Deep Consciousness Research Articles

Sustainable development and green chemistry in chemistry education

Sustainable development is one of the most frequently used terms in today’s political debate. Our current understanding of sustainable development as a regulatory idea was basically defined by the Agenda 21: ‘‘Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.’’ As a consequence, all our individual and political actions should be reflected in the light of their societal, economical and ecological sustainability. This claim concerns every field of society, among them particularly chemistry and chemistry education. Both fields should reflect on how chemistry and chemistry education can contribute to more sustainability in our society, today and in future. One of chemistry’s contributions to meeting the challenge of more sustainability in the development of our society is the promotion of a sustainable chemistry, in research and industrial production. Under the name of green chemistry (or in Europe also sustainable chemistry) a lot of effort has been undertaken to make future chemistry less poisonous and less hazardous. Green chemistry aims at making chemistry more energy efficient, at reducing waste disposal, and/or producing innovative products with less consumption of natural resources. Alternative processes and reaction pathways are designed, new materials and products are developed contributing to meet our needs today, but with taking more care of the interests of future generations. Modern chemistry education is challenged by both the political aim of a sustainable development of our society in general as well from the call for green chemistry strategies in chemical research and industry in particular. School chemistry education should promote competencies of the young generation to become scientifically literate. This means chemistry education has to contribute to making students capable of actively participating in society. Competencies need to be promoted to allow students to understand and participate in societal debate about applications of chemistry and technology. One prerequisite is that students should achieve substantial chemistry knowledge in the context of respective sustainability issues to understand the underlying developments, alternatives and dilemmas. But, subject matter knowledge will not be enough. The students as future citizens also need to learn how societal debate about questions related to chemistry, industry and the environment functions as well as develop skills to involve themselves together with others in the societal processes of democratic decision making. But this is only one side of the coin. Society can only decide about alternatives for raising sustainability in chemistry related developments and businesses if there are any. Future chemists and chemical engineers need to learn what a more resource efficient and environmentally friendly chemistry for the future might look alike. That means the ideas of a green chemistry should become part of their training from the very start. Students of chemistry programs at university should be guided to develop a deep consciousness of the importance of sustainability strategies in chemistry research and industry, and also to develop knowledge and skills to operate them. This themed issue on ‘‘sustainable development and green chemistry in chemistry education’’ therefore focuses on more sustainable chemistry in secondary as well as in tertiary education. It starts with two perspective papers summing up the state of the art in Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) in secondary school chemistry as well as practices related to the ideas of green chemistry in higher education. Both perspectives will be illustrated by a kaleidoscope of examples from both areas in the other contributions to this issue. Three examples will provide ideas of how to include ESD in the secondary chemistry curriculum. Fields of study are using environmental issues as a context for chemistry education, using the debate about plastics as a socio-scientific issue for chemistry education, or making the analysis of the environmental impact of chemical synthesis a part of an organic chemistry course in upper secondary schools. Another set of papers will reflect the role of sustainability issues and green chemistry in higher education. These papers focus on both changing the curricula towards embedding explicit lessons on sustainable development in higher chemistry and chemical engineering education, but also on how to put the principles of green chemistry into practice in higher chemistry teaching. The latter step can be achieved, for example, by incorporating alternative reagents or making technical problems from the sustainability debate a context for higher chemistry learning. Since 2005 we have been living in the UN World Decade of an Education for Sustainable Development which will end in 2014. This current issue highlights that sustainability issues as part of this development already have increasingly become a prominent factor in contemporary chemistry education – both on secondary University of Bremen, Germany. E-mail: ingo.eilks@uni-bremen.de Alpe-Adria-University, Klagenfurt, Austria. E-mail: Franz.Rauch@uni-klu.ac.at Chemistry Education Research and Practice Dynamic Article Links

Forgetting Sedgwick

Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick was not a historian of sexuality, but she was keenly aware of the historicity of sexuality and erotic desire in ways unlike other major figures in queer theory. This fact has gone largely unnoticed in queer studies, a field dominated by literary and cultural critics that has an uneasy relation with academic history. An example of the historicity of Sedgwick's theories of sexuality can be seen in her famous critique of Foucault's Great Paradigm Shift—that imaginary moment in the late nineteenth century when the category of the modern homosexual was thought to displace the category of the sodomite (Epistemology 44). The formulation of axiom 5 in Epistemology of the Closet—“the historical search for a Great Paradigm Shift may obscure the present conditions of sexual identity” (44)—reveals a deep consciousness of the “irreducible historicity of all things … discerning the time-and-place specificity of a thing, identifying the ways in which it relates to its context or milieu, and determining the extent to which it is both enabled and hamstrung by this relationship,” to cite the historian Hayden White's description of history as critique (224). If Foucauldian genealogy (or a “history of the present”) “begins with an analysis of blind spots in our current understanding, or with a problematization of what passes for ‘given’ in contemporary thought” (Halperin 13), it is vital, as Sedgwick puts it, to “denaturalize the present, rather than the past” (Epistemology 48). Sedgwick's vantage point on a queer past pivots around “homosexuality as we conceive of it today” (45), a phrase as resonant now in sexuality studies as was Foucault's reference to the homosexual as a species (Foucault 43). So entrenched are the modern categories of identity that Sedgwick repeats the phrase over and over in her cogent analysis of our current conceptions of sexuality. Such insistent differentiation between an alien past and an equally—if not more—alien present, the distinction between “them” and “us,” reverberates across the history of homosexuality. Consider, for instance, Matt Houlbrook's discussion of men who refrain from using “‘gay’ in the way we would use the term today” (xiii) or Jonathan Ned Katz's understanding of the presentness of our present standpoint—“what we today recognize as erotic feelings and acts” (6).

Intracerebral Hemorrhage From a Ruptured Aneurysm at the Site of Anastomosis 27 Years After Superficial Temporal Artery-Middle Cerebral Artery Bypass -Case Report-

A 77-year-old female presented with a very rare case of intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH) from a ruptured aneurysm at the site of the anastomosis 27 years after superficial temporal artery-middle cerebral artery (STA-MCA) bypass manifesting as sudden onset of unconsciousness and right hemiparesis. Computed tomography (CT) on admission demonstrated massive ICH in the left frontoparietal region. Magnetic resonance angiography showed good patency of the anastomosis and no obvious aneurysm, but three-dimensional CT (3D-CT) angiography revealed a small aneurysm at the site of the left STA-MCA anastomosis. Emergency evacuation of the hematoma was performed, and the aneurysm was trapped and resected after ligation. After the operation, she continued to exhibit deep consciousness disturbance. Unfortunately, her general condition grew steadily worse and she died 3 months later. Patients who undergo STA-MCA anastomosis should be carefully followed up by periodical imaging examinations. 3D-CT angiography is very useful to detect aneurysm formation at the anastomosis site.

The United States and War Propaganda: from the Spanish-American War in Cuba (1898) to the Invasion of Iraq (2003)

In 1897 Theodore Roosevelt wrote to a friend “I should welcome almost any war, for I think this country needs one”. He was thinking in his deep consciousness that “the Empire” needed war. In 1898 “the splendid little war” against Spain in Cuba was the answer to this expectation. Many decades later, following the dislocation of the USSR and the end of the Cold War, the USA emerged as the only superpower. It was in this context that the September 11 attacks took place. In 2003, Washington declared war on Iraq despite the international opposition. The USA waged a tremendous PR campaign to convince public opinion of the potential threat of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and of the involvement of the Saddam Hussein regime in the attacks against the World Trade Center. None of these reasons proved to be true, but the war showed the strength of different political and industrial lobbies.

Reality shows: uma abordagem psicossocial

Desde os primórdios da civilização, o ser humano mostra necessidade de representar cenicamente seus dramas pessoais e vicissitudes existenciais. O "reality show" é uma das versões pós-modernas da encenação da vida humana. Este artigo, por meio de uma pesquisa bibliográfica, analisa criticamente as relações existentes entre o "reality show" e aspectos psicossociais do comportamento humano. Conclui-se que tais programas televisivos são o retrato da contemporaneidade, ou seja, revelam a morte do sujeito, a fugacidade das experiências vividas, a desvalorização da história e o culto à imagem e à superficialidade. Por meio da sedução do espectador, mobilizam-se aspectos primitivos de seu psiquismo, fazendo com que ele se sinta narcisicamente poderoso e onipotente e se acredite dono do destino dos participantes do programa. Sugerem-se novos estudos que contribuam para a reflexão crítica e maior conscientização.

Human Development VIII: A Theory of “Deep” Quantum Chemistry and Cell Consciousness: Quantum Chemistry Controls Genes and Biochemistry to Give Cells and Higher Organisms Consciousness and Complex Behavior

Deep quantum chemistry is a theory of deeply structured quantum fields carrying the biological information of the cell, making it able to remember, intend, represent the inner and outer world for comparison, understand what it “sees”, and make choices on its structure, form, behavior and division. We suggest that deep quantum chemistry gives the cell consciousness and all the qualities and abilities related to consciousness. We use geometric symbolism, which is a pre-mathematical and philosophical approach to problems that cannot yet be handled mathematically. Using Occams razor we have started with the simplest model that works; we presume this to be a many-dimensional, spiral fractal. We suggest that all the electrons of the large biological molecules orbitals make one huge “cell-orbital”, which is structured according to the spiral fractal nature of quantum fields. Consciousness of single cells, multi cellular structures as e.g. organs, multi-cellular organisms and multi-individual colonies (like ants) and human societies can thus be explained by deep quantum chemistry. When biochemical activity is strictly controlled by the quantum-mechanical super-orbital of the cell, this orbital can deliver energetic quanta as biological information, distributed through many fractal levels of the cell to guide form and behavior of an individual single or a multi-cellular organism. The top level of information is the consciousness of the cell or organism, which controls all the biochemical processes. By this speculative work inspired by Penrose and Hameroff we hope to inspire other researchers to formulate more strict and mathematically correct hypothesis on the complex and coherence nature of matter, life and consciousness.

Teaching History in Twentieth Century Nigeria: The Challenges of Change

The twilight of the twentieth century saw major developments in the world, which profoundly redefined people's perceptions of and interest in history, both as a mode of enquiry and as an academic discipline. The significance of such changes would appear to have found resonance in the Third World. The most important of these changes included “the revolution in IT, which transformed and democratized scholarship, and the further expansion in higher education; the shift from sociology to anthropology as the most fruitful subject from which historians were now borrowing; the influence of Michel Foucault, postmodernism and the ‘linguistic turn;’ the rise of women's history, gender history, and the reconfiguration of ‘imperial’ history; and a broader shift away from the search for causation to the search for meaning.’ Some of these were to pose serious challenges either to the ways in which history was perceived by civil society or practiced by professionals. It also affected the very possibility of doing history at all. But the details, complexity, and magnitude of the changes varied from country to country in different ways.In 1993 the “Mission Statement” of the newly-introducedIfe Journal of Historygave an indication of the travails of the discipline of history in contemporary Nigeria: More than at any other time, the discipline of history today in Nigeria, is under severe stress. Perplexed by economic crises of immense proportions and dominated by the craze for money and by the politics of the moment, we have become distorted in our orientation and deluded of any deep consciousness of history. We live as if all that matters is today. In private and in public, our citizens are routinely treated to dreary lectures on the irrelevance and insignificance of a systematic knowledge of our past…We seemed determined to go on record as the first nation to make a meaningful progress without reference to the accumulated values, experiences and culture of yesteryears. … The discipline of history is routinely dismissed as dispensable. History which used to be an attractive subject has dropped to the bottom of the ladder of priorities for intending undergraduates. Historians receive little or no regard in a society that is in a haste to modernise and that places emphasis solely on science and the acquisition of material wealth.…

O humor como arma estética e identitária nas obras de Dany Laferriere e Yinka Shonibare

A proposta deste texto é articular a autobiografia do escritor canadense de origem haitiana Dany Laferrière (1953-), autor de uma obra composta de 10 romances (narrativas) que ele intitulou Une autobiographie américaine, com o trabalho do artista plástico britânico de origem nigeriana Yinka Shonibare (1962-), sobretudo no que diz respeito ao tratamento do humor, da transgressão e da paródia de valores e estereótipos sobre o negro. É importante detectar como estes dois artistas diaspóricos, nascidos na segunda metade do século XX, que vivem no entre-lugar entre seus países de origem e os grandes centros, se inserem na tradição ocidental, usando do humor como arma estética e identitária para marcar a consciência aguda de indivíduos subalternizados por injunções históricas, ao se depararem com a defasagem existente entre o que seu espírito livre deseja e uma auto-imagem deformada e caricatural que o espelho da sociedade lhes mostra.

Hidden hands: working-class women and Victorian social-problem fiction

Johnson, Patricia E. 2001. Hidden Hands: Working-Class Women and Victorian Social-Problem Fiction. Athens: Ohio University Press. $55.00 hc. $24.95 sc. 224 pp. It has always seemed to me imminently obvious that a literary scholar whose interest focuses on nineteenth-century British industrial and social-problem novelsthose most mundane of stories, in no demeaning sense of the word-should have as a corollary interest the relationships of the novels to the world outside literature. It seems only consistent that a fascination with such novels should be paired with a deep consciousness of the life conditions which give rise to and in turn arise from the narrative force of the novels examined in Patricia E. Johnson's Hidden Hands: Working-Class Women and Victorian Social-Problem Fiction. Such seems to be Johnson's original intent, but Hidden Hands is an uneven examination of relationships between fictional and public discourses of working women's social and political roles, moving between a firm placement of literary representations in their social context and a stubbornly literary-in the more demeaning sense-close reading of the novels.Yet within these bounds, it is a useful resource which will engage the attention of those wishing to know more about images of working women in a number of novels, in particular, Charlotte Elizabeth Tonna's Helen Fleetwood, Benjamin Disraeli's Sybil, or Two Nations, Elizabeth Gaskell's Mary Barton, and Charlotte Bronte's Shirley. introduction covers Chapter One, The Death of the Factory Girl; and Chapter Two, Naming the Unnameable: Sexual Harassment and Working-Class Women in Novels of Industry, merely adds more detail to the introduction. What one sees there is a description of the impact on the narrative possibilities of social fiction by the 1842 report of the Children's Employment Commission on industrial working conditions. For with the official reconstruction of working women as sexually dangerous and economically and socially threatening, the interdependence of class and gender norms made it virtually impossible to make factory girls the heroines of their own stories; they had to be written into the class/gender ideology of the time, that is, domesticated, or, if not, punished for their failure to be confined to the labor of the house. Narrative retribution can take the form of disease and death or mutilation, as in Gaskell's North and South; unmarried solitude as in Sybil; invisibility as in Shirley and George Eliot's Felix Holt; victimization by brutal husbands as in Charles Dickens's Hard Times, George Gissling's Nether World, and Rudyard Kipling's Record of Bedalia Herodsfoot; or even editorial deletion, also in Hard Times. As Johnson says in reference to Hard Times, The dead factory girl in heaven becomes the image through which all conflict-both domestic and political-will be magically resolved (41).Alternatively, the factory girl can be singled out as better than her peers and thus amenable to reformation to middle-class feminine ideals: a disguised aristocrat in Sybil, a daughter of a factory worker apprenticed to a milliner by her idealistic father in Mary Barton, an anomalous moral figure in the midst of degradation in Frances Hodgson Burnett's That Lass O' Lowries. As Johnson points out, pre-1842 industrial novels such as Helen Fleetwood (183941) presented powerfully detailed descriptions of factory girls' lives and created images of strong women who claimed autonomy, but, with the exception of Mary Barton (1848), after the Commission's report, both such realities and such women became unnarratable (27). As we see in Chapter Three, Sybil (1845), for example, ambiguously figures women as both particular, classed subjects and as the ideal woman but ends by containing Sybil within the domestic sphere; an unencumbered representation of autonomous working-class women would have exposed only too clearly the contradictions within and between class and gender ideologies. …

Untouchable Pasts: Religion, Identity, and Power among a Central Indian Community, 1780-1950

Untouchable Pasts: Religion, Identity, and Power among a Central Indian Community, 1780-1950

THE WILDERNESS CONDITION: ESSAYS ON ENVIRONMENT AND CIVILIZATION

Review by R. James Tobin Head of Acquisitions, Golda Meir Library, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, PO Box 604, Milwaukee WI 53201-0604. USA. THE WILDERNESS CONDITION: ESSAYS ON ENVIRONMENT AND CIVILIZATION. Edited by Max Oelschlaeger. Washington, D.C. and Covelo, CA: Island Press, c.1992. 345 pp. US$16.00 paper ISBN: 1-55963-190-2. Recycled, acid-free paper. First presented at an interdisciplinary conference on wilderness and civilization in Colorado during 1989, this collection of essays is intended to reach a general audience. In one of these essays, The Etiquette of Freedom , the poet Gary Snyder, author of TURTLE ISLAND and other books, presents, with exquisite sensitivity to language, the many meanings of wild, wilderness, nature, and natural, along with the positive and negative feelings these terms evoke. This essay is one of the best in the collection. Max Oelschlaeger, in Wilderness, Civilization and Language , writes perceptively about Snyder, Aldo Leopold, John Muir, and Thoreau, especially in contrast with Emerson. Thoreau and Muir found wilderness inherently valuable and developed in the nineteenth century the kind of viewpoint that has recently come to be called ecocentrism or deep ecological consciousness. This is in extreme contrast with the views of Gifford Pinchot, founder of the U. S. Forest Service, who saw trees and forests only as resources to be exploited. George Sessions, in Ecocentrism, Wilderness and Global Ecosystem Protection, outlines these differences and then distinguishes eleven reasons for protecting wilderness and wild species. He goes on to discuss radical ecosystem protection zoning proposals made by such people as David Brower, Eugene Odum, Arne Naess, Paul Shepard and others. The most extreme of these proposals would restore central North America to a wilderness condition. The likelihood of this happening would seem to be near the vanishing point of probability, of course, but the political aspects are not discussed here. Aldo Leopold represents a middle view--or a developing range of views in a constant state of tension. He developed a conservation ethic which, as Curt Meine shows in his careful and interesting analysis, proposed conservation of wildlife for human use. However, Leopold also, increasingly, proposed and defended the preservation of nature in its wild state for its own sake. The most personal essay in the collection, by Michael Peter Cohen, centers on a mountain climbing expedition in the Grand Tetons. Dolores LaChapelle contributes an interesting account of the Chinese concept of Li or pattern in nature, which contrasts with the Western notion of laws of nature, and which apparently does not attempt to serve as an explanation of these patterns. Michael Zimmerman, in The Blessing of Otherness: Wilderness and the Human Condition, outlines some views of Heidegger, Susan Griffin and Hans Peter Duerr. Pete A.Y. Gunter discusses Descartes' view of human selfhood as separate from the human body and as apart from nature, which is seen as without value. Erazim Kohak contrasts conceptions of value with perceptions of value. Paul Shepard writes about A Post-Historic Primitivism.

Co-ordination in Great Britain: Trends and Issues

IT was as recently as 1870 that provision was first made in Great Britain to create a national system of elementary education, under School Boards established at local government level for that purpose. By the turn of the century that task had been largely completed. A growing consciousness that for brighter pupils there should be some opportunity beyond elementary school and, perhaps more important, that a more effective instrument was needed at local government level led to the Education Act of 1902, the significant terms of which have been discussed at some length in the preceding article. The war of 1914-18 gave further impetus to the development of the education service, as indeed wars inevitably do, heightening our consciousness of the importance of young people. The Act of 1918, later consolidated with other relevant statutes in the Act of 1921, assigned to local education authorities the duty of making further provision for education beyond the elementary school, and also expanded the scope of their work to include aid for recreational and social activities of young people. So the pattern grew in scope until the war of 1939. This tragedy in world affairs created a new atmosphere, in which there was a deep consciousness that the war would be won not by rich nor poor, not by country nor town, but by all, each contributing according to his capacity. In that setting, the Education Act of 1944 was born. Here was a statute embracing education from the earliest age into adult life and giving local education authorities powers and duties of an extremely wide nature. Their task was, in fact, to secure the education of all the people in their areas, and for this purpose education was conceived as the development of the individual according to age, ability, and aptitude. This was, indeed, a new concept; of its translation into actuality the local education authority was to be the effective co-ordinating instrument, bringing together all those who were concerned with the welfare of chil-

Trends in Old Testament Theology

VERY worker in field of Old Testament is familiar with the death and rebirth of Old Testament theology.' Briefly, from time of Johann Phillip Gabler's inaugural lecture at Altdorf on March 30, 1787, this branch of biblical scholarship was a self-conscious and increasingly significant phase of Old Testament study. Numerous works of first rank were produced through nineteenth century; then suddenly, just after close of century, it came to an abrupt end with posthumous volume by A. B. Davidson, which was at same time one important Old Testament theology by an English-speaking scholar. There ensued years of histories of Israel's with many books of high scholarship and significance. Then in 1930's (with a preliminary work in 1922) Old Testament theologies again began to appear and subject acquired almost at once a respectability and importance which following years have but enhanced.2 This strange double shift in scholarly interest and expression is one of remarkable features of recent biblical study. Yet explanations, whether partial or complete, are at hand. In considerable measure reason is inherent in subject matter. For, on one hand, religion of Israel is now fully recognized to have been subject, just as any other, to a process of growth. Some scholars believe that until prophetic times it was not far removed from a semi-paganism; others wish to trace back into early times, even into patriarchal age, some worthy grasp of exalted faith that presently became glory and greatness of Israel. But both alike admit reality of development in Israel's knowledge of God and in standards of human conduct. A historical treatment of Israel's religion is a sine qua non for those who would understand it. But not less does an organized statement of a matter so complex as a nation's religious faith and practice seem a necessity of rational thought. The Jews, it is true, have through their long history manifested little interest in such formulations. Only in recent times and to a limited extent have they produced theologies of Judaism.' The Jewish emphasis on conformity to group way of life has left large freedom of thought for individual. But Christianity has from first taught centrality of faith, though not without serious misunderstandings and excesses throughout centuries. A statement of content of that faith has always been needed. The creeds of early church were germ of all later theologizing. Christianity has been a theological religion. Thus it has been first of all tension between these two basically valid approaches to religion of ancient Israel that has caused vacillation of interest which we are considering. It was natural, almost inevitable, that with evolutionary concepts of latter half of nineteenth century, growing emphasis on a correct sequence of Old Testament writings, and parallel interest in new study of comparative religion, as it was called, that theological treatment, dominant even long before Gabler, should give way to histories of Israel's religion. Indeed change was less spectacular than our summary sketch would make it appear. For famous and standard Old Testament theologies of period evidence richly operation of new forces and shift of emphasis that was already taking place. They manifest a deep consciousness of historical nature of their subject matter, and even, as in case of Schultz's work, preface their theological structure with a lengthy history of religion. They were in this regard only availing themselves of best thought and insight of contemporary scholarship, and marking a real advance over uncritical methods that had

Where the Goddess of Beauty Prevails Cultural Renaissance in Ceylon

Abstract Stirrings of deep old consciousness are awakening the peoples of the East. Ceylon is no exception. Pendant from India at the south the “pearl” glistens in the sunshine. If ever there were a glistening isle it is this. Of India, yet not of it. Tangled with it racially, and by the trade and wars of many centuries, yet separate. Separate in government, separate in history, separate in race. Ancient and very ancient, newly discovering its old ancientry. Bound there in the mighty growths of the jungle lies buried a whole civilization. There it rests, its location lost, attested to by early records in the Mahavansa, but still undiscovered by modern man. It awaits a new generation, a generation now rising in the youth of Ceylon.

Berson on Ethics and Religion

It is now more than two years since Bergson's long-expected treatise on ethics and religion was published.* The circles of philosophy have duly reacted to the stimulus; the competent critics have spoken; and receding from the immediate pre-occupations of our hurried age, the book is finding its permanent level in the world's deeper consciousness. The voices of authority being silent, the time may have come for the layman to speak, with a due sense of modesty and diffidence. Indeed, the selection of such a topic on the part of one who is no professional philosopher, calls for some apology. It is beside the point to plead that one has sat as a student at Bergson's feet: that is surely no excuse for rushing in where angels fear to tread. More relevant would be the defence that the theme possesses a universal appeal. We are all concerned in a matter where the spiritual fate of man is involved; and from the standpoint of simple common sense the inexpert is free to express himself at his own peril.