With a clean conscience: cleanliness reduces the severity of moral judgments.

Theories of moral judgment have long emphasized reasoning and conscious thought while downplaying the role of intuitive and contextual influences. However, recent research has demonstrated that incidental feelings of disgust can influence moral judgments and make them more severe. This study involved two experiments demonstrating that the reverse effect can occur when the notion of physical purity is made salient, thus making moral judgments less severe. After having the cognitive concept of cleanliness activated (Experiment 1) or after physically cleansing themselves after experiencing disgust (Experiment 2), participants found certain moral actions to be less wrong than did participants who had not been exposed to a cleanliness manipulation. The findings support the idea that moral judgment can be driven by intuitive processes, rather than deliberate reasoning. One of those intuitions appears to be physical purity, because it has a strong connection to moral purity

The relationship between polyfluorooctanoic acid and overall oral health

Polyfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) is a known endocrine disruptor and is associated with several diseases. Because of the health effects of PFOA on other organs, it was hypothesized that the presence of PFOA might be directly, through endocrine disruption, or indirectly, through other diseases or their treatments, associated with overall oral health. This cross-sectional study used data from the 2007-2008 and 2009-2010 National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys (NHANES) to test this hypothesis. After restricting the dataset to those with both the PFOA serum measurement and the answered oral health question, the sample size for this study was 3,233 individuals. The oral health data is self-reported and comes from one question on the oral health questionnaire, while the serum PFOA concentration comes from the NHANES blood test given during the physical examination. Descriptive and univariate comparisons were analyzed using Excel and SAS to describe and compare PFOA and oral health, along with data on other demographic, health, and social factors that could impact the relationship between oral health and serum PFOA concentration. Additional analyses were performed in SAS V 9.3 including stratification of the PFOA-oral health relationship, and multivariable logistic regression analyses to better assess the effects of confounding and effect modification on the primary hypothesis variables. Results show that above average PFOA subjects were more likely to be males, aged 50 years and older, Whites, in the top 25% of incomes, college graduates, and those who drink alcohol frequently or heavily. Oral health, body mass index (BMI), cholesterol level, diabetes status, and smoking habits, were not statistically associated with serum PFOA concentration. Results also found that individuals with better oral health were more likely to be Whites, aged 20-40 years or 60-69 years, with healthy BMIs, non-diabetics, college graduates in the top 25% of incomes, alcohol drinkers less than 5 times per week, and are not binge drinkers or current smokers. Since other factors might affect the relationship between oral health and PFOA concentration, the stratified results were performed to reveal effect modification and confounding factors. Males, certain age groups, BMI, frequency of alcohol consumption, and smoking habits are all effect modifiers for the relationship between serum PFOA concentration and oral health. This suggests that there could be other biological factors aside from PFOA concentration affecting the oral health outcomes. Finally, a logistic regression model controlling for multiple potential confounders supports the stratified results, concluding that PFOA concentration is not related to self-reported oral health in a statistically significant relationship. In conclusion, based on the consistency of the evidence across the analyses, this study found no statistically significant relationship between serum PFOA concentration and self-reported overall oral health. To verify this conclusion, future studies with more defined oral health measures, rather than the self-reported oral health ratings provided by the NHANES would be useful. These studies should also explore the effect modifiers to determine if there truly are other biological factors affecting the relationship between serum PFOA concentration and self-reported oral health. Finally, a study measuring the temporality between exposure and disease is needed to determine cause and effect between PFOA concentration and oral health relationships. Specifically the study would need to include timing of the oral health outcomes in relation to PFOA concentration to determine whether PFOA concentration changes precede oral health changes (and not the reverse)

A Few Interventions and Offerings from Five Movement Lawyers to the Access to Justice Movement

We are five lawyers who occupy very different corners of justice work. We are civil rights, human rights, and criminal defense lawyers, and we have worked at and managed legal services programs. We have taught law at law schools and universities and have built our own organizations. We currently work in interdisciplinary spaces with community organizers, funders, and other stakeholders in the justice system. As diverse as our perspectives are, we share a common belief that any mobilization around access to justice fails if it does not center the vision and strategies of larger social justice movements. We share here our collective calls to action to the legal community—and the allies that support and resource legal services—to expand our mission beyond chasing a standard of fairness that is impossible to achieve as long as we have deeply embedded structural and systemic inequity. Instead, let us reimagine what our communities actually need to be safe, free, and to live in our fullest humanity. We believe the role of movement lawyers is to use the law as a tool of social change, at the direction of communities most impacted by injustice. When we focus our lawyering on listening to community organizers, clients, and activists with a broader vision for social change, we can become partners in transforming systems, rather than simply making them more hospitable

A layered operational model for describing inter-tool communication in tool integration frameworks

Integration frameworks for building software engineering environments provide at least data, control and presentation integration facilities, together with integration devices which afford access to these facilities by the tools which populate the framework. Typically, an integration device is a specially developed language, or extension to an existing language, in which the integration programmer specifies the desired interactions between the tools comprising the software engineering environment. Surprisingly little effort has been applied to assessing the expressiveness of integration languages, even though the power of such a language limits the level of integration a tool can achieve within the environment. Our work seeks to provide an approach to both assessing and comparing the expressiveness of the integration devices of a range of commercial and research products. The paper presents a layered operational model, based on information structures; this model has been developed for describing the semantics of the inter-tool communication features of integration devices in a precise manner, and in a manner which will facilitate such assessment and comparison

Courtroom Observation and Applied Litigation Research: A Case History of Jury Decision Making

Quantitative research has dominated applied litigation research, but it seems to lack the flexibility needed to link pretrial research to ongoing courtroom events. Participant observation is a methodology which seems more suitable for studying the dynamic environment of a trial. A 6-day civil trial is used to evaluate participant observation reports against pretrial survey analysis and trial simulations. The objective is to show how different methodological approaches converge in the frame of reference which reflects the actual verdict reached in trial

Solvable 2D superconductors with l-wave pairing

We analyze a family of two-dimensional BCS Hamiltonians with general l-wave pairing interactions, classifying the models in this family that are Bethe-ansatz solvable in the finite-size regime. We show that these solutions are characterized by nontrivial winding numbers, associated with topological phases, in some part of the corresponding phase diagrams. By means of a comparative study, we demonstrate benefits and limitations of the mean-field approximation, which is the standard approach in the limit of a large number of particles. The mean-field analysis also allows to extend part of the results beyond integrability, clarifying the peculiarities associable with the integrability itself.Comment: 9 pages, 1 figur

Linear Self-Motion Cues Support the Spatial Distribution and Stability of Hippocampal Place Cells

The vestibular system provides a crucial component of place-cell and head-direction cell activity [1-7]. Otolith signals are necessary for head-direction signal stability and associated behavior [8, 9], and the head-direction signal's contribution to parahippocampal spatial representations [10-14] suggests that place cells may also require otolithic information. Here, we demonstrate that self-movement information from the otolith organs is necessary for the development of stable place fields within and across sessions. Place cells in otoconia-deficient tilted mice showed reduced spatial coherence and formed place fields that were located closer to environmental boundaries, relative to those of control mice. These differences reveal an important otolithic contribution to place-cell functioning and provide insight into the cognitive deficits associated with otolith dysfunction

Only One Oar in the Water: The Political Failure of School Desegregation in Yonkers, New York

Political efforts to desegregate public schools do not fail solely because of political opposition. They fail when political opposition joins and interacts with an institutional structure that ambiguously divides educational authority between state and local actors. Both factors-a high level of political controversy and a shared system of educational authority-were present in Yonkers, New York during the 1960s and 1970s, and jointly explain the district's failure to desegregate its schools. Using a "regression by hand," the authors show that neither factor taken alone necessarily undermines a policy's success in the political arena. The political success of New York's policy to fund nonpublic schools demonstrates that controversial policies can be realized when the institutional structure that creates them does not divide authority between state and local actors. Conversely, the political success of efforts to reform Yonkers' programs in special education shows that shared responsibility can promote educational reform if the policy is not controversial. The authors conclude by cautioning against abandoning efforts to desegregate public schools and calling for changes in the structure of shared state and local responsibility for educational policy.African and African American StudiesGovernmen

La motivation au changement des personnes incarcérées

Rapport de stage présenté à la Faculté des Arts et des Sciences en vue de l'obtention du grade de Maîtrise ès sciences (M.Sc.) en criminologie.De nombreuses études ont été menées afin d'explorer les facteurs de réceptivité auprès des personnes incarcérées. D’ailleurs, plusieurs méta-analyses démontrent que les traitements qui tiennent compte de la réceptivité de la clientèle affichent un plus grand taux de succès. Par contre, plusieurs variables doivent être évaluées afin d’améliorer nos connaissances sur les facteurs de réceptivité reliées aux traitements correctionnels. Outre les facteurs connus qui influencent la motivation aux changements, tels que les facteurs de risque et de protection ainsi que les facteurs internes et externes, serait-il possible que d'autres facteurs aient également une influence significative sur la motivation ? Par ailleurs, le risque que représente une personne incarcérée peut-il avoir un impact considérable sur sa motivation à s'engager dans un processus de changement ? Afin de répondre à ces questions, nous avons complété un stage à l’établissement de détention de St-Jérôme et des études de cas ont été réalisées auprès de quatre individus incarcérés à cet endroit. Tout au long du stage, nous avons analysé la perception du risque de ces individus et nous avons constaté que ce facteur avait véritablement une influence sur leur motivation au changement. À cet égard, l'évaluation de ce facteur contributif pourrait permettre aux intervenants correctionnels de mieux cibler les personnes incarcérées qui seraient les plus aptes à bénéficier des interventions correctionnelles.Numerous studies have focused on receptivity factors as a means of intervening on behalf on incarcerated individuals. In fact, several meta-analyses have displayed that those treatments which took into consideration receptivity factors proved to be more successful than those which did not. Nevertheless, among the receptivity factors, many variables remain to be studied in order to further our understanding of these important elements, such as the motivation to change of incarcerated individuals as well as their motivation to become involved in a process of change. Aside from the known elements which influence an individual's motivation to change, such as protection and risk factors as well as internal and external factors, is it possible that other factors also have a significant influence upon such motivation? In other words, could an individual's perception of the risk they present influence their motivation to change? In order to explore these questions, a field placement was completed at the St-Jérôme Detention Centre and case studies were completed with four individuals incarcerated at this facility. All throughout the placement, we analysed these individual's perception of their risk and we observed that this factor truthfully had an influence upon their level of motivation. In this regard, further studies regarding this factor could allow correctional workers to better identify those inmates who could benefit from correctional interventions

Feeling Real: Social Presence within Online Discussion Forums

Research on effective online teaching indicates that social presence enhances learning in an online environment (Bolliger & Inan, 2012). Social presence connects students to the instructor and to one another and influences the online learning experience and perceptions of learning (Bibeau, 2001). By establishing social presence of the individual and honoring the social and historical experiences of the collective; a richer, more engaging learning community can be formed. However, social presence is not easily attained in online learning environments. Rethinking the discussion forums within the online learning environment is a possible strategy for increasing social presence. In this session, presenters will share findings and examples of four teaching strategies that emerged from a qualitative action research study that investigated the social presence of students in three different graduate level online learning communities within a Midwestern urban school of education. The following question guided the study: How does incorporating a variety of discussion forum designs enhance social presence in an online course? Data was collected from online students in the forms of survey data, discussion forum conversations, and facilitator reflection journal. Come engage with key insights acquired from integrating multiple discussion formats into online courses including artifact-based and synchronous conversations. Learn how to enrich social presence through community building and student engagement in a variety formats. Find out more about the relationship between social climate, students feeling like a real person, a student\u27s sense of membership in a group, and a quality learning experience within online courses. Higher Education