Language, Truth, and Rhetoric

The words of Martin Heidegger are no example of the lowest form of wit. His sentence is meant to be interpreted in two important ways that utilize different meanings of the word truth. Our common understanding of the word truth is not something innate but a product of history and culture that stretches back through the Romans to the ancient Greeks. Alētheia in ancient Greek was translated to veritas in Latin. The translation included an interpretation--as all translations do (which is why translation is rhetorical in nature)--of alētheia as a Platonic entity. Alētheia was interpreted as something transcendent; something that remains constant no matter what culture, language, time, class, gender, race, etc., one comes from. Alētheia/veritas/truth is out there somewhere and we just need to find it. We often think of truth in this way. It\u27s at the heart of phrases like the moral of the story is, or the author\u27s message is, or what the novel is really about is, --as if we fully know the author\u27s intent and that the text contains one absolute point

A comparison of combined versus individual cognitive coping strategies for managing pain

Several cognitive coping strategies for reducing pain sensation have been identified, but their effects have traditionally only been examined in isolation. The current investigation instead compared the effectiveness of traditional cognitive coping strategies based upon imagery and pain acknowledgement/attention against an “integrated” strategy (that required both strategies to be used in combination) within a cold pressor test (CPT). Participants (N = 24, Mage= 19.46, SD = 1.47) underwent a baseline condition followed by counterbalanced strategy trials: imagery, attention, & integrated condition. Tolerance times, pain ratings, and perceived control ratings were recorded. The imagery condition had lower pain ratings and higher perceived control ratings compared to the baseline and attention condition but did not statistically differentiate from the integrated condition on any measure. In contrast, pain ratings were higher, and perceived control ratings were lower, in the attention condition relative to baseline, a finding which was not predicted by previous research. This suggests that, at least in its current form, attending to pain could actually represent absence of a coping strategy. Additionally, performance levels in the integrated strategy were consistently between those observed with the imagery strategy and the remaining conditions, suggesting that while imagery in the integrated strategy did help to alleviate pain, unfamiliarity with the integrated approach may have limited the extent of its observed effectiveness. This possibility of further pain-reducing effects following training with the integrated strategy warrants further investigation

Understanding Mobile Search Task Relevance and User Behaviour in Context

Improvements in mobile technologies have led to a dramatic change in how and when people access and use information, and is having a profound impact on how users address their daily information needs. Smart phones are rapidly becoming our main method of accessing information and are frequently used to perform `on-the-go' search tasks. As research into information retrieval continues to evolve, evaluating search behaviour in context is relatively new. Previous research has studied the effects of context through either self-reported diary studies or quantitative log analysis; however, neither approach is able to accurately capture context of use at the time of searching. In this study, we aim to gain a better understanding of task relevance and search behaviour via a task-based user study (n=31) employing a bespoke Android app. The app allowed us to accurately capture the user's context when completing tasks at different times of the day over the period of a week. Through analysis of the collected data, we gain a better understanding of how using smart phones on the go impacts search behaviour, search performance and task relevance and whether or not the actual context is an important factor.Comment: To appear in CHIIR 2019 in Glasgow, U

Perceptions of Profession and of being a Professional among Personnel/HRM Practitioners: A Phenomenographic Inquiry

This thesis explores the phenomena of profession and of being a professional among Personnel/Human Resource Management (P/HRM) Practitioners in the United Kingdom. The use of the term Personnel/Human Resource Management reflects a lack of consensus over nomenclature. Twenty semi structured interviews were undertaken between December 2006 and January 2007 using a purposely selected research sample stratified against qualification, experience, gender and organizational type to ensure representation across the public and private sectors. Respondents were asked about their perceptions of professions in general, their perceptions of their own roles as practitioners, about the influence of their respective work organizations on their professional status and about their perceptions of the Professional Institution the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD). Phenomenography was the selected qualitative research approach as it provided a framework for describing experience and examining variations in experience. The essence of the approach is that it takes a relational qualitative perspective that aims to describe key aspects of variation in the collective experience of phenomena, rather than focusing on the individual experience. The accepted approach in phenomenographic data analysis is to start with an analysis of the interview transcripts. However, a particular feature of this study was the analysis of the actual audio recordings of the interviews; this provided an additional level of insight and data but marked a significant departure from previously 'accepted' approaches. The study revealed a changing construction of profession and a reorientation of what it means to be a professional. Professionalism was constructed as the concern of the individual rather than the collective, and is best described as the 'professional project of the self and was characterized by a reliance on individual integrity, ethics and credibility. Professionalism was influenced by the 'know how' of the practitioners, their status within the occupation and work organization and was related to their ability to acquire and demonstrate business acumen, political awareness and the skills of self promotion and critical reflection. Respondents perceived the role and influence of the Professional Institute, The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) as limited, while the work organization was perceived to have an impact on the status of the individual practitioner and the function. In the context of this study it was the ability of the practitioner to know about and contribute to the wider business agenda that enhanced their individual and collective professional credibility and status. The implications for educational policy and practice are identified as being concerned with the way in which future practitioners and new career entrants are educated, trained and supported to develop an appropriate business awareness and the new skills set required to be successful, to understand the significance of an increasing reliance on 'self' as the mediator of professionalism and to manage effectively a relationship between the practitioner and the work organization which is perceived as evolving as Personnel/Human Resource Management (P/HRM) aspires to the status of a recognised profession

Debating Migration: the Brexit referendum in newspaper opinion pieces

On the 23rd June 2016, the UK public voted to Leave the EU in a close contest, with 51.89% advocating Leave and 48.11% optioning to Remain. In the aftermath of the vote, a rise in hate-crime was revealed signalling the fractious political climate at the time. Therefore, this paper reviews the discursive contribution of the UK online newsprint media during the EU referendum - with an emphasis on how migration-related arguments featured at different stages of the campaign. Political deliberations are supported by the media, who publish argumentative pieces in support of a certain outcome. Focusing on the comment pages of The Telegraph, The Daily Mail, The Guardian and The Mirror, this study provides an overview of how each campaign developed migration-arguments to support a Remain/Leave vote. This paper will demonstrate how the Discourse-Historical Approach to Critical Discourse Analysis can be used in conjunction with argumentation theory to examine how the representations of the circumstances surrounding an argument support a conclusion. Due to the influential capacity of the media, examination of what representational and argumentative strategies were relied upon will provide an insight into how the media contributed towards the public debate of the EU referendum and describe how migrants were objectified for political success

Searching on the Go: The Effects of Fragmented Attention on Mobile Web Search Tasks

Smart phones and tablets are rapidly becoming our main method of accessing information and are frequently used to perform on-the-go search tasks. Mobile devices are commonly used in situations where attention must be divided, such as when walking down a street. Research suggests that this increases cognitive load and, therefore, may have an impact on performance. In this work we conducted a laboratory experiment with both device types in which we simulated everyday, common mobile situations that may cause fragmented attention, impact search performance and affect user perception. Our results showed that the fragmented attention induced by the simulated conditions significantly affected both participants' objective and perceived search performance, as well as how hurried they felt and how engaged they were in the tasks. Furthermore, the type of device used also impacted how users felt about the search tasks, how well they performed and the amount of time they spent engaged in the tasks. These novel insights provide useful information to inform the design of future interfaces for mobile search and give us a greater understanding of how context and device size affect search behaviour and user experience

Sub-2 cm/s passivation of silicon surfaces by aprotic solutions

Minimizing recombination at semiconductor surfaces is required for the accurate determination of the bulk carrier lifetime. Proton donors, such as hydrofluoric acid and superacids, are well known to provide highly effective short-term surface passivation. We demonstrate here that aprotic solutions based on bis(trifluoromethanesulfonyl)methane (TFSM) in hexane or pentane can also result in excellent passivation of (100)-orientation silicon surfaces. We show that the optimized TFSM-pentane passivation scheme can measure effective lifetimes up to 20 ms, with a surface recombination velocity of 1.7 cm s1 at an excess carrier density of 1015 cm3 . Fitting injection-dependent lifetime curves requires chemical passivation and field effect passivation from a negatively charged layer with a charge density of 1010–1011 q cm2 . The slightly higher recombination velocity of 2.3 cm s1 measured with TFSM-hexane can be explained by a lower charge density in the passivating layer, suggesting that the steric hindrance associated with the solvent size could play a role in the passivation mechanism. Finally, phosphorus nuclear magnetic resonance experiments confirm that TFSM-based solutions have Lewis acidity without being superacids, which opens up opportunities for them to be used in materials systems sensitive to superacidic environments

Perceptions of the effect of fragmented attention on mobile web search tasks

Mobile devices are rapidly becoming our main method of accessing the Internet and are frequently used to perform on-the-go search tasks. The use of such devices in situations where attention must be divided, such as when walking, are common and research suggests that this increases cognitive load and, therefore, may have an impact on performance. In this work we conducted a laboratory experiment with both phone and tablet devices with the aim of evaluating common mobile situations that cause fragmented attention, impact search performance and impact on user perception. To do this the distraction level was varied by simulating 3 everyday situations: 1) walking quickly (on a treadmill), 2) navigating a pre-defined route and 3) sitting still which was used as the baseline condition). The results showed that different experimental conditions had a number of different effects on the participants' perceptions of their own search performance, how hurried they felt and how engaged they were in the tasks

MID-VICTORIAN PLYMOUTH: A SOCIAL GEOGRAPHY

In the 19th century, the two settlements of Plymouth and East Stonehouse grew and coalesced into one urban area. Natural population increase and immigration both contributed to the rapid population growth which gave impetus to the urban expansion. Analysis of the unpublished census manuscripts for I85I and I87I revealed clear patterns of distrihution indicating segregation according to demographic, occupational and birthplace characteristics. There was severe overcrowding, population density was higher than that of mid-Victorian London and Liverpool, and the consequences for local public health and on the morphology of the urban area were substantial. Deprivation and poverty occurred not only in the older, cramped parts of Plymouth but also i n newly-built housing areas, such was the demand for accommodation. This provided an impetus for suburbanisation. Mid-Victorian Plymouth was a thriving, cosmopolitan trading port with a large fishing fleet and it was an important military and naval base. The town also served southwest Devon and southeast Cornwall as a market for local goods and produce. The local economy supported a wide-ranging employment structure, responding to infrastructural improvements, and provided a magnet for immigrants primarily from rural Devon and Cornwall but also from many other parts of Britain and from Ireland. Women formed a greater than average section of the local population, the towns attracted country girls to work as domestic servants and, also, many women were temporarily deserted as their husbands' occupations took them away from home. Principal component analyses show that, following a rapid phase of population growth i n the 1840s and 1850s, the combined population of Plymouth and Stonehouse entered a period of slower growth when immigration gave way to natural increase. The later phase is identified as a time of consolidation as immigrants settled and the local economy prospered, the population became more integrated and homogeneous