• North American Studies

Visual awareness is a specific form of consciousness. Binocular rivalry, the alternation of visual consciousness resulting when the two eyes view differing stimuli, allows one to experimentally investigate visual awareness. Observers usually indicate the gradual changes of conscious perception in binocular rivalry by a binary measure: pressing a button. However, in our experiments we used gradual measures such as pupil and joystick movements and found reactions to start around 590 ms before observers press a button, apparently accessing even pre-conscious processes. Our gradual measures permit monitoring the somewhat gradual built-up of decision processes. Therefore these decision processes should not be considered as abrupt events. This is best illustrated by the fact that the process to take a decision may start but then stop before an action has been taken - which we will call an abandoned decision process here. Changes in analog measures occurring before button presses by which observers have to communicate that a decision process has taken place do not prove that these decisions are taken by a force other than the observer - hence eliminating "free will" - but just that they are prepared "pre-thresholdly," before the observer considers the decision as taken.

Insect-proof net cultivation (IPN), rice-duck farming (RD) and organic matter return (OM) are important methods to realize sustainable development of rice production. A split-plot field experiment was performed to study the effects of IPN, RD and OM on the rice yield, dry matter accumulation and N utilization. Results showed that compared to inorganic N fertilizer (IN), wheat straw return (WS) and biogas residue return (BR) increased the rice yield by 2.11–4.28% and 4.78–7.67%, respectively, and also improved dry matter and N accumulation after the elongation stage (EG), dry matter and N translocation, and N recovery efficiency (NRE). These results attributed to an increase in leaf SPAD values and net photosynthetic rate (Pn) after the EG. Compared to conventional rice farming (CR), RD promoted the rice yield by 1.52–3.74%, and contributed to higher the leaf photosynthesis, dry matter and N accumulation, dry matter and N translocation, and NRE. IPN decreased the intensity of sun radiation in the nets due to the coverage of the insect-proof nets, which declined the leaf Pn, dry matter accumulation and translocation, N absorption and translocation, and NRE compared to open field cultivation (OFC). The rice yield of IPN were 2.48–4.98% lower than that of OFC. Compared to the interaction between CR and IN, the interaction between RD and OM improved the rice yield by 5.26–9.33%, and increased dry matter and N accumulation after the EG, dry matter and N translocation, and NRE. These results indicated that OM, RD and the interaction between RD and OM could promote dry matter accumulation and N utilization, which was beneficial to improve the rice yield.

IMMIGRATION REFORM has been a legislative topic of many states and the federal government for nearly 10 years. In 1985, legislation finally was at tained with passage of the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) of 1986 (P.L. 99-603, Immigration and Natural ization Service [INS], 1986). Still, in 1986, there was extensive discussion concerning the impact of the act—par ticularly on the employment status of Hispanics, because it was assumed that the majority of undocumented workers were of Hispanic origin. Implementation of the provisions of the act began in 1987. The implications of this immigration reform legislation for social welfare have not been addressed in these discussions. As is often the case, social workers experience firsthand the effects of social policy decisions on their clients. Unless the majority of undocumented aliens returns to their native country, social workers will find themselves attempting to remedy the effects of an immigration policy that prevents the undocumented alien from attaining satisfactory living conditions. In addition, social workers will have to confront problems involving health care, intergenerational assis tance, depression, domestic violence, homelessness, or criminal behavior. Social workers will confront these prob lems in mental health settings, state and county protective service agencies as well as in prisons. Social workers in public protective service agencies may become frustrated in trying to obtain services for their clients because of their illegal resident status. Social workers seeking to obtain ser vices for undocumented aliens will re quire knowledge not common among the majority of practitioners. Applicants for legal residence come from a wide range of countries, including many African and Asian countries whose citizens were formerly unable to migrate to the United States in any substantial numbers because of discriminatory immigration policies. Social workers who assist these clients will need to understand the dif Donald E. Gelfand Rebeca Bialik-Gilad

While interrelated issues and challenges can only expand, the study of foreign policy in Australia is not a very healthy discipline. While not wholly wedged on life-support, there are genuine groun...

Since its first identification as a thin strip of gray matter enclosed between stretches of neighboring fiber bundles, the claustrum has been considered impossible to study by many modern techniques that need a certain roominess of tissue for their application. The claustrum was known as the front wall, vormauren in German from 1822, and is still called avant-mur in French. We here propose a means for breaking into and through this wall, by utilizing the instances where the claustral tissue itself has broken free into more spacious dimensions. This has occurred several times in the evolution of modern mammals, and all that needs be done is to exploit these natural expansions in order to take advantage of a great panoply of technological advances now at our disposal. So here we review the kinds of breakout “puddles” that await productive exploitation, to bring our knowledge of structure and function up to the level enjoyed for other more accessible regions of the brain. .

This study investigates the dynamic relationships between carbon emission, urbanization, energy consumption, and economic growth in a panel of 42 Asian countries for the period 2000–2014 using dynamic common correlated effects panel data modeling. This study employs second generation cross-sectional Pesaran (J. Appl. Econom., 2007, 22(2), 265-312) panel unit root, Westerlund panel cointegration tests (Econom. Stat., 2007, 69(6), 709-748), and Pesaran’s (Econometrica, 2006, 74(4), 967-1012) common correlated effects mean group estimation technique. These approaches allow for cross-sectional dependence, and are robust to the presence of common factors, serial correlation, and slope heterogeneity. The Common Correlated Effect Mean Group test reveals a high average coefficient of 0.602 between carbon emission and energy consumption while low coefficients of 0.114 and 0.184 for the pairs of carbon emission-urbanization and carbon emission-GDP, respectively for the panel as a whole, suggesting a cointegration between carbon emission, urbanization, energy consumption, and economic growth. The results indicate that there is relatively high carbon emission especially for highly populated and geopolitical risk Asian countries in the short run. Findings reveal long run relationships between the variables, which is attributed to the on-going carbon taxation and energy prices. Our results are robust to PMG-ARDL estimator. Overall, these findings cast important implications on renewable energy policy and urban planning insights for the policymakers.