Indoleamine 2,3‐dioxygenase (IDO) is the rate‐limiting enzyme in conversion of tryptophan to kynurenines, feeding de novo nicotinamide synthesis. IDO orchestrates materno‐foetal tolerance, increasing human reproductive fitness. IDO mediates immune suppression through depletion of tryptophan required by T lymphocytes and other mechanisms. IDO is expressed by alternatively activated macrophages, suspected to play a key role in tuberculosis (TB) pathogenesis. Unlike its human host, Mycobacterium tuberculosis can synthesize tryptophan, suggesting possible benefit to the host from infection with the microbe. Intriguingly, nicotinamide analogues (...) are used to treat TB. In reviewing this field, it is postulated that flux through the nicotinamide synthesis pathway reflects switching between aerobic glycolysis and oxidative phosphorylation in M. tuberculosis‐infected macrophages. The evolutionary cause of such shifts may be ancient mitochondrial behavior related to reproductive fitness. Evolutionary perspectives on the IDO pathway may elucidate why, after centuries of co‐existence with the Tubercle bacillus, humans still remain susceptible to TB disease. (shrink)

Considerable attention has been paid recently to the gendering of organizations and occupations. Unfortunately, the gendered-organizations approach remains theoretically and empirically underdeveloped, as there have as yet been few clear answers to the question central to the perspective: What does it really mean to say that an organization itself, or a policy, practice, or slot in the hierarchy, is “gendered”? Reviewing literature in the gendered-organizations tradition, the author discusses three of the most common ways the perspective has been applied and (...) argues that all of these definitions pose potential problems for the project of meaningful social and organizational change. The article concludes with some suggestions about how a more useful conception of the gendered organization might be built. (shrink)

This article uses Acker's theory of gendered organizations to frame an analysis of the ways in which policies and practices in a men's and a women's prison reflect and reproduce gendered inequalities. The article offers a working definition of one of Acker's key theoretical concepts, the notion of “gendered organizational logic.” Then, using interview data collected from correctional officers in a men's and a women's prison, the article examines the ways in which officer training and assignments, although designed to be (...) nominally generic, assume a male worker and disproportionately benefit male officers working in men's institutions. These findings imply that the perspective could more usefully be conceived as a theory of “masculinized” organizations. (shrink)

The prevailing metaphor for understanding the persistence of gender inequalities in universities is the “chilly climate.” Women faculty sometimes resist descriptions of their workplaces as “chilly” and deny that gender matters even in the face of considerable evidence to the contrary. I draw on interviews with women academics to explore this apparent paradox, and I offer a theoretical synthesis that may help explain it. I build on insights from Ridgeway and Acker to demonstrate that women do experience gender at work, (...) but the contexts in which they experience it have implications for how they understand gender’s importance and whether to respond. Specifically, I find that women are likely to minimize or deny gender’s importance in interactions. When it becomes salient in structures and cultures, women understand it differently. Placing gender in organizational contexts can better inform our understanding of gender inequality at work and can help in crafting more effective efforts to foster gender equity. (shrink)

Adrian Viens, Guest Editor of this Olivieri symposium, and Julian Savulescu, the Editor of JME, set the scene for the symposium."In failing...[her] when she needed them most, it is now clear that some members of the University’s Faculty of Medicine heard her muffled cries of academic freedom from the back room, yet their response was to serve another round of drinks and turn the music up louder. With the bombshell revelations in the...affair, the plug may have been pulled on (...) this business sponsored party, and hopefully a sober re-examination of the university’s neglected role and responsibility toward independent inquiry and academic freedom can begin.1" "These guys don’t get one thing—we’re not going away. This isn’t a personal vendetta. This is something I want patients to be protected from when I’m dead, fifty years from now.2" "[The Olivieri affair is] not a mystery novel, but instead the latest skulduggery at Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children.1" "The legal assaults which you have endured in your battle against the drug company, and in your battle against the medical establishment appear to have been fought with the type of uncommon bravery that is rarely seen. It is for this reason that our trustees have unanimously chosen to recognise you for this most prestigious award.3" "[The Olivieri affair resulted from] a fundamental misreading of the issue as a mere contractual and scientific dispute...[it is] Canada’s worst academic and research scandal in decades...[Since 1998, Olivieri has been] demoted, then restored, then harassed. She has been smeared with allegations attacking her competence, integrity, sanity and personality....4"The Olivieri affair is one of the most important events to occur in research ethics. From its dominance in the Canadian and international news media, to changes in the governance of public health, academic medicine, …. (shrink)

Recent studies using functional magnetic resonance imaging of patients in a vegetative state have raised the possibility that such patients retain some degree of consciousness. In this paper, the ethical implications of such findings are outlined, in particular in relation to decisions about withdrawing life-sustaining treatment. It is sometimes assumed that if there is evidence of consciousness, treatment should not be withdrawn. But, paradoxically, the discovery of consciousness in very severely brain-damaged patients may provide more reason to let them die. (...) Although functional neuroimaging is likely to play an increasing role in the assessment of patients in a vegetative state, caution is needed in the interpretation of neuroimaging findings. (shrink)

Hookups are uncommitted sexual encounters that range from kissing to intercourse and occur between individuals in whom there is no current dating relationship and no expressed or acknowledged expectations of a relationship following the hookup. Research over the last decade has begun to focus on hooking up among adolescents and young adults with significant research demonstrating how alcohol is often involved in hooking up. Given alcohol’s involvement with hooking up behavior, the array of health consequences associated with this relationship, as (...) well as its increasing prevalence from adolescence to young adulthood, it is important to determine the predictors and consequences associated with alcohol-related hooking up. The current review extends prior reviews by adding more recent research, including both qualitative and experimental studies (i.e. expanding to review more diverse methods), research that focuses on the use of technology in alcohol-related hookups (i.e. emerging issues), further develops prevention and intervention potentials and directions, and also offers a broader discussion of hooking up outside of college student populations (i.e., expanding generalization). This article will review the operationalization and ambiguity of the phrase hooking up, the relationship between hooking up and alcohol use at both the global and event levels, predictors of alcohol-related hooking up, and both positive and negative consequences, including sexual victimization, associated with alcohol-related hookups. Throughout, commentary is provided on the methodological issues present in the field, as well as limitations of the existing research. Future directions for research that could significantly advance our understanding of hookups and alcohol use are provided. (shrink)

Randomised placebo-controlled trials (RPCTs) are the gold standard for evaluating novel treatments. However, this design is rarely used in the context of orthopaedic interventions where participants are assigned to a real or placebo surgery. The present study examines attitudes towards RPCTs for orthopaedic surgery among 687 orthopaedic surgeons across the USA. When presented with a vignette describing an RPCT for orthopaedic surgery, 52.3% of participants viewed it as ‘completely’ or ‘mostly’ unethical. Participants were also asked to rank-order the value of (...) five different types of evidence supporting the efficacy of a surgery, ranging from RPCT to an anecdotal report. Responses regarding RPCTs were polarised with 26.4% viewing it as the least valuable (even less valuable than an anecdote) and 35.7.% viewing it as the most valuable. Where equipoise exists, if we want to subject orthopaedic surgeries to the highest standard of evidence (RPCTs) before they are implemented in clinical practice, it will be necessary to educate physicians on the value and ethics of placebo surgery control conditions. Otherwise, invasive procedures may be performed without any benefits beyond possible placebo effects. (shrink)

The study of anarchism as a philosophical, political, and social movement has burgeoned both in the academy and in the global activist community in recent years. Taking advantage of this boom in anarchist scholarship, Nathan J. Jun and Shane Wahl have compiled twenty-six cutting-edge essays on this timely topic in New Perspectives on Anarchism.

To describe phenomena that occur at different time scales, computational models of the brain must incorporate different levels of abstraction. At time scales of approximately 1/3 of a second, orienting movements of the body play a crucial role in cognition and form a useful computational level embodiment level,” the constraints of the physical system determine the nature of cognitive operations. The key synergy is that at time scales of about 1/3 of a second, the natural sequentiality of body movements can (...) be matched to the natural computational economies of sequential decision systems through a system of implicit reference called deictic in which pointing movements are used to bind objects in the world to cognitive programs. This target article focuses on how deictic bindings make it possible to perform natural tasks. Deictic computation provides a mechanism for representing the essential features that link external sensory data with internal cognitive programs and motor actions. One of the central features of cognition, working memory, can be related to moment-by-moment dispositions of body features such as eye movements and hand movements. (shrink)

The concept of mental integrity is currently a significant topic in discussions concerning the regulation of neurotechnologies. Technologies such as deep brain stimulation and brain-computer interfaces are believed to pose a unique threat to mental integrity, and some authors have advocated for a legal right to protect it. Despite this, there remains uncertainty about what mental integrity entails and why it is important. Various interpretations of the concept have been proposed, but the literature on the subject is inconclusive. Here we (...) consider a number of possible interpretations and argue that the most plausible one concerns neurotechnologies that bypass one’s reasoning capacities, and do so specifically in ways that reliably lead to alienation from one’s mental states. This narrows the scope of what constitutes a threat to mental integrity and offers a more precise role for the concept to play in the ethical evaluation of neurotechnologies. (shrink)

The majority of commentators agree that the time to focus on embodiment has arrived and that the disembodied approach that was taken from the birth of artificial intelligence is unlikely to provide a satisfactory account of the special features of human intelligence. In our Response, we begin by addressing the general comments and criticisms directed at the emerging enterprise of deictic and embodied cognition. In subsequent sections we examine the topics that constitute the core of the commentaries: embodiment mechanisms, dorsal (...) and ventral visual processing, eye movements, and learning. (shrink)

BackgroundResuscitation and treatment of critically ill newborn infants is associated with relatively high mortality, morbidity and cost. Guidelines relating to resuscitation have traditionally focused on the best interests of infants. There are, however, limited resources available in the neonatal intensive care unit, meaning that difficult decisions sometimes need to be made. This study explores the intuitions of lay people regarding resource allocation decisions in the NICU.MethodsThe study design was a cross-sectional quantitative survey, consisting of 20 hypothetical rationing scenarios. There were (...) 119 respondents who entered the questionnaire, and 109 who completed it. The respondents were adult US and Indian participants of the online crowdsourcing platform Mechanical Turk. Respondents were asked to decide which of two infants to treat in a situation of scarce resources. Demographic characteristics, personality traits and political views were recorded. Respondents were also asked to respond to a widely cited thought experiment involving rationing.ResultsThe majority of respondents, in all except one scenario, chose the utilitarian option of directing treatment to the infant with the higher chance of survival, higher life expectancy, less severe disability, and less expensive treatment. As discrepancy between outcomes decreased, however, there was a statistically significant increase in egalitarian responses and decrease in utilitarian responses in scenarios involving chance of survival, life expectancy, and cost of treatment. In the classic ‘lifeboat’ scenario, all but two respondents were utilitarian.ConclusionsThis survey suggests that in situations of scarcity and equal clinical need, non-health professionals support rationing of life-saving treatment based on probability of survival, duration of survival, cost of treatment or quality of life. However, where the difference in prognosis or cost is very small, non-health professionals preferred to give infants an equal chance of receiving treatment. (shrink)

Recently, bioethicists and the UNCRPD have advocated for supported medical decision-making on behalf of patients with intellectual disabilities. But what does supported decision-making really entail? One compelling framework is Anita Silvers and Leslie Francis’ mental prosthesis account, which envisions supported decision-making as a process in which trustees act as mere appendages for the patient’s will; the trustee provides the cognitive tools the patient requires to realize her conception of her own good. We argue that supported decision-making would be better understood (...) as a collaborative process, giving patients with intellectual disabilities the opportunity to make decisions in a respectful relationship with trusted others. We offer an alternative account of supported decision-making where the primary constraint is to protect the patient from domination by the trustee. This is advantageous in its preservation of the prospects for genuine collaboration, for the mental prosthesis approach ultimately reinforces a problematic ideal of isolated patient self-determination. (shrink)

ObjectivePrevious research has shown reduced interoceptive accuracy in depression. Attention deficit represents a key symptom of depression. Moreover, IAcc is positively correlated with attention. There is no study that investigates the effect of depression on IAcc and attention. The aim of this study is to examine the mediating effect of IAcc on depression and attention.MethodsThirty-six depressed patients from the Psychosomatic Clinic in Windach were matched with 36 healthy controls according to age and sex and were assessed at Ulm University. All (...) participants completed the Beck Depression Inventory-II, the heartbeat perception task to examine IAcc, and the d2 test assessing selective attention.ResultsDepressed patients showed attention deficits—both for general visual attention and IAcc—compared to healthy controls. The mediation analyses revealed that the relationship between depression and attention is not mediated via IAcc. Furthermore, depression predicts IAcc and attention, but these effects are direct and largely unaffected by the respective other variable.DiscussionThe results of the present study highlight both interoceptive as well as attention deficits in depressed patients. No clear mediation between these variables could be shown in this study. More elaborative research is needed to clarify whether different approaches to improve IAcc are effective for these deficits in depressed patients and could therefore be of importance as an additional aspect of therapy in depression. (shrink)

Preimplantation genetic diagnosis allows the detection of genetic abnormalities in embryos produced through in vitro fertilization. Current funding models in Australia provide governmental subsidies for couples undergoing IVF, but do not extend to PGD. There are strong reasons for publicly funding PGD that follow from the moral principles of autonomy, beneficence and justice for both parents and children. We examine the objections to our proposal, specifically concerns regarding designer babies and the harm of disabled individuals, and show why these are (...) substantially outweighed by arguments for subsidizing PGD. We argue that an acceptance of PGD is aligned with present attitudes towards procreative decision making and IVF use, and that it should therefore receive government funding. (shrink)

A growing number of technologies are currently being developed to improve and distribute thinking and decision-making. Rapid progress in brain-to-brain interfacing and swarming technologies promises to transform how we think about collective and collaborative cognitive tasks across domains, ranging from research to entertainment, and from therapeutics to military applications. As these tools continue to improve, we are prompted to monitor how they may affect our society on a broader level, but also how they may reshape our fundamental understanding of agency, (...) responsibility, and other key concepts of our moral landscape.In this paper we take a closer look at this class of technologies – Technologies for Collective Minds – to see not only how their implementation may react with commonly held moral values, but also how they challenge our underlying concepts of what constitutes collective or individual agency. We argue that prominent contemporary frameworks for understanding collective agency and responsibility are insufficient in terms of accurately describing the relationships enabled by Technologies for Collective Minds, and that they therefore risk obstructing ethical analysis of the implementation of these technologies in society. We propose a more multidimensional approach to better understand this set of technologies, and to facilitate future research on the ethics of Technologies for Collective Minds. (shrink)

Uncivil behavior by leaders may be viewed as an effective way to motivate employees. However, supervisor incivility, as a form of unethical supervision, may be undercutting employees’ ability to do their jobs. We investigate linkages between workplace incivility and perceived work ability, a variable that captures employees’ appraisals of their ability to continue working in their jobs. We draw upon the appraisal theory of stress and social identity theory to examine incivility from supervisors as an antecedent to PWA, and to (...) investigate job involvement and grit as joint moderators of this association. Results from data collected in two samples of working adults provided evidence for three-way interactions in relation to PWA. Among employees with high levels of grit, there was no significant relation between supervisor incivility and PWA, regardless of employee job involvement. However, we found some evidence that for those low in grit, having high job involvement was associated with a stronger relationship between supervisor incivility and PWA. Findings attest to the importance of unethical supervisor behavior, showing the potential for supervisor incivility to erode PWA, as well as the importance of grit as a potential buffer. (shrink)

LANGUAGE NOTE | Document text in English; abstract also in Chinese. 腦機介面 (BCIs) 是大腦和電腦無需人工交互即可直接交流的一系列技術。隨著人工智能 (AI) 時代的到來，我們需要更多地關注腦機介面和人工智能的融合所帶來的倫理問題。那麼，與機器一起思考會帶來什麼樣的倫理問題？在本文中，圍繞這一主題，我們將重點關注以下問題：自主性、完整性、身分認同、隱私，以及 作為一種增強的方式，該技術在兒科領域的應用會帶來怎樣的風險和潛在收益。我們的結論是，雖然該技術存在多種令人擔憂的問題，同時也有可能帶來好處，但仍存在很大的不確定性。如果生命倫理學家想在這一領域有所建樹 ，他們就應該做好準備來迎接我們對醫學和醫療保健領域中一些我們視為核心價值的理解的重大轉變。 Brain-Computer Interfaces – BCIs – are a set of technologies with which brains and computers can communicate directly, without the need for manual interaction. As we are witnessing the dawn of an era in which Artificial Intelligence (AI) quite possibly will come to dominate the technological innovation landscape, we are compelled to ask questions about the ethical issues which the convergence of BCIs and AI (...) is poised to bring about. What are the ethics of thinking with machines? In this paper, we explore this question, focusing on some of the main arenas of ethical debate and contention, ranging from autonomy and integrity to identity and privacy, and discuss the risks and potential benefits of the technology in the domains of paediatric populations, and as a means of human enhancement. We conclude that, while there are multiple concerns as well as possibilities for the technology to do good, there are great uncertainties at play. If bioethicists want to stay relevant in this field, they ought to prepare themselves for seismic shift in how we conceptualise much of what we take to be core values in medicine and healthcare. (shrink)

We examine the influences of social capital, source credibility, and fairness perceptions on the judgments of experienced compensation committee members who are considering a proposal to reduce management’s performance targets in the middle of a compensation cycle due to difficult circumstances. Eighty-nine U.S. public company CC members participated in a 2 × 2 experiment with social capital and source credibility each manipulated as low or high, and outcome fairness to management, process fairness to shareholders, and outcome fairness to shareholders included (...) as measured variables. While social capital and source credibility are not significant, we find that outcome fairness to the CEO and outcome fairness to shareholders are significantly related to CC members’ support for reducing performance targets during a compensation cycle. In addition, we find that more experienced CC members are less supportive of changing the performance targets. The significant interactions include one between outcome fairness to shareholders and process fairness to shareholders, which suggests that CC member support for the proposal relies on both process and outcome fairness being present. Finally, the participants’ qualitative responses reflect arguments both for and against adjusting performance targets. Overall, the results highlight the important roles of fairness and director experience in boardroom decisions and provide important insights into factors affecting CC judgments. (shrink)

Large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT or Google’s Bard have shown significant performance on a variety of text-based tasks, such as summarization, translation, and even the generation of new...

Feminist scholarship on the relative importance of working-class institutional strength in the economy and in the state has led to two divergent conclusions. Radical feminists argue that working-class institutions dominated by men produce male-biased outcomes; socialist feminists hold that working-class institutions promote classwide interests that benefit women as well as men. This article addresses this debate by applying generic and gendered working-class strength models of the welfare state in an examination of women's public pension quality. Quality is measured as women's (...) average pension compared with that of men, relative to women's average earnings, and compared with the average wage in the society. The authors find support for the socialist feminist view. Working-class institutions, having historically organized and represented the interests of working men, benefit women by improving the security and adequacy of their retirement incomes, but it is women's access to working-class economic and political institutions that brings greater economic equality with men in old age. (shrink)

Generative AI programs can produce high-quality written and visual content that may be used for good or ill. We argue that a credit–blame asymmetry arises for assigning responsibility for these outputs and discuss urgent ethical and policy implications focused on large-scale language models.

Cognitive Science, Volume 46, Issue 6, June 2022.

Psychologists and philosophers who pose moral dilemmas to understand moral judgment typically specify outcomes as certain to occur in them. This contrasts with real-life moral decision-making, which is almost always infused with probabilities (e.g., the probability of a given outcome if an action is or is not taken). Seven studies examine sensitivity to the size and location of shifts in probabilities of outcomes that would result from action in moral dilemmas. We find that moral judgments differ between actions that result (...) in an equal increase in probability of harm (equal size), but have different end-states (e.g., an increase in harm probability from 25% to 50% or from 50% to 75%). This deviation from expected value is robust under separate evaluation, and increases when the comparison between shifts is made explicit under simultaneous evaluation. Consistent with the centrality of perceived harm in some models of moral judgment, perceived harm partially mediates sensitivity to location of harm probability shift. Unlike for shifts in harm probabilities, participants are insensitive to the location of shifts in probability of beneficial outcomes. They are also insensitive to the location of shifts in probability of analogous monetary losses and gains, suggesting an asymmetry between harm and benefit in moral reasoning, as well as an asymmetry between moral and monetary decision-making more broadly. Implications for normative philosophical theory and moral psychological theory, as well as practical applications, are discussed. (shrink)

In this reply to our commentators, we respond to ethical concerns raised about the potential use (or misuse) of personalized LLMs for academic idea and prose generation, including questions about c...

The view that ordinary objects are composites of form and matter ("hylomorphism") can be contrasted with the more common view that ordinary objects are composed of only material parts ("matter only"). On a matter-only view the hard question is modal: which modal profile does that (statue-shaped) object have? Does it have the modal profile of a statue, a lump, a mere aggregate? On a hylomorphic view the hard question is ontological: which objects exist? Does a statue (matter-m + statue-form), a (...) lump (matter-m + lump-form), and/or a mere aggregate (matter-m + mere aggregate-form) exist? I defend a novel answer to the hard question for hylomorphism. In particular, I argue that which ordinary objects exist depends, in part, on how subjects respond to the matter they encounter. I argue that, with regard to grounding the existence and modal properties of ordinary objects, response-dependent hylomorphism is superior to both matter only views and to non-response-dependent versions of hylomorphism. (shrink)

State Medical Boards (SMBs) can take severe disciplinary actions (e.g., license revocation or suspension) against physicians who commit egregious wrongdoing in order to protect the public. However, there is noteworthy variability in the extent to which SMBs impose severe disciplinary action. In this manuscript, we present and synthesize a subset of 11 recommendations based on findings from our team’s larger consensus-building project that identified a list of 56 policies and legal provisions SMBs can use to better protect patients from egregious (...) wrongdoing by physicians. (shrink)

It has been suggested that early cry parameters are connected to later cognitive abilities. The present study is the first to investigate whether the acoustic features of infant cry are associated with cognitive development already during the first year, as measured by oculomotor orienting and attention disengagement. Cry sounds for acoustic analyses (fundamental frequency; F0) were recorded in two neonatal cohorts at the age of 0-8 days (Tampere, Finland) or at 6 weeks (Cape Town, South Africa). Eye tracking was used (...) to measure oculomotor orienting to peripheral visual stimuli and attention disengagement from central stimuli at 8 months (Tampere) or at 6 months (Cape Town) of age. Only a marginal positive correlation between fundamental frequency of cry (F0) and visual attention disengagement was observed in the Tampere cohort, but not in the Cape Town cohort. This correlation indicated that infants from the Tampere cohort with a higher neonatal F0 were marginally slower to shift their gaze away from the central stimulus to the peripheral stimulus. No associations between F0 and oculomotor orienting were observed in either cohort. We discuss possible factors influencing the current pattern of results suggesting a lack of replicable associations between neonatal cry and visual attention and suggest directions for future research investigating the potential of early cry analysis in predicting later cognitive development. (shrink)