Stephen Cheung

Single-sided deafness (SSD) or profound unilateral hearing loss obligates the only serviceable ear to capture all acoustic information. This loss of binaural function taxes cognitive resources for accurate listening performance, especially under adverse environments or challenging tasks. We hypothesized that adults with SSD would manifest both functional and structural brain plasticity compared to controls with normal binaural hearing. We evaluated functional alterations using magnetoencephalographic imaging (MEGI) of brain activation during performance of a moderately difficult auditory syllable sequence reproduction task and assessed structural integrity using diffusion tensor magnetic resonance imaging (DTI). MEGI showed the SSD cohort to have increased induced oscillations in the theta band over the left superior temporal cortex and decreased induced gamma band oscillations over the frontal and parietal cortices between 175-475 ms following stimulus onset. DTI showed the SSD cohort to have extensive fractional anisotropy reduction in both auditory and non-auditory tracts and regions. Overlaying functional and structural changes revealed by the two imaging techniques demonstrated close registration of cortical areas and white matter tracts that expressed brain plasticity. Hence, complete loss of input from one ear in adulthood triggers both functional and structural alterations to dorsal temporal and frontal-parietal areas.

The relationship between philosophy and literature in Nietzsche’s writings is frequently acknowledged in the abstract, but it is seldom drawn out from specific examples in Nietzsche’s carefully wrought texts. This chapter argues that an appreciation for what Nietzsche is doing in Gay Science 125 must not only take into account the contents of Nietzsche’s parable but the parabolic form itself. This rereading of a perhaps all-too-familiar parable will supply a specific example of how Nietzsche employs literary form and style, not simply to point toward, but in some sense to enact various features of his philosophy.

This article argues not only that Nietzsche saw reverence (Ehrfurcht) as a virtue to be included as part of a set of virtues for a particular type of individual, but also, and more radically, that Nietzsche took reverence to be a cardinal virtue—a virtue upon which all other virtues hinge—and that Nietzsche wanted to cultivate reverence, to one degree or another, in every type. The article examines the related textual and philosophical context in which it makes sense for Nietzsche to elevate reverence in the way suggested. Then, reinforcing this claim, it traces the Sophist origin of Nietzsche’s thinking about reverence, showing how Nietzsche’s understanding resembles the mythological account of reverence given by the Sophist Protagoras. This ancient influence upon a central theme of Nietzsche’s work has not been recognized before.

This analysis of the English-speaking popular reception of Nietzsche from 1895 to the present will follow Nietzsche in bringing history and philosophy together. I will argue that Nietzsche’s philosophy provides explanatory power for understanding the reception of his atheism and that his reception history in turn sheds light on the meaning of his atheism. Chapter One explores how Nietzsche employs form and style to establish the event of God’s death as the chasm of understanding that lies between himself and other atheists. Chapter Two considers the defining features and concerns of Nietzsche’s atheism – nihilism, Dionysianism, asceticism, naturalism, eternal recurrence and the übermensch – in the context of Nietzsche’s soteriological project. Against this backdrop, the remaining chapters will explore the reception of Nietzsche’s atheism that has not been conveyed to a popular audience through the details of his philosophy but rather through the themes and categories that naturally arose between the established poles of debate of the broader culture of the time. Chapters 3–5 demonstrate how Nietzsche’s popular reception has been shaped through debates over Nietzsche’s alleged madness, nationalism, social Darwinism, decadence, warmongering and nazism, while chapter 6 explores why most authors attempting to popularise atheism today either make little mention of Nietzsche or conspicuously do not mention him at all. The question throughout this account of Nietzsche’s reception is not simply ‘How has Nietzsche been received?’ but rather ‘What would Nietzsche make of his own popular reception?’ A Nietzschean evaluation of his own reception history is made feasible by Nietzsche himself who not only predicts that he and the majority of atheists who read him will remain at a vast distance from each other, but having measured the distance that lies between them, he also takes the trouble to explain why that distance exists.

We analyze related party transactions between Chinese publicly listed firms and their state-owned enterprise (SOEs) shareholders to examine whether companies benefit from the presence of government shareholders and politically connected directors appointed by the government. We find that minority shareholders seem to be expropriated in firms controlled by local government SOEs, firms with a large proportion of local government affiliated directors on their board, and firms in provinces where local government bureaucrats are less likely to be prosecuted for misappropriation of state funds. In contrast, firms controlled by the central government (or with a large proportion of central government affiliated directors) are benefited in their related party transactions with their central government SOEs.