The Pragmatics of persuasive in Sesotho bride price discussion

This study is based on the investigation of the pragmatics of persuasive in Sesotho bride price discussions. The study was informed by Austin’s (1962), and Searle’s (1969) speech act theory, and politeness theory. Different linguistic expressions that denote persuasion and various classes of persuasive are used to analyse some insinuations of persuasive expressions function. This is a qualitative study which utilised different methods to collect data. Ten (10) bride price discussion meetings, as well as ten (10), structured interviews from the study areas of Leribe (ButhaButhe and Hlotse) and Berea (Teyateyaneng) districts in Lesotho were conducted. The study revealed that the speakers used various linguistic expressions to reach an agreement. The expressions used were comprehensible to the people sharing the same cultural background context.

Petrha+

Role play and simulated patients are tools frequently used in undergraduate physiotherapy courses to help students gain familiarity with what they will find in future real-life encounters. However, these approaches have limitations when it comes to delivering diversity and repetition to a large number of students and are mostly bounded to the school's premises. Web-based virtual patient software can help to overcome these shortcomings as they equally require students to go through most of the steps of the physiotherapy process, and simultaneously offer unlimited diversity of cases and repetition opportunities and can be delocalized from physical schools. PETRHA + is an Erasmus+ strategic partnership of European high education institutions aiming at the improvement of a web-based serious game prototype designed to enhance physiotherapy students' clinical reasoning using virtual patients. The objective of this chapter is the presentation of the background context that led to the development of the serious game, its design features, functions, and ongoing and future developments.

Introduction

This chapter provides background context on the calls for doing (more) interdisciplinarity and explains our own positioning as to what interdisciplinarity actually is, as well as what we believe this book contributes to the study of said interdisciplinarity. Specifically, we discuss mainstream arguments for why interdisciplinary research is deemed to be a worthwhile endeavour by many researchers, policymakers, funders, and so on. We build on this by arguing that there is a unique—and currently under-fulfilled—role to be played by Science and Technology Studies (STS) in exploring the sociological dimensions of how large-scale (energy) research projects are actually carried out. Alongside these wider landscape discussions, we explain what this book contributes to the study of interdisciplinarity and to energy research, through our empirics and STS-inspired ideas. We also make clear how we define interdisciplinarity and disciplines and explain how we focus on problem-focused research that may (or may not) involve external stakeholders.

'Different from Any Other': the Experience of a Lebanese Migrant in Wellington in the Mid-Twentieth Century

<p>Aiming to cast insight on the Lebanese community in Wellington in the mid-twentieth century, a series of in-depth narrative history interviews explore aspects of the reflections of Lebanese migrant, Elias Arraj, who arrived in Wellington in 1953. A secondary data source comprising archived oral histories undertaken with members of the Dunedin Lebanese community in 1988 provides a background context, and additional insights on ‘being Lebanese’ in New Zealand. The research design comprises a constructionist epistemology, a critical theoretical orientation and a narrative inquiry methodology. The interpretation of both primary and secondary data sources employs a thematic analysis. The roles of the researcher and the participants in the construction of the data and the impact of underlying social and cultural factors on the narrators’ experiences are also explored. Considering the cultural inheritance and religious affiliations which were important to Elias the thesis focuses on: his experience of immigration and re-settlement; the way he interpreted and responded to the difficulties he faced as a new migrant; and available avenues of support. The narratives reveal how Elias drew on his distinct and enduring sense of cultural heritage to overcome the challenge of being an immigrant in New Zealand.</p>

'Different from Any Other': the Experience of a Lebanese Migrant in Wellington in the Mid-Twentieth Century

<p>Aiming to cast insight on the Lebanese community in Wellington in the mid-twentieth century, a series of in-depth narrative history interviews explore aspects of the reflections of Lebanese migrant, Elias Arraj, who arrived in Wellington in 1953. A secondary data source comprising archived oral histories undertaken with members of the Dunedin Lebanese community in 1988 provides a background context, and additional insights on ‘being Lebanese’ in New Zealand. The research design comprises a constructionist epistemology, a critical theoretical orientation and a narrative inquiry methodology. The interpretation of both primary and secondary data sources employs a thematic analysis. The roles of the researcher and the participants in the construction of the data and the impact of underlying social and cultural factors on the narrators’ experiences are also explored. Considering the cultural inheritance and religious affiliations which were important to Elias the thesis focuses on: his experience of immigration and re-settlement; the way he interpreted and responded to the difficulties he faced as a new migrant; and available avenues of support. The narratives reveal how Elias drew on his distinct and enduring sense of cultural heritage to overcome the challenge of being an immigrant in New Zealand.</p>

Sample Size Justifications in Gait & Posture

Background: Context regarding how researchers determine the sample size of their experiments is important for interpreting the results and determining their value and meaning. Between 2018 and 2019, the journal Gait &amp; Posture introduced a requirement for sample size justification in their author guidelines.Research Question: How frequently and in what ways are sample sizes justified in Gait &amp; Posture research articles and was the inclusion of a guideline requiring sample size justification associated with a change in practice?Methods: The guideline was not in place prior to May 2018 and was in place from 25th July 2019. All articles in the three most recent volumes of the journal (84-86) and the three most recent, pre-guideline volumes (60-62) at time of preregistration were included in this analysis. This provided an initial sample of 324 articles (176 pre-guideline and 148 post-guideline). Articles were screened by two authors to extract author data, article metadata and sample size justification data. Specifically, screeners identified if (yes or no) and how sample sizes were justified. Six potential justification types (Measure Entire Population, Resource Constraints, Accuracy, A priori Power Analysis, Heuristics, No Justification) and an additional option of Other/Unsure/Unclear were used.Results: In most cases, authors of Gait &amp; Posture articles did not provide a justification for their study’s sample size. The inclusion of the guideline was associated with a modest increase in the percentage of articles providing a justification (16.6% to 28.1%). A priori power calculations were the dominant type of justification, but many were not reported in enough detail to allow replication.Significance: Gait &amp; Posture researchers should be more transparent in how they determine their sample sizes and carefully consider if they are suitable. Editors and journals may consider adding a similar guideline as a low-resource way to improve sample size justification reporting.

Cyber Security: Cyber Fraud on Carding: A Review

This chapter provides one person case study of Mr. Dan DeFilippi who was arrested for master card fraud by the US u. s. SS in December 2004. The episode delves into the psychology of a cybercriminal and also the inside workings of master card fraud. A background context of master card fraud is presented to border the first interview. Slightly on the identification of issues and controversies with reference to carding is then given. Finally, the convicted cybercriminal turned key informant makes advice on how to reduce the growing prevalence of cybercrime. A giant finding is that master card fraud is simply too easy to enact and merchants have to conduct better staff training to catch fraudsters early. With increases in global online acquiring, international carding networks are proliferating, making it hard for enforcement agencies to be “policing” illegal transactions. Big data could have a task to play in analyzing behaviors that expose cybercrime.

Transparency and Representationalism

This chapter explores the phenomenon of transparency and presents several different versions of representationalism about conscious states, only one of which is endorsed. There are discussions of representationalism with respect to perceptual experiences, bodily sensations, emotions, conscious thoughts, and moods. Along the way, the objection from blur in vision is addressed and an account offered of how introspection works with respect to conscious states. At the end, there is a discussion of whether consciousness itself is transparent to us. The background context for this discussion is provided by some remarks made by G.E. Moore that seem to run counter to transparency.

Unravelling the Role of Socioeconomic Forces in the Early Stage of COVID-19 Pandemic: A Global Analysis

The COVID-19 pandemic has rapidly evolved into an acute health crisis with extensive socioeconomic and demographic consequences. The severity of the COVID-19 pandemic requires a refined (and more comprehensive) understanding of virus dissemination over space, transmission mechanisms, clinical features, and risk factors. In line with this assumption, the present study illustrates a comparative, empirical analysis of the role of socioeconomic and demographic dimensions in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic grounded on a large set of indicators comparing the background context across a global sample of countries. Results indicate that—in addition to epidemiological factors—basic socioeconomic forces significantly shaped contagions as well as hospitalization and death rates across countries. As a response to the global crisis driven by the COVID-19 pandemic, all-embracing access to healthcare services should be strengthened along with the development of sustainable health systems supported by appropriate resources and skills. The empirical findings of this study have direct implications for the coordination of on-going, global efforts aimed at containing COVID-19 (and other, future) pandemics.

Modelling brain representations of abstract concepts

conceptual representations are critical for human cognition. Despite their importance, key properties of these representations remain poorly understood. Here, we used computational models of distributional semantics to predict multivariate fMRI activity patterns during the activation and contextualization of abstract concepts. We devised a task in which participants had to embed abstract nouns into a story that they developed around a given background context. We found that representations in inferior parietal cortex were predicted by concept similarities emerging in models of distributional semantics. By constructing different model families, we reveal the models' learning trajectories and delineate how abstract and concrete training materials contribute to the formation of brain-like representations. These results inform theories about the format and emergence of abstract conceptual representations in the human brain.