Physical self-concept and disturbed eating attitudes and behaviors in French athlete and non-athlete adolescent girls: direct and indirect relations

This study aims to investigate the direct and indirect associations between physical self-subdomains, physical self-worth, global self-worth, and disturbed eating attitudes and behaviors among French non-elite athlete and non-athlete adolescent girls. A sample of adolescent girls including 50 ballet dancers, 41 basketball players, and 47 non-athletes was used in this study. Data obtained from the ballet dancer and basketball player subsamples revealed significant, sample-specific as well as common, direct relations between global and physical self-perceptions and disturbed eating attitudes and behaviors, as well as significant indirect relations (via global self-worth and physical self-worth) between specific physical self-perceptions and disturbed eating attitudes and behaviors. In contrast, no association was found between global and physical self-perceptions in the sample of non-athlete adolescent girls.     

Paraconsistent algebras

The prepositional calculiC _n , 1 n introduced by N.C.A. da Costa constitute special kinds of paraconsistent logics. A question which remained open for some time concerned whether it was possible to obtain a Lindenbaum's algebra forC _n . C. Mortensen settled the problem, proving that no equivalence relation forC _n . determines a non-trivial quotient algebra.The concept of da Costa algebra, which reflects most of the logical properties ofC _n , as well as the concept of paraconsistent closure system, are introduced in this paper.We show that every da Costa algebra is isomorphic with a paraconsistent algebra of sets, and that the closure system of all filters of a da Costa algebra is paraconsistent.     

Execution and pauses in writing narratives: processing time, cognitive effort and typing skill

At the behavioural level, the activity of a writer can be described as periods of typing separated by pauses. Although some studies have been concerned with the functions of pauses, few have investigated motor execution periods. Precise estimates of the distribution of writing processes, and their cognitive demands, across periods of typing and pauses are lacking. Furthermore, it is uncertain how typing skill affects these aspects of writing. We addressed these issues, selecting writers of low and high typing skill who performed dictation and composition tasks. The occurrences of writing processes were assessed through directed verbalization, and their cognitive demands were measured through interference in reaction times (IRT). Before writing a narrative, 34 undergraduates learned to categorize examples of introspective thoughts as different types of activities related to writing (planning, translating, or revising). Then, while writing, they responded to random auditory probes, and reported their ongoing activity according to the learned categories. Convergent with previous findings, translating was most often reported, and revising and planning had fewer occurrences. Translating was mostly activated during motor execution, whereas revising and planning were mainly activated during pauses. However, none of the writing processes can be characterized as being typical of pauses, since translating was activated to a similar extent as the other two processes. Regarding cognitive demands, revising is likely to be the most demanding process in narrative writing. Typing skill had an impact on IRTs of motor execution. The demands of execution were greater in the low than in the high typing skill group, but these greater demands did not affect the strategy of writing processes activation. Nevertheless, low typing skill had a detrimental impact on text quality.     

A dog at the keyboard: using arbitrary signs to communicate requests

As a consequence of domestication, dogs have a special readiness for communication with humans. We here investigate whether a dog might be able to acquire and consistently produce a set of arbitrary signs in her communication with humans, as was demonstrated in “linguistic” individuals of several species. A female mongrel dog was submitted to a training schedule in which, after basic command training and after acquiring the verbal labels of rewarding objects or activities, she learned to ask for such objects or activities by selecting lexigrams and pressing keys on a keyboard. Systematic records taken during spontaneous interaction with one of the experimenters showed that lexigrams were used in an appropriate, intentional way, in accordance with the immediate motivational context. The dog only utilized the keyboard in the experimenter’s presence and gazed to him more frequently after key pressing than before, an indication that lexigram use did have communicative content. Results suggest that dogs may be able to learn a conventional system of signs associated to specific objects and activities, functionally analogous to spontaneous soliciting behaviors and point to the potential fruitfulness of the keyboard/lexigram procedure for studying dog communication and cognition. This is the first report to systematically analyze the learning of arbitrary sign production in dogs. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.     

Effects of daily environmental enrichment on memory deficits and brain injury following neonatal hypoxia-ischemia in the rat

Environmental enrichment (EE) results in improved learning and spatial memory, as well as attenuates morphological changes resulting from cerebral ischemia in adult animals. This study examined the effects of daily EE on memory deficits in the water maze and cerebral damage, assessed in the hippocampus and cerebral cortex, caused by neonatal hypoxia-ischemia. Male Wistar rats in the 7th postnatal day were submitted to the Levine-Rice model of neonatal hypoxia-ischemia (HI), comprising permanent occlusion of the right common carotid artery and a period of hypoxia (90 min, 8%O(2)-92%N(2)). Starting two weeks after the HI event, animals were stimulated by the enriched environment (1h/day for 9 weeks); subsequent to the stimulation, performance of animals in the water maze was assessed. HI resulted in spatial reference and working memory impairments that were completely reversed by EE. Following the behavioral study, animals were killed and the hippocampal volume and cortical area were estimated. There was a significant reduction of both hippocampal volume and cortical area, ipsilateral to arterial occlusion, in HI animals; environmental stimulation had no effect on these morphological measurements. Presented data indicate that stimulation by the daily environmental enrichment recovers spatial memory deficits caused by neonatal hypoxia-ischemia without affecting tissue atrophy in either hippocampus or cortex.     

Climate justice after Paris: a normative framework

This paper puts forward a normative framework to differentiate between the climate-related responsibilities of different countries in the aftermath of the Paris Agreement. It offers reasons for applying the chief moral principles of ‘historical responsibility’ and ‘capacity’ to climate finance instead of climate change mitigation targets. This will (i) provide a normative basis to realize the goal of climate change mitigation while allowing for developing and newly industrialized countries to develop economically and (ii) offer an account of the distributive principles that can regulate climate finance. This is a real-world interpretation of the 1992 UNFCCC principle of ‘common but differentiated responsibilities’ that takes into account the progress accomplished at the COP21 in Paris and offers a solution to the still unsolved problem of differentiated responsibilities. This paper offers an application of this proposal to the Green Climate Fund.     

Vestibular stimulation interferes with the dynamics of an internal representation of gravity

The remembered vanishing location of a moving target has been found to be displaced downward in the direction of gravity (representational gravity) and more so with increasing retention intervals, suggesting that the visual spatial updating recruits an internal model of gravity. Despite being consistently linked with gravity, few inquiries have been made about the role of vestibular information in these trends. Previous experiments with static tilting of observers’ bodies suggest that under conflicting cues between the idiotropic vector and vestibular signals, the dynamic drift in memory is reduced to a constant displacement along the body’s main axis. The present experiment aims to replicate and extend these outcomes while keeping the observers’ bodies unchanged in relation to physical gravity by varying the gravito-inertial acceleration using a short-radius centrifuge. Observers were shown, while accelerated to varying degrees, targets moving along several directions and were required to indicate the perceived vanishing location after a variable interval. Increases of the gravito-inertial force (up to 1.4G), orthogonal to the idiotropic vector, did not affect the direction of representational gravity, but significantly disrupted its time course. The role and functioning of an internal model of gravity for spatial perception and orientation are discussed in light of the results.     

Unplanned pregnancy and risk of maternal depression: secondary data analysis from a prospective pregnancy cohort

Purpose: to evaluate the relationship between unplanned pregnancy (UP), a common problem in high and low income countries and maternal depression (MD). Methods: Secondary analysis of data from a prospective cohort study with pregnant women recruited from 10 primary care clinics of the public sector in São Paulo, Brazil. Participants were questioned about pregnancy intention at 20–30 weeks of gestation. The Self Report Questionnaire score >7 was used to evaluated the presence of depression during pregnancy and 11 months after childbirth. Four groups of MD were defined: never; antenatal only; postnatal only; persistent (both antenatal/postnatal). Multinomial logistic regression was used to assess the relationship between UP and MD, controlling for confounding. Results: Data were analysed for 701 at the postpartum period. Five hundred and sixty-two (67.8%) women did not plan the pregnancy. Women with UP had 2.5 more risk of being depressed during both assessments (during pregnancy and postpartum) when compared to women with a planned pregnancy (RR: 2.5; 95% CI: 1.47:4.30). In the adjusted models, women with UP were significantly more likely to have persistent depression (RR: 2.3; 95% CI: 1.2:4.3). Conclusion: UP is an independent risk factor for persistent depression, but not for postpartum depression     

Bergson,human rights,and joy

Continental Philosophy Review - This article examines Henri Bergson’s conception of human rights in The Two Sources of Morality and Religion (1932). I claim that he provides an original view...