Suchergebnisse

AbstractTo examine the real‐time process of strategy choice and execution and the role of inhibition in problem solving, 4‐ to 6‐year‐old children were asked to navigate a ball around a maze board under high‐ and low‐precision motor demands. Employing a motor problem‐solving task made normally hidden cognitive processes observable. Sequential analysis revealed two subtypes of inhibition (response and attentional) that are involved in problem solving and different developmental trajectories for each. Cognition‐action trade‐offs due to motor and inhibition demands adversely impacted children's strategy choices, but contributed to heightened variability of strategies. Children used fewer strategies with age, reflecting more efficient problem solving due to increasing inhibitory control. When solutions required precision, preschoolers were more likely to have difficulty inhibiting irrelevant and distracting strategies and maintaining appropriate strategies. By preschool age, executive functioning serves to make strategic motor control possible. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCLxK7dvheE.

In The Tree of Life, Terrence Malick presents Jack O'Brien's attempts to come to terms with his past. The most traumatic experience in his past is his brother's death which gives not only Jack but also other members of the family a great agony. Similarly, Miracles from Heaven deals with affliction. Inspired by a true story, Patricia Riggen dives into the lives of the Beams projecting both physical and psychological agony since the 10-year-old daughter Anna (Annabel) suffers from a deathly illness. Even though Anna is miraculously healed in the end by divine intervention, both films interrogate death and suffering as a process that threatens the meaningful order of a cosmos ruled by an almighty powerful transcendental creator. Pondering on especially the term theodicy as a theoretical framework, this paper elucidates how these two films deal with the problem of suffering in which humanity loses touch with a meaningful cosmos and how they offer spiritual solutions to this problem by engaging in cosmic voyages.

"Not the Only Story: Narrative, Memory and Self-becoming in Julian Barnes' Novel. Julian Barnes's The Only Story depicts the affair of the narrator, Paul, with an older, married woman, Susan. Yet while the obvious subject matter may be trite, the writer's treatment of it is noteworthy. More specifically, the present paper aims to explore the manner in which this story is remembered by the narrator. Using Paul Ricoeur's work on the narrative self, we suggest that the protagonist does not wish to deliver an accurate account of the events that shaped his life, but rather he attempts to come to terms with the latter through storytelling. Thus, "the only story" is not necessarily that of Paul's first love. It is, rather, the only story that matters to him, which must include all others and which he must tell in order to shape and understand his own process of becoming.

Keywords: The Only Story, Julian Barnes, Paul Ricoeur, memory, storytelling, self-becoming, identity
"

AbstractThis study investigates the role of social identities in the context of international students' transition to China. Sojourners usually confront perceived threats, including adjustment to life‐changes in a new society. The transition has a general capacity to disrupt the patterned behaviour of individuals that undermine their health and well‐being. Previous studies informed by the Social Identity Model of Identity Change demonstrate that group membership and associated social identities can buffer the adverse effects of transition. However, China's story concerning international students' social identity change is not yet researched. To address this issue, in‐depth, semi‐structured interviews were conducted with sixty‐three international students. The results revealed that being disconnected from old social networks due to internet restriction leads to potential identity threats during early transition. However, new group memberships with co‐national and multinational peers, communication technologies and host‐culture adaptation enhanced sojourners' well‐being and help to adapt to life‐changes in Chinese society.

Year 1942. French writer René Barjavel composes the short novel Ravage. He does it in Vichy's France, in the climax of the «new State» of marshall Pétain. What kind of relations may exist between the new order imposed by the old soldier politician for his defeated country and the one imagined in this literary work? Is this post- apocalyptic novel some sort of justifying epics of Vichy's regime? To these and other inquiries we try to approach in the humble pages that follow. ; Año 1942. El escritor francés René Barjavel compone la breve novela de anticipación Ravage. Lo hace en la Francia de Vichy, en pleno auge del «Estado nuevo» del mariscal Pétain. ¿Qué relaciones pueden plantearse entre el nuevo orden impuesto por el viejo militar y político para su derrotado país y el que se imagina en esta obra literaria? ¿Es esta novela posapocalíptica una especie de epopeya justificadora del régimen de Vichy? A estas y otras inquietudes pretendemos aproximarnos en las humildes páginas que siguen.

The old oil and gas wells of approximately 70% are found to have no economic value in Indonesia, leading to being abandoned during the end of their lifecycle, as ruled by the government. This is part of decommissioning an entire field with an environmental preservation program, known as an Abandonment and Site Restoration (ASR). The program involves the evaluation of international permanent abandonment standards, as references for the designs, comparisons, and assessments of Indonesia's policies. It also provides contrast gap analysis and suggestions in ensuring a proper permanent plug and abandonment approach, to avoid any future leaks or re-abandonment operations. Therefore, this study aims to determine and evaluate the gap analysis between Indonesia and International Well Abandonment Standards, as well as OGUK and NORSOK D-010. The results showed that abandonment activities had improvement opportunities philosophy, and practice, used for plugging/isolations, control lines, as well as reservoir and annular barriers. In addition, literature studies were performed to understand the abandonment philosophy for all reviewed standards, to provide proper suggestions or improvements.

Property taxation (P.T.) is a phenomenon that is as old as man's existence in Africa. It has been used globally as the pillar of government developmental efforts, especially in infrastructure financing and development. As a veritable revenue source visible to taxpayers and linked to improved city infrastructure and urban growth, its level of awareness among property owners and their attitudes towards achieving its goals in Nigeria remains a mirage. Property taxation is said to have failed in Nigeria, especially in states where limited revenues have been generated. The level of awareness/acceptance and property owners' attitudes toward implementing property taxation policies has been a significant barrier. Hence, the study presents a survey of property owners' awareness and attitude towards property taxation in Osogbo, an emerging state capital in Nigeria. The study, therefore, recommended the need for a rigorous public enlightenment campaign on the need for property taxation, the transparent use of proceeds from property tax, among others. Keywords: Property Taxation, Property Owner, Emerging Cities, Awareness and Attitude

TD Ramakrishnan's novel Sugandhi Enna Aandaal Devanayaki is a mixture of the mythological, metaphysical and historical into a fictional space which transcends the boundaries of nation. The novel is a quest for retelling the historical trauma of Sreelanka. In the search for Sugandhi a Tamil liberation activist, the narrator stumbles upon the mythical Sugandhi from the folklore, creating tension between faction and reality. In the search for the mythical Sugandhi Ramakrishnan uses 'SusinaSupina' and arrives at Devanayaki belonging to 7th century AD Pallava Dynasty. As fact, fiction and myth blur into the contemporary social space, the myth of Devanayaki merges with Rajani Thirinagame creating the notion of the alternate history from a female perspective. In the novel History blurs into myth, reality into fiction, contemporary into past, individual into society and body into spirit.TD Ramakrishnan deconstructs the millennium old Tamil- Sinhalese political history using the alternate history from mythology and folklore. This paper is an attempt to read the novel Sugandhi Enna AandaalDevanayaki as a Historiographic metafiction.

This paper analyses determinants of household savings in a model based on an extension of the disequilibrium savings theory. These extensions follow from the life-cycle and permanent-income theories. Based on panel data for 14 countries spanning the period 2000-2018, fixed-effect least squares and two-stage least squares estimation procedures were used. In line with previous studies, there is strong and robust evidence for the hypotheses of disequilibrium savings theory, specifically, positive effects of unanticipated income changes, unanticipated inflation and the lagged savings rate. There is also robust evidence for the income uncertainty hypothesis that uncertainty has a positive effect on savings. The analysis presents some evidence that social security suppresses savings, but finds no significant effects on the interest rate or old-age dependency ratio. Unexpectedly, the participation rate of the elderly has a significant positive effect in some specifications. These findings contribute to the debate on whether and how governments can influence saving behavior.

Abstract
We show a negative relation between the inflation rate and the unemployment rate, that is, the Phillips curve using a three-period overlapping generations (OLG) model with childhood period and pay-as-you-go pension for older generation under monopolistic competition with negative real balance effect. In a three-period OLG model, there may exist a negative real balance effect because consumers have debts and savings. A fall (or rise) in the nominal wage rate induces a fall (or rise) in the price, then by negative real balance effect, the unemployment rate rises (or falls), and we get a negative relation between the inflation rate and the unemployment rate. This conclusion is based on the premise of utility maximisation of consumers and profit maximisation of firms. Therefore, we present a microeconomic foundation for the Phillips curve. We also examine the effects of fiscal policy financed by seigniorage, which is represented by left-ward shift of the Phillips curve.

Abstract
Today the relationship between Russia and the today EU-28 (today EU-27) members of the European Union is essential and very strategically important; this issue is bound to become more urgent as the two draws closer together over the next decades. In this paper, we discuss this and the Russian Federation's role in the Ukraine conflict that has seriously affected EU-Russia relations. The EU and Russia have a long record of cooperation on issues of bilateral and international concern in several fields, from climate change to drug and human trafficking, but also the organized crime, terrorism, and non-proliferation. In particular, Europe, the "old traditional Europe", acquires special weight for Russia in the context of the cooling down of relations between Russia and the United States. We will discuss gas, oil, and energy, but we can see that the solution can be only economic, and the oil and agriculture sectors could help do just that. "Business is business".

Recently, in many countries, the use of mobile messaging applications for news has risen while the use of Facebook for news has declined. The purpose of this study is to identify who shares news on messaging applications, why and in what ways. Findings from a survey and focus groups in the US, the UK, Germany, and Brazil show that (a) the main motivation for news users to share news in these spaces is context collapse; their aversion to news sharing on an open network like Facebook, (b) the anytime/anywhere mobile affordance facilitates their need for private news sharing, (c) news stories chosen for sharing usually revolve around niche interests or breaking news events and not politics and current affairs, (d) news sharers are likely to be young, and to trust news found on social media in the Western countries of our sample, while they tend to be older and partisan in Brazil where 38% of the population shares news on mobile messaging apps during an average week.

AbstractThe present three studies focused on the development and validation of a multifaceted measure of organizational practices for the aging workforce, the Later Life Workplace Index (LLWI). The first study developed a comprehensive item pool based on expert interview evidence from Germany and the United States. Two further studies among workers across industries in Germany (N = 609, N = 349) provided psychometric evidence. The LLWI comprises nine distinct domains of organizational practices for the aging workforce, namely an age-friendly organizational climate and leadership style, certain work design characteristics, health management, individual development opportunities, knowledge management, the design of the retirement transition, continued employment opportunities, and health and retirement coverage. The final LLWI consists of 80 items in total. In addition, the studies demonstrated that the LLWI measures correlated with older workers' work outcomes such as stress level, workability, person-organization fit, and post-retirement work intentions in meaningful ways. Applications for the LLWI in research and practice are discussed.

AbstractThis study investigated whether recipients' past moral or immoral behaviour shapes 4‐year‐olds' judgements of the agents who either harm or help the recipients. Children (N = 161) watched the agent who either harmed or helped the antisocial, prosocial, or neutral recipient. Afterwards, children indicated their sociomoral judgement of the agent's act, their attitude towards the agent and their perception of the agent's emotions. Children liked the agent more, ascribed less sadness to the agent, and judged the agent's actions as less bad when the agent inflicted harm against the antisocial recipient than on the prosocial and neutral recipient. The recipient's past behaviour did not influence children's evaluations when the agent helped the recipient. The presented evidence indicates that by the age of 4, children develop the ability to use complex moral reasoning that allows them to monitor whether the harmful behaviour of antisocial others is justified by retaliation for past transgressions.