Welcome

It is a real pleasure to have this opportunity to visit Bluebird Nurseries and talk with everyone gathered here, and I join John Trumbull in welcoming you this morning. I am looking forward to learning more about the Nebraska nursery industry today, and I look forward to visiting and working with you now, and in the days ahead. Getting to know Nebraska and its residents is one of the real pleasures of my new job, and has been since I started in January. My wife Virginia and I literally slid into the state one snowy day last December - almost hard to remember that icy, snowy winter, given the past few months - and ever since our arrival we have been impressed and delighted by the friendliness and warmth of Nebraska's residents. This is a great state, and we are very happy to be here. As I welcome you I also want to offer Chancellor Harvey Perlman's regrets that he could not accept the invitation to be here, too; he is unable to join us because of conflicts in schedule.

Nebraska Agribusiness Club

Thank you for inviting me to be here with you today. I've now completed four months as University of Nebraska Vice President for Agriculture and Natural Resources and Harlan Vice Chancellor of the Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources, and I welcome every opportunity that comes my way to meet and talk with Nebraska's residents. I'm particularly happy to be here with you; I appreciate your interest in agriculture, and Ed Woeppel tells me that many members of this group are very supportive of the Institute, and worked hard to create IANR in the '70s.

Agriculture Builders of Nebraska Inc.

It’s a pleasure to be able to speak with you today. I want you to know that Virginia and I are delighted to be in Nebraska. And I’m especially happy to have arrived in the state at a time where I can, on my 7th day on the job, learn so much about UNL just by reading the state’s largest newspaper.

UAAD Founders' Day

Because today is the birthday of Thomas Edison who was born in 1847 in Ohio, I suppose that you would expect me as today's speaker to have a special obligation to be inventive. Some of you probably know that for several years, Edison's birthday has been observed as National Science Youth Day, which sounds to me like a rather interesting invention itself. Youth is not a science and science is certainly not a youth, but I am perfectly willing to go along with the national celebration and wish a happy birthday to any science youth that I might happen to encounter. I would encourage you to do the same.

ABN Noon Speech (Short version)

Folks, because we find ourselves in a time crunch, I'm going to forego the terrific speech I planned to give today and quickly make five key points. Please know I will be happy to provide additional information on any of them at any time.

COMT Met (158) modulates facial emotion recognition in bipolar I disorder mood episodes

Background: One of the many cognitive deficits reported in bipolar disorder (BD) patients is facial emotion recognition (FER), which has recently been associated with dopaminergic catabolism. Catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT) is one of the main enzymes involved in the metabolic degradation of dopamine (DA) in the prefrontal cortex (PFC). The COMT gene polymorphism rs4680 (Val(158)Met) Met allele is associated with decreased activity of this enzyme in healthy controls. The objective of this study was to evaluate the influence of Val(158)Met on FER during manic and depressive episodes in BD patients and in healthy controls. Materials and methods: 64 BD type I patients (39 in manic and 25 in depressive episodes) and 75 healthy controls were genotyped for COMT rs4680 and assessed for FER using the Ekman 60 Faces (EK60) and Emotion Hexagon (Hx) tests. Results: Bipolar manic patients carrying the Met allele recognized fewer surprised faces, while depressed patients with the Met allele recognized fewer "angry" and "happy" faces. Healthy homozygous subjects with the Met allele had higher FER scores on the Hx total score, as well as on "disgust" and "angry" faces than other genotypes. Conclusion: This is the first study suggesting that COMT rs4680 modulates FER differently during BD episodes and in healthy controls. This provides evidence that PFC DA is part of the neurobiological mechanisms of social cognition. Further studies on other COMT polymorphisms that include euthymic BD patients are warranted. ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT00969. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Learning Democracy Together in School? : Student and Teacher Attitudes in Bosnia and Herzegovina

The principal aim of this study is to examine attitudes and values, through questionnaires, among students and teachers in the last grade of primary school (grade 8) regarding issues related to authoritarianism, democracy, human rights, children rights, conflict resolution and legislation in Bosnia and Herzegovina. A second aim is to explore and analyze the role of the international community in the democratization and education processes in the light of globalization in this country through secondary sources of data, site visits and observations. Analysis of the student sample reveals suspicion towards democracy, especially when democracy was associated with politics and politicians. When the issue of democracy was de-contextualized from Bosnia and Herzegovina realities in the questionnaire, students showed more positive attitudes towards it. Students generally agreed with very strong authoritarian statements. High achieving students were more democratic, more socially responsible, more tolerant regarding attitudes towards religion, race and disabilities, and less authoritarian compared to low achievers. High achievers felt that they had influence over daily events, and were positive towards social and civil engagement. High achievers viewed politics negatively, but had high scores on the democracy scale. High achievers also agreed to a larger extent that it is acceptable to break the law. The more authoritarian students were somewhat more prone to respond that it is not acceptable to break the law. The major findings from the teacher sample show that teachers who agreed with non-peaceful mediation, and had a non-forgiving and rigid approach to interpersonal conflicts, also agreed with strong authoritarian statements and were less democratic. In general, teachers valued students who behave respectfully, have a good upbringing and are obedient. They were very concerned about the general status of education in society, which they felt was becoming marginalized. Teachers were not happy with the overloaded curricula and they showed an interest in more knowledge and skills to help children with traumatic war experiences. When asked about positive reforms, teachers were highly critical of, and dissatisfied with, the educational situation. Bosnia and Herzegovina is undergoing a transition from a state-planned economy and one party system to a market economy and a multi party system. During this transition, the country has become more involved in the globalization process than ever. Today the country is a semi-protectorate where international authorities intervene when necessary. The International community is attempting to introduce western democracy and some of the many complexities in this process are discussed in this study. Globalization processes imply contradictory demands and pressures on the education system. On one hand, economic liberalization has affected education policies —a closer alignment between education and economic competitiveness. On the other hand, there is a political and ideological globalization process underlying the importance of human rights, and the inclusiveness of education for all children. Students and teachers are caught between two opposing ideals — competition and cooperation.

Aldo Rossi, autobiografia scientifica: scrittura come progetto. Indagine critica tra scrittura e progetto di architettura

«In altri termini mi sfuggiva e ancora oggi mi sfugge gran parte del significato dell’evoluzione del tempo; come se il tempo fosse una materia che osservo dall’esterno. Questa mancanza di evoluzione è fonte di alcune mie sventure ma anche mi appartiene con gioia.» Aldo Rossi, Autobiografia scientifica. The temporal dimension underpinning the draft of Autobiografia scientifica by Aldo Rossi may be referred to what Lucien Lévy-Bruhl, the well-known French anthropologist, defines as “primitive mentality” and “prelogical” conscience : the book of life has lost its page numbers, even punctuation. For Lévy-Bruhl, but certainly for Rossi, life or its summing up becomes a continuous account of ellipses, gaps, repetitions that may be read from left to right or viceversa, from head to foot or viceversa without distinction. Rossi’s autobiographical writing seems to accept and support the confusion with which memories have been collected, recording them after the order memory gives them in the mental distillation or simply according to the chronological order in which they have happened. For Rossi, the confusion reflects the melting of memory elements into a composite image which is the result of a fusion. He is aware that the same sap pervades all memories he is going to put in order: each of them has got a common denominator. Differences have diminished, almost faded; the quick glance is prevalent over the distinction of each episode. Rossi’s writing is beyond the categories dependent on time: past and present, before and now. For Rossi, the only repetition – the repetition the text will make possible for an indefinite number of times – gives peculiarity to the event. As Gilles Deleuze knows, “things” may only last as “singleness”: more frequent the repetition is, more singular is the memory phenomenon that recurs, because only what is singular magnifies itself and happens endlessly forever. Rossi understands that “to raise the first time to nth forever”, repetition becomes glorification . It may be an autobiography that, celebrating the originality, enhances the memory event in the repetition; in fact it greatly differs from the biographical reproduction, in which each repetition is but a weaker echo, a duller copy, provided with a smaller an smaller power in comparison with the original. Paradoxically, for Deleuze the repetition asserts the originality and singularity of what is repeated. Rossi seems to share the thought expressed by Kierkegaard in the essay Repetition: «The hope is a graceful maiden slipping through your fingers; the memory of an elderly woman, indeed pretty, but never satisfactory if necessary; the repetition is a loved friend you are never tired of, as it is only the new to make you bored. The old never bores you and its presence makes you happy [...] life is but a repetition [...] here is the beauty of life» . Rossi knows well that repetition hints at the lasting stability of cosmic time. Kierkegaard goes on: «The world exists, and it exists as a repetition» . Rossi devotes himself, on purpose and in all conscience, to collect, to inventory and «to review life», his own life, according to a recovery not from the past but of the past: a search work, the «recherche du temps perdu», as Proust entitled his masterpiece on memory. If you want the past time to be not wasted, you must give it presence. «Memoria e specifico come caratteristiche per riconoscere se stesso e ciò che è estraneo mi sembravano le più chiare condizioni e spiegazioni della realtà. Non esiste uno specifico senza memoria, e una memoria che non provenga da un momento specifico; e solo questa unione permette la conoscenza della propria individualità e del contrario (self e non-self)» . Rossi wants to understand himself, his own character; it is really his own character that requires to be understood, to increase its own introspective ability and intelligence. «Può sembrare strano che Planck e Dante associno la loro ricerca scientifica e autobiografica con la morte; una morte che è in qualche modo continuazione di energia. In realtà, in ogni artista o tecnico, il principio della continuazione dell’energia si mescola con la ricerca della felicità e della morte» . The eschatological incipit of Rossi’s autobiography refers to Freud’s thought in the exact circularity of Dante’s framework and in as much exact circularity of the statement of the principle of the conservation of energy: in fact it was Freud to connect repetition to death. For Freud, the desire of repetition is an instinct rooted in biology. The primary aim of such an instinct would be to restore a previous condition, so that the repeated history represents a part of the past (even if concealed) and, relieving the removal, reduces anguish and tension. So, Freud ask himself, what is the most remote state to which the instinct, through the repetition, wants to go back? It is a pre-vital condition, inorganic of the pure entropy, a not-to-be condition in which doesn’t exist any tension; in other words, Death. Rossi, with the theme of death, introduces the theme of circularity which further on refers to the sense of continuity in transformation or, in the opposite way, the transformation in continuity. «[...] la descrizione e il rilievo delle forme antiche permettevano una continuità altrimenti irripetibile, permettevano anche una trasformazione, una volta che la vita fosse fermata in forme precise» . Rossi’s attitude seems to hint at the reflection on time and – in a broad sense – at the thought on life and things expressed by T.S. Eliot in Four Quartets: «Time present and time past / Are both perhaps present in time future, / And time future is contained in time past. / I all time is eternally present / All time is unredeemable. / What might have been is an abstraction / Remaining perpetual possibility / Only in a word of speculation. / What might have been and what has been / Point to one end, which is always present. [...]» . Aldo Rossi’s autobiographical story coincides with the description of “things” and the description of himself through the things in the exact parallel with craft or art. He seems to get all things made by man to coincide with the personal or artistic story, with the consequent immediate necessity of formulating a new interpretation: the flow of things has never met a total stop; all that exists nowadays is but a repetition or a variant of something existing some time ago and so on, without any interruption until the early dawnings of human life. Nevertheless, Rossi must operate specific subdivisions inside the continuous connection in time – of his time – even if limited by a present beginning and end of his own existence. This artist, as an “historian” of himself and his own life – as an auto-biographer – enjoys the privilege to be able to decide if and how to operate the cutting in a certain point rather than in another one, without being compelled to justify his choice. In this sense, his story is a matter very ductile and flexible: a good story-teller can choose any moment to start a certain sequence of events. Yet, Rossi is aware that, beyond the mere narration, there is the problem to identify in history - his own personal story – those flakings where a clean cut enables the separation of events of different nature. In order to do it, he has to make not only an inventory of his own “things”, but also to appeal to authority of the Divina Commedia started by Dante when he was 30. «A trent’anni si deve compiere o iniziare qualcosa di definitivo e fare i conti con la propria formazione» . For Rossi, the poet performs his authority not only in the text, but also in his will of setting out on a mystical journey and handing it down through an exact descriptive will. Rossi turns not only to the authority of poetry, but also evokes the authority of science with Max Plank and his Scientific Autobiography, published, in Italian translation, by Einaudi, 1956. Concerning Planck, Rossi resumes an element seemingly secondary in hit account where the German physicist «[...] risale alle scoperte della fisica moderna ritrovando l’impressione che gli fece l’enunciazione del principio di conservazione dell’energia; [...]» . It is again the act of describing that links Rossi to Planck, it is the description of a circularity, the one of conservation of energy, which endorses Rossi’s autobiographical speech looking for both happiness and death. Rossi seems to agree perfectly to the thought of Planck at the opening of his own autobiography: «The decision to devote myself to science was a direct consequence of a discovery which was never ceased to arouse my enthusiasm since my early youth: the laws of human thought coincide with the ones governing the sequences of the impressions we receive from the world surrounding us, so that the mere logic can enable us to penetrate into the latter one’s mechanism. It is essential that the outer world is something independent of man, something absolute. The search of the laws dealing with this absolute seems to me the highest scientific aim in life» . For Rossi the survey of his own life represents a way to change the events into experiences, to concentrate the emotion and group them in meaningful plots: «It seems, as one becomes older. / That the past has another pattern, and ceases to be a mere sequence [...]» Eliot wrote in Four Quartet, which are a meditation on time, old age and memory . And he goes on: «We had the experience but missed the meaning, / And approach to the meaning restores the experience / In a different form, beyond any meaning [...]» . Rossi restores in his autobiography – but not only in it – the most ancient sense of memory, aware that for at least 15 centuries the Latin word memoria was used to show the activity of bringing back images to mind: the psychology of memory, which starts with Aristotele (De Anima), used to consider such a faculty totally essential to mind. Keith Basso writes: «The thought materializes in the form of “images”» . Rossi knows well – as Aristotele said – that if you do not have a collection of mental images to remember – imagination – there is no thought at all. According to this psychological tradition, what today we conventionally call “memory” is but a way of imagining created by time. Rossi, entering consciously this stream of thought, passing through the Renaissance ars memoriae to reach us gives a great importance to the word and assumes it as a real place, much more than a recollection, even more than a production and an emotional elaboration of images.

Letteratura postmoderna e comunicazione pubblicitaria, problemi teorici e analisi testuali

Premise: In the literary works of our anthropological and cultural imagination, the various languages and the different discursive practices are not necessarily quoted, expressly alluded to or declared through clear expressive mechanisms; instead, they rather constitute a substratum, a background, now consolidated, which with irony and intertextuality shines through the thematic and formal elements of each text. The various contaminations, hybridizations and promptings that we find in the expressive forms, the rhetorical procedures and the linguistic and thematic choices of post-modern literary texts are shaped as fluid and familiar categories. Exchanges and passages are no longer only allowed but also inevitable; the post-modern imagination is made up of an agglomeration of discourses that are no longer really separable, built up from texts that blend and quote one another, composing, each with its own specificities, the great family of the cultural products of our social scenario. A literary work, therefore, is not only a whole phenomenon, delimited hic et nunc by a beginning and an ending, but is a fragment of that complex, dense and boundless network that is given by the continual interrelations between human forms of communication and symbolization. The research hypothesis: A vision is delineated of comparative literature as a discipline attentive to the social contexts in which texts take shape and move and to the media-type consistency that literary phenomena inevitably take on. Hence literature is seen as an open systematicity that chooses to be contaminated by other languages and other discursive practices of an imagination that is more than ever polymorphic and irregular. Inside this interpretative framework the aim is to focus the analysis on the relationship that postmodern literature establishes with advertising discourse. On one side post-modern literature is inserted in the world of communication, loudly asserting the blending and reciprocal contamination of literary modes with media ones, absorbing their languages and signification practices, translating them now into thematic nuclei, motifs and sub-motifs and now into formal expedients and new narrative choices; on the other side advertising is chosen as a signification practice of the media universe, which since the 1960s has actively contributed to shaping the dynamics of our socio-cultural scenarios, in terms which are just as important as those of other discursive practices. Advertising has always been a form of communication and symbolization that draws on the collective imagination – myths, actors and values – turning them into specific narrative programs for its own texts. Hence the aim is to interpret and analyze this relationship both from a strictly thematic perspective – and therefore trying to understand what literature speaks about when it speaks about advertising, and seeking advertising quotations in post-modern fiction – and from a formal perspective, with a search for parallels and discordances between the rhetorical procedures, the languages and the verifiable stylistic choices in the texts of the two different signification practices. The analysis method chosen, for the purpose of constructive multiplication of the perspectives, aims to approach the analytical processes of semiotics, applying, when possible, the instruments of the latter, in order to highlight the thematic and formal relationships between literature and advertising. The corpus: The corpus of the literary texts is made up of various novels and, although attention is focused on the post-modern period, there will also be ineludible quotations from essential authors that with their works prompted various reflections: H. De Balzac, Zola, Fitzgerald, Joyce, Calvino, etc… However, the analysis focuses the corpus on three authors: Don DeLillo, Martin Amis and Aldo Nove, and in particular the followings novels: “Americana” (1971) and “Underworld” (1999) by Don DeLillo, “Money” (1984) by Martin Amis and “Woobinda and other stories without a happy ending” (1996) and “Superwoobinda” (1998) by Aldo Nove. The corpus selection is restricted to these novels for two fundamental reasons: 1. assuming parameters of spatio-temporal evaluation, the texts are representative of different socio-cultural contexts and collective imaginations (from the masterly glimpses of American life by DeLillo, to the examples of contemporary Italian life by Nove, down to the English imagination of Amis) and of different historical moments (the 1970s of DeLillo’s Americana, the 1980s of Amis, down to the 1990s of Nove, decades often used as criteria of division of postmodernism into phases); 2. adopting a perspective of strictly thematic analysis, as mentioned in the research hypothesis, the variations and the constants in the novels (thematic nuclei, topoi, images and narrative developments) frequently speak of advertising and inside the narrative plot they affirm various expressions and realizations of it: value ones, thematic ones, textual ones, urban ones, etc… In these novels the themes and the processes of signification of advertising discourse pervade time, space and the relationships that the narrator character builds around him. We are looking at “particle-characters” whose endless facets attest the influence and contamination of advertising in a large part of the narrative developments of the plot: on everyday life, on the processes of acquisition and encoding of the reality, on ideological and cultural baggage, on the relationships and interchanges with the other characters, etc… Often the characters are victims of the implacable consequentiality of the advertising mechanism, since the latter gets the upper hand over the usual processes of communication, which are overwhelmed by it, wittingly or unwittingly (for example: disturbing openings in which the protagonist kills his or her parents on the basis of a spot, former advertisers that live life codifying it through the commercial mechanisms of products, sons and daughters of advertisers that as children instead of playing outside for whole nights saw tapes of spots.) Hence the analysis arises from the text and aims to show how much the developments and the narrative plots of the novels encode, elaborate and recount the myths, the values and the narrative programs of advertising discourse, transforming them into novel components in their own right. And also starting from the text a socio-cultural reference context is delineated, a collective imagination that is different, now geographically, now historically, and from comparison between them the aim is to deduce the constants, the similarities and the variations in the relationship between literature and advertising.

Das moderne Buch: Harry Graf Kesslers Ästhetik der Lebenskunst im Spiegel der Großherzog Wilhelm Ernst Ausgabe deutscher Klassiker

Die Großherzog Wilhelm Ernst Ausgabe deutscher Klassiker wurde seit 1904 bis in die Zwanziger Jahre hinein im Insel Verlag in Leipzig publiziert. Die Buchreihe hat nicht nur für den Verlag und die Druckerei Poeschel in der sie gedruckt wurde eine ganze Reihe von Neuerungen nach sich gezogen, auch für den deutschen Buchmarkt hat die Klassikerausgabe einen Meilenstein bedeutet. Sie hat einige Eigenschaften des Taschenbuches vorweggenommen. Sie orientierte sich an der Qualität bibliophiler Buchpublikationen, aber war dennoch preislich erschwinglich. Zeitgenössische Klassikerausgaben erschienen zumeist mit einem Kommentar. Nicht so die Großherzog Wilhelm Ernst Ausgabe. Der Text wurde zwar von führenden Wissenschaftlern editiert, aber sie war dennoch unkommentiert. Der Text war in einer Jenson-Antiqua gesetzt obwohl die Debatte um individuell gestaltete Künstlerschriften und die Diskussion um die als deutsche Schrift begriffene Fraktur unter den wichtigsten Protagonisten des deutschen Buchgewerbes ihren Höhepunkt noch nicht erreicht hatte. Ziel für die Klassikerausgabe war darüber hinaus, das zur Jahrhundertwende leicht angestaubte Image der Stadt Weimar aufzupolieren. Über das Patronat des Großherzogs hinaus hätte man die Gewinne aus dem Verkauf der Bücher der Permanenten Ausstellung für die Anschaffung von modernen Kunstobjekten zur Verfügung stellen wollen, die unter der Leitung von Harry Graf Kessler stand. Sieht man den Inhalt der Werke der in der Klassikerreihe erschienen Dichter Goethe, Schiller und Körner in einem ästhetischen Kontext mit dem der Philosophen Schopenhauer und Kant, wird im Spiegel der Formalästhetik der Klassikerausgabe Graf Kesslers Bildungs- und Kulturbegriff erkennbar, der sich in den Jahren nach der Jahrhundertwende zu seinem Lebenskunstideal verdichtete. Der zerrütteten Existenz der Zeitgenossen, wie Friedrich Nietzsche sie beschrieben hatte, sollte der Inhalt der Ausgabe in seiner modernen Form eine moderne Wertehaltung entgegensetzen. Die Lektüre der Klassiker sollte den deutschen Philister „entkrampfen“ und ihm ein Stück der verloren geglaubten Lebensfreude wieder zurück bringen, in dem dieser auch die Facetten des Lebensleids als normal hinnehmen und akzeptieren lernte. Die Klassikerausgabe repräsentierte aus diesem Grund auch den kulturellen und politischen Reformwillen und die gesellschaftlichen Vorstellungen die der Graf für ein modernes Deutschland als überfällig erachtete. Die Buchreihe war aus diesem Grund auch ein politisches Statement gegen die Beharrungskräfte im deutschen Kaiserreich. Die Klassikerreihe wurde in der buchhistorischen Forschung zwar als bedeutender Meilenstein charakterisiert und als „wichtiges“ oder gar „revolutionäres“ Werk der Zeit hervorgehoben, die Ergebnisse der Forschung kann man überspitzt aber in der Aussage zusammenfassen, dass es sich bei der Großherzog Wilhelm Ernst Ausgabe um einen „zufälligen Glückstreffer“ deutscher Buchgestaltung zu handeln scheint. Zumindest lassen die Aussagen, die bisher in dieser Hinsicht gemacht wurden, keine eindeutige Einordnung zu, außer vielleicht der, dass die Klassiker von der englischen Lebensreform inspiriert wurden und Henry van de Velde und William Morris einen Einfluss auf ihre äußere Form hatten. Gerade die Gedankenansätze dieser Beiden nutzte Graf Kessler aber für eigene Überlegungen, die ihn schließlich auch zu eigenen Vorstellungen von idealer Buchgestaltung brachten. Da für Kessler auch Gebrauchsgegenstände Kunst sein konnten, wird das Konzept der Klassikerausgabe bis zur Umsetzung in ihrer `bahnbrechenden´ Form in das ideengeschichtliche und ästhetische Denken des Grafen eingeordnet. Die Klassiker werden zwar in buchhistorischen Einzeluntersuchungen bezüglich ihrer Komponenten, dem Dünndruckpapier, ihrem Einband oder der Schrifttype exponiert. In buchwissenschaftlichen Überblicksdarstellungen wird ihr Einfluss hingegen weniger beachtet, denn verschiedene Kritiker bezogen sie seit ihrem ersten Erscheinen nicht als deutsches Kulturgut mit ein, denn sie lehnten sowohl die englischen Mitarbeiter Emery Walker, Edward Johnston, Eric Gill und Douglas Cockerell wie auch ihre Gestaltung als „welsche“ Buchausgabe ab. Richtig ist, die Großherzog Wilhelm Ernst Ausgabe hatte dieselbe Funktion wie die von Graf Kessler in Weimar konzipierten Kunstausstellungen und die dortige Kunstschule unter der Leitung seines Freundes Henry van de Velde. Auch das für Weimar geplante Theater, das unter der Leitung von Hugo von Hofmannsthal hätte stehen sollen und die Großherzog Wilhelm Ernst Schule, hätten dieselben Ideen der Moderne mit anderen Mitteln transportieren sollen, wie die Großherzog Wilhelm Ernst Ausgabe deutscher Klassiker.

Beeinflusst die Stärke der Stressreaktion in der Post-Akquisitionsphase das Identitätsgedächtnis von Gesichtern?

Stress in der Post-Akquisitionsphase begünstigt die Gedächtniskonsolidierung emotional erregender Informationen. Das Zusammenspiel von noradrenerger Aktivierung und Cortisol auf Ebene der Amygdala ist hierbei von entscheidender Bedeutung. rnIn dieser Studie wird untersucht, ob dieser Effekt durch das Ausmaß der kardiovaskulären bzw. der subjektiv erlebten Stressreaktivität beeinflusst wird. 49 Probanden (Alter: 23.8 Jahre; 32 Frauen) wurden je 52 Gesichter, davon 50% mit ärgerlichem sowie 50 % mit glücklichem Ausdruck präsentiert. Sofort nach Akquisition wurde bei 30 Probanden akuter Stress durch den sozial evaluierten Kaltwassertest (SECPT; Eintauchen der dominanten Hand in eiskaltes Wasser für 3 Minuten unter Beobachtung) induziert, bei 19 Probanden wurde eine Kontrollprozedur ohne Stress durchgeführt. Die 30 Probanden der SECPT-Gruppe wurden post-hoc zum einen anhand der individuellen Blutdruckreaktivität und zum zweiten anhand der Stärke der subjektiv bewerteten Stressreaktivität per Mediansplit in zwei Subgrupen unterteilt (High Responder, Low Responder). rnDer erste Wiedererkennungstest fand 30 Minuten nach der Akquisitionsphase, ein weiterer 20 Stunden später statt. Zu den Testzeitpunkten wurden jeweils 26 der initial präsentierten Gesichter mit neutralem Gesichtsausdruck gezeigt sowie 26 neue neutrale Gesichter. rnDie Kontrollgruppe und die Gruppe der High Responder (basierend auf der kardiovaskulären Reaktivität) zeigten ein besseres Erinnerungsvermögen für die initial positiv präsentierten gesichter, wohingegen die Gruppe der Low Responder ein besseres Gedächtnis für die initial negativ präsentierten Gesichter aufwies. rnStress scheint abhängig von der Stärke der kardiovaskulären Reaktion zu valenzspezifischen Konsolidierungseffekten zu führen. Hierbei könnten viszerale Afferenzen z.B. der arteriellen Baroreflexe eine Rolle spielen. rn

Doppiaggio e globalizzazione: La diffusione della cultura americana nel doppiaggio italiano e spagnolo di tre serie tv.

La presente tesi prende in analisi il doppiaggio italiano e spagnolo di tre serie tv, di tre periodi diversi: Happy Days, Beverly Hills 90210 e The OC. Confrontando il doppiaggio italiano e spagnolo con la versione originale di alcuni episodi a tematica natalizia, si vuole dimostrare come la cultura americana influenzi la lingua e la cultura italiana e spagnola. Per cui, assieme ad un'analisi comparativa, sarà presente anche una piccola analisi cronologica in modo da dimostrare come siano cambiati i riferimenti culturali natalizi nel corso del tempo.

An ERP study of major-minor classification in melodies

COMPOSERS COMMONLY USE MAJOR OR MINOR SCALES to create different moods in music.Nonmusicians show poor discrimination and classification of this musical dimension; however, they can perform these tasks if the decision is phrased as happy vs. sad.We created pairs of melodies identical except for mode; the first major or minor third or sixth was the critical note that distinguished major from minor mode. Musicians and nonmusicians judged each melody as major vs. minor or happy vs. sad.We collected ERP waveforms, triggered to the onset of the critical note. Musicians showed a late positive component (P3) to the critical note only for the minor melodies, and in both tasks.Nonmusicians could adequately classify the melodies as happy or sad but showed little evidence of processing the critical information. Major appears to be the default mode in music, and musicians and nonmusicians apparently process mode differently.

Perception of mode, rhythm, and contour in unfamiliar melodies: Effects of age and experience

We explored the ability of older (60-80 years old) and younger (18-23 years old) musicians and nonmusicians to judge the similarity of transposed melodies varying on rhythm, mode, and/or contour (Experiment 1) and to discriminate among melodies differing only in rhythm, mode, or contour (Experiment 2). Similarity ratings did not vary greatly among groups, with tunes differing only by mode being rated as most similar. In the same/different discrimination task, musicians performed better than nonmusicians, but we found no age differences. We also found that discrimination of major from minor tunes was difficult for everyone, even for musicians. Mode is apparently a subtle dimension in music, despite its deliberate use in composition and despite people's ability to label minor as "sad" and major as "happy."

The Pursuit of Tangible Happiness: Religion and Politics in a Japanese New, New Religion

The decline of traditional religions in Japan in the past century, and especially since the end of World War Two, has led to an explosion of so-called “new religions” (shin shūkyō 新宗教), many of which have made forays into the political realm. The best known—and most controversial—example of a “political” new religion is Sōka Gakkai 創価学会, a lay Buddhist movement originally associated with the Nichiren sect that in the 1960s gave birth to a new political party, Komeitō 公明党 (lit., Clean Government Party), which in the past several decades has emerged as the third most popular party in Japan (as New Komeitō). Since the 1980s, Japan has also seen the emergence of so-called “new, new religions” (shin shin shūkyō 新新宗教), which tend to be more technologically savvy and less socially concerned (and, in the eyes of critics, more akin to “cults” than the earlier new religions). One new, new religion known as Kōfuku-no-Kagaku 幸福の科学 (lit., Institute for Research in Human Happiness or simply Happy Science), founded in 1986 by Ōkawa Ryūho 大川隆法, has very recently developed its own political party, Kōfuku Jitsugentō 幸福実現党 (The Realization of Happiness Party). This article will analyse the political ideals of Kōfuku Jitsugentō in relation to its religious teachings, in an attempt to situate the movement within the broader tradition of religio-political syncretism in Japan. In particular, it will examine the recent “manifesto” of Kōfuku Jitsugentō in relation to those of New Komeitō and “secular” political parties such as the Liberal Democratic Party (Jimintō 自民党) and the Democratic Party (Minshutō 民主党).