Marxism after the Collapse of the Soviet Union

The article studies the implications for historical materialism of the failure of the socialist project in the Soviet Union. The author demonstrates that the said failure broadly confirms central historical materialist theses, which would have been difficult to sustain if the Russian revolution had succeeded in its goal of superseding capitalism and establishing a socialist society.     

Dreaming a New Future

“Mission from the Margins” is not about the victims but about confronting the forces of marginalization. It is about naming and dismantling cultures and structures that keep the world unjust by legitimizing abuse of human beings and creation. The Ecumenical Conversation “Dreaming a New Future” was an attempt to be enriched by the yearnings for justice, freedom, and life of those who are thus pushed to the margins. It calls the churches to resist the schemes and solutions of those who occupy the centres and instead opt to be signs and symbols of God's reign by partnering with the marginalized in their struggles. As such, “Mission from the Margins” is both a subversive and a creative mission engagement. It insists that our actions of love, reconciliation and unity must critically engage with the dispensers of injustice. This essay proposes Life-centred affirmations and actions, repatterning “sentness,” partnership for justice as a way toward unity, and the need for the church to be a moral force as signposts for the Pilgrimage of Justice, Reconciliation and Unity.     

Opening the closed heart: affect-focused clinical work with the victims of early trauma

This paper begins with the understanding that early trauma leads to powerful dissociative defenses which injure the capacity to feel. It further explores ways to restore this capacity through body-centred attention to affect-in-the-moment in the psychoanalytic situation. Using the author’s personal experience while in analysis as well as a case of severe early trauma, he demonstrates the consciousness-killing effect of primitive defenses and shows how body-sensitive techniques hold the promise of restoring the patient’s sense of aliveness and hence, opening the unconscious to those affect-images that are the building blocks of the human imagination. A final section focuses on the neglect of feeling in Jungian psychology and suggests that the “creation of consciousness” which Jung described as his personal myth, is quintessentially a process of emotional transformation – of bringing unconscious suffering into consciousness – as feelings.     

Determination of visual figure and ground in dynamically deforming shapes

Figure/ground assignment - determining which part of the visual image is foreground and which background - is a critical step in early visual analysis, upon which much later processing depends. Previous research on the assignment of figure and ground to opposing sides of a contour has almost exclusively involved static geometric factors - such as convexity, symmetry, and size - in non-moving images. Here, we introduce a new class of cue to figural assignment based on the motion of dynamically deforming contours. Subjects viewing an animated, deforming shape tended to assign figure and ground so that articulating curvature extrema - i.e., "hinging" vertices - had negative (concave) contour curvature. This articulating-concavity bias is present when all known static cues to figure/ground are absent or neutral in each of the individual frames of the animation, and even seems to override a number of well-known static cues when they are in opposition to the motion cue. We propose that the phenomenon reflects the visual system's inbuilt expectations about the way shapes will deform - specifically, that deformations tend to involve rigid parts articulating at concavities.     

与《告别中医中药》论者商榷

《告别中医中药》一文的立论和方法是不可取的;《告别中医中药》一文的四点论据还需商榷,《告别中医中药》一文与党的中医政策和构建社会主义和谐社会有着不和谐的声音.中医和西医与其他自然科学一样在各自起作用的范围内存在和发展.     

生命进化动力之哲学思考

对生命进化的本质问题作了新的哲学思考,提出进化的本质是物种在生存的驱动下生存效率的优化过程,是原始细胞自主性与环境选择的双向过程。同时提出推动物种进化的动力在于生存资源稀缺性与物种自私性之间的矛盾和多细胞物种效率优化过程中自身的局部利益与整体利益之间的矛盾。     

The homogeneity effect on figure/ground perception in infancy

We examined whether the homogeneity of the two profiles of Rubin's goblet affects figure/ground perception in infants. We modified the two profiles of Rubin's goblet in order to compare figure/ground perception under four test patterns: (1) two profiles painted with horizontal lines (horizontal-line condition), (2) two profiles painted middle gray (uni-color condition), (3) one profile painted light gray and the other dark gray (two-color condition), and (4) a goblet painted with concentric circles (concentric-circles condition). In the horizontal-line condition the homogeneity of the profile was strengthened, and in the two-color condition the homogeneity of the profile was weakened compared to the uni-color condition, which was an original Rubin's goblet. In the concentric-circles condition the homogeneity of the reversed areas of the horizontal-line were strengthened.     

Hybrid sales structures in the age of e-commerce

Sales organizations continue to exhibit meaningful changes in their structures during the e-commerce era. This article examines the impact of Internet technology on the evolution of sales organizations and identifies key components underpinning a successful hybrid sales structure. A comprehensive review of sales organization studies leads to the derivation of a hybrid sales structure model, as well as a series of key recommendations pertaining to the organization and sales performance. These findings establish a platform for further research into the hybrid sales structure. The transition from a reliance on traditional, outside sales forces to a concomitant use of inside sales personnel produces hybrid sales structures that can accommodate online buyer–seller interactions and also leverage technological advances in sales automation and business intelligence to boost sales performance.     

Trust of an Automatic Ground Collision Avoidance Technology: A Fighter Pilot Perspective

The present study examined the antecedents of trust among operational Air Force fighter pilots for an automatic ground collision avoidance technology. This technology offered a platform with high face validity for studying trust in automation because it is an automatic system currently being used in operations by the Air Force. Pilots (N = 142) responded to an online survey which asked about their attitudes toward the technology and assessed a number of psychological factors. Consistent with prior research on trust in automation, a number of trust antecedents were identified which corresponded to human factors, learned trust factors, and situational factors. Implications for the introduction of novel automatic systems into the military are discussed.