Subjective Sense Research Articles

Planetary consciousness incites probably transcendent feelings and deepens the polarization of worldviews

The authors postulate that their recently published theory explaining the essence of human self-awareness is useful to consider whether a personal planetary consciousness is emerging on our planet. Their earlier published theory posits that the feeling of self-awareness can be effectively explained when it is assumed that it arises as a result of the interaction of three processes, namely the feeling of qualia, the recurrent activity of neural circuits realizing the self-image, and the formation of the brain's electromagnetic field, important for the sense of subjectivity. This allows the authors in the next stage of inference to consider whether it is possible to find analogical elements and processes on a planetary scale. The authors specify the layers of distributed intelligence emerging on Earth. This allows them to consider the concept of a planetary global brain. The authors believe that the recent, quite unexpected, widespread use of new global-scale artificial intelligence systems such as Chat/GPT is an argument in favor of the formation of a global brain. Next, the authors mention the first known published intuitions related to planetary consciousness, especially Teilhard de Chardin's concept of the noosphere. The authors also indicate the observable manifestations of existence of alleged planetary consciousness. They believe that people's transcendent feelings should be considered as such its manifestation. They hypothesize that the recently observed polarization of worldviews is also magnified by alleged emerging planetary consciousness. The authors, drawing on the analogy between brain hemisphere specialization and the planet's two ideological blocks, conclude that it's vital to patiently moderate conflicts and accept that altering this pattern is unfeasible. Some other practical conclusions are also formulated.

Accumbens connectivity during deep-brain stimulation differentiates loss of control from physiologic behavioral states

BackgroundLoss of control (LOC) eating, the subjective sense that one cannot control what or how much one eats, characterizes binge-eating behaviors pervasive in obesity and related eating disorders. Closed-loop deep-brain stimulation (DBS) for binge eating should predict LOC and trigger an appropriately timed intervention. Objective/hypothesisThis study aimed to identify a sensitive and specific biomarker to detect LOC onset for DBS. We hypothesized that changes in phase-locking value (PLV) predict the onset of LOC-associated cravings and distinguish them from potential confounding states. MethodsUsing DBS data recorded from the nucleus accumbens (NAc) of two patients with binge eating disorder (BED) and severe obesity, we compared PLV between inter- and intra-hemispheric NAc subregions for three behavioral conditions: craving (associated with LOC eating), hunger (not associated with LOC), and sleep. ResultsIn both patients, PLV in the high gamma frequency band was significantly higher for craving compared to sleep and significantly higher for hunger compared to craving. Maximum likelihood classifiers achieved accuracies above 88% when differentiating between the three conditions. ConclusionsHigh-frequency inter- and intra-hemispheric PLV in the NAc is a promising biomarker for closed-loop DBS that differentiates LOC-associated cravings from physiologic states such as hunger and sleep. Future trials should assess PLV as a LOC biomarker across a larger cohort and a wider patient population transdiagnostically.

전통적 정의론에 따른 범죄피해자 개념의 고찰

The laws and systems that have not grasped the essence of the purpose of recovering the damage of “crime victims” without accurately organizing the concept of crime victims are very dangerous. Fundamentally, the concept of crime victims is relative. It is also the reason for the relativity of the concept that a crime victim can be defined only when it is determined who is a criminal and what is a crime. However, the reason why it is difficult to define the concept of crime victims is that the concept is inevitably different depending on which theory of justice is selected.
 Traditional justice theories do not define the social role of crime victims or even their definitions. Furthermore, traditional justice does not see criminals as social evils or objects that should be permanently separated from society, but also criminals as members of society who pursue individual freedom and interests as rational human beings with free will.
 In the theory of retribution justice, the existence of crime victims seems to be only a means of determining the amount of punishment in the active aspect of requesting that the degree of disadvantage deserved be proportional to criminal damage. However, in the negative aspect, retaliation is a disadvantage that only justifies the existence of punishment and is not related to the amount of punishment, so crime victims are not considered.
 Utilitarianism can be said to be the sum of human responses to the distribution result, not the distribution method of goods. Maximizing the subjective value of utility, in terms of goods, the distribution of goods and the objective sum of goods are always constant. Therefore, it is not possible to confirm how crime victims are defined and what values and respect should be received within society. In Hegel's theory of absolute punishment, there is no room for a crime victim to intervene in the national punishment right, and his absence becomes clear. The state should never reflect the victim’s subjective sense of damage in punishment. If a criminal is approved as a right holder to be punished by his/her criminal act itself as an existence of immediate will, there will be no room for the criminal victim to exist in the action of the right to punish.
 Furthermore, it was confirmed that the distribution of fair resources is emphasized as a matter of welfare, resources, and opportunities if it is approached in terms of means of equal distribution for the purpose of guaranteeing more equal freedom.
 As such, traditional criminal theories approach how to punish criminals from the perspective of justice, so they do not consider the concept of crime victims at all, or the treatment of crime victims is not a matter of justice. However, it can be seen that the principle of proportionality presented as a means of pursuing justice in most justice theories cannot be fully explained by excluding crime victims.

Being understood and feeling understood: Examining the role of personality and emotion perceptions in others’ felt understanding

How must a person be understood to feel understood? We explored how perceptions of close others’ personality and emotions related to their felt understanding. Results revealed that perceivers’ raw emotion accuracy, but not personality accuracy, was positively associated with targets’ felt understanding in two studies. Notably, being perceived in line with the normative, socially desirable profile of emotions, and not in line with one’s distinct profile of emotions, drove this association. Overall, then, adopting a normative lens when perceiving others’ emotions could promote a subjective sense of feeling understood. These findings help advance the personality and social perception literature, and indicate that adopting a componential approach to accuracy can provide nuance when investigating associations with social processes.

The Fruits of Spiritual Experiences during the Pandemic: COVID-19 and the Effects of Non-Ordinary Experiences

Abstract This paper presents new research about spiritual experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic. The aim is to discuss the impact of spiritual experiences on people’s lives and relationships. Building upon William James’ four features of the “fruits” of religious experience as a conceptual frame, the paper presents data from two surveys in which participants narrated spiritual experiences and reflected on the impacts of those experiences. We start with a short presentation of James’ ideas about the fruits of religious experience. The next section outlines four themes that have emerged from the narratives of spiritual experiences during the pandemic: impacts on people’s relationships with their religious communities, shifts in one’s subjective sense of spiritual connection and intuition, encounters with spiritual figures and near-death experiences, and interpretations of COVID-19 as a spiritual contagion. The final section broadens the discussion from the impact of specific spiritual experiences to include spiritual responses to the pandemic more generally, leading to a discussion of the experiences within the wider debate in fruits of religious experience.

위당 정인보의 실심 감통과 경세제민

This article reexamines Jeong In-bo’s lifelong studies and achievements from the perspective of understanding him as a statesman. Keenly empathizing the pain of the people who lost their nation, he recognizes that it was the task of the times to reclaim national sovereignty and relieve the people from suffering. He finds the cause of the collapse of Joseon inside Joseon, and diagnoses that all problems originated from ‘thinking of promoting one’s own interests (自私念)’. What he suggested to resolve these problems is ‘to awaken the sincere mind’. He believes that separation can be turned into oneness, conflict into love, and slaughter into revitalization only when ‘thinking of promotion of one’s own interest’ is overcome by awakening the sincere mind of all Joseon people. While studying Yangming studies, Jeong In-bo realized that the sincere mind has the ability to empathize, and verified this realization by his own experience. Through this experience, he submitted ‘empathy of the sincere mind’ as a statecraft principle that can save the world. All of his activities including educational, academic, media and political activities, aim at ‘governing a nation and saving the people’ according to the statecraft principle of ‘empathy of the sincere mind’. Jeong In-bo paved the way for advancing Korean Studies by awakening the importance of Korean Studies to his colleagues and students who worked at Yonhee College. Furthermore, with a deep understanding of Joseon’s reality after liberation, he adopted ‘strengthening and raising the national spirit’, which was the spirit of the times, as his educational ideology, and suggested a way for the nation to move forward by seeking detailed practical plans. He also brought the thoughts and works of Silhak scholars in the late Joseon dynasty into light; from his view, these scholars related to the nation and its people through the sincere mind and academically explored the way to save the nation and its people. He inspired the sense of subjectivity of the people by exploring Joseon’s spirit of 5,000 years in his research on Joseon history, enhancing the sense of identity of our nation. He struggled to solve the problems of the times by spreading his academic achievements through the media and carrying out an enlightenment movement to awaken the sincere mind of the people. Even in his short political term in Syngman Rhee’s government, he tried to correct the bureaucracy. All these academic works and activities of Jeong In-bo were motivated by the determination to save the world.

Narrative Study on Successful Career Transition Based on Experiences of Chinese Vocational College Maritime Students

Chinese vocational college maritime graduates play a crucial role in the maritime field. They operate ship equipment, ensure maritime safety, and provide important support in achieving the goal of China becoming a maritime power. Therefore, paying attention to their career development is of significant importance. This study adopted a narrative research approach and aimed to delve into the inner journey of successful career transition among 12 Chinese vocational college maritime graduates. It was conducted through semi structured interviews to gain a comprehensive understanding of their experiences. The research findings indicate the interviewees identified several challenging factors associated with the maritime profession. These factors include monotonous and oppressive job tasks, high work pressure, confined spaces on ships, fixed and inflexible salaries, limited career advancement opportunities, a sense of disconnection from society, difficulties making friends, challenges achieving work–life balance, and limited prospects for career growth. These factors contributed to a subjective sense of professional dissatisfaction among them. However, once they transitioned to land-based jobs, they achieved subjective professional success. This can mainly be attributed to the fact that land-based jobs allow them to take care of their families, pursue a more independent lifestyle, maintain social connections, and lead a stable life. Based on the research findings, it is recommended ship companies and society as a whole pay attention to the career development of maritime students and improve the working environment in the maritime industry. This is necessary to meet their needs for balancing family responsibilities, pursuing a more independent lifestyle, and maintaining social connections. By addressing these aspects, it will help facilitate subjective professional success among maritime students.

Between The Real And The Imaginary: Truth And Lies In The Psychoanalytic Encounter.

When reality is too much to bear, bodymind unity can fracture, creating self-deceptions, distortions, and disguises of emotional experience that amount to unconscious lies. Without clarity regarding what is real and what is imaginary, emotional truth is difficult to discern. Lies disrupt the development of a subjective sense of self, making it difficult to trust sensations, emotions, or thoughts. In the absence of this trust, a patient may form a delusion that they do not exist. Working psychoanalytically with patients traumatized in infancy and early childhood requires the analyst to experience a somatic link between herself and the patient, thereby enabling a process that was inhibited and, in some cases, nearly aborted to resume functioning. Clinical material is presented illustrating a negative hallucination of not existing following an emotional experience that could not be borne as well as bodymind dissociation that separated the patient's psychic pain from her childhood narrative. The author concludes that these methods of coping with trauma prevent the grieving necessary for truth to become bearable and the mind to grow.

Reinforcement learning establishes a minimal metacognitive process to monitor and control motor learning performance

Humans and animals develop learning-to-learn strategies throughout their lives to accelerate learning. One theory suggests that this is achieved by a metacognitive process of controlling and monitoring learning. Although such learning-to-learn is also observed in motor learning, the metacognitive aspect of learning regulation has not been considered in classical theories of motor learning. Here, we formulated a minimal mechanism of this process as reinforcement learning of motor learning properties, which regulates a policy for memory update in response to sensory prediction error while monitoring its performance. This theory was confirmed in human motor learning experiments, in which the subjective sense of learning-outcome association determined the direction of up- and down-regulation of both learning speed and memory retention. Thus, it provides a simple, unifying account for variations in learning speeds, where the reinforcement learning mechanism monitors and controls the motor learning process.

The cost-effectiveness of a virtual intervention to prevent eating disorders in young women in Sweden.

To determine the cost-effectiveness of a virtual version of the Body Project (vBP), a cognitive dissonance-based program, to prevent eating disorders (ED) among young women with a subjective sense of body dissatisfaction in the Swedish context. A decision tree combined with a Markov model was developed to estimate the cost-effectiveness of the vBP in a clinical trial population of 149 young women (mean age 17 years) with body image concerns. Treatment effect was modeled using data from a trial investigating the effects of vBP compared to expressive writing (EW) and a do-nothing alternative. Population characteristics and intervention costs were sourced from the trial. Other parameters, including utilities, treatment costs for ED, and mortality were sourced from the literature. The model predicted the costs and quality-adjusted life years (QALYs) related to the prevention of incidence of ED in the modeled population until they reached 25 years of age. The study used both a cost-utility and return on investment (ROI) framework. In total, vBP yielded lower costs and larger QALYs than the alternatives. The ROI analysis denoted a return of US $152 for every USD invested in vBP over 8 years against the do-nothing alternative and US $105 against EW. vBP is likely to be cost-effective compared to both EW and a do-nothing alternative. The ROI from vBP is substantial and could be attractive information for decision makers for implementation of this intervention for young females at risk of developing ED. This study estimates that the vBP is cost-effective for the prevention of eating disorders among young women in the Swedish setting, and thus is a good investment of public resources.

Trajectory of depressive symptoms in the context of romantic relationship breakup: Characterizing the "natural course" of response and recovery in young adults.

Young adults face stressful role transitions as well as increased risk for poor mental health, but little is known about a "natural course" of response to such events. We used the PHQ-2 to characterize the trajectory of depressive symptoms before, during, and after relationship breakup and examined subjective appraisal and sense of control as moderators. In our sample of participants reporting a single breakup during the 2-year study period (N=156), breakup was associated with a temporary increase in depressive symptoms that returned to pre-breakup levels within three months. We observed increased symptoms among negatively appraised, but not positive or neutral, events. A general low sense of control was associated with higher depressive symptoms at all time points. Our results suggest that a natural course of response to young adult breakups is characterized by recovery within three months and that subjective appraisal and sense of control contribute to this adaptive response.

Tourism, feelings, and the consumption of heritage

More and more research has been conducted to examine individuated, affective, and embodied themes related to heritage landscapes. Following this recent trend, the paper analyzes how tourists experience heritage landscapes to retrieve positive feelings from the past and thus seek inspiration for a better life. Specifically, this paper has two objectives. First, it examines the embodied interactions between tourists and heritage landscapes in Lijiang Old Town, a well-known cultural heritage site in Yunnan, China. Studying these interactions will add substance to the affective aspect of heritage landscapes, showing the cultural value of heritage to individuals who live in a speedy world. Second, this paper attempts to understand the complex feelings developed by tourists towards heritage landscapes. We find that leisurely tourists attempt to enjoy heritage landscapes in order to counter their hectic pace of life in China’s big cities. They engage in either strolling in the town to decode the cultural values of heritage landscapes or staying put to immerse themselves in a heritage aura, for the purpose of relaxation and slowness. All the positive feelings in the town can lead to selftransformation and even spiritual rejuvenation. By apprehending heritage for inspiration, a situated and relational picture of tourism consumption unfolds to highlight how tourists develop a subjective sense of and feeling about heritage..

Objects’ perceived meaningfulness predicts both subjective memorability judgments and actual memory performance

ABSTRACT Memorability studies have revealed a limitation in our ability to accurately judge which images are memorable. Conversely, metacognitive research suggests that individuals can utilize cues to reliably assess their memory performance. Here, we investigated two important stimulus cues potentially underlying subjective memorability, and their relation to actual memory performance. Participants encoded 200 real-world object images while providing Judgements of Learning (JOLs), in which they estimated the likelihood of remembering each image. Subsequently, they completed an old/new memory recognition test on these stimuli. All stimuli were priorly rated by an independent group of participants for their perceived meaningfulness and visual complexity. Results indicated that participants' metacognitive judgements exhibited a relatively good resolution, allowing them to distinguish well-remembered from less-remembered images. Furthermore, analyses conducted at the image level demonstrated that JOLs significantly predicted memory performance, with the meaningfulness of the images emerging as a crucial factor associated with JOLs of both participants and their actual memory performance. The visual complexity factor was correlated only with the actual memory performance. Collectively, these findings suggest that memory performance is closely associated with the meaning of objects. Critically, individuals possess a subjective sense of images' memorability, which is at least partially mediated by perceived meaningfulness.

Korea Army’s Value as a Way to Character Education for Military Personnel

Purpose: This paper intends to identify the core values of the Republic of Korea Army (ROKA) and the foundation for character education. The ROKA aims to win the ground war as the central force of national defense.
 Method: In order to accomplish the research purpose, the researcher critically reviewed the literature related to the Korea Army value and character education including policy reports, army papers, and academic articles.
 Results: The ROKA is trying to establish a new military culture and value system to responds to changes from the internal and external environment and to educate the so-called MZ generation soldiers who are majority of the military personnel. Value refers to a resource that satisfies an individual's needs in a subjective sense, and a hierarchy occurs according to an individual's tendency or desire. If these values persist for a long time, they will also have a hierarchy at the social level, too. In addition, an organizational culture is formed in the direction of pursuing the values even in the military organizations.
 Conclusion: In this respect, this paper presents the values that the ROKA pursues, the organizational culture formed around these values, and the directions of character education system to imbue the core values.

Refleksyjność w kontekście podmiotowości i sprawczości nauczyciela. Wnioski dla kształcenia nauczycieli

The article’s aim is to describe and analyse reflectivity as a desirable dimension of the professionalism of a contemporary teacher and the space of his becoming and development. It’s described on basis of author’s own research works and analyses, in reference to the so-called “reflective cognitive approach” in the social sciences, presented by Giddens, Sztompka, Bourdieu and studies and analyses on the basis of pedeutology (Czerepaniak-Walczak, Kwiatkowska, Mizerek, Klus-Stańska, Gołębniak). In this text, in addition to referring to the aforementioned trends and concepts, the approach of Margaret S. Archer is introduced, in which the three components of subjectivity, reflexivity and agency are closely related and determine the essence of man as a person. In this way, author exposes the issue of the teacher as a person. This perspective, along with the social approach, in the current conditions (due to their technological complications and global tensions), is particularly desirable. Meanwhile, these are neglected issues in Polish education policy; the teacher’s (technical) competence model (limited professionalism) does not seem to be enough while facing constant changes in the socio-political arena and in the media. They affect the axiological condition of teachers, cause their identity confusion, uncertainty, low sense of subjectivity, lack of strong legitimacy and trust in society. The article also addresses the issue of education to reflectivity as the basic subjective competence of the teacher, the quality of his person, education as a task of modern education and the education and professional development of teachers.

Color Differentiation of Digital Risks in Teacher Education

Introduction. At the present stage of education digital transformation, the urgent task is being addressed to train educators who are ready to meet the challenges and risks of a changing and unstable digital world. Digital risks differentiating and adjusting the course of digital learning for future educators constitute the study problem and goal. The paper draws attention to the issues of digital transformation in the educational system carried out under conditions of uncertainty, as well as ways and opportunities to adjust the course of digital learning, ensuring the readiness of future teachers for the changes that are coming in the near and distant future. Materials and Methods. Leading research methods: system analysis of digital risks in teacher education, scenario modeling of network interactions and digital learning in basic risk situations, pedagogical experiment. The dynamic set of analytical and predictive judgments of future teachers about the possibilities of overcoming risk situations constitute the experimental materials. In research, digital risks are differentiated by three definable parameters: subjective sense of danger, relative risk and probability of threat. Results. The algorithmic model provides risk classification features and color codes. Their influence on the choice of safe behavior strategies in basic risk situations associated with networking and digital learning is described. The study reveals the authorʼs idea of risks color differentiation, which in this paper is illustrated by examples of teachers’ professional activities in networking and digital learning situations. The paper practical significance lies in pedagogical influences of algorithmic model approbation in risks situations of different danger levels: especially dangerous, moderate and underestimated risks in the dynamic digital space. It is concluded that actions in danger situations can be effectively regulated by light signals similar to a modified traffic light. Each signal can be matched with an individual scenario included a stereotypical behavior algorithms set that is assigned considering the real danger and subjective feeling on it, the basic scenario and prediction corresponding to it. The survey final measurements showed that the future teachers who passed the experimental training significantly decreased their subjective sense of danger. Discussion and Conclusion. The pedagogical experiment reveals that the study of risk situations, pedagogical activity scenario modeling and orientation to color cues in typical risk situations reduce the teachers’ uncertainty sense and give positive shifts in teachers’ training.

Overview of Dogs Training Programs in Correctional Institutions

Positive opinions about impact that relations with animals have on participating humans were the main reason for introducing animal-based resocialization programs in correctional institutions. As form of occupational therapy, they aim at increasing and improving social and psychological skills of imprisoned individuals. They aim at creating and increasing empathy, improving communication and its effectiveness, building sense of responsibility and patience. Participants of such programs underline their positive impact on their well-being and subjective sense of wellness. In this text I present short history of using relations with animals in improving psychological and social competencies of humans. I discuss also positive effects of such programs for effectiveness of correctional institutions.

Martin Luther and the Rule of Faith: Reading God's Word for God's People by Todd R. Hains

Reviewed by: Martin Luther and the Rule of Faith: Reading God's Word for God's People by Todd R. Hains Mark Mattes Martin Luther and the Rule of Faith: Reading God's Word for God's People. By Todd R. Hains. Downers Grove, Illinois: IVP Academic, 2022. xx + 217 pp. With respect to hermeneutics, Luther is often seen as having freed interpreters from medieval allegorizing because he favored a literal approach to scripture. Likewise, he is thought to have liberated interpreters of scripture from accountability to the wider catholic tradition and instead allowed them an autonomous voice. Hains challenges such misrepresentations by focusing on a neglected aspect of the reformer's thinking: the analogy or rule of faith. For Luther, the analogy of faith offers a way to find a legitimate place for the allegorical interpretation of scripture. According to Hains, the analogy of faith, referred to in Romans 12:6, was seen prior to the Enlightenment as the core apostolic teaching of the church, but, after the Enlightenment, "the vast majority of exegetes" have interpreted it "in the subjective sense," as the faculty of faith "exercised by the individual" (13). Indeed, Enlightenment hermeneutics rejected the analogy of faith seen as apostolic teaching because, from the start, the allegorizing it employs to interpret scripture assumes the traditional creedal affirmations of faith to which it wishes to arrive. Its strategy was to replace the analogy of faith with the historical critical method (17). In contrast, for Luther, when interpreting scripture, nothing is as central for faith as Christ. Luther's hermeneutic cannot be reduced to formulas like "justification by grace alone" since Luther read scripture through a thoroughly trinitarian lens and justification should not be understood apart from union with Christ (6). Luther appealed to the catechism, which includes the Ten Commandments, the Apostles' Creed, the Lord's Prayer, and the sacraments, as what constitutes the analogy of faith, since those matters [End Page 216] unfailingly leads us to Christ (19). Here, "catechism" should not be reduced either to Luther's Small or Large Catechisms. The concept has a wider focus. It is the "animating logic" of Luther's theology as a whole (24). The Small and Large Catechisms are commentaries on "catechism" understood in a broader sense (34). Drawn from the scriptures, the analogy of faith functions, as I interpret Hains, as a "canon within the canon," a legitimate move precisely because it leads to Christ. With this analogy of faith, Hains demonstrates that Luther employed a rich allegorical approach to scripture provided that attempts at allegorizing agree with the analogy of faith. Allegory elaborates and explains faith. It is a matter of rhetoric and not dialectic (8) and while it should not be employed as the basis for doctrine, it can expand on the application of doctrine. For Luther, the Bible can be divided into five sections: the law, history, wisdom, prophets, and the New Testament. Hains selects representative passages from each of these biblical sections (Genesis 22, Judges 14, Psalm 72, Isaiah 9:2–7, and Luke 24:13–14) in order to illustrate how Luther employed the analogy of faith. Hermeneutics informed by the analogy of faith entails interpreting passages not merely in relation to each other, a "general analogy," but instead by putting the catechism in conversation with anything in the Bible, a "special analogy" (29). Again, the key is that the catechism ever witnesses to Jesus Christ as the Lord of scripture (29). For example, to properly interpret the sacrifice of Isaac, which comes across as God commanding Abraham to violate the prohibition against murder, Hains notes that grammar, history, and the literary context alone fail to ascertain the meaning of the passage. Instead, an interpreter needs the help of the second article of the creed which details the sacrificial life of Christ (88). Isaac, as Luther saw it, is properly understood as a figure of Christ (89). Hains concludes that the analogy of faith allows interpreters to read the Bible on the basis of the Bible, since the catechism in all its parts is thoroughly biblical and that it promotes faith since it ever witnesses to Christ. Hains builds on an angle in...

Effects of sulforaphane glucosinolates from broccoli seed extract on the immune system of healthy Japanese adults

Background: The Purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of sulforaphane glucosinolate (SGS) from broccoli seed extracts on immune function and common cold symptoms in healthy Japanese adults.Methods: This randomized, placebo-controlled, double-blind, parallel-group comparison study was conducted on Japanese adults who had worse health-related quality of life on the SF-8 and were more likely to catch colds from October 22, 2020 to April 2, 2021.Individuals who agreed to participate in the study were randomly assigned to either the SGS 100 mg/day group or the placebo group (n = 33 each). The intervention lasted 8 weeks. The outcomes of this study were the cumulative and the maximum number of days for which common cold symptoms persisted during the intervention period per subject (primary), and the frequency with which subjects experienced these symptoms per group (secondary). Additionally, the incidence rate of subjects infected with the influenza virus, immune indices, and SF-8 were assessed.Results: Based on a per protocol set, 64 subjects (33 in the SGS group and 31 in the placebo group) were analyzed. After the 8-week interventional period, the cumulative number of days for which common cold symptoms per subject was significantly lower for the SGS group than the placebo group (12.1 ± 13.5 for the SGS group and 20.2 ± 18.2 for the placebo group). The cumulative number of days of common cold symptoms per group was also significantly lower in the SGS group than in the placebo group (400 days in the SGS group and 626 days in the placebo group). No changes attributable to the SGS intervention were observed in the other outcomes. There were no adverse events due to food ingestion.Conclusion: A period of 8 weeks of SGS intake was shown to alleviate the onset of common cold symptoms in healthy Japanese adults who were prone to catching colds and had a low subjective sense of wellness.Keywords: Broccoli, sulforaphane, glucoraphanin, cold symptoms, immunityTrial registration: UMIN-CTR: UMIN000042195.Foundation: Murakami Farm Co., Ltd.

Groundwork for Democracy? Community Abeyance and Lived Citizenship in Hong Kong

Studies on Hong Kong’s contentious politics have focused primarily on the high tides of mobilization. Scant attention is paid to what became of the intense mobilizations following their decline. This article spotlights the “abeyance” politics of community activism, in which activists sought to make territorial communities an arena of social and political participation in quieter times after mass mobilizations. Drawing on the concept of abeyance from political sociology, we argue that community activism served as “abeyance structures” after the mass mobilizations in the early 2010s, a major protest cycle preceding the 2019 anti-extradition movement. Based on mixed methods and original data, we argue that these abeyance structures not only allowed activists to maintain their political engagement but also gave rise to various practices of “lived citizenship” in territorial communities. These practices produced a changing sense of political subjectivity among citizens, establishing a more grounded notion of democracy that emphasizes their participation in local affairs and social entitlements. Our findings aim to enrich the literature on movement abeyance and provide a nuanced understanding of political activism in Hong Kong beyond street politics.