Perilous Task Research Articles

Photographing to advance, the use of photography in psychotherapy

The practice of the clinical psychologist in child psychiatry can be a perilous task. His balance, as precarious as it may be, lies in listening to and observing the patient, but also in the use of precious tools of which therapeutic mediations are a part. They allow to experiment a sensory-motor anchorage and bring a multidimensional vision necessary to the comprehension of the subject and his suffering. By creating an intermediary space between the I and the You, the outside and the inside, they determine a place where the psychotherapeutic work can take place.

Optimal Integration of PV-Based Distributed Generators and Shunt Capacitors for 69 Bus System using Imperialist Competitive Algorithm and ETAP Software

Optimal deployment of photovoltaic-based distributed generators (PVDG) and shunt capacitor units is a perilous task in modern power system planning. This work presents an effective Imperialist Competitive Algorithm (ICA) based on social political process for selecting the best locations and sizes for PVDGs and shunt capacitor units. Three different load patterns, i.e., nominal, decremented and incremented are taken into account while installing PVDG and shunt capacitor units in the typical radial distribution systems of 69-bus. The primary objective of this work is to reduce active power losses and to significantly improve the voltage pattern after positioning of PVDG and capacitor units. The results show that the losses are reduced significantly by integrating the PVDG and capacitor units simultaneously at the optimum position in the test system. Furthermore, results of simulating the 69 bus system (with the integrated PVDG and capacitors) prove to be promising and authentic.

Upright lifesavers

The perilous task of saving lives at sea was made safer with a new lifeboat design

Translating for children in the Arab world: an exercise in child political socialization

Translating under the Arab dictatorships is a perilous task, as censorship bodies control all means and forms of expression. This is particularly true for children’s literature, which is a powerful tool of political socialisation. Al-Hajji’s Guide to Arab children's literature, translated in the Arab world from 1950 to 1998, shows that no book that undermines the dominant ideology has ever been translated in this geographical context. However, if a book chosen for translation contains some elements that might be viewed as subversive, strategies are adopted that automatically annihilate any threat. This paper focuses on the Arabic translation of Anna Sewell’s Black Beauty, published in Syria in 1991, to which elements have been added that were never envisaged by the original author.

Damned if you do, damned if you don’t: Effects of empathy and responsibility in Muslim leaders’ mediated responses to extremist attacks

ABSTRACTMuslim American leaders are often called upon to publicly respond to violent attacks carried out by Muslim extremists. Yet it is unclear what types of responses are most likely to satisfy non-Muslim Americans and ultimately improve attitudes toward Muslim Americans as a group. In three experiments, we examined how expressions of empathy and responsibility within Muslim leaders’ mediated responses to extremism affect response satisfaction. We did so immediately after real terrorism incidents carried out internationally (Study 1) and domestically (Study 2), as well as within a controlled fictional incident (Study 3). Across studies, expressing (vs. not expressing) empathy decreased the perception that the issued statement was motivated by external pressure, which was associated with (a) increased response satisfaction and trust in Muslim Americans and (b) decreased perceptions that Muslim Americans were collectively responsible for the incident. In contrast, accepting (vs. denying) responsibility increased the perception that the response was issued out of a sense of collective guilt, which, in Study 3, led to (a) decreased response satisfaction and trust in Muslims and (b) increased Muslim collective responsibility. These findings illustrate the perilous task facing group leaders who use the media to publicly respond to actions of extremist ingroup members.

Proficiency Comparison Ofladtree And Reptree Classifiers For Credit Risk Forecast

Predicting the Credit Defaulter is a perilous task of Financial Industries like Banks. Ascertainingnonpayer before giving loan is a significant and conflict-ridden task of the Banker. Classification techniques are the better choice for predictive analysis like finding the claimant, whether he/she is an unpretentious customer or a cheat. Defining the outstanding classifier is a risky assignment for any industrialist like a banker. This allow computer science researchers to drill down efficient research works through evaluating different classifiers and finding out the best classifier for such predictive problems. This research work investigates the productivity of LADTree Classifier and REPTree Classifier for the credit risk prediction and compares their fitness through various measures. German credit dataset has been taken and used to predict the credit risk with a help of open source machine learning tool.

Minority Recruitment and Retention for Universities: Bilingual Special Education Faculty

Recruitment and retention of minority faculty in bilingual special education is a perilous task. Research has shown that minority faculty/teachers are able to provide emotional support, mentor students, serve as role models, create a positive climate, provide diverse views, increase collaboration among faculty and teachers, and work with minorities. This article presents strategies for recruiting and retaining (particularly in developing resiliency) minority bilingual special education university faculty. Faculty in bilingual special education must adapt, recover, and persevere in order to best serve the interests of students with disabilities who are culturally and linguistically diverse. Strategies for developing resiliency are provided.

International Human Rights and the Politics of Memory: Limits and Challenges

International Human Rights and the Politics of Memory: Limits and Challenges Andreas Huyssen (bio) Human rights as a transnational social movement, and memory discourses in many different parts of the world, first emerged in the 1970s, gained steam in the 1980s, and together reached inflationary proportions by the 1990s. Both discourses were historically overdetermined and both are now increasingly being questioned about their hidden assumptions, their effectiveness, and their future prospects. In a recent book, Samuel Moyn interprets the human rights movement as a last utopia after the collapse of the earlier utopias of the twentieth century such as communism and fascism, as well as modernization and decolonization.1 In my book Present Pasts, I argued analogously that the collapse of an earlier utopian imagination was one condition that made it possible for the new memorial discourses to arise. I argued that the time consciousness of high modernity in the West tried to secure utopian futures, whereas the time consciousness of the late twentieth century involved the no less perilous task of taking responsibility for the past. The human rights movement, however, remains firmly oriented to the future goal of establishing an international, perhaps even global, rights regime. Here it is important to remember that the international human rights movement in its contemporary configuration has as short a history as the current culture privileging a politics of memory. Of course, there always was a discourse of memory, and rights discourse itself does indeed have a deeper history. Greek tragedy provides many insights into the links between memory, justice, and the law. From the American and French Revolutions through decolonization, rights and memory were always umbilically linked to state and nation, to citizenship issues and the invention of national traditions. And yet, the current international human rights movement and the transnational flows of memory politics since the 1990s represent a fundamentally new conjuncture. This leads me to a simple question that defies easy answers: What do rights have to do with memory in the first place? At the most simple [End Page 607] level, one could argue that only memory of rights violations can nurture the future of human rights in the world, thus providing a substantive link between past and future. But, all too often, memory discourse and contemporary rights debates remain separated by more than just disciplinary specialization with memory discourse dominant in the humanities and rights discourse in the social sciences. From my vantage point in the humanities, I would argue that contemporary memory studies should be linked more robustly with human rights and justice discursively and practically to prevent memory, especially traumatic memory, from becoming a vacuous exercise feeding parasitically and narrowly on itself. But I would also suggest that unless it is nurtured by memory and history, human rights discourse is in danger of losing historical grounding and risks legalistic abstraction and political abuse. After all, the abstract universalism of human rights is both a problem and a promise. History of Human Rights and Memory Discourses Recognizing the inherent strengths and limitations of both human rights and memory discourse is important if we want to nurture their interaction. The individual strengths of both fields must be mobilized to supplement each other in order to mitigate the deficiencies of either. Both are concerned with the violation and protection of basic human rights, and both must draw on history to do so. Both want to acknowledge, if not right, past wrongs, and both project and imagine a better future for the world. Both grew to a certain degree out of legal, moral, and philosophical discourses about genocide and rights violations after World War II. Both the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and the United Nations’s Genocide Convention of 1948 were the political result of memory (though in their phrasing both UN documents circumvented the ethnic and particularist dimension of the Holocaust). Memory, not only of the unspeakable genocides and forced population transfers of the first half of the twentieth century, but also of the legacies of the natural law tradition, was influential in the shaping of these UN documents. And yet it took several decades more before the international human rights movement took off. Some recent...

“But the Pension Fund Was Just SITTING There …”: The Politics of Teacher Retirement Plans

The tension at the heart of pension politics is the incentive to satisfy today's claimants in the here and now at the expense of long-term concerns. Teacher pensions, in particular, pose two challenges. The first is that political incentives invite irresponsible fiscal stewardship, as public officials make outsized short-term commitments to employees. The second is that incentives hinder modernization, as policy makers avoid the politically perilous task of altering plans ill suited to attracting talent in the contemporary labor market. The alignment of the political stars has helped some states and localities to address the first challenge, but far too few have demonstrated a willingness to tackle the second. We illustrate the political dynamics through discussions of pension plans in New Jersey, Oregon, and San Diego, California, and suggest several political strategies that could make pension challenges more tractable and encourage public officials to be responsible fiscal stewards or to revisit anachronistic retirement systems.

Foreword

Winning the peace has typically proved far harder than winning the war. 1 The delicate transition from war to peace is frequently characterized by enduring tensions, sporadic violence, and the ever present threat of a return to war. Various estimates suggest indeed that the risk of conflict recurrence is between 20 to 50 per cent in the first five years after a conflict has ended. Such a feeling of failure is obviously not independent of the particularly high – even disproportionate for some – expectations that the ambitious concept of peacebuilding encourages. Post-conflict peacebuilding is aimed at addressing the deep-rooted, structural causes of a violent conflict in a comprehensive manner. It is both a multifaceted and long-term process; the ultimate objective being to reconcile security, development, and justice. The means of facilitating a sustainable peace are well known. They demand an unfailing determination from the international community, the mobilization of resources over the long term, and a better understanding of the true needs of the war-torn societies. One cannot, however, help but notice that the concept of post-conflict peacebuilding is still struggling to move from rhetoric to reality. Its popularity in diplomatic circles certainly owes much to the broad and equivocal nature of this concept which still lacks of a common understanding among the broad variety of stakeholders. The ever-present gap between theory and practice is also a reminder of the extent to which building sustainable peace is a complex and perilous task involving a wide range of activities and actors.

Waldo’s Perspectives

Revisiting a is a perilous task. The is available for all to read; it obtained its classic status precisely because it could stand on its own. The added value of revisiting it is, therefore, to see how enduring it is. Did the passage of time reveal structural flaws? Were assumptions that were made by the author later tested by scholars and rejected? Our guides for that visit prove to be seasoned scholars who explain and comment without becoming revisionists. The contribu tors start with the themes contained in Waldo's Adminis

Mordecai Kaplan as Hermeneut: History, Memory, and His God-Idea

In an insightful article on Mordecai M. Kaplan and process theology, Jacob Staub, past academic dean of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, rightfully notes that any attempt to extract a single, consistent, 'authentic' essence from all of the various theological formulations byJewish teachers through the ages is a perilous task indeed.' As students ofJewish thought and intellectual history know, not only are there a wide variety ofJewish theological expressions but many, if not most, of these expressions preclude, by their own selfunderstandings, other Jewish theological views. Just to mention one twentieth-century example, Martin Buber's (1878-1965) description of the dialogical encounter between the human being and God is fundamentally opposed to Hermann Cohen's (1842-1918) notion that God is and cannot be anything but an idea that regulates human moral action.2 In the context of Kaplan, and specifically Kaplan's God-idea, Staub takes the diversity ofJewish theological views of God to show that the question to be asked about Kaplan's theology is not whether it is authentically Jewish but whether it provides a meaningful system of Jewish living.3

The ExCEEd Teaching Model

While the first five articles in this Journal of Professional Issues in Engineering Education and Practice JPI series covered a variety of teaching tools and techniques such as the chalkboard, questioning, drama, board notes, physical models, and demonstrations, the previous issue took a broader view and introduced a model instructional strategy. This strategy provides a conceptual framework that an instructor can use to develop classroom instruction in an organized and coherent manner. The strategy reflects the way that students actually learn and prompts the instructor to make conscious decisions about allocating responsibility for student learning and sequencing the contributing activities. This article takes an even wider perspective and attempts to answer the question, What constitutes good teaching? The ExCEEd Teaching Workshop strives to demonstrate and then develop good teaching skills. To do this, good teaching, at some point, must be defined. The ExCEEd Teaching Model represents our best attempt to do this. The ExCEEd Model was developed by examining what attributes make a good teacher, how students learn best, and what tools are available to assist the teacher. The model is based on teaching and learning theory from the literature, supported by years of practical experience from veteran instructors. This article traces the development process of the ExCEEd Teaching Model shown in Fig. 1. Once established, this model serves as a definition of good teaching that can then be used consistently throughout the workshop. Admittedly, many others have attempted to answer this same question, and no two answers are the same. Nevertheless, the ExCEEd Teaching Model is relatively simple; and if an instructor is doing everything in it, he or she is most likely teaching well. Defining high quality teaching is a controversial and perilous task. Teaching is a very personal activity, and no two people do it the same way. Teaching effectiveness is often dependent on the personality and individual talents of the instructor. What works superbly for one teacher may totally flop for another. The answer often becomes, “I can’t define good teaching, but I know it when I see it.” Evidence of good teaching can be seen in the infectious enthusiasm of the teacher, the obvious engagement of the students, the clarity of the presentation, or the successful measured evaluation of what the students have learned. Although there are an infinite number of ways to teach well, there are some consistent elements, activities, and attributes that seem to be present with all good teachers. The ExCEEd Model attempts to capture these.

Intertextual variation: prehistory and postfuture In Alberto Manguel's Variaciones sobre un tema de durero

Responding creatively to a work culturally identified as 'canonical' can be a paradoxical situation for an artist. Faced with the simultaneous but opposing temptations of both reification and iconoclasm, the intertextual artist must seemingly choose either respect or rebellion. In choosing rebellion, artists take on tradition, transforming historically distant texts perceived (perhaps idolized) as cultural inheritance, often revealing those texts as hegemonic discourses. Yet radical intertextual engagement can also be used to create paradigms for confronting and dismantling reigning contemporary authorities; in this case, intertextual response becomes a (personally and politically) perilous task.

Writing Women's bOdies On the Palimpsest of Islamic History

Arab women writers' new turn to Islamic history is informed by burgeoning Islamic fundamentalist movements throughout the Arab-Muslim world, and the continuous threat they pose to women's struggles for rights. In the view of women writers, the fundamentalist narrative's strongest claims for legitimacy are penned on the female body in an ongoing process that has contained women, muted their voices, and screened out their agency. Arab women have thus set on the perilous task of rewriting Islamic history. Unlayering the palimpsest of the fundamentalist narrative, engaging its ambiguities, activating its silences, interrogating its in-between(s), and filling in its blanks, women's writings make available numerous visions of female-ness, and a whole cosmology of female struggles that have been consciously overshadowed by male texts. The female body, as an object of writing, is transfigured into a subject writing its own text(s), thus repositioning women's role as shapers of history and makers of culture. Providing a critical appraisal of Fatima Mernissi's and Assia Djebar's works, this article analyzes the many discursive strategies used to refigure the body as a site from which and for which women can intervene to create multifaceted spaces of oppositional agency and political empowerment.

Danger

At first glance, philosophy of might seem to be an unproblematic discipline. However, closer inspection reveals that philosophers and religious people often seem uneasy when confronted with subject. That uneasiness, one suspects, is due to fact that philosophy of poses a threat to our accepted notions of philosophy and religion-a threat that lies in ambiguity of genitive. The philosopher suspects that philosophy of is religious philosophy, a disguised and apologetics that threatens objectivity of philosophy. The religious person, on other hand, suspects that philosophy of is philosophy about religion, an intrusion into by outsiders (i.e., unbelievers) that threatens sanctity of religious belief and practice. In following, I want to explore threat posed by philosophy of and argue that should embrace ambiguity of genitive and danger that poses to philosophy and religion. Indeed, as philosophers of have no choice but to embrace this ambiguity if are to be true to philosophy, religion, and philosophy of religion. The danger of philosophy of is acknowledged in one of two ways. One way involves a kind of repression and avoidance of threat. Thus on opening page of his An Introduction to Philosophy of Religion (2nd edition, Oxford, 1993) Brian Davies tells us that it is difficult to say exactly what philosophy of is, noting that difficulty lies in characterizing both philosophy and religion. Rather than pursuing this insight, he goes on to tell us that he will attempt perilous of defining philosophy of religion (ix) and then proceeds to introduce us to subject. Here Davies, like a few other philosophers of religion, is dealing with problem and threat posed by philosophy of by not dealing with it. However, avoidance and repression generally are not healthy ways of coping with problems; they lead to more problems. Thus William Wainwright, for instance, also foregoes any definition, though he has some very definite ideas about what philosophy of should be covering. He seems to assume that philosophy of is equivalent to (whatever that is) and consequently jumps right into an argument about maximally perfect reality,1 despite fact that there are religious traditions (e.g., Buddhism, Confucianism, Daoism) that cannot be said to be doing theology (i.e., investigating logic ofGod) or are not concerned with a maximally perfect reality. If philosophers of such as Davies and Wainwright refuse to define what is they are doing, they leave themselves open to suspicion that they have a hidden agenda, or have made assumptions that will not survive light of day. Of course, more often than not philosophers of do undertake the perilous task of defining philosophy of religion. Yet they too acknowledge threat posed by philosophy of (albeit indirectly) by characterizing in such a way as to put everyone at ease. A good example can be found at beginning of John Hick's popular introduction to Philosophy of Religion (4th edition, Prentice-Hall, 1990). On opening page of that work, Hick confidently proclaims-with emphasis-that we may reserve name `philosophy of religion' for what (by analogy with philosophy of science, philosophy of art, etc.) is its proper meaning, namely, philosophical thinking about religion (1). The definitionsenerally accepted and/or echoed in other treatments of subject2-is bound to be comforting to both philosophers and religious persons. But definition (and those like it) does not do justice to philosophy, religion, or philosophy of religion, either in theory or in practice. One of first things to note about Hick's definition is that somehow places philosophy outside religion. …

Terror and Guerrilla Warfare in Latin America, 1956–1970

Most of the extraordinary waves of terror which have swept many Latin American societies since 1970 have occurred in guerrilla-based insurgencies or even civil wars. Because of the massive body counts produced during these confrontations between revolutionaries and counterrevolutionaries based in or linked with a government, human rights organizations have issued a long series of reports about terror—especially that which has been carried out by incumbent regimes and death squads—and which has been supplemented by the exposés of the guerrillas themselves. Amnesty International, the Human Rights group in the Organization of American States (OAS), and Americas Watch have been the major international actors documenting the wave of terror. Many independent national groups, such as El Salvador's “Socorro Juridico” and other human rights organizations linked with church bodies have undertaken that more perilous task at home.

Structure and Meaning in the Eclogues of Calpurnius Siculus

Although a great deal of energy has been devoted in recent years to the critical examination of the pastorals of Theocritus and Virgil very little (comparatively speaking) has been expended by way of literary study on their immediate successor, theEcloguesof Calpurnius Siculus. This may be due to ignorance — some theoreticians betray no knowledge of his existence — or to prejudice — Calpurnius belongs to the age of silver (or even worse). And yet, since he is the first poet to inherit pastoral as a fully formed genre, one would expect that his work might command critical attention. It is my intention in this study to examine the way in which Calpurnius handles the medium he inherited from Virgil and his treatment of those issues with which he is principally concerned. It is not my intention to examine his relationship to a specific historical and political context — a perilous task given the lack of hard evidence concerning his biography.

Philosophy in the University: Athena or Socrates?

PHILOSOPHY IN THE UNIVERSITY: ATHENA OR SOCRATES? SOCIETY IS ALWAYS bound to find philosophers intolerable , that notorious breed who make it their profession , like their father Socrates, to question everything. Moreover, philosophers insist on teaching, on bringing forth the new life of raised consciousness in those around them. And this experience of passing from the mind's dark and comfortable womb to the light of day is usually traumatic. Instead of being grateful, people generally hate those who precipitate such an event. Without his daimon, Socrates admitted, he could never have sustained the philosophical life. The problem is somewhat like that of an irresistible force meeting an immovable object. Society hangs on for dear life itself to its traditions. To unsettle those traditions is to unsettle the subject of those traditions. And no subject will tolerate unsettlement indefinitely. Beyond a certain point it fights back for its life, its identity, its traditions. Hence also its prohibitions. Hence the burdensome existence of every philosophy teacher true to his model. If it is true that there is no history of a happy philosopher, perhaps Socrates' paradigmatic life explains it all. But to come down to some specificity. (A common scholastic word, by the way, long before Watergate taught the nation how to pronounce it.) The problem of a philosophy teacher vis-a-vis society is not that he questions, but rather what he questions. For no one will deny that questioning is part of teaching. But question everything? Then how exactly, the philosopher asks, should he question? Clearly, the issue touches philosophy teachers not only in a Catholic but indeed in any university, say, a Russian or a Red 685 636 BENJAMIN S. LLAMZON Chinese university. That is, any university which identifies itself explicitly with the values of a larger community. For if questions are raised only as devices to bring on pre-forged answers , which in turn are meant merely to reinforce community beliefs, then the intellectual life is mocked, the university enterprise turned into a farce. If, on the other hand, questions are genuine, as they should be, with answers truly open to possibilities other than traditional beliefs, then the larger community 's interest in sending their young specifically to such and such a university seems betrayed. Such is the dilemma which, appearing in various forms, seems to plague the Catholic educational scene in every age. For his part, a philosopher cannot evade the perilous task of working through a solution consonant with the signs of the times in the church, country and the university. There are related questions. Though peripheral and probably better handled by other disciplines, we should mention at least two of them which seem to touch our topic quite closely. One, how many of the students in a Catholic college today are there anymore because it is strictly Catholic? My own limited classroom surveys reveal that public and private loans, grants, scholarships, a relatively " higher " level of campus clientele, manageable tuition, ecumenism, even just sheer physical convenience and a safe location all figure decisively enough in a student's choice of a school to caution against usual presuppositions on the matter. Two, does it make sense anymore to refer to students today as the "young"? After all, among other things, these "young" today can vote, purchase liquor, get the pill, even undergo abortion without strict requirement of parental permission. Parietals are a fact of life in campus dormitories. Are these not indicators that the university has already changed away from its traditional in loco parentis status? Are these not in effect an admission that students are now masters of their own morals and mature enough not to need any protection from themselves? Yet, interestingly enough, we hang on to the characterization PHILOSOPHY IN THE UNIVERSITY 687 of the university as an Alma Mater to her alumni? This persists unchanged. Everyone continues to decry the trend toward mass production and impersonality on campus. Indeed there would be spirited and universal support today for Newman's insistence that a college be an "Alma Mater, knowing her children one by one, not a foundry or a mint or a treadmill." 1 How to make this real in the face...

Ethnic Survivals and the Modern Shift

Research into the psychological characteristics of a people in the context of its so-called literary production has been frequently criticized, and not without good reason. In an article published in the Revue de Psychologie des peuples, Mr. Brossaud of the Center for the Study of Civilizations at Nanterre—a department under the direction of Professor Guy Michaud—has emphasized the difficulties presented by the literary approach in the field of ethno-psychology. If the ethno-psychologist demonstrates a certain suspicion towards anything that does not represent pure ethno-psychology, this is because the interest of a poem or a play is essentially of an aesthetic nature. It would certainly be a perilous task to look for the characteristics of the French mentality, for example, in the literary works of contemporary France.