When I use a word . . . . The Precautionary Principle: a brief history.

Two ideas precede the modern Precautionary Principle. First, that prevention is better than cure, exemplified by an aphorism in an early 13th century book of Jewish aphorisms, the Sefer Hasidim: "Who is a skilled physician? He who can prevent sickness." Secondly, Thomas Sydenham's 17th century assertion that in healthcare it is important above all not to do harm, "primum est ut non nocere." These two ideas come together in the Vorsorgeprinzip, which was incorporated into German legislation for maintaining clean air in the 1960s and 1970s, and first appeared in English-language documents in 1982, which referred to taking a precautionary approach or precautionary measures, or more formally as the Precautionary Principle. The principle features in international documents such as the Rio Declaration and in many pieces of EU legislation relating to topics as diverse as genetically modified organisms, food safety, the safety of toys, and invasion of alien species of animals, plants, fungi, or microorganisms.

[Eyes and gaze: Proverbs and expressions]. / Des yeux et du regard : proverbes et expressions.

The eyes and the gaze participate in a major way in our non-verbal language, even before the verb appeared. From the Bible to contemporary language, through Greek mythology, theater, literature or spoken language, a multitude of expressions and proverbs present the eye, what it sees and what it symbolizes.

TITLE: Des yeux et du regard : proverbes et expressions. ABSTRACT: Les yeux et le regard participent de façon majeure à notre langage non verbal, avant même l'apparition du verbe. Depuis la Bible jusqu'au langage contemporain, en passant par la mythologie grecque, le théâtre, la littérature ou le langage parlé, une multitude d'expressions et de proverbes mettent en scène l'œil, ce qu'il voit et ce qu'il symbolise. Cet article parcourt les champs sémantiques de l'œil et du regard, leur évolution dans le temps, et leur étonnante richesse. En définitive, une revue de notre humanité.

Goiter drawing in Ulrich Boner's Der Edelstein Codices Palatini Germanici 794.

We provide an example of representation of thyroid swelling in the artwork of Ulrich Boner's Der Edelstein Codices Palatini Germanici 794.

How discourse constraints influence neurolinguistic mechanisms during the comprehension of proverbs.

We use event-related brain potential (ERP) methodology to examine the influence of the linguistic markers literally speaking and figuratively speaking on the comprehension of proverbs (e.g., The cat is out of the bag). Our results show that slow cortical potentials at anterior electrode sites varied in amplitude across the proverbs as a function of the presence or absence of the markers, the presence and absence of discourse contexts, and the familiarity of the proverbs. The results demonstrate that the integration of literal meaning into context is easier than figurative meaning, and argues against models of figurative language processing that hold that comprehenders are obligated either to first process the literal or figurative sense of the trope.

Biombos y espejos / Folding screens and mirrors / Telas e espelhos

En estas páginas se presentan prosas, aforismos, reflexiones y microrrelatos que tratan sobre la muerte, el amor, la soledad, la pobreza, la injusticia, la enfermedad, la música, el cine, la literatura y la vida en la ciudad

In these pages are presente prose, aphorisms, reflections and micro-narratives dealing with death, love, loneliness, poverty, injustice, disease, music, cinema, literatura and city life

Nestas páginas são apresentadas prosa, aforismos, reflexões e micro-narrativas sobre a morte, o amor, a solidão, a pobreza, a injustiça, a doença, a música, o cinema, a literatura e a vida urbana

Nem tudo que reluz é ouro: discutindo prevenção quaternária a partir de ditados populares / All that glisters is not gold: discussing quaternary prevention based on popular sayings / No todo lo que reluce es oro: discutiendo prevención cuaternaria a partir de dictados populares

A Medicina tem convocado as pessoas a realizarem cada vez mais ações preventivas, desde medidas de pressão arterial até a aplicação de novas vacinas; entretanto, médicas e médicos de família e comunidade têm identificado riscos e limitações das ações preventivas, mostrando que nem todas elas são ética ou cientificamente justificáveis. Esse é o escopo da prevenção quaternária, que visa poupar as pessoas de sobremedicalização e procedimentos desnecessários. Vivendo em uma sociedade que prima pela alta tecnologia, onde o terror virou negócio e o autocuidado, uma obsessão, pode ser muito difícil desaconselhar a realização de algum exame ou desprescrever alguma medicação; porém, é exatamente nesse contexto que a prevenção quaternária é profundamente necessária, e a dificuldade de sua prática exige articular outros saberes e recursos além do nível de evidência ou do grau de recomendação de uma ou outra ação. As crenças em saúde são objeto de um cuidado centrado na pessoa, e muitas delas são inspiradas ou traduzidas por ditados populares. Nesse ensaio, discuto o excesso de intervenções e a prevenção quaternária a partir de alguns deles. Analisando frases como "é melhor prevenir do que remediar", apresento os aforismos como ferramentas de compreensão da prevenção quaternária, podendo ser usados por profissionais e docentes para discutir essa prática contra-hegemônica com pacientes e estudantes. Ao articular os saberes popular e profissional, o texto contribui à competência cultural da Atenção Primária à Saúde e ajuda a produzir encontros clínicos mais harmoniosos e a promover um cuidado menos invasivo, medicalizador e danoso.

Medicine has been calling on people to carry out more and more preventive actions, from blood pressure measurements to the application of new vaccines; however, family physicians have been identifying risks and limitations of preventive actions, showing that not all of them are ethically or scientifically justifiable. This is the scope of quaternary prevention, which aims to protect people from over-medicalization and unnecessary procedures. Living in a society that excels in high technology, where terror has turned into business and self-care, an obsession, it can be very difficult to discourage some exam or to unprescribe some medication; but it is precisely in this context that quaternary prevention is deeply necessary, and the difficulty of its practice requires articulating other knowledge and resources beyond the level of evidence or the degree of recommendation of one or another action. Health beliefs are object of person-centered care, and many of them are inspired or translated by popular sayings. In this essay, I discuss the excess of interventions and quaternary prevention from some of them. Analyzing phrases such as "better safe than sorry", I present aphorisms as tools for understanding quaternary prevention, which can be used by professionals and teachers to discuss this counter-hegemonic practice with patients and students. By articulating popular and professional knowledge, the text contributes to the cultural competence of Primary Health Care and helps to produce more harmonious clinical encounters and to promote less invasive, medicalizing and harmful care.

La Medicina ha convocado a las personas a realizar cada vez más acciones preventivas, desde medidas de presión arterial hasta la aplicación de nuevas vacunas; sin embargo, médicas y médicos de familia y comunidad han identificado riesgos y limitaciones de las acciones preventivas, mostrando que no todas ellas son ética o científicamente justificables. Este es el alcance de la prevención cuaternaria, que intenta ahorrar a las personas de sobremedicalización y procedimientos innecesarios. En una sociedad que prima por la alta tecnología, donde el terror se volvió negocio y el autocuidado, una obsesión, puede ser muy difícil desaconsejarse la realización de algún examen o desprescribir alguna medicación, pero es precisamente en ese contexto que la prevención cuaternaria es profundamente necesaria, y la dificultad de su práctica exige articular otros saberes y recursos más allá del nivel de evidencia o del grado de recomendación de cada acción. Muchas creencias en salud son inspiradas o traducidas por dichos populares; en este ensayo, discuto el exceso de intervenciones y la prevención cuaternaria a partir de algunos de ellos. Analizando frases como "más vale prevenir que curar", presento los aforismos como herramientas de comprensión de la prevención cuaternaria, pudiendo ser usados por profesionales y docentes para discutir esa práctica contra-hegemónica con pacientes y estudiantes. Al articular los saberes popular y profesional, el texto contribuye a la competencia cultural de la Atención Primaria a la Salud y ayuda a producir encuentros clínicos más armoniosos y a promover un cuidado menos invasivo, medicalizador y dañino.

Ambiguity effects of rhyme and meter.

Previous research has shown that rhyme and meter-although enhancing prosodic processing ease and memorability-also tend to make semantic processing more demanding. Using a set of rhymed and metered proverbs, as well as nonrhymed and nonmetered versions of these proverbs, the present study reveals this hitherto unspecified difficulty of comprehension to be specifically driven by perceived ambiguity. Roman Jakobson was the 1st to propose this hypothesis, in 1960. He suggested that "ambiguity is an intrinsic, inalienable feature" of "parallelistic" diction of which the combination of rhyme and meter is a pronounced example. Our results show that ambiguity indeed explains a substantial portion of the rhyme- and meter-driven difficulty of comprehension. Longer word-reading times differentially reflected ratings for ambiguity and comprehension difficulty. However, the ambiguity effect is not "inalienable." Rather, many rhymed and metered sentences turned out to be low in ambiguity. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

Microsaccadic behavior when developing a complex dynamical activity.

Microsaccade are sensitive to changes of perceptual inputs as well as modulations of cognitive states. There are just a few works analyzing microsaccade while subjects are processing complex information and fewer when doing predictions about upcoming events. To evaluate whether contextual predictability would change microsaccadic behavior, we evaluated microsaccade of twenty one persons when reading 40 regular sentences and 40 proverbs. Analysis of microsaccade during reading proverbs and regular sentences revealed that microsaccade rate on words before maxjump, during maxjump and words after maxjump varied depending on the kind of sentence and on the word predictability. Maxjump was defined as the word with the largest difference between the cloze predictability of two consecutive words. Low and high predictable words demanded less or more microsaccade on words previous, during and on maxjump depending of the semantic context and of the readers' predictions of upcoming words.In summary, the present study shows that microsaccade' rate evidenced significant differences when reading proverbs and regular sentences. Hence, evaluation of microsaccade during reading sentences with different contextual predictability might provide information about specific effect of cue attention on complex task.

Neural correlates of Korean proverb processing: A functional magnetic resonance imaging study.

INTRODUCTION: The Korean language is based on a syntactic system that is different from other languages. This study investigated the processing area of the Korean proverb in comparison with the literal sentence using functional magnetic resonance imaging. In addition, the effect of opacity and transparency of proverbs on the activation pattern, when familiarity is set to the same condition, was also examined. METHODS: The experimental stimuli included 36 proverbs and 18 literal sentences. A cohort of 15 healthy participants silently read each sentence for 6 s. A total of 18 opaque proverbs, 18 transparent proverbs, and 18 literal sentences were presented pseudo-randomly in one of three predesigned sequences. RESULTS: Compared with the literal sentences, a significant activation pattern was observed in the left hemisphere, including the left inferior frontal gyrus, in association with the proverbs. Compared with the transparent proverbs, opaque proverbs elicited more activation in the right supramarginal gyrus and precuneus. CONCLUSIONS: Our study confirmed that the left inferior frontal gyrus mediates the retrieval and/or selection of semantic knowledge in the Korean language. The present findings indicated that the right precuneus and the right supramarginal gyrus may be involved in abstract language processing.

Language Sampling With Adolescents: Building a Normative Database With Fables.

PURPOSE: The goal of the study was to create a language sampling task appropriate for adolescents and to contribute normative data from speakers with typical language development. METHOD: Thirty adolescents (mean age = 14 years, 1 month) participated in an interview that involved the retelling and interpretation of 4 Greek fables. Each speaker's performance on the task was audio-recorded, transcribed verbatim, and entered into the Systematic Analysis of Language Transcripts computer program (Miller & Iglesias, 2015). Samples were analyzed statistically for language productivity and syntactic complexity. In addition, each participant's perspective on the moral messages of the fables was examined informally. RESULTS: The Fables task was effective in prompting adolescents to use complex language and in encouraging them to express their opinions about the moral messages. Although boys and girls did not differ in their performance on the task, some fables were more effective than others at eliciting spoken language and complex syntax. Moreover, the adolescents tended to agree with the moral messages of the fables and appeared to find them relevant to their lives. CONCLUSION: The Fables task has potential for clinical use with adolescents. Research is necessary to expand the normative database to include larger and more diverse groups of adolescents.

[Not Available] / Sauvages, Lazerme und die Hippokratischen Aphorismen.

How was medicine-taught and studied in the early modern period? How did teachers and students relate to the tradition of medical texts? Historians have addressed these questions mainly through research on printed sources. This article uses student notes as a window on medical training in action in Montpellier. The student was Franqois Boissier de Sauvages; the teacher, Jacques Lazerme. The notes record Lazerme lecturing in the form of commentary on the first 14 Hippocratic Aphorisms and setting quite different emphases from those of earlier commentators: professional ethics and how to handle a case (on aphorism 1), moderation in. bloodletting (on 2), disease classification (on 4-6), similarity of symptoms among different diseases (on 7), treating fever (on 8-io), periodicity of disease (on ii), weather and disease (on iz), "calor innatus" and oscillations in the circulation of the blood, with reference to Isaac Newton (on 14). These commentaries allow a fresh look at medical training between theory and practice.