Information technologies (IT) have become a politically important issue over the last ten years. Governmental reports promote the idea of a new information society, or network society, where ITs are a prerequisite for the economic and social development. The discourse and the rhetoric about technology and its relation to society are dominated by modern, rational and macrosocial understandings of technology. In this paper we challenge dominant rational discourses on technology and present alternative views to bring new perspectives to the subject (...) in order to complicate and enrich our understanding of technology and how it relates to society. Our aim is to develop a theoretical framework that can account for a dynamic and microsocial approach to studying the implementation of an Electronic Patient Record (EPR) at a Danish hospital. The key notions in the framework are 'trading zone', 'cooperation' and 'technological translations'. (shrink)

How are we to understand advanced information technologies at a time where their use is becoming more and more widespread? To address this question, the author analyses the discourse of cooperative design. In doing this she draws on recent feminist thinking and her own experiences from a research project. She discusses the meaning of concepts such as experience, users, computers and politics in this discourse. She particularly stresses alternative ways of understanding the political nature of design and that multiple perspectives, (...) including descriptive and historical ones, are relevant to both developing the technology and to deepening our understanding of the politics of intervention in design. (shrink)

Unchangeable. Unwavering. Let God's Truth Anchor You. The world is a sea of clashing beliefs and thoughts. Your own feelings and circumstances change from one day to the next. Your heart longs for something to hold on to...something to steer you in the right direction and give you peace. Only God's truth can satisfy that longing. Bestselling author Randy Alcorn shares daily meditations, Scripture readings, and inspirational quotes to help you grasp the wisdom and love found in the eternal Word (...) of God. When you know the truth, you'll be better prepared to... recognize your place in God's plan detect the deceit you encounter in the world point others to Jesus, who is Truth personified God's truth is real, alive, and able to transform you into the person you long to be. This is your invitation to refresh your heart and find lasting security. (shrink)

Conversations about real-life ethically challenging situations form the core of the book, aimed specifically at business school teachers and students. Conversations on Ethics and Business offers a direct line and insight into workplace ethics for an undergraduate and graduate audience. Each topical 'conversation' is followed by a curated and guided list of additional readings. The book also offers an introduction to business ethics for working professionals who may not have had any formal exposure to ethical examination of the typical problems (...) of running a business. The authors approach business ethics as an integrative part of everyday business decisions, with the aim of promoting better choices, and creating value for various stakeholders. Filled with real-world examples, Conversations on Ethics and Business serves as a primer for all readers interested in business ethics, and applied ethics in general."--Cover page 4. (shrink)

Psychological adaptation underlies all human behavior. Thus, rape could either arise from a rape-specific psychological adaptation or it could be a side-effect of a more general psychological adaptation not directly related to rape. The rape-specific hypothesis and the incidental effect hypothesis are explained. Determining the specific environmental cues that men’s sexual psyche has been designed by selection to process will allow us to decide which of these two hypotheses is true. I focus on rape, and briefly look at other types (...) of sexual coercion, such as sexual harassment and incest. (shrink)

Research on the nature of science and science education enjoys a longhistory, with its origins in Ernst Mach's work in the late nineteenthcentury and John Dewey's at the beginning of the twentieth century.As early as 1909 the Central Association for Science and MathematicsTeachers published an article – ‘A Consideration of the Principles thatShould Determine the Courses in Biology in Secondary Schools’ – inSchool Science and Mathematics that reflected foundational concernsabout science and how school curricula should be informed by them. Sincethen (...) a large body of literature has developed related to the teaching andlearning about nature of science – see, for example, the Lederman and Meichtry reviews cited below. As well there has been intensephilosophical, historical and philosophical debate about the nature of scienceitself, culminating in the much-publicised ‘Science Wars’ of recent time. Thereferences listed here primarily focus on the empirical research related to thenature of science as an educational goal; along with a few influential philosophicalworks by such authors as Kuhn, Popper, Laudan, Lakatos, and others. Whilenot exhaustive, the list should prove useful to educators, and scholars in otherfields, interested in the nature of science and how its understanding can berealised as a goal of science instruction. The authors welcome correspondenceregarding omissions from the list, and on-going additions that can be made to it. (shrink)

When E. M. Forster published the novel Howards End in 1910, it was at the height of ‘the inheritance society’, and the gulf between rich and poor was great and problematic; a fact that Forster was very well aware of. Yet in spite of this, the main character in Howards End, Margaret Schlegel, is a financially independent rentier living off of the wealth of her ancestors, and her wealth increases when she is named the ‘spiritual heir’ of Ruth Wilcox and (...) thus inherits the house of Howards End. In this study, I argue that Forster shifts the focus from inherited money to inherited values in order to pardon a society of great inequality. Drawing on an aristocratic principle, Forster thus deals with inheritance as an inalienable and spiritual subject rather than as a legal and economic one. (shrink)

COVID-19 pandemic has claimed thousands of lives around the world. Among the casualties are doctors, nurses, and other health care professionals. Those who defy the danger of death and continue to render their services have to deal with psychological and mental stress due to the lack of protective measures and equipment, the overwhelming number of patients, and the experience of discrimination. In fact, some left their job. In this paper, I will argue that the motivation of health care professionals and (...) the outcome of their sacrifices, as against assuring personal safety, can be explained by the principle of the common good. First, they are faithful to their oath as health care professionals since it is their commitment as part of an institution that assumes the responsibility of providing health care to people in need. Second, restoring the patients’ condition goes beyond health issues since the recovery of each COVID-19 patient diminishes the spread of the virus, which, if not for the care of HCPs, could worsen the situation with snowballing consequences to society as a whole. While it is expected for any health care professional as a frontliner in times of pandemic, their motivation to serve exemplifies the greater value for the common good. (shrink)

In exploring ways to speak about perception and feeling within the framework of a deconstructive cultural analysis, the article contributes to a narration of methodologies for research so as to better their capacity for engaging with the more faint or elusive manifestations of the real. The argument is grounded in a view of affective presence as involving a way of apprehending the world. Based on an exploration of affectivity and perception in a research project on prostitution in North Norway, it (...) argues that the body and its affects form a crucial site of intervention in developing transformative methodologies. An intuition that informs my inquiry is that attending to such subtle realities holds great potential for confronting injustice and suffering in transformative ways. (shrink)

Performativity is a theory of how reality comes into being. It is also a deconstructive practice. This article addresses the question of performativity as an emergent mode of working in social and cultural research. It does so by way of exploring a research project focusing on prostitution in a multiethnic context in north Norway, carried out by two researchers doing collaborative work on men, sexuality and knowledge. The author’s interest is in exploring performativity as a mode of engaging, aimed at (...) achieving transformations in the terms through which the real is constituted. The author argues that practising performativity requires an openness within the research process to the possibility that researchers and their practices themselves must alter. Such transformative modes of relating seem to be called for in order to develop effective ways of engaging with the present. (shrink)

This study examines the influence of ethical fit on employee attitudes and intentions to turnover. The results of this investigation provides support for the conjecture that ethical work climate is an important variable in the study of person-organization fit. Ethical fit was found to be significantly related to turnover intentions, continuance commitment, and affective commitment, but not to job satisfaction. Results are discussed in regard to some of the affective and cognitive distinctions among satisfaction, commitment, and behavioral intentions.

This article looks at two strains of urban community organizing, distinguished by philosophy and often by gender, and influenced by the historical division of American society into public and private spheres. The authors compare the well-known Alinsky model, which focuses on communities organizing for power, and what they call the women-centered model, which focuses on organizing relationships to build community. These models are rooted in somewhat distinct traditions and vary along several dimensions, including conceptions of human nature and conflict, power (...) and politics, leadership, and the organizing process. The authors conclude by examining the implications of this analysis and questions for further research and practice. (shrink)

The purpose of this study was to determine if there is a relationship between the ethical climate of the organization and the development of person-organization fit. The relationship between an individual's stage of moral development and his/her perceived ethical work environment was examined using a sample of 86 working students. Results indicate that a match between individual preferences and present position proved most satisfying. Subjects expressing a match between their preferences for an ethical work climate and their present ethical work (...) climate indicated that they were less likely to leave their positions. (shrink)

It is hypothesized that human faces judged to be attractive by people possess two features—averageness and symmetry—that promoted adaptive mate selection in human evolutionary history by way of production of offspring with parasite resistance. Facial composites made by combining individual faces are judged to be attractive, and more attractive than the majority of individual faces. The composites possess both symmetry and averageness of features. Facial averageness may reflect high individual protein heterozygosity and thus an array of proteins to which parasites (...) must adapt. Heterozygosity may be an important defense of long-lived hosts against parasites when it occurs in portions of the genome that do not code for the essential features of complex adaptations. In this case heterozygosity can create a hostile microenvironment for parasites without disrupting adaptation. Facial bilateral symmetry is hypothesized to affect positive beauty judgments because symmetry is a certification of overall phenotypic quality and developmental health, which may be importantly influenced by parasites. Certain secondary sexual traits are influenced by testosterone, a hormone that reduces immunocompetence. Symmetry and size of the secondary sexual traits of the face (e.g., cheek bones) are expected to correlate positively and advertise immunocompetence honestly and therefore to affect positive beauty judgments. Facial attractiveness is predicted to correlate with attractive, nonfacial secondary sexual traits; other predictions from the view that parasite-driven selection led to the evolution of psychological adaptations of human beauty perception are discussed. The view that human physical attractiveness and judgments about human physical attractiveness evolved in the context of parasite-driven selection leads to the hypothesis that both adults and children have a species-typical adaptation to the problem of identifying and favoring healthy individuals and avoiding parasite-susceptible individuals. It is proposed that this adaptation guides human decisions about nepotism and reciprocity in relation to physical attractiveness. (shrink)

Drawing on the critical theories of Jean Baudrillard, Cinema of Simulation performs close readings of key films to examine cinematic visions of mutational reality.

This article argues that we live in a highly technical world in which people are disappearing. Religion does not have the tools to help us resist this extinction since it has itself diminished humanity by positing a perfect Other Being, which controls our lives. The author argues that we need to reclaim a sense of ourselves as essentialising animals. We need to have a more body-based sense of humanity, which will lead to a fuller awareness and acceptance of difference and (...) combat hierarchical and alienating thinking. (shrink)

Emotions change over time. A comprehensive understanding of emotions will require that their temporal nature be observed and analysed. By observing emotion over time, one can disentangle and simultaneously analyse temporal variability within individuals and between-individual variability using a two-step process approach. First, within-person temporal patterns (e.g., covariation, lead–lag relation, periodicity, etc.) are assessed for each subject. Second, between-person analyses are conducted on the within-person patterns. These two steps can be done simultaneously with hierarchical linear models (HLM) or in two (...) actual steps with the process approach. HLM is limited to the intra-individual analysis of linear patterns (e.g., slope, intercept), whereas the process approach can be used to examine non-linear aspects of intra-individual change, such as multivariate patterns, within-subject skew, or phase relations between oscillating processes. In this paper we provide a description of the process approach and present several examples of, as well as suggestions for, intra-individual analysis applied to emotion and individual differences. (shrink)

This article seeks to refine understandings of the governmental logics that comprise and shape urban governance. Drawing on research using ethnographic methods that explore the business improvement district and the condominium corporation it is argued that exclusive focus on urban neo-liberalism neglects an urban ”police.” This latter logic is most famously remarked upon in Michel Foucault’s writings as targeting “little things” in urban spaces. Both “police” and the ”free rider problem” it confronts predate and are irreducible to neo-liberalism. Ethnography helps (...) discern this “police” as well as how neo-liberalism relates to it in private urban realms typically hidden from view. Examining BIDs and condos in this way shows that neo-liberalism and “police” co-exist and combine in the governance of urban residential and commercial life. This matters because it reveals a more complex picture of urban governance than is sometimes assumed when neo-liberalism is exclusively invoked and one that is necessarily considered when conceiving of alternative governing arrangements. (shrink)

BackgroundThis paper discusses the contentious issue of reuse of stored biological samples and data obtained from research participants in past clinical research to answer future ethical and scientifically valid research questions. Many countries have regulations and guidelines that guide the use and exportation of stored biological samples and data. However, there are variations in regulations and guidelines governing the reuse of stored biological samples and data in Sub-Saharan Africa including Malawi.DiscussionThe current research ethics regulations and guidelines in Malawi do not (...) allow indefinite storage and reuse of biological samples and data for future unspecified research. This comes even though the country has managed to answer pertinent research questions using stored biological samples and data. We acknowledge the limited technical expertise and equipment unavailable in Malawi that necessitates exportation of biological samples and data and the genuine concern raised by the regulatory authorities about the possible exploitation of biological samples and data by researchers. We also acknowledge that Malawi does not have bio-banks for storing biological samples and data for future research purposes. This creates room for possible exploitation of biological samples and data collected from research participants in primary research projects in Malawi. However, research ethics committees require completion and approval of material transfer agreements and data transfer agreements for biological samples and data collected for research purposes respectively and this requirement may partly address the concern raised by the regulatory authorities. Our concern though is that there is no such requirement for biological samples and data collected from patients for clinical or diagnostic purposes.SummaryIn conclusion, we propose developing a medical data and material transfer agreement for biological samples and data collected from patients for clinical or diagnostic purposes in both public and private health facilities that may end up in research centers outside Malawi. We also propose revision of the current research ethics regulations and guidelines in Malawi in order to allow secondary use of biological samples and data collected from primary research projects as a way of maximizing the use of collected samples and data. Finally, we call for consultation of all stakeholders within the Malawi research community when regulatory authorities are developing policies that govern research in Malawi. (shrink)

In their important work on locus equations, Sussman and his colleagues have helped to simplify the theoretical problem of how human listeners identify place of articulation contrasts among consonants, but much work remains before this problem is solved.

This study considers the ethical decision making of individual employees and the influence their perception of organizational expectations has on employee feelings about the decision making process. A self-administered questionnaire design was used for gathering data in this study, with a sample size of 245 full-time employees. The match between the ethical alternative chosen by the respondent and that alternative perceived to be encouraged by his/her organization was found to be significantly related to both feelings of discomfort and feelings of (...) intrapersonal role conflict. Implications for these findings are discussed. (shrink)

The most recent work toward compiling a comprehensive database of adenosine‐to‐inosine RNA editing events suggests that the potential for RNA editing is much more pervasive than previously thought; indeed, it is manifest in more than 100 million potential editing events located primarily within Alu repeat elements of the human transcriptome. Pairs of inverted Alu repeats are found in a substantial number of human genes, and when transcribed, they form long double‐stranded RNA structures that serve as optimal substrates for RNA editing (...) enzymes. A small subset of edited Alu elements has been shown to exhibit diverse functional roles in the regulation of alternative splicing, miRNA repression, and cis‐regulation of distant RNA editing sites. The low level of editing for the remaining majority may be non‐functional, yet their persistence in the primate genome provides enhanced genomic flexibility that may be required for adaptive evolution. (shrink)

The growing body of whistleblowing literature includes many studies that have attempted to identify the individual level antecedents of whistleblowing behavior. However, cross-cultural differences in perceptions of the ethicality of whistleblowing affect the judgment of whistleblowing intention. This study ascertains how Chinese managers/professionals decide to blow the whistle in terms of their locus of control and subjective judgment regarding the intention of whistleblowing. Hypotheses that are derived from these speculations are tested with data on Chinese managers and professionals. Statistical analysis (...) largely supports the hypotheses, which suggests that an individual''s locus of control does moderate the relationship between ethical judgment and whistleblowing. (shrink)

ブッダとは誰か?仏教とは何か?3・11の震災後の言葉を探して仏教に問いかける―仏教と真剣に向き合う僧侶、研究者との対話を通して、仏教の「新しいいま」が見えてくる。.

Throughout the world people differ in the magnitude with which they value strong family ties or heightened religiosity. We propose that this cross-cultural variation is a result of a contingent psychological adaptation that facilitates in-group assortative sociality in the face of high levels of parasite-stress while devaluing in-group assortative sociality in areas with low levels of parasite-stress. This is because in-group assortative sociality is more important for the avoidance of infection from novel parasites and for the management of infection in (...) regions with high levels of parasite-stress compared with regions of low infectious disease stress. We examined this hypothesis by testing the predictions that there would be a positive association between parasite-stress and strength of family ties or religiosity. We conducted this study by comparing among nations and among states in the United States of America. We found for both the international and the interstate analyses that in-group assortative sociality was positively associated with parasite-stress. This was true when controlling for potentially confounding factors such as human freedom and economic development. The findings support the parasite-stress theory of sociality, that is, the proposal that parasite-stress is central to the evolution of social life in humans and other animals. (shrink)

The most important contemporary development in rhetoric for the theory of argumentation is Jeanne Fahnestock's program of figural logic, the ruling insight of which is that figures epitomize arguments. Working primarily with the antimetabolic formula at the heart of Gregor Mendel's paper “Experiments in Plant Hybridization,” I investigate the figural bases of the logic anchoring this foundational essay in genetics. In addition to antimetabole, the formula also depends crucially on ploche, polyptoton, onomatopoeia, antithesis, synecdoche, reification, and metaphor.

Life threatening emergencies involving infants and children are inherently dramatic, tension-filled situations. It is no wonder, then, that depictions of such events can be found in literature by and about doctors. In many ways, too, such depictions can illuminate key aspects of such events, such as the physician's own anxiety and the tensions between the various people involved, better than the medical literature. Hence it is suggested that the study of literary depictions of pediatric emergencies might be a useful adjunct (...) for those, physicians and other health care providers, who are called upon to manage them. (shrink)

A symphony of Gustav Mahler becomes a cathartic experience following the death of a beloved goat.

Based on action research as a practitioner‐involving approach, this article communicates the findings of a two‐year study on implementing patient participation as an empowering learning process for both patients and rehabilitation nurses. At a rehabilitation facility for patients who have sustained spinal cord injuries, eight nurses were engaged throughout the process aiming at improving patient participation. The current practice was explored to understand possibilities and obstacles to patient participation. Observations, interviews and logbooks, creative workshops and reflective meetings led to the (...) development and testing of four new rehabilitation initiatives aimed at enhancing patient participation. This study suggests that skills of critical reflection from action research toolbox shed light on both the notion of patient participation and caring in nursing rehabilitation. By actively involving nurses in research, the knowledge development stems from practice and the solutions therefore became practice‐oriented. In addition, the personal and professional development experienced by the involved nurses points to a secondary gain in the form of an analytical and reflective approach to complex issues in relation to patient participation, rehabilitation in general and the individual nurses' sense of professional pride. (shrink)

Is the reason that majorities exert an undue influence on the actions of individuals revealed through changes in subjective experience? Using an adaptation of the response interference paradigm in which participants are trained to introspect on their own experience of conscious conflict, two studies reported here show that the mere act of recalling counter-majority stances or opinions is associated with stronger subjective effects than recalling stances or opinions that coincide with majorities. Thus, an intention to conform to a majority seems (...) to interfere with people’s recall of their own stance or opinion. These results provide novel evidence for recent yet under-supported suggestions that majorities can influence individuals even when it is improper or illogical because human social cognition is primarily and involuntarily cooperative at the implicit level. (shrink)