Seizing the Catholic Moment: Kairos and the Rhetoric of Diocesan Administration

What can Roman Catholic diocesan administrations in the United States learn from rhetorical studies in the postmodern moment? This dissertation attempts to help American dioceses to respond to a postmodern moment of increasing secularization, changing human resources, and declining institutional trust. In this moment of challenge and uncertainty, it finds Richard Neuhaus\u27s (1987) metaphor of the Catholic Moment to be particularly powerful for diocesan administration because it finds within the tensions of postmodernity a new sense of possibility that both the Christian and rhetorical traditions have understood through the metaphor of kairos. The rhetoric of diocesan administration is best understood not as the implementation of communicative or managerial \u27techniques\u27 but as a form of playful engagement that flows out of the pastoral acknowledgement of the call of a homeless world. \u27Part I: The Call of the Catholic Moment\u27 describes the challenges that American dioceses currently face, frames the rhetorical dimensions of diocesan life, and seeks to ground the rhetoric of diocesan administration in the institutional roots that give it a human face: the stewardship of the gift of the Catholic faith and the pastoral care of persons. In the moment of postmodernity, dioceses that fail to attend to these roots compromise their identity and their ability to respond to the Catholic Moment. In the Catholic Moment, diocesan administrations are constantly invited and challenged to learn how to become better dioceses--more confident, more competent, more caring, and more self-consciously Catholic--than ever before. \u27Part II: The Response of Diocesan Administration\u27 approaches the rhetorical challenges of postmodernity in a constantly constructive fashion. Building on the notion of interpretive play so important to Hans-Georg Gadamer\u27s (1960/2004) philosophical hermeneutics, it will propose an understanding of diocesan rhetoric framed by the metaphor of administrative play that transforms diocesan administration from a bureaucratic structure into a communicative home. By allowing Catholic dioceses to see the historical moment of postmodernity in ways conducive to administrative play, Neuhaus\u27s metaphor of the Catholic Moment--transforms postmodernity into an occasion of kairos\u27-as long as dioceses are open and willing to seize it

Appreciative Inquiry in an Urban Context: Service Learning Amidst the Opioid Crisis

Britt’s (2012) service-learning framework situates community engaged learning activities in three broad categories: the practice of doing, which emphasizes skill building in relation to real-world problems; the practice of becoming, which sensitizes students to a broader range of social and civic responsibilities; and the practice of engaging in social change, which translates skill development and awareness into concrete action. This essay describes a successful service learning project focusing on opioid addiction in a mid-Atlantic city that combines all three. After describing the project’s background and implementation, it suggests practices and lessons that could inform similar efforts

“Let Me Walk With You”: Communicative Coaching and Communication Administration at the Crossroads

Communication administration today is at a crossroads, contending with an unprecedented set of pressures and challenges. This essay explores how the emerging field of coaching might speak to this time. Drawing from the practices and standards of the International Coaching Federation (ICF), the coaching literature, and communication ethics scholarship, this essay frames a uniquely communicative approach to coaching practice. After describing communicative coaching in terms of the goods that it protects and promotes (Arnett, Fritz, & Bell, 2009), it discusses how communicative coaching can sustain the goods of productivity, place, persons, and professionalism (Fritz, 2013) within the context of the academic home (Arnett, 1992) and reflects on how coaching can contribute to communication administration as a collective endeavor of acknowledgement, accompaniment, and humanity

Building Bridges on Local Soil: Locality and Community-Engaged Research and Pedagogy

Over a decade ago, Oster-Aaland, Sellnow, Nelson, and Pearson (2004), following up an earlier survey published in JACA (Sellnow and Oster, 1999), found that communityengaged research and pedagogy had become an established part of the communication curriculum. As a special issue of Peer Review has suggested (Carey, 2017), interest in service learning has only grown, and the increasing emphasis on civic engagement and community development has clear implications for the communication discipline. Courses and projects that address pressing or emerging social problems not only raise students’ ethical awareness but also allow students to build research and professional skills that build a bridge between the classroom and their emerging professional identity (O’Hara, 2001; Novak, Markey and Allen, 2007; Simons and Cleary, 2010). But despite community-engaged learning’s reputation as a high-impact practice (Kuh, 2008), the questions that emerged in Oster-Aaland et al.’s study remain: How can community-engaged research and scholarship result in meaningful service? How can these experiences apply to a broad range of communication constructs and course contexts? How can these activities enhance not only students’ intercultural awareness but also their sense of social and ethical responsibility

From “Safe Spaces” to “Communicative Spaces”: Semiotic Labor, Authentic Civility and the Basic Communication Course

Difficult conversations and controversial topics are common in the basic communication classroom, raising difficult challenges for course directors, instructors, and students. In response to this problem, many in higher education promote the development of “safe spaces.” Drawing from Eicher-Catt’s work on civility, this essay suggests shifting the focus from safe spaces to the development and maintenance of what Eicher-Catt calls communicative spaces. The notion of communicative spaces, when extended into the classroom, reorients our understanding of classroom civility and suggests practices for course directors, instructors, and students that affirm the dignity of students by attending not to their emotional needs but to the project of learning

09. Matching Long-Term Fire Effects Research to Pressing Questions Facing Tallgrass Prairie Managers across the Upper Midwest

The goal for this paper is to explore how a network of coordinated prescribed fire experiments could be developed and applied to tallgrass prairie management. In a 2011 survey conducted by the Tallgrass Prairie and Oak Savanna Fire Science Consortium in their region, 61% of 207 land managers indicated that their greatest need with respect to fire regimes was information on the outcome of variations in fire frequency and season, with information on these variables ranging from limited to completely lacking. Need for this kind of information was echoed during a breakout discussion session at the 2016 North American Prairie Conference where researchers and land managers shared their opinions on how the potential costs and benefits of developing a research network with experimental treatments could be relevant to management needs. The discussion was encouraging, although researchers noted funding as an important barrier. An example of the informative nature of long-term fire studies is ongoing at the University of Nebraska at Omaha where an experiment established in 1978 has shown strong differences among vegetation and soils in plots burned in different seasons and with different frequencies. A network of sites replicating this type of experiment across the region would inform land management decisions at a broad array of sites that are represented by a variety of soils, weather, climate, and plant species, including invasive plants. All these variables have been hypothesized to be important predictors of fire effects at some location, but the relative importance of different variables across the region has not been quantified through monitoring or research. In this paper, we outline potential steps for a sustained effort to investigate the benefits and risks of engaging in and funding a regional fire research network

Neural origins of human sickness in interoceptive responses to inflammation

BACKGROUND: Inflammation is associated with psychological, emotional, and behavioral disturbance, known as sickness behavior. Inflammatory cytokines are implicated in coordinating this central motivational reorientation accompanying peripheral immunologic responses to pathogens. Studies in rodents suggest an afferent interoceptive neural mechanism, although comparable data in humans are lacking. METHODS: In a double-blind, randomized crossover study, 16 healthy male volunteers received typhoid vaccination or saline (placebo) injection in two experimental sessions. Profile of Mood State questionnaires were completed at baseline and at 2 and 3 hours. Two hours after injection, participants performed a high-demand color word Stroop task during functional magnetic resonance imaging. Blood samples were performed at baseline and immediately after scanning. RESULTS: Typhoid but not placebo injection produced a robust inflammatory response indexed by increased circulating interleukin-6 accompanied by a significant increase in fatigue, confusion, and impaired concentration at 3 hours. Performance of the Stroop task under inflammation activated brain regions encoding representations of internal bodily state. Spatial and temporal characteristics of this response are consistent with interoceptive information flow via afferent autonomic fibers. During performance of this task, activity within interoceptive brain regions also predicted individual differences in inflammation-associated but not placebo-associated fatigue and confusion. Maintenance of cognitive performance, despite inflammation-associated fatigue, led to recruitment of additional prefrontal cortical regions. CONCLUSIONS: These findings suggest that peripheral infection selectively influences central nervous system function to generate core symptoms of sickness and reorient basic motivational states. PMID:19409533[PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE] PMCID: PMC2885492Free PMC Articl

Upside-down fluxes Down Under: CO2 net sink in winter and net source in summer in a temperate evergreen broadleaf forest

Predicting the seasonal dynamics of ecosystem carbon fluxes is challenging in broadleaved evergreen forests because of their moderate climates and subtle changes in canopy phenology. We assessed the climatic and biotic drivers of the seasonality of net ecosystem–atmosphere CO2 exchange (NEE) of a eucalyptus-dominated forest near Sydney, Australia, using the eddy covariance method. The climate is characterised by a mean annual precipitation of 800mm and a mean annual temperature of 18°C, hot summers and mild winters, with highly variable precipitation. In the 4-year study, the ecosystem was a sink each year (−225gCm−2yr−1 on average, with a standard deviation of 108gCm−2yr−1); inter-annual variations were not related to meteorological conditions. Daily net C uptake was always detected during the cooler, drier winter months (June through August), while net C loss occurred during the warmer, wetter summer months (December through February). Gross primary productivity (GPP) seasonality was low, despite longer days with higher light intensity in summer, because vapour pressure deficit (D) and air temperature (Ta) restricted surface conductance during summer while winter temperatures were still high enough to support photosynthesis. Maximum GPP during ideal environmental conditions was significantly correlated with remotely sensed enhanced vegetation index (EVI; r2 = 0.46) and with canopy leaf area index (LAI; r2= 0.29), which increased rapidly after mid-summer rainfall events. Ecosystem respiration (ER) was highest during summer in wet soils and lowest during winter months. ER had larger seasonal amplitude compared to GPP, and therefore drove the seasonal variation of NEE. Because summer carbon uptake may become increasingly limited by atmospheric demand and high temperature, and because ecosystem respiration could be enhanced by rising temperatures, our results suggest the potential for large-scale seasonal shifts in NEE in sclerophyll vegetation under climate change.The Australian Education Investment Fund, Australian Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network, Australian Research Council and Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment at Western Sydney University supported this work. We thank Jason Beringer, Helen Cleugh, Ray Leuning and Eva van Gorsel for advice and support. Senani Karunaratne provided soil classification details

Regulation of the type IV pili molecular machine by dynamic localization of two motor proteins

Type IV pili (T4P) are surface structures that undergo extension/retraction oscillations to generate cell motility. In Myxococcus xanthus, T4P are unipolarly localized and undergo pole-to-pole oscillations synchronously with cellular reversals. We investigated the mechanisms underlying these oscillations. We show that several T4P proteins localize symmetrically in clusters at both cell poles between reversals, and these clusters remain stationary during reversals. Conversely, the PilB and PilT motor ATPases that energize extension and retraction, respectively, localize to opposite poles with PilB predominantly at the piliated and PilT predominantly at the non-piliated pole, and these proteins oscillate between the poles during reversals. Therefore, T4P pole-to-pole oscillations involve the disassembly of T4P machinery at one pole and reassembly of this machinery at the opposite pole. Fluorescence recovery after photobleaching experiments showed rapid turnover of YFP–PilT in the polar clusters between reversals. Moreover, PilT displays bursts of accumulation at the piliated pole between reversals. These observations suggest that the spatial separation of PilB and PilT in combination with the noisy PilT accumulation at the piliated pole allow the temporal separation of extension and retraction. This is the first demonstration that the function of a molecular machine depends on disassembly and reassembly of its individual parts

News Accuracy in Switzerland and Italy

Nearly 80 years of accuracy research in the United States has documented that the press frequently errs, but empirical study about news accuracy elsewhere in the world is absent. This article presents an accuracy audit of Swiss and Italian daily regional newspapers. Replicating US research, the study offers a trans-Atlantic perspective of news accuracy. To compare newspaper accuracy in Switzerland and Italy to longitudinal accuracy research in the United States, the study followed closely the methodology pioneered by Charnley (1936) and adapted by Maier (2005). News sources found factual inaccuracy in 60 percent of Swiss newspaper stories they reviewed, compared to 48 percent of US and 52 percent of Italian newspapers examined. The results show that newspaper inaccuracy—and its corrosive effect on media credibility—transcends national borders and journalism cultures. Nowadays, digitization offers new ways of implementing correction policies. Media organizations need, however, to adapt to these changes and to adapt their structures in particular to new forms of participative and interactive two-way communication