Fellowship, Service, and the \u27Spirit of Adventure\u27: The Religious Society of Friends and the Outdoors Movement in Britain, C. 1900-1950

This article considers the involvement of members of the Religious Society of Friends in various manifestations of the outdoors movement in early twentieth-century Britain. It examines the Edwardian \u27Quaker tramps\u27 and their role in the \u27Quaker renaissance\u27, and goes on to consider the influence of Friends in organisations such as the Holiday Fellowship and the Youth Hostels Association, as well as interwar Quaker mountaineers. It argues that, while the outdoor activities of the Quaker renaissance were essentially internal to the Religious Society of Friends, a wider conception of social service took Quakers beyond the boundaries of the Society in the interwar period, resulting in a more profound influence on the outdoors movement. These activities of Friends were associated with the promotion of the \u27social gospel\u27, and represented a significant strand of Quaker service in the first half of the twentieth century

Reading Books and Reading Minds: Differential Effects of Wonder and The Crossover on Empathy and Theory of Mind

We tested sixth graders for empathy and theory of mind before and after an academic unit on either Wonder or The Crossover. Wonder was associated with improved perspective-taking; students who read The Crossover increased in concern for others. Faux pas detection increased in both genders with Wonder, and in girls with The Crossover. Students who read The Crossover in print showed improved understanding of facial expressions, while students who used iPads declined. Young adult fiction is associated with improved social cognitive skills, but effects depend on gender and reading format, as well as on the choice of individual book

The Effects of Pre and Post Exercise Low-Level Laser Therapy on Biochemical Markers of Skeletal Muscle Fatigue in Equines

Our objective was to determine whether administering low-level laser therapy before or after exercise had the greatest effect on biochemical markers of skeletal muscle fatigue in equines such as cortisol and blood lactate. Twelve quarter horses were divided into three groups: Group A received no laser therapy, Group B received laser therapy before exercise, and Group C received laser therapy after exercise. A Class II ERCHONIA ® PL500 handheld low-level laser was utilized for treatment with a wavelength of 635nm. Exercise was utilized using a horse walker system for 30 minutes five days a week for three weeks. Blood was collected via jugular venipuncture at time zero and then once a week for the remainder of the study. According to the results of this study, there is no evidence to suggest that laser therapy had a significant effect on equine cortisol or lactate, regardless if it was performed before or after exercise. However, there was an interaction between group and time for both lactate and cortisol. The results also showed that lactate increased as time increased as a result of lactic acid build up due to exercise, and cortisol decreased over time, which could be due to several possible variables such as weather. Several factors could have altered the results of this study, such as age, gender, weather, and diet of the equine subjects

Knowledge, education and social differentiation amongst the Betsileo of Fisakana, highland Madagascar

This thesis is an ethnographic study of a village in Fisakana, an area of highland Madagascar where the institution of formal education has had great social, economic and cultural influence. Although the principal means of subsistence in Fisakana is wet rice cultivation, a severe shortage of good land has led to large-scale emigration. Schooling has provided opportunities for social and spatial mobility that have shaped the character of the region. Migration and movement are dominant themes in the ethnography of Madagascar. The thesis examines three different types of migration in Fisakana. Each entails a different type of relationship between the migrants and their ancestral land. These are discussed in the context of other literature dealing with this topic in the anthropology of Madagascar. The region is characterised by inequalities of wealth. People working in the profession sector have prospered economically in comparison to those dependent on agriculture. This thesis makes an original contribution to the literature on social and economic differentiation in the highlands by treating the subject from an ethnographic perspective. The role of formal education in widening socio-economic differentiation is explored in detail. Then the thesis studies how this differentiation is elaborated symbolically through the building of houses and tombs. it also points out the ambiguous nature of tomb ceremonies: whilst ostensibly symbolising social unity and cohesion, they also imply fissure and exclusion. The thesis then examine the Betsileo social construction of knowledge. Through an exploration of what is learned inside and outside the classroom the thesis shows how local notions of traditional and foreign knowledge articulate with missionary, colonial and post-colonial ideologies of schooling, and with the social and spatial differentiation and displacement produced by formal education

Value and the foundation of Economic Dynamics

This article constructs time-varying labour value measures free of such restrictions and shows that they call for a radical re-evaluation of this century's debate on value. We exhibit a counter-example to the Okishio theorem in which labour-saving innovation leads to a continuously-falling profit rate, and a dynamic approach to the classical problem of transforming values into prices in which the sum of values is equal to the sum of prices while the sum of profits remains equal to the sum of surplus values. Elsewhere we have exhibited a computer simulation model using these values. A dynamic value measure is thus practical, necessary, and the basis for a general reconstruction of economics

Heretical thoughts about science and society: Frederick S. Pardee distinguished lecture, November 1, 2005

A version of this essay was delivered in November 1, 2005 as the Frederick S. Pardee Distinguished Lecture at Boston University.Freeman Dyson illuminates the importance of having heretics to challenge assumptions, and gives six heretical predictions of his own. The first is that American hegemony will not last until the next century. The second is that global warming is not the enormous problem that people make it out to be, primarily because increasing topsoil can counteract the excess of carbon dioxide and also, our knowledge is still too limited to diagnose the situation. His third heresy is that the increase in carbon dioxide may take us back to that wettest and warmest point in the interglacial period when the Sahara Desert was wet, and that this may be a better climate overall, driving at the critical juncture between naturalists and humanists. The fourth heresy makes an analogy between the transition that computers made to become small and ubiquitous, and the direction that biotechnology perhaps ought to go. Number five elaborates on communal sharing of genes and a completely new path for biology and evolution, and his sixth is that rural poverty should be solved by increasing the productivity of rural activities using “green technology,” (based on biology) such that people are not forced to migrate to urban centers