On Friendship, Equality and Introductions: Comparing English and German Regimes of Manners and Emotions

This paper explores friendship by analysing some of the characteristic differences in manners between the Germans and the English, from the end of the nineteenth century until the 1970s. During that time rules for introductions were a major if not the most prominent topic in English manners books, whereas these rules attracted hardly any attention in the German ones. In an opposite way, the same goes for friendship: the topic was almost absent in English manners books while it was a central theme in German ones, together with topics such as duzen – addressing each other with the informal you: Du. Establishing a 'friendship' as well as 'being properly introduced' are both ritual transitions from a rather distant and hierarchical relationship in the direction of greater 'equality' and intimacy. These different forms are explained by placing them in the context of their national class structures and by connecting them to differences in the processes of social emancipation and national integration.Historical and International Comparison of Germany and England: Friendship, Equality, Introductions, Privacy, Good Society, Social Mobility, Informalization, and Regimes of Manners and Emotions

The Effects of Three Schedules of Reinforcement on Stimulus Generalization

The effects of three schedules of reinforcement on stimulus generalization in rats were investigated. In the presence of a 2000 hz tone the subjects were trained to bar press on one of three schedules: CRF, VR 25, or VR 50. Three animals started in each condition. After tone/no-tone discrimination training they were tested for generalization. Generalization took.place over six,31.5 minute sessions. This tested the subjects* response rate to each of seven tones: 250 hz, 500 hz, 1000, hz, 2000 hz, 4000 hz, 8000 hz, and 16000 hz. During a 31.5 minute generalization test every tone was presented randomly nine times for 30 seconds each. The VR 25 group produced a much steeper generalization gradient than the VR 50 group. The CRF group produced inconsistent generalization without a .clearcut generalization gradient around the training stim ulus. Generalization gradients were steepest early in generalization testing and tended to become flatter as extinction continued. The results indicate that,.similar to VI schedules, VR schedules produce more stimulus gener alization as density of reinforcement decreases

EXTERNAL BORROWING – A SOLUTION IN OVERCOMING THE CURRENT ECONOMIC CRISIS?

The government decisions to call, in recent years, more and more reimbursable financing gave birth to fierce reactions among politicians and economy specialists. The present article aims to analyze how the external borrowing may be a solution to overcome the difficult situation where we are.government, financing, external borrowing, economic crisis

Manacled to Identity: Cosmopolitanism, Class, and ‘The Culture Concept’ in Stephen Crane

This article begins with a close reading of Stephen Crane’s short story ‘Manacled’ from 1900, which situates this rarely considered short work within the context of contemporary debates about realism. I then proceed to argue that many of the debates raised by the tale have an afterlife in our own era of American literary studies, which has frequently focused on questions of ‘identity’ and ‘culture’ in its reading of realism and naturalism to the exclusion of the importance of cosmopolitan discourses of diffusion and exchange across national borders. I then offer a brief reading of Crane’s novel George’s Mother, which follows Walter Benn Michaels in suggesting that the recent critical attention paid to particularities of cultural difference in American studies have come to conflate ideas of class and social position with ideas of culture in ways that have ultimately obscured the presence of genuine historical inequalities in US society. In order to challenge this critical commonplace, I situate Crane’s work within a history of transatlantic cosmopolitanism associated with the ideas of Franz Boas and Matthew Arnold to demonstrate the ways in which Crane’s narratives sought out an experience of the universal within their treatments of the particular

Graph theory, irreducibility, and structural analysis of differential-algebraic equation systems

The $\Sigma$-method for structural analysis of a differential-algebraic equation (DAE) system produces offset vectors from which the sparsity pattern of a system Jacobian is derived. This pattern implies a block-triangular form (BTF) of the DAE that can be exploited to speed up numerical solution. The paper compares this fine BTF with the usually coarser BTF derived from the sparsity pattern of the \sigmx. It defines a Fine-Block Graph with weighted edges, which gives insight into the relation between coarse and fine blocks, and the permitted ordering of blocks to achieve BTF. It also illuminates the structure of the set of normalised offset vectors of the DAE, e.g.\ this set is finite if and only if there is just one coarse block

The Occurrence of Alexithymia in Children and Adolescents with Posttraumatic Stress Disorder

Previous studies of the relationship between alexithymia and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) have utilized samples of combat veterans with PTSD. However, children and adolescents who have experienced trauma and are diagnosed with PTSD exhibit similar or identical symptomology. The current study examined alexithymia in a sample of children and adolescents diagnosed with PTSD. It was hypothesized that the sample, when compared to non-PTSD and control samples, would reveal a significantly greater severity of alexithymia and PTSD. Although overall results were not consistent with previous research, trends of group means supported a relationship between alexithymia and PTSD.

Anger Control

This study was designed to assess the efficiency of anger control training with twenty-three institutionalized male delinquents evidencing verbal and physical aggression. The study employed a two group crossover design. After an initial test session assessing anger with a variety of measures, the immediate treatment group received anger control training. Following this training both groups participated in a test session. The delayed treatment group then received training and both groups were finally tested a third time. For a number of measures, both groups showed significant differences between the first and the second testing sessions. However no significant differences could be attributed to the anger control training

The Application of Behavior Modification Techniques to Two Geriatric Patients

Behavior modification techniques were applied to the behavioral problems of two geriatric nursing home residents. For the first subject, providing reinforcement for a competing activity effectively reduced both disruptive behavior defined as requests for cigarettes, attacking a fellow resident or unauthorized removal of charts, and time spent in the hallway. Similarly, for the second subject, offering reinforcement for out-of-bed behavior had the desired effect of increasing time spent out of bed. However, positive changes in behavior failed to generalize beyond the experimental situation, possibly due to an inability to exercise adequate control over the environment. Suggestions for establishing a totally structured environment that would be ideal for optimal behavioral change were made

Attitudes Toward Psychotropic Medications Among Psychotropic Medications Among Psychiatric Outpatients and the General Population

Attitudes and beliefs towards psychotropic medication were evaluated among psychiatric outpatients, patients seeking buprenorphine for substance abuse, and nonusers in a general population. The Drug Attitude Inventory scale (DAI-10) and the Beliefs about Medicines Questionnaire General (BMQ-G) were used to assess attitudes and beliefs of 49 participants. The general population had a negative attitude toward psychotropic medication and the psychiatric groups showed positive attitudes. Compliance and noncompliance were not associated with attitudes or beliefs toward psychotropic medication. Other findings include that females had less positive attitudes and beliefs towards psychotropic medication than males. The current findings expand and support research associated with substance abuse treatment of buprenorphine and attitudes toward psychotropic medication among psychiatric patients and the general population