Modest Ways Research Articles

Why you shouldn’t serve meat at your next catered event

Much has been written about the ethics of eating meat. Far less has been said about the ethics of serving meat. In this paper I argue that we often shouldn’t serve meat, even if it is morally permissible for individuals to purchase and eat meat. Historically, the ethical conversation surrounding meat has been limited to individual diets, meat producers, and government actors. I argue that if we stop the conversation there, then the urgent moral problems associated with industrial animal agriculture will go unsolved. Instead, we must also consider the important but overlooked role that midsized institutions play in addressing major collective problems. I focus mostly on the harms that industrial animal agriculture inflicts on humans, animals, and the environment, but the discussion bears on other global issues like climate change. Institutional choices are an underexplored avenue for driving social change—their power and influence outstrip individual actions, and they can shape behavior in modest ways that promote social goods. Here I highlight the paradigmatic case of catered events and suggest three ways that institutional actors can reduce meat consumption and shape cultural attitudes surrounding meat: large impact decisions, subtly shaping incentives, and consolidating burdens.

Development of Analytical Profile of Ocimum sanctum L. leaves Powder prepared by Classical and Lyophilization method through Accelerated Stability Studies

Shelf life means the time period during which the potency of a drug remains unaffected from environmental factors or microbial contamination. Nowadays diverse procedures of making powder are available which affect on shelf life of them. Ocimum sanctum L. is most common household herb in Indian subcontinent. Hence, the present study is aimed to develop analytical profile of Ocimum sanctum L. leaves powder by classical and lyophilized method and compare the stability of both the samples. Materials and Methods: Ocimum sanctum L. leaves powder was prepared by two different drying methods and accelerated stability study was conducted as per ICH guideline Q1A (R2). Physicochemical analysis was repeated at interval of 0, 1, 3 and 6 months. Organoleptic parameters, microbial limits and heavy-metal analysis were observed at specific intervals. Result and Discussion: No significant changes were observed in organoleptic characters of both the samples up to storage of 6 months at accelerated condition. The values of physicochemical parameters of both the samples were within the prescribed limit specified in Ayurvedic Pharmacopeia of India. Results of Microbiological limit test were also below the limit and considerably decreased at specific intervals. Heavy metals namely arsenic, cadmium and mercury were not detected and lead was present below detectable limits. Conclusion: Analysis revealed that the classically prepared powder has better shelf life (3.08 years) than lyophilized powder (2.70 years) and also provides the modest and effective ways for optimal Eugenol extraction in accelerated conditions.

물질문화와 맥베스의 스툴

The study of material culture has influenced a wide range of humanities disciplines, and has been the subject of inquiry by archaeologists and social anthropologists, while the study of objects has also been the focus of critical attention in history and literature. Many of these methods have been developed in relation to contemporary materiality, and work on objects from the past has also been shaped by this. In early modern England, objects were seen as marvels that were useful, thought-provoking, wondrous, entertaining, and generated meaning in their own modest ways. Even relatively inexpensive and simply made objects had ingenuity and a clear understanding of how objects performed emotions, so they were not just ideas about things, but meaningful ways of communicating in everyday life. Much of the work on early modern materiality has been done through Shakespeare’s plays, and this article therefore aims to outline the different ways in which recent criticism has related Shakespeare’s plays to early modern material culture, to explore how objects are mediated between the theatrical text and the wider culture through Shakespeare’s plays, and to suggest and explore future scholarly directions in this area through the study of material culture and the construction of identity, production and consumption as part of the early modern period. It argues that greater scholarly attention to forms of material culture, namely early modern objects and the processes associated with them, may offer fruitful new avenues for understanding the ways in which Shakespeare’s plays work with audiences.

Environmental chemical risk factors of breast cancer in Nigeria I: Broad overview

Nigeria is currently experiencing a most disturbing level of incidence rate, morbidity and mortality from the ravages of female breast cancer, with its attendant burden of emotional, social and financial consequences. Tens of thousands of chemicals make their way into our everyday products and environment, with little regard for safety. The need to explore the impact of adverse environmental chemical exposures to breast health in Nigeria informed this study as there is need for public health approach to long term prevention. After exploring the robust scientific database on environmental chemical risk factors for female breast cancer, we found that many mammary toxicants are ubiquitous in our environment in Nigeria but have been taken for granted as inevitable in normal life exposures. This study identifies some of the potential environmental chemical risk factors of breast cancer in Nigeria. We describe the special exposure scenarios in Nigeria and prescribe some modest but practical ways to mitigate exposures. The factors that constitute risk to breast cancer could potentially be modified either through community education or government action and regulation. The subject is discussed in multiple Parts before releasing the manuscripts for publication to prevent criminalizing only a few chemicals if discussed and published to the exclusion of others. To our knowledge, this is the first ever comprehensive work on the subject in the African continent and is useful to typical developing countries as are found in sub-Saharan countries and elsewhere since findings and recommendations are usually generic in nature and mutually beneficial.

A Different Lens: Pegg Clarke, E. G. Shaw and the History of Australian Women’s Photography

Many women were actively engaged in photography in Australia from the nineteenth century. However, women’s contributions to the field are under-represented in extant histories of Australian photography, particularly photography prior to the 1970s. This essay explores some of the reasons for that erasure and offers two acts of historical and textual recovery. Drawing on new archival research, I examine the lives and work of two little-known Australian women photographers of the early twentieth century: Pegg Clarke and Eleanor Georgina Shaw. Pegg Clarke (1890–1956) was a successful studio, portrait and art photographer who was active from the 1910s through to the 1950s. Eleanor Georgina Shaw (E. G. Shaw; 1870–1954) was an amateur street, urban and architectural photographer who was active in Sydney from the 1910s through to the 1930s. In navigating some of the epistemological and practical challenges of working with these archival collections, and at times engaging in what Saidiya Hartman calls ‘critical fabulation’, I weave together the fragmentary remains of these two women’s careers in an attempt to place them on the critical map. I also offer some speculations as to how their work might provide an opportunity to revise, if in modest ways, extant histories of Australian photography.

Pediatric Critical Care Medicine in the COVID-19 Pandemic.

We are facing one of the greatest challenges in the history of critical care medicine as a discipline. The response to the COVID-19 pandemic from all of our colleagues, including all of the caregivers and allied personnel, has been truly exceptional and makes us extremely proud. We are grateful for their skill during uncertain and trying times, when their lives and those of their families are at risk. Our team at the journal has tried to help even in the most modest ways such as providing expedited review for all coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19)-related manuscripts, rapid posting of accepted manuscripts on our journal website, and prompt dissemination of the information through the efforts of our outstanding international Social Media ambassadors. Some of our COVID-related content has generated great interest including the recent timely report by Remy et al (1) titled “Caring for critically ill adults with coronavirus disease 2019 in a PICU: Recommendations by dual trained intensivists,” and the informative accompanying editorial (2). The ability of some of our pediatric critical care medicine caregivers to adapt to provide care to adults has been truly remarkable and we view anything that the journal can do to help as a priority. These represent only two of the many useful reports on COVID-19 that we have published, and a number of additional reports are soon to appear. The pandemic has produced a major surge in manuscript submissions that has led to several unique challenges for the journal. We must do whatever is necessary to get key information to our readership on COVID-19—its impact on critically ill infants and children, and on all facets of the field of pediatric critical care medicine. However, the flurry of COVID-related submissions has been coupled to both a major overall increase in manuscript submissions, and the anticipated challenges in obtaining reviews during a pandemic. It has been necessary to raise the bar for acceptance in Pediatric Critical Care Medicine, but even with that, we have begun to develop a backlog; time from posting on PubMed to print or online publication is increasing. The large volume of submissions has also led to some anticipated delays in manuscript processing and the need for me to personally screen, handle, and/or provide disposition to a larger number of manuscripts than in the past; we apologize for any delays. Thanks for your patience. Striking the right balance here is essential but challenging. To this end, we have been more selective in manuscript acceptance, but we must try to ensure that important research in our field unrelated to COVID-19 is not dismissed. Beyond raising the bar for acceptance, we have taken several steps to accommodate the surge in manuscript submissions, including maximally expanding the number of online pages, reducing the number of editorials, moving more tables and figures to supplemental material, and mandating careful shortening of manuscripts. Thanks to our submitting authors for making the additional revisions necessary to maximize the information that we can provide to our readership in these difficult times. We would like to thank all of the journal staff, our publisher, the senior associate editors, and all of the editorial board members, along with everyone who has stepped to the plate as an ad hoc reviewer to review the surge of manuscript submissions promptly. We cannot thank you enough. We applaud your efforts during this unprecedented pandemic. Stay safe.

SÍNODO DA AMAZÔNIA, “ECOLOGIA INTEGRAL” E RELAÇÃO ESPECIAL DOS POVOS INDÍGENAS COM A TERRA

Em outubro de 2019, após a intensidade e o alcance dos incêndios que atingiram a floresta amazônica, bispos da Igreja Católica Romana, lideranças indígenas e peritos se reuniram para discutir a situação vulnerável dos povos e da biodiversidade da região. O Documento Final do Sínodo Amazônico reconheceu a crise ambiental como um desafio geracional com consequências sociais e econômicas e fez um apelo à sociedade para que busque formas de vida mais modestas e respeitosas da natureza, convocando todos para uma profunda “conversão ecológica”. A noção de “ecologia integral” que inspira essa conversão, é apresentada, na encíclica Laudato Si’, como paradigma relacional e como um processo capaz de estabelecer pontes entre o cuidado com o território e o desenvolvimento. A proteção dos povos indígenas e seus territórios é considerada exigência ética fundamental e imperativo moral coerente com o enfoque da “ecologia integral”. Com o intuito de contribuir para o debate em torno da noção de “ecologia integral”, propomos nesse artigo uma análise dos documentos produzidos pelo Sínodo da Amazônia e dos documentos produzidos pela Organização das Nações Unidas sobre a relação dos povos indígenas com a terra. Veremos que a compreensão dessa relação é fundamental para o reconhecimento do papel vital que os povos indígenas desempenham na luta contra as alterações climáticas e que a preservação dos territórios indígenas constitui a melhor forma de salvar a Amazônia e evitar a destruição da floresta.

Rockefeller Foundation’s Rural Philanthropy in China: a Case Study of the North China Council for Rural Reconstruction

Abstract In the early twentieth century, approximately eighty-five percent of the Chinese population relied on agriculture for their livelihood. Aiming to improve the well-being of China’s vast rural population, the Rockefeller Foundation (RF) made their own efforts through conducting philanthropy in rural China. The North China Council for Rural Reconstruction (NCCRR), a RF-funded rural philanthropic program composed of six Chinese institutions, was established in Peiping (Beijing) on April 2, 1936. As a nontraditional and experimental program, the NCCRR brought together the leading professors from various disciplines at different universities into intimate contact with philanthropic and educational activities in rural China. Although the program perhaps pointed to the modest ways in which institutions conducted rural philanthropy, the task of reviving China’s countryside was ultimately too heavy for the RF as a foreign private foundation. Due to complicated circumstances far beyond their control, the RF had to terminate its rural reconstruction work in 1944.

Indigenous mental health: the limits of medicalised solutions.

The excess burden of mental disorders experienced by Indigenous Australians is complexly overdetermined. Social and political factors contributing to the intransigence of vulnerability are reviewed, and the wider arena of neoliberal political change considered. The dynamic relationship between disadvantage and mental health vulnerability requires that practitioners should be attuned to both the 'big picture' and 'modest and practical ways' to contribute to reducing the developmental embedding of social disadvantage and transgenerational vulnerability.

Mediating modesty on Saudi YouTube: from postfeminist to posthuman performance

In 2015, pioneering Saudi vlogger Juju Sajer revealed her face on YouTube after three years of performing in relative invisibility. She used her beauty vlog for small family dramas as well as beauty advice, translating the global genre to stage Saudi womanhood in modest and modern ways. This article analyses Juju’s use of digital frames as material for building a representational apparatus for young Saudi women. It takes a posthumanist approach to media roles as materially entangled with apparatuses of production, attending to the performer’s construction of networks and her onscreen performances. Juju’s evolving role from beauty vlogger to proto-talk show host, accompanied her increasing control over means of digital production after she gained corporate sponsorship and put her face on her brand. In contrast to theorists of communicative capitalism, I examine Juju’s self-branding as a networked performance of self, which enlivened and extended representational repertoires for young Saudi women. As a niche YouTube channel, it shows the potential of digital performance repertoires to develop within a framework of gendered modesty.

Eschatological Poetics: The Rules of Iconic Extension

Eschatological Poetics:The Rules of Iconic Extension Cyril O'Regan Here I pursue the question of what role—if any—imagination can play with respect to theology. This is not only a modern issue, as can be seen in, for example: Origen's entertaining questions beyond what is probative in the teaching of the Church, such as the question of universal salvation; the risky explorations of Eckhart in his vernacular German sermons when it comes to God, creation, Christ, self, and Mary, in which he suggests alternatives to the received tradition; and John of the Cross's improvisations on mystical theology offered in the Ascent to Mount Carmel and anagogic reading of Scripture presented in the Dark Night and the Spiritual Canticles. Still, the question of what role imagination can play in theology has become increasingly more urgent and reflective in the modern period, when the limitations of received tradition and reason in the construction of theology come under scrutiny and the notion of talent, and even that of genius, comes to be applied to theological construction. Obviously, Friedrich Schleiermacher is the central figure, but it is also true that this move was repeated in more modest ways by thinkers in the nineteenth century as different as Soren Kierkegaard and Johann Sebastian Drey,1 and in [End Page 835] the twentieth century by theologians as different as Paul Tillich, David Tracy, Sergei Bulgakov, and Hans Urs von Balthasar.2 The very different theological styles of these thinkers, and specifically their very different use of imagination and the authority they accord it, is a fascinating area [End Page 836] of research, although it will not directly be pursued in this article. Here I would like to deal more narrowly with the role imagination plays in Catholic theological reflection on "last things" and, more specifically, in Catholic theology's articulation of postmortem existence. A number of things need to be said about the overall horizon of this article. First, the main authors I deal with here, both contemporary and traditional, are Catholic. Second, for ecumenical reasons, the article will focuses exclusively on heaven. I have basically put aside (without prejudice) the Catholic doctrine of purgatory, which is not shared by the other Christian confessions, and although a doctrine of hell is found in all confessions, I put the representation of hell in parenthesis on the grounds that, in all confessions, there exist minority reports questioning its reality. Third, while I do not put Catholic doctrine of the intermediate state entirely in brackets,3 I treat it in a highly qualified way: insofar as it looks forward to the resurrected body.4 Fourth, and finally, the overall horizon of the article is contemporary and the criteria of adequacy when it comes to representation are not exclusively dependent on the representations generated in the premodern Catholic tradition, even if these representations prove to be both useful and orienting. One major feature of this study is a critical examination of two Catholic thinkers, John Thiel and Paul Griffiths,5 who have provided two very different accounts of heaven. Both are aware of the current anemia when it comes to the representation of the blessed state, and both suggest that the doctrinal under-determination in evidence [End Page 837] opens up the space for responsible symbolic or iconic extension beyond the received tradition. Neither is willing to take the convenient out of substituting the kingdom of God for heaven6 and then proceeding to interpret the kingdom in terms of the transmogrification of the individual or society and/or the transmutation of the cosmos. But only the first part of this study focuses on what I am calling "eschatological poetics" in its modern Catholic forms, meaning forms of theology that involve an iconic extension of and beyond the standard Christian eschatology. In discussing these very different forms of eschatology, I will examine whether and how these eschatologies complement, supplement, or replace influential representations within the broader Christian tradition, whether there are rules for iconic extension, and whether the rules are biased toward either continuity or discontinuity. I will also attempt to isolate as much as possible the assumptions about the negative states of existence that...

Collaborative Sociological Practice: the Case of Nine Urban Biotopes

This paper examines the socially engaged art project Nine Urban Biotopes (9UB), an international exchange between European and South African cultural organisations. Two artist residencies offer case studies of collaborative arts and research practice. The ways that these case studies are read as ‘failures’ and ‘successes’ illustrate the complexities of North-South collaborations. This project, the partnership that sustained it and the residencies that were central to it, exemplify, in modest ways, how public sociology can be realised in modest ways in a global context. This paper shows, with examples, that whilst partnership and collaboration are emphasised in institutional and policy discourse, in practice these arrangements are filled with tension and unequal power relations between partners. An evaluative methodology premised on sociological practice allows the tensions that are inherent in partnership and collaboration to be recognised and productively interrogated. It also allows us to reimagine what ‘success’ and ‘failure’ looks like in research partnerships by working with the antagonisms that are integral to collaboration.

Johannes von Kries’s Principien: A Brief Guide for the Perplexed

This paper has the aim of making Johannes von Kries’s masterpiece, Die Principien der Wahrscheinlichkeitsrechnung of 1886, a little more accessible to the modern reader in three modest ways: first, it discusses the historical background to the book (in particular, what Keynes later termed the “principle of indifference”); next, it summarizes the basic elements of von Kries’s approach (in particular, his “Principle of the Spielraum”); and finally, it examines the so-called “principle of cogent reason” with which von Kries’s name is often identified in the English literature.

Shoes, Gowns and Turncoats: Reconsidering Cacciaguida’s History of Florentine Fashion and Politics

Shoes, Gowns and TurncoatsReconsidering Cacciaguida’s History of Florentine Fashion and Politics Kristina Olson Scholarship has traditionally taken for granted that the Italian historiographical tradition is rhetorically based upon the virtues and vices of women, and a similar assumption has occasionally been made for the Commedia as well, though that totalizing vision has been challenged recently.1 When considered in the contexts of material consumption, Dante’s history of Florence is based upon the vices of both men and women, one that exists in dialogue with the governance of dress and ornamentation of the body, as scholars have noted.2 Two seminal moments in the Commedia speak to these political and social realities by lamenting the moral decadence of Florence, comparing past and present sumptuary mores: Forese Donati’s invective against the “sfacciate donne fiorentine” (Purg. 23.97–102), and, under examination here, Cacciaguida’s nostalgia for the prelapsarian age of Florence, which, among other social markers of integrity, did not have excessive ornamentation or luxurious clothing (Par. 15.100–117). The focus in Forese’s invective on the immodest dress of women expands to target both male and female dress in Cacciaguida’s description of the modest ways of Florentines who dwelled in the “cerchia antica.”3 Likewise, Cacciaguida’s reminiscence, which describes fashion trends on behalf of both sexes, should be interpreted within the political contexts from which they originate, as well as in terms of the history of its reception in the commentary tradition, as I argue in these pages. When read against the distortions of the commentary tradition of the Commedia and the [End Page 26] chronicles, and then contextualized within fashion history and select sumptuary statutes, Cacciaguida’s history of Florence can be perceived to inculpate both men and women as the protagonists in the performance of new wealth. The inextricable relationship between Dante’s history of fashion and his political vision differentiates the Commedia from the moralizing, misogynistic tradition of these other narratives. I. Im/material Girls: “Donne contigiate,” the Commentary Tradition and Villani’s Cronica The historical origins of Florence in the Commedia begin in the mid-twelfth century as the sober and chaste city described by Cacciaguida where women and men dressed simply and maintained domestic peace (Par. 15.97–129). These “mothers and fathers of Florence” evoke, as Barolini notes, those beloved parents whose absence is felt in the preceding canto: “forse non pur per lor, ma per le mamme, / per li padri e per li altri che fuor cari / anzi che fosser sempiterne fiamme” (Par. 14.64–66).4 Dante’s great-great-grandfather is anticipated by this nostalgia for the material existence of one’s progenitors, for the body as well as for that which dresses the body. In Paradiso 14, clothing serves as a metaphor for the insistent materiality which bridges this life to the next: from the “vesta” (39) radiated by love around the souls of the blessed to the “clothing” of the flesh: “Come la carne glorïosa e santa / fia rivestita, la nostra persona / più grata fia per esser tutta quanta” (Par. 14.43–5, emphasis added). It is this textual turn to the body and its adornment in Paradiso that leads as well to the exclamation of the pilgrim upon observing the souls that adorn the cross: “‘O Eliòs che sì li addobbi!’” (96, emphasis added). Dress forms an essential part of Dante’s lexicon that is at once other-worldly and bound up in the things of this world. If clothing served only as a reference to the things of this world for Dante, then he might have emphasized this notable aspect of St. Francis’s revocation of his father’s wealth a few cantos earlier, for example (Par. 11.56–62).5 Instead, as the reader begins Paradiso 15 proper, she is reminded of the spiritual value of clothing even when discussing the refusal of the material. In this case, he who “undresses” himself (“si spoglia”) of the love that breathes upwards towards the eternal, should suffer: “Bene è che sanza termine si [End Page 27] doglia / chi, per amor di cosa che non duri / etternalmente, quello amor si spoglia” (Par...

A Modest Art: Securing Privacy in Technologically Mediated Homecare

This article addresses the art of living in a technological culture as the active engagement with technomoral change. It argues that this engagement does not just take the form of overt deliberation. It shows in more modest ways as reflection-in-action, an experimental process in which new technology is fitted into existing practices. In this process challenged values are re-articulated in pragmatic solutions to the problem of working with new technology. This art of working with technology is also modest in the sense that it is not oriented to shaping one’s own subjectivity in relation to technology. It emanates from human existence as relational and aims at securing good relationships. The argument will be developed in relation to a case study of the ways in which homecare workers engaged with the value of privacy, challenged by tele-monitoring technology that was newly introduced into their work.

Large-scale bibliometric review of diffusion research

Despite the fact that diffusion research has existed for more than a century, a quantitative review covering this subject in a broad and general context is still lacking. This article reviews diffusion research by providing an extensive bibliometric and clustering analysis. In total, we identified thirteen clusters comprising 6,811 publications over the period of 2002---2011, and thereby describe the characteristics of diffusion research in an extensive and general way based on quantitative bibliometric methods. The analysis reveals that diffusion research is highly interdisciplinary in character, involving several disciplines from ethnology to economics, with many overlapping research trails. The concluding section indicates that diffusion research seems to be data driven and relies heavily on solely empirical studies. Consequently, influential publications rely on empirical data that support and change theories in modest ways only. In this contribution, we propose a review method that produces a fairly good overview of the research area and which can be applied to any knowledge field to replace or complement the traditional literature review.

Rhetorics of Health Citizenship: Exploring Vernacular Critiques of Government’s Role in Supporting Healthy Living

This article explores how older adults negotiate and partially counter normative expectations of "health citizenship" that stress individual responsibility for maintaining health and preventing health problems. Based on interviews with 55 participants in Canada and the U.K. about what healthy living means to them in their everyday lives, we examine how the dominant discourse of personal responsibility in participants' responses is counterpointed by a more muted, yet significant, alternative critical perspective on the relative roles and responsibilities of government and citizens in making healthy living possible. Drawing on Hauser's (1999) concept of vernacular rhetoric along with recent theories of environmental citizenship, we analyze how participants exercise their civic-political judgment by using a logic of dissociation to argue that what government says about the importance of healthy living is incompatible with what government does to support citizens' abilities to eat healthily and live actively. By deploying this technique of argumentation to address structural-political-economic dimensions of healthy living, participants enact, in modest ways, an alternative, critical-collective mode of health citizenship that complicates and, at least partially, disrupts neoliberal constructions of the individually responsible, "good" health citizen.

The politics of climate change in India: narratives of equity and cobenefits

AbstractIndia occupies an intriguing dual position in global climate politics—a poor and developing economy with low levels of historical and per capita emissions, and a large and rapidly growing economy with rising emissions. Indian climate politics has substantially been shaped around the first perspective, and increasingly, under international pressure, is being forced to grapple with the second. This review of Indian climate politics examines the initial crystallization of Indian climate positions and its roots in national climate politics, and then examines the modest ways in which climate politics have been revisited in domestic debates since about 2007. Following elucidation of these themes, the article turns to a discussion of new directions for Indian climate policy and their moorings in domestic climate politics. WIREs Clim Change 2013, 4:191–201. doi: 10.1002/wcc.210This article is categorized under: The Carbon Economy and Climate Mitigation > Policies, Instruments, Lifestyles, Behavior Policy and Governance > National Climate Change Policy

Why read academic journals any more?

Just a few weeks ago I overheard an academic colleague suggest in a discussion that ‘‘the habit of reading academic journals really no longer is in sync with our times’’: Google and other electronic searching devices now offer the capability for every researcher and author to do ‘‘on demand’’, perfectly project-specific inquiries into the fast growing electronic repositories of published materials. This is both more time-efficient, she argued, and yields—with some likelihood—results on research questions at hand that are broader and richer than what even perseverant traditional readers of academic journals can hope to extract and retain from their ‘‘anticipatory’’ general scanning and studying of their peers’ work. Right? The idea of giving up general reading of academic journals at first sight sounds like a radical departure from the traditional values and habits of academia. But then, upon second consideration, don’t we logisticians consider the shift from ‘‘push’’ to ‘‘pull’’ activation of industrial supply chains as the more modern, more effective practice in many instances? Why should this not apply to knowledge supply chains as well? And being honest to ourselves: Is not the rate of articles which most of us actually read and study out of general interest in our field’s academic journals very, very low? Or wrong? Don’t we loose an important source of inspiration and access to new knowledge if we completely abandone the traditional academic habit of general, ‘‘serenditpitous’’ reading—i.e. reading which is not focused on a single, preconsidered question, but provides multiple chances to make unexpected, ‘‘pleasant discoveries’’? I do not want to be unrealistic. It is an element of today’s academic reality that the value of publishing and publications is more often with the authors than with readers. The process of researching, writing, and revising papers increases authors’ insight in their chosen field of research. Adding references on their lists of publications helps their careers! Assisting authors to serve these purposes is an important and legitimate function of academic journals. But I like to make the argument that a balance between project-specific ‘‘on demand’’ reading behavior, however time-efficient, and a habit of some broader, less directed scanning and studying of one’s academic peers’ work is indispensible for the advancement of scientific knowlegde. In modest ways, I think, this can be proven by looking at the–quite incidental–selection of articles which our reviewers suggested for this issue of LOGISTICS RESEARCH: The papers by Sharma/Lote and Van Le/Huyngh/Claudiu/Achim relate to the much discussed phenomenon oft he ‘‘Bullwhip Effect’’ in supply chains. Sharma/Lote suggest to apply the analogy of vibrations and mechanisms of dampening vibrations to an interesting case of demand volatility. They may inspire ‘‘Bullwhip Effect’’ researchers to come up with new kinds of policies to successfully reduce system vibrations. A similar promise may be in Van Le/Huyngh/Claudiu/Achim’s research on the effects of inventory sharing on the Bullwhip Effect. The paper by Drezner, if read not from the technical perspective of a Quantitiative Methods expert, but—more broadly—as a contribution to the advancement of knowledge shows similarity in a set of location problems which otherwise were seen as not related. Weichert/et al.’s paper on technologies for automating the task of unstacking pallets offers a ‘‘new combination’’ of such technologies. P. Klaus (&) Nuremberg, Germany e-mail: peter.klaus@wiso.uni-erlangen.de

Mathematical reasoning in teachers’ presentations

This paper presents a study of the opportunities presented to students that allow them to learn different types of mathematical reasoning during teachers’ ordinary task solving presentations. The characteristics of algorithmic and creative reasoning that are seen in the presentations are analyzed. We find that most task solutions are based on available algorithms, often without arguments that justify the reasoning, which may lead to rote learning. The students are given some opportunities to see aspects of creative reasoning, such as reflection and arguments that are anchored in the mathematical properties of the task components, but in relatively modest ways.