Event Processing through naming: Investigating event focus in two people with aphasia

Some people with aphasia may have trouble with verbs because of fundamental difficulties in processing situations in a way that maps readily onto language. This paper describes a novel assessment, the Order of Naming Test, that explores the conceptual processing of events through the order in which people name the entities involved. The performance of non-brain damaged control participants is described. The responses of two people with non-fluent aphasia are then discussed. Both 'Helen' and 'Ron' showed significant difficulty with verbs and sentences. Ron also had trouble on a range of tasks tapping aspects of event processing, despite intact non-verbal cognition. While Helen's performance on the Order of Naming Test was very similar to the controls, Ron's differed in a number of respects, suggesting that he was less focused on the main participant entities. However, certain aspects of his response pointed at covert event processing abilities that might be fruitfully exploited in therapy

Adolf Reinach: An Intellectual Biography

The essay provides an account of the development of Reinach’s philosophy of “Sachverhalte” (states of affairs) and on problems in the philosophy of law, leading up to his discovery of the theory of speech acts in 1913. Reinach’s relations to Edmund Husserl and to the Munich phenomenologists are also dealt with

An Environmental-Economic Measure of Sustainable Development

A central issue in the study of sustainable development is the interplay of growth and sacrifice in a dynamic economy. This paper investigates the relationship among current consumption, growth, and sustained consumption in two canonical, stylized economies and in a more general context. It is found that the maximin value measures what is sustainable and provides the limit to growth. Maximin value is interpreted as an environmental-economic carrying capacity and current consumption or utility as an environmental-economic footprint. The time derivative of maximin value is interpreted as net investment in sustainability improvement. It is called durable savings to distinguish it from genuine savings, usually computed with discounted utilitarian prices.sustained development, growth, maximin, sustainability indicator

A Simple Approach to Project Extreme Old Age Mortality Rates and Value Mortality-Related Financial Instruments

This article shows how mortality models that involve age effects can be fitted to ages beyond the sample range using projections of age effects as replacements for age effects that might not be in the sample. This ‘projected age effect’ approach allows insurers to use age-effect mortality models to obtain valuations of financial instruments such as annuities that depend on projections of extreme old ag

Land use, associated eel production, and abundance of fish and crayfish in streams in Waikato, New Zealand

The density and biomass of fish and crayfish, and the production of eels, was compared among streams in native forest, exotic forest, and pasture. Populations were estimated by multiple-pass electroshocking at 11 sites in hill-country streams in the Waikato region, North Island. Three sites were in native forest, four in exotic forest, and four in pasture. Length of stream sampled at each site was 46-94 m (41-246 m2 in area), and catchment areas up stream of the sites ranged from 0.44 to 2.01 km2. A total of 487 fish were caught. The species were longfinned and shortfinned eels, banded kokopu, Cran's and redfinned bullies, and common smelt. Eels were the most abundant fish in all three land-use types, and shortfinned eels were more abundant at pastoral sites (mean density 1.11 fish m-2) than longfinned eels (mean density 0.129 fish m-2). Banded kokopu were present only at forested sites. Mean fish densities were greater at pastoral sites (1.55 fish m-2) than under either native forest (0.130 fish m-2) or exotic forest (0.229 fish m-2). Mean fish biomass was also greater at pastoral sites (89.7 g m-2) than under native forest (12.8 g m-2) or exotic forest (19.3 g m-2). Longfinned eels made a greater contribution to the fish biomass at all sites than did shortfinned eels. Densities of crayfish were high (0.46-5.40 crayfish m-2), but were not significantly different between land-use types. Crayfish biomass ranged from 1.79 to 11.2 g m-2. Total eel production was greater at pastoral sites (mean 17.9 g m-2 year-1) than at forest sites (mean 2.39 g m-2 year-1)

Mobility becoming migration: Understanding youth spatiality in the twenty-first century

The aim of this chapter, and the next, is to provide readers with an expanded introduction of sorts, engaging with prominent theoretical themes in the study of youth spatiality. Of particular interest is appreciating the relationship between our two main terms of reference, migration and mobility, the former having a certain gravitas, the latter a more youthful and carefree aura. This chapter will however show that the distinction between these two modalities is artificial and detrimental to our appreciation of youth spatiality, with mobility and migration being linked both literally and imaginatively. While the intention is certainly not to reinvent the entire youth mobility research field, we can provide some ideas for a conceptual rethink, starting with acknowledgement of the importance of integrating mobility with migration, and vice versa, moving towards outlining a youth mobility paradigm capable of accommodating a diverse range of perspectives. This includes drawing upon evidence from the Global North and Global South, and both long-duration and fixed-term forms of exchangeinfo:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

Migration decision-making, mobility capital and reflexive learning

In the previous chapter, the idea was introduced that migration can be constructed out of an accumulation of miscellaneous mobility experiences. Through this means, young people can become migrants in a relatively tacit and unconscious manner, encapsulating a sense of flux and inherent precarity. In this chapter, we continue exploration of this theme, looking at the specific issues of migration decision-making and the means through which different mobility phases become connected, interpolating into the discussion the concept of ‘mobility capital.’ The connections between different mobility episodes are important to consider, as is the means through which one decision affects the next, making migration a concatenation of what may have otherwise been seen as separate experiences (see Samuk et al. 2021). This will be explained as a reflexive learning process, requiring young people to use their own agency and the ability to learn how to be mobile from family members, peers, educators, trainers and employers.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

International student mobility in crisis? Understanding post-diploma mobility decision-making in an economic crisis context

This article examines student mobility in Portugal, with the aim of understanding what prompts the decision to leave, with particular emphasis upon the weight of factors associated with the on-going economic crisis. Findings from a survey of 400 Lisbon students conducted during 2014 are used to demonstrate the popularity of the idea of moving abroad after the completion of present course of study, with 35% indicating an intention to leave Portugal. Regression analysis confirms that factors associated with the economic crisis have a bearing upon mobility decisions, the most significant predictor being negative impact on personal well-being.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Working towards mobility

Mobility in training and employment contexts is of high importance for many young people who may wish to use spatial movement as a means of facilitating transitions not only from education to work but also from education to training and training to work, taking advantage of opportunities that may not be available close to home, potentially strengthening intercultural skills and employability at the same time. As with student mobility, much of this movement takes place within institutional structures and involves learning in internationalized groups, using the dynamics such environments offer for exchange and collaboration (see also Cuzzocrea et al. 2021). But while universities do host certain training courses and work placements (as we shall see later in this section), specialist training providers feature more prominently, introducing a new set of protagonists into the mobility equation, along with employment agencies, local and national authorities and entrepreneurial partners (see Nienaber et al. 2021). Therefore, as well as taking into account young people’s individual views, and the influence of universities and national and supranational policymakers, these other parties also help hold together migration trajectories through hosting projects and placements, and in this part of the book we wish to represent some contemporary experiences.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

The Impact of Covid-19 on Future Higher-Age Mortality

Covid-19 has predominantly affected mortality at high ages. It kills by inflaming and clogging the air sacs in the lungs, depriving the body of oxygen ‒ inducing hypoxia ‒ which closes down essential organs, in particular the heart, kidneys and liver, and causes blood clots (which can lead to stroke or pulmonary embolism) and neurological malfunction. Evidence from different countries points to the fact that people who die from Covid-19 are often, but not always, much less healthy than the average for their age group. This is true for England & Wales – the two countries we focus on in this study. The implication is that the years of life lost through early death are less than the average for each age group, with how much less being a source of considerable debate. We argue that many of those who die from coronavirus would have died anyway in the relatively near future due to their existing frailties or co-morbidities. We demonstrate how to capture this link to poorer-than-average health using a model in which individual deaths are ‘accelerated’ ahead of schedule due to Covid-19. The model structure and its parameterization build on the observation that Covid-19 mortality by age is approximately proportional to all-cause mortality. This, in combination with current predictions of total deaths, results in the important conclusion that, everything else being equal, the impact of Covid-19 on the mortality rates of the surviving population will be very modest. Specifically, the degree of anti-selection is likely to be very small, since the life expectancy of survivors does not increase by a significant amount over pre-pandemic levels. We also analyze the degree to which Covid-19 mortality varies with socio-economic status. Headline statistics suggest that the most deprived groups have been disproportionately affected by Covid-19. However, once we control for regional differences in mortality rates, Covid-19 deaths in both the most and least deprived groups are also proportional to the all-cause mortality of these groups. However, the groups in between have approximately 10-15% lower Covid-19 deaths compared with their all-cause mortality. We argue that useful lessons about the potential pattern of accelerated deaths from Covid-19 can be drawn from examining deaths from respiratory diseases, especially at different age ranges. We also argue that it is possible to draw useful lessons about volatility spikes in Covid-19 deaths from examining past seasonal flu epidemics. However, there is an important difference. Whereas the spikes in seasonal flu increase with age, our finding that Covid-19 death rates are approximately proportional to all-cause mortality suggests that any spike in Covid-19 mortality in percentage terms would be similar across all age ranges. Finally, we discuss some of the indirect consequences for future mortality of the pandemic and the ‘lockdown’ measures governments have imposed to contain it. For example, there is evidence that some surviving patients at all ages who needed intensive care could end up with a new impairment, such as organ damage, which will reduce their life expectancy. There is also evidence that many people in lockdown did not seek a timely medical assessment for a potential new illness, such as cancer, or deferred seeking treatment for an existing serious illness, with the consequence that non-Covid-19-related mortality rates could increase in future. Self-isolation during lockdown has contributed to an increase in alcohol and drug consumption by some people which might, in turn, reduce their life expectancy. If another consequence of the pandemic is a recession and/or an acceleration in job automation, resulting in long-term unemployment, then this could lead to so-called ‘deaths of despair’ in future. Other people, by contrast, might permanently change their social behaviour or seek treatments that delay the impact or onset of age-related diseases, one of the primary factors that make people more susceptible to the virus – both of which could have the effect of increasing their life expectancy. It is, however, too early to quantify these possibilities, although it is conceivable that these indirect consequences could have a bigger impact on future average life expectancy than the direct consequences measured by the accelerated deaths model