Young entrepreneurs and non-teleological temporality in Portugal and the UK

The promotion of young enterprise is central to European Union youth policy, particularly since the financial crisis of 2007/2008. Expectations that young people need to be enterprising and eschew dependency on formal structures of salaried employment are a key narrative in European and national youth policies. These policy initiatives correspond with recent theoretical development of the entrepreneurial self as a managerial version of the governable individual. Endorsements of entrepreneurship implicitly promote a normative expectation that young people’s future orientations need to be innovative, flexible and creative. There is, therefore, an implicit temporality to youth entrepreneurship. This paper’s contribution to scholarship on how young lives are promoted and produced as entrepreneurial selves is to document how young people’s engagement with entrepreneurship fosters orientations to present and future. Conventionally entrepreneurs are assumed to be goal-orientated. In our qualitative study of young entrepreneurs in two European countries (n = 28), we find that this assumption of goal-orientation needs qualification. Young entrepreneurs in our study engage with the idea that being an entrepreneur is about being creative rather than seeking to maximise financial profit. Their focus on creativity, innovation and problem-solving is realised through a non-teleological commitment to what they are doing in the here and now, rather than calibrating their activities in relation to predetermined goals and worrying about the possibility of future failure.

Working with Edge Emotions as a means for Uncovering Problematic Assumptions: Developing a practically sound theory

The connection between cognition and emotion, and between mind and body, has been well documented by neuroscience. The adult education practitioners of critical reflection and transformative learning processes have understood this more holistic understanding of human nature both empirically and intuitively. However, the key theory of the field, Jack Mezirow’s theory of transformative learning, has been given consistent criticism on its focus on rational and cognitive aspects of learning while understating its emotional and social aspects. Similarly, the conceptualization of the processes of reflection appears more appropriate to sophia than for phronesis. This, as is argued in the paper, leaves the theory rather idealistic while lacking understanding of the prerequisites for, and actualities of reflection. This paper presents a recent theoretical development that is both grounded in the analysis of Mezirow’s theory as well as extending and elaborating the theorization of reflection, by utilizing the insights from neuroscience. The presented theory explicates how cognition and emotion are intertwined in the processes of reflection. Further, the theory offers conceptual basis for further research and practice regarding reflection and transformative learning, not only showing the ideals, but offering conceptual tools to work with the challenges of reflection as well.

A Prototype for Modular Cell Engineering

ABSTRACTWhen aiming to produce a target chemical at high yield, titer, and productivity, various combinations of genetic parts available to build the target pathway can generate a large number of strains for characterization. This engineering approach will become increasingly laborious and expensive when seeking to develop desirable strains for optimal production of a large space of biochemicals due to extensive screening. Our recent theoretical development of modular cell (MODCELL) design principles can offer a promising solution for rapid generation of optimal strains by coupling a modular cell and exchangeable production modules in a plug-and-play fashion. In this study, we experimentally validated some designed properties of MODCELL by demonstrating: i) a modular (chassis) cell is required to couple with a production module, a heterologous ethanol pathway, as a testbed, ii) degree of coupling between the modular cell and production modules can be modulated to enhance growth and product synthesis, iii) a modular cell can be used as a host to select an optimal pyruvate decarboxylase (PDC) of the ethanol production module and to help identify a hypothetical PDC protein, and iv) adaptive laboratory evolution based on growth selection of the modular cell can enhance growth and product synthesis rates. We envision that the MODCELL design provides a powerful prototype for modular cell engineering to rapidly create optimal strains for synthesis of a large space of biochemicals.

Variational transition state theory: theoretical framework and recent developments

This article reviews the fundamentals of variational transition state theory (VTST), its recent theoretical development, and some modern applications.

The development and validation of a Multitarget Affective Commitment Scale

Purpose – In order to contribute to the understanding of affective commitment towards distinct workplace targets, the purpose of this paper is to develop and validate a Multitarget Affective Commitment Scale (MACS) through two data collections. The MACS uses similarly worded items for distinct targets and reflects the most recent theoretical development of affective commitment. Design/methodology/approach – In the first data collection, items from previous commitment scales were tested through the social network service Facebook (n=305). The second data collection was conducted in the healthcare system of Denmark (n=496) using survey questionnaires. Findings – In Study 1, exploratory factor analyses were conducted to reduce the items based on the Facebook data. In Study 2, the authors confirm the findings of Study 1 and further reduce the items based on the healthcare sample. The healthcare sample is also used in Study 3, where the authors validate the MACS by investigating its relationship with predictors, correlates, and outcomes. Originality/value – The results suggest that the MACS are a reliable and valid measure of affective commitment compatible with the diverse targets to which affective commitment often occurs. Consequently, the MACS is applicable for research investigating multiply affective commitments, thereby advancing the understanding of interactions between affective commitments and diverse targets, among other applications.

Image schemas and mimetic schemas in cognitive linguistics and gesture studies

Image schemas have been a fundamental construct in cognitive linguistics, providing grounds for psychological, philosophical, as well as linguistic research. Given the focus in cognitive linguistics on embodied experience as a fundamental basis for language structure and meaning, the employment of image schemas in the analysis of gesture with speech is a logical extension. However, given their level of abstraction, to what degree do image schemas provide a useful explanatory tool for researching the concrete, physically embodied details of gestures? This article considers the answer to this question and then turns to a more recent theoretical development that complements the picture by encompassing a different realm of cognitive and linguistic phenomena. This research, on ‘mimetic schemas’, is shown to have great potential for thinking about some known phenomena of gesture in a new way. Schema research on these different levels thus provides a useful means to analyze behavior in another modality involved in spoken language use, namely the visual.

THEORY OF RESONANT SPIN HALL EFFECT

A brief review is presented on the resonant spin Hall effect, where a tiny external electric field induces a saturated spin Hall current in a 2-dimensional electron or hole gas in a perpendicular magnetic field. The phenomenon is attributed to the energy level crossing associated with the spin-orbit coupling and the Zeeman splitting. We summarize recent theoretical development of the effect in various systems and discuss possible experiments to observe the effect.

THEORETICAL DEVELOPMENT ON PENTAQUARKS

I first give a brief overview of the status of exotic hadron search so far. Then I review the recent theoretical development on pentaquarks. Finally I emphasize that none of theoretical formalisms predicts the existence of Θ pentaquark very reliably. None of them explains its narrow width in a natural way.