Unitary Perspective Research Articles

Effect of Expertise on Cognitive Complexity: The Case of Security Analysts

I examine how security analysts’ prior expertise influences the complexity of their evaluations in the context of a new technology. Drawing from research on managerial cognition, I argue that analysts with prior experience or status engage in schematic information processing that affects the complexity of their evaluations. Further, I develop the construct of evaluative complexity, which is an indicator of comprehensiveness of analyst evaluations. Historical data from the early internet industry (from 1995 to 2005) of approximately 1800 analyst reports on the initial public offerings in the internet industry support my predictions that analysts with either prior experience or status demonstrate less complexity in their evaluations of internet firms. Specifically, in new technology contexts experienced or high-status analysts are more likely to assess new technological firms from unitary perspectives and convey more certainty in a context that calls for caution. My research aims to contribute to our understanding of the role of infomediaries in the emergence of new technologies and the paradox of experience and status in these contexts.

“Love Is Love”: Unitary Caring Science Principles in Veteran’s Illness Narratives of Living With Heart Failure in Stories of the Heart Research Study

Heart failure impacts millions globally, yet relatively little information is available from a holistic, narrative perspective. This research brief used a unitary caring science perspective to explore illness narratives of military veterans with heart failure receiving care from a U.S. Veterans Administration facility. Five veterans were interviewed. Results were analyzed using established narrative methods. Components of unitary caring science that emerged included interconnection, caring, the importance of story, and meaning creation. These findings inform and expand unitary caring science research, expanding this approach to interdisciplinary applications and advancing understanding of the experience of U.S. veterans with heart failure.

Decoding domestic tourism customers’ emotional responses to covid-19: A segmentation approach

ABSTRACT Tourists’ emotional responses to crises have been conceived from a unitary perspective despite the potential existence of different segments of emotional reactions. Using data from 412 residents drawn from Macau, this study segments their emotional responses toward the COVID-19 pandemic, characterizes the segments by their perceived travel risk and future travel intentions. The findings reveal that there are three segments of residents’ emotional responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, namely deeply depressed, depressed, and phlegmatic. The deeply depressed have strong negative sentiments toward the pandemic with the highest perceived travel risk and least desire to travel in the future. The depressed have moderate negative emotions toward the pandemic with moderate perceived travel risk and desire to travel in the future while the phlegmatic have indifferent positive and negative emotions toward the pandemic with the least perceived travel risk and highest desire to travel in the future. The implications of these findings with regard to how to restart tourism with the domestic tourism market are discussed.

Experiences of Caring Through Providing Touch Near End-of-Life

We analyzed interviews from participants who provided massage or simple touch to patients with advanced cancer near end of life. We employed qualitative, descriptive, content analysis to participants responding to a semistructured interview. Three themes emerged that align with a unitary caring perspective: caring relationships, pattern recognition and wholeness, and transformations and transcendence. Findings from this study are significant for human care and caring. Providing touch for those near end of life is a catalyst in developing caring relationships and essential for holistic practice.

Relevance of Electrostatic Charges in Compactness, Aggregation, and Phase Separation of Intrinsically Disordered Proteins.

The abundance of intrinsic disorder in the protein realm and its role in a variety of physiological and pathological cellular events have strengthened the interest of the scientific community in understanding the structural and dynamical properties of intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs) and regions (IDRs). Attempts at rationalizing the general principles underlying both conformational properties and transitions of IDPs/IDRs must consider the abundance of charged residues (Asp, Glu, Lys, and Arg) that typifies these proteins, rendering them assimilable to polyampholytes or polyelectrolytes. Their conformation strongly depends on both the charge density and distribution along the sequence (i.e., charge decoration) as highlighted by recent experimental and theoretical studies that have introduced novel descriptors. Published experimental data are revisited herein in the frame of this formalism, in a new and possibly unitary perspective. The physicochemical properties most directly affected by charge density and distribution are compaction and solubility, which can be described in a relatively simplified way by tools of polymer physics. Dissecting factors controlling such properties could contribute to better understanding complex biological phenomena, such as fibrillation and phase separation. Furthermore, this knowledge is expected to have enormous practical implications for the design, synthesis, and exploitation of bio-derived materials and the control of natural biological processes.

Organic chemistry as representation.

Electron redistribution is the cornerstone of our understanding of chemical reactivity. For the vast majority of organic reactions electrons are assumed to move in pairs providing explanatory mechanisms through the generation of intermediate structures. But for many transformations these discrete steps are idealized constructs, involving intermediates assumed but not empirically justified. This unitary perspective predicated on the curved arrow formalism has resulted in the scenario where for many organic transformations our supposed understanding far surpasses our growing knowledge. Reformulating organic mechanisms to include single electron transfer (SET) as a component of, or an alternative to, the prevailing iconic descriptions can provide for a more empirically adequate mechanistic description. In addition using the language of SET presents an opportunity to unify mechanistic concepts under a common donor/acceptor framework.

Ernst Cassirer's transcendental account of mathematical reasoning

Cassirer's philosophical agenda revolved around what appears to be a paradoxical goal, that is, to reconcile the Kantian explanation of the possibility of knowledge with the conceptual changes of nineteenth and early twentieth-century science. This paper offers a new discussion of one way in which this paradox manifests itself in Cassirer's philosophy of mathematics. Cassirer articulated a unitary perspective on mathematics as an investigation of structures independently of the nature of individual objects making up those structures. However, this posed the problem of how to account for the applicability of abstract mathematical concepts to empirical reality. My suggestion is that Cassirer was able to address this problem by giving a transcendental account of mathematical reasoning, according to which the very formation of mathematical concepts provides an explanation of the extensibility of mathematical knowledge. In order to spell out what this argument entails, the first part of the paper considers how Cassirer positioned himself within the Marburg neo-Kantian debate over intellectual and sensible conditions of knowledge in 1902–1910. The second part compares what Cassirer says about mathematics in 1910 with some relevant examples of how structural procedures developed in nineteenth-century mathematics.

Framework for developing a new model of risk classification according to the energy usage of companies

Abstract In the last 50 years, both the authorities and the majority of the citizens have understood the need to enforce measures to both preserve energy and reduce the costs of producing it. Nowadays, every developed country has correlated the profitability and the competitiveness of its industry with the efficient and sustainable use of energy and is therefore making conscious efforts to improve these areas. Any action program deemed to enhance energy efficiency has as main component the critical analysis of the energetic resources allocated to an activity in a given perimeter, also known as energy audit. This paper aims to develop a model of risk classification to be applied in planning and performing procedures during energy audit, which can allow a common framework to be developed in this area of audit. The stakeholders of the entity will also be offered a unitary perspective regarding the risks of the respective business, which can be helpful in their decision-making process. The research methodology of this paper consists of quantitative instruments, namely the statistical analysis of a database containing energy audit conclusions of companies in Europe. The indicators used will relate to energy savings, the number of measures implemented as a result of the audit, the percentage of energy saved from total consumption (energy efficiency) and the business line of the company. The novelty this framework will bring consists of the congruence created in the energy audit procedures of different practices and of the standardization and quality improvement in energy audit opinions. The approach of energy audits will therefore evolve towards a risk based one, rather than an analytical one. Also, we will explain the importance of energy savings for the profitability and the competitiveness of companies in the economy today, while facilitating a transparent communication with the stakeholders. This analysis is relevant especially given the fact that the cycle of 4 years after the directive of mandatory energy audit has been enforced ends with 2018 and a conclusion can be drawn before the new audit period starts in 2019.

What we have learned from the Methadone Maintenance Treatment of Dual Disorder Heroin Use Disorder patients.

Mental Disorders and Heroin Use Disorder (HUD) often co-occur and constitute correlated risk factors that the authors believe are best considered from a unitary perspective. In this article we review and discuss data collected by the V.P. Dole Research Group in Dual Disorder (V.P. Dole DD-RG) patients according to the following six discussion points: (1) Treatment of personality disorders during Methadone Maintenance Treatment (MMT); (2) Treatment of Mood Disorders during MMT; (3) Treatment of Anxiety Disorders during MMT; (4) Treatment of Psychotic Disorders during MMT; (5) Treatment of violence during MMT; (6) Treatment of Alcohol Use Disorder (AUD) during MMT. In treating Mood Disorder in HUD patients, we must bear in mind the interactions (potentiation and side effects) between psychopharmacology, used substances and agonist opioid medications; the use of psychiatric medications as an anti-craving drug, and the possible use of agonist and antagonist opioid medications in treating the other mental disorders. In treating chronic psychosis in HUD patients, we must consider the potentiation and side effects of antipsychotic drugs consequent on HUD treatment, worsening addiction hypophoria and inducing a more severe reward deficiency syndrome (RDS) in hypophoric patients. Violence and AUD during MMT can benefit from adequate dosages of methadone and co-medication with Sodium gamma-hydroxybutyrate (GHB). The experience of our V.P. Dole DD-RG suggests the following: (a) DD is the new paradigm in neuroscience in deepening our understanding of mental health; (b) To successfully treat DD patients a double competence is needed; (c) In managing DD patients priority must be given to Substance Use Disorder (SUD) treatment (stabilizing patients); (d) Antidepressant use is ancillary to SUD treatment; antipsychotic use must be restricted to acute phases; mood stabilizers must be preferred; any use of Benzodiazepines (BDZs) must be avoided.

Energy-Quality Scalable Integrated Circuits and Systems: Continuing Energy Scaling in the Twilight of Moore’s Law

This paper aims to take stock of recent advances in the field of energy-quality (EQ) scalable circuits and systems, as promising direction to continue the historical exponential energy downscaling under diminished returns from technology and voltage scaling. EQ-scalable systems explicitly trade off energy and quality at different levels of abstraction and sub-systems, dealing with “quality” as an explicit design requirement, and reducing energy whenever the application, the task, or the dataset allow quality degradation (e.g., vision and machine learning). A general framework for EQ-scalable systems based on the concept of quality slack is presented along with scalable architectures. A taxonomy of techniques to trade off energy and quality, a VLSI perspective, and possible quality control strategies are then discussed. The state of the art is surveyed to put the advances in its different sub-fields into a unitary perspective, emphasizing the on-going and prospective trends. At the component level, the generality of the EQ-scaling concept is shown through several examples, ranging from logic to analog circuits, to memories, data converters, and accelerators. Interesting implications of the joint adoption of EQ scaling and machine learning are also discussed, suggesting that their synergy gives ample room for further energy and performance improvements. From a level of abstraction viewpoint, EQ scaling is discussed from the circuit level to architectures, the hardware-software interface, the programming language, the compiler level, and run-time adaptation. Several case studies are discussed to put EQ scaling in the context of real-world applications.

What is a rite? Émile Durkheim, a hundred years later

Abstract This paper is focused on the anthropological concept of ritual, starting from Emile Durkheim's approach in Les formes élémentaires de la vie religieuse (1912). We discuss three different aspects of the Durkheimian perspective on religion and rituals: a) the sacred/profane dichotomy; b) the concept of collective representations - which establishes a substantial continuity between religious and scientific thought; c) a ‟practical” and performative interpretation of rites as the basis of social bond. During the twentieth century, these aspects have influenced different and sometimes opposing theoretical approaches (including ‟symbolist” and ‟neo-intellectualist” theories and Victor Turner's ‟anthropology of experience”). We briefly review each of them, arguing for the importance of reconsidering them into a unitary perspective, centred on religious phenomena as basically moral experiences and as the language of social relations. In the conclusions, we will show how such unitary approach helps us understand the transformations as well as the continuities of rituality in the individualized and secularized societies of what we call nowadays the Western world.

Hierarchical Structure of Generalized Thermodynamic and Informational Entropy.

The present research aimed at discussing the thermodynamic and informational aspects of entropy concept to propose a unitary perspective of its definitions as an inherent property of any system in any state. The dualism and the relation between physical nature of information and the informational content of physical states of matter and phenomena play a fundamental role in the description of multi-scale systems characterized by hierarchical configurations. A method is proposed to generalize thermodynamic and informational entropy property and characterize the hierarchical structure of its canonical definition at macroscopic and microscopic levels of a system described in the domain of classical and quantum physics. The conceptual schema is based on dualisms and symmetries inherent to the geometric and kinematic configurations and interactions occurring in many-particle and few-particle thermodynamic systems. The hierarchical configuration of particles and sub-particles, representing the constitutive elements of physical systems, breaks down into levels characterized by particle masses subdivision, implying positions and velocities degrees of freedom multiplication. This hierarchy accommodates the allocation of phenomena and processes from higher to lower levels in the respect of the equipartition theorem of energy. However, the opposite and reversible process, from lower to higher level, is impossible by virtue of the Second Law, expressed as impossibility of Perpetual Motion Machine of the Second Kind (PMM2) remaining valid at all hierarchical levels, and the non-existence of Maxwell’s demon. Based on the generalized definition of entropy property, the hierarchical structure of entropy contribution and production balance, determined by degrees of freedom and constraints of systems configuration, is established. Moreover, as a consequence of the Second Law, the non-equipartition theorem of entropy is enunciated, which would be complementary to the equipartition theorem of energy derived from the First Law.

What has project characteristics got to do with the empowerment of individuals, teams and organisations?

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore the impact of project settings on empowerment experiences of individuals and teams by examining the effects of specific project characteristics on facets of the empowerment concept (i.e. the structural and psychological perspectives).Design/methodology/approachA parallel questionnaire survey of client, consultant and contractor organisations was conducted in Hong Kong to test hypotheses relating three facets of the empowerment concept and five project-level antecedents. Hierarchical linear modelling and ordinary least square regression were employed to test the hypotheses.FindingsThe analyses show that dynamic project environments, high project team integration and high interdependence of project tasks lead to high individual psychological empowerment, while public-client projects (compared with private-client projects), a hostile project environment and high client integration lead to a low individual psychological empowerment. Uncertainty in project technology also leads to high team psychological empowerment, while hostile project environments lead to low team psychological empowerment. Further, dynamic project environments lead to more empowering work climate, while hostile project environments lead to less empowering work climate. However, project team integration, project complexity, project lifecycle and quasi-public-client projects (compared with private-client projects) have no significant association with the empowerment of individuals and teams.Originality/valueThis study examined task-related factors (i.e. project in this case) which traditionally have not been the focus of studies examining the antecedents of empowerment. Further, project-level antecedents and their link to an integrated perspective of empowerment comprising a sociostructural perspective, a psychological perspective and a team-based perspective are examined, which is a significant departure from the unitary perspective of empowerment taken in most previous studies.

Towards a psychopathology specific to Substance Use Disorder: Should emotional responses to life events be included?

IntroductionThe severity of emotional responses to life events (PTSD spectrum) as part of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in Substance Use Disorder (SUD) patients has often been considered from a unitary perspective. Light has also been shed on the possible definition of a specific psychopathology of SUD patients. This psychopathology has been proved to be independent of treatment choice, of being active in using substances, of lifetime psychiatric comorbidity and primary substance of abuse (heroin, alcohol, cocaine). MethodsTo further support this unitary perspective, in this study we have compared the severity and typology of the five psychopathological dimensions found in SUD patients, by dividing 93 HUD patients (77.4% males and 22.6% females), characterized by the lifetime absence of exposure to actual or threatened death, serious injury, or sexual violence, on the basis of the severity of their PTSD spectrum. We used the cut-off that differentiated people developing (High PTSD spectrum; H-PTSD/S) or not developing (Low PTSD spectrum; L-PTSD/S) a PTSD after the earthquake that hit L'Aquila, Italy, in April 2009. ResultsUsing a canonical correlation analysis, the significant (p<0.001) canonical variate set-one (psychopathology) is saturated negatively by “panic anxiety” and positively by the “worthlessness-being trapped” and “violence-suicide” dimensions. Set-two (PTSD spectrum) is saturated negatively by “emotional, physical and cognitive responses to loss and traumas”, and positively by “grief reactions”, “re-experiencing numbing”, “arousal symptoms” and “personality traits”. When comparing the two groups, all five psychopathological dimensions were significantly more severe in H-PTSD/S patients, who were distinguished by higher values of worthlessness-being trapped, sensitivity-psychoticism and violence-suicide symptomatology. No differences were observed regarding the typology of psychopathology. ConclusionsThis study further supports the SUD-PTSD spectrum unitary perspective and argues in favor of the inclusion of the PTSD spectrum in the psychopathology of SUD.

A patient with cancer and her family in caring partnership based on Margaret Newman's theory of health as expanding consciousness

The purpose, on the basis of Margaret Newman's theory of health as expanding consciousness in a unitary perspective, was to practice the caring partnership with a client who could not share their desires and find their future direction at a gear change period and document the process of their relational changes within this process. The design was research as praxis. The participant was a patient with cancer and her family in the midst of a difficult health situation. Through caring partnership, a nurse researcher asked to tell “the meaningful events and relationships in their lives” over four in-depth dialogue meetings. Data were collected from the tape-recorded dialogue transcriptions. In the process of caring partnership, the patient and each family member recognized their own pattern and family pattern of “being closed off,” their approach to the situation, and found a new direction through this process. The finding suggested that caring partnership as a nursing intervention would be helpful for nurses as well as for patients and their families in difficult health situations.

Book Review: Framing Work: Unitary, Pluralist and Critical Perspectives in the Twenty-first Century

Book Review: Framing Work: Unitary, Pluralist and Critical Perspectives in the Twenty-first Century

On Systemic Perspective and the Strategies in E-learning: Inquiries in Linear Algebra

Abstract There is presented a teaching experience described by means of some theoretic elements of the Ontosemiotic Approach. We propose a series of problem-situations of exploration type which require an integral approach to intra- mathematical inquires, with investigation objectives, which involve applications of theore tical constructions and methods on the junctions in standard courses, in another environment. Our strategy is to design a series of theoretical questions , which lead to research activity, and to carry the students toward systemic perspective of mathematical practices through the practices of unitary perspective. We consider the Ontosemiotic Approach as an adequate theoretical framework which allows us to analyse the learning process in the e-modality of Linear Algebra course in order to arrange the activities so that the students would achieve the deeper comprehension of the most important concepts and their mutual relations.

How exploitation impedes and impels exploration: Theory and evidence

Research summary: This study suggests that strategy and organizational scholars seeking to analyze the impact of exploitation on exploration would benefit by moving away from the generally assumed unitary perspective on exploitation. Specifically, we propose a multifaceted perspective on exploitation by theoretically and empirically distinguishing between repetitive exploitation versus incremental exploitation. We argue that repetitive exploitation can impede exploration and delay firms' responses to environmental changes, while incremental exploitation can impel exploration and accelerate firms' responses to environmental changes. We test our arguments using extensive longitudinal data from the hard disk drive (HDD) industry, and our supportive empirical findings highlight the relevance of our distinction between the two types of exploitation and their very different effects on exploration.Managerial summary: This study offers a solution to the puzzle of why many believe firms cannot excel at advancing existing practices and developing new initiatives, typically described as the trade‐off between exploitation and exploration. We introduce the distinction between repetitive and incremental exploitation and show that only the former type of innovation generates rigidity toward exploration, whereas the latter actually promotes exploration. More specifically, our evidence from the hard disk drive industry shows that those firms emphasizing incremental innovation (as opposed to repetition of their existing practices) were most likely to remain explorative over time, whereas firms emphasizing more repetitive innovation proved less open to changes. We discuss the implications of our findings as suggesting that firms seeking to optimize their innovativeness over the long term should strive to remain active in incrementally innovating their existing practices. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley &amp; Sons, Ltd.

The Now and the Passage of Time

The notion of the “present moment” has intrigued philosophers, physicists, and psychologists alike. Here we review the literature in the physics and the neuropsychology of the “now” in order to connect those two yet unrelated fields. Such a unitary perspective helps us to explain why there cannot be an objective and absolute “now” and why we naïvely tend to believe in a cosmically extended present. In particular, invoking the recent identification in the Cognitive Neurosciences of various temporal integration windows underlying an individual’s temporal experience within physical spacetime enables us to qualify in a more precise way in what sense the now, as frequently claimed by philosophers, is mind-dependent.

Cognitive archaeology without behavioral modernity: An eliminativist attempt

During the last decade, evidence of artifacts typically associated with the European Upper Palaeolithic has gradually accumulated in the archaeological record of early modern human and late Neanderthal populations. These artifacts, in particular instances of “symbolic” body ornaments, have been considered proof of “behavioral modernity” and used to draw inferences about the cognitive equivalence between primitive and modern human populations. Very recently, however, proponents of holistic mapping and material engagement theory have provided two separate lines of argument criticizing the notion of behavioral modernity and its use in cognitive archaeology. Major problems with this concept have been identified at both the epistemological and metaphysical levels. In this paper I will articulate a critique of behavioral modernity by integrating the preliminary tenets of the aforementioned approaches within a unitary perspective. This integrative process will provide close examination of behavioral modernity under the lights of scientific eliminativism. I will argue that behavioral modernity fails to instantiate a natural kind and thus it cannot be the object of reliable scientific analysis. Furthermore, behavioral modernity does also not represent a useful functional kind, for it offers no explanatory role in the mapping of artifacts and mental architectures. The current use of behavioral modernity in cognitive archaeology is grounded in a series of arbitrary categories and unwarranted inferences. In consequence, this notion can, and in fact, does harm this domain, because it fosters incommensurable theories. For these reasons, I conclude that behavioral modernity ought to be eliminated from the cognitive archaeology vocabulary.