A perceptional view of the Coleman model of trust

In his classic model of trust, Coleman (1990) argues that the decision of an actor to trust or not is a function of the expected gain and loss involved. In this paper we show how actors who attempt to recruit others into network marketing employ narrative in manipulating the recruit's expectations. For example, we show how the costs involved in recruiting friends and family into network marketing are transformed into benefit through narrative strategies. Through the strategic use of narrative, recruiters change the recruit's perception of the parameters of the Coleman model and make perfectly rational behavior that was not considered rational before. In addition, we argue that recruiters use similar narrative on themselves in reconfirming the validity of their own previous decision to trust.

Predatory publishers: Using Open Access for the wrong reasons

The rise of Open Access (OA) and its Gold business model – based on Article Process Charges (APC’s) – led to a new phenomenon that might be potentially damaging for the development of OA and the quality of academic publications: the predatory publisher. These publishers do not list positive peer-reviews as a criteria for their publications, but the fact that the supply side (i.e. the author, his/her institution, or a funding body) has paid for it. By taking on everything or even actively sending spam mail to academics, offering a chance to publish with them, these publishers create misconceptions about OA and, more importantly, may even devalue OA publications. The problem with modern technology is that everyone can build a website and pretend to be an OA publisher, which makes it even easier for these predatory publishers. So how to restore this trust and make sure that all OA publications are of a certain quality? Who will check the authority of these publishers, and how? Who will step up and protect authors, but also the concept of OA, from falling into the hands of these predatory publishers whose only goal it is to make money? Big OA platforms such as OAPEN Library and DOAJ only accept material that has been peer-reviewed. Others, like Jeffrey Beall, have made a blacklist of all potentially damaging publishers. In the end, a growing awareness seems to be one of the most important features to tackle this problem that is harmful on various levels. This paper will dive into the results – both positive and negative – of predatory publishers

Corporate social capital and strategic management paradigm:a contingency view on organizational performance

The strategic management paradigm explains organizational performance through the alignment between environment, strategy, and reference points. We extend this paradigm by incorporating the role of interorganizational networks on firm performance, thus integrating strategic management and corporate social capital theory. This results in four normative propositions that describe the conditions under which particular interfirm network structures assist or impede firm performance

Reward Processing in the Brain: A Prerequisite for Movement Preparation?

In the last decade, expanding animal studies on the cerebral organization of reward processing toward human in vivo situations has become possible. In this review, we define some of the concepts associated with reward, summarize the crucial importance of the dopaminergic system, and discuss the currently available neuroimaging studies in man. We will show that abstract concepts of human behavior like emotions, drive, arousal, and reinforcement are now open for further exploration in man at the level of neuronal circuit organization. The cerebral dopaminergic neurotransmitter circuitry does play an important role in the organization of both the motor and motivational system

Speech dysprosody but no music ‘dysprosody’ in Parkinson’s disease

AbstractParkinson’s disease is characterized not only by bradykinesia, rigidity, and tremor, but also by impairments of expressive and receptive linguistic prosody. The facilitating effect of music with a salient beat on patients’ gait suggests that it might have a similar effect on vocal behavior, however it is currently unknown whether singing is affected by the disease. In the present study, fifteen Parkinson patients were compared with fifteen healthy controls during the singing of familiar melodies and improvised melodic continuations. While patients’ speech could reliably be distinguished from that of healthy controls matched for age and gender, purely on the basis of aural perception, no significant differences in singing were observed, either in pitch, pitch range, pitch variability, and tempo, or in scale tone distribution, interval size or interval variability. The apparent dissociation of speech and singing in Parkinson’s disease suggests that music could be used to facilitate expressive linguistic prosody

Potential adverse public health effects afforded by the ingestion of dietary lipid oxidation product toxins: significance of fried food sources

Exposure of polyunsaturated fatty acid (PUFA)-rich culinary oils (COs) to high temperature frying practices generates high concentrations of cytotoxic and genotoxic lipid oxidation products (LOPs) via oxygen-fueled, recycling peroxidative bursts. These toxins, including aldehydes and epoxy-fatty acids, readily penetrate into fried foods and hence are available for human consumption; therefore, they may pose substantial health hazards. Although previous reports have claimed health benefits offered by the use of PUFA-laden COs for frying purposes, these may be erroneous in view of their failure to consider the negating adverse public health threats presented by food-transferable LOPs therein. When absorbed from the gastrointestinal (GI) system into the systemic circulation, such LOPs may significantly contribute to enhanced risks of chronic non-communicable diseases (NCDs), e.g. , cancer, along with cardiovascular and neurological diseases. Herein, we provide a comprehensive rationale relating to the public health threats posed by the dietary ingestion of LOPs in fried foods. We begin with an introduction to sequential lipid peroxidation processes, describing the noxious effects of LOP toxins generated therefrom. We continue to discuss GI system interactions, the metabolism and biotransformation of primary lipid hydroperoxide LOPs and their secondary products, and the toxicological properties of these agents, prior to providing a narrative on chemically-reactive, secondary aldehydic LOPs available for human ingestion. In view of a range of previous studies focused on their deleterious health effects in animal and cellular model systems, some emphasis is placed on the physiological fate of the more prevalent and toxic α,β-unsaturated aldehydes. We conclude with a description of targeted nutritional and interventional strategies, whilst highlighting the urgent and unmet clinical need for nutritional and epidemiological trials probing relationships between the incidence of NCDs, and the frequency and estimated quantities of dietary LOP intake

A catalog of larval Amphibia in the Yale Peabody Museum

The herpetological collection of Yale University\u27s Peabody Museum of Natural History contains over 1,460 lots of larval amphibians, representing more than 9,000 individuals. Although the majority of the larvae originate from North American localities, especially Connecticut, the collection includes representative holdings from several countries. A catalog of the entire Yale Peabody Museum larval collection is provided here