We don’t want to know what we know

Why are humans so ignorant with regard to the fundamental gap between ethical claims and the status quo of the human-animal relationship? To answer this, we should include more psychological and sociological perspectives in our discussions

From thinking selves to social selves

I argue that Rowlands’s concept of pre-reflective self-awareness offers a way to understand animals as Social Selves. It does so because it departs from the orthodox conception of self-awareness, which is both egocentric and logocentric. Instead, its focus is on the relation between consciousness and a person’s lived body, her actions and goals. Characterizing persons as pre-reflectively self-aware beings in Rowlands’s sense offers a much more useful conceptual tool to interpret social behaviour in animals

Arctic passages: maternal transport, Iñupiat mothers and Northwest Alaska communities in transition

Thesis (Ph.D.) University of Alaska Fairbanks, 2013While the primary goal of the northwest Alaska Native village maternal transport program is safe deliveries for mothers from remote villages, little has been done to examine the impact of transport on the mothers and communities involved. I explore how present values (Western and Iñupiat cultural values) can influence the desire of indigenous women of differing eras and Northwest Alaska villages to participate in biomedical birth practices, largely as made available by a tribal health-sponsored patient transport system. The work that follows portrays the varying influences on these women and their communities as they determine the level of importance for mothers to get to the hospital to deliver. I have enlisted viewpoints of Alaska Native families and women of different generations from various lñupiat villages to help paint a picture of the situation. With this research, I ask, how do generations of mothers, transport situations, and villages compare in terms of experiences during the processes of these Iñupiat women becoming mothers? What gender, ethnicity, and power interplays exist in this dynamic helix of social and political elements (embodiment) during their periods of liminality? What are influences (biomedical and community) that contribute to a woman's transition to motherhood in this community? Moreover, how do women, families, and community members perceive the maternal transport policy today? I examine how the transport policy figures into stages of liminality, as these mothers and communities produce future generations. With theoretical frameworks provided by medical anthropology and maternal identity work, I track the differences concerning the maternal transport operation for lñupiat mothers of the area. I compare the influences of cultural value systems present in each of the communities by birth era and location. Using content analysis to determine common themes, I found connections among presence of Iñupiat values, community acceptance of maternal transport, and expressed desire for community autonomy in maternal health care.Preface -- Chapter 1. Maternal health care for Iñupiat mothers of the Northwest -- 1.1. Introduction -- 1.2. The Alaska Native Village Maternal Health Transport (ANVMT) policy -- 1.3. Arctic passages research questions -- 1.4. Risk assessment and postneonatal mortality statistics -- 1.4.1. Data used for risk assessment -- 1.4.2. 'They must simply be asked' -- 1.5. Liminality, communitas, and maternal identity work -- 1.5.1. Liminality -- 1.5.2. Related studies use of liminality as analysis tool -- 1.5.3. Communitas -- 1.5.4. Communitas and Turner's contribution to liminality -- 1.5.5. Maternal identity work -- 1.6. Iñupiat communities of Northwest Alaska -- 1.6.1. Population -- 1.6.2. Geography, climate, and transportation -- 1.6.3. NW Alaska socio-political maternal health care governing bodies -- 1.7. Overview of the thesis -- Chapter 2. Design, methods and analytical techniques -- 2.1. Selection of topic and study area -- 2.1.1. ANVMT policy analysis in exploratory phase -- 2.1.2. ANVMT policy analysis and early stage hypothesis development -- 2.2. Version one of study scope and parameters -- 2.2.1. Development of new study scope -- 2.2.2. Development of new study design -- 2.3. Arctic Passages study scope and parameters -- 2.4. Sampling and data collection techniques -- 2.4.1. Arctic Passages framework approach -- 2.4.2. Arctic Passages grounded theory -- 2.5. Methodological and analytical techniques -- 2.5.1. Familiarization -- 2.5.2. Identifying thematic framework -- 2.5.3. Indexing -- 2.5.4. Charting -- 2.5.5. Mapping and interpretation -- 2.6. Summary -- Chapter 3. Biomedicine, maternal health policy, and birth models -- 3.1. Introduction: US maternal health care policy and biomedicine -- 3.2. Use of Alaska Native maternal and infant health data to inform policy -- 3.3. Anthropology of birth: medical anthropology and cultural competency -- 3.3.1. Physician-patient cultural divide and cultural competency -- 3.3.2. Cultural competency efforts in Alaska Native health care -- 3.3.3. History and cross-cultural treatment of birth -- 3.3.4. Jordan's midwife construct -- 3.4. Emergence of birth models -- 3.5. Midwifery and biomedical birth models -- 3.5.1. The midwifery birth model -- 3.5.2. The biomedical birth model -- 3.5.3. Authoritative knowledge in birth constructs -- 3.5. Summary -- Chapter 4. Maternal identity, embodiment and Iñupiat cultural values -- 4.1. Introduction -- 4.2. Nursing theories and maternal identity -- 4.2.1. Maternal identity and ethnic identity -- 4.2.2. Maternal identity and group membership -- 4.2.3. Public health policy, nationalism, and tribalism and maternal identity -- 4.3. Embodiment and birthing practice -- 4.3.1. Embodiment and the body politic -- 4.3.2. Embodiment among maternal Third and Fourth World identities -- 4.4. Iñupiat Ilitqusiat: backdrop to everyday changing realities -- 4.4.1. Maternal and medical cultural influences -- 4.4.2. Iñupiat Ilitqusiat definition for Arctic Passages -- 4.4.3. Iñupiat Ilitqusiat expressions in Arctic Passages -- 4.5. Summary -- Chapter 5. Iñupiat Birthways in Northwest Alaska and ANVMT policy -- 5.1. Sampling results and scope -- 5.2. Secondary birth and transport figures -- 5.2.1. Arctic Passages statistical data sources -- 5.2.2. Maternal and infant health statistical records on Maniilaq region births -- 5.2.3. Maniilaq region flight services impact on ANVMT policy -- 5.2.4. Maniilaq region facility usage trends, historical and current data -- 5.3. Delivery and infant mortality figures -- 5.3.1. Maniilaq service area 'type of delivery' statistics -- 5.3.2. Maniilaq Service Area infant mortality statistics -- Chapter 6. Iñupiat mothers navigating the ANVMT system: today and yesterday -- 6.1. Arctic Passage mothers and the ANVMT policy -- 6.1.1. Themes -- 6.1.2. Buckland mothers' views of the ANVMT policy -- 6.1.3. Kotzebue mothers' views of the ANVMT policy -- 6.1.4. Point Hope mothers' views of the ANVMT policy -- 6.2. Arctic Passages community and family members and the ANVMT policy -- 6.2.1. Buckland -- 6.2.2. Kotzebue -- 6.2.3. Point Hope -- 6.3. Maternal transport: a new tradition in the Arctic Passages communities? -- 6.4. Maternal identity work, liminality, communitas and the ANVMT system -- 6.4.1. Self-identification and embodiment as Iñupiat mothers -- 6.4.2. Iñupiat mothers, liminality, and communitas -- 6.5. Different generations of Arctic Passages Iñupiat mothers as participants -- 6.6. Influences and the ANVMT system -- 6.6.1. Biomedical influences -- 6.6.2. Family and community influences -- Chapter 7. Conclusion -- 7.1. Conclusions -- 7.2. Arctic Passages limitations and questions for further research -- 7.2.1. Limitations -- 7.2.2. Questions for further research -- 7.3. Maniilaq ANVMT policy: availability versus accessibility -- 7.3.1. Trust and communication between worldviews in Maniilaq maternal care -- 7.3.2. Alignment of like-minded communities and health care philosophies -- References

What do we owe animals as persons?

Rowlands (2016) concentrates strictly on the metaphysical concept of person, but his notion of animal personhood bears a moral dimension (Monsó, 2016). His definition of pre-reflective self-awareness has a focus on sentience and on the lived body of a person as well as on her implicit awareness of her own goals. Interestingly, these also play a key role in animal welfare science, as well as in animal rights theories that value the interests of animals. Thus, Rowlands’s concept shows connectivity with both major fields of animal ethics. His metaphysical arguments might indeed contain a strong answer to the question of what we owe animals as persons

From thinking selves to social selves

I argue that Rowlands’s concept of pre-reflective self-awareness offers a way to understand animals as Social Selves. It does so because it departs from the orthodox conception of self-awareness, which is both egocentric and logocentric. Instead, its focus is on the relation between consciousness and a person’s lived body, her actions and goals. Characterizing persons as pre-reflectively self-aware beings in Rowlands’s sense offers a much more useful conceptual tool to interpret social behaviour in animals

Ultrafast heterogeneous electron transfer reactions Comparative theoretical studies on time and frequency domain data

Recent theoretical studies on linear absorption spectra of dye semiconductor systems perylene attached to nanostructured TiO2, L. Wang et al., J. Phys. Chem. B 109, 9589 2005 are extended here in different respects. Since the systems show ultrafast photoinduced heterogeneous electron transfer the time dependent formulation used to compute the absorbance is also applied to calculate the temporal evolution of the sub 100 fs charge injection dynamics after a 10 fs laser pulse excitation. These studies complement our recent absorption spectra fit for two perylene bridge anchor group TiO2 systems. Moreover, the time dependent formulation of the absorbance is confronted with a frequency domain description. The latter underlines the central importance of the self energy caused by the coupling of the dye levels to the semiconductor band continuum. The used model is further applied to study the effect of different parameters such as 1 the dependence on the reorganization energies of the involved intramolecular transitions, 2 the effect of changing the transfer integral which couples the excited dye state with the band continuum, and 3 the effect of the concrete form of the semiconductor band density of states. Emphasis is also put on the case where the charge injection level of the dye is near or somewhat below the band edge. This nicely demonstrates the change from a structureless absorption to a well resolved vibrational progression including characteristic shifts of the absorption lines which are a direct measure for the dye semiconductor couplin

Un progetto per Nowa Huta

Il volume raccoglie i progetti presentati alla IX Biennale Internazionale di Cracovia, 2002, sul tema "Less ideology - more geometry in the space to live the city". Oggetto del concorso sono quegli spazi della città, costruita come città dormitorio durante gli anni del Realismo Socialista, che possono diventare spazi pubblici per la città contemporanea. Progetto vincitore del primo premio. Born from a political will (socialist realism), from a model of urban and territorial organization (a new way of life) that imprinted its processes of conception and construction, Nowa Huta is, like all foundation towns, a city without a past, a city that appears today fixed in the everlasting present of the time (the ideology) which conceived and built it, and projected towards a future balanced between failure of the ideals (which were the very reason for the existance of the city) and the shutting-down of the huge factories to which it was connected (its practical reason). A city without a past and with an uncertain future. But the shape of Nowa Huta, its spatial structure, has an immense debt to the history and the tradition of the architecture and, set free form its political and ideological charge, it represents today an important contribution to urban research, both on a territorial scale (location, means of transport, water supply, production settlements) and on a urban scale (quarters, residential units, public services, collective buildings, green areas, traffic in its different forms). Therefore our reflection starts from the actual reality of the city, from its built structure (the layout of streets and its relationship with architecture, the residential districts and the emerging monuments) which represents the more constant and convincing element: the aggregative systems, the building types and the architectural forms have changed in the course of time, but the plan remained unchanged in its geometrical clearness

How dogs perceive humans and how humans should treat their pet dogs: Linking cognition with ethics

Humans interact with animals in numerous ways and on numerous levels. We are indeed living in an “animal”s world,’ in the sense that our lives are very much intertwined with the lives of animals. This also means that animals, like those dogs we commonly refer to as our pets, are living in a “human’s world” in the sense that it is us, not them, who, to a large degree, define and manage the interactions we have with them. In this sense, the human-animal relationship is nothing we should romanticize: it comes with clear power relations and thus with a set of responsibilities on the side of those who exercise this power. This holds, despite the fact that we like to think about our dogs as human’s best friend. Dogs have been part of human societies for longer than any other domestic species. Like no other species they exemplify the role of companion animals. Relationships with pet dogs are both very widespread and very intense, often leading to strong attachments between owners or caregivers and animals and to a treatment of these dogs as family members or even children. But how does this relationship look from the dogs’ perspective? How do they perceive the humans they engage with? What responsibilities and duties arise from the kind of mutual understanding, attachment, and the supposedly “special” bonds we form with them? Are there ethical implications, maybe even ethical implications beyond animal welfare? The past decades have seen an upsurge of research from comparative cognition on pet dogs’ cognitive and social skills, especially in comparison with and reference to humans. We will therefore set our discussion about the nature and ethical dimensions of the human–dog relationship against the background of the current empirical knowledge on dog (social) cognition. This allows us to analyze the human–dog relationship by applying an interdisciplinary approach that starts from the perspective of the dog to ultimately inform the perspective of humans. It is our aim to thereby identify ethical dimensions of the human–dog relationship that have been overlooked so far

MOVPE growth of GaP/GaPN core-shell nanowires: N incorporation, morphology and crystal structure

Dilute nitride III-V nanowires (NWs) possess great potential as building blocks in future optoelectronical and electrochemical devices. Here, we provide evidence for the growth of GaP/GaPN core-shell NWs via metalorganic vapor phase epitaxy, both on GaP(111)B and on GaP/Si (111) hetero-substrates. The NW morphology meets the common needs for use in applications, i.e. they are straight and vertically oriented to the substrate as well as homogeneous in length. Moreover, no parasitical island growth is observed. Nitrogen was found to be incorporated on group V sites as determined from transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and Raman spectroscopy. Together with the incorporation of N, the NWs exhibit strong photoluminescence in the visible range, which we attribute to radiative recombination at N-related deep states. Independently of the N incorporation, a peculiar facet formation was found, with {110} facets at the top and {112} at the bottom of the NWs. TEM reveals that this phenomenon is related to different stacking fault densities within the zinc blende structure, which lead to different effective surface energies for the bottom and the top of the NWs.This work was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, proj. no. HA 3096/4-2 & DA 396/6-2). We thank D Roßberg and D Flock for preparation of the TEM lamellae via FIB, as well as A Müller for technical support of the MOVPE system and W Dziony for AES measurements. We appreciate fruitful discussions with A Paszuk and A Nägelein