Hanin: Nostalgia among Syrian refugees

We examined the psychological functions of nostalgia (hanin in Arabic) among Syrian refugees residing in Saudi Arabia, who were forcibly displaced during the Syrian civil war. Forced displacement entails disruption, loss, and mourning, creating a salient contrast between one's past and present circumstances, which could attenuate the benefits of nostalgia. Studying this population thus affords a strong test of the boundaries of nostalgia's functionality. We experimentally induced nostalgia via vivid autobiographical recall and then assessed various psychological functions, as well as current affect. A supplemental objective was to examine the role of dispositional resilience. Most established benefits of nostalgia also accrued to Syrian refugees. However, contrary to previous findings, nostalgia decreased optimism, highlighting the limits of its palliative capacity among displaced individuals. As hypothesized, the impact of nostalgia was moderated by dispositional resilience, which acted as a catalyst of the emotion's benefits and as an inhibitor of its costs.     

Morphological and magnetic response of copper-substituted nickel ferrite nanoparticles

Ferrite nanoparticles are interesting materials owing to their unique physical and chemical properties. The metal-doped ferrites have well-defined structures and magnetic response, such as high permeability for a specific frequency range. In this study, copper-substituted nickel ferrite (Ni_1?xCu_xFe₂O₄) nanoparticles with a compositional range of 0?≤?x?≤?0.3 were synthesised through a co-precipitation technique. Metal chlorides were used as precursors and NaOH as a precipitating agent for the growth of ferrite nanoparticles. To minimise the internal stresses and maximise the magnetic response, ferrite nanoparticles were annealed in a furnace at 700°C for 6 h. The structural and magnetic response of Ni_1?xCu_xFe₂O₄ ferrite with different values of x were investigated using Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), Fourier Transform Infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), Vibrating Sample Magnetometer (VSM) and X-ray Diffraction (XRD) techniques. XRD analysis confirmed the formation of cubic spinel structure of single phase for all the compositions. The lattice constant decreased with increase in the value of x. FT-IR study showed two main metal oxygen bonds in the range 500–700 cm^?1 confirming the formation of a single-phase cubic inverse structure of Cu-substituted Ni ferrite. VSM results revealed the formation of ferrimagnetic nanoparticles. The optical and magnetic response of the ferrite nanoparticles changed with Cu content.     

Place and Displacement: Towards a Distopological Approach

Most recently, debates on decolonization, transformation, and Africanization raise, again, critical questions about the continuous dominance of the Western practice of philosophy in an African place. Such debates bear particular reference to colonization; however, they are relevant to any place where displacement is an issue and transformation demanded. Yet, the concept of displacement receives surprisingly little attention in these debates or in literature on place. I argue that place and displacement are inherently related, and explore some implications of this relation with regard to the practice of philosophy. My contention is that while displacement is an issue that raises specific challenges to the practice of Western philosophy in an African context, it is in fact a defining feature of philosophy as such in search of its place in the world. In conclusion, I propose what I call a distopological approach towards a philosophical practice that takes seriously its place and inherent relation to displacement.     

Trace of pace,place, and space in personal relationships: The chronogeometrics of studying relationships at scale

The study of personal relationships has traditionally relied on self‐reports or observations of face‐to‐face interaction. Digital media increasingly provide the ability to trace communication and relationships at scale. Such methods portend significant theoretical and methodological challenges, as well as potential. As a way of illustrating such potential, big data approaches to the select traditional relational concepts of routine relating, propinquity, homophily, small world, and reciprocity are reviewed. The fields of communication and personal relationships will need to inform such research by developing their own interdisciplinary relationships with geographic information sciences, computational linguistics, and computer sciences or cede a significant frontier of their field to these other disciplines.     

Integrated memory for objects, places, and temporal order: evidence for episodic-like memory in mice

Human episodic memory refers to the recollection of an unique past experience in terms of what happened, and where and when it happened. Factoring out the issue of conscious recollection, episodic memory, even at the behavioral level, has been difficult to demonstrate in non-human mammals. Although, it was previously shown that rodents can associate what and when or what and where information given on unique trials, it proved to be difficult to demonstrate memory for what, where, and when simultaneously in mammals, without using extensive training procedures, which might induce semantic rather than episodic memory recall. Towards the goal of an animal model of human episodic memory we designed an three-trial object exploration task in which different versions of the novelty-preference paradigm were combined to subsume (a) object recognition memory, (b) the memory for locations in which objects were explored, and (c) the temporal order memory for object presented at distinct time points. We found that mice spent more time exploring two "old familiar" objects relative to two "recent familiar" objects, reflecting memory for what and when and concomitantly directed more exploration at a spatially displaced "old familiar" object relative to a stationary "old familiar" object, reflecting memory for what and where. These results suggest that during a single test trial the mice were able to (a) recognize previously explored objects, (b) remember the location in which particular objects were previously encountered, and (c) to discriminate the relative recency in which different objects were presented. According to the currently discussed behavioral criteria for episodic-like memory in animals, our results suggest that mice are capable to form such higher order memories.     

Auditory stimulation affects apparent motion1

Abstract: In two experiments, we investigated how the number of auditory stimuli affected the apparent motion induced by visual stimuli. The multiple visual stimuli that induced the apparent motion on the front parallel plane, or in the depth dimension in terms of the binocular disparity cue, were accompanied by multiple auditory stimuli. Observers reported the number of visual stimuli (Experiments 1 and 2) and the displacement of the apparent motion that was defined by the distance between the first and last visual stimuli (Experiment 2). When the number of auditory stimuli was more/less than that of the visual stimuli, observers tended to perceive more/less visual stimuli and a larger/smaller displacement than when the numbers of the auditory and visual stimuli were the same, regardless of the dimension of motion. These results suggest that auditory stimulation may modify the visual processing of motion by modulating the spatiotemporal resolution and extent of the displacement.     

不同表面特征图片对内隐记忆和外显记忆的影响

该研究选取30名被试,采用任务分离实验研究范式探讨不同表面特征图片对内隐记忆和外显记忆的影响。以32张动物图片为实验材料,其中鱼类和鸟类图片各半。两类图片中一半为黑白图片,另一半为彩色图片,所有实验材料用E—Prime软件呈现在电脑上。结果表明：（1）不同表面特征图片的再认成绩（外显记忆）显著好于偏好再认成绩（内隐记忆）,即外显记忆成绩好于内隐记忆;（2）在再认测验和偏好判断测验中,再认成绩和偏好再认成绩在图片表面特征的两个水平上存在显著差异;（3）控制组的偏好再认成绩显著好于实验组的偏好再认成绩,即控制组的内隐记忆好于实验组。结论：刺激材料的表面特征既是外显记忆的内容,也是影响外显记忆的重要因素;内隐记忆的作业成绩高度依赖于刺激材料的表面特征,刺激材料的表面特征是影响两种记忆的重要因素。     

表面相似性与共享标签知识对智障儿童数量表征的影响

采用给数取物任务和数量比较任务,考察表面相似性与共享标签知识对96名7～16岁智障儿童数量表征的影响。研究结果表明：（1）智障儿童数量表征能力随着年龄增长而提高,11～13岁和14～16岁智障儿童完成数量比较任务的正确率显著高于7～10岁;（2）智障儿童在高表面相似物体下完成数量比较任务的正确率显著高于低表面相似物体下的正确率;（3）擅长使用数字标签的智障儿童,在数量比较任务的表现显著优于不擅长组。     

亲子关系和父母教育卷入对青少年抑郁、自伤和自杀意念的影响：挫败感和人生意义感的作用

基于生态系统理论和动机-意志整合模型,采用问卷法以930名青少年(年龄=15.24±1.66岁)及其父母为研究对象,构建一个有调节的中介模型,从家长与孩子双视角分析孩子体验到的亲子关系和父母教育卷入对青少年抑郁、自伤和自杀意念的影响路径。结果显示：(1)相比低亲子关系-低教育卷入一致的个体,高亲子关系-高教育卷入的青少年有着更低水平的挫败感,且相比于低亲子关系-高教育卷入的青少年,有着高亲子关系-低教育卷入的个体表现出更低水平的挫败感;(2)挫败感在亲子关系-教育卷入与青少年抑郁、自伤和自杀意念之间起部分中介作用;(3)人生意义感调节该中介模型后半段,即挫败感对青少年抑郁、自伤和自杀意念的影响,具体表现为随着人生意义感的增加,挫败感对抑郁、自伤和自杀意念的影响逐渐减小。研究从家庭关系中家长与孩子双视角,揭示了挫败感和人生意义感的中介与调节作用,为青少年抑郁、自伤和自杀意念的发生机制提供更多解释路径。     

The internal environment of knowledge claims: One aspect of the knowledge-society connection

In the sociology of knowledge, the relationship between society and knowledge —or rather what separates them — remains an unsolved problem. A critical analysis of various solutions that we must look for to this problem suggests the plausibility of a passage between social groups, styles of argumentation and objects of knowledge. An empirical model of decision displacements is proposed on the basis of a corpus of texts and of observations derived from concrete analysis of a laboratory situation.