A Changing Society and the New Trends in Education

Profound differences exist between the ways in which arts educators and artists personally value the arts and the rationales offered via arts advocacy campaigns for public arts support. The author argues that those discrepancies carry grave consequences for K-university arts education. The author describes means by which to better reconcile valuing the arts for their intrinsic qualities with intense political pressure to justify arts education in terms of its alleged ability to improve students' math and reading skills and to address concerns of social justice and economic development. This article was adapted from a keynote speech given by the author on 13 October 2006 for the 62nd annual meeting of The National Association of Schools of Art and Design.     

Aging of the circadian system

Ageing affects all organic structures and processes, including the circadian system and its principal sign, the biological rhythms. The circadian system temporarily organizes the living organisms. It is made up of structures receiving information from the external environment (that synchronize the circadian clock), the central circadian pacemaker and the peripheral clocks that depends on it, and several outputs that are the overt rhythms. Ageing produces losses in function of all these three components: receptors (the eye in its capacity to transmit the more active light information to the circadian system), the central pacemaker (due to alterations in neuronal function) and the outputs. This leads to the alteration of overt rhythms, with losses in the phase relationship between them, a reduction in amplitude, an increase in fragmentation and an advancement of its phase.     

Chronodisruption and ageing

Modern life leads to a more active nocturnal lifestyle, reduced sleep hours and sometimes abrupt shifts across time zones (such as jet lag and shift work) that generate chronodisruption (CD) which can result in premature ageing. CD is defined as a significant disturbance of the internal temporal order of biochemical, physiological and behavioural circadian rhythms. Epidemiological studies show that CD induced by shift work, chronic jet lag, social jet lag and excessive exposure of bright light at night is associated with an increased incidence of metabolic syndrome, cardiovascular disease, cognitive and affective impairment, sleep disorders, some cancers and premature ageing. CD may be the result of disturbances in different components of the circadian system (central pacemaker and peripheral oscillators, inputs to central clock, mainly due to visual deficiencies, and output signals from the pacemaker and oscillators). Exposure to different synchronizers (light, meal times, physical and social activities) with a regular pattern results in a chronoenhacement that can prevent age-related CD.     

‘New Life’: Pentecostalism as Social Critique in Vanuatu

This paper argues that the new Pentecostal churches proliferating in the southwest Pacific nation, Vanuatu, must be understood in relation to the colonial history, the history of the churches, and the way the nation achieved its independence. The dominating frames of understanding Pentecostal churches in anthropology today, what I call the sociological perspective and the economic perspective, are insufficient in this context. Through an analysis of specific church groups breaking away from the mainline churches, and their Pentecostal-oriented rhetoric, I argue that the focus on change and on the break with the past becomes meaningful in relation to a general political development. The independent, new churches thus become powerful social movements working for social change. This change is specifically connected to the failures of the state; their failure to secure and protect, for instance, land rights against foreign investment.     

东太平洋赤道海域茎柔鱼的营养生态位和肠道微生物组成

掌握海洋生物的营养生态位特征及其应对环境变化的响应机制,对于评估渔业和气候变化对海洋生态系统功能的影响至关重要.茎柔鱼(Dosidicus gigas)是东太平洋重要的渔业经济物种,在生态系统中具有承上启下的重要生态作用.在气候变化的大背景下,掌握茎柔鱼应对气候变化的响应过程将有利于合理把控其资源状况.本研究采用稳定同...     

Mechanization Evolves a New Perspective

The author describes an ongoing National Endowment for the Humanities project that is devoted to building multiple competences by studying Rembrandt and seventeenthcentury Dutch culture. Its uniqueness consists in its designing of a state-of-the-art Web site that interrelates the humanities, social studies, visual arts, and technology. A major goal of the project's pedagogy is the development of standards-based instructional strategies that are informed by the national standards of the social studies and visual arts. Informing this effort is a recollection of the national standards movement and an assessment of its strengths and limitations. Policy relevance consists in avoiding the miscues of the standards movement.     

Exploring the costs and benefits of social information use: an appraisal of current experimental evidence

Research on social learning has focused traditionally on whether animals possess the cognitive ability to learn novel motor patterns from tutors. More recently, social learning has included the use of others as sources of inadvertent social information. This type of social learning seems more taxonomically widespread and its use can more readily be approached as an economic decision. Social sampling information, however, can be tricky to use and calls for a more lucid appraisal of its costs. In this four-part review, we address these costs. Firstly, we address the possibility that only a fraction of group members are actually providing social information at any one time. Secondly, we review experimental research which shows that animals are circumspect about social information use. Thirdly, we consider the cases where social information can lead to incorrect decisions and finally, we review studies investigating the effect of social information quality. We address the possibility that using social information or not is not a binary decision and present results of a study showing that nutmeg mannikins combine both sources of information, a condition that can lead to the establishment of informational cascades. We discuss the importance of empirically investigating the economics of social information use.     

Contemporary Comparative Anthropology – The Why We Post Project

This paper confronts the disparity between a tradition that has defined anthropology as a comparative discipline and the practices which increasingly embrace cultural relativism and the uniqueness of each fieldsite. It suggests that it is possible to resolve this dilemma, through creating a vertical structure that complements the horizontal task of comparison across fieldsites. This vertical structure is composed of different methods of dissemination which make explicit a series of steps from a baseline of popular dissemination which stresses the uniqueness of individuals, through books and journal articles with increasing degrees of generalisation and comparison. Following this structure leads us up through analysis to the creation and employment of theory. This allows us to make comparisons and generalisations without sacrificing our assertion of specificity and uniqueness. We illustrate this argument though a recent nine-field site comparison of the use and consequences of social media in a project called ‘Why We Post.’     

广东阳春现代樟树树轮宽度变化及其对气候因子的响应

树木年轮方法定年准确、连续性强、分辨率高和易于获取复本等 ,成为全球气候变化研究的重要手段之一。在热带、亚热带地区 ,受树木生理特性的影响 ,树轮研究工作开展较少。通过广东阳春过渡热带现代樟树树木年轮宽度的变化 ,发现秋季降水是影响研究区樟树生长的重要因子。树轮记录的准 4～ 4 .92 a周期的树轮指数变化可能与厄尔尼诺的周期有关 ,即厄尔尼诺引起气候变化对树木生长产生影响。尽管樟树生长快 ,树轮不清晰 ,交叉定年困难 ,但由于研究区存在明显的旱季 ,樟树树轮仍然能够在一定程度上反映气候条件的影响。     

公立医院社会责任与法律保障关系探讨

随着公立医院改革试点的指导意见确立,公立医院发展面临前所未有的挑战。围绕公立医院社会责任以及运用法律保障公立医院更好地履行社会责任等方面进行分析,具有探讨性地提出一些观点。同时对如何保障公立医院的合法权益,如何为公立医院、医务人员提供良性的执业环境等方面从法律角度,结合我国目前新医改方案出台、公立医院面临新一轮改革的形势,提出一些建议与意见。深化医药卫生体制改革是确保公立医院履行社会责任的有效途径之一,目的是建立中国特色的基本医疗卫生制度,保证城乡居民公平,享有安全、有效、方便、价廉的基本医疗卫生服务。这不仅是解决当前医患矛盾也是确保公立医院履行职责的治本之策、久安之道。     

Weather changes associated with hospitalizations for cardiovascular diseases and stroke in California, 1983–1998

Poisson regression models were used to evaluate associations between temperature, precipitation, days of extreme heat, and other weather changes (lagged 7 days), as well as El Niño events, with hospitalizations for acute myocardial infarction, angina pectoris, congestive heart failure, and stroke in three California regions. Temperature changes were defined as a 3 °C decrease in maximum temperature or a 3 °C increase in minimum temperature. Temperature and precipitation were analyzed separately for normal weather periods and El Niño events, and for both weather periods combined. Associations varied by region, age, and gender. In Los Angeles, temperature changes resulted in small changes in hospitalizations. Among San Francisco residents 70+ years of age, temperature changes increased hospitalizations for nearly all outcomes from 6% to 13%. Associations among Sacramento residents were similar to those in San Francisco: among men 70+ years of age, temperature changes increased hospitalizations by 6%–11% for acute myocardial infarction and congestive heart failure, and 10%–18% for stroke. El Niño events were consistently and significantly associated with hospitalizations only in San Francisco and Sacramento, and then only for angina pectoris (increasing hospitalizations during El Niño events). These exploratory analyses merit further confirmation to improve our understanding of how admissions to hospitals for cardiovascular disease and stroke change with changing weather. Such an understanding is useful for developing current public health responses, for evaluating population vulnerability, and for designing future adaptation measures.     

Modelling of auxin-binding protein 1 suggests that its C-terminus and auxin could compete for a binding site that incorporates a metal ion and tryptophan residue 44

Sequence comparison indicates that auxin-binding protein 1 (ABP1) belongs to a family of proteins with the core β-barrel structure of the vicilins. Previous modelling within this family correctly predicted metal-ion binding and oligomeric properties of oxalate oxidase. ABP1 also contains a putative metal-ion-binding cluster of amino acids, adjacent to a tryptophan side chain, leading to a proposed auxin-binding site that incorporates metal-ion interaction with the auxin carboxylate. Modelling implicates W44 (Zea mays ABP1) in auxin binding, rather than W136 or W151. Reduced sequence similarity for the C-terminal region prevents model building. It is proposed that one of these C-terminal tryptophans, along with a neighbouring negatively charged side chain, occupies the binding pocket in the absence of auxin, thereby linking auxin binding to conformational change and C-terminal involvement in signalling. Received: 10 December 1999 / Accepted: 4 August 2000