Crossing classical thresholds: Gods, monsters and Hell dimensions in the Whedon universe

This essay shows that Classics provides an enriching context for the hugely popular youth-oriented fantasies on US television. Taking two Joss Whedon created series Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, I examine what additional nuances might be revealed about the nature of the hero and how heroism is theorised from Greek and Roman mythical models to the present day. The figures of Aeneas in the Latin epic of Virgil and Prometheus in Aeschylus and Hesiod are connected to the supernatural aspects of Buffy and Angel who in a completely different cultural context face death and chthonic demons as real and metaphorical foes

A review of the effectiveness of a brief (8 session) Cognitive Analytic Therapy (CAT) for clients with anger problems

This report represents evaluative data from 12 months of psychotherapeutic intervention using Cognitive Analytic Therapy at Winn Gardens and some reflections on the subsequent development of the project into Burngreave. The focus of the intervention was primarily managing anger but other psychological problems underlying anger have also been treated. In total 23 referrals were received and 8 completed case of „evaluation‟ are presented here. Results indicate a significant improvement in general health, psychological health and behaviour change from what is a brief therapy consisting of 8 sessions and a follow up. The intervention has diverted clients from assaulting behaviour, both to themselves and others, reducing the impact of violence on partners, others, health and social care services and police and court services. It is difficult to quantify this but the associated costs for anger and violence are significant and incalculable. Up to July 2010 14 referrals were received at Burngreave all of whom were contacted, offered an appointment and/or undertook therapy. Four clients have completed therapy with a number of others taking up a number of sessions. It is anticipated that similar positive therapeutic outcomes to Winn Gardens will be found in the population at Burngreave on completion.</p

Do Non-profit Enterprises Pay More For Their Labor Inputs? An Examination of Hospital Behavior

How the behavior of non-profit organizations differs from that of for-profit organizations has been the topic of a wide body of research. The motivational and behavioral differences resulting from the two organizational forms are particularly important in the U.S. health-care sector – an industry dominated by non-profit enterprise. This paper outlines some of the theories of non-profit hospital behavior and reviews some of the empirical work related to those theories. I then examine empirically whether there is a difference in wages and salaries paid to seven categories of hospital employee in different types of hospitals. To my knowledge, there have been no studies that evaluate directly whether non-profit hospitals pay more than their for-profit counterparts. I find that non-profit hospitals pay significantly higher wages to their employees in five of seven major categories. In the conclusion I highlight those theories that are consistent with these empirical findings and those that are not

Reactivity on the Web

Reactivity, the ability to detect simple and composite events and respond in a timely manner, is an essential requirement in many present-day information systems. With the emergence of new, dynamic Web applications, reactivity on the Web is receiving increasing attention. Reactive Web-based systems need to detect and react not only to simple events but also to complex, real-life situations. This paper introduces XChange, a language for programming reactive behaviour on the Web, emphasising the querying of event data and detection of composite events

Hospital expenditure at the end-of-life: what are the impacts of health status and health risks?

Background: It is important for health policy and expenditure projections to understand the relationship between age, death and expenditure on health care (HC). Research has shown that older age groups incur lower hospital costs than previously anticipated and that remaining time to death (TTD) was a much stronger indicator for expenditure than age. How health behaviour or risk factors impact on HC utilisation and costs at the end of life is relatively unknown. Smoking and Body Mass Index (BMI) have featured most prominently and mixed findings exist as to the exact nature of this association.&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt; Methods: This paper considers the relationship between TTD, age and expenditure for inpatient care in the last 12 quarters of life; and introduces measures of health status and risks. A longitudinal dataset covering 35 years is utilised, including baseline survey data linked to hospital and death records. The effect of age, TTD and health indicators on expenditure for inpatient care is estimated using a two-part model.&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt; Results: As individuals approach death costs increase. This effect is highly significant (p&lt;0.01) from the last until the 8th quarter before death and influenced by age. Statistically significant effects on costs were found for: smoking status, systolic blood pressure and lung function (FEV1). On average, smokers incurred lower quarterly costs in their last 12 quarters of life than non-smokers (~7%). Participants’ BMI at baseline did show a negative association with probability of HC utilisation however this effect disappeared when costs were estimated.&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt; Conclusions: Health risk measures obtained at baseline provide a good indication of individuals’ probability of needing medical attention later in life and incurring costs, despite the small size of the effect. Utilising a linked dataset, where such measures are available can add substantially to our ability to explain the relationship between TTD and costs.&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt

Standing on Academic Shoulders: Measuring Scientific Influence in Universities

This article measures scientific influence by means of citations to academic papers. The data source is the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI); the scientific institutions included are the top 110 U.S. research universities; the 12 main fields that classify the data cover nearly all of science; and the time period is 1981-1999. Altogether the database includes 2.4 million papers and 18.8 million citations. Thus the evidence underlying our findings accounts for much of the basic research conducted in the United States during the last quarter of the 20th century. This research in turn contributes a significant part of knowledge production in the U.S. during the same period. The citation measure used is the citation probability, which equals actual citations divided by potential citations, and captures average utilization of cited literature by individual citing articles. The mean citation probability within fields is on the order of 10-5. Cross-field citation probabilities are one-tenth to one-hundredth as large, or 10-6 to 10-7. Citations between pairs of citing and cited fields are significant in less than one-fourth of the possible cases. It follows that citations are largely bounded by field, with corresponding implications for the limits of scientific influence. Cross-field citation probabilities appear to be symmetric for mutually citing fields. Scientific influence is asymmetric within fields, and occurs primarily from top institutions to those less highly ranked. Still, there is significant reverse influence on higher-ranked schools. We also find that top institutions are more often cited by peer institutions than lower-ranked institutions are cited by their peers. Overall the results suggest that knowledge spillovers in basic science research are important, but are circumscribed by field and by intrinsic relevance. Perhaps the most important implication of the results are the limits that they seem to impose on the returns to scale in the knowledge production function for basic research, namely the proportion of available knowledge that spills over from one scientist to another.

The Extended Mind and Network-Enabled Cognition

In thinking about the transformative potential of network technologies with respect to human cognition, it is common to see network resources as playing a largely assistive or augmentative role. In this paper we propose a somewhat more radical vision. We suggest that the informational and technological elements of a network system can, at times, constitute part of the material supervenience base for a human agent’s mental states and processes. This thesis (called the thesis of network-enabled cognition) draws its inspiration from the notion of the extended mind that has been propounded in the philosophical and cognitive science literature. Our basic claim is that network systems can do more than just augment cognition; they can also constitute part of the physical machinery that makes mind and cognition mechanistically possible. In evaluating this hypothesis, we identify a number of issues that seem to undermine the extent to which contemporary network systems, most notably the World Wide Web, can legitimately feature as part of an environmentally-extended cognitive system. Specific problems include the reliability and resilience of network-enabled devices, the accessibility of online information content, and the extent to which network-derived information is treated in the same way as information retrieved from biological memory. We argue that these apparent shortfalls do not necessarily merit the wholesale rejection of the network-enabled cognition thesis; rather, they point to the limits of the current state-of-the-art and identify the targets of many ongoing research initiatives in the network and information sciences. In addition to highlighting the importance of current research and technology development efforts, the thesis of network-enabled cognition also suggests a number of areas for future research. These include the formation and maintenance of online trust relationships, the subjective assessment of information credibility and the long-term impact of network access on human psychological and cognitive functioning. The nascent discipline of web science is, we suggest, suitably placed to begin an exploration of these issues

Evolutionary processes and its environmental correlates in the cranial morphology of western chipmunks (Tamias).

The importance of the environment in shaping phenotypic evolution lies at the core of evolutionary biology. Chipmunks of the genus Tamias (subgenus Neotamias) are part of a very recent radiation, occupying a wide range of environments with marked niche partitioning among species. One open question is if and how those differences in environments affected phenotypic evolution in this lineage. Herein we examine the relative importance of genetic drift versus natural selection in the origin of cranial diversity exhibited by clade members. We also explore the degree to which variation in potential selective agents (environmental variables) are correlated with the patterns of morphological variation presented. We found that genetic drift cannot explain morphological diversification in the group, thus supporting the potential role of natural selection as the predominant evolutionary force during Neotamias cranial diversification, although the strength of selection varied greatly among species. This morphological diversification, in turn, was correlated with environmental conditions, suggesting a possible causal relationship. These results underscore that extant Neotamias represent a radiation in which aspects of the environment might have acted as the selective force driving species' divergence

45TH BIENNIAL CONVENTION of SIGMA GAMMA EPSILON VIRTUAL MEETING HOSTED BY EASTERN ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY April 10, 2021

The 45th Biennial Convention of Sigma Gamma Epsilon, the national honor society in the Earth Sciences, was originally scheduled for April 3 – 5, 2020 at The University of Tennessee at Martin, but it was postponed until April 10, 2021 due to the Coronavirus pandemic. Since COVID-19 was still a serious issue this spring, the SGE National Council decided to conduct this meeting in a virtual format using the Zoom platform. The meeting was hosted by SGE Gamma Chi Chapter in the Department of Geology/Geography at Eastern Illinois University and presided over by Dr. Diane Burns, Chair of the Department and Gamma Chi Chapter Advisor. This report summarizes the Convention and includes information on the deliberations and actions of the attendees