Achieving consensus through professionalized head nods: The role of nodding in service encounters in Japan

While the interactional functions of head nodding in everyday Japanese conversation have been frequently studied, a discourse on head nodding as a professional communicative practice has yet to be explored. With the method of multimodal conversation analysis, the current study examines the role of nodding in a particular professional-client setting, namely, hair salon interactions. My interest specifically lies in the frequent occurrence of synchronized head nods during the “service-assessment sequence,” where both service provider and customer inspect and determine whether the completed work is adequate. I pursue mechanisms of synchronized head nods by revealing exactly how participants collaborate in producing a nod, and how their verbal actions may at times be designed accordingly. In doing so, the study provides insight into what consensus may look like at service encounters in Japan, and discusses how such nodding practices may contribute to a satisfactory closure of a business negotiation

Round table on morbilliviruses in marine mammals.

Since 1988 morbilliviruses have been increasingly recognized and held responsible for mass mortality amongst harbour seals (Phoca vitulina) and other seal species. Virus isolations and characterization proved that morbilliviruses from seals in Northwest Europe were genetically distinct from other known members of this group including canine distemper virus (CDV), rinderpest virus, peste des petits ruminants virus and measles virus. An epidemic in Baikal seals in 1987 was apparently caused by a morbillivirus closely related to CDV so that two morbilliviruses have now been identified in two geographically distant seal populations, with only the group of isolates from Northwest Europe forming a new member of the genus morbillivirus: phocid distemper virus (PDV). Because of distemper-like disease, the Baikal seal morbillivirus was tentatively named PDV-2 in spite of its possible identity with CDV. The appearance of morbilliviruses in the Mediterranean Sea causing high mortality amongst dolphins should further increase the research activities on protection strategies for endangered species of marine mammals

Gluon mass generation in the PT-BFM scheme

In this article we study the general structure and special properties of the Schwinger-Dyson equation for the gluon propagator constructed with the pinch technique, together with the question of how to obtain infrared finite solutions, associated with the generation of an effective gluon mass. Exploiting the known all-order correspondence between the pinch technique and the background field method, we demonstrate that, contrary to the standard formulation, the non-perturbative gluon self-energy is transverse order-by-order in the dressed loop expansion, and separately for gluonic and ghost contributions. We next present a comprehensive review of several subtle issues relevant to the search of infrared finite solutions, paying particular attention to the role of the seagull graph in enforcing transversality, the necessity of introducing massless poles in the three-gluon vertex, and the incorporation of the correct renormalization group properties. In addition, we present a method for regulating the seagull-type contributions based on dimensional regularization; its applicability depends crucially on the asymptotic behavior of the solutions in the deep ultraviolet, and in particular on the anomalous dimension of the dynamically generated gluon mass. A linearized version of the truncated Schwinger-Dyson equation is derived, using a vertex that satisfies the required Ward identity and contains massless poles belonging to different Lorentz structures. The resulting integral equation is then solved numerically, the infrared and ultraviolet properties of the obtained solutions are examined in detail, and the allowed range for the effective gluon mass is determined. Various open questions and possible connections with different approaches in the literature are discussed.Comment: 54 pages, 24 figure

A mediation approach to understanding socio-economic inequalities in maternal health-seeking behaviours in Egypt.

BACKGROUND: The levels and origins of socio-economic inequalities in health-seeking behaviours in Egypt are poorly understood. This paper assesses the levels of health-seeking behaviours related to maternal care (antenatal care [ANC] and facility delivery) and their accumulation during pregnancy and childbirth. Secondly, it explores the mechanisms underlying the association between socio-economic position (SEP) and maternal health-seeking behaviours. Thirdly, it examines the effectiveness of targeting of free public ANC and delivery care. METHODS: Data from the 2008 Demographic and Health Survey were used to capture two latent constructs of SEP: individual socio-cultural capital and household-level economic capital. These variables were entered into an adjusted mediation model, predicting twelve dimensions of maternal health-seeking; including any ANC, private ANC, first ANC visit in first trimester, regular ANC (four or more visits during pregnancy), facility delivery, and private delivery. ANC and delivery care costs were examined separately by provider type (public or private). RESULTS: While 74.2% of women with a birth in the 5-year recall period obtained any ANC and 72.4% delivered in a facility, only 48.8% obtained the complete maternal care package (timely and regular facility-based ANC as well as facility delivery) for their most recent live birth. Both socio-cultural capital and economic capital were independently positively associated with receiving any ANC and delivering in a facility. The strongest direct effect of socio-cultural capital was seen in models predicting private provider use of both ANC and delivery. Despite substantial proportions of women using public providers reporting receipt of free care (ANC: 38%, delivery: 24%), this free-of-charge public care was not effectively targeted to women with lowest economic resources. CONCLUSIONS: Socio-cultural capital is the primary mechanism leading to inequalities in maternal health-seeking in Egypt. Future studies should therefore examine the objective and perceived quality of care from different types of providers. Improvements in the targeting of free public care could help reduce the existing SEP-based inequalities in maternal care coverage in the short term

Variability as a Predictor for the Hard-to-soft State Transition in GX 339−4

During the outbursts of black hole X-ray binaries (BHXRBs), their accretion flows transition through several states. The source luminosity rises in the hard state, dominated by nonthermal emission, before transitioning to the blackbody-dominated soft state. As the luminosity decreases, the source transitions back into the hard state and fades to quiescence. This picture does not always hold, as ≈40% of the outbursts never leave the hard state. Identifying the physics that govern state transitions remains one of the outstanding open questions in black hole astrophysics. In this paper we present an analysis of archival RXTE data of multiple outbursts of GX 339−4. We compare the properties of the X-ray variability and time-averaged energy spectrum and demonstrate that the variability (quantified by the power spectral hue) systematically evolves ≈10–40 days ahead of the canonical state transition (quantified by a change in spectral hardness); no such evolution is found in hard-state-only outbursts. This indicates that the X-ray variability can be used to predict if and when the hard-to-soft state transition will occur. Finally, we find a similar behavior in 10 outbursts of four additional BHXRBs with more sparse observational coverage. Based on these findings, we suggest that state transitions in BHXRBs might be driven by a change in the turbulence in the outer regions of the disk, leading to a dramatic change in variability. This change is only seen in the spectrum days to weeks later, as the fluctuations propagate inwards toward the corona

Assessing health professionals’ communication through role-play: An interactional analysis of simulated versus actual general practice consultations

Simulations, in which healthcare professionals are observed in dialogue with role-played patients, are widely used for assessing professional skills. Medical education research suggests simulations should be as authentic as possible, but there remains a lack of linguistic research into how far such settings authentically reproduce talk. This article presents an analysis of a corpus of general practice simulations in the United Kingdom, comparing this to a dataset of real-life general practitioner (GP) consultations. Combining corpus linguistic and conversation analytic methodologies, key interactional features of the simulations are identified, particularly those associated with successful/unsuccessful performance in terms of the examiner’s grading. The corpus analysis identifies various forms of the phrase ‘tell me more about’ to occur significantly more frequently in the simulations compared to real GP consultations, typically in the opening sequences and most frequently in successful cases. It falls to a conversation analysis of the data, examining this phrase within the interactional context of these opening sequences, to better understand the actions it performs. Successful candidates in the simulations are found to perform a consistent sequential pattern, often incorporating this phrase. Although simulated, these interactions have real professional consequences for those being assessed. Linguistic findings about what constitutes successful interaction or differences to real-life practice therefore have important implications for professional education and assessment

Ethical Issues of Gamification in Healthcare: The Need to be Involved

Gamification techniques have proven to be very effective in improving motivation and commitment, providing increased performance in both qualitative and quantitative terms. For this reason, it has been applied in more and more areas, with health and healthcare being no exception. The potential of this type of approach is enormous, and, on the one hand, it can motivate positive feelings; it can also foster deviant behaviors that fail to contribute to the individual and common good. This chapter aims to explore the relationship between the development of gamification systems and the ethical and moral aspects that are crucial elements when the target of the process becomes the human mind. The main questions and ethical dimensions that will allow us to constitute a reference framework for the development of gamification systems will be presented. Timely reflection and the inclusion of security mechanisms will allow us to develop better experiences for users, always combining improved motivation with the search for the good.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Qualitative interviews in psychology: problems and possibilities

This paper distinguishes a series of contingent and necessary problems that arise in the design, conduct, analysis and reporting of open-ended or conversational qualitative interviews in psychological research. Contingent problems in the reporting of interviews include: (1) the deletion of the interviewer; (2) the conventions of representation of interaction; (3) the specificity of analytic observations; (4) the unavailability of the interview set-up; (5) the failure to consider interviews as interaction. Necessary problems include: (1) the flooding of the interview with social science agendas and categories; (2) the complex and varying footing positions of interviewer and interviewee; (3) the orientations to stake and interest on the part of the interviewer and interviewee; (4) the reproduction of cognitivism. The paper ends with two kinds of recommendation. First, we argue that interviews should be studied as an interactional object, and that study should feed back into the design, conduct and analysis of interviews so that they can be used more effectively in cases where they are the most appropriate data gathering tools. Second, these problems with open-ended interviews highlight a range of specific virtues of basing analysis on naturalistic materials. Reasons for moving away from the use of interviews for many research questions are described

Medicine and Ethics

A new world has probably emerged through the progression of technology which has led to significant debates on social, cultural, legal, and ethical issues, especially in the biomedical field in this century. Application of physician-patient relationship, principles of pluralism, autonomy, democracy, human dignity, and human rights is being challenged within the medicine and health-care system of today. Development of technology-based remedies has fostered greater degrees of medicalization. Hence, the automatic application of such technologies risks distorting the nature of medicine. To be sure, there is a cultural shift that is affecting the society that is increasingly unable to adapt to traditional legal systems. This cultural shift, perhaps, demands new ethics. This entry aims to evaluate the gap between traditional deontological nature of medicine and the emerging new ethics and assess why bioethical reflection is needed