Everyday Life Research Articles

Free Berlin: Art, Urban Politics, and Everyday Life by Briana J. Smith (review)

Free Berlin: Art, Urban Politics, and Everyday Life by Briana J. Smith (review)

Conceptions of Everyday Life in Information Science

ABSTRACTThis panel examines conceptions of everyday life in Information Science. Several theories about everyday life and its information phenomena will be reviewed and analyzed for their origins, distinctions, and divergent claims. Four expert panelists who have published on these matters will encapsulate their ideas, and there will be a video interlude, as well. By design, the panel Agenda features short opening statements, leaving 40 minutes to discuss: How do existing notions of everyday life within Information Science bring information into focus in different ways? Are informational conceptions of everyday life adequate or wanting of critical re‐examination? In keeping with ASIS&T's multiperspective community, inputs will be sought from students, practitioners, first‐time conference attendees, and other groups, in turn. If, as Marcia J. Bates claims, we are “…always looking for the red thread of information in the social texture of people's lives” (1999, p. 1048) then we need to individually and collectively reflect on the nature of everyday life.

Real-time biopsychosocial antecedents and correlates of functional neurological symptoms in daily life: A pilot remote monitoring technology study

Functional neurological symptom disorder (FNSD) is a neuropsychiatric diagnosis referring to symptoms resembling those of neurological disorders, occurring without causal neuropathology. FNSD has a complex biopsychosocial aetiology but its mechanisms are poorly understood. Remote monitoring technologies (RMT) could provide critical insights into functional neurological symptoms (FNS) in real-world contexts. We examined the feasibility and acceptability of a novel RMT protocol, to identify psychobiological correlates and antecedents of FNS in everyday life. Seventeen individuals with FNS (seizures/motor) and 17 healthy controls (HC) completed ecological momentary assessments (EMA) eight times daily for 1-week, reporting FNS severity, associated physical and psychological symptoms, and subjectively significant events. Sleep quality was reported daily. Physiological variables were measured using wearable Fitbit 5 devices. Multilevel modelling examined variables associated with FNS variability. Average EMA completion rates were good in both groups (≥80%). At week-level, the FNS group reported significantly greater subjective arousal, pain, fatigue, dissociation, negative affect, daily events, stressful events, and sleep duration, compared to HC. Objective sleep disturbance and duration, and resting heartrate, were also significantly greater in the FNS sample. FNS severity correlated significantly with daily events, affect, subjective arousal, pain, fatigue and sleep disturbance, at day- or within-day levels. Daily events and negative affect were the most prominent time-lagged predictors of within-day moment-to-moment FNS severity. RMTs are feasible and acceptable tools for investigation of FNS in real-world settings, revealing daily events and negative affect as possible triggers of FNS. Interventions targeting affective reactivity and regulation might be beneficial in this group. Larger-scale, longer-term RMT studies are needed in this population.

“I don’t speak correctly”

The aim of this paper is to describe the linguistic attitudes of Galician speakers in Costa da Morte towards their own variation of the language. Although Costa da Morte is a region where people predominantly use Galician, rather than Spanish, in their everyday lives, they often have a negative attitude towards the non-standardised version of Galician they speak. This article examines the sociocultural context of the Galician language and explores how attitudes are influenced not by another dominant language system, but by the emergence of a prestigious standard version of the language.

Negotiating connections, confinements, and neighbourhood places: Older adults’ everyday well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond

The COVID-19 pandemic profoundly disrupted society and raised concerns about the well-being of older adults. Today, many people have abandoned ‘pandemic protocols’ but questions remain about the pandemic's longer term impacts on older adults. We used digitally mediated photovoice to explore older adults’ well-being in the context of their everyday lives, early in the pandemic and again two years later. Nine apartment-dwelling older adults who lived in high-density neighbourhoods in Vancouver, Canada participated in our study. We holistically considered how five dimensions of well-being were interrelated to shape experiences: material, relational, subjective, psychological, and environmental. We explored positive and negative aspects of these dimensions in relation to two key themes: (i) negotiating comfort, purpose and confinement at home, and (ii) navigating neighbourhood places amidst pandemic disruptions. Material resources to meet one's needs (e.g., communication technology, hobbies) and access to public and private greenspaces were assets. However, some participants experienced increased barriers to maintaining the five overlapping dimensions of well-being we examined; these participants viewed their homes negatively, and engaged less with their neighbourhoods over time. We emphasize how older adults’ well-being during the pandemic was a dynamic and, at times, precarious process. Understanding how interrelated dimensions shape older adult well-being might ultimately inform practices and policies that promote age-friendly cities.

Embodied leisure experiences of nature-based activities for people living with dementia.

This article adopts an embodiment lens to explore the individual leisure experiences of people living with dementia when engaging in nature-based pursuits. It focuses on how people living with dementia frame their everyday experiences of nature and how these are shaped by any cognitive challenges and/or other comorbidities affecting physical health. Taking a phenomenological research approach, we interviewed 15 people living with dementia and 15 family carers of people with dementia to explore how people with dementia engage with nature as a subjective leisure experience. We analysed their accounts using reflexive thematic analysis. The findings reveal how people living with dementia frame their experiences of nature-based pursuits through three interlinked themes of 'bodily feelings and emotions', 'sense of self and identity' and 'connectivity to others'. The paper contributes to knowledge by examining through the lens of embodiment a neglected and overlooked dimension of everyday leisure: how nature is encountered, negotiated and enjoyed. The paper illustrates how nature and the outdoors may help people living with dementia to continue to enjoy prior leisure pursuits and thus achieve a degree of continuity in their everyday lives.

Longitudinal follow-up of hearing, speech, and language skills in 6-year-old children with congenital moderate hearing loss

ObjectivesChildren born with moderate hearing loss present with speech and language outcomes at both ends of the spectrum. To explore reasons for this, the objective of this study was to follow up a group of children born with moderate sensorineural hearing loss at 6 years of age (n=7) by investigating their outcomes in hearing, speech, and language development from time point of hearing aid fitting at 6 months. Another objective was to investigate the relationship between earlier outcomes on precursing variables to the current status in auditory, speech and language development. MethodEarlier data from a project with the same participants of auditory variables, speech, and language development were compared to the current study outcomes at 6 years of age. Children in this study performed standardized tests of phonology (SVANTE), expressive vocabulary (BNT), and speech-in-noise test (Hagerman´s sentences). Parents reported on their child´s functional auditory performance in everyday life (PEACH), and demographics and general development (questionnaire). Etiology and frequency of speech and language-directed intervention from time point of diagnosis to 6 years of age were collected through medical journals. ResultsHearing levels were stable over time in all children but one, who had received bilateral cochlear implants. Performance on speech-in-noise testing varied in aided condition (-0.8 to 8, mean 2.65, SD 3.09) and unaided condition (7.2 dB to 21.2 dB, mean 12.06, SD 4.82). Scores on the PEACH indicated further review in four of the seven children. Mean group score on consonant proficiency had increased from 3 to 6 years of age and were within age norms. Vocabulary scores were below the norms of children with typical hearing. Outcomes on vocabulary measures at 2.5 years years showed strong correlations that were significant to scores on the BNT at 6 years of age (r = 0.87, p = 0.05). Correlations between hours of hearing aid use and vocabulary was not significant at 6 years of age. The frequency of intervention sessions in the first 6 years varied between participants (4 to 55, mean 19.1, SD 17.1). ConclusionDespite homogeneous hearing and other background variables in the participants from birth, large individual variations in speech and language outcomes at 6 years of age were found. Considering the many factors involved that impact the development of children with moderate hearing loss, the results suggest that monitoring early precursors in auditory, speech and language development may be helpful in setting commensurate goals for each child. Detecting additional conditions that may pose challenges in future speech and language as early as possible is important. There is ample room for improvement in terms of increasing the frequency of intervention for children with moderate hearing loss and their families.

Cytotoxic effect of polystyrene nanoplastics in human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVECs) and normal rat kidney cells (NRK52E)

Plastics play a crucial role in nearly each aspect of societal production and everyday life, therefore making them one of the most widespread pollutants on a global scale. Because synthetic plastics are not entirely biodegradable, they often remain in the environment and fragment into micro- and nanoplastic particles. The detrimental impacts of nanoplastics on the environment and human health have received substantial worldwide interest in recent years. However, the effects of nanoplastics on human health have not yet been fully explored. Our study aimed to investigate the cytotoxic effects of polystyrene nanoplastics on two distinct mammalian cell lines: normal rat kidney cells (NRK52E) and human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVECs). Results showed that polystyrene nanoplastics generate cytotoxicity in both NRK52E and HUVECs in a concentration- and time-dependent manner. Additionally, polystyrene nanoplastics induced pro-oxidant levels (e.g., reactive oxygen species and hydrogen peroxide) and reduced antioxidants (glutathione content and glutathione peroxidase enzyme activity) in both types of cells. We also found that polystyrene nanoplastics cause apoptosis in both NRK52E and HUVECs, as shown by the activation of the caspase-3 enzyme and the loss of mitochondrial membrane potential. Interestingly, it was noticed that the vulnerability of HUVECs cells against polystyrene nanoplastics was a little higher than that of NRK52E cells. Also, the cell toxicity caused by polystyrene nanoplastics in NRK52E and HUVECs was effectively alleviated by co-exposure to a reactive oxygen species inhibitor, N-acetyl-cysteine. This suggests that oxidative stress might be one of the pathways that polystyrene nanoplastics cause cell toxicity. The present work warrants future study to explore the toxicity mechanisms of polystyrene nanoplastics in appropriate in vivo models.

Density textures: the crowd, everyday life, and urban poverty in Manila

ABSTRACT While there is a long and varied history of research on urban density, there is little work examining how high-density urbanism (HDU) is perceived and experienced amongst marginalized residents. Yet, paying attention to how residents understand density offers important insight into what density is and to how it matters for cities. Drawing on research in one of the world’s densest and most unequal cities, Manila, we develop the concept of “density textures” to address this gap. We examine density textures through three key inter-related themes: negotiating space, the unruly crowd, and material substrates. We conclude with reflections for future research.

Emotional clarity in daily life is associated with reduced indecisiveness and greater goal pursuit.

Affect-as-information theory posits that understanding of one's emotions (i.e., emotional clarity) can be leveraged to make decisions and attain goals. Furthermore, recent work has emphasized the dynamic nature of emotional clarity and its fluctuations in daily life. Therefore, we sought to test how momentary emotional clarity, experienced in everyday life, would be associated with levels of indecisiveness and goal pursuit. Following affect-as-information, we hypothesized that emotional clarity would be associated with lower indecisiveness but greater goal pursuit. We also hypothesized that indecisiveness would be associated with less goal pursuit with momentary emotional clarity being a potential moderator of this association. Adults (N = 215, Mage = 44.3) experiencing a range of depression, a disorder characterized by indecisiveness, completed a self-report measure of indecisiveness and 2 weeks of experience sampling assessing momentary emotional clarity, goal pursuit, and negative affect. Momentary emotional clarity showed robust links to lower indecisiveness and greater goal pursuit that were not accounted for by negative affect. We did not observe a link between indecisiveness and goal pursuit. Emotional clarity appears to play a role in motivational and cognitive processes that unfold in daily life. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Artificial Intelligence (AI) In Dental Clinical Practice

Artificial intelligence (AI) characterized as the ability of a machine to mimic human intelligence, has been a breakthrough in technological advancements during the last few decades and has made a huge impact on our everyday life. In current scenario, it has become necessary for the dental professionals too to get oriented with clinical as well as technological advancement to provide easy, rapid, relatively cost-effective and excellent patient care. In dentistry, artificial intelligence has been playing a significant role in improving diagnosis, treatment planning and quality of patient care. But dental practice involves more than just disease diagnosis and includes evaluating correlation between clinical and radiographic findings and administering customized definitive treatment to the patients. Hence, AI cannot replace dentists but can definitely help reducing his efforts and assisting him in decision making. This review provides information about the existence of this new technology, its current applications and its influence on dental practice

Reviews

Kathy E. Ferguson, Letterpress Revolution; The Politics of Anarchist Print Culture Reviewed by Constance Bantman Benjamin Franks, Anarchisms, Postanarchisms and Ethics Reviewed by Iwona Janicka Paul Dobraszczyk, Architecture and Anarchism: Building without Authority Reviewed by Tim Waterman Tom Wetzel, Overcoming Capitalism: Strategy for the Working Class in the 21st Century Reviewed by Nathan Jun Tim Waterman, The Landscape of Utopia: Writings on Everyday Life, Taste, Democracy, and Design Reviewed by Rhiannon Firth Richard Gilman Opalsky, The Communism of Love: An Inquiry into the Poverty of Exchange Value Reviewed by Koshka Duff and Chris Rossdale

Eating practices of young people in lifeworld contexts of residential care

ABSTRACT Eating practices are central to the everyday life of the addressees of pedagogical organisations. However, the eating practices of young people who live in residential care groups have rarely been the focus of educational research. This article presents the findings of an ethnographic research project on the eating practices of adolescents living in these facilities in Germany. We examined the participants’ eating practices in their everyday lives by studying residential care groups. In this article, the eating practices of young people in the lifeworld contexts of family, peer group, school, vocational training, or work are studied. Changes in lifeworlds and eating practices caused by the COVID-19 pandemic are also addressed. Furthermore, the article discusses the ethnographic research methods and the adaptations of these methods to the post-pandemic condition.

Unveiling Digital Mirrors: Decoding Gendered Body Poses in Instagram Imagery

Social media platforms have had a significant impact on people's everyday lives worldwide and imagery on social media has become a vital means of practicing views of the self and communicating them to others. Albeit a significant proportion of people frequently upload self-representations on social media, this source of information on individuals, groups, and societies remains under-examined within the social sciences and neighboring disciplines. In our study, we focus on gender-stereotypical body-posing in self-portraits on social media. While sociology has examined gender stereotypes for decades, research lacks empirical evidence on representations in digital contexts as well as novel forms of stereotyping. We present a scalable and transferable methodology for analyzing body poses in images on the social media platform Instagram by combining neural network pose detection with an unsupervised learning approach. Based on a clustering algorithm applied to gender-annotated imagery, we identify 150 body posing clusters. Our results reveal significant gender differences in 20 percent of clusters, many of which represent gender-stereotypical body poses addressed in sociological literature. Moreover, we can identify new stereotypical poses related to smartphone technology and social media trends. This study represents a novel approach to utilizing large-scale image data for social science research and contributes to a better understanding of the consolidation and reproduction of gender stereotypes in digital realms.

Современность имени Иммануила Канта. К вопросу о теоретических и практических истоках проекта Модерна

The article discusses the question of the theoretical and practical origins of the project of Modernity in the philosophy of Immanuel Kant. The theory of reflexive modernity was emerging in the second half of the 20th century. Ac­cording to its positions, historical development and social transformations derive their energy from resolving emerging contradictions through an appeal to the pub­lic reason. Modernity turns out to be a fundamentally mobile and dialogical process, the maintenance of which requires a complex culture of thought and ac­tion. The author offers a critical view at the optimistic sentiments of the theorists of the end of the last century, who considered the emerging contradictions to be fundamentally solvable. The ambiguous consequences of the end of globaliza­tion, the environmental crisis and the digitalization of everyday life turned out to be among the main reasons for rethinking the general framework of theorizing about modernity as a project that must be consistently implemented. The claim to build a general theory of modernity has given way to alarmist and situational discourses, although the influence of the Western rationalist attitude remains. The article hypothesizes that one of the reasons for the crisis of the philosophical narrative about modernity was the ideologization of Enlightenment thought. Thus, the ideas of I. Kant turned into ideologemes justifying the existing world order, the beneficiaries of which are a minority. The author shows that de­spite the existing grounds for this, we are talking about a private interpretation of the principles of practical philosophy of the German philosopher. Actual modernity can rightfully bear the name of Immanuel Kant, but it is the critical analysis of its most widespread interpretation that can be productive for solving the key problems of the modern world

Effects of climate change on migration in Latin America and Caribbean: a scoping review

Climate change-induced natural disasters such as hurricanes, landslides, forest fires, and changes in precipitation directly affect rural sectors that depend on field production and other dimensions of everyday life. This generates the mobilization of people from their homes to safer places within the same country or across borders. There is a lack of information on the impacts of climate change on environmental migrants in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). This scoping review aims to describe the scientific evidence of the health effects of climate change on migrant in LAC. The review was conducted using databases from PubMed, Web of Science (WoS), and Google Scholar in English, Spanish and Portuguese. After screening the title, abstract, and full text of identified hits (n = 726), 31 records were finally included. Evidence indicates that climate change relates to health and healthcare, psychosocial and infrastructure dimensions among migrants in LAC. Health effects refer to limited access to healthcare, underdiagnosis, increased susceptibility to diseases and mental health conditions like stress and anxiety. Psychosocial dimensions refer to a heightened risk of sexual and gender-based violence, social marginalization, family separation, and loss of identity and culture. Infrastructure refers to environmental degradation and agricultural and urban infrastructure destruction. Multiple adaptations to these conditions are described among migrant populations in the region. Recommendations for improvements are presented. This scoping review suggests climate change’s significant health, psychosocial, and infrastructural associations with migrants in Latin America.

Top-down attention shifts behavioral and neural event boundaries in narratives with overlapping event scripts

Understanding and remembering the complex experiences of everyday life relies critically on prior schematic knowledge about how events in our world unfold over time. How does the brain construct event representations from a library of schematic scripts, and how does activating a specific script impact the way that events are segmented in time? We developed a novel set of 16 audio narratives, each of which combines one of four location-relevant event scripts (restaurant, airport, grocery store, and lecture hall) with one of four socially relevant event scripts (breakup, proposal, business deal, and meet cute), and presented them to participants in an fMRI study and a separate online study. Responses in the angular gyrus, parahippocampal gyrus, and subregions of the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) were driven by scripts related to both location and social information, showing that these regions can track schematic sequences from multiple domains. For some stories, participants were primed to attend to one of the two scripts by training them to listen for and remember specific script-relevant episodic details. Activating a location-related event script shifted the timing of subjective event boundaries to align with script-relevant changes in the narratives, and this behavioral shift was mirrored in the timing of neural responses, with mPFC event boundaries (identified using a hidden Markov model) aligning to location-relevant rather than socially relevant boundaries when participants were location primed. Our findings demonstrate that neural event dynamics are actively modulated by top-down goals and provide new insight into how narrative event representations are constructed through the activation of temporally structured prior knowledge.

Secret Information Needs & Practices of LGBTQ+ Young Adults

ABSTRACTYoung adults have been shown to prefer online sources when searching for information about sensitive topics, such as sexual health (Baker et al., 2020; Buhi et al., 2009). This is especially true for LGBTQ+ young adults, who may want to keep potentially sensitive information needs about their sexuality or gender identity a secret as they explore their identity, or because they may need to for safety reasons (Delmonaco & Haimson, 2022; Kitzie, 2019). This pilot survey study aimed to explore what types of information needs LGBTQ+ young adults may keep secret from the people in their lives, at what age they had their first secret information need, what skills helped them to fulfill their secret information needs, and which skills/resources they would have liked to have when trying to address their secret information needs. Preliminary results suggest that topics relating to health and participants' LGBTQ+ identities were more likely to be kept secret than other everyday life information needs.

Attitudes of Slovenian School Teachers Towards Smart Educational Humanoid Robots in the Classroom

Robots are becoming an increasingly important part of our everyday lives and, consequently, of the education landscape. They can take many forms in education, from simple robots that students assemble and program to more complex (humanoid) robots that can, for example, travel distances when working remotely. The attitude of Slovenian teachers towards the introduction of smart educational humanoid robots into everyday school life was explored. A questionnaire was designed, and the current state of teachers’ attitudes was analysed based on the responses of participating teachers. The results show that negative attitudes towards the use of robots in the classroom prevail and that teachers do not feel qualified to integrate smart educational humanoid robots in education. Statistically significant differences between male and female teachers also emerge in some of the statements. However, teachers expressed positive attitudes towards concrete examples of robot use.

Rules of succession through a focus on everyday life based on the кadiaskers’ notes of the XVII–XVIII centuries

The goal of the research is to clarify the rules of succession through a focus on everyday life in the Crimean Khanate. The relevance of the research lies in the fact that until now both individual aspects and the general everyday life of the Crimean Khanate have not been studied. In turn, this is due to the fact that the sources of the Crimean Khanate period are mostly written in the Arabic script. Much attention in the article is paid to new facts revealed during the study of the Kadiaskers’ notebooks of the XVII–XVIII centuries. An analysis of the recorded court decisions allowed us to clarify not only one aspect of the extensive legislative system, but also to imagine the everyday life in the Crimean Khanate. When writing the article, the following scientific-research methods were used: comparative-historical method, linguistic analysis method and others. The identified examples of court decisions from the Kadiaskers’ notebooks have been transliterated and translated from Arabic (the Ottoman language) into Russian, which will significantly facilitate the work for future research. During the research, it has been found out that the executive and legal authorities in the Crimean Khanate worked strictly according to the established Muslim legislative system, the Sharia laws. Each individual example taken and examined reveals the details of life situations and gives an opportunity to look into the everyday life of an ordinary person.