A Dragonfly: Outlook of Pira Canning Sudham as Suggested by His Novel Shadowed Country

Through textual examination, this paper suggests possible influences on Pira Canning Sudham. It focuses on his novel Shadowed Country and that novel’s central character, PremSurin. It considers representations of the education system through which Prem passes and the outlook of his primary school teacher, who is a major influence on Prem as a youngster. It also considers Prem’s outlook on, or engagement with, the world in terms of voices and his awareness of the danger of speaking out against authority figures. Finally, it turns to representations of karma and the intermingling of animism and Buddhism in Shadowed Country. The paper is meant to stimulate thinking rather than answer a question, and is thus left open-ended

The Spiritual Road is a Hard Road to Walk: Gao Xingjian’s One Man’s Bible as Translated by Mabel Lee: A Political Primer

This review considers One Man’s Bible by Gao Xingjian, as translated by Mabel Lee. It looks at: an addressee’s influence; events that took place during the Cultural Revolution in China (from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s); and subsequent disillusionment

Work time, work interference with family, and psychological distress.

Despite public concern about time pressures experienced by working parents, few scholars have explicitly examined the effects of work time on work–family conflict. The authors developed and tested a model of the predictors of work time and the relationships between time, work interference with family (WIF), and psychological distress. Survey data came from 513 employees in a Fortune 500 company. As predicted, several work and family characteristics were significantly related to work time. In addition, work time was significantly, positively related to WIF, which in turn was significantly, negatively related to distress. The results suggest that work time fully or partially mediates the effects of many work and family characteristics on WIF. For decades, American workers have appeared content with the length of their work weeks. Since World War II, labor unions in the United States have overwhelmingly chosen to fight for higher wages rather than less work time (Schor, 1991). In the last few years, however, there are growing signs that many Americans are once again yearning for shorter work hours. Articles in the popular media chronicle the difficulties faced by employees who wor

Organized complexity of the urban object

Over a half-century, space syntax has proven resilient as a theory and method for describing and analyzing the built environment from dwellings and complex buildings to cities. The paper briefly discusses resilience as a concept in the built environment and the foundations of space syntax itself. We summarize the body of the theoretical thinking in space syntax – laws of the urban object, generic function, principles of centrality and linearity, the design method of spatio-formal processes, and laws of spatial emergence-convergence – before offering a new hypothesis about laws of spatial conservation and spatial optimization at work in the built environment. The latter builds on Conroy-Dalton’s (2001) ideas about angularity and the conservation of linearity in movement. Both could provide an essential bridge with Carvalho and Penn’s (2004) concept of self-similarity in settlements, which relates to Batty and Longley’s (1994) notions of fractal cities. We argue the hypothesis of conservation-optimization defines the conceptual framework for the progressive and regressive practice of urban planning in settlements. We illustrate this theoretical discussion by demonstrating the resilience or replication of previous space syntax findings, and by drawing on new research about the history, spatial structure, and neighborhood logic of Metropolitan Doha.

System-of-Systems Interface Synchronization in Military Satellite Communications

Student research poste

Cooperation and partner choice among Agta hunter-gatherer children: An evolutionary developmental perspective

Examining development is essential for a full understanding of behaviour, including how individuals acquire traits and how adaptive evolutionary forces shape these processes. The present study explores the development of cooperative behaviour among the Agta, a Filipino hunter-gatherer population. A simple resource allocation game assessing both levels of cooperation (how much children shared) and patterns of partner choice (who they shared with) was played with 179 children between the ages of 3 and 18. Children were given five resources (candies) and for each was asked whether to keep it for themselves or share with someone else, and if so, who this was. Between-camp variation in children’s cooperative behaviour was substantial, and the only strong predictor of children’s cooperation was the average level of cooperation among adults in camp; that is, children were more cooperative in camps where adults were more cooperative. Neither age, sex, relatedness or parental levels of cooperation were strongly associated with the amount children shared. Children preferentially shared with close kin (especially siblings), although older children increasingly shared with less-related individuals. Findings are discussed in terms of their implications for understanding cross-cultural patterns of children’s cooperation, and broader links with human cooperative childcare and life history evolution

Cooperation and partner choice among Agta hunter-gatherer children: An evolutionary developmental perspective

Examining development is essential for a full understanding of behaviour, including how individuals acquire traits and how adaptive evolutionary forces shape these processes. The present study explores the development of cooperative behaviour among the Agta, a Filipino hunter-gatherer population. A simple resource allocation game assessing both levels of cooperation (how much children shared) and patterns of partner choice (who they shared with) was played with 179 children between the ages of 3 and 18. Children were given five resources (candies) and for each was asked whether to keep it for themselves or share with someone else, and if so, who this was. Between-camp variation in children's cooperative behaviour was substantial, and the only strong predictor of children's cooperation was the average level of cooperation among adults in camp; that is, children were more cooperative in camps where adults were more cooperative. Neither age, sex, relatedness or parental levels of cooperation were strongly associated with the amount children shared. Children preferentially shared with close kin (especially siblings), although older children increasingly shared with less-related individuals. Findings are discussed in terms of their implications for understanding cross-cultural patterns of children's cooperation, and broader links with human cooperative childcare and life history evolution