Televisual experiences of poverty and abundance: Entertainment television in the Philippines

This paper draws from ethnographic research on entertainment television in the Philippines, in which poverty, suffering, abundance and joy are materialised and enacted as central themes. Examples are considered from a particularly successful Philippine television program, Eat Bulaga, in which audience members compete to win prizes of cash, bank accounts, feasts, appliances or vehicles. While the production of this television program creates a wider, mediated representation of poverty and abundance, suffering and joy, the paper focuses on the practices and experiences of the people – including production staff and audience members ‐ whose participation in the making of this television program is a materially, and at times spiritually, transformative event. In doing so, Eat Bulaga consolidates and remediates a large market of television audiences whose self‐understanding incorporates the mass consumption of particular goods as being central to the Philippine experience of poverty‐in‐modernity.     

Phenomenological and neurocognitive perspectives on delusions: A critical overview

There is considerable overlap between phenomenological and neurocognitive perspectives on delusions. In this paper, we first review major phenomenological accounts of delusions, beginning with Jaspers’ ideas regarding incomprehensibility, delusional mood, and disturbed “cogito” (basic, minimal, or core self‐experience) in what he termed “delusion proper” in schizophrenia. Then we discuss later studies of decontextualization and delusional mood by Matussek, changes in self and world in delusion formation according to Conrad's notions of “apophany” and “anastrophe”, and the implications of ontological transformations in the felt sense of reality in some delusions. Next we consider consistencies between: a) phenomenological models stressing minimal‐self (ipseity) disturbance and hyperreflexivity in schizophrenia, and b) recent neurocognitive models of delusions emphasizing salience dysregulation and prediction error. We voice reservations about homogenizing tendencies in neurocognitive explanations of delusions (the “paranoia paradigm”), given experiential variations in states of delusion. In particular we consider shortcomings of assuming that delusions necessarily or always involve “mistaken beliefs” concerning objective facts about the world. Finally, we offer some suggestions regarding possible neurocognitive factors. Current models that stress hypersalience (banal stimuli experienced as strange) might benefit from considering the potential role of hyposalience in delusion formation. Hyposalience – associated with experiencing the strange as if it were banal, and perhaps with activation of the default mode network – may underlie a kind of delusional derealization and an “anything goes” attitude. Such an attitude would be conducive to delusion formation, yet differs significantly from the hypersalience emphasized in current neurocognitive theories.     

中国蕨类植物细胞分类学研究概况

中国蕨类植物类群十分丰富,由63科230属约2600种组成,其中约有10％的种类为中国特有。迄今为止,中国蕨类植物进行过染色体计数的种类约有395种,仅占中国蕨类植物总数的15％,其中48％为多倍体。本文对中国蕨类植物细胞分类学研究的历史和现状进行了综合评述。文中论述了蕨类植物染色体数目和染色体基数在系统学上的应用以及蕨类植物染色体组型分析、多倍化、无融合生殖、多倍体复合体及网状进化的研究概况。中国20多年的蕨类植物细胞分类学研究表明,蕨类植物的染色体数目、基数、组型分析、多倍化及其繁殖方式对蕨类植物的分类、起源和演化的研究都有重要作用,对种及种复合体的鉴定、科属的划分也有重要的参考价值。并对中国蕨类植物细胞分类学研究提出了一些建议。     

Explaining Chinese identification in Hong Kong: the role of beliefs about group malleability

ABSTRACT

Hong Kong is an epicentre of identity conflicts in China. While numerous accounts have been proposed to explain the rise of “localism”, few have explained why many Hong Kong Chinese have maintained their ethnic identification with China. Based on an original survey of a representative sample of the population and an experiment conducted among college students, this article advances a novel explanation, arguing that people who perceive the core character of groups as shaped by context (i.e. it is malleable) are more likely to have a higher level of Chinese identification. The explanation is that in the face of deep cultural and political differences between mainland and Hong Kong Chinese, the belief induces the latter to understand those differences as stemming from people’s current situations rather than from some unchangeable national traits, thus reducing their need to adopt an alternative identity. The findings have important implications on (ethno) nation-building policies.     

Intention and Moral Enhancement

Recently philosophers have proposed a wide variety of interventions referred to as ‘moral enhancements’. Some of these interventions are concerned with helping individuals make more informed decisions; others, however, are designed to compel people to act as the intervener sees fit. Somewhere between these two extremes lie interventions designed to direct an agent's attention either towards morally relevant issues – hat‐hanging – or away from temptations to do wrong – hat‐hiding. I argue that these interventions fail to constitute genuine moral enhancement because, although they may result in more desirable outcomes – more altruism, more law‐following, and/or less self‐destructive behavior, they ignore a person's intentions, and often what makes an action right or wrong is the intent behind it.     

Cancer immunotherapy takes a multi-faceted approach to kick the immune system into gear

Cancer accounts for about every fourth death in the United States, with approximately 1,500 people dying each day as a result of this disease. Despite some progress in the last decades, these numbers alone undoubtedly demonstrate the urgent need for new and more efficient treatments. Immunotherapy aims to activate an efficient immune response against tumors or even prevent cancers from occurring in the first place. It is a growing field currently flourishing with several successful trials, some of which have led to the recent approval of new anti-cancer drugs by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). This review addresses the manifold strategies that immunotherapy has taken in the past and discusses the most recent achievements in the field.     

The protean forms of Yankee Hindutva

Movements in the diaspora must perforce settle accounts with the cultural frameworks within which they operate. When the Hindu Right sets off from the shores of South Asia, it has to come to terms with its new location. In the United States, it constitutes a Yankee Hindutva – where it asserts itself in the space allowed by multiculturalism. To delink itself from its shabby heritage in the subcontinent, Yankee Hindutva adopts many, protean, forms – this to attract people from all walks of life. This article traces the protean forms of Yankee Hindutva, the many ways in which the Hindu Right enters the lives of certain South Asian Americans, whom they now call “Hindu Americans”. An analysis of the grounds for the Right lead the authors into a discussion of the patterns for fund-raising adopted by Yankee Hindutva, as well as its attempt to secure social control over Indian Americans. The authors also demonstrate the ideological and stylistic contradictions of Yankee Hindutva, this to offer some brief comments on the forces arrayed against it.     

For an anthropology of the demoralized: state pay,mock‐labour,and unfreedom in a Serbian firm

Recently, the leitmotif of much anthropological writing became that of the virtue of precarity: the belief that people continue to exercise their ethical imagination in the most trying circumstances. While refreshingly non‐deterministic, the Foucauldian approach to freedom that guides this vision neglects those situations in which people see their ability to be moral as irreparable, and structurally compromised. Such is the case of a Serbian firm selling spare car parts, where policies of financing unprofitable employment gradually involved workers in everyday, ritualized performances of productivity for the state – what I call mock‐labour. Unable either to meaningfully fulfil or to renounce the ethos of work, workers remain in an affective blend of nonchalance and failure, experiencing mock‐labour as both a source of material security and an abandonment of their creative capacities – a mocking of moral self. I call for a reconciliation of the anthropologies of ethics and precarity through the notion of demoralization, as a state in which the deficits of structural agency and the limits of reflective freedom overlap.     

‘The past is a promise to the future’: stories,persons, and the devil in Greece

Drawing on ethnography from central Greece, this article is about the way people narrate their encounters with the devil. Although it echoes the idea that life as told and life as lived are structured in the same way, it takes the argument a step further by suggesting they are structured through a narrative plot wherein the present and the future of the story-tellers pre-date the past of which their stories tell. It also foregrounds the link between this structure and a particular kind of morality which replicates the narrative logic of the stories, giving rise to an inherently relational personhood – a personhood that, just like the way in which its narration destabilizes the logic of before and after, destabilizes the distinction between self and other. Lastly, contextualizing the current economic crisis in the lives of such persons, the article suggests we need to think of it in relation to the devil and the stories people tell of him.     

Bodies of data: doubles,composites, and aggregates

In this essay, I describe three bodies of data, analysing how relations are drawn between physical, digital, and political composites. Following the phrase ‘getting to know your data self’, my aim is to draw out the kinds of relations people use data to make, and the versions of the body that I find codified in data imaginaries. Thematically, the stories give different accounts of control over data, as the data body is doubled, built out of composites, and aggregated into a body politic.     

Digging the rabbit hole,COVID-19 edition: anti-vaccine themes and the discourse around COVID-19

This article draws on a broadcast popular among the anti-vaccine community to map out six themes used by the broadcast to mislead viewers about COVID-19. The themes are the claim that “they” – government and pharma – are lying to you, claims that COVID-19 is an excuse to remove civil liberties, viewing everyone as an expert, claiming that science cannot save us, skewing the science, and a claim that “they” are out to harm the viewers. The article points out that similar themes are used to mislead followers with anti-vaccine information. It highlights the concern that these themes will not only mislead people who are already anti-vaccine about the pandemic, but may draw in people who are not anti-vaccine but are seeking information about COVID-19, and suggests some options for dealing with the misinformation. Scientists benefit from understanding these claims, as we are often tasked with providing rebuttals to this misinformation.     

Episodic memory and common sense: how far apart?

Research has revealed facts about human memory in general and episodic memory in particular that deviate from both common sense and previously accepted ideas. This paper discusses some of these deviations in light of the proceedings of The Royal Society's Discussion Meeting on episodic memory. Retrieval processes play a more critical role in memory than commonly assumed; people can remember events that never happened; and conscious thoughts about one's personal past can take two distinct forms-'autonoetic' remembering and 'noetic' knowing. The serial-dependent-independent (SPI) model of the relations among episodic, semantic and perceptual memory systems accounts for a number of puzzling phenomena, such as some amnesic patients' preserved recognition memory and their ability to learn new semantic facts, and holds that episodic remembering of perceptual information can occur only by virtue of its mediation through semantic memory. Although common sense endows many animals with the ability to remember their past experiences, as yet there is no evidence that humanlike episodic memory-defined in terms of subjective time, self, and autonoetic awareness-is present in any other species.     

Bioethics,children, and the environment

Queer perspectives have typically emerged from sexual minorities as a way of repudiating flawed views of sexuality, mischaracterized relationships, and objectionable social treatment of people with atypical sexuality or gender expression. In this vein, one commentator offers a queer critique of the conceptualization of children in regard to their value for people's identities and relationships. According to this account, children are morally problematic given the values that make them desirable, their displacement of other beings and things entitled to moral protection, not to mention the damaging environmental effects that follow in the wake of population growth. Objectionable views of children are said even to have colonized the view of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and trans (LGBT) people who – with the enthusiastic endorsement of bioethics – increasingly turn to assisted reproductive treatments to have children. In the face of these outcomes, it is better – according to this account – that people reconsider their interest in children. This account is not, however, ultimately strong enough to override people's interest in having children, relative to the benefits they confer and relative to the benefits conferred on children themselves. It is certainly not strong enough to justify differential treatment of LGBT people in matters of assisted reproductive treatments. Environmental threats in the wake of population growth might be managed in ways other than devaluing children as such. Moreover, this account ultimately damages the interests of LGBT people in matters of access, equity, and children, which outcome is paradoxical, given the origins of queer perspectives as efforts to assert and defend the social interests of sexual and gender minorities.     

Immunological discrimination between self and non-self by precursor depletion and memory accumulation

We study processes by which T-lymphocytes "learn" to discriminate "self" from "non-self". We show that intrinsic features of the T cell activation and proliferation process are sufficient to tolerize (self) reactive T-lymphocyte clones. Self vs non-self discrimination therefore develops without any down-regulatory (e.g. suppressive) interactions. T-lymphocyte clones will expand by proliferation only if the IL2 concentration is high enough to induce a proliferation rate larger than the rate of cell decay. This concentration is the proliferation threshold. Because effector T cells are short-lived the proliferation threshold must be quite high. Such high numbers of cells producing IL2 are achieved only when sufficient (memory) precursors are activated. Self and non-self antigens differ with respect the number of (memory) precursor cells they accumulate, as a result of two processes, i.e. precursor depletion and memory accumulation, and can thus be discriminated. Precursor depletion: the dynamics of long-lived precursors can cause tolerization. In neonatal circumstances precursor influx is still low, newborn cells reacting with self antigens are immediately activated, generating (few), i.e. fewer than the proliferation threshold, effectors that decay rapidly. Thus total lymphocyte numbers remain low, yielding self tolerance. Conversely, large doses of similar antigens introduced in mature systems push "their" lymphocyte clone over the proliferation threshold because a large (accumulated) precursor population is rapidly activated. Small doses are however low zone tolerized. Memory accumulation: peripheral T-lymphocyte populations in fact consist of a mixture of virgin precursors and memory cells. If the formation process of (long-lived) memory cells is taken into account and virgin precursors are made short-lived, the proliferation threshold again accounts for self non-self discrimination. Memory cells accumulate when antigenic restimulation is low; it is low when the antigen concentration and/or the antigen affinity is low. Therefore self antigens, which are present in relatively high concentrations, fail to accumulate high affinity memory cells, and are hence tolerated. Memory cells crossreacting to self antigens with low affinity, however accumulate neonatally, pushing those clones over the proliferation threshold whenever "their" high affinity antigen enters the immune system. Thus the model generates differences in the antigenicity (i.e. memory precursor frequency) of self and non-self.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)     

Perceptions and uses of Chinese medicine among the chinese in Hong Kong

The present paper was based on both qualitative observations and quantitative survey data. Major findings are as follows: (1) The sacred or magical-religious tradition of Chinese medicine is accepted by a relatively small portion (roughly one-fifth) of the ordinary Chinese people in urban Hong Kong, and is relatively more popular among women or less educated people. (2) Both the classical-professional and the local-empirical traditions of secular medicine are resorted to by many Chinese people (over one half) either for treating diseases or for strengthening their constitution. The acceptance of secular Chinese medicine does not vary significantly among different sex, age, education, or income groups. It should be noted that secular Chinese medicine is often used in addition to or in combination with modern Western medicine. (3) It appears that most people are more confident in the Chinese medical tradition than in Chinese-style practitioners in Hong Kong, and that people's confidence in secular Chinese medicine has been increasing in recent years. (4) There are reasons for the confidence in secular Chinese medicine. Chinese medicine is generally perceived to be better than or as good as Western, scientific medicine in some ways, such as for tonic care, for fewer side effects, for curing the cause (not symptoms) of diseases, and for treating certain diseases. Therefore, to ordinary Chinese people, Chinese and Western medicine may perform either equivalent or complementary functions. (5) As regards the process of seeking medical care, most people seem to follow the pattern of moving from self-medication, using Chinese and/or Western home remedies, to Western-style doctors, to Chinese-style practitioners, and finally to a Western medical hospital. Policy and theoretical implications of these findings are discussed.     

Kombinowanie: agency,informality, and the poetics of self in Highland Poland

This article asks what role local models of agency and subjectivity play in the structure and interpretation of informal economic practices, and how this influences the ways in which people narrate their behaviour to others. Exploring the use of a common Polish idiom for informal activities – kombinowanie – amongst villagers in the Carpathian Highlands, it argues that the term acts as a ‘master‐trope’ for local identity, providing villagers with a narrative model for asserting and broadcasting their social agency to peers. Furthermore, it shows how in this particular ethnographic context, the retelling of instances of informal or illegal activity as kombinowanie can be seen as part of a Highlander ‘poetics of self’, in that each manifestation of the term carries with it a series of implicit sociohistorical and normative meanings that relate to notions of ‘typical’ Górale (Highland) behaviour. By characterizing kombinowanie as a type of tactics, I open up the term for comparative analysis with other local conceptions of agency which value insubordination.     

Power-law species–area relationships and self-similar species distributions within finite areas

The species–area relationship (SAR) is often expressed as a power law, which indicates scale invariance. It has been claimed that the scale invariance – or self‐similarity at the community level – is not compatible with the self‐similarity at the level of spatial distribution of individual species, because the power law would only emerge if distributions for all species had identical fractal dimensions (FD). Here we show that even if species differ in their FD, the resulting SAR is approximately linear on a log–log scale because observed spatial distributions are inevitably spatially restricted – a phenomenon we term the ‘finite‐area effect’. Using distribution atlases, we demonstrate that the apparent power law of SARs for central European birds is attributable to this finite‐area effect affecting species that indeed reveal self‐similar distributions. We discuss implications of this mechanism producing the SAR.     

Development of region-specific emission factors and estimation of methane emission from rice fields in the East, Southeast and South Asian countries

Rice cultivation areas in East, Southeast and South Asia account for 89% of the world total, and field measurements of methane (CH₄) emission from rice cultivation have been widely performed in this area. In this paper, we assembled most of the measurements and developed region‐specific CH₄ emission factors. Efforts were made in order to regionalize rice fields by climate and soil properties, and to incorporate the effect of organic input and water regime on emission. Data on rice cultivation areas of 1995 were collected at subdivision level (province, state, prefecture, etc.). Total emission from these areas was estimated at 25.1 Tg CH₄ year ^{? 1}, of which 7.67 Tg was emitted from China and 5.88 Tg from India. Irrigated and rainfed rice fields contributed 70.4 and 27.5% to the total emission, respectively. Deepwater rice fields had a very small share. A high‐resolution and quality emission distribution map was constructed as the emission was directly estimated at province level and below that, a 30‐second land‐use dataset was used in order to translate the emission to grid format. As the rice cultivation area in the study region accounts for 89% of the world total, extrapolating the estimate to the global scale indicates a global emission of 28.2 Tg CH₄ year ^{? 1}. The estimate was compared with country reports made by local scientists. For some countries – such as Indonesia, Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam, Japan, South Korea, Pakistan and the Philippines – the results of this estimate agree reasonably well with their country reports (CV < 15%). For some other countries – such as China, India and Bangladesh – there is relatively large disagreement between our estimate and their country reports. The reasons for the discrepancies were discussed.     

山药中的致痒物质及致痒机制研究

山药是一种传统中药,对人体有许多益处,如抗腹泻、抗炎、抗糖尿病、低胆固醇血症、抗氧化、抗肿瘤和免疫调节.山药黏液接触皮肤,常引起严重瘙痒.而山药中存在的致痒物质成分尚不清楚.我们采用乙醇提取、膜过滤、离子交换色谱、悬浮液滴法从新鲜山药中提取尿囊素晶体.从河南焦作山药中提取的尿囊素含量约为3.567 mg/g.活性实验结果表明,尿囊素引起的小鼠抓挠反应次数显著地高于对照组.尿囊素直接激活背根神经节神经元,诱导钙流入,还可以诱导神经元内向电流产生.我们首次在细胞水平证明尿囊素能够激活神经细胞,诱导痒觉信号传导.