Modern World (modern + world)

Distribution by Scientific Domains


Selected Abstracts


The Seven Deadly Sins of Obesity: How the Modern World is Making us Fat

NUTRITION & DIETETICS, Issue 1 2008
GradDipDiet, Tim Gill BSc (Hon)
[source]


Legitimate Authority and "Just War" in the Modern World

PEACE & CHANGE, Issue 1 2002
Laurie Calhoun
Legitimate authority is a widely touted yet rarely analyzed concept in discourse about war. In this essay, I articulate and analyze the schema of just war theory that has dominated philosophical discourse regarding war since the early medieval period. Although the requirements for a "just war" appear to exceed the simple proclamation by a legitimate authority, in fact, all of the other requirements are subject to the interpretation of the legitimate authority. In other words, just war theory reduces, in actual practice, to the requirement of legitimate authority. A consideration of the nature of contemporary warfare further suggests that just war theory is the vestigial idiom of a world that no longer exists. What remains today of just war theory is a dangerous rhetorical weapon, deployed by the leaders of both sides in every belligerent conflict. [source]


Colonial Botany: Science, Commerce, and Politics in the Early Modern World Edited by Londa Schiebinger and Claudia Swan

RENAISSANCE STUDIES, Issue 3 2006
Patricia Fara
No abstract is available for this article. [source]


Book Reviews: Many Middle Passages: Forced Migration and the Making of the Modern World

THE AUSTRALIAN JOURNAL OF ANTHROPOLOGY, Issue 2 2010
Ann Curthoys
No abstract is available for this article. [source]


Prospects for Religion in the Modern World

THE ECUMENICAL REVIEW, Issue 4 2000
Grace Davie
First page of article [source]


Continuants and Occurrents: Peter Simons

ARISTOTELIAN SOCIETY SUPPLEMENTARY VOLUME, Issue 1 2000
Peter Simons
Commonsense ontology contains both continuants and occurrents, but are continuants necessary? I argue that they are neither occurrents nor easily replaceable by them. The worst problem for continuants is the question in virtue of what a given continuant exists at a given time. For such truthmakers we must have recourse to occurrents, those vital to the continuant at that time. Continuants are, like abstract objects, invariants under equivalences over occurrents. But they are not abstract, and their being invariants enables us toinfer both their lack of temporal parts and that non-invariant predications about them must be relativized to times. [E]ndurance is the property of finding its pattern reproduced in the temporal parts of the total event. Whitehead, Science and the Modern World, 189. [source]


Trajectories for Greening in China: Theory and Practice

DEVELOPMENT AND CHANGE, Issue 1 2006
Peter Ho
This edited volume argues that China's development poses the greatest ever environmental challenge for the modern world in terms of speed, size and scarcity. The volume is organized around the greening of the Chinese state and society: can the inclusion of sustainable development principles into governance, management and daily practices by social actors lead to sustainable development per se? This introduction sketches the different scholarly camps around greening and sustainable development, ranging from sceptical to radical environmentalism. The contributions demonstrate that China is showing clear signs of greening as new institutions and regulations are created, environmental awareness increases and green technologies are implemented. However, the question remains whether this is sufficient to effectuate long-term sustainable development. The key factors here are the sheer speed of China's economic growth, the size of its population, and the relative scarcity of its natural and mineral resources. Chinese development presents compelling reasons for rethinking the viability of greening. It is necessary to move beyond both alarmist visions of an environmental doomsday, and optimistic notions that incremental changes in technology, institutions and lifestyles are sufficient for sustainability. It might be more fruitful , and not only for China , to consider ,precautionary' rather than ,absolute' limits to growth. [source]


Balancing needs and means: the dilemma of the ,-cell in the modern world

DIABETES OBESITY & METABOLISM, Issue 2009
G. Leibowitz
The insulin resistance of type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM), although important for its pathophysiology, is not sufficient to establish the disease unless major deficiency of ,-cell function coexists. This is demonstrated by the fact that near-physiological administration of insulin (CSII) achieved excellent blood glucose control with doses similar to those used in insulin-deficient type 1 diabetics. The normal ,-cell adapts well to the demands of insulin resistance. Also in hyperglycaemic states some degree of adaptation does exist and helps limit the severity of disease. We demonstrate here that the mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) system might play an important role in this adaptation, because blocking mTORC1 (complex 1) by rapamycin in the nutritional diabetes model Psammomys obesus caused severe impairment of ,-cell function, increased ,-cell apoptosis and progression of diabetes. On the other hand, under exposure to high glucose and FFA (gluco-lipotoxicity), blocking mTORC1 in vitro reduced endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress and ,-cell death. Thus, according to the conditions of stress, mTOR may have beneficial or deleterious effects on the ,-cell. ,-Cell function in man can be reduced without T2DM/impaired glucose tolerance (IGT). Prospective studies have shown subjects with reduced insulin response to present, several decades later, an increased incidence of IGT/T2DM. From these and other studies we conclude that T2DM develops on the grounds of ,-cells whose adaptation capacity to increased nutrient intake and/or insulin resistance is in the lower end of the normal variation. Inborn and acquired factors that limit ,-cell function are diabetogenic only in a nutritional/metabolic environment that requires high functional capabilities from the ,-cell. [source]


Global use of alcohol, drugs and tobacco

DRUG AND ALCOHOL REVIEW, Issue 6 2006
PETER ANDERSON
Abstract Humans have always used drugs, probably as part of their evolutionary and nutritional heritage. However, this previous biological adaptation is unlikely to be so in the modern world, in which 2 billion adults (48% of the adult population) are current users of alcohol, 1.1 billion adults (29% of the adult population) are current smokers of cigarettes and 185 million adults (4.5% of the adult population) are current users of illicit drugs. The use of drugs is determined largely by market forces, with increases in affordability and availability increasing use. People with socio-economic deprivation, however measured, are at increased risk of harmful drug use, as are those with a disadvantaged family environment, and those who live in a community with higher levels of substance use. Substance use is on the increase in low-income countries which, in the coming decades, will bear a disproportionate burden of substance-related disability and premature death. [source]


Methodological nationalism and beyond: nation,state building, migration and the social sciences

GLOBAL NETWORKS, Issue 4 2002
Andreas Wimmer
Methodological nationalism is understood as the assumption that the nation/state/society is the natural social and political form of the modern world. We distinguish three modes of methodological nationalism that have characterized mainstream social science, and then show how these have influenced research on migration. We discover parallels between nationalist thinking and the conceptualization of migration in postwar social sciences. In a historical tour d'horizon, we show that this mainstream concept has developed in close interaction with nation,state building processes in the West and the role that immigration and integration policies have played within them. The shift towards a study of ,transnational communities', the last phase in this process , was more a consequence of an epistemic move away from methodological nationalism than of the appearance of new objects of observation. The article concludes by recommending new concepts for analysis that, on the one hand, are not coloured by methodological nationalism and, on the other hand, go beyond the fluidism of much contemporary social theory. [source]


The changing face of mass murder: massacre, genocide, and postgenocide

INTERNATIONAL SOCIAL SCIENCE JOURNAL, Issue 174 2002
Mark Levene
This contribution argues the case for the efficacy of labelling distinct episodes of extreme violence. While accepting common ingredients in what are here denoted as examples of ,massacre', ,genocide', and ,post-genocide the clue to their ' separateness lies not in the form but in the historical framework within which each occurs. Only by examining patterns of historical process, in this case in the late-Ottoman empire, are we likely to be able to build a broader analysis of the nature and causation of chronic and systemic violence in the modern world. [source]


Community life as a motive for migration from the urban center to the rural periphery in Israel

JOURNAL OF COMMUNITY PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 6 2010
Sara Arnon
A white house topped by a red roof, set in a garden, surrounded by a lawn dotted with trees and shrubs,this is not just a child's naive drawing. It is the aspiration of many in the modern world, Israelis among them. This case study deals with the inner migration of families, mainly from the urban center of Israel, to rural communities in its northern periphery. It is also an opportunity to examine counter-urbanization characteristics and motivations, which contribute to our understanding of the role of community in this process. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [source]


Studying the satisfaction of patients on the outcome of an aesthetic dermatological filler treatment

JOURNAL OF COSMETIC DERMATOLOGY, Issue 4 2008
Lúcia Helena Fávaro De Arruda MD
Summary Background, Many factors contribute to extend productive life in the modern world. Competition makes people worry about physical appearance, mostly in respect to facial and skin aging. This has motivated new developments in cosmetic dermatology and the need of evaluating patient satisfaction with the new proposed treatments. Poll questionnaire has been used for such evaluation, and the analysis of the electroencephalogram (EEG) mapping obtained while the patient answers the satisfaction questionnaire may render the results less subjective. Objectives, The purpose of this paper is to study the satisfaction of a group of 33 women (mean age, 44 years) treated with hyaluronic acid filling of nasolabial folding or lips, combining the EEG brain mapping and questionnaire techniques. Methods, At the third month of evaluation, two networked personal computers were used for the EEG recording and for presenting the patient with a questionnaire about her well-being feeling; self-evaluation of her face; her satisfaction with the results of the aesthetic treatment; how the family, friends, and people at work evaluated the result of the treatment; and her decision to repeat the treatment and to recommend it to friends and family. Results, Poll results showed that patients were feeling well and were satisfied with the results of the aesthetic treatment. Furthermore, the regression EEG mappings showed patients to be satisfied with their appearance and with the treatment involving similar brain areas. Conclusion, Patients decided to undergo the treatment because they were already considering it (54%) or because they were dissatisfied with their lips or nasolabial folding (52%). The fact that the treatment was free of charge solidified the decision. Patients consider themselves as good-looking and they wanted to preserve such a condition. [source]


Smoking can be good for you

JOURNAL OF COSMETIC DERMATOLOGY, Issue 2 2004
R Wolf
Summary Smoking is without doubt one of the greatest causes of avoidable illness and death in the modern world. Most well known is the relationship between smoking and numerous cancers, cerebrovascular and cardiovascular disease. Smoking and most especially nicotine, are, however, sometimes beneficial in certain diseases, including Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, allergic alveolitis, nausea and vomiting of pregnancy, pre-eclampsia, fibroids, carcinoma of body of uterus, ulcerative colitis, pyoderma gangrenosum, aphthous stomatitis and ulceration, pemphigus, herpes simplex and acne. In the immensely justifiable enthusiasm to discredit this dangerous activity, the mechanisms behind these beneficial effects tend to have been un-discussed or ignored. It is the aim of this paper to spur interest in the reasons for these effects. If the mechanisms are elucidated, therapeutic advances may be possible. [source]


The Longue Durée of Racial Fixity and the Transformative Conjunctures of Racial Blending

JOURNAL OF LATIN AMERICAN & CARIBBEAN ANTHROPOLOGY, Issue 2 2007
Norman E. WhittenArticle first published online: 28 JUN 200
The new human beings of the modern world,espańol, indio, negro, mestizo, mulato, sambo,were born out of the same upheaval that made "nations," "bureaucrats," "slavers," "global merchants," and "colonies." It was the modern world's signature to etch economic dominance and political supremacy into a radical cultural design. It was also its signature to hide the social relations that were brewing supremacy and conflict behind a semblance of "race things". Irene Silverblatt (2004:5) As tends to happen with martyrs and saints, any undercurrent of doubt is usually excised from the biographies of key figures associated with the defense of Latin America's unique mesticity. Marilyn Grace Miller (2004:14) [source]


The Idea of Literacy

JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION, Issue 2 2000
Jim MacKenzie
In this paper I show that literacy is not, as is often thought, a necessary condition for civilisation; argue that it was not, as often thought, the crucial factor in enabling the modern world to emerge from earlier civilisations; report the disadvantages of literacy as expressed by Plato's character Socrates and Milne's character Piglet, and look at the relation of literacy to reasoning and to philosophy; trace the role of the idea of literacy in the nineteenth century protocol for creating national cultures, and speculate on further developments in the same line; and then discuss its role in the modern economy and in the future. [source]


Making Order Out of Trouble: Jurisdictional Politics in the Spanish Colonial Borderlands

LAW & SOCIAL INQUIRY, Issue 2 2001
Lauren Benton
Jurisdictional fluidity was a central feature of early modem Iberian law, and jurisdictional tensions were exacerbated by overseas conquest and colonization. Contests over the legal status of conquered peoples featured both jurisdictional jockeying among colonial factions and widespread preoccupation with the symbols and rituals marking cultural and legal difference. This article examines the dynamics of jurisdictional politics in seventeenth-century New Mexico, where church and state officials carried on a bitter feud over legal authority during most of the century. Rather than viewing this contest as either transparently political or a mask for deeper processes defining hegemony, the article argues that seemingly dry legal distinctions were the focus of passionate and persistent struggle precisely because they merged institutional and cultural concerns of missionaries, settler elites, and Indians. The analysis leads to broader, more speculative claims about the role of jurisdictional fluidity in creating an "orderly disorder" that spanned diverse regions within Spanish America and, more broadly, across colonial regimes in the early modern world. [source]


Legal Autonomy as Political Engagement: The Ladakhi Village in the Wider World

LAW & SOCIETY REVIEW, Issue 1 2006
Fernanda Pirie
Local systems of law are constantly forced to adapt to powerful external legal orders. As well as employing tactics of resistance and accommodation, some communities respond by maintaining boundaries around their legal sphere, safeguarding a measure of judicial autonomy. This article examines one such instance, from the Indian Himalayas. It argues that, much more complex than a case of domination and resistance, this autonomy represents a long history of deference and distance toward external forces. The maintenance of legal autonomy ultimately represents community ontology, but it is also a means of engaging with wider forces within the modern world. [source]


COSMOPOLITANISM AND HUMAN RIGHTS: RADICALISM IN A GLOBAL AGE

METAPHILOSOPHY, Issue 1 2009
ROBERT FINE
Abstract: The cosmopolitan imagination constructs a world order in which the idea of human rights is an operative principle of justice. Does it also construct an idealisation of human rights? The radicality of Enlightenment cosmopolitanism, as developed by Kant, lay in its analysis of the roots of organised violence in the modern world and its visionary programme for changing the world. Today, the temptation that faces the cosmopolitan imagination is to turn itself into an endorsement of the existing order of human rights without a corresponding critical analysis of the roots of contemporary violence. Is the critical idealism associated with Kantian cosmopolitanism at risk of transmutation into an uncritical positivism? We find two prevailing approaches: either the constitutional framework of the existing world order is presented as the realisation of the cosmopolitan vision, or cosmopolitanism is turned into a utopian vision of a world order in which power is subordinated to the rule of international law. I suggest that the difficulties associated with both wings of cosmopolitanism threaten the legitimacy of the project and call for an understanding and culture of human rights that is less exclusively "conceptual" and more firmly grounded in social theory. [source]


EUROPE IN CRISIS: A QUESTION OF BELIEF OR UNBELIEF?

MODERN THEOLOGY, Issue 2 2007
PERSPECTIVES FROM THE VATICAN
For Joseph Ratzinger, elected Pope Benedict XVI in 2005, modernity has transformed Europe into a continent without God. As a result, Europe's self-understanding is flawed. This outcome puts serious doubts on the Church's resolution, expressed in Gaudium et spes, to dialogue with the modern world. Moreover, the present pope was among the first to warn both church and society against the erosion of modernity. Also more recently, e.g. in his Values in a Time of Upheaval, he argued that only a Europe firmly rooted in Christian faith can survive the nihilism and moral crisis with which it is confronted. As a creative minority Christians should help Europe win back the best of its heritage and use it to the service of all humanity. In this contribution Boeve presents the evolution and primary features of Joseph Ratzinger's thought in this regard and concludes with a number of critical observations. [source]


Place, Landscape, and Environment: Anthropological Archaeology in 2009

AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST, Issue 2 2010
Christopher Rodning
ABSTRACT, Topics of current interest to anthropological archaeologists include the relationships between people and place, interactions between people and past environments, and responses by past societies to changes in the natural environment. In this article, I focus on recent considerations of past landscapes and the built environment. This research concentrates on such topics as architecture, the utilization of different environmental zones, and transitions from foraging to farming, one of the long-standing topics of interest to anthropological archaeology. Recent archaeological research also emphasizes climate change and warfare, topics that have relevance to current events and conditions in the modern world. [source]


Evolving health: The origins of illness and how the modern world is making us sick

AMERICAN JOURNAL OF HUMAN BIOLOGY, Issue 4 2003
Niccolo Caldararo
No abstract is available for this article. [source]


Antiquity of postreproductive life: Are there modern impacts on hunter-gatherer postreproductive life spans?

AMERICAN JOURNAL OF HUMAN BIOLOGY, Issue 2 2002
Nicholas G. Blurton Jones
Female postreproductive life is a striking feature of human life history and there have been several recent attempts to account for its evolution. But archaeologists estimate that in the past, few individuals lived many postreproductive years. Is postreproductive life a phenotypic outcome of modern conditions, needing no evolutionary account? This article assesses effects of the modern world on hunter-gatherer adult mortality, with special reference to the Hadza. Evidence suggests that such effects are not sufficient to deny the existence of substantial life expectancy at the end of the childbearing career. Data from contemporary hunter-gatherers (Ache, !Kung, Hadza) match longevity extrapolated from regressions of lifespan on body and brain weight. Twenty or so vigorous years between the end of reproduction and the onset of significant senescence does require an explanation. Am. J. Hum. Biol. 14:184,205, 2002. © 2002 Wiley-Liss, Inc. [source]


Noah and Joseph Effects in Government Budgets: Analyzing Long-Term Memory

POLICY STUDIES JOURNAL, Issue 3 2007
Bryan D. Jones
This article examines the combined effects of what mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot has termed "Noah" and "Joseph" effects in U.S. national government budgeting. Noah effects, which reference the biblical great flood, are large changes or punctuations, far larger than could be expected given the Gaussian or Normal models that social scientists typically employ. Joseph effects refer to the seven fat and seven lean years that Joseph predicted to the Pharaoh. They are "near cycles" or "runs" in time series that look cyclical, but are not, because they do not occur on a regular, predictable basis. The Joseph effect is long-term memory in time series. Public expenditures in the United States from 1800 to 2004 shows clear Noah and Joseph effects. For the whole budget, these effects are strong prior to World War II (WWII) and weaker afterward. For individual programs, however, both effects are clearly detectable after WWII. Before WWII, budgeting was neither incremental nor well behaved because punctuations were even more severe and memory was not characterized by simple autoregressive properties. The obvious break that occurred after WWII could have signaled a regime shift in how policy was made in America, but even the more stable modern world is far more uncertain than the traditional incremental view. [source]


Fundamental Rights: Between Morals and Politics

RATIO JURIS, Issue 1 2001
Gregorio Peces-Barba Martínez
Starting from the impossibility of understanding fundamental rights from the standpoint of natural law doctrine or positivism, the author tackles the issue of rights from a realistic point of view, that is to say from the perspective of law and politics on the one hand, and from the perspective of public morality, on the other. Thus the foundation of fundamental rights is the meeting point of conceptions of social morality that are current in the modern world and the political aspect of the conception of pluralist democracy. Moreover, fundamental rights are considered an instrument to enable the social and moral development of human beings. [source]


Miscarriages of apothecary justice: un-separate spaces of work and family in early modern Rome

RENAISSANCE STUDIES, Issue 4 2007
Elizabeth S. Cohen
Claiming that a disruptive inspection by the College of Apothecaries had caused his wife and co-worker to miscarry and shortly die, a Roman candymaker in 1609 brought criminal charges against six guildsmen. A microanalysis of the trial records tells two linked stories. The first reconstructs tensions between, on the one hand, communal and corporate discipline and, on the other, one master's practices. The second recounts an obstetrical crisis involving self-help and several sorts of medical practitioners. These themes of work, health, public authority, and domesticity intersect within the confines of the artisan's shop and home. To explicate the meanings of these ,un-separate' spaces, this case study draws on Michael McKeon's reformulation for the early modern world of the binary, often invoked by scholars, of public and private. His ,distinction without separation' better characterizes the experiences of this candymaker and his family. (pp. 480,504) [source]


Vine Deloria Jr. as a Philosopher of Education: An Essay of Remembrance

ANTHROPOLOGY & EDUCATION QUARTERLY, Issue 3 2007
Troy A. Richardson
This essay engages the concepts of maturity, relationality, and responsibility in the writings of Vine Deloria Jr. as foundational to a Native philosophy of education. After situating Deloria and these Native philosophic concepts as a moment of difference in the colonial,modern world, I explore how these concepts of maturity, relationships, and responsibility have been discussed in his work and remain potent forces in the continuing evolution of education among Native peoples. [source]