Thoughts In Mind Research Articles

Bouncing back: A commentary on resilience in sustainability narratives

Resilience is an increasingly common element in the sustainability and sustainable growth narratives of a growing number of companies and organisations. At the same time, a number of meanings are claimed for resilience and the relationship between resilience and sustainability has been depicted in a number of ways. With these thoughts in mind, this short commentary paper outlines the characteristic features of the concept of resilience, provides some illustrations of how a number of companies and organisations are harnessing the concept as an integral part of their sustainability strategies and policies, offers some general reflections on the application of the concept, and concludes with some thoughts on how public relations and communications professionals can contribute to resilience planning.

One Classroom, Two Teachers? Historical Thinking and Indigenous Education in Canada

Recent reforms to social studies and history education in Canada raise many questions about the relationship between Indigenous approaches to history, and the emphasis in new curricula on historical thinking. What are the implications of the relationship between these two reform movements for educators? This article illuminates literature on Indigenous histories and historical thinking—their intersections and divergences—in order to identify questions, conflicts and limitations produced in the encounter between these two fields. The article concludes with preliminary suggestions as to how educators may proceed to adapt their programs with the goals of historical thinking in mind, while remaining respectful of Indigenous imperatives for school learning.

Elizabeth Bishop’s Grammar School for the Aspect-Blind and A-rhetorical

This paper uses Elizabeth Bishop’s poem, “Over 2000 Illustrations and a Complete Concordance” as an exemplar that displays the centrality of aspect perception in her work.

Grey

With the blackest of black humour, Hans (Christopher Walken) describes seeing his murdered wife in limbo—not quite hell, but definitely not heaven. Any day in England too foggy to see past one's hands brings to mind thoughts of Helheim, one of the nine Norse underworlds that, despite its name, is said to be a land of neutral mist (“Hel” in Old Norse means hidden).

Reading What the Mind Thinks From How the Eye Sees

Human eyes convey a remarkable variety of complex social and emotional information. However, it is unknown which physical eye features convey mental states and how that came about. In the current experiments, we tested the hypothesis that the receiver’s perception of mental states is grounded in expressive eye appearance that serves an optical function for the sender. Specifically, opposing features of eye widening versus eye narrowing that regulate sensitivity versus discrimination not only conveyed their associated basic emotions (e.g., fear vs. disgust, respectively) but also conveyed opposing clusters of complex mental states that communicate sensitivity versus discrimination (e.g., awe vs. suspicion). This sensitivity-discrimination dimension accounted for the majority of variance in perceived mental states (61.7%). Further, these eye features remained diagnostic of these complex mental states even in the context of competing information from the lower face. These results demonstrate that how humans read complex mental states may be derived from a basic optical principle of how people see.

An analysis on the status of application of mind map in domestic nursing

Mind map is a kind of thinking tool, which draws the mind's thoughts through words and pictures and can be applied instudy,life and work.Through biblio-metrological analysis, this study finds that domestic application of mind map in nursing focuses on fields such as nursing teaching, clinical nursing management and health education. The study and application of mind map in domestic nursing field are only in the beginning and exploration stage, lacking experimentation and evaluation study under the guidance of scientific methods, both the depth and breadth of research are yet to be improved. Key words: Mind map; Nursing education; Clinical nursing; Nursing management

Welcome Interns: May I Have Your Attention?

Welcome Interns: May I Have Your Attention?

Corporeal: Exploring the Material Dynamics of Embodiment

Corporeal: Exploring the Material Dynamics of Embodiment

The development of graduate attributes: the Book of the Year project

The notion of developing graduate attributes or generic skills through higher education, in order to enhance the employability of graduates, has become a focus of much attention in academic circles in the past decade. With the development of the key graduate skill of critical thinking in mind, a Book of the Year Project was introduced in 2012 at a South African Law Faculty. A questionnaire to ascertain a profile of the students was administered at the beginning of the project and a follow up survey to provide empirical data relating to the achievement of the objectives of the project was administered at the end of the first semester. An analysis of the data suggests that the project be continued. The authors conclude with some recommendations for future innovations related to such a project.

Becoming a Ruthless Editor

Becoming a Ruthless Editor

Introduction to the Statistical Concepts Symposium Section: Selected Review Topics to Improve Our Understanding and Use of Statistics

There are three kinds of lies; lies, damned lies and statistics. Statistics is a body of methods for making wise decisions in the face of uncertainty. In order to shed light on the use and misuse of statistics in the agricultural and natural resource sciences, Agronomy Journal set about to provide its authors and readers with useful information on statistical approaches and strategies for conducting and publishing scientific information. As readers, researchers, reviewers, or as editors of scientific literature, we may have come across situations or articles where we had serious doubts whether the most appropriate method to analyze an experiment or set of experiments was used. Furthermore, ever-increasing computing power has enabled researchers to use more intensive and complex statistical methods with the help of new and updated general and special purpose statistical software programs always becoming available. With these more complex computations, we now also have the ability to design more advanced and efficient experiments. We as biological scientists may or may not enjoy or have the time or training for learning to properly design, program, and interpret these sophisticated tools, a set of activities that is itself a continually dynamic field of study. As scientific researchers, it is our charge to produce forward-thinking and meaningful experimentation with the most appropriate and accurate methodology available. With these thoughts in mind, Brent Godshalk, then Editor of the Agronomy Journal, and his Editorial Board recognized the need for communications on these topics at the 2011 Agronomy Journal Board meeting and chartered the Statistics Committee. The Agronomy Journal Statistics Committee set a goal to provide clear guidance on the appropriate use of effective statistical tools and procedures to Agronomy Journal readers and contributors; thereby allowing them to focus on and support their science with proper statistical approaches. To this end, the committee and the ASA Biometry and Statistical Computing Section co-sponsored the Symposium, “Statistical Concepts and Tools to Aid in Publishing Proper Research Conclusions” at the 2012 ASA, CSSA, and SSSA International Annual Meetings. Our second and major output is this series of articles in the Agronomy Journal. The articles will also be part of the “Special Sections” webpage (https://www.agronomy.org/publications/aj/special-sections). All of the software code that was presented in appendices in separate articles is also available in one file that can be assessed at https://www.agronomy.org/publications/aj/special-sections. The software code is also a supplemental file with this introduction article. These articles and the additional output of our committee are targeted to support scientists in key basic concepts and methodologies in statistics and biometry. We believe that many of us need support in these basic concepts as an effective means of complementing the trend to focus on supporting scientists to learn exceedingly more complex and advanced statistical tools and methodologies. Neither the committee nor the contributing authors pretend that this effort is comprehensive or will solve all the challenges of data analysis and interpretation facing the agricultural and natural resources research communities. Our goal is that Agronomy Journal contributors and others in the scientific community strive to learn and use the newer, more advanced statistical methodologies—but first are sure to understand and use the basic methodologies when these are more appropriate. We hope that each of you agree with the goal of striving to conduct, interpret, and communicate your excellent science in the best possible way. Each article in this series received robust reviews from several reviewers. More than 30 anonymous reviewers in all donated their time, and we thank them for the substantial contribution they have made to this series. Please note: The publisher is not responsible for the content or functionality of any supporting information supplied by the authors. Any queries (other than missing content) should be directed to the corresponding author for the article.

ChemNanoMat-A New Journal for Small Science with a Big Impact

<i>ChemNanoMat</i>-A New Journal for Small Science with a Big Impact

Light ! Camera! Education: The Use of Cinema to Enhance Education and Learning

In our time film making is regarded as a powerful teaching tool. Jean Mitry and Alain Bergala, amongst other filmmakers and writers associated with cinema, advocate that filmmaking is not just an art or a way to express culture, but it’s also a way of acquiring knowledge. Bearing these thoughts in mind, we intend in this paper, to point out how learning and education come together in Willy Russell’s film, Educating Rita . This film is based on the social constructivist notion advocated by Piaget (1896-1980) and Vygotsky (1896-1934), in which the determining factors for cognitive development interact with the physical and social environment, with human symbolism and with social interactions. Educating Rita refers to the social, historical and cultural context of the United Kingdom during the70’s, and conveys how the educational process turns out to be a social practice. In this film the student is given a primary role, namely he is responsible for his own learning and proves he can find ways to achieve his goals and being responsible for the consequences of his choices, in a process of experiencing, reflecting and transforming himself through and educational experience he undergoes in adult. In addition to the importance of social context in education, the film focuses on the affective and educational issues and calls up a reflection on the affective dimension during the teaching-learning process.

Do-it-Yourself Happiness: integrating well-being into population health

Over the past few years, the concept of ‘wellbeing’ has gained considerable currency in economic, social and political circles with a recognition that well-being is vitally important for the healthy functioning of families, communities and society. There is a large and compelling body of evidence, primarily from the field of positive psychology that is demonstrating that higher levels of positive emotions are correlated with a wide range of health and social outcomes. We know that certain actions, activities and practices can improve mood, reduce the risk of depression, strengthen relationships, keep us healthy and even add seven years to our lives. Yet health promotion tends to focus primarily on physical health rather than an integrated approach to mind and body. DIY Happiness is a health promotion initiative that aims to improve people’s understanding of mental health and wellbeing – in effect, social marketing the concept of mental health as a ‘positive asset’ that can be improved and enhanced by both individual and collective action DIY Happiness has three key objectives: to improve participants’ understanding of mental health and wellbeing; to boost participants’ subjective wellbeing to encourage participants to increase their uptake of evidence-based activities that improve wellbeing There are two stages to the programme. The first consists of eight weekly workshops based on six dimensions of well-being. These dimensions are graphically represented by a “wheel of well-being” and build on the Foresight report’s ‘5 Ways to Wellbeing.” After an introductory workshop, participants explore one of the themes of the Wheel of Well-being, each week, in a positive and participative way. Workshop themes include BODY (health, fitness and being active); MIND (learning, skills, creativity and thinking); SPIRIT (meaning, giving, positive emotions and health); PEOPLE (connecting to others, friends and family); PLACE (taking notice, surroundings, neighbourhoods); and PLANET (caring for the environment, sustainable happiness). The final session brings the whole programme together and develops the second stage of the project: “Dare-to-Dream World Congress on Integrated Care 2014, Sydney, November 23-26, 2014. International Journal of Integrated Care – Volume 14, 8 December – URN:NBN:NL:UI:10-1-116588– http://www.ijic.org/ Dare-to-Dream, the second stage of the programme, encourages participants to use the knowledge they’ve acquired to design tailor-made ‘happiness-boosting’ initiatives for their family, friends and local neighbourhood. Between 2009 and 2011, 350 women from across London took part in Well London’s DIY Happiness project in 20 local neighbourhoods facing the highest levels of health inequity. The project evaluation shows: improvements in well-being scores for all participants significant improvements in feelings of cheerfulness, usefulness and optimism about the future. A training-the-trainers programme is currently running with community workers in London and to support sustainability a Wheel of Wellbeing website has been developed (www.wheelofwellbeing.org), offering a practical collection of free tips, tools, activities and ideas, all designed to inspire people to develop new ways to improve well-being, whether from an individual, group or strategic perspective. The presentation will explore the evidence base, how to effectively engage communities in wellbeing, discuss the programme findings and look at key questions such as who decides on what’s a good investment for wellbeing and how?

Initial effects of a free swimming pilot programme on the physical activity levels of young people

Concerns remain over the physical activity (PA) levels of young people.1,2 Consequently, identifying interventions that are effective at encouraging young people to adopt and improve PA levels over the life course3 – especially those not meeting PA guidelines – is central to non-communicable disease prevention in later life.1 Efforts to increase PA levels through the promotion of swimming and aquatic activities for children and young people are one such option.4,5 Swimming has been referred to as the UK's ‘major participation sport’ and a mode of exercise that inactive groups contemplate when seeking to increase their PA levels.4 The aspiration to find effective and sustainable models of PA intervention necessitates rigorous monitoring and evaluation within the context where implementation takes place. With those thoughts in mind, this research set out to investigate the effectiveness of a local authority (LA) led pilot programme of free swimming (FS), with this paper reporting the initial key findings emerging from this study.

Corporate Reputation Management: The Sample of Erciyes University

One of the main problems encountered by modern organizations is how they are perceived by the society. Every individual in a society has in integrated state in his mind thoughts, perceptions, beliefs, and the impression of the institution. Image is made up of institution-related perceptions and impressions. Messages of all kinds affect image, and image determines the direction of reputation. Expressed in different concepts such as being respected, dear, reliable, and prestigious, reputation has recently become more attractive to researchers. This being considered by institutions and their existing image being analyzed by means of scientific research methods will help them to achieve their targets. The objective of this study is to measure the Erciyes University students’ perceptions of the same university. In this study in which students from communication faculty in their last year participated, data has been collected by administering questionnaires containing items related with institutional image. Findings from this study are important in that they provide information to serve to enhance institutional image.

Acta Diabetologica is 50 and well: long live Acta!

Acta Diabetologica has gone through a number of important changes this past year. First, and for the better, its Impact Factor enjoyed an impressive rise. Second, more worryingly, its authoritative and well-experienced Editorsin-Chief stepped down after achieving this rewarding result. Fortunately, Professors Guido Pozza and Renato Lauro, to whom heartfelt thanks are due for their steady guidance of the journal, will continue to make their experience available as Founding Editor and Honorary Editor, respectively. Thirdly, having been established in 1964 as Acta Diabetologica Latina, the journal celebrates its 50th birthday and is the oldest active diabetes journal in Europe. It is with such awesome thoughts in mind that this new Editor-in-Chief took charge last June. His predecessors led Acta Diabetologica to first league among Endocrine and Metabolism publications and entrusted him with the ability to continue their good work. Some of the action to this effect will go under the sign of continuity and some will have to take note of changing times. Rigorous selection of the manuscripts received by the Editorial Office will continue to be enforced, jointly with the two long-serving Managing Editors, Professors Massimo Federici and Antonio Secchi, and with old and new members of the Editorial and Advisory Boards. We shall have to be tough and maintain the current 80 % rejection rate. However, more importantly, we shall strive to be as fair as possible. This Editorial Board believes that quality is more important than quantity and that publishing good articles is better than publishing few articles. No good papers left behind should be our motto, probably not shared by all those authors who will see their submissions rejected. Alas, journal Editors do not make many friends! But a good Impact Factor is not all there is to life of journals, editors, authors, and publishers. More important is the choice of an editorial line that will do its modest share to genuinely stimulate original research in the field of human diabetes and metabolism. This may sound matter of fact but a number of signals emerging from the world of science should be taken very seriously indeed. Karl Popper based his view of scientific progress on the concept of ‘‘Falschungsmoglichkeit’’ or empirical falsification of data, meaning that current wisdom can constantly be proven false when newer concepts are applied to previous knowledge and suggesting that science tends to evolve by correcting itself [1]. But in Popper’s time, scientific research was still an educated hobby for affluent gentlemen. In his ‘‘Gattopardo,’’ Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa provides us with the memorable description of a Sicilian prince who, among other nightly enjoyments, could afford a private observatory to explore the terse skies above his land and even discover one or two new celestial objects, which he duly communicated to the learned societies of his day [2]. Until perhaps the first half of the twentieth century, many new things could be described with a lot of amateurial dedication, sharp intelligence, and relatively affordable means. Today, research is a profession, costly, competitive and requiring complex technical skills, deep knowledge and full-time dedication. Rewards derive mostly from the dissemination of one’s own results, and in today’s ‘‘publish or perish’’ environment, powerful forces tend to derail research(ers) from pursuing the straight line of advancement of knowledge for the ultimate benefit of mankind. Pressure to publish is sometimes stronger than prudence. Staff at a leading biotech firm were able to replicate the results of only 6 out of 53 landmark papers in cancer [3] M. Porta (&) Department of Medical Sciences, University of Turin, Turin, Italy e-mail: massimo.porta@unito.it

Erratology and the Ill-Logic of the Seismotic University

With the tertiary education mantra of creativity, critical thinking and innovation in mind, we consider the critical-creativity of error. Taking the university to model social orthography, or ‘correct writing’, according to the norms of disciplines, we consider the role of error in the classroom. Looked at another way, error questions the norms governing norms and the instability of disciplinary grounds. Beyond correction, error involves a mis-taking, or taking another way. Tracing the origin of error we are able to reconstruct the social world in terms of which it is conceivable for a mistake of any kind to have been made. The university, we find, withholds worlds which are not new but are sources of creativity, and constitutes a pluriversity or poly-versity.

The status of women in naturopathy: A view from the United States and Australia

Like other professionalized heterodox medical systems in Western societies, naturopathic practitioners and the leaders of naturopathic professional associations historically appear to have been predominantly males. Conversely, this situation appears to have started to change in the 1970s. Today the vast majority of naturopathic students and naturopathic practitioners in the United States and Australia, are women. While women have moved into positions of leadership in the American Association of Naturopathic Physicians, various Australian naturopathic professional associations, and naturopathic training programs in both the US and Australia, the presence of men in positions of organizational and education leadership appears to exceed their diminished numbers as practitioners. Bearing these thoughts in mind, this essay explores why women have been drawn to naturopathy in great numbers and the political-economic and socio-cultural forces that still hinder their professional development as practitioners and professional leaders within the contexts of the American and Australian dominative medical systems.

Dirichlet distribution with views on geodesy and geophysics

The Dirichlet distribution is one of the most important multivariate probability distributions with wide range of applications in various areas of statistics, probabilistic modelling, engineering and geosciences. Despite growing interest in the distribution, little appeared to be known of the Dirichlet distribution in the community of geodesy and geophysics. With these thoughts in mind, the present paper is an application-driven short and simplified introduction to the fundamental issues of the Dirichlet distribution and gives some useful representations of and bounds on the Dirichlet distribution function. A new polynomial representation for the bivariate Dirichlet distribution is established. In addition, we also shed a certain light on the astronomical, geodetic and geophysical background of the Dirichlet integral in historical context. The potential possibility of geodetic and geophysical applications of the Dirichlet distribution is briefly described within the framework of recent developments and trends of statistical science and applied probability.