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This paper is a site of despair, anger, and weariness, in a time of incomprehensible violence. In staying with discomfort and frustration, it is a refusal of the attempted erasures of violence or complying with the need to place it in neat theoretical frameworks. It speaks to an exhaustion in having to theoretically engage with the coherence of dominant epistemologies of meaning-making of violence, in a time when everyday is marked by spectacular violence in Palestine and what that does to thinking of Kashmir, another site of military occupation. I build on my lived experiences as a Muslim Kashmiri woman from the world’s highest militarized zone, the violence of erasure, as well as thinking with/from distance, detachment and dissonances. It is an attempt at reflecting on my ‘ragged, fragmented and often incoherent’ thoughts and experiences around violence, dissonances and feelings of being uprooted. I write this piece ‘pivoted on refusals’. I refuse to make this an exercise of providing easy answers or addressing gaps in the violence literature or of disrupting ways of knowledge production. Who does this writing need to become legible to and what does such legibility attain? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, the issue of co-parenting has become a particularly discussed topic in the educational environment, perhaps due to the increase in the number of disorganized, separated families, or changes, etc. He is currently talking about joint parental management (Feinberg, 2002). And about the impact it has on the child in all dimensions of his life. Using the method of narrative review of academic literature, the study aims to identify the characteristics of the coparenting process and the main concerns in the field of coparenting. The work also aims to emphasize the importance of knowing the characteristics of coparenting by teachers in order to support the education and prevention of problems related to the relations between parents and children. 34 relevant researches from the databases available on Schoolar were evaluated. The results indicate a complicated dynamic of parental relations both in intact families and in separated families, single-parent families, etc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This piece offers a space for critical debate and reflection on the methodological and epistemological foundations that underpin feminist research on conflict, violence and peace. Taking stock of the variety of approaches and theoretical standpoints, we examine the (feminist) politics of knowledge production in academia and its limitations. We discuss how ontological and epistemological assumptions shape what counts as (feminist) academic knowledge and what is considered to be possible in (policy) practice. The article makes three contributions. First, we argue that the production of knowledge within disciplinary boundaries, and in particular, International Relations, is closely related to the discipline's history of positivism and exclusion. Second, to counter that, we propose a close engagement with Black and decolonial feminist methods of feeling-knowing, storytelling and collaboration. Third, we highlight that embracing uncertainty means accepting incommensurability and heterogeneity, as well as a shift away from the urge to accumulate knowledge towards paying attention to the process of co-constructing it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A history of social research has aimed to illuminate consequences for the psyche of workers that carry out occupations in dehumanizing contexts. In criminology, scholarship has detailed concern over how carceral contexts produce detriment via emotional labour for workers. Although prison work has been shown to necessitate emotional suppression, studies also find workers can bear intimacy for the incarcerated. We contribute to the prison scholarship by illustrating these emotive paradoxes that represent dissonance for staff. We draw from 18 focus groups of staff, to examine how emotive dissonance manifests from contradictory feeling rules in prison work. We explore emotive disharmony among the workgroup that comes from opposing feeling rules, and, we explore how workers experience with emotive dissonance manifests as emotional estrangement. Our findings help contemplate the implications of navigating emotion within dehumanizing contexts and illustrate that how staff treat the incarcerated has implications for their own sense of humanity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes American cable channel HGTV's programing strategies in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and specifically their construction of a "COVID-free" fantasia in their series Home Town and its spinoff, Home Town Takeover. By considering this response through the lens of dissonance, I argue that while the network originally emphasized their social responsibility to mitigating the spread of the virus, their business model incentivized them to move past the virus more swiftly than other channels, pushing the labor of mediating dissonance onto their on-screen talent and their audience. This case study foregrounds how variables like genre, channel, and audience shaped the television industry's response to the pandemic, with HGTV's business model built on "evergreen" reality programing leading them to abdicate principles of social responsibility both more quickly and more thoroughly, despite numerous options that would have addressed the dissonance of COVID in a more balanced fashion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Correlations may arise in quantum systems through various means, of which the most remarkable one is quantum entanglement. Additionally, there are systems that exhibit nonclassical correlations even in the absence of entanglement. Quantum dissonance refers to how Quantum Discord (QD) — the difference between the total correlation and the classical correlation in a given quantum state — appears as a nonclassical correlation in a system without entanglement. It could be said that QD has the potential to provide a more inclusive viewpoint for discerning the nonclassical correlations. In this paper, we address the problem of manipulating the QD between two subsystems through local operations. We propose two explicit procedures for obtaining separable Werner states, a type of mixed state with nonzero QD. Both approaches involve performing local operations on classically correlated states and offers a step-by-step method for obtaining separable Werner states with nonzero discord, providing an alternative (explicit and user-friendly) to existing methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article takes issue with the distinction between tangible and intangible heritage and the duality between the symbolic and instrumental (profit-generating) value of heritage. Based on ethnographic research in a tourist destination on the Croatian coast, the article interrogates what happens when built culture and urban public spaces are still part of living culture in a locality. It demonstrates dissonant meanings and uses of heritage that arise from the intangible and socially constructed nature of material heritage for local users. Beyond the symbolic and instrumental meanings and uses of heritage, its societal, experiential meaning is underlined as it is a part of living societal culture that is consumed on a daily basis. In the end, the article reflects on the limits of local community engagement in heritage processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social innovation (SI) has been credited with fostering novel solutions to the socio-economic challenges many rural areas face. The quest for a substantiated understanding of its potential for regional development has spawned a rich literature on SI impact assessments. Yet, having been instrumental, these assessments harbour several ambiguities as they seek to unveil objective impacts in a results-oriented manner. First, SI processes take diverse directionalities, questioning the idea of them being 'straightforward facts' and giving leeway to a more constructivist understanding. Second, a results-oriented perspective tends to obscure social processes that initially contribute to the emergence of impacts. In response to such concerns, we suggest a valuation perspective that explores how SI impacts are constructed iteratively throughout the innovation process. To do so, we operationalise the notion of dissonance as a critical factor embedded in innovative activities in three instances: impulses, turning points, and lock-ins. This perspective allows us to study how value is experienced, assigned, and strategically attracted while shedding light on how SI processes and their impacts are co-constructed in valuation processes. The article uses empirical vignettes from selected case studies with SI initiatives in Northern Germany. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the field of urban archaeology in the United States, focusing on its connection to the National Historic Preservation Act and the insights it provides into past city life. It discusses the challenges faced by urban archaeologists, such as protective ordinances and urban renewal efforts, and emphasizes the need for collaboration with preservationists, historians, and community stakeholders. The article includes case studies from different cities, highlighting the complexities and tensions inherent in urban archaeology. It also addresses the under-resourcing and underutilization of archaeology in present cities, the lack of legal protection for archaeological research in Chicago, and the dominance of architectural history in heritage research. The text emphasizes the importance of engaging with diverse perspectives and calls for collaboration, methodological expansion, and community involvement in urban archaeology projects. [Extracted from the article]

The spike protein determines the host-range specificity of coronaviruses. In particular, the Receptor-Binding Motif in the spike protein from SARS-CoV-2 contains the amino acids involved in molecular recognition of the host Angiotensin Converting Enzyme 2. Therefore, to understand how SARS-CoV-2 acquired its capacity to infect humans it is necessary to reconstruct the evolution of this important motif. Early during the pandemic, it was proposed that the SARS-CoV-2 Receptor-Binding Domain was acquired via recombination with a pangolin infecting coronavirus. This proposal was challenged by an alternative explanation that suggested that the Receptor-Binding Domain from SARS-CoV-2 did not originated via recombination with a coronavirus from a pangolin. Instead, this alternative hypothesis proposed that the Receptor-Binding Motif from the bat coronavirus RaTG13, was acquired via recombination with an unidentified coronavirus. And as a consequence of this event, the Receptor-Binding Domain from the pangolin coronavirus appeared as phylogenetically closer to SARS-CoV-2. Recently, the genomes from coronaviruses from Cambodia (bat_RShST182/200) and Laos (BANAL-20-52/103/247) which are closely related to SARS-CoV-2 were reported. However, no detailed analysis of the evolution of the Receptor-Binding Motif from these coronaviruses was reported. Here we revisit the evolution of the Receptor-Binding Domain and Motif in the light of the novel coronavirus genome sequences. Specifically, we wanted to test whether the above coronaviruses from Cambodia and Laos were the source of the Receptor-Binding Domain from RaTG13. We found that the Receptor-Binding Motif from these coronaviruses is phylogenetically closer to SARS-CoV-2 than to RaTG13. Therefore, the source of the Receptor-Binding Domain from RaTG13 is still unidentified. In accordance with previous studies, our results are consistent with the hypothesis that the Receptor-Binding Motif from SARS-CoV-2 evolved by vertical inheritance from a bat-infecting population of coronaviruses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the way in which Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus (1818) illuminates the physiological dimension of the sublime experience and its profound impact on the subject. Frankenstein’s creature presents provocative implications of how the unruly physiological functions of the body can defamiliarize the Enlightenment understanding of an ideal human being anchored in rationalism. My perspective adds to the aesthetics of the sublime, specifically the postmodern ideas of dissonance and immanence demonstrated by the creature’s signs of bodily unruliness, from instincts of self-preservation to carnal desires, which cause the spiritual effects of shock and horror in the creator. I argue that not only does Shelley provide a lens through which to perceive the defamiliarized world where the modern subject consistently encounters the unknown other as represented by the creature, but she also kindles a new kind of sympathy that can be enacted through the compromise of the self and the other’s disruptive physiological responses. In this respect, this paper employs the notion of the “physiological sublime” to explore Shelley’s incorporation of the sublime into the physiological dimension of interpersonal relations, and on the manifestation of sympathy as arising from the subject’s acknowledgment of their own physiological otherness as it develops through direct encounters with the other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Introduction: Musical roundness perception relies on consonance/dissonance within a rule-based harmonic context, but also on individual characteristics of the listener. The present work tackles these aspects in a combined psychoacoustic and neurophysiological study, taking into account participant's musical aptitude. Methods: Our paradigm employed cadence-like four-chord progressions, based on Western music theory. Chord progressions comprised naturalistic and artificial sounds; moreover, their single chords varied regarding consonance/dissonance and harmonic function. Thirty participants listened to the chord progressions while their cortical activity was measured with magnetoencephalography; afterwards, they rated the individual chord progressions with respect to their perceived roundness. Results: Roundness ratings differed according to the degree of dissonance in the dominant chord at the progression's third position; this effect was pronounced in listeners with high musical aptitude. Interestingly, a corresponding pattern occurred in the neuromagnetic N1m response to the fourth chord (i.e., at the progression's resolution), again with somewhat stronger differentiation among musical listeners. The N1m magnitude seemed to increase during chord progressions that were considered particularly round, with the maximum difference after the final chord; here, however, the musical aptitude effect just missed significance. Discussion: The roundness of chord progressions is reflected in participant's psychoacoustic ratings and in their transient cortical activity, with stronger differentiation among listeners with high musical aptitude. The concept of roundness might help to reframe consonance/dissonance to a more holistic, gestalt-like understanding that covers chord relations in Western music. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is about J. R. R. Tolkien's adaptation of Pythagorean musical elements in the 'Song of the Ainur' of the Silmarillion. It details Tolkien's use of Pythagorean dissonance, along with what that amounts to in terms of musical theory, and explores the epistemological origins of the concept and how it found its way into this work of fiction. On the latter point, Platonism, Neoplatonism, and early Christian theology are considered. This includes the likes of Prudentius, pseudo-Dionysius, Augustine, and Aquinas, among others. The article observes that Tolkien has deliberately chosen a somewhat esoteric element of Pythagorean musical theory, albeit highly relevant to his own historical context, in order to explore concepts of morality along with the traditional, Christian conundrum of predestination vs. free will. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is no doubt that the correct interpretation of the ambiguous provisions of the international treaty leads to its properly application. That requires a research in a two-facet problem of: the appointment of the means or "mechanisms" appropriate to take up the interpretation process, and then selecting the "rules" of interpretation which must be adopted in that process for the detection of the intended meanings of vague provisions. This research is concentrated on the first facet of the problem. Therefore, it starts from the assumption that the interpreted treaty does not include specifically the mechanism that should be adopted when the difference in the meaning of a text arises. This requires research in each of the mechanisms: national and international, which any of them can be suitable to take over the task of determining the intended meaning of ambiguous terms. However, if the "mechanisms" is national, will the interpretation be according to national rules with the possibility of adopting it as a justification for failure in the implementation of commitments, or will it require the use of international "rules" and on what basis is this done?. And if that mechanisms is international, is there any international behavior which refers to the likelihood or the necessity to recourse to a specific mechanism and to the commitment to the decision of the interpretation of the terms that the parties differ in their understanding of the treaty through its application?. The lack of intervention of international law in determining the specific mechanism for removing the ambiguity give rise to the problem of contradiction between the multiple interpretations of terms, which raises the need for guidelines to strengthen the Convention on the Law of Treaties (1969) and to fulfill the widening the application of international law before the national jurisdiction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The perception of two (or more) simultaneous musical notes, depending on their pitch interval(s), could be broadly categorized as consonant or dissonant. Previous literature has suggested that musicians and non-musicians adopt different strategies when discerning music intervals: while musicians rely on the frequency ratios between the two fundamental frequencies, such as “perfect fifth” (3:2) as consonant and “tritone” (45:32) as dissonant intervals; non-musicians may rely on the presence of ‘roughness’ or ‘beats’, generated by the difference of fundamental frequencies, as the key elements of ‘dissonance’. The separate Event-Related Potential (ERP) differences in N1 and P2 along the midline electrodes provided evidence congruent with such ‘separate reliances’. To replicate and to extend, in this study we reran the previous experiment, and separately collected fMRI data of the same protocol (with sparse sampling modifications). The behavioral and EEG results largely corresponded to our previous finding. The fMRI results, with the joint analyses by univariate, psycho-physiological interaction, and representational similarity analysis (RSA) approaches, further reinforce the involvement of central midline-related brain regions, such as ventromedial prefrontal and dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, in consonant/dissonance judgments. The final spatiotemporal searchlight RSA provided convincing evidence that the medial prefrontal cortex, along with the bilateral superior temporal cortex, is the joint locus of midline N1 and dorsal anterior cingulate cortex for the P2 effect (for musicians). Together, these analyses reaffirm that musicians rely more on experience-driven knowledge for consonance/dissonance perception; but also demonstrate the advantages of multiple analyses in constraining the findings from both EEG and fMRI.

Despite being central to the media repertoire approach, operationalizations of interrelations of media repertoire components often remain limited to proportions of use, or the personal relevance of repertoire components. This paper seeks to contribute to our understanding of these interrelations by focusing specifically on one particular operationalization: the (in)compatibility of parts of the repertoire. Recent discussions in newspaper headlines indicate how Flemish reality TV-show Temptation Island might function as one such component, deemed incompatible with the repertoire of higher-educated young viewers. By drawing upon Lahire's theory of dissonance, and exploring the appropriation of Temptation Island within repertoires through a moral economy of media use, the paper explores how young viewers under thirty-five make sense of "dissonant components" within their repertoire, and alleviate the tensions that their presence can create by adopting strategies that establish distance from the text or by hiding parts of the repertoire in certain social contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

THIS STUDY TESTED WHETHER CHORDS THAT DO not differ in acoustic roughness but that have distinct affective connotations are strong enough to prime negative and positive associations measurable with an affective priming method. We tested whether musically dissonant chords low in valence (diminished, augmented) but that contain little acoustic roughness are strong enough in terms of negative affective connotations to elicit an automatic congruence effect in an affective priming setting, comparable to the major-positive/minor-negative distinction found in past studies. Three out of 4 hypotheses were supported by the empirical data obtained from four distinct sub-experiments (approximately N = 100 each) where the diminished and augmented chords created strong priming effects. Conversely, the minor chord and the suspended fourth failed to generate priming effects. The results demonstrate how automatic responses to consonant/ dissonant chords can be driven by acquired, cultural concepts rather than exclusively by acoustic features. The obtained results of automatic responses are notably in line with previous data gathered from self-report studies in terms of the stimuli’s positive vs. negative valence. The results are discussed from the point of view of previous affective priming studies, cross-cultural research, as well as music historical observations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sinha's Animal's People is a novel premised on sound, through the transcription of Animal's voice and recorded interviews. Despite its centrality, sound is occluded by the novel's own textual form. This essay explores the metatextual relationship between sound and text, subaltern voice and novelistic form, by focusing on a particular moment of "guided listening" in Animal's narration. I propose that Animal's invitation to the reader, to hear beauty in the deathly silence of the Kampani's abandoned, toxic factory, compels a mode of counterintuitive listening. This moment presents an impasse, advocating experimentation and a reflexive encounter with the novel going forward. In doing so, Animal's "guided listening" reconfigures Animal's voice not as a matter to be recuperated by the reader and represented through the text, but rather as a voice whose agency lies in its capacity to reorganize the novel's associative economies and inspire the reader to do the same. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A previous study explored the potential to influence the perception of consonance by controlling the spectral components of simultaneous pitches within a chord in sound synthesis using the additive method. This approach involves considering spectral components across in all simultaneously sounding pitches constituting a chord. Components within the range of beatings and roughness are adjusted to gradually enhance or weaken both phenomena. So far, the idea and method were implemented in a basic additive synthesizer, producing simple, abstract, time-invariant timbres. The current study extends this research and addresses challenges associated with implementing the aforementioned consonance-altering mechanism in a more advanced additive synthesizer, applied to the task of resynthesizing the sound of selected acoustic instruments. This study deals with natural, independent evolution of spectral components, wherein consonance undergoes gradual variations over time. Additionally, it presents a solution to mitigate the impact of the mechanism on the overall signal level, arising from the attenuation of selected spectral components. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

IntroductionMusical roundness perception relies on consonance/dissonance within a rule-based harmonic context, but also on individual characteristics of the listener. The present work tackles these aspects in a combined psychoacoustic and neurophysiological study, taking into account participant’s musical aptitude.MethodsOur paradigm employed cadence-like four-chord progressions, based on Western music theory. Chord progressions comprised naturalistic and artificial sounds; moreover, their single chords varied regarding consonance/dissonance and harmonic function. Thirty participants listened to the chord progressions while their cortical activity was measured with magnetoencephalography; afterwards, they rated the individual chord progressions with respect to their perceived roundness.ResultsRoundness ratings differed according to the degree of dissonance in the dominant chord at the progression’s third position; this effect was pronounced in listeners with high musical aptitude. Interestingly, a corresponding pattern occurred in the neuromagnetic N1m response to the fourth chord (i.e., at the progression’s resolution), again with somewhat stronger differentiation among musical listeners. The N1m magnitude seemed to increase during chord progressions that were considered particularly round, with the maximum difference after the final chord; here, however, the musical aptitude effect just missed significance.DiscussionThe roundness of chord progressions is reflected in participant’s psychoacoustic ratings and in their transient cortical activity, with stronger differentiation among listeners with high musical aptitude. The concept of roundness might help to reframe consonance/dissonance to a more holistic, gestalt-like understanding that covers chord relations in Western music.

"Re-thinking history: educating for the environment and active citizenship" is the title of the conference promoted and organised in October 2022 by the International Centre for the Didactics of History and Heritage of the University of Bologna as part of the nineteenth edition of the "International History Festival". The essay addresses some current issues concerning the warnings, legacies and instrumentalisations of history and its heritage with an eye to the educational dimension, in the full awareness that even the discordant and controversial aspects of the past can motivate renewed interests in the teaching of history and heritage by activating multiple and sometimes discordant interpretations. The salient phases of the history of Bologna's porticos will also be retraced as an example of a heritage that was born dissonant and that the community then recognised as a distinctive element of territorial identity, becoming a world heritage site in 2021.

Social innovation (SI) has been credited with fostering novel solutions to the socio-economic challenges many rural areas face. The quest for a substantiated understanding of its potential for regional development has spawned a rich literature on SI impact assessments. Yet, having been instrumental, these assessments harbour several ambiguities as they seek to unveil objective impacts in a results-oriented manner. First, SI processes take diverse directionalities, questioning the idea of them being ‘straightforward facts’ and giving leeway to a more constructivist understanding. Second, a results-oriented perspective tends to obscure social processes that initially contribute to the emergence of impacts. In response to such concerns, we suggest a valuation perspective that explores how SI impacts are constructed iteratively throughout the innovation process. To do so, we operationalise the notion of dissonance as a critical factor embedded in innovative activities in three instances: impulses, turning points, and lock-ins. This perspective allows us to study how value is experienced, assigned, and strategically attracted while shedding light on how SI processes and their impacts are co-constructed in valuation processes. The article uses empirical vignettes from selected case studies with SI initiatives in Northern Germany.

Beyond the widespread disruption narrative around media innovation, journalism scholarship has put forward valuable remedies to counteract a techno-deterministic perspective by embracing socio-constructivist and socio-technical approaches. Nevertheless, thus far, scholarly attention has primarily been directed towards the newsroom despite the journalism field having undergone significant structural transformations. In this article, we adopt an organisational perspective to journalism innovation and apply it to the emerging locus of inter-firm collaborations in journalism. In fact, while the newsroom has traditionally been considered the dominant location for implementing innovations, an increasing amount of media work currently occurs in decentralised settings. Our study draws upon 20 qualitative interviews with media practitioners and media managers who have been involved as project leaders in inter-firm collaborative projects. These projects have received institutional funding specifically aimed at fostering media innovation. We strive to understand how practitioners conceive of innovation in their overall activity, what obstacles they encounter in their usual routines, and how collaborative practices support them in their innovation trajectory. Our findings indicate that innovation is predominantly perceived as a demanding and complex ongoing practice characterised by adaptation to an evolving environment and hindered by a lack of resources and time. We also find that collaborations offer media practitioners a temporary framework for balancing their efforts to keep up with the demand for daily media production and their aspiration to carry out explorative activities. Lastly, our research reveals that these collaborations provide occasions for knowledge exchange and self-reflection that are frequently absent in non-collaborative settings.

In this article, we examine the ways in which the notion of interdisciplinarity was understood, implemented and experienced by researchers at a government-funded Chilean climate research centre. Our multi-site ethnography, consisting of interviews, participant observations, and document analysis, was motivated by three key aims. First, to generate an inductive, multi-faceted picture of the lived meaning of "interdisciplina" at the Centre; second, to explore whether and to what extent the "peripheral" features of the research context would exacerbate the challenges associated with practicing interdisciplinarity, and third, to see whether frictions between disciplines at the Centre could be considered productive "dissonances" in Stark's sense of the term. We found that despite the centre efforts to produce a common framework to regulate interdisciplinary research, its researchers nevertheless understood, enacted and experienced it in diverse ways. More specifically, we found that researcher´s conceptions of interdisciplinarity were coloured by their lived experiences of attempting to practice it, and in particular by the benefits and costs they associated with doing so. This in turn was linked to several variables, including the specific balance between disciplines, the absence or presence of shared, clearly-defined goals, the affirmation of a common research ethic or motivational commitment, and the structural-material conditions of the research in question. We also found that the research conditions characteristic of the Global South do tend to exacerbate the well-documented challenges associated with interdisciplinarity, yet that the adversities associated with precarious conditions were often met by increased resilience and bonding among researchers, who use creative and collaborative strategies to adapt to adversity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: Test whether a group-delivered dissonance-based transdiagnostic eating disorder treatment, Body Project Treatment (BPT), produces greater reductions in eating disorder symptoms and higher abstinence from eating disorder behaviors and remittance from eating disorder diagnoses than group-delivered transdiagnostic interpersonal psychotherapy (IPT). Method: Women with a range of eating disorders (N = 73) were randomized to 8-week group-implemented BPT or IPT and completed surveys and masked diagnostic interviews at pretest, posttest, and 6-month follow-up. Results: Participants randomized to BPT versus IPT showed significantly greater reductions in eating disorder symptoms (d = −.75), pursuit of the thin ideal (d = −.87), anxiety symptoms (d = −.76), and social impairment (d = −.59) through 6-month follow-up. By end of treatment, participants randomized to the BPT versus IPT did not significantly differ on abstinence from binge eating and purging (49% vs. 40%, respectively) or remittance from eating disorder diagnoses (54% vs. 40%, respectively). Participants randomized to BPT versus IPT did not differ significantly in average session attendance (5.8 vs. 6.9, respectively) or average homework assignments completed (4.6 vs. 5.6, respectively). The within-condition reductions in eating disorder symptoms for BPT did not significantly differ when implemented in person versus via synchronous video telepsychiatry (d = −1.39 vs. −1.09, respectively), though these effects should be considered preliminary because of the small cell sizes. Conclusions: The evidence that BPT produces greater reductions in eating disorder symptoms, pursuit of the thin ideal, anxiety symptoms, and social impairment than IPT is encouraging because it provides some assurance that the effects are present equating for the effects of expectancies, demand characteristics, and nonspecific factors. What is the public health significance of this article?: This study provides evidence that a novel dissonance-based transdiagnostic eating disorder treatment produced greater reductions in eating disorder symptoms, pursuit of the thin ideal, anxiety symptoms, and social impairment relative to group-delivered transdiagnostic interpersonal psychotherapy. To our knowledge, this is the first transdiagnostic eating disorder treatment to significantly outperform an alternative active treatment through 6-month follow-up. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Complex cognitions are involved in professing to love animals whilst eating them – the "meat paradox." Meat-related cognitive dissonance varies depending upon the self-identified gender of the individual, with women more likely to report more negative affect and more likely to express a desire to reduce meat consumption than men. In this study, we investigated possible reasons for why gender effects are observed. We hypothesized that there may be an effect across different species – do we feel bad about eating lambs but not chickens? Is it the case that dissonance is most strongly elicited when the meat-animal connection involves animals thought to have less intelligence? What role does identification with particular gender roles play in the justifications that drive the meat paradox? Does the idea that qualities of food are related to the way an animal is killed play a role – this being the concept of magical thinking, which has been demonstrated to be more common in women? In two experiments involving 466 participants, we aimed to better understand the meat paradox in the context of cognitive dissonance, gender, magical thinking, empathy, and gender-role orientation. We found that exposure to information about the intelligence of animals (lamb and chicken) and the slaughter process induced negative affect in comparison with the control condition (apples). We replicated the finding that women who identify with more traditional gender roles experience greater meat-related cognitive dissonance. Further, there was a significant correlation between increased negative affect and higher scores on magical thinking. Finally, experiencing meat-related cognitive dissonance led to an increase in rates of intention to decrease meat consumption. Whilst we replicated several previous findings reported in the literature, we did not show unequivocal relationships between gender, gender roles, and magical thinking and the meat paradox. The ways in which people manage meat-related cognitive dissonance remains an area for further interrogation to better understand these contradictions of thinking and behavior. Understanding the meat paradox has implications for animal welfare and human and planetary health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Seeking to elucidate aspects of harmonic practice that originated in contrapuntal patterns, this article traces a specific set of voice-leading configurations in which the generative roles of dissonance, counterpoint, and harmonic progression are blurred. These configurations, originating in early eighteenth-century practice, feature upper-voice suspensions, which are notable for their interlocking qualities and for their compatibility with an extended range of thoroughbass patterns and bass motions (Harrison 2003). Segments of such patterns were partially assimilated into later compositional practice and appeared in treatises on fundamental-bass and scale-step systems of harmony, but these configurations revealed a degree of friction between counterpoint-based idioms and the emerging harmonic theories attempting to explain them according to singular principles. The continued appearance of these configurations in subsequent compositional practice raises the question of what aspects of dissonance and counterpoint have been both embedded in harmonic practice and increasingly subordinated to chord structure in the harmonic theories that stretch from Rameau to Schenker. This dialectical engagement between historical theory and compositional practice offers a critique of our inherited harmonic theories, exposing competing conceptions of dissonance and discrepancies over its autonomy relative to harmonic principles. Tracing this history also reveals that the essential connections among rhythm/meter, dissonance treatment, and harmonic progression that are clearly present in eighteenth-century practice--Kirnberger's "rhythmic harmony" (Aldrich 1970)--become increasingly subordinated to harmonic principles in nineteenth-century theory. The historical path of embedded dissonance appears to exemplify Adorno's notion of sedimentation, which offers several interesting disciplinary and aesthetic conclusions about harmonic theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers the normative and critical value of popular comedy. I begin by assembling and evaluating a range of political theory literature on comedy. I argue that popular comedy can be conducive to both critical and transformative democratic effects, but that these effects are contingent on the way comedic performances are received by audiences. I illustrate this by means of a case study of a comedic climate change 'debate' from the television show, Last Week Tonight. Drawing from recent scholarship on deliberation, judgment and rhetoric, I highlight both critical and transformative dimensions of the performance. I attribute these to the vignette's likely reception, which I describe as 'dissonant' – unresolved, affectively turbulent and aesthetically attuned. I argue that comedy is uniquely positioned to spur such 'dissonant' modes of engagement and, in so doing, to promote acknowledgement and reflective judgment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: This study tested whether the dissonance-based Body Project eating disorder prevention program reduced onset of subthreshold/threshold anorexia nervosa (AN), bulimia nervosa (BN), binge eating disorder (BED), and purging disorder (PD) over long-term follow-up. Methods: Data were combined from three prevention trials that targeted young women at high-risk for eating disorders (N = 1092; M age = 19.3). Participants were randomized to Body Project groups led by peer educators or expressive writing/educational controls and completed masked diagnostic interviews over 2- to 4-year follow-ups. Logistic regressions tested whether onset of each eating disorder over follow-up differed between Body Project and control participants. Results: Peer-led Body Project groups produced a 46% reduction in onset of subthreshold/threshold BN and a 62% reduction in onset of PD relative to controls over follow-up. Rates of onset of subthreshold/threshold AN and BED did not significantly differ between peer-led Body Project participants and control participants. Conclusions: Results support the dissemination of the peer-led Body Project for reducing future onset of BN and PD. This study and recent research suggest that thin-ideal internalization, the risk factor for eating disorders targeted in the Body Project , may be more relevant for predicting onset of BN and PD compared to AN and BED. Findings support the development of a version of the Body Project aimed to reduce risk factors that have predicted future onset of all four types of eating disorders (e.g. overvaluation of weight/shape, fear of weight gain), which may more effectively prevent all eating disorder types. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explored preparatory year program (PYP) teachers' emotional labor and dissonance in an English as a Foreign Language (EFL) setting and this relates to institutional power. It also addressed issues related to the conflict between their professional training, knowledge, and beliefs and the institutional requirements. The final evaluation test of the PYP was used as an example of top-down institutional policies that may conflict with English language teachers' training and/or pedagogical preferences, thereby producing emotional labor. To illustrate these concepts, the data were analyzed from interviews with 22 EFL teachers at a Saudi university regarding their emotions toward preparing the students for the final evaluation test and the requirements of the institutional power. The results were discussed in light of the following themes: (a) orienting to feeling rules, and (b) adapting to institutional policies, teachers' preferences, and other beliefs. The findings suggested that teachers exhibited high levels of deep acting and naturally-felt emotions, which could be explained by the idea that teachers internalized their roles. In addition, they showed that teachers may resist the feeling rules of their institution's policies. This article ends with pedagogical implications and recommendations for further research on emotional labor as a tool of teacher engagement. The researcher's personal reflections and emotion(al) labor were incorporated with engagement with the participants' accounts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the novel "The Orchard of Lost Souls" by Nadifa Mohamed, which delves into the experiences of Somali women during the lead-up to the civil war in Somaliland-Somalia. The author focuses on the inner lives of the female characters and their struggles with identity and agency, using clothing as a means of expression. The article highlights the diverse perspectives and conflicting viewpoints of the women, shedding light on the complexities of Somali culture and society. Overall, the text emphasizes the complexity and diversity of Somali women's experiences and perspectives. [Extracted from the article]

There are many connections that link the aesthetic sphere to the set of phenomena that are encompassed by the general definition of “Anthropocene”. Among them, there are two that are explored in this contribution. On the one hand, it is a matter of getting to the bottom of the relationship between the conceptual heritage of the aesthetic-philosophical tradition and its metaphorical variants with the thematic core of the Anthropocene. On the other hand, it is a matter of ascertaining how this process intertwines and interferes with the forms of visualization of the “human epoch” and thereby conditions the possible reactions that descend from such representations. Finally, to conclude with a tentative assessment of the possibilities of countervisualization and lines of research within the conceptual field of aesthetics for a different rendering of relations with phenomena linked to the notion of the Anthropocene.

The extent and persistence of academic dishonesty among college students is well-established in published research. This study confirms similarly extensive cheating at a small, Midwestern university using selfreported data collected by surveying students. The empirical analysis identifies evidence of dissonance relating to semantics, environment, and role. The three principle findings are: a distinction between the terms cheating and unauthorized assistance, reporting academic dishonesty more outside the classroom than in, and acknowledging more providing than receiving of unauthorized assistance. The results suggest that students experience competing codes of behavior informed by environment and role. Prescriptions consistent with these finding are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents autoethnographic strategies to manage cognitive dissonance in art teacher education. Dissonance, as a conflict in beliefs and actions, is discussed in educational research but not commonly in art education. By exposing the autoethnographic voices of three academic artist teachers based in the United Kingdom and Singapore, including that of one author, this paper identifies the constitution and location of cognitive dissonance in art education. Autoethnographic images and excerpts help reveal personal accounts of cognition whilst positioning dissonance in practice. Contributors to dissonance like belief and concept conflicts, demonstrative challenges and power relationships are also exposed. This paper recommends that educational stakeholders, such as education ministries, teacher education departments and school leadership teams collaborate to acknowledge, accept and begin to manage dissonance in art teacher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on Kevin Spacey's manipulative rhetoric in the YouTube video he posted on Christmas Eve in 2018 when he was facing a felony sexual assault charge in Nantucket District Court in USA. Drawing upon the notion of "double deixis" used for the second-person pronoun, this article questions the extent to which Spacey's use of the first-person pronoun could be called "doubly deictic". The findings show that Spacey's strategic use of deixis allows him to blur identities and conflate fictional and real worlds. Not only is he using deixis in a way that hampers easy interpretation and complicates cognitive projection but he assigns his audience an awkward double positioning (as fans and citizens). The article also tries to elucidate the complex effects of Spacey's manipulation on viewers. It suggests an addition to the notion of "double consciousness" that malfunctions here, as a "third consciousness" seems to be imposed onto the audience. This may explain why certain viewers are likely to experience some "cognitive dissonance" while watching this video that the media has defined as "creepy". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study strives to analyse the polyphony of Milan Kundera's novels from musicological perspective. Different attributes of novel polyphony formulated by literary theories are added by the term stratified texture which refers to various simultaneous sound layers. Dissonances are the integral elements of Kundera's polyphony similar to Schoenberg's twelve-note counterpoint. This dissonant counterpoint can be seen as the depiction of the contemporary world. The study argues that Kundera's development of polyphony in novel is extremely important in contemporary epoch as counterpoint is disappering in musical compositions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To undertake the modernization of Azerbaijan's water sector, the government of Azerbaijan collaborated with the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations (UN) in a comprehensive initiative to explore stakeholder perceptions on in-country water governance. The research approach, designed by national water experts and the authors, resulted in the development and administration of a stakeholder engagement and perception survey. The survey, implemented in 2022, elicited responses from a total of 219 state and non-state actors. To enrich interpretations of the survey, this study furthers the analysis of the government commissioned FAO stakeholder survey results and sheds additional insights as to where stakeholders see problems in water governance processes. This independent study informs the broader FAO project and generates supplemental recommendations to the Azerbaijani government for legislative and executive-level action to make Azerbaijan's water sector more resilient as the climate changes and water insecurity increases. Even though an impressive number of 219 stakeholders participated in the survey, 80% of the responses were from state stakeholders, thus introducing significant bias into the dataset. In order to cope with the bias and make the best of the dataset, the authors analyzed the responses with a customized categorical methodology. Stakeholders were categorized into state, non-state, decision-maker, or executive groups and were examined for trends using various Pareto analyses. Interpretation of the survey responses reveals that, while stakeholders in the water sector interact through informal and formal means, stakeholder groups, to a large extent, lack an understanding of the barriers to stakeholder engagement in water-related policy matters. The stakeholders that indicate understanding of challenges accompanying water policy engagement note a lack of data, a lack of human and institutional capacity, and a lack of financial support to be some of the most common obstacles encountered in the sector. Furthermore, perceptions differ regarding the need for governance reform, the criticality of climate change, institutional resistance to change, policy or practice gaps, transparency, and variables needed for successful stakeholder engagement across all sectors. Such variations in perceptions illustrate the need for restructuring stakeholder interactive platforms and financial channeling to lead to better water governance and water management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most people are members of different groups. While the norms of these groups can align, they can also be contradicting, leading to dissonance within the social self. This is different from dissonance at the individual level because it is based solely on individuals' membership in ingroups with conflicting norms. Building on the Social Identity Approach and Cognitive Dissonance Theory, we assume that norm conflict between ingroups increases psychological discomfort, particularly for people who are highly identified with both ingroups. Norm conflict was manipulated by showing participants the results of bogus surveys, indicating that their ingroups agree or disagree (in Experiment 1 on the topic of self-driving cars; in Experiment 2 on how to act in a moral dilemma). We tested several strategies to cope with norm conflict between ingroups, namely, lowering the credibility of the norm conflict information and/or norm prototypicality (Exp. 1 & 2), disidentification (Exp. 1), as well as compartmentalization and the restorative function of agentic groups (Exp. 2). In line with our assumptions, results indicated that norm conflict between ingroups led to increased psychological discomfort in Experiment 1 (N = 870) and Experiment 2 (N = 812). This was not moderated by the two ingroup identification levels. The results of Experiment 1 indicated that lowering perceived prototypicality of the norms was a coping strategy for high identifiers. No effects emerged for other coping strategies. Both experiments show evidence of dissonance within the social self and highlight the necessity for further examinations of its consequences and boundary conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In pitched sounds the ratios between frequencies of spectral components remain close to natural numbers. In acoustic instruments these ratios deviate from exact values due to damping or boundary conditions, complicating use of musical systems defining frequency ratios associated with musical intervals. If such system is imposed on the fundamental frequencies of pitches consisting a chord, higher spectral components may deviate noticeably, strengthening or weakening the effects of beating and roughness caused by their proximity, and changing chord characteristics in terms of consonance-dissonance gradation. Unlike acoustic instruments, sound synthesizers can precisely adjust components of generated signal, and use this phenomenon as a controllable timbre effect. For this purpose spectral components of a chord within the range of beating and roughness are modified to gradually strengthen or weaken both phenomena. The study presents the assumptions of the effect and its implementation in a sound synthesizer based on the additive method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Findings from brain imaging studies with small samples can show limited reproducibility. Thus, we tested whether the evidence that a transdiagnostic eating disorder treatment reduces responsivity of brain valuation regions to thin models and high-calorie binge foods, the intervention targets, from a smaller earlier trial emerged when we recruited additional participants. Methods: Women with DSM-5 eating disorders (N = 138) were randomized to the dissonance-based body project treatment (BPT) or a waitlist control condition and completed functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans assessing neural response to thin models and high-calorie foods at pretest and posttest. Results: BPT v. control participants showed significantly greater reductions in responsivity of regions implicated in reward valuation (caudate) and attentional motivation (precuneus) to thin v. average-weight models, echoing findings from the smaller sample. Data from this larger sample also provided novel evidence that BPT v. control participants showed greater reductions in responsivity of regions implicated in reward valuation (ventrolateral prefrontal cortex) and food craving (hippocampus) to high-calorie binge foods v. low-calorie foods, as well as significantly greater reductions in eating disorder symptoms, abstinence from binge eating and purging behaviors, palatability ratings for high calorie foods, monetary value for high-calorie binge foods, and significantly greater increases in attractiveness ratings of average weight models. Conclusions: Results from this larger sample provide evidence that BPT reduces valuation of the thin ideal and high-calorie binge foods, the intervention targets, per objective brain imaging data, and produces clinically meaningful reductions in eating pathology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Couched within the self-effects paradigm of social media influence, this research examines how posting a health promotion message to one's social media influences one's own, versus others', later health behaviors, with emphasis on emotional intensity and message sharing directives. 382 participants viewed one of eight versions of a melanoma awareness video and were given the opportunity to post it to their Facebook page. Video sharers reported increased sun safety behavior one week later, even after accounting for a range of sun safety-related predictors. Emotional intensity and self-efficacy emerged as key message sharing predictors. These findings align with cognitive dissonance theory, offering unique evidence in a mediated context with relatively enduring effects, and expands the dialogue about the self-persuasive power of social media.

Couched within the self-effects paradigm of social media influence, this research examines how posting a health promotion message to one's social media influences one's own, versus others', later health behaviors, with emphasis on emotional intensity and message sharing directives. 382 participants viewed one of eight versions of a melanoma awareness video and were given the opportunity to post it to their Facebook page. Video sharers reported increased sun safety behavior one week later, even after accounting for a range of sun safety-related predictors. Emotional intensity and self-efficacy emerged as key message sharing predictors. These findings align with cognitive dissonance theory, offering unique evidence in a mediated context with relatively enduring effects, and expands the dialogue about the self-persuasive power of social media.