Grit

Many of our most important goals require months or even years of effort to achieve, and some never get achieved at all. As social psychologists have lately emphasized, success in pursuing such goals requires the capacity for perseverance, or "grit." Philosophers have had little to say about grit, however, insofar as it differs from more familiar notions of willpower or continence. This leaves us ill-equipped to assess the social and moral implications of promoting grit. We propose that grit has an important epistemic component, in that failures of perseverance are often caused by a significant loss of confidence that one will succeed if one continues to try. Correspondingly, successful exercises of grit often involve a kind of epistemic resilience in the face of failure, injury, rejection, and other setbacks that constitute genuine evidence that success is not forthcoming. Given this, we discuss whether and to what extent displays of grit can be epistemically as well as practically rational. We conclude that they can be (although many are not), and that the rationality of grit will depend partly on features of the context the agent normally finds herself in. In particular, grit-friendly norms of deliberation might be irrational to use in contexts of severe material scarcity or oppression

Believing in Others

Suppose some person 'A' sets out to accomplish a difficult, long-term goal such as writing a passable Ph.D. thesis. What should you believe about whether A will succeed? The default answer is that you should believe whatever the total accessible evidence concerning A's abilities, circumstances, capacity for self-discipline, and so forth supports. But could it be that what you should believe depends in part on the relationship you have with A? We argue that it does, in the case where A is yourself. The capacity for "grit" involves a kind of epistemic resilience in the face of evidence suggesting that one might fail, and this makes it rational to respond to the relevant evidence differently when you are the agent in question. We then explore whether similar arguments extend to the case of "believing in" our significant others -- our friends, lovers, family members, colleagues, patients, and students

UPPER THERMAL LIMITS OF FRESHWATER MUSSELS IN TEXAS TO INFORM CONSERVATION AND MANAGEMENT

Understanding the temperature tolerances of organisms is critical because thermal regimes of freshwater ecosystems are changing globally due to climate change, river regulation, and land development, which may create conflicts between the needs of humans and aquatic ecosystems. Native freshwater mussels are especially sensitive to increasing water temperatures because of their physiology and unique life-history. Detailed knowledge on lethal temperatures for mussels has been limited to less than 5% of the species known to occur in North America, and little is known about thermal tolerances of mussel species from rivers within the southwestern United States. To determine the effects of elevated water temperature on mussels from the southwestern United States, I tested the upper thermal tolerances of larvae (glochidia) for the following species across 4 basins in Texas (Neches, Guadalupe, San Antonio, and Colorado): Amblema plicata, Cyclonaias petrina, Fusconaia mitchelli, Lampsilis bracteata, Lampsilis hydiana, Lampsilis satura, Lampsilis teres, Leptodea fragilis, and Obovaria arkansasensis. I then tested the upper thermal tolerances of adults of 3 of these species (Amblema plicata, Cyclonaias petrina, and Fusconaia mitchelli) from the Guadalupe River. I evaluated upper lethal limits of freshwater mussels acclimated to 27 °C across a range of experimental temperatures (30–39 °C) in standard acute laboratory tests. The results of the adult trials were then related to in situ water temperature and flows using a uniform continuous above-threshold (UCAT) analysis which evaluates the duration and frequency of continuous events above a specified temperature threshold. Median lethal temperature (LT50) in 24-h tests among glochidia averaged 32.4 °C and ranged from 26.9 to 36.4 °C. The mean LT50 in acute 96-h adult tests averaged 36.4 °C and ranged from 33.7 to 37.5 °C, while the chronic 10-d adult tests averaged 35.9 °C and ranged from 32.4 to 37.5 °C. Thermal tolerances of F. mitchelli were significantly lower than both A. plicata and C. petrina, and the UCAT analysis showed that LT05 (temperature affecting 5% of the population) thresholds were exceeded for F. mitchelli in the Guadalupe River at both acute (96-h) and chronic (10-d) values. Findings from my study indicate freshwater mussels from the arid and semi-arid regions of the Southwest are already at risk from rising environmental temperatures and altered hydrologic flows

Intercultural Coworker Relationships (ICORs) in the Global Workplace: A Grounded Theory Study

Previous research supports what employees intuitively sense: peers make the place (Chiaburu & Harrison, 2008; Schneider, 1987). Extant research suggests coworker relationships have critical influence on outcomes ranging from turnover (Felps, Mitchell, Hekman, Lee, Holtom, & Harman, 2009) to creativity (Homan, Buengeler, Eckhoff, van Ginkel, & Voelpel, 2015) to organizational commitment (Viswesvaran & Ones, 2002) to employee health and well-being (Heaphy & Dutton, 2008). Despite the increase of Intercultural COworker Relationships (ICORs), particularly in multinational firms in the technology industry, research has yet to examine what defines coworker relationship quality in the presence of national cultural differences. In other words, how do employees define and experience relationship quality in ICORs? How do employees behave to facilitate relationship quality in ICORs? The present study sought to address these theoretically and practically important questions using a mixed methods design, with an emphasis on the qualitative data collected via grounded theory methodology. Findings reveal consistencies and important differences compared to monocultural coworker relationships. The current study offers a theoretical framework to conceptualize the development of ICOR quality. The importance of understanding how relationship quality is defined and facilitated in organizations with nationally diverse populations is discussed, both in terms of theoretical and practical implications

A taxonomy of explanations in a general practitioner clinic for patients with persistent “medically unexplained” physical symptoms

MSS1 and MSS2 were supported by grants from the Chief Scientist Office of the Scottish Government (references CZG/2/412 and CZH/4/945). We are grateful to the general practitioners and patients who participated in these studies.Peer reviewedPostprin

Visual attention and cognitive performance in sheep

Cognitive probes are increasingly being used as an inferred measure of the emotional (and thus welfare) status of the animal. This reflects the bidirectional and interactive nature of emotional and cognitive systems. To date, cognitive paradigms have focused on how the emotional system biases expected outcome of prospective actions within goal-orientated scenarios. Evidence, however, suggests that negative affective state can also modulate attentional mechanisms. Measuring attention alongside other current tests of cognitive bias may provide greater resolution in the measurement of animal welfare. As a starting point for developing cognitive tasks of attentional control, we decided to assess the basic relationship between visual attention and cognitive performance in a farm animal species (sheep). Variation in visual attention and cognitive performance was sought through testing of four different breeds of upland and lowland sheep (Beulah, Bluefaced Leicester, Texel and Suffolk; n = 15/breed) on a visual attention task and a two-choice visual discrimination task (to measure cognitive performance). Cognitive performance and visual attention differed significantly between breeds (F 3,46 = 4.70, p = 0.006 and F3,5o = 6.05, p < 0.001 respectively). The least visually attentive breed of sheep (Blue face Leicester) had the lowest level of cognitive performance and the most visually attentive breed (Suffolk) had the highest level of cognitive performance. A weak but significant relationship between vigilance/fearfulness and visual attention was also observed (t44 = 3.91, p = < 0.001; r2 = 0.23) that appeared to adhere to the Yerkes-Dodson law, with both high and low levels of vigilance/fearfulness having a negative effect on visual attention. These results demonstrate a discernible relationship between visual attention and cognitive performance that provides a basis for further exploring attention systems in the context of changes in animal affective state and thus animal welfare.CHDI Inc

Executive decision-making in the domestic sheep.

Two new large animal models of Huntington's disease (HD) have been developed recently, an old world monkey (macaque) and a sheep. Macaques, with their large brains and complex repertoire of behaviors are the 'gold-standard' laboratory animals for testing cognitive function, but there are many practical and ethical issues that must be resolved before HD macaques can be used for pre-clinical research. By contrast, despite their comparable brain size, sheep do not enjoy a reputation for intelligence, and are not used for pre-clinical cognitive testing. Given that cognitive decline is a major therapeutic target in HD, the feasibility of testing cognitive function in sheep must be explored if they are to be considered seriously as models of HD. Here we tested the ability of sheep to perform tests of executive function (discrimination learning, reversal learning and attentional set-shifting). Significantly, we found that not only could sheep perform discrimination learning and reversals, but they could also perform the intradimensional (ID) and extradimensional (ED) set-shifting tasks that are sensitive tests of cognitive dysfunction in humans. Their performance on the ID/ED shifts mirrored that seen in humans and macaques, with significantly more errors to reach criterion in the ED than the ID shift. Thus, sheep can perform 'executive' cognitive tasks that are an important part of the primate behavioral repertoire, but which have never been shown previously to exist in any other large animal. Sheep have great potential, not only for use as a large animal model of HD, but also for studying cognitive function and the evolution of complex behaviours in normal animals

The Cambridge MRI database for animal models of Huntington disease.

We describe the Cambridge animal brain magnetic resonance imaging repository comprising 400 datasets to date from mouse models of Huntington disease. The data include raw images as well as segmented grey and white matter images with maps of cortical thickness. All images and phenotypic data for each subject are freely-available without restriction from (http://www.dspace.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/243361/). Software and anatomical population templates optimised for animal brain analysis with MRI are also available from this site.This project is supported by CHDI Foundation. We are grateful to Zhiguang Chang, Nigel Wood, Greg Brown and Skye Rudiger for their assistance with acquiring the data in our library.This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Elsevier via http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2015.04.05