Studying with the Internet: Giorgio Agamben,Education, and New Digital Technologies

This paper provides an analysis of the educational use of the Internet and of digital technologies that is neither pessimistic nor optimistic, that is neither critical nor post-critical. Turning to Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben’s comments on studying and its relationship to the technology of the blank writing tablet, the authors argue that digital devises are a radical transformation in our relationship to the technologies of reading and writing. Traditionally, the scholar was able to experience his or her potentiality to communicate through writing via the blankness of the writing tablet. Yet, according to Agamben, such blankness has become inaccessible in the digital age, where the screen is always full of content. Here the authors argue that Agamben is correct in his diagnosis, yet his own theory of communicability (as the experience of our ability to and not to communicate this or that specific message) offers up a way to redeem the educational use of digital devices. It is precisely the overflowing saturation of communications on the Internet which produces a new kind of blankness. It is this blankness which should thus become the focus of a studious form of media literacy—one that is not critical or post-critical so much as pre-critical (in that it contemplates the very potentiality for communication as such).     

Another look at category effects on colour perception and their left hemispheric lateralisation: no evidence from a colour identification task

The present study aimed to replicate category effects on colour perception and their lateralisation to the left cerebral hemisphere (LH). Previous evidence for lateralisation of colour category effects has been obtained with tasks where a differently coloured target was searched within a display and participants reported the lateral location of the target. However, a left/right spatial judgment may yield LH-laterality effects per se. Thus, we employed an identification task that does not require a spatial judgment and used the same colour set that previously revealed LH-lateralised category effects. The identification task was better performed with between-category colours than with within-category task both in terms of accuracy and latency, but such category effects were bilateral or RH-lateralised, and no evidence was found for LH-laterality effects. The accuracy scores, moreover, indicated that the category effects derived from low sensitivities for within-blue colours and did not reflect the effects of categorical structures on colour perception. Furthermore, the classic “category effects” were observed in participants’ response biases, instead of sensitivities. The present results argue against both the LH-lateralised category effects on colour perception and the existence of colour category effects per se.     

Ambulante Behandlung von Sexualstraftätern

Treatment of sexual offenders is still a controversial issue for both forensic clinical practice and research. The methods to evaluate efficacy and effectiveness in the field of forensic psychiatry and psychotherapy show many distinctive characteristics. Especially outpatient treatment of sexual offenders takes place in a conflict of interest. This article aims to illustrate several potentials and difficulties in the field of sexual offender treatment using the example of the Hamburg Institute for Sex Research and Forensic Psychiatry at the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf (UKE).     

A Clockwork Orange: Compensation opposing momentum in memory for location

Libet, Gleason, Wright, and Pearl's (1983; Libet, 1985) influential work using a clock-watching task suggests that voluntary actions are initiated in motor cortex prior to the point where the participant claims to have initiated that action. Joordens, van Duijn, and Spalek (2002) showed that a bias exists in this task with respect to the participants' reports of initiation times. Joordens et al. assumed that this bias was primarily due to motion cues that are very much like those used to elicit phenomena such as representational momentum. In the present Experiment 1, it is demonstrated that this bias disappears when a mouse-click response is used in place of a temporal-order judgment. This finding, however, is actually more confusing than clarifying given that the procedural parallels with representational momentum are still present and should be supporting a bias. In the three subsequent experiments the view that a bias is indeed present, but that it is opposed by an opposite-acting compensation process, is proposed and tested. Implications for both representational momentum and for the general use of clock-watching tasks (e.g., Libet et al., 1983) are highlighted.     

Righteous Rhetoric: Sex,Speech and the Politics of Concerned Women for America

Abstract

This article considers the Catholic Church's rejection of female sexed bodies as capable of symbolizing Christ in the Eucharist of God's agency in the world. The theories of René Girard provide a useful resource for analyzing the fear of female sexuality within Catholicism. They reveal that an obsessive focus upon sex has been the means through which the male tendency towards sacrificial violence, forbidden within Christianity, has continued to exert a powerful influence. A recognition of this substitutory process would not only enable a revisioning of the roles women and men might play within the Church, but also enable the Church to more effectively oppose the ‘culture of death’ which endangers us all.     

Involvement of hippocampal nitric oxide in spatial learning in the rat

Nitric oxide (NO) is thought to be involved in synaptic plasticity contributing to learning and memory in several brain areas including the hippocampus. The hippocampus is believed to have a critical role in the processing of spatial information. But, data on the role of hippocampal NO in spatial learning are not consistent. So the effect of NO synthase (NOS) inhibition in the CA1 region of rat hippocampus on spatial localization was investigated in the Morris water maze (MWM). Male albino Wistar rats cannulated in their CA1 region received bilateral injections of vehicle (saline) or N(omega)-nitro-L-arginine methyl ester (L-NAME), a NOS inhibitor (50, 100 and 200 microg/0.5 microl) through the cannulae 30 min before training each day. Animals were subjected to 5 days of training in the MWM; 4 days with the invisible platform to test spatial learning and the 5th day with the visible platform to test motivation and sensorimotor coordination. The results showed dose-dependent increases (p<0.001) in escape latency, traveled distance, heading angle, and dose-dependent decreases (p<0.01) in target quadrant entries in L-NAME-received groups as compared to the control group. This impairment was reversed by co-administration of mole-equivalent doses of L-arginine (L-Arg), the NO precursor. L-Arg alone at the dose of 129.2 microg, increased heading angle (p<0.01) with no effect on other parameters. On the basis of the present data, it is concluded that processes mediated by NO synthesis in the hippocampus are essentially involved in spatial learning.     

Culture and Personal Epistemology: U.S. and Middle Eastern Students’ beliefs about Scientific Knowledge and Knowing

Middle Eastern (Omani) and Western (U.S.) students’ beliefs about knowledge and knowing in the sciences were compared on four dimensions of personal epistemology proposed by Hofer and Pintrich (Review of Educational Research (1997), 67, 88–140). As predicted, given their experiences with comparatively traditional political and religious institutions, Omani more so than U.S. college students were more likely to accept scientific authorities as the basis of scientific truth. Furthermore, Omani men were more accepting of authorities than were Omani women, but there was no gender difference among U.S. students. Omani more than U.S. students also believed that knowledge in the sciences was simpler and more certain, which is consistent with comparisons between U.S. and Asian students (e.g., Qian & Pan, 2002, A comparision of epistemological beliefs and learning from science text between American and Chinese high school students. In B. K. Hofer & P. R. Pintrich (Eds.), Personal epistomology: The psychology of beliefs about knowledge and knowing (pp. 365–385), Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum). Students in the two countries did not differ, however, in whether their beliefs were based on personal opinions versus systematic evidence. Suggestions for further research included directly assessing experiences with, and attitudes toward, authorities in academic and other areas of students’ lives.     

Short-term and Mid-term Effects of Fasting and Downset Meal Pattern on Lipid Profile in Iranian Fasted Women

It is not clear that whether the effects of fasting and downset meal pattern on lipid profile are limited only to Ramadan or do they remain after that month. The cohort study was conducted on 49 women aged 20–45 who worked at Shahid Motahari hospital in Isfahan. They put on groups of 23 consuming downset meal and 26 non-consuming downset meal persons. Serum triglyceride, cholesterol, LDL, and HDL were measured on the 3 days before the beginning, 3 and 30 days after the end of Ramadan. Repeated measure test was used to determine the changes during times and the interaction effects between times and nocturnal eating pattern. This study showed that fasting causes some short-term and mid-term changes in triglyceride and HDL that is mostly attributable to changes in dietary habits during Ramadan, rather than downset meal pattern.