人文科学最新文献

Non-communicable (chronic) and communicable (infectious) diseases constitute the leading causes of death worldwide. They appear to impact populations in developed and developing nations differently with changing trends in the landscape of human conditions. Greater understanding of changing disease burdens should influence the planning of health programmes, the implementation of related interventions, and policymaking efforts on a national and global scale. However, the knowledge of disease burdens does not reflect how states and global health organizations prioritize their efforts in addressing them. This work aims to address the discrepancy in public health priority setting by improving our understanding of how the two disease categories impact the human condition. It reviews two case studies, COVID-19 and type 2 diabetes, as representative cases of an infectious and a chronic disease, respectively, to answer the following question. How does biopolitics, as the governance of human bodies, at the nexus of infectious and chronic disease, impact national and global public health priorities? This work contextualizes and reframes the relationship towards disease categories by focusing on three primary themes: risk, current public health interventions, and funding priorities for each case study analysed. It argues that the politics over life at the nexus of chronic and infectious diseases, best conceived as future-oriented economic optimization, directs the efforts of prioritization in healthcare based on risk and responsibility-based relationship between multiple stakeholders.

This study tests whether prediction error underlies structural priming in a later-learnt L2 across two visual world eye-tracking priming experiments. Experiment 1 investigates priming when learners encounter verbs biased to double-object-datives (DO, “pay”) or prepositional-object-datives (PO, “send”) in the other structure in prime sentences. L1-German–L2-English learners read prime sentences crossing verb bias and structure (DO/PO). Subsequently, they heard target sentences – with unbiased verbs (“show”) – while viewing visual scenes. In line with implicit learning models, gaze data revealed priming and prediction-error effects, namely, more predictive looks consistent with PO following PO primes with DO-bias verbs. Priming in comprehension persisted into (unprimed) production, indicating that priming by prediction error leads to longer-term learning. Experiment 2 investigates the effects of target verb bias on error-based priming. Priming and prediction-error effects were reduced for targets with non-alternating verbs (“donate”) that only allow PO structures, suggesting learners’ knowledge of the L2 grammar modulates prediction-error-based priming.

Each of us is embodied. Our relationships are reinforced and swayed by physiological processes. States that impose unwanted childbirth on women also force them into unwanted bonds of care. While most people who have given birth understand this because they experienced it, this formative experience is alien to cisgender men. Yet the physiological changes that birthing people undergo are points that few commentators on abortion raise. There are several possible reasons for this, including concerns about reifying biological processes that have been used to assert alleged truths about the "natural" role of women in society and culture. I discuss the physiological underpinnings of maternal/neonate bonds, the importance of this issue in the abortion debate, and the role it ought to play, while keeping in mind the valid critiques of historical and current appeals to biology as a means of subjugating women socially and culturally.

There is increased enthusiasm about the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies in psychotherapy. Notably, AI psychotherapy chatbots are increasing in popularity, especially since the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) gave one of these apps breakthrough device designation. This article raises concerns about the lack of consideration of potential harms of this technology for clinical trial participants, and current and future users. We outline what these harms might be, by turning to the Belmont Report and the existing literature on harms of (typical) psychotherapy and conclude with two recommendations. Note that our goal is not to articulate doomsday fears regarding the use of AI in psychotherapy contexts; rather we offer a constructive proposal in thinking about the potential harms of these tools and invite clinicians, patients, developers, researchers, policymakers and funding agencies to work together to augment the benefits of these tools and minimize their potential harms.

The beauty line, Quenty-Cosmetic, exemplifies the ambivalent construction of naturalness surrounding an early cosmeceutical product in 1970s West Germany. This line of skincare products, featuring biologically active ingredients, was marketed as a preventative solution for skin ageing, revealing tensions between societal perceptions of ageing and the ideal of the "natural look" in the context of a polluted environment. Quenty's presence in pharmacies, drugstores, and health food stores illustrates its role in blurring the lines between cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, and natural products, reflecting Ilana Löwy's "boundary concepts." Drawing on the archival resources on Quenty-Cosmetic of Bayer Archives Leverkusen, this article examines how nature is simultaneously portrayed as both a hero and an adversary in the quest for the "natural look," revealing the complexities inherent in the cosmetic industry's construction of naturalness.

At the entrance to this impressive exhibition stands Umberto Boccioni's dramatic bronze sculpture, Forms of Continuity in Space (1913), a Futurist piece filled with power, movement and innovation. It is a fitting introduction to what follows.

This article explores the historical uses of two animal medicines that are understood in current biomedicine to have potential endocrine activity: deer musk and whale ambergris, which were prized as aphrodisiacs in the early-modern world. It diverges from the focus in existing scholarship on nineteenth-century gonadal organotherapy as the precursor for the modern discovery of the sex-steroid hormones, looking instead at the older examples of deer musk and whale ambergris that were commonly prescribed both in medieval Islamicate and early-modern European Christianate medical sources. The early-modern Latin, French, German and English description of these substances as fertility, aphrodisiac, and rejuvenative remedies indicates a direct exchange of pharmacological concepts and substances relating to the human sexual and reproductive systems between Europe and the Middle East from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries. The article explores how musk and ambergris were used in early-modern Western medicine, and how knowledge of them circulated across cultures. I argue that musk and ambergris, which were both thought to have effects on vitality, fertility, and potency in medieval Middle Eastern and early-modern European traditions, trouble the view of the origins of sex-steroid hormone endocrinology as deriving purely from modern European gonadal opotherapy. The valuing of these substances as fertility, vitality, and aphrodisiac remedies in the work of early-modern European physicians was indicative of both the globalization of medical knowledge, and an increased commercial trade in pharmacological material goods, confirming the view of medical globalization as a multi-directional historical process constituted in both conceptual and material terms.

Fluency, intelligibility, comprehensibility, and accentedness are important dimensions of second language (L2) pronunciation proficiency representing global, listener-based intuitions. This study meta-analyzed 49 reports from 1995 to 2023, examining 141 effect sizes (Pearson r) to understand their relationships and possible moderators. Three-level meta-analysis models showed weighted mean correlations of .82, .75, .62, .57, and .32 for fluency/comprehensibility, comprehensibility/accentedness, fluency/accentedness, intelligibility/comprehensibility, and intelligibility/accentedness, respectively. Task types moderated correlations for fluency/accentedness, intelligibility/comprehensibility, and intelligibility/accentedness, with controlled tasks leading to higher correlations. Ratings of multiple dimensions by the same listeners tended to result in weaker correlations for fluency/comprehensibility and comprehensibility/accentedness. The findings imply that having an accent does not mean being unintelligible and support prioritizing intelligible and comprehensible speech over accent reduction. The study also highlights an over-reliance on first language speaker norms in L2 pronunciation research and advocates for more transparent reporting.