Prior Familiarity Research Articles

Familiarity modulates motor activation while other species' actions are observed: a magnetic stimulation study.

Observing other people's actions facilitates the observer's motor system as compared with observing the same individuals at rest. This motor activation is thought to result from mirror-like activity in fronto-parietal areas, which enhances the excitability of the primary motor cortex via cortico-cortical pathways. Although covert motor activation in response to observed actions has been widely investigated between conspecifics, how humans cope with other species' actions has received less attention. For example, it remains unclear whether the human motor system is activated by observing other species' actions, and whether prior familiarity with the non-conspecific agent modulates this activation. Here, we combined single-pulse transcranial magnetic stimulation and motor-evoked potential recording to explore the impact of familiarity on motor activation during the observation of non-conspecific actions. Videos displaying actions performed either by a conspecific (human) or by a non-conspecific (dog) were shown to individuals who had prior familiarity or no familiarity at all with the non-conspecific agent. We found that, whereas individuals with long-lasting familiarity showed similar levels of motor activation for human and canine actions, individuals who had no familiarity showed higher motor activation for human than for canine actions. These findings suggest that the human motor system is flexible enough to resonate with other species, and that familiarity plays a key role in tuning this ability.

Collaborative Anthropology as Classroom Teaching: The How and the Why

Collaborative Anthropology as Classroom TeachingThe How and the Why Holly Swyers (bio) In 2013 I wrote a piece for Anthropology News advocating for collaborative anthropology as part of classroom instruction. In that piece I described my ongoing collaboration with the Lake Forest–Lake Bluff Historical Society to illustrate the use of externally generated field experiences in the classroom. I have subsequently learned about other collaborative anthropologies involving students, ranging from Charles Menzies and Caroline Butler’s collaboration with the Gitxaała Nation (Menzies and Butler 2011) to Susan Hyatt’s contribution to “Anthropologists Back to School 2013” at the aaa annual meeting in Chicago (Hyatt 2014). I have also discovered Tim Wallace’s (2011: 255) critique of the effort to combine collaboration or service learning with ethnographic training, including his claim that “service learning projects are best accomplished by students who have both prior familiarity with the setting and some basic practical experience in ethnographic field techniques.” While I appreciate Wallace’s perspective as someone who runs a field school for ethnographic methods, I cannot agree that collaboration with host communities and ethnographic field training are necessarily incompatible. I propose instead that a collaboration with a training focus is not only possible for anthropology but may be one of the most successful ways to engage undergraduates in our discipline and the questions it raises. Only with their curiosity thus whetted and a working sense of the practicalities and ethics of fieldwork can they dive more fully into ethnographic field training. In addition I propose an answer to a concern regarding “cultural tourism” or exploitation of host [End Page 21] communities expressed in critiques of service learning (e.g., Morton 1995; Menzies and Butler 2011). The ethical dimensions of applied and collaborative anthropology, I argue, are shared by native ethnographers, and using the idea of collaborative native ethnography in early anthropological training can help give our students the awareness and exposure they need to make the most of what anthropology can teach them (cf. Hurn 2012; Keene and Colligan 2004). My objective in this article is to investigate both the how and why of creating a training collaboration, using a specific project that I and my collaborators at the Lake Forest–Lake Bluff Historical Society developed in 2009. The project in question involved the historic Mill Road Farm golf course in Lake Forest, and it engaged students in two of my courses. I have written elsewhere about the oral histories that students collected (Swyers 2013); here I focus on a survey archaeology project my students conducted. Their work, under the joint direction of the Historical Society staff and me, resulted in an award-winning exhibit (Hack 2009) that increased the visibility of the Historical Society and garnered enthusiasm for a more sustained partnership. This collaboration has enabled a training paradigm that not only gives students useful skills but also makes them more able to recognize culture as a product of interaction and history rather than something people possess, a point to which I return at the end of this essay. The Why: Part 1 In my experience most traditional age undergraduates approach the reading of ethnography much as they approach reading fiction. This is not surprising given the writing conventions of anthropology (cf. Gupta and Ferguson 1997: 30–31) and the relative inexperience of the typical American eighteen year old. While I have tried to supplement my teaching with readings that explicitly describe the methods of collecting and analyzing data, I find reading about it does little to make clear what it is like to be engaged in active ethnographic research. I have sought to remedy this problem by including data collection and analysis of some sort in all my classes beyond my introductory course. While I can ask students to study their own milieu and have done so, I find it difficult to get them to push past their comfort zones or to resist facile interpretations of what they observe based on their insider knowledge [End Page 22] of their social world. That I teach at a residential college with 1,600 students only exacerbates the problem; almost all students are known to one another at least by face...

Pair housing of Vervets/African Green Monkeys for biomedical research.

Vervets, also known as African green monkeys, are a nonhuman primate species widely used in biomedical research. However, there are currently few references available describing techniques and rates of success for pair-housing this species. We present data from four cohorts of vervets from three different facilities: (i) the Wake Forest Vervet Research Colony (VRC; n = 72 female pairs, n= 52 male pairs), (ii) the University of Louisiana at Lafayette-New Iberia Research Center (UL-NIRC; n = 57 female pairs, n = 54 male pairs), (iii) the Tulane National Primate Research Center (TNRPC; n = 18 male pairs), and (iv) a cohort of imported males (n = 18 pairs) at Wake Forest. Compatibility was measured at 14, 30, and 60 days following introduction. Success rates for pair-housing at 14 days ranged from 96% to 98% for females and 96% to 100% for males at the VRC and UL-NIRC but were lower in the smaller imported male cohorts (TNPRC: 50%; WF: 28%). Among the UL-NIRC cohort and VRC male cohort, most of the pair separations after 14 days were due to reasons unrelated to social incompatibility. In contrast, a large proportion of TNPRC and imported male pairs successful at 14 days required separation within 60 days due to incompatibility. Multiple logistic regressions were performed using cohort, mean age of pair and weight difference between pair-mates as potential predictors of compatibility at 14 days. All three predicted the 14-day outcome in males but not females. A separate analysis in the VRC cohort found no evidence that prior familiarity in a group setting influenced outcomes. Variations in success rates across cohorts may have been influenced by introduction methodology. Behavioral differences between vervets and macaques, coupled with our findings, lead us to theorize that the gradual introduction techniques commonly implemented to pair house macaques may not be beneficial or suitable for this species. Am. J. Primatol. 79:e22501, 2017. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

UV color determines the issue of conflicts but does not covary with individual quality in a lizard

Ultraviolet (UV) colors are visual signals potentially involved in territorial conflicts. However, the role of UV signals remains unclear relative to the prior resident effect and familiarity with the opponent, and the reliability of UV signals is still controversial. Male common lizards Zootoca vivipara exhibit substantial variation in the reflectance of their throat UV color patch. We tested whether UV reflectance was correlated with indicators of individual condition. We further manipulated throat UV reflectance of resident and intruder lizards and staged repeated encounters in the laboratory during the mating season. We found no evidence of condition dependence of the UV colors expression. During the first encounter among unfamiliar males, a reduction of UV reflectance of 1 of the 2 opponents influenced agonistic behaviors and the contest outcome, such that there was a significant advantage for residents over intruders. This advantage disappeared when both opponents were UV reduced. During the subsequent encounters among familiar males, fighting was more aggressive when opponents displayed similar UV signals, but UV signals did not influence the contest outcome. These results demonstrate that UV reflectance acted as a badge of status in male common lizards whose effects on the behavioral response were modulated, but not overridden, by the prior resident effect and by the familiarity effect. Male–male interactions are therefore mediated by UV signaling and competition for mates should play a major role in the evolutionary maintenance of this ornament. We discuss putative functions and reliability of UV signals.

The Genetic Basis of Kin Recognition in a Cooperatively Breeding Mammal

Cooperation between relatives yields important fitness benefits, but genetic loci that allow recognition of unfamiliar kin have proven elusive. Sharing ofkinship markers must correlate strongly with genome-wide similarity, creating a special challenge to identify specific loci used independently of other shared loci. Two highly polymorphic gene complexes, detected through scent, have been implicated in vertebrates: the major histocompatibility complex (MHC), which could be vertebrate wide, and the major urinary protein (MUP) cluster, which is species specific. Here we use a new approach to independently manipulate sharing of putative genetic kin recognition markers, with the animal itself or known family members, while genome-wide relatedness iscontrolled. This was applied to wild-stock outbred female house mice, which nest socially and often rear offspring cooperatively with preferred nest partners. Females preferred to nest with sisters, regardless of prior familiarity, confirming the use of phenotype matching. Among unfamiliar relatives, females strongly preferred nest partners that shared their own MUP genotype, though not those with only a partial (single-haplotype) MUP match to themselves or known family. In the absence of MUP sharing, females preferred related partners that shared multiple loci across the genome to unrelated females. However, MHC sharing was not used, even when MHC type completely matched their own or that of known relatives. Our study provides empirical evidence that highly polymorphic species-specific kinship markers can evolve where reliable recognition of close relatives is an advantage. This highlights the potential for identifying other genetic kinship markers in cooperative species and calls for better evidence that MHC can play this role.

Transnational connections: The meaning of global culture in the tastes of Brazilian elites

This manuscript integrates work on cultural taste and inequality with literature on globalization to explain how objects of global culture become markers of elite cultural taste in Brazil. A content analysis of a culture magazine oriented toward Brazilian elites shows that elite culture in Brazil integrates popular and highbrow objects from the United States and Western Europe with limited popular genres from Brazilian culture. A dominant interpretive frame asserted similarity (rather than social distance or exoticism) between Brazilian lifestyles and non-Brazilian culture by drawing on a white, wealthy disposition that relies on prior familiarity with non-Brazilian culture and places.

Design and Implementation of an Open-Source Computer-Based Testing System with End User Impact Analysis in Africa

The System is a Java Desktop Application designed by the integration of Java and MySQL to help provide a platform whereby computer-based tests can be organized and performed. The basic idea behind designing the system to have a fluid outlook and functional over a Wi-Fi network is simply to offer an operational scheme that is easy to implement by high schools, tertiary institutions and examination bodies with the intention of downloading and adapting it for their own use. Also, to provide a platform whereby prospective CBT examinees can have continuous practice and prior acquaintance with the nitty-gritty of computer based testing in general. This paper concludes by surveying and analyzing the impact of this initiative (being freely available for use and adaptation) on prospective CBT candidate’s test performance.

On the system CL12 of computability logic

Computability logic (see http://www.csc.villanova.edu/~japaridz/CL/) is a long-term project for redeveloping logic on the basis of a constructive game semantics, with games seen as abstract models of interactive computational problems. Among the fragments of this logic successfully axiomatized so far is CL12 --- a conservative extension of classical first-order logic, whose language augments that of classical logic with the so called choice sorts of quantifiers and connectives. This system has already found fruitful applications as a logical basis for constructive and complexity-oriented versions of Peano arithmetic, such as arithmetics for polynomial time computability, polynomial space computability, and beyond. The present paper introduces a third, indispensable complexity measure for interactive computations termed amplitude complexity, and establishes the adequacy of CL12 with respect to A-amplitude, S-space and T-time computability under certain minimal conditions on the triples (A,S,T) of function classes. This result very substantially broadens the potential application areas of CL12. The paper is self-contained, and targets readers with no prior familiarity with the subject.

Toddlers’ Judgments of Media Character Source Credibility on Touchscreens

In three experiments, 32-month-old children ( n = 40 for Experiment 1, n = 36 for Experiment 2) and 24-month-old children ( n = 33 for Experiment 3) were asked to judge the credibility of information presented on a touchscreen device. The information was delivered by a familiar and an unfamiliar media character. Two app conditions varied on which character was accurate in naming familiar fruits. Then both characters labeled four novel fruits with nonsense words. Feedback about the accuracy of the characters’ labels of the familiar fruits was provided in Experiments 1 and 3, but no such feedback was provided in Experiment 2. Children were more likely to endorse the accurate character as the correct labeler of the novel fruits, regardless of prior familiarity with the character, the feedback presented in the touchscreen application, or the age of the child. Parent scaffolding affected only the 24-month-old children. The results reveal that very young children can make relatively sophisticated judgments about the credibility of information encountered on touchscreen devices.

Before and After Study of Pharmacists' and Students' Knowledge of Two Novel Antidotes: High-Dose Insulin Euglycemia and Intravenous Fatty Acid Emulsion 20.

To assess pharmacists' and students' knowledge of high-dose insulin euglycemia (HIE) and intravenous fatty acid emulsion 20% (IFE) and to see whether it improved after an educational intervention. A survey to assess the knowledge about the use of HIE and IFE as antidotes was e-mailed to practicing pharmacists, pharmacy residents, and students prior to and following an educational intervention. Fact sheets on the antidotes were developed in conjunction with the New York City Poison Control Center and were used as the educational intervention in this study. The impact of exposure to the intervention was measured by comparing the number of correct responses per question on the pre- and posttests and the mean pre- and posttest scores using chi-square and t tests, respectively. Most respondents felt either not at all or only somewhat comfortable with managing a toxicologic emergency. There was a statistically significant difference in mean scores on the pretest and posttest (2.9 vs 5.45; P = .001) and for the number of participants giving correct responses for each question before and after education: 52.4% of respondents answered "I don't know" to the questions prior to education versus 21.2% after education (P < .001). Fewer respondents felt not at all comfortable managing a toxicologic emergency after the educational intervention (42.4 vs 50.3%; P < .001). Pharmacists and students reported little comfort in managing toxicological emergencies in general and have limited baseline knowledge about these agents. Educational interventions can significantly improve knowledge. Prior familiarity with these newer antidotes should reduce delays in their administration in an emergency.

A Strategic Approach to CSR Communication: Examining the Impact of Brand Familiarity on Consumer Responses

AbstractDespite the widely acknowledged importance of corporate social responsibility (CSR) communications, our knowledge is limited with regard to various factors affecting consumer responses to such communication efforts. This paper aims to identify the extent to which prior brand familiarity influences consumer responses to CSR communications through a controlled experiment, exploring whether the use of different communication functions for environmental domain of CSR (i.e., publicity and advertising) generates any different effect on these responses. Findings reveal that familiar and unfamiliar brands do not differ from each other with regard to consumer attitude toward message, but elicit dissimilar responses in terms of attitude toward brand and purchase intentions. The study leads to managerial implications regarding the effective formulation and dissemination of CSR‐related messages in order to achieve stakeholder engagement. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley &amp; Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

Self-administered Questions and Interviewer–Respondent Familiarity

We examine the effects of interviewer–respondent familiarity on both response patterns and rates of item nonresponse when self-administered questions (SAQs) are used. We use SAQ data from a survey in which the researchers experimentally ensured that there would be varying degrees of familiarity between interviewers and respondents. Our results reveal only minimal differences in response patterns by degree of prior acquaintance between interviewer and respondent, indicating that SAQs are effective at eliminating potential bias stemming from such relationships. Our results for item nonresponse depend on how we measure the relationship between interviewer and respondent; but in all cases, it is clear that prior knowledge of one another, far from harmful, leads to low nonresponse rates to SAQs. Thus, researchers using SAQs may not need to adhere to the norm that interviewers and respondents must be strangers, with practical and cost-effective consequences for data collection.

Threats, approach behavior, and violent recidivism among offenders who harass Canadian justice officials.

We examined the characteristics of offenders who harassed justice officials, comparing those who threatened or approached their victim with those who engaged in other problematic communications. We also explored predictors of subsequent violence. We identified 86 offenders from the files of a justice officials protection and investigation service in Ontario, Canada, who had used threatening, disturbing, intimidating, or harassing language (written or verbal) toward police, prosecutors, judges, defense attorneys, probation officers, or correctional workers. We conducted chi-squared tests and ANOVAs to compare offenders who did versus did not threaten or approach on criminal history, substance abuse, mental health, and other variables at the index offense, and tested predictors of future violence using the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) area under the curve. Using threats was associated with being male, a prior criminal history, substance abuse, and suicidality. Approaching the victim was associated with younger age, less previous offending, and absence of a prior acquaintance with the target. Postindex criminal offending was common (55%), but typically nonviolent, and on only 3 occasions (4%) was the victim the original target of harassment. When violent recidivism did occur it was not toward the target; it was best predicted by younger age at index, criminal history, and using threats. Offenders who harass justice officials are rarely violent toward these victims, and their violence is predicted by well-established variables.

Incidental memory of younger and older adults for objects encountered in a real world context.

Effects of context on the perception of, and incidental memory for, real-world objects have predominantly been investigated in younger individuals, under conditions involving a single static viewpoint. We examined the effects of prior object context and object familiarity on both older and younger adults’ incidental memory for real objects encountered while they traversed a conference room. Recognition memory for context-typical and context-atypical objects was compared with a third group of unfamiliar objects that were not readily named and that had no strongly associated context. Both older and younger adults demonstrated a typicality effect, showing significantly lower 2-alternative-forced-choice recognition of context-typical than context-atypical objects; for these objects, the recognition of older adults either significantly exceeded, or numerically surpassed, that of younger adults. Testing-awareness elevated recognition but did not interact with age or with object type. Older adults showed significantly higher recognition for context-atypical objects than for unfamiliar objects that had no prior strongly associated context. The observation of a typicality effect in both age groups is consistent with preserved semantic schemata processing in aging. The incidental recognition advantage of older over younger adults for the context-typical and context-atypical objects may reflect aging-related differences in goal-related processing, with older adults under comparatively more novel circumstances being more likely to direct their attention to the external environment, or age-related differences in top-down effortful distraction regulation, with older individuals’ attention more readily captured by salient objects in the environment. Older adults’ reduced recognition of unfamiliar objects compared to context-atypical objects may reflect possible age differences in contextually driven expectancy violations. The latter finding underscores the theoretical and methodological value of including a third type of objects–that are comparatively neutral with respect to their contextual associations–to help differentiate between contextual integration effects (for schema-consistent objects) and expectancy violations (for schema-inconsistent objects).

Extraction and 1H NMR Analysis of Fats from Convenience Foods: A Laboratory Experiment for Organic Chemistry

The extraction and analysis of fats from convenience foods (crackers, cookies, chips, candies) has been developed as an experiment for a second-year undergraduate organic chemistry laboratory course. Students gravimetrically determine the fat content per serving and then perform a 1H NMR analysis of the recovered fat to determine the levels of saturated, unsaturated, monounsaturated, and polyunsaturated fats in the food. Students compare their results to the information provided on the food package label. This experiment engages students in the learning process by connecting with their prior knowledge and familiarity of the foods used. Students learn several important concepts and techniques, such as fat characteristics and structure, solid–liquid extraction, structure–solubility relationships, vacuum filtration, and 1H NMR spectroscopy.

Comparability of Test Results of Computer based Tests (CBT) and Paper and Pencil Tests (PPT) among English Language Learners in Iran

This study aims at examining the score comparability of institutional multiple-choice reading comprehension tests in two testing methods, i.e. paper-based and computer-based tests taken by Iranian first-year English students in Azad University of Tehran, Iran. In order to find the results, the researcher required examining the impact of computer-based testing (henceforth CBT) on the test score results, and exploring the relationship between particular test takers’ characteristics such as prior computer familiarity and computer attitudes as well as test performancewith their test scores. Two equivalent tests were administered to participants on two different occasions. Utilizing matched t-test to compare the means of two test modes, the results of the study show the priority of PPT over CBT with .01 degree of difference at p<05. Using ANOVA, the findings revealed that computer familiarity and attitude towards computer had no significant influence on the students’ performance in computerized test. Additionally, participants showed more preference on test features presented on the computer test.

Communities and managerial competencies supporting SMEs innovation networking: a longitudinal case study

Over the last few decades, the need for small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) to rely on networking to get access to innovation and larger knowledge bases has become evident. This paper analyzes the birth and evolution of an Italian innovation community created by a group of SMEs searching for innovation. Coming from quite different fields, these SMEs converged around a challenging project in the field of biomedical and rehabilitation devices. The aim of the paper is twofold: (1) to investigate what type of competences and tasks have to be accomplished to effectively manage an innovation community (IC) and what managerial roles (promotors) emerge by crossing competences and tasks; and (2) to what extent community members' absorptive capacity (ACAP) influences their ability to acquire and exploit innovation generated by the community. Using an in‐depth longitudinal case study analysis, we identified three different stages in community evolution. We also studied which promotors' roles that emerged in each stage and determined their relationship both between each other and to community performance. Furthermore, we investigated to what extent an existing knowledge base in a specific domain and previous experiences in networking influenced community members' ability to exploit innovation. We found that a specific correspondence among competences and tasks is needed to guarantee community performance and that promotors should interact among themselves to enable the community to reach its goal. Concerning ACAP, we found that prior experience and familiarity in networking are not predictive of new knowledge exploitation.

(Non-)decoupled supersymmetric field theories

We study some consequences of coupling supersymmetric theories to (super)gravity. To linear order, the couplings are determined by the energy-momentum supermultiplet. At higher orders, the couplings are determined by contact terms in correlation functions of the energy-momentum supermultiplet. We focus on the couplings of one particular field in the supergravity multiplet, the auxiliary field $M$. We discuss its linear and quadratic (seagull) couplings in various supersymmetric theories. In analogy to the local renormalization group formalism, we provide a prescription for how to fix the quadratic couplings. They generally arise at two-loops in perturbation theory. We check our prescription by explicitly computing these couplings in several examples such as mass-deformed ${\cal N}$ = 4 and in the Coulomb phase of some theories. These couplings affect the Lagrangians of rigid supersymmetric theories in curved space. In addition, our analysis leads to a transparent derivation of the phenomenon known as Anomaly Mediation. In contrast to previous approaches, we obtain both the gaugino and scalar masses of Anomaly Mediation by relying just on classical, minimal supergravity and a manifestly local and supersymmetric Wilsonian point of view. Our discussion naturally incorporates the connection between Anomaly Mediation and supersymmetric $AdS_4$ Lagrangians. This note can be read without prior familiarity with Anomaly Mediated Supersymmetry Breaking (AMSB).

Evidentiality, intersubjectivity and salience in Spanish and Catalan markers claro/clar and la verdad/veritat

From an interactional perspective, this paper explores the evidential and salient meanings of Spanish and Catalan pragmatic markers claro/clar and la verdad/veritat, focusing on their intersubjective nature. Salience is the prominence that speakers give to certain meanings of lexemes based on prior experience, familiarity or convention (Giora, 2003; Kecskes 2013). Intersubjectivity involves the sharing of responsibility and commitment to the validity of the information provided (Nuyts 2001). The working hypothesis is that these markers adopt a twofold cognitive-functional role depending on: (i) the nature of the interactional communicative context; (ii) the newness or givenness of the information. In a monologic segment, the speaker makes use of the evidentials to argue and share with the interlocutor his/her epistemological stance and perspective through an inferential reasoning process; the aim is persuasive and evaluative. In a dialogic segment, their role is that of truth-attesting and the negotiation of salient meaning.

Review of: James W. Heisig, Nothingness and Desire: An East-West Philosophical Antiphony

James W. Heisig, and Desire: An East-West Philosophical Antiphony Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press 2013. vi + 193 pages. Nanzan Library of Asian Religion and Culture. Hardcover $44.10; paperback $22.50. isbn 978-0824838867.This book has its origins in the Jordan Lectures on Comparative Religion, deliv- ered by the author in 2011 at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. Nothingness and desire are put forward as what the author calls guiding fic- tions, through the interplay of which an antiphony-a call-and-response-between philosophies East and West becomes possible, across five critical contem- porary topics: self, God, morality, property, and the nature of the East-West divide.Perhaps ranging is the wrong metaphor of movement: the six lectures that make up this series do not so much range complacently or at random across their themes as circle them repeatedly and with intent. Heisig's contention is that the lingering and mistaken centrality in the western philosophical imagination of humanity and its anthropocentric projections has contributed profoundly harm- ful patterns of thought to our social and political discourse-such that unless new, alternative narratives of life and the natural world begin to take root soon, the social and ecological crises engendered by the old ones seem all but certain to overwhelm us. This gives and Desire the feel of as much an antiphony of poli- tics and philosophy as of philosophies East and West: an examination of how every- day politics-in the broadest sense of our individual and collective pursuit of power and security-and our most fundamental philosophical assumptions unceasingly call out and respond to one another, in such a way that the former can only mean- ingfully be reimagined, or redeemed, in conjunction with the latter.Nothingness and desire, the elucidation of which forms the basis of the intro- ductory lecture, perform a great deal of useful work here both as critical concepts and as symbols drawing us constantly onwards in the asking of ever more refined questions about the five major themes of the book. And while Heisig finds parts in his antiphony for voices as diverse as Daoism, Confucianism, various Buddhist tra- ditions, and Japan's Kyoto School, through to Aristotle, Augustine, Eckhart, and the modern German tradition spanning Hegel and Heidegger, his eschewal of unneces- sary contextual detail ensures that his analysis proceeds apace. Readers may find as a result that prior familiarity with the work of Nishida Kitar? and Tanabe Hajime is an advantage in grasping the basics of this crucial opening chapter, but then again Heisig pitches his prose at the intelligent generalist rather than the specialist-pro- viding in his brief introduction to nothingness, for example, a series of helpful correctives to false assumptions about the term that might easily distort a reader's understanding and misdirect their engagement with the rest of the book. Heisig points out, for instance, that while being operates in parts of the western tradi- tion as the supreme principle of reality, is not a straightforward alter- native. Certainly, there is a sense in which nothingness can be understood as the principle that encompasses and makes possible both and non-being. But it is not solely, or even mainly, a descriptor: depending on the situation, its expres- sive, performative aspects come to the fore, and we encounter nothingness vividly as a dynamism a quality, or a state of mind (23). This point about nothingness verbal as much as it is nominal matters a great deal for later chapters, where practical virtues such as insight, the training of habit, and the ability to respond naturally to the demands of the present situation are recommended over against the problems and self-deceptions that attend established religious or philosophical formulations.If Heisig requires of us a degree of pause and reflection in order to understand the multivalence and implications of here-not to mention the rereading of the occasional sentence, where the philosophical amateurs amongst us are concerned-the same goes too for desire. …