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Employing Bourdieu’s practice theory, this paper explores factors that influence corporate executives’ behaviour towards corporate governance regulation. Drawing insights from a weak institutional environment (Nigeria) and relying on a qualitative research methodology (semi-structured interviews with 31 executives), this research uncovers how nine nuanced situational and cultural field factors determine executives’ regulatory response to the severity of punishment, the certainty of penalties, and the cost–benefit compliance considerations. The study further explains how sequential rationalisation between the severity and certainty of punishment contributes to the regulatory apathy that executives exhibit. Theoretically, this study demonstrates how practice theory components (habitus, capital, and field) blend to establish executives’ regulatory practice.

Questions of trust are increasingly important in relation to data and its use. The authors focus on humanities data and its visualization, through analysis of their own recent projects with museums, archives and libraries internationally. Their account connects the specifics of hands-on digital humanities work to larger epistemological questions. They discuss the sources of potential mistrust, and examine how different expectations and assumptions emerge depending on the use and user of the data; they offer a simple schema through which the implications may be traced. It is argued that vital issues of trust can be engaged with through design, which, rather than being conceived as a cosmetic finish, is seen as contributing insights and questions that affect the whole process. The article concludes with recommendations intended to be useful in both theory and practice.

Nicholas Evans’s Far from the Caliph’s Gaze challenges the idea that doctrinal certainty amounts to dogmatic thinking. This idea informs certain representations of Muslims in Euro-American literary...

In US school settings and materials, climate change is often framed as an uncertain phenomenon. However, the effect of such denialist representations on youth’s perceptions of climate change has no...

Energy security is a growing concern in the circumpolar Arctic. A growing number of Inuit and other Indigenous communities are seeking greater certainty in the sources of heat, electricity and fuel...

Clear legal content of white papers provides certainty, stability and trust in the relations between all the participants in initial coins offering (ICO) procedures and contributes to the successfu...

The critical and dark period we are still experiencing is shared by everyone in the world. The pandemic in fact burst into private, social and working lives of all human beings. In telling a year-long story, my intent is to share what happened in my subjective reality, and my work as an analyst in Italy. The unsettling storm in the beginning, the vortex of changes in the setting, and the inner earthquake of questions and uncertainties, are feelings and experiences that are likely to recall analogies, memories or nightmares. My therapeutic work, at the time, focused on the pondered yet unthought processing and transformation of the sessions, in a dance between an ancient certainty and a new uncertainty, yet to experiment. In the ancient certainty lies the therapeutic dyad with its own subjectivity, story, and the need to be empathic and affective witnesses when it’s the hardest. In the uncertainty of the new, I have discovered the capability and the fear of losing myself, searching for an opening to be with my patients again, in the various paths, in similarities and differences, in shared pain and surprise. It is not over yet, but the light of the great thinkers and the closeness and support of my psychoanalytic community, have given me strength and hope in bearing the weight of these moments, and in keeping my consciousness and conscience awake for the reconstruction of the value of the interhuman world.

As a self-imposed norm of judicial discipline, the Supreme Court has held that a judgment may be overruled only by a bench larger than the bench which delivered the judgment. Being a facet of the doctrine of stare decisis, the “Larger Bench Rule” achieves certainty, equality, and efficiency in adjudication, and secures public legitimacy for the Court. The Rule also accords equal weight to the wisdom of every judge. But the Court has breached the Rule in some key cases. We trace seven instances where smaller or coordinate benches explicitly or impliedly overruled binding judgments. The Court did this, we show, by ignoring precedent, shoddily ‘distinguishing’ precedent, expressly disagreeing with precedent on merits, or unfairly declaring the precedent invalid for itself contravening the Larger Bench Rule. Finally, we suggest – preliminarily – some measures to ensure adherence to the Rule in future.

Bangladesh has made significant strides on women’s issues in the areas of education, employment and politics. In the wake of this progress, the country has also experienced a surge of religious ide...

We consider the problem of decision-making in Markov decision processes (MDPs) when the reward or transition probability parameters are not known with certainty. We study an approach in which the d...

In this paper we ‘plug in’ ideas from post-qualitative thinking to read empirical material from Erasmus+ project, Open School Doors, and mobilise new ways of conceptualising teachers’ work with newly arrived families. Driven by commitments to inclusion and social justice teacher participants described tacit, in-the-moment, knowledge-making, that felt contingent and risky, as they sought to respond to encounters with families that demanded compassionate action but pushed them beyond the threshold of professional certainty and the would-be neutralities of ‘professional’ identities. We understand these affective responses to the work of teaching as ‘abductive’ moments (Brinkman 2014) of breakdown, rupture and estrangement, that draw attention to the always already becoming nature of professional practice. We put to work the concepts of entanglement, assemblage (Barad 2007) and rhizomes (Deleuze and Guattari 1987) to make use of ‘abductive’ moments as productive opportunities for exploration of teachers’ messy, implicated, intra-relatedness to their practice worlds and to imagine models of professional learning that promote connection and knowledge-in-the-making as ethical, ‘response-able’ (Barad, 2007) post/rhizo-professional alternative to linear forms of professional learning. Our discussion is embedded in a specific context but has important broader implications for the design of teacher education as preparation for complex anticipated working lives.

Regarding Michael Servetus alias Reves, Villanovanus, or de Villeneufve, it is known with certainty that he was burnt at the stake, under a sentence from the Calvinist Geneva Council, on 27 October...

To use a questionnaire to determine the levels of maternal decision-related distress, clarity of the pros and cons, and certainty when considering prenatal genetic diagnostic testing; and to assess the relationship between these constructs and patient characteristics.Cross-sectional study. Voluntary, anonymous questionnaires distributed 2017-2019 to women referred for invasive prenatal genetic testing. Excluded: English or Spanish illiterate. Maternal characteristics were collected. Questions evaluated distress, decisional certainty, and decisional clarity on a 5-point Likert scale (range: 0 = low/uncertain/unclear to 4 = high/certain/clear). Analysis: non-parametric Kruskal-Wallis, correlation statistics, and ANOVA.Forty-four female patients completed it. Most were married, white, Catholic, and multiparous. 58% had already made a testing decision. Patients expressed low distress levels (mean 1.18 ± 0.80) and expressed high decisional certainty (mean 3.28 ± 0.76) and clarity (mean 3.30 ± 0.99). Decisional certainty and clarity were positively correlated (Higher maternal distress scores were associated with lower decisional certainty and decisional clarity in women considering prenatal genetic testing.

Worldwide the construction industry presents a significant demand for new technologies ensuring certainty, cost-effectiveness and time efficiency. Modern construction relies on digital resources, a...

Rohingya are among multiple refugees and asylum seekers who have arrived in Indonesia without any certainty of their futures. For most Rohingya refugees, Indonesia is a transit country, where they ...

This article partially examines Stafford and Warr’s reconceptualized model of deterrence by investigating the relationship between punishment, punishment avoidance, perceived certainty and severity...

Ontological security speaks to a kind of identitarian security and argues that actors need to have a surety and certainty in who and what they are in order to enjoy settled peaceable lives. As a fu...

This study examines the extent to which local cuisine helps shape a sense of place and its contribution to adapting to uncertain socioeconomic conditions. By adopting entrepreneurial action theory,...

The paper aims at discussing the current stage of development of e-bike as a technological innovation system in China. The article looks at the evolution of the e-bike mobility system from spontane...

As data analytics become prevalent in industries in Malaysia to draw predictions about individuals’ habits and behaviour, it is important that certainty exists about the legal status of predictions...

The ability to quantifying certainty of an estimated or predicted quantity is key to practical and realistic decision-making. Hence, realistic and correct statistical intervals are essential to all...

Some energy consumers require power on an anytime, all-year-round basis with a high level of certainty, including defense installations, isolated communities, and some industrial processes. For the...

So far it has never been clearly decided whether the treatise De natura rerum constitutes an authentic work by the physician and natural philosopher Theophrastus Bombast of Hohenheim, called Paracelsus (1493/94-1541) This article outlines the manuscript and printing traditions of De natura rerum, in which a recently discovered manuscript from 1571 is identified as the earliest source. The watermarks of this manuscript refer to the Tyrolean Inn Valley, where great alchemical expertise was available due to silver mining. A detailed examination of the content and style of the preface and the nine chapters indicates the involvement of at least three different authors. Some of these parts are definitely forgeries, while others cannot be judged with certainty as to their authenticity. On the other hand, three chapters, those on death, resuscitation and the signature of natural things, are most likely real writings of Paracelsus.

This article details how the embodied underpinnings of engaging in a duoethnographic collaboration were generative for theorizing and operationalizing humanization in a qualitative inquiry on socia...

If there is one certainty in these uncertain times, it is that rivalry amongst Great Powers, especially between the United States and the China-Russia bloc, will be with us indefinitely. Developmen...

Setting the stage for the “Psychology and the Other” special issue, this introductory article lays out the complex relationship between certainty and uncertainty and points to the critical importan...

Beginning from the premise that the “lack of certainty surrounding personal and rather abstract questions of belief should not […] be viewed as a justification for abandoning a consideration of the...

Experiences that contradict one's core concepts (e.g. of the world, people, the self) elicit intense emotions. Such schema incongruence can elicit awe, wherein experiences that are too vast to understand with existing cognitive schemata cause one to feel that schemata should be updated [i.e. a “need for cognitive accommodation” (NFA); Keltner & Haidt, 2003. Approaching awe, a moral, spiritual, and aesthetic emotion. Cognition and Emotion, 17(3), 297–314]. However, other emotional responses to schema incongruence, such as horror, have not been investigated. The current studies compared awe and horror to investigate if they are distinct emotional responses to schema incongruence. Study 1 observed significant differences between awe and horror in cognitive appraisals (e.g. certainty, legitimacy), indicating several areas of dissimilarity. Study 2 found evidence that awe and horror are both responses to schema incongruence, as schema incongruence and NFA were salient in awe and horror, but not a contrast emotion. However, awe and horror were elicited by different types of schema incongruence: awe by spiritual vastness, horror by extremity. Awe-eliciting experiences also appeared to be easier to assimilate than horrifying experiences, as NFA and uncertainty were significantly lower in awe than in horror. Differences in the functions of horror and awe are also discussed.

This study explores the influence of cognitive (knowledge and certainty) and psychosocial (social norms and efficacy) variables on youth’s climate change-related behaviour, with the aim to create a...

Identity fusion is a powerful feeling of connectedness to one’s group. The current research explores whether measuring certainty in identity fusion improves its ability to predict extreme pro-group...

Data journalism, there is no doubt, presents a fascinating conceptual ambiguity. Those of us in the field who have faced the challenge of defining data journalism have had to deal with the issue of...

Doubt, in much of Kierkegaard’s writing, is the inspiration for faith. Illustrating doubt in terms of the suspension of totality, the negation of certainty, and subsequent reflection, Fear ...

This study explores how age, certainty of belief, belief in science and gender is related to death anxiety and death acceptance. Results from a sample of atheists and other nonbelievers (N = 270) i...

Intellectual disability scholarship tends to defend a fragile knowledge base by erecting barriers and refusing to look beyond them. This generates a sense of certainty that allows people in a diffi...

In the modernization of the state, NPM ideas are presumed to offer governments certainty in the face of major unknowns. The reliance of NPM on information technologies is presented by governments as underlining this potential for certainty. However, this presumption of certainty is elusive in practice. Government pursuit of NPM transformational policies aims to make efficiency savings and cost reductions, but this may create new uncertainties for citizens, particularly because of the unintended consequences of the implementation of new forms of technology.

Past research suggests that religion imbues people with a sense of certainty - via an increase in personal control, by providing meaning in life, or by activating associated norms. Based on findings suggesting that uncertainty and cognitive dissonance share many underlying features, we investigated whether thinking about religion, either situationally or chronically, buffers against cognitive dissonance. In four methodically diverse studies, we found converging support for this hypothesis. Semantically or symbolically activating Christian religious concepts, as well as being a self-reported believer, attenuated participants' need to reduce post-decisional dissonance via a spreading of alternatives in a free-choice paradigm (Studies 1, 2, & 4) as well as after counterattitudinal advocacy in an induced compliance paradigm (Study 3). The attenuation of post-decisional dissonance was found for a US American online sample (Studies 1 & 4) and for German university students in a laboratory setting, where the dissonance-inducing decision had factual consequences (Study 2).

The future of work debate is cast with the certainty that technology-driven change is inevitable as numerous pundits profiteer from predicting the future. Among the many books, conferences, worksho...

PURPOSE: Almost since the earliest utilization of ionizing radiation, many within the radiation community have worked towards either preventing (i.e. protecting) normal tissues from unwanted radiation injury or rescuing them from the downstream consequences of exposure. However, despite over a century of such investigations, only incremental gains have been made towards this goal and, with certainty, no outright panacea having been found. In celebration of the 60(th) anniversary of the International Journal of Radiation Biology and to chronicle the efforts that have been made to date, we undertook a non-rigorous survey of the articles published by normal tissue researchers in this area, using those that have appeared in the aforementioned journal as a road map. Three ‘snapshots’ of publications on normal tissue countermeasures were taken: the earliest (1959–1963) and most recent (2013–2018) 5-years of issues, as well as a 5-year intermediate span (1987–1991). CONCLUSIONS: Limiting the survey solely to articles appearing within International Journal of Radiation Biology likely reduced the number of translational studies interrogated given the basic science tenor of this particular publication. In addition, by taking ‘snapshots’ rather than considering the entire breadth of the journal’s history in this field, important papers that were published during the interim periods were omitted, for which we apologize. Nonetheless, since the journal’s inception, we observed that, during the chosen periods, the majority of studies undertaken in the field of normal tissue countermeasures, whether investigating radiation protectants, mitigators or treatments, have focused on agents that interfere with the physical, chemical and/or biological effects known to occur during the acute period following whole body/high single dose exposures. This relatively narrow approach to the reduction of normal tissue effects, especially those that can take months, if not years, to develop, seems to contradict our growing understanding of the progressive complexities of the microenvironmental disruption that follows the initial radiation injury. Given the analytical tools now at our disposal and the enormous benefits that may be reaped in terms of improving patient outcomes, as well as the potential for offering countermeasures to those affected by accidental or mass casualty exposures, it appears time to broaden our approaches to developing normal tissue countermeasures. We have no doubt that the contributors and readership of the International Journal of Radiation Biology will continue to contribute to this effort for the foreseeable future.

Genetic ancestry testing (GAT) is marketed as a way to make up for missing knowledge about one’s ancestry. Previous research questions the GAT industry’s ability to fulfill this promise in terms of the validity and reliability of test results. We instead explore the demand side of GAT, evaluating who is most and least likely to express interest in GAT. Using data from an original, nationwide survey of over 100,000 American adults, we find that GAT interest is related to both self-identified race and immigrant generation, with Asian Americans and first-generation immigrants expressing the least interest. Our quantitative and qualitative evidence suggests interest is further shaped by a pre-existing sense of ancestral certainty, leading some individuals to decline GAT, even if it were free. How interest and ancestral certainty are patterned has implications for who is included in – and thus for the conclusions that can be drawn from – genetic ancestry databases.

One certainty is that the emergence of new approaches to studying the 1917 Russian Revolution will be determined not solely by the current historiographic situation but also by society’s expectatio...

It was the great German warlord Helmuth von Moltke who said that ‘strategy is a system of expedients’ and added, from rueful experience, ‘no plan of operations reaches with any certainty beyond the...

The present research investigated the relationship between meaning perceptions and the structure of counterfactual thoughts. In Study 1, participants reflected on how turning points in their lives ...

The purpose of this study was to determine whether criminal thinking interacts with the rational requirements of human decision-making in a group of college students. A convenience sample of 315 un...

In no affairs of mere prejudice, pro or con, do we deduce inferences with entire certainty, even from the most simple data. E. A. Poe, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of NantucketIn an Internati...

Using a cultural-historical genre analysis of the Gantt chart, the author describes how, when a project’s progress and scope are being considered, this popular project management visualization evok...

It is expected that children increasingly learn to identify errors throughout their schooling process and even before it. As a further step, however, some scholars have suggested how a culture of e...

This paper is about an infant’s first experience of ‘relating to the other’ as explored through once weekly psychoanalytic psychotherapy with a mother and her infant over a period of 18 months. It considers the impact of trauma on the mother’s capacity to develop reverie for her infant in any ordinary way. It explores the significance of the third in being able to bear the splitting of hateful projections of the infant in order to protect a good maternal object, and, ultimately, in being able to allow space for the mother–infant relationship to come into being and develop. The impact of patriarchal and fundamentalist states of mind on mothering, where utter certainty is a feature, and the roots of such states in infancy are also considered. This paper aims to highlight the urgency of psychotherapeutic early intervention for parents and their infants where there is severe relational trauma in a parent that compromises the infant’s mental health and development from the beginning. Child psychotherap...

This article intends to reconsider the epistemological status of delusional beliefs on the basis of Wittgenstein’s conception of certainty. Several works over the last two decades have compared del...

When an eyewitness identifies a suspect from a lineup, it is important to know how certain they are about the decision. Even though eyewitnesses are likely to express certainty with words, past res...