time, associating past memories, present experience and the unknown future.

Destination Image of Himachal Pradesh: Foreign Tourist Perception

Destination Image is a psychological set of emotions in a tourist’s mind. This study is an inquiry from 384 Foreign Nationals who included destination Himachal in their visit to India. The latent factors of ‘destination image’ were extracted and validated through structural equation modeling (SEM). Out of the ten explored latent factors ‘affective’ dimension is the major element followed by ‘infrastructure’, ‘culture’ and ‘safety’ are acting as significant persuading forces in destination image formation. The study will help various organizations and agencies to position their tourism products. Future researchers can investigate the change in destination image with other locations having the same geographical conditions. This study is limited to the present experience of tourists and didn’t include the revisit experiences of foreign tourists.

Railway superstructure for high-speed rails

The construction of the track is solved as a conventional (with track ballast) or as a ballastless track (without track ballast). When deciding on the choice of the most suitable track design for high-speed rail, it is necessary to emphasize that with increasing line speed, the requirements for the quality of the track geometry increase, including the size of the deviations of individual geometric parameters of the track from the projected values. When assessing the choice of track structure – especially for high-speed rails – it is therefore necessary and correct to assess the total costs (investment and operational) for a sufficiently long time. DB Netz AG’s present experience with a ballastless track since its first implementation in 1972 in Rheda station, for almost 50 years, shows that the required lifetime of 60 years has its real justification. In addition, current research and development in the field of ballastless track is moving towards extending the life of ballastless track well beyond this limit. The paper is focused on the comparison a ballasted and ballastless track construction. It deals in more detail with evaluation of the advantages and disadvantages of a ballastless track construction. The main objective is to assess the use of ballastless track structure for the construction of high-speed lines.

The Case of Sharon Considered from the Vantage Point of Interpersonal Reconstructive Therapy

In Interpersonal Reconstructive Therapy (IRT: Benjamin, 2003/2006; 2018) a case formulation is used to tailor interventions to each patient’s unique patterns. Using the IRT lens, psychopathology is understood as reflecting attempts to adapt to current environments using maladaptive rules and values that were learned and internalized in the context of close attachment relationships. IRT identifies precise ways in which early learning shapes present experience. Additionally, the "gift of love" (GOL) hypothesis posits that motivation to repeat maladaptive ways is linked to the wish to receive love and acceptance from specific internalized attachment figures by repeating their ways and values for the patient. The IRT case formulation has been shown to be reliable and valid (Critchfield, Benjamin, Levenick, 2015). The therapy adherence measure is also reliable (Critchfield, Davis, Gunn, Benjamin, 2008) and correlates well with retention as well as reduced symptoms and rehospitalization rates (Karpiak, Critchfield, Benjamin, 2011) among "difficult to treat" patients characterized as having high levels of personality disorder, chronic and severe problems, and prior failed treatment attempts. To illustrate the case formulation process, an IRT formulation is applied to the case of a 28-year-old female patient for whom a poor outcome was documented.

Motivating and constraining factors for research participation in Scottish care homes

Background/aims: Knowledge and research about research participation in the context of care homes is sparse. This article describes the level of research engagement for care homes in Scotland, and the facilitators and barriers to this. Methods: A short survey was distributed to care homes in Scotland. A total of 130 care homes returned completed surveys. Results: As of 2014, only 7' of care homes had past or present experience of research. Lack of time and workplace pressures were key obstacles to increasing research within care homes. Respondents recognised that residents could benefit from research but there were also concerns about the risks of research involvement. Conclusions: The survey provides much needed evidence that care homes are being overlooked in research, leading to exclusion of staff and residents. More work is needed to help integrate research into care homes without adding to the demands and pressures of the workplace.