Spatial selectivity in human ventrolateral prefrontal cortex

The functional organization of lateral prefrontal cortex is not well understood, and there is debate as to whether the dorsal and ventral aspects mediate distinct spatial and non-spatial functions, respectively. We show for the first time that recordings from human ventrolateral prefrontal cortex show spatial selectivity, supporting the idea that ventrolateral prefrontal cortex is involved in spatial processing. Our results also indicate that prefrontal cortex may be a source of control signals for neuroprosthetic applications

Organizational learning and emotion: constructing collective meaning in support of strategic themes

Missing in the organizational learning literature is an integrative framework that reflects the emotional as well as the cognitive dynamics involved. Here, we take a step in this direction by focusing in depth over time (five years) on a selected organization which manufactures electronic equipment for the office industry. Drawing on personal construct theory, we define organizational learning as the collective re-construal of meaning in the direction of strategically significant themes. We suggest that emotions arise as members reflect on progress or lack of progress in achieving organizational learning. Our evidence suggests that invalidation – where organizational learning fails to correspond with expectations – gives rise to anxiety and frustration, while validation – where organizational learning is aligned with or exceeds expectations – evokes comfort or excitement. Our work aims to capture the key emotions involved as organizational learning proceeds

Parents, children and the porous boundaries of the sexual family in law and popular culture

This article focuses on a perceived ideological overlap between popular cultural and judicial treatments of sex and conjugality that contributes to a discursive construction of parenthood and parenting. The author perceives that in both legal and popular cultural texts, there is a sense in which notions of ‘natural’ childhood are discursively constituted as being put at risk by those who reproduce outside of dominant sexual norms, and that signs of normative sexuality (typically in the form of heterosexual coupling) may be treated as a sign of safety. These ideas are rooted in ancient associations between fertility, sexuality and femininity that can also be traced in the historical development of the English language. With the help of commentators such as Martha Fineman, the article situates parents and children within a discourse of family which prioritises conjugality, with consequences for the ways in which the internal and external boundaries of families are delineated

More than a cognitive experience: unfamiliarity, invalidation, and emotion in organizational learning

Literature on organizational learning (OL) lacks an integrative framework that captures the emotions involved as OL proceeds. Drawing on personal construct theory, we suggest that organizations learn where their members reconstrue meaning around questions of strategic significance for the organization. In this 5-year study of an electronics company, we explore the way in which emotions change as members perceive progress or a lack of progress around strategic themes. Our framework also takes into account whether OL involves experiences that are familiar or unfamiliar and the implications for emotions. We detected similar patterns of emotion arising over time for three different themes in our data, thereby adding to OL perspectives that are predominantly cognitive in orientation

A new conceptual framework for revenge firesetting

Revenge has frequently been acknowledged to account for a relatively large proportion of motives in deliberate firesetting. However, very little is actually known about the aetiology of revenge firesetting. Theoretical approaches to revenge-seeking behaviour are discussed. A brief review of how revenge is accounted for in existing theoretical explanations of deliberate firesetting and the known characteristics of revenge firesetters are provided. On this basis, the authors suggest, as a motive, revenge firesetting has to date been misconceptualised. A new conceptual framework is thus proposed, paying particular attention to the contextual, affective, cognitive, volitional and behavioural factors which may influence and generate a single episode of revenge firesetting. Treatment implications and suggestions for future research are also provided

Quasi-fission reactions as a probe of nuclear viscosity

Fission fragment mass and angular distributions were measured from the ^{64}Ni+^{197}Au reaction at 418 MeV and 383 MeV incident energy. A detailed data analysis was performed, using the one-body dissipation theory implemented in the code HICOL. The effect of the window and the wall friction on the experimental observables was investigated. Friction stronger than one-body was also considered. The mass and angular distributions were consistent with one-body dissipation. An evaporation code DIFHEAT coupled to HICOL was developed in order to predict reaction time scales required to describe available data on pre-scission neutron multiplicities. The multiplicity data were again consistent with one-body dissipation. The cross-sections for touch, capture and quasi-fission were also obtained.Comment: 25 pages REVTeX, 3 tables, 13 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev

Microwave and Physical Electronics

Contains reports on six research projects.Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD) OEMsr-26

Experiencing uncertainty – on the potential of groups and a group analytic approach for making management education more critical.

This document is the Accepted Manuscript. The final, definitive version of this paper has been published in Management Learning, November 2017, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/1350507617697868. Published by SAGE Publishing. All rights reserved.This article points to the potential of methods derived from group analytic practice for making management education more critical. It draws on the experience of running a professional doctorate for more experienced managers in a university in the UK over a 16 year period. Group analysis is informed by the highly social theories of S.H. Foulkes and draws heavily on psychoanalytic theory as well as sociology. First and foremost, though, it places our interdependence at the heart of the process of inquiry, and suggests that the most potent place for learning about groups, where we spend most of our lives, is in a group. The article prioritises three areas of management practice for which group analytic methods, as adapted for research environment, are most helpful: coping with uncertainty and the feelings of anxiety which this often arouses; thinking about leadership as a relational and negotiated activity, and encouraging reflexivity in managers. The article also points to some of the differences between the idea of the learning community and psychodynamic perspectives more generally and the limitations of group analytic methods in particular, which may pathologise resistance in the workplace.Peer reviewe

Criminalising vulnerability: Protecting ‘vulnerable’ children and punishing ‘wicked’ mothers

This article aims to uncover how, in attempting to ameliorate the vulnerability of children, the offence of ‘causing or allowing the death of the child’ criminalises abused mothers. It explores how, in the courtroom, tropes of female criminality and constructs of the ‘bad’ mother are mobilised in ways that are both gendered and ‘classed’. The effect is to silence female defendants, deprive their actions of context, and deny them agency. This argument has implications for assessing the moral and legal culpability of abused women who fail to protect their children, because it shifts the focus onto how the abuser has exploited and exacerbated the vulnerability of both mother and child. This approach also challenges law’s preoccupation with scrutinising (and punishing) women who do not adhere to a glorified, middle class ideal of motherhood. More broadly, by focusing on the context of a woman’s alleged ‘failure’, there opens a space within legal discourse to refute the characterisation of female criminality as being either ‘mad’ or ‘bad’, and of women who engage in criminal behaviour as being either ‘virgins’ or ‘whores’. Finally, in focusing on vulnerability as a universal and unavoidable part of the human experience, gendered assumptions of autonomy and the self/other dichotomy are challenged

"I am your mother and your father!": In vitro derived gametes and the ethics of solo reproduction

In this paper, we will discuss the prospect of human reproduction achieved with gametes originating from only one person. According to statements by a minority of scientists working on the generation of gametes in vitro, it may become possible to create eggs from men’s non-reproductive cells and sperm from women’s. This would enable, at least in principle, the creation of an embryo from cells obtained from only one individual: ‘solo reproduction’. We will consider what might motivate people to reproduce in this way, and the implications that solo reproduction might have for ethics and policy. We suggest that such an innovation is unlikely to revolutionise reproduction and parenting. Indeed, in some respects it is less revolutionary than in vitro fertilisation as a whole. Furthermore, we show that solo reproduction with in vitro created gametes is not necessarily any more ethically problematic than gamete donation—and probably less so. Where appropriate, we draw parallels with the debate surrounding reproductive cloning. We note that solo reproduction may serve to perpetuate reductive geneticised accounts of reproduction, and that this may indeed be ethically questionable. However, in this it is not unique among other technologies of assisted reproduction, many of which focus on genetic transmission. It is for this reason that a ban on solo reproduction might be inconsistent with continuing to permit other kinds of reproduction that also bear the potential to strengthen attachment to a geneticised account of reproduction. Our claim is that there are at least as good reasons to pursue research towards enabling solo reproduction, and eventually to introduce solo reproduction as an option for fertility treatment, as there are to do so for other infertility related purposes