The effects of aging and musical experience on the representation of tonal hierarchies

Two experiments explored the representation of the tonal hierarchy in Western music among older (aged 60 to 80) and younger (aged 15 to 22) musicians and nonmusicians. A probe tone technique was used: 4 notes from the major triad were presented, followed by 1 note chosen from the 12 notes of the chromatic scale. Whereas musicians had a better sense of the tonal hierarchy than nonmusicians, older adults were no worse than younger adults in differentiating the notes according to musical principles. However, older adults were more prone than younger adults to classify the notes by frequency proximity (pitch height) when proximity was made more salient, as were nonmusicians compared with musicians. With notes having ambiguous pitch height, pitch height effects disappeared among older adults but not nonmusicians. Older adults seem to have internalized tonal structure, but they sometimes fail to inhibit less musically relevant information.

The Politics of Purchasing Power: Feminist Tourism and Women's Development in Nepal

My purpose in this essay is to explore how ideas about women and development are created and circulated at the moment of consumption of wares produced at a women's development project in Nepal. I analyze the project as an example of the ways that women's development is an object of material and discursive consumption. Artifacts produced and sold by Nepali women, and purchased by tourists from the "first world," become part of an international exchange of power, money, and meaning. Based on a survey of consumers and ethnographic observations, I conclude that feminist tourists forge relations with disempowered "Others" through the pleasurable activity of an alienated market transaction. Consumers of crafts produced at a women's development project assume a position of empowerment and enlightenment, ready to help out their "women" counterparts through their support of an enterprise with circular logic: within the industry of development (although not necessarily for feminist tourists themselves), at least one of the central projects of development is the development project itself. At the same time, feminist tourists locate themselves outside the oppressive structures and ideologies affecting their "third-world sisters." This is a relation of sympathy and imagined empathy, with no sense of differential location within systems of oppression. They fail to examine or articulate the global link between their own purchasing power and local living conditions of Maithil women; the connection is effectively built out of the discourse.

Stability of Art Preference in Frontotemporal Dementia

We examined aesthetic preference for reproductions of paintings among frontotemporal dementia (FTD) patients, in two sessions separated by 2 weeks. The artworks were in three different styles: representational, quasirepresentational, and abstract. Stability of preference for the paintings was equivalent to that shown by a matched group of Alzheimer's disease patients and a group of healthy controls drawn from an earlier study. We expected that preference for representational art would be affected by disruptions in language processes in the FTD group. However, this was not the case and the FTD patients, despite severe language processing deficits, performed similarly across all three art styles. These data show that FTD patients maintain a sense of aesthetic appraisal despite cognitive impairment and should be amenable to therapies and enrichment activities involving art.

Institutional Identity and Anticipatory Socialization: a Qualitative Analysis of Multi-Campus University Websites

A document analysis of institutional websites was conducted to infer the extent to which affiliated campuses are integrated with one another within multi-campus university systems. The factors that contribute to either a common or differentiated sense of institutional identity, as expressed in the campuses’ individual web presences, were a primary focus of the investigation. This study then sought to determine the effect that institutional identity has on the anticipatory socialization of students who relocate from branch campuses to their parent institutions. Once an analysis of the findings had been conducted, recommendations for further research in this area were made.

Greek Life and God Attachment: the Interaction of Sorority Influence and Religiosity on Women's Body Shame

The present study investigated the relationships between sorority women’s internalization of Greek thin ideals and body image, and dimensions of sorority women’s religiosity and body image. A combined relationship among sorority women’s internalization of Greek thin ideals, body image, and religiosity was also examined. Based on previous research it was expected that women’s internalization of Greek thin ideals would be associated with worse body image (in terms of body shame, body esteem, and drive for thinness) and that women’s religiosity (in terms of secure attachment to God) would be associated with better body image. Combinations of Greek thin ideal internalization and God attachment were expected to significantly predict changes in women’s body image. Women completed a series of survey measures assessing their awareness and internalization of Greek sociocultural thin ideals and their sense of community within their particular sorority. Women also completed a series of survey measures assessing their body shame, body esteem, and drive for thinness, in addition to survey measures assessing dimensions of their religiosity. The study’s findings revealed that women’s internalization of Greek thin ideals was associated with worse body image outcomes and that anxious attachment to God was associated with worse body image outcomes, particularly in relation to body shame. Moderation analyses revealed that Greek thin ideal internalization significantly interacted with anxious God attachment to predict body shame.

Must We Forgive?: Exploring the Limits and Possibilities of Forgiveness and Resentment

Conflict has marked civilization from Biblical times to the present day. Each of us, with our different and competing interests, and our desires to pursue those interests, have over time wronged another person. Not surprisingly then, forgiveness is a concern of individuals and groups¿communities, countries, religious groups, races¿yet it is a complex idea that philosophers, theologians, political scientists, and psychologists have grappled with. Some have argued that forgiveness is a therapeutic means for overcoming guilt, pain, and anger. Forgiveness is often portrayed as a coping mechanism¿how often we hear the phrase, ¿forgive and forget,¿ as an arrangement to help two parties surmount the complications of disagreement. But forgiveness is not simply a modus vivendi; the ability to forgive and conversely to ask for forgiveness, is counted as an admirable trait and virtue. This essay will explore the nature of forgiveness, which in Christian dogma is often posited as an unqualified virtue. The secular world has appropriated the Christian notion of forgiveness as such a virtue¿but are there instances wherein offering forgiveness is morally inappropriate or dangerous? I will consider the situations in which forgiveness, understood in this essay as the overcoming of resentment, may not be a virtue¿when perhaps maintaining resentment is as virtuous, if not more virtuous, than forgiving. I will explain the various ethical frameworks involved in understanding forgiveness as a virtue, and the relationship between them. I will argue that within Divine Command Theory forgiveness is a virtue¿and thus morally right¿because God commands it. This ethical system has established forgiveness as unconditional, an idea which has been adopted into popular culture. With virtue ethics in mind, which holds virtues to be those traits which benefit the person who possesses them, contributing to the good life, I will argue unqualified forgiveness is not always a virtue, as it will not always benefit the victim. Because there is no way to avoid wrongdoing, humans are confronted with the question of forgiveness with every indiscretion. Its limits, its possibilities, its relationship to one¿s character¿forgiveness is a concern of all people at some time if for no other reason than the plain fact that the past cannot be undone. I will be evaluating the idea of forgiveness as a virtue, in contrast to its counterpart, resentment. How can forgiveness be a response to evil, a way to renounce resentment, and a means of creating a positive self-narrative? And what happens when a sense of moral responsibility is impossible to reconcile with the Christian (and now, secularized imperative of) forgiveness? Is it ever not virtuous to forgive? In an attempt to answer that question I will argue that there are indeed times when forgiveness is not a virtue, specifically: when forgiveness compromises one¿s own self-respect; when it is not compatible with respect for the moral community; and when the offender is unapologetic. The kind of offense I have in mind is a dehumanizing one, one that intends to diminish another person¿s worth or humanity. These are moral injuries, to which I will argue resentment is a better response than forgiveness when the three qualifications cannot be met.

Bacchus and Civic Order: The Culture of Drink in Early Modern Germany / Bacchus und die bürgerliche Ordnung. Die Kultur des Trinkens im frühneuzeitlichen Augsburg

Lining the streets inside the city's gates, clustered in its center, and thinly scattered among its back quarters were Augsburg's taverns and drinking rooms. These institutions ranged from the poorly lit rooms of backstreet wine sellers to the elaborate marble halls frequented by society's most privileged members. Urban drinking rooms provided more than food, drink, and lodging for their guests. They also conferred upon their visitors a sense of social identity commensurate with their status. Like all German cities, Augsburg during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries had a history shaped by the political events attending the Reformation, the post-Reformation, and the Thirty Years' War; its social and political character was also reflected and supported by its public and private drinking rooms. In Bacchus and Civic Order: The Culture of Drink in Early Modern Germany, Ann Tlusty examines the social and cultural functions served by drinking and tavern life in Germany between 1500 and 1700, and challenges existing theories about urban identity, sociability, and power. Through her reconstruction of the social history of Augsburg, from beggars to council members, Tlusty also sheds light on such diverse topics as social ritual, gender and household relations, medical practice, and the concerns of civic leaders with public health and poverty. Drunkenness, dueling, and other forms of tavern comportment that may appear "disorderly" to us today turn out to be the inevitable, even desirable result of a society functioning according to its own rules.

Bioinformatics tools and databases for the study of human growth hormone

Advances in novel molecular biological diagnostic methods are changing the way of diagnosis and study of metabolic disorders like growth hormone deficiency. Faster sequencing and genotyping methods require strong bioinformatics tools to make sense of the vast amount of data generated by modern laboratories. Advances in genome sequencing and computational power to analyze the whole genome sequences will guide the diagnostics of future. In this chapter, an overview of some basic bioinformatics resources that are needed to study metabolic disorders are reviewed and some examples of bioinformatics analysis of human growth hormone gene, protein and structure are provided.

Trust and Social Networks in a Changing Europe.

This project set out to investigate the effects of the recent massive social transitions in Eastern Europe on the everyday social lives of the inhabitants of three very different nations: Georgia, Russia and Hungary. It focused in particular on the availability and nature of the support networks available to three different segments of each of the societies (manual workers, students and entrepreneurs) and the impact of network participation on psychological and physical well-being. The group set four specific questions to investigate: the part played by individual psychological beliefs in the formation and maintenance of social networks and the consequent formation of trusting relations; the implication of the size and quality of these networks for mental health; the nature of the social groups inhabited by the respondents and the implication of their work schedule and daily routines on the maintenance of a social and family life; and an analysis of how cultures vary in their social networks and intimacy. Three different methods were used to examine social support and its implications: structured questionnaires, semi-structured short interviews and a media analysis of newspaper materials. The questionnaires were administered to 150 participants in each country, equally divided between students studying full time, manual workers employed in factories, and business people (small kiosk owners, whose work and life style differs considerably from that of the manual workers). The questionnaires investigated various predictors of social support including the locus of control, relationship beliefs, individualism-collectivism and egalitarianism, demographic variables (age, gender and occupation), social support, both in general and in relation to significant events that have occurred since the transition from communism. Those with an internal locus of control were more likely to report a higher level of social support, as were collectivists, while age too was a significant predictor, with younger respondents enjoying higher levels of support, regardless of the measures of support employed. Respondents across the cultures referred to a decline of social support and the group also found a direct correlation between social support and mental health outcomes. All 450 respondents were interviewed on their general responses to changes in their lives since the fall of communism and the effects of their work lives on their social lives and the home environment. The interviews revealed considerable variations in the way in which work-life offered opportunities for a broader social life and also provided a hindrance to the development of fulfilling relationships. Many of the work experiences discussed were culture specific, with work having a particularly negative impact on the social life of Russian entrepreneurs but being seen much more positively in Georgia. This may reflect the nature of support offered in a society as overall support levels were lowest in Russia, meaning that social support may be of particular importance there. The way in cultural values and norms about personal relationships are transmitted in a culture is a critical issue for social psychologists and the group examined newspaper articles in those newspapers read by the respondents in each of the three countries. These revealed a number of different themes. The concept of a divided society and its implications for personal relationships was clearest in Russian and Hungary, where widely-read newspapers dwelt on the contrast between "new Russians/Hungarians" and the older, poorer ones and extended considerable sympathy to those suffering from neglect in institutions. Magyar Nemzet, a paper widely read by Hungarian students reflects the generally more pessimistic tone about personal relationships in Russia and Hungary and gave a particularly detailed analysis of the implications this holds for human relations in a modern society. In Georgia, however, the tone of the newspapers is more positive, stressing greater social cohesion. Part of this cohesion is framed in the context of religion, with the church appealing to a broader egalitarianism, whereas in less egalitarian Hungary appeals by the Church are centred more on the nuclear family and its need for expansion in both size and influence. The division between the sexes was another prominent issue in Hungary and Russia, while the theme of generational conflict also emerged in Hungarian and Georgian papers, although with some understanding of "young people today". The team's original expectation that the different newspapers read by the different groups of respondents would present differing images of personal relationships was not fulfilled, as despite variations in style, they found little clear "ideological targeting" of any particular readership. They conclude that the vast majority of respondents recognised that the social transition from communism has had a significant impact on the well-being of social relationships and that this is a pertinent issue for all segments of society. While the group see the data collected as a source to be worked on for some time in the future, their initial impressions include the following. Social support is clearly an important concern across all three countries. All respondents (including the students) lament the time taken up by their heavy work schedules and value their social networks and family ties in particular. The level of social support differs across the countries investigated, with Georgian apparently enjoying significantly higher levels of social support. The analysis produced an image of a relatively cohesive and egalitarian society in which even the group most often seen as distant from the general population, business people, is supported by a strong social network. In contrast, the support networks available to the Russian respondents seem particularly weak and reflect a general sense of division and alienation within the culture as a whole. The implications of low levels of social support may vary across countries. While Russians reported the lowest level of mental health problems, the link between social support and mental health may be strongest in that country. In contrast, in Hungary it is the link between fatalism and mental health problems which is particularly strong, while in Georgia the strongest correlation was between mental health and marital quality, emphasising the significance of the marital relationship in that country.

Current Changes in the Lifestyle and Mental Health of Teenagers

The group studied 1,253 students from various types of schools chosen randomly from those in Prague and Budejovice in order to evaluate the life styles, prevailing value standards, attitudes and behavioural patterns of Czech adolescents. The respondents (including 614 men and 639 women with an average age of 16.4 years) completed questionnaires containing standard scales focusing on feelings about social life, conservative and authoritarian tendencies, levels of self-esteem, general health, eating attitudes and behaviour The adolescents showed a relatively high level of conformity with authoritarian, conservative tendencies and with a dictate of power, rigid conventionality, ethnocentrism and low inner tolerance of differences, their scores being higher than those found in Western European countries. These tendencies were stronger among students outside Prague and those attending vocational schools. As the level of education rose, the sense of fatality and social determination decreased, indicating a higher share of responsibility for events in the surrounding world. When changes of life style were considered, adolescents can be expected to adapt more easily to more risky, socially attractive and manifest models of attitudes and behaviour. On the one hand, adolescents were often involved in sports, and young women in particular often showed a extreme concern and care for their own bodies. On the other hand, one quarter of respondents smoked, one fifth reported serious problems with alcohol and one quarter had already had some experience with drugs. One third of young men and one quarter of young women reported regular consumption of alcohol, and 6.5 percent of men and 3.6 percent of women regularly smoked marihuana or hashish. For the majority of adolescents, life conditions and conformity seem to be more important than the sense of active choice and responsibility for one's own life.

National Identity in Lithuania: Processes During the Period of Changes

Under the conditions of rapid and total change in the social, political, economic and legal environment in Lithuania, a re-orientation process is going on in all groups of society. In this process, not only younger but also middle-aged and old people become adherents to what Ms. Liubiniene calls the new, "post-materialist" values, strongly reinforced by powerful agents of socialisation originating in the West, like the media, advertising agencies and lifestyle-consumption models. As a result, the national identity of Lithuania and its inhabitants is being reconstructed. Ms. Liubiniene set out to examine the details of this evolving identity by conducting a survey of 1218 university staff and students. Her conclusions are set out in a 74 page manuscript, written in Lithuanian and available on disc. Change is most noticeable among the young. Indeed, time and time again, Ms. Liubiniene was to find that the age of 36 marks a natural watershed, with, for instance, the younger group valuing individualism highly and the older, collectivism. Ms. Liubiniene ventures to suggest that traditional values are deeply rooted amongst elderly people, women and people with an education in the humanities. Young people on the other hand, and especially those with a professional orientation towards business are more open to change and ready to adapt to new values. Turning to the evaluation of national symbols, Ms. Liubinie finds that those with an education in the humanities might be considered to be the most traditional, placing greater value on the symbols of nature, ethnic culture and religion. Folk songs and the crucifix are also in their top ten. Respondents with a technical education favour symbols of statehood and nature, and respondents with a business orientation assign greater value to the symbols of nature, history, sports and statehood. Ms. Liubinie concludes that the group of respondents most active and ready to adapt to new things is composed of young males of a business orientation. Generally the national identity of the young is weaker compared to that of the old. In the future, the combination of the evolution of values and the process of inter-generational replacement allows us to predict a weakening of the sense of national identity, or at least its transformation into something radically different to what it is today.

Liberal Nationalism: A Historical and Critical Analysis of Conceptions

At the end of the 20th century we live in a pluralist world in which national and ethnic identities play an appreciable role, sometimes provoking serious conflicts. Nationalist values seem to pose a serious challenge to liberal ones, particularly in the post-communist countries. Malinova asked whether liberalism must necessarily be contrasted with nationalism. Although nationalist issues has never been a major concern for liberal thinkers, in many countries they have had to take such issues into consideration and a form of 'liberalism nationalism' has its place in the history of political ideas. Some of the thinkers who tried to develop such an idea were liberals in the strict sense of the word and others were not, but all of them tried to elaborate a concept of nationalism that respected the rights of individuals and precluded discrimination on ethnic grounds. Malinova studied the history of the conceptualisation of nations and nationalism in the writings, of J.S. Mill, J.E.E. Acton, G. Mazzini, V. Soloviev, B. Chicherin, P. Struve, P. Miljoukov and T.G. Masaryk. Although it cannot be said that these theories form a coherent tradition, certain common elements of the different approaches can be identified. Malinova analysed the way that liberal nationalists interpreted the phenomenon of the nation and its rights in different historical contexts, reviewed the structure of their arguments and tried to evaluate this theoretical experience from the perspective of the contemporary debate on the problems of liberal nationalism and multiculturalism and recent debates on 'the national idea' in Russia.

The Culture of the Deaf Community in the Czech Republic

Romana Mazerova. The Culture of the Deaf Community in the Czech Republic Mazerova set out to discover if the deaf community in the Czech Republic can be said to have its own culture and if so what this is. She began with a comprehensive survey of the history of the deaf from 1786 to the present day, identifying a major turning point in the exclusion of sign language from the education of the deaf around 1930, a move then reinforced in the communist period to the extent that teachers of the deaf had to sign a commitment not to use sign language in their lessons. She also noted the difference between so-called signed Czech, which is an exact translation of the spoken language, and Czech sign language, which has its own structure and even dialects. Following the historical research, Mazerova studied a range of Czech and foreign materials relating to the culture of the deaf, interviewed deaf people about their experiences in school, their participation in the activities of associations for the deaf, and their experiences as a deaf person in a hearing society (these interviews are recorded on video), and visited various associations, clubs and schools for the deaf throughout the country. She concluded that while deaf people share certain behaviours which are quite distinct from those of hearing Czechs, there is little sense of a community as such. The vast majority of deaf people were not born into the deaf community and while feel that they belong together, they do not identify themselves as part of a deaf community and do not work together as a community to achieve their goals.

The Representation of Motherhood in Polish Cinema

The project aimed to analyse representations of motherhood in Polish cinema as a special case of a more general system within the representation of women. It concentrated on the image of the Polish Mother created during the 19th century in Polish culture under the influence of specific political, social and religious factors. Ms. Ostrowska's initial hypothesis was that this symbolic image became one of the most stable elements in Polish cinema and as her research revealed, it was valuable for the preservation of national identity but nevertheless a fiercely constraining model for Polish femininity. In order to fully understand the nature of this persistent image it was initially necessary to related it to broader contexts and issues in representation. These included the image of the Polish Mother within general mythological structures (using the notion of myth in the Barthesian sense). Following her initial research Ms. Ostrowska felt that it was most appropriate to view the myth of the Polish Mother as a dominant ideological structure in the discourse of motherhood within Polish culture. An analysis of the myth of the Polish Mother can provide an insight into how Polish society sees itself at different periods in time and how a national identity was constructed in relation to particular ideological demands stemming from concrete historical and political situations. The analysis of the film version of this myth also revealed some aspects of the national character of Polish cinema. There the image of woman has become enshrined as the "eternal feminine", with virtues which are inevitably derived directly from Catholicism, particularly in relation to the networks of meanings around the central figure of Mary, Mother of God. In 19th century Poland these were linked with patriotic values and images of woman became part of the defence of the very idea of Poland and Polishness. After World War Two, this religious-political image system was adapted to the demands of the new communist ideology. The possibility of manipulating the ideological dimensions of the myth of the Polish Mother is due to the very nature of the image, which as a symbol of civil religion had been able to function independently of any particular state or church institution. Although in communist ideology the stress was on the patriotic aspect of the myth, its pronounced religious aspect was also transmitted, consciously or not, in the denotation process, this being of great significance in the viewer's response to the female character. This appropriation of elements derived from the national patriotic tradition into the discourse of communist ideology was a very efficient strategy to establish the illusion of continuity in national existence, which was supposed to convince society of the rightness of the new political situation. The analysis of films made in the post-war period showed the persistence of this discourse on motherhood in a range of cinematic texts regardless of the changing political situation. Ms. Ostrowska claims that the stability of this discursive formation is to a certain extent the result of the mythological aspect of the mother figure. This mythological structure also belongs to the ideology of Romanticism which in general continues to prevail in Polish cultural discourse as a meta-language of national community. The analysis of the films confirmed the hypothesis of the Polish Mother as a myth-sign whose signifier is stable whereas the signified depends on the specific historical conditions in which it is set. Therefore in the famous propaganda documentary Kobiety naszych dni (Women of Our Days, 1951) by Jan Zelnik, and in other films made after the October 1956 "thaw" it functions as an "empty sign. She concludes that it would be difficult to deny that the myth of the Polish Mother has offered Polish women a special role in national life, granting them a high moral position in the social, hierarchy. However the processes of idealisation involved have resulted in a deprivation of her subjectivity and the right to decide about her own life. This idealisation also served to strengthen traditional patriarchal structures through this set of female obligations to the mother land. In Polish ideology it is not a man who demands sacrifice from a woman but the motherland, which, deprived of the institutions of male power for nearly 150 years, had functioned as a feminine structure. That is why oppressive aspects of the myth have been obscured for so long. While Polish women were doubtless able to accept the constrictions because of their sense of national duty and any misgivings were overridden by the argument of the cause, it is important to recognise that the strength of these constructions, compounded by the ways in which they spoke of and continue to speak of a certain perfection, make them persist into contemporary Poland. Poland is however no longer embattled and the signs that made these meanings are potentially empty. This space for meaning will be and is already being contested and increasingly colonised by current western models of femininity. Ms. Ostrowska's final question is whether this will help to prevent a possible resentful victimisation of the silent and noble Polish Mother.

The meanings of pasture in resource degradation negotiations: Evidence from post-socialist rural Kyrgyzstan

Pasture use in the Kyrgyz Republic has changed significantly as a result of fundamental political, economic, and societal changes following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the subsequent changes in people’s livelihoods. Government institutions criticize current land use patterns as unsustainable and the cause of degradation. But at the local level, pasture quality is rarely seen as a major problem. This article uses a qualitative approach to examine the tension between these views and addresses current land use practices and related narratives about pasture degradation in rural Kyrgyzstan. By focusing on meanings ascribed to pastures, it shows how people closely relate current practices to the experiences and value systems of the Soviet period and to changing identities emerging in the post-Soviet transformation process. It argues that proper understanding of resource degradation issues requires adequate consideration of the context of meaning constructed by local resource users when they make sense of their environment.