Biology's last taboo

The last taboo?

The Last Taboo: Opening the Door on the Global Sanitation Crisis

The publication of each of these texts during 2008—declared the International Year of Sanitation by the United Nations General Assembly to draw attention to the 2.6 billion people without access to basic sanitation—is timely. Each seeks to provide practical information and guidance to increase the proportion of the population with access to sanitation. Maggie Black is a writer who focuses on so...

Dutch taboo norms

This article provides norms for general taboo, personal taboo, insult, valence, and arousal for 672 Dutch words, including 202 taboo words. Norms were collected using a 7-point Likert scale and based on ratings by psychology students from the Erasmus University Rotterdam in The Netherlands. The sample consisted of 87 psychology students (58 females, 29 males). We obtained high reliability based...

Processing Neutral , Emotion and Taboo

Bilinguals have reported that they have a stronger emotional experience in their native language (L1) than in their second language (L2). Behavioral studies are inconclusive about this question. However, studies that used skin conductance levels as a dependent variable are clearer about this effect: participants elicit a stronger skin conductance response on emotional and taboo words in L1 comp...

Japan Tests the Nuclear Taboo

This article examines whether recent changes in the security environment, including North Korea’s nuclear test of October 2006, are driving Japan to consider the acquisition of its own nuclear deterrent. It argues that a combination of three factors have thus far sustained Japan’s nuclear restraint: (1) national identity as a non-nuclear weapon state, (2) commitment to global nuclear nonprolife...