Between Fiction and Physiology: Brain Fever in The Brothers Karamazov and Its English Afterlife

Working at the intersection of translation theory and medical humanities, this article interrogates the term brain fever, which Constance Garnett, adhering to clichés of English sentimental fiction, uses in reference to a wide variety of medical conditions in the works of Fyodor Dostoevsky. Garnett’s choice has become useful shorthand for the narrative function of delirium in Dostoevsky’s works, but it obscures the sensitivity to medical terminology that informs the Russian texts. In The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky stages the conflict between Enlightenment rationality and religious mysticism by satirizing the terminology of medical authorities and contrasting it with the language of faith, which posits its own etiology for mental diseases. Garnett’s abundance of interpolated brain fevers can be read not as a simple mistranslation but as marking the roles of translation and diagnosis in mediating the various cultural paradigms produced in fictional worlds

Differential Effects of Received Trade Credit and Provided Trade Credit on Firm Value

With over half a trillion dollars in trade credit flowing between firms in the U.S., it is critically important for managers to understand how the trade credit that their firm receives and provides affect its value. Trade credit is a strategic investment in supply chain relationships that allows the recipient to make payment later rather than at the time of the sale. A firm provides trade credit to its downstream business customers and also receives trade credit from its upstream suppliers. Although research has shown that provided trade credit builds a firm’s shareholder value, it has not examined what effect, if any, received trade credit has on the firm’s value. As a result, one might assume that received trade credit affects firm value in the same manner as provided trade credit. We argue otherwise and show that received trade credit and provided trade credit have differential effects on firm value. Received trade credit has a negative direct effect and a positive indirect effect (through profit), whereas provided trade credit has a positive direct effect and a negative indirect effect. The difference in direct effects hinges on the disparate nature of dependence in the supply chain. Provided trade credit increases customers’ dependence on the firm, building the firm’s value. In contrast, received trade credit increases the firm’s dependence on its suppliers, destroying the firm’s value. Empirical results using a sample of 2,804 firms from 1986 to 2017 provide robust support for the hypotheses. They show that managers risk over-estimating the value of a 1 SD increase in received (provided) trade credit by $284.74 ($74.95) million, on average, if they do not consider both the direct and indirect effects it has on their firm’s value

Botched Ebola Vaccine Trials in Ghana: An Analysis of Discourses in the Media

In June 2015, proposed Ebola vaccine trials were suspended by the Ministry of Health of Ghana amid protests from members of parliament and the general public. Scholarship has often focused on the design, development, and administration of vaccines. Of equal importance are the social issues surrounding challenges with vaccine trials and their implementation. The purpose of this study was to analyze discourses in the media that led to the suspension of the 2015 Ebola vaccine trials in Ghana. I use a sociological lens drawing on moral panic and risk society theories. The study qualitatively analyzed discourses in 18 semi-structured interviews with media workers, selected online publications, and user comments about the Ebola vaccine trials. The findings show that discourses surrounding the Ebola vaccine trials drew on cultural, biomedical, historical, and even contextual knowledge and circumstances to concretize risk discourses and garner support for their positions. Historical, political, and cultural underpinnings have a strong influence on biomedical practices and how they are (not) accepted. This study highlights the complexity and challenges of undertaking much needed vaccine tests in societies where the notion of drug trials has underlying historical and sociological baggage that determine whether (or not) the trials proceed

When Is Retaliation Respected? Status and Vengefulness in Intergroup and Interpersonal Contexts

The authors investigate how conflict between groups shapes social status within groups. Conflict may create opportunities for individuals to gain or lose status by demonstrating group commitment. Pursuing revenge for an intergroup affront can serve as a source of status in settings characterized by a “culture of honor” or “code of the street.” Yet little is known about whether this holds in everyday settings. The authors develop a theoretical account of the relationship between vengeful behavior and social status. They test their predictions with four online survey experiments. Respondents generally perceive intergroup retaliation as more status-worthy than interpersonal retaliation, and these status rewards are similar for men and women, are specific to retaliation rather than initiating aggression, and are diminished by premeditation. Broader implications include understanding how status shapes the social organization of aggression, why trivial disputes escalate, and the link between inter- and intragroup relations

IMPLICITNESS AND EXPLICITNESS IN COGNITIVE ABILITIES AND CORRECTIVE FEEDBACK A DOUBLE DISSOCIATION?

This aptitude–treatment interaction study investigated the extent to which explicit and implicit cognitive abilities are differentially related to learning outcomes under two corrective feedback conditions. One hundred and thirteen intermediate English learners of Spanish were randomly assigned to an implicit feedback (recast), explicit feedback (explicit correction), or control group after completing tests from two aptitude batteries (High-Level Language Aptitude Battery [Hi-LAB] and LLAMA). Linguistic improvement on noun-adjective gender agreement and Differential Object Marking was assessed using grammaticality judgment and oral production tasks. Results showed that implicit but not explicit abilities were relevant for the acquisition of gender agreement under implicit feedback as measured by grammaticality judgments. In contrast, explicit but not implicit abilities were relevant for the acquisition of object marking under explicit feedback as measured by oral production. These results lent support to a double dissociation, but they also suggested higher-order interaction effects between the type of cognitive ability, outcome measure, and target structure

A History of Passing

At 90, Nella Larsen’s Passing (1929) remains a deeply relevant novel for today’s readers. Yet, as Alice Dunbar-Nelson’s prescient quote suggests, Passing’s meaning, from its publication date onward, was never stable or concrete. In fact, the novel’s very brilliance, with its designed ambiguity and invitation for interpretation, has been its capacity to mean a myriad of things to a myriad of readers, now for almost a century. The history of Passing—or the story of Larsen’s story—then is its own compelling and instructive narrative, as each successive generation has actively and even literally projected its own needs, desires, and anxieties upon Larsen’s groundbreaking work. As a result, Passing’s history, with its radical swings in reception and reputation, has been as remarkable as that of any work in American literature. Over the past nine decades, Passing has gone from critically acclaimed (late 1920s) to totally obscure and out-of-print (1930-1969) to socially relevant but underappreciated (1970s-early 1980s) to massively significant and canonized (mid-1980s-present). Today Larsen’s novel is considered a landmark work in the fields of African American and American literature, feminism, queer studies, modernism, interracial literature, and the history of American race. Hundreds of books, scholarly articles, and dissertations have taken the novel as their focus. Yet, even within Larsen’s own compact catalogue, Passing has never held a fixed role. In the essay that follows, I will trace the rich history of Larsen’s novel, arguing that this record of publication and reading provides us with critical insight not just into the shifting interpretation of an important novel but also into how America has understood—and continues to understand, and will continue to understand—race, gender, sexuality, and ultimately, those who do not easily fit into its prescriptive categories

Coastal flooding will disproportionately impact people on river deltas

Climate change is intensifying tropical cyclones, accelerating sea-level rise, and increasing coastal flooding. River deltas are especially vulnerable to flooding because of their low elevations and densely populated cities. Yet, we do not know how many people live on deltas and their exposure to flooding. Using a new global dataset, we show that 339 million people lived on river deltas in 2017 and 89% of those people live in the same latitudinal zone as most tropical cyclone activity. We calculate that 41% (31 million) of the global population exposed to tropical cyclone flooding live on deltas, with 92% (28 million) in developing or least developed economies. Furthermore, 80% (25 million) live on sediment-starved deltas, which cannot naturally mitigate flooding through sediment deposition. Given that coastal flooding will only worsen, we must reframe this problem as one that will disproportionately impact people on river deltas, particularly in developing and least-developed economies

Neighborliness and Decency, Witchcraft and Famine: Reflections on Community from Irish Folklore

Many examples of Irish folklore reflect and instill enduring conceptions about the workings, vulnerability, and viability of community, which is understood to be a doing, a project in need of continual maintenance. Arguably, there has been no more devastating blow to the vernacular understanding of community as social contract for mutual support than the mid-nineteenth-century Famine in Ireland. If folklore provides models for contemplating and reproducing ideas about how community may be enacted, it also bears witness to the haunting consequences of abandoning community

The Relationship Between Perception of HIV Susceptibility and Willingness to Discuss PrEP With a Health Care Provider: A Pilot Study

HIV continues to be a significant public health concern and despite recent reductions in new HIV diagnoses, certain demographics continue to be disproportionality affected. Men who have sex with other men (MSM) account for the largest percentage of new HIV diagnoses; however, 24% of new diagnoses can be attributed to male-to-female sex, highlighting the need to explore the HIV epidemic beyond the narrow scope of MSM. A multivariate linear regression model was used to explore the perception of HIV susceptibility and level of comfort discussing pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) with a health care provider among a sample of men living in the United States (n = 377). Men who had an increased perception of HIV susceptibility were significantly more likely to feel comfortable discussing PrEP with a health care provider. Men who distinguish themselves to be at increased risk of acquiring HIV were significantly more likely to report having either insertive or receptive condomless anal intercourse within the previous 3 months, while men who reported condomless vaginal intercourse perceived low HIV susceptibility. Never being screened for HIV was significantly associated with a perception of low HIV susceptibility compared to those men who had been screened in the previous year. Understanding how men perceive HIV susceptibility and engage with HIV prevention may help to improve HIV prevention efforts such as PrEP