The church,the monastery and the politician: Perils of entrepreneurial leadership in post-1970s Thailand

In recent decades, Thailand has seen the development of new styles of social and political organisation whose effects can be seen across religious and confessional lines. Among them are charismatically led large-scale organisations emulating the style of large-scale businesses. The article ‘triangulates’ this style via brief case studies of the Thai Rak Thai Party (now the Phuea Thai Party), the Wat Phra Dhammakaya Buddhist meditation movement and the Church of the Divine Call (pseudonym), who share some underlying similarities despite their overt differences. The similarities among the groups flow in part from trends associated with economic development and globalisation. Yet, at the same time these groups – and the ways in which they inspired such fervent opposition – express some enduring features of Thai cultural and social organisation.     

Physical Oracles: The Turing Machine and the Wheatstone Bridge

Earlier, we have studied computations possible by physical systems and by algorithms combined with physical systems. In particular, we have analysed the idea of using an experiment as an oracle to an abstract computational device, such as the Turing machine. The theory of composite machines of this kind can be used to understand (a) a Turing machine receiving extra computational power from a physical process, or (b) an experimenter modelled as a Turing machine performing a test of a known physical theory T. Our earlier work was based upon experiments in Newtonian mechanics. Here we extend the scope of the theory of experimental oracles beyond Newtonian mechanics to electrical theory. First, we specify an experiment that measures resistance using a Wheatstone bridge and start to classify the computational power of this experimental oracle using non-uniform complexity classes. Secondly, we show that modelling an experimenter and experimental procedure algorithmically imposes a limit on our ability to measure resistance by the Wheatstone bridge. The connection between the algorithm and physical test is mediated by a protocol controlling each query, especially the physical time taken by the experimenter. In our studies we find that physical experiments have an exponential time protocol; this we formulate as a general conjecture. Our theory proposes that measurability in Physics is subject to laws which are co-lateral effects of the limits of computability and computational complexity.     

A SIMPLICIAL DESIGN FOR THE ANALYSIS OF CORRELATIONAL LEARNING DATA

The usual matrix of intercorrelations among trials in a study of the learning process produces a superdiagonal matrix with resulting factors which are uninteresting: viz, a factor for the early trials and a factor for the later trials; with perhaps also a factor for the middle trials. By introducing several independent measures of learning for each trial a more meaningful factor structure can be obtained.     

A Lewisian Semantics for S2

This paper sets out a semantics for C.I. Lewis's logic S2 based on the ontology of his 1923 paper ‘Facts, Systems, and the Unity of the World’. In that article, worlds are taken to be maximal consistent systems. A system, moreover, is a collection of facts that is closed under logical entailment and conjunction. In this paper, instead of defining systems in terms of logical entailment, I use certain ideas in Lewis's epistemology and philosophy of logic to define a class of models in which systems are taken to be primitive elements but bear certain relations to one another. I prove soundness and completeness for S2 over this class of models and argue that this semantics makes sense of at least a substantial fragment of Lewis's logical theory.     

The Theory and Practice of Psychiatry by Frederick C. Redlich and Daniel X. Freedman

Abstract

The noted humorist Dave Barry, in looking back over his life and thinking of things he had learned, said one of the things he learned was that “There is a very fine line between ‘hobby’ and ‘mental illness’” (1998, p. 182).

Following in Dave Barry’s path, I would like to look back over the 45+ years I’ve been practicing group therapy and see if there is anything to be learned by what I have learned over those years.     

A Comparative Study of Declared and Undeclared College Students on Career Uncertainty and Involvement in Career Development Activities

As reported in current research, many if not most freshmen and sophomores in colleges and universities who are declared as well as undeclared about their academic majors express uncertainty about their careers and lack the level of involvement in the career development process (especially self-assessment, career exploration, and career decision making) necessary to make educated career decisions. This research study, using both quantitative and qualitative research processes, identifies and examines differences and similarities in career uncertainty and in levels of involvement in the career development process between declared and undeclared college students.     

Pride and respect in volunteers' organizational commitment

As volunteer organizations cannot rely on instrumental means to motivate their workers, we examine organizational commitment as a focal indicator of work motivation among volunteers. Based on a social identity analysis and previous work among paid employees, we argue that pride in the organization and respect from the organization predicts organizational commitment among volunteers. We further propose that among volunteers the perceived importance of volunteer work is an antecedent of pride, and that perceived support from the organization is an antecedent of respect. In this study among volunteer workers, Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) offers empirical support for our hypothesized model. In addition to the theoretical significance of developing a model that explains organizational commitment among volunteer workers, this study also has practical relevance, as it indicates that volunteer organizations might convey the importance of volunteer work and provide organizational support to induce pride and respect as a means of enhancing organizational commitment among their volunteers. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The influence of language exposure on lexical and syntactic language processing

Previous literature has argued that proficient bilingual speakers often demonstrate monolingual-equivalent structural processing of language (e.g., the processing of structural ambiguities; Frenck-Mestre, 2002). In this paper, we explore this thesis further via on-line examination of the processing of syntactically complex structures with three populations: those who classify as monolingual native English speaker (MNES), those who classify as non-native English speakers (NNES), and those who calssify as bilingual native English speakers (BNES). On-line measures of processing of object-relative constructions demonstrated that both NNES and BNES have different patterns of performance as compared to MNES. Further, NNES and BNES speakers perform differently from one another in such processing. The study also examines the activation of lexical information in biasing contexts, and suggests that different processes are at work in the different type of bilinguals examined here. The nature of these differences and the implications for developing sensitive models of on-line language comprehension are developed and discussed.     

Pavlovian eyeblink conditioning in combat veterans with and without post-traumatic stress disorder

Several recent studies have investigated relationships between post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and learning and memory problems. These reports have found in general that not only does PTSD affect trauma-related memories, but when patients with PTSD are compared with similar trauma patients without PTSD, general memory impairments have been found. The present paper reports a study in which associative learning, using Pavlovian eyeblink conditioning, was investigated in combat veterans with and without chronic PTSD, using interstimulus intervals of 500 and 1000 msec in two separate experiments. Although several recent reports suggest that larger-magnitude autonomic conditioned responses occur in patients with PTSD during Pavlovian conditoning, the present study found evidence of impaired Pavlovian eyeblink conditioning in combat veterans with and without PTSD, compared to non-combat veterans. Although these data suggest that combat leads to an impaired associative learning process regardless of whether PTSD is apparent, a group of community-dwelling combat veterans not under medical treatment showed normal conditioning, suggesting that variables other than prior combat must also be involved.