Gnome on the range: finding the hypertextual narratives in ancient wisdom texts

In this paper we present the Sharing Ancient WisdomS (SAWS) project. Working with wisdom texts, or gnomologia, the project aims to produce an enhanced digital scholarly edition of the collected manuscripts which both makes the Greek, Arabic and Spanish texts available and demonstrates the hypertexual nature of these texts. By positioning the texts as collections of sayings, of which a given manuscript only shows one narrative path, we demonstrate how a hypertextual approach allows us to explore alternate narrative paths within and across the texts and support researchers as they study the context, significance and transmission of the wisdoms within these works

Physician Assisted Dying: A Turning Point?

Physician Assisted Dying (PAD) has been lawful in some countries since the 1940s and in the United States since 1997. There is a body of social and scientific research that has focused on whether the practice has been misused and whether gaps exist in legislative safeguards. There are multiple concerns with physicians assisting patients to die: incompatibility with the physician’s role as a healer, devaluation of human life, coercion of vulnerable individuals (e.g., the poor and disabled), and the risk that PAD will be used beyond a narrow group of terminally ill individuals. Statutes in the United States have been drafted with these concerns in mind in an effort to mitigate the possible risks of PAD while still providing individuals with access. There seems to be a shift in attitudes towards PAD. Currently four states statutorily permit PAD and it is being discussed by multiple legislatures across the country. There also seems to be a shift in medical practice as demonstrated by a 2015 survey that showed for the first time that more than half of physicians surveyed favored medical assistance in dying. PAD is a deeply personal choice. The question is whether more states will authorize the practice and, if so, what safeguards will be put in place to ensure the practice is not misused and remains consistent with prevailing social and ethical thought

Forced Migration, The Human Face of a Health Crisis

Nearly 60 million refugees, asylum-seekers and internally displaced persons (IDPs) fled their homes in 2014, predominately from war-torn Syria, Afghanistan and Somalia. The global response to assisting this vulnerable group has been wholly incommensurate with the need given the profound health hazards faced by forced migrants at each stage of their journey. The majority of forced migrants are housed in lower-income countries that do not have the infrastructure to assist the significant numbers of individuals who are crossing their borders and the humanitarian organizations who seek to assist in the response are grossly underfunded and under-resourced. Countries have varying responsibilities to protect different classes of forced migrants based in international law, however there are significant gaps in existing agreements, leaving many individuals without protection or hope of assistance. There is a need to strengthen existing international agreements to ensure that all classes of forced migrants are entitled to protection and to ensure the enforceability of existing agreements where governments refuse to honor their existing obligations

Exploring manuscripts: sharing ancient wisdoms across the semantic web

Recent work in digital humanities has seen researchers in-creasingly producing online editions of texts and manuscripts, particularly in adoption of the TEI XML format for online publishing. The benefits of semantic web techniques are un-derexplored in such research, however, with a lack of sharing and communication of research information. The Sharing Ancient Wisdoms (SAWS) project applies linked data prac-tices to enhance and expand on what is possible with these digital text editions. Focussing on Greek and Arabic col-lections of ancient wise sayings, which are often related to each other, we use RDF to annotate and extract seman-tic information from the TEI documents as RDF triples. This allows researchers to explore the conceptual networks that arise from these interconnected sayings. The SAWS project advocates a semantic-web-based methodology, en-hancing rather than replacing current workflow processes, for digital humanities researchers to share their findings and collectively benefit from each other’s work

Morphosyntactic variation in an emerging dialect of eastern North Carolina Spanish

For the past several decades, the Spanish-speaking population in eastern North Carolina (eNC) has been increasing rapidly. While much is known of other Spanish varieties spoken in major cities in the US, little is known about the formation of Spanish communities in the rural South. This project aims to fill that void by adding to our knowledge of Spanish morphosyntax by noting specific properties that make this emerging Spanish community’s expression of explicit subject in Spanish different than other bilingual Spanish varieties around the U.S. Methodology for the study included: (a) collection of speech samples through sociolinguistic interviews, and (b) participant profiles through a Background Language Proficiency (BLP) Questionnaire. Results from our study conducted on 1,309 tokens from 18 first- and second-generation speakers of Mexican Spanish indicated a statistically significant difference in subject expression based on time spent in the region of eNC, bilingual dominance in English, country of birth, and individual rates of expression. Additionally, preliminary results indicate an influence of verbal person as a predictor of subject expression. Overall, the findings from this study indicate an emerging effect of bilingual contact between English and Spanish in the region of eNC. This justifies the need to investigate whether the region plays a different role in constructing the linguistic identities of its Hispanic inhabitants separately from other historically bilingual U.S. cities

Contact-induced lexical development in Yupik and Inuit languages

Lexical change in Yupik and Inuit languages was relatively slow until the period of widespread cultural change brought about by contact with Europeans over the past few centuries, probably because there had been little earlier contact with other language families. The colonial period brought various groups to the Arctic and different waves of language contact, primarily with Danish, French, English, and Russian. Lexical borrowing has been significant, and old borrowings, often the result of early trade, can be distinguished from later ones and often pertain to food, tobacco, tools, fabric and other areas where new goods were introduced. Later borrowings came about largely when European political structures were set up and may be less thoroughly integrated phonologically than older borrowings. Numbers of borrowings can be taken to reflect the extent of the foreign contact, as is clearly the case with Russian words in Alaskan languages, most numerous in Aleut, which had the most sustained Russian presence. New religious terms to describe Christianity came into the languages during the colonial period, sometimes as borrowings, but also as relexicalizations of old words pertaining to shamanism. A third means of lexical expansion is coinage, where new terms are invented based on native roots and suffixes. The languages and dialects may thus develop words for the same object or concept by borrowing from different European languages, by relexicalizing an old word, or by coining a new one, with a different result in each case. Different sources for new lexical items have resulted in an important level of differentiation among the languages, and this differentiation needs to be recognized.Le changement lexical des langues yupik et inuit a été relativement lent jusqu'à la période des vastes changements culturels engendrés par le contact avec les Européens au cours de ces derniers siècles, sans doute parce qu'il n'y avait eu, jusque là, que peu de contacts avec d'autres langues. La période coloniale a amené plusieurs groupes dans l'Arctique et différentes vagues de contacts de langues, principalement avec le danois, le français, l'anglais et le russe. L'emprunt lexical a été considérable et les premiers emprunts, souvent le résultat des tous premiers trocs, peuvent se distinguer des suivants et se rapportent souvent à la nourriture, au tabac, aux outils, aux tissus et aux autres domaines où de nouvelles denrées étaient introduites. Les emprunts plus tardifs sont apparus en grand nombre avec la mise en place des structures politiques européennes, et d'un point de vue phonologique, sont peut-être moins entièrement intégrés que les premiers. Nombre d'emprunts peuvent être présentés en tant que reflet de l'étendu du contact avec l'étranger comme c'est clairement le cas des langues d'Alaska qui contiennent des mots russes; les plus nombreux sont dans l'aléoute, langue parlée dans la région qui a connu une présence russe des plus importantes. De nouveaux termes religieux pour décrire le christianisme ont été introduits pendant la période coloniale, parfois comme emprunts mais aussi comme des relexicalisations de mots précédemment liés au chamanisme. Le néologisme est la troisième voie d'expansion lexicale où de nouveaux termes sont inventés, fondés sur les racines et les suffixes de la langue d'origine. Par conséquent, les langues et les dialectes peuvent développer des mots pour le même objet ou le même concept en empruntant aux langues européennes, en relexicalisant un mot ancien ou en créant un mot nouveau avec à chaque fois un résultat différent. Les différentes sources de ces nouveaux items lexicaux ont eu pour résultat un important niveau de différenciation parmi les langues et cette dernière se doit d'être identifiée

Using Student Roles During Group Supervision To Assess Counselor Dispositions

The purpose of this article is to present the use of student roles during group supervision in an online master\u27s program to assess counselor dispositions and CACREP Standards. Counselor dispositions are considered an aspect of counselor competence and will be explored through a model of dispositional values and the application of student roles in group supervision. The possibility of future qualitative and quantitative studies regarding student roles in group supervision will provide a wealth of information for consideration in group supervision

Attitudinal and Dispositional Predictors of Environmentally-Responsible Behavior

Measures of locus of control, optimism, consideration of future consequences of behavior, environmental concern, belief in global warming, biospheric altruism, corporate skepticism, economic motivation, recycling attitudes and motivation, and political ideology were used to predict environmentally-responsible behaviors. Regression analyses revealed that the best predictors were perceived importance of recycling, economic motivation, recycling motivation, and corporate skepticism. These results suggest that global dispositional variables, such as optimism and locus of control, are not particularly useful predictors of environmentally-responsible behaviors. Instead, environmentally-specific dispositions, such as economic motivation and recycling motivation are much better predictors, as well as attitudinal dimensions such as perceived importance of recycling, environmental concern, belief in global warming, corporate skepticism, and political ideology. This suggests that efforts to increase environmentally-responsible behaviors are best directed at impacting environmentally-relevant dispositions and attitudes