To what degree has biology influenced and shaped the development of moral systems? One way to determine the extent to which human moral systems might be the product of natural selection is to explore behaviour in other species that is analogous and perhaps homologous to our own. Many non-human primates, for example, have similar methods to humans for resolving, managing, and preventing conflicts of interests within their groups. Such methods, which include reciprocity and food sharing, reconciliation, consolation, conflict intervention, and (...) mediation, are the very building blocks of moral systems in that they are based on and facilitate cohesion among individuals and reflect a concerted effort by community members to find shared solutions to social conflict. Furthermore, these methods of resource distribution and conflict resolution often require or make use of capacities for empathy, sympathy, and sometimes even community concern. Non-human primates in societies in which such mechanisms are present may not be exactly moral beings, but they do show signs of a sense of social regularity that -- just like the norms and rules underlying human moral conduct -- promotes a mutually satisfactory modus vivendi. (shrink)

To what degree has biology influenced and shaped the development of moral systems? One way to determine the extent to which human moral systems might be the product of natural selection is to explore behaviour in other species that is analogous and perhaps homologous to our own. Many non-human primates, for example, have similar methods to humans for resolving, managing, and preventing conflicts of interests within their groups. Such methods, which include reciprocity and food sharing, reconciliation, consolation, conflict intervention, and (...) mediation, are the very building blocks of moral systems in that they are based on and facilitate cohesion among individuals and reflect a concerted effort by community members to find shared solutions to social conflict. Furthermore, these methods of resource distribution and conflict resolution often require or make use of capacities for empathy, sympathy, and sometimes even community concern. Non-human primates in societies in which such mechanisms are present may not be exactly moral beings, but they do show signs of a sense of social regularity that—just like the norms and rules underlying human moral conduct—promotes a mutually satisfactory modus vivendi. (shrink)

This article focuses on the ways that one individual child, Christina, experienced urban life in and outside of a diversely populated elementary school with a multicultural curriculum. Labeled by the school and her parents as white, Christina identified as Latina, and used specific spaces in the city to support this claim. Drawing on data from a year-long ethnographic study, I show how Christina navigated her life in the city and explore the ways that she consciously represented herself over time, in (...) multiple social spaces, as non-white. Three particular spaces are explored here: the city bus ride to school, Christina's neighborhood, and classroom discussions. Christina used a variety of resources to negotiate each space, in effect drawing a map of her racial identity as she lived in the city. Her case offers ideas about how such a curriculum might influence the senses of self of children in diversely populated classrooms. (shrink)

The Tasmanian salmon industry has become one of the state's most profitable industries to date. Though production conditions notoriously lack transparency, there is a clear dependency on the mass production of complex nonhuman animals who are kept in inappropriate conditions and subject to harmful industry practices. This article explores why the Tasmanian Environmental Protection Agency recently approved the construction of the largest salmon hatchery in Australia, despite serious environmental sustainability and welfare concerns. It considers the likely impact of the new (...) hatchery on the welfare of both the farmed nonhuman animals and the surrounding free-ranging life and advocates for industry improvements that are guided by considerations of nonhuman animal welfare and environmental sustainability. (shrink)

Volume 20, Issue 4, May 2020, Page 108-110.

Although the overwhelming majority of terminally ill patients in Oregon who seek a physician's aid in dying are enrolled in hospice programs, hospices do not take a major role in this practice. An examination of fifty‐five Oregon hospices reveals that both legal and moral questions prevent hospices from collaborating fully with physician‐assisted death.

Medical assistance in dying was legalized by the Supreme Court of Canada in June 2016 and became a legal, viable end of life care option for Canadians with irremediable illness and suffering. Much attention has been paid to the balance between physicians’ willingness to provide MAiD and patients’ legal right to request medically assisted death in certain circumstances. In contrast, very little attention has been paid to the challenge of making MAiD accessible to vulnerable populations. The purpose of this paper (...) was to examine the extant literature and resources that are available on the provision of MAiD in Canada. We found that the provision of EOLC in Canada offers insufficient access to palliative and EOLC options for Canadians and that vulnerable Canadians experience disproportional barriers to accessing these already limited resources. Consequently, we argue that palliative care, hospice care and MAiD must be considered a spectrum of EOLC that is inclusive and accessible to all Canadians. We conclude by imploring Canadian healthcare professionals, policy makers and legislators to consider MAiD as a viable EOLC option for all Canadians. (shrink)

The number of children with chronic critical illness (CCI) is a growing population in the United States. A defining characteristic of this population is a prolonged hospital stay. Our study assessed the proportion of pediatric patients with chronic critical illness in U.S. hospitals at a specific point in time, and identified a subset of children whose hospital stay lasted for months to years. The potential harms of a prolonged hospitalization for children with CCI, which include over treatment, infection, disruption of (...) family life, and the intensive utilization of resources—combined with the moral distress experienced by the clinicians who care for the children, suggest the need for ethical analysis of this growing issue to identify actions that could be taken at the clinical and health systems levels to reduce the harms associated with prolonged hospital stay.In this article we present three real cases from our study that involved a very long hospital stay. We applied a framework developed by Mackenzie, Rogers, and Dodds to analyze inherent, situational, and pathogenic vulnerabilities to examine the ways that interventions intended to remedy one source of harm for the children in our cohort inadvertently created other harms. We examined the complex ways that children with protracted hospitalization are vulnerable to the choices made by their family and clinicians, as well as by healthcare systems and communities. Finally, we used this analysis to summarize actions and ethical responses to this growing patient population. Such an understanding is essential to making clinical and ethical decisions that arise for children who are at risk for a very long stay in the hospital. (shrink)

We explore the various ethical challenges that arise during the practical implementation of an emergency resource allocation protocol. We argue that to implement an allocation plan in a crisis, a hospital system must complete five tasks: (1) formulate a set of general principles for allocation, (2) apply those principles to the disease at hand to create a concrete protocol, (3) collect the data required to apply the protocol, (4) construct a system to implement triage decisions with those data, and (5) (...) create a system for managing the consequences of implementing the protocol, including the effects on those who must carry out the plan, the medical staff, and the general public. Here we illustrate the complexities of each task and provide tentative solutions, by describing the experiences of the Coronavirus Ethics Response Group, an interdisciplinary team formed to address the ethical issues in pandemic resource planning at the University of Rochester Medical Center. While the plan was never put into operation, the process of preparing for emergency implementation exposed ethical issues that require attention. (shrink)

Healthcare systems across the globe are struggling with increasing costs and worsening outcomes. This presents those responsible for overseeing healthcare with a challenge. Increasingly, policymakers, politicians, clinical entrepreneurs and computer and data scientists argue that a key part of the solution will be ‘Artificial Intelligence’ (AI) – particularly Machine Learning (ML). This argument stems not from the belief that all healthcare needs will soon be taken care of by “robot doctors.” Instead, it is an argument that rests on the classic (...) counterfactual definition of AI as an umbrella term for a range of techniques that can be used to make machines complete tasks in a way that would be considered intelligent were they to be completed by a human. Automation of this nature could offer great opportunities for the improvement of healthcare services and ultimately patients’ health by significantly improving human clinical capabilities in diagnosis, drug discovery, epidemiology, personalised medicine, and operational efficiency. However, if these AI solutions are to be embedded in clinical practice, then at least three issues need to be considered: the technical possibilities and limitations; the ethical, regulatory and legal framework; and the governance framework. In this article, we report on the results of a systematic analysis designed to provide a clear overview of the second of these elements: the ethical, regulatory and legal framework. We find that ethical issues arise at six levels of abstraction (individual, interpersonal, group, institutional, sectoral, and societal) and can be categorised as epistemic, normative, or overarching. We conclude by stressing how important it is that the ethical challenges raised by implementing AI in healthcare settings are tackled proactively rather than reactively and map the key considerations for policymakers to each of the ethical concerns highlighted. (shrink)

Pets often factor in older adults’ health behaviors and decisions. However, the degree to which issues related to pet ownership are encountered or addressed by professionals working with this population remains unknown. The aim of this study was to identify specific issues stemming from pet ownership professionals had encountered in their work with older adults, people living with dementia, and care partners. An interdisciplinary sample completed an online survey addressing pet ownership issues encountered in their work. Descriptive statistics, t-tests, and (...) repeated measures ANOVAs were used to analyze quantitative data. A conventional content analysis was used to analyze open-ended responses to an item asking about “other” issues encountered in their work with these populations. The professionals estimated 46.29% of clients had been pet owners, 41.23% regularly asked about pets, and 79.22% had encountered issues related to pet ownership. Specific issues raised to the professionals varied by type of client. The professionals reported older adults most often raised getting pet items into the home and concerns about their pets’ health. The issues most often raised by people living with dementia to the professionals were planning for the pet due to a housing transition and basic pet care. Care partners focused on basic pet care and planning for the pet due to a housing transition. The professionals themselves most often raised the issues of basic pet care, concerns about falling, and the pets’ behavior. Professionals who entered clients’ homes were more likely to raise issues stemming from pet ownership compared to those who reported they did not enter clients’ homes in their current job, t = 5.59, p < 0.00001. The eleven new issues identified by the content analysis underscored how the health and wellbeing of people and their pets are linked. The results of this study provide strong evidence that professionals do encounter issues related to pet ownership. Including issues stemming from pet ownership into procedures, policies, and programs is likely to have positive impacts on those served by and working in the geriatric workforce. (shrink)

Aim of the study was to analyze the posttraumatic stress disorder risk nurses, detecting the relationship between distress experience and personality dimensions in Italian COVID-19 outbreak. A cross-sectional study was conducted based on 2 data detection. Mental evaluation was carried out in Laboratory of Clinical Psychology on n.69 nurses in range age 22–64 years old. Measurement was focused on symptoms anxiety, personality traits, peritraumatic dissociation and post-traumatic stress for all participants. No online screening was applied. Comparisons within the various demographic (...) characteristics demonstrated few significant differences between groups on DASS-21, PDEQ, and ISE-R scores. Correlation analysis was performed among PDEQ, DASS-21, BFI-10 and IES-R and confirmed between anxiety and peritraumatic dissociation and post-traumatic stress; then anxiety is positively correlated to agreeableness variable of BFI-10 test. The emotional distress was protracted overtime but in long-term personality traits resulted mediator facing subjective stress. Our finding drew details for protective and predictive risk factors as well as mental health issues of nurses dealing with pandemic: healthcare workers faced the protracted challenge caring COVID-19 patients over and over again: in short time the impact was relevant, and the prolonged exposition to the stressor was tackled by personal resources such as personality traits. (shrink)

Concerted, timely action for mitigating climate change is of uttermost importance to keep global warming as close to 1.5°C as possible. Air traffic already plays a strong role in driving climate change and is projected to grow—with only limited technical potential for decarbonizing this means of transport. Therefore, it is desirable to minimize the expansion of air traffic or even facilitate a reduction in affluent countries. Effective policies and behavioral change, especially among frequent flyers, can help to lower greenhouse gas (...) emissions. For both, a positive evaluation and public support is indispensable. This study contributes to understanding air travel behavior and the perception of regulative policies. We examined the role of attitudes, perceived behavioral control, efficacy, global identity, and justice concerns for intentions to avoid flights and aviation-related environmental policy support. We conducted an online survey study with a quota sample of N = 2,530 participants in Germany. The strongest positive predictors of intentions to refrain from flying and policy support were perceived behavioral control to travel without flying, efficacy beliefs that avoiding air travel contributes to climate change mitigation, and intergenerational justice concerns; pro-travel attitude was a negative predictor. Moreover, we tested whether the provision of additional information on climate impact, global and intranational inequalities as well as subsidies affected the intention to avoid air travel and policy support. We found no effects of the different types of information. Nor did we find an interaction between the type of information provided and global or national identity. Our results highlight the need for a shift within the mobility sector that facilitates attractive and accessible transport alternatives in order to strengthen people’s behavioral control to choose other means than planes and their efficacy perceptions. Moreover, raising awareness of the impacts of climate change on future generations and developing strategies to promote people’s concern for intergenerational justice might motivate people to reduce air travel and thereby contribute to a livable future for new generations. (shrink)

Interest in and initiation of farm-to-school (FTS) programs have increased in recent years, spurred on by converging public concerns about child obesity trends and risks associated with industrialization and distancing in the modern food system. A civic agriculture framework that more specifically considers civic engagement and problem solving offers insights about variations in the development and prospects for FTS programs. Drawing on comparative case studies of two emerging FTS initiatives in Pennsylvania—one in a rural setting and one in an urban (...) setting—this article examines the role of internal and external “champions” in launching FTS programs and fostering civic engagement. Farm-to-school community stakeholders across the two cases framed FTS in broadly similar terms of (1) redressing poor food environments; (2) improving student nutrition, health and well-being; and (3) revitalizing rural community through support of local agriculture. However, specific concerns and emphases differed across the rural and urban cases, illustrating the significance of local context for such programs. The article concludes by discussing the importance of frame bridging and frame extension as strategies for expanding the FTS movement, and also ensuring programs that correspond to the specific circumstances and possibilities of their social and geographic settings. (shrink)

An often-overlooked characteristic of the human mind is its propensity to wander. Despite growing interest in the science of mind-wandering, most studies operationalize mind-wandering by its task-unrelated contents. But these contents may be orthogonal to the processes that determine how thoughts unfold over time, remaining stable or wandering from one topic to another. In this chapter, we emphasize the importance of incorporating such processes into current definitions of mind-wandering, and propose that mind-wandering and other forms of spontaneous thought (such as (...) dreaming and creativity) are mental states that arise and transition relatively freely due to an absence of constraints on cognition. We review existing psychological, philosophical and neuroscientific research on spontaneous thought through the lens of this framework, and call for additional research into the dynamic properties of the mind and brain. (shrink)

While utopians cannot produce what they can imagine, we can no longer imagine what we produce. It is increasingly the case that undergraduate teacher candidates find themselves enrolled in courses that have been developed “in partnership” with local school districts—districts adjacent to the actual universities where they are enrolled. Recently, one such partnership arrangement had a foundation of education professor and initial certification students oscillating between two school districts located in the same large suburban area. One side of town is (...) inhabited by mostly minority children in underfunded schools—commonly viewed as the “bad” district. The other side of town has the “better” district, as it .. (shrink)

Compared to our understanding of positive prediction error signals occurring due to unexpected reward outcomes, less is known about the neural circuitry in humans that drives negative prediction errors during omission of expected rewards. While classical learning theories such as Rescorla–Wagner or temporal difference learning suggest that both types of prediction errors result from a simple subtraction, there has been recent evidence suggesting that different brain regions provide input to dopamine neurons which contributes to specific components of this prediction error (...) computation. Here, we focus on the brain regions responding to negative prediction error signals, which has been well-established in animal studies to involve a distinct pathway through the lateral habenula. We examine the activity of this pathway in humans, using a conditioned inhibition paradigm with high-resolution functional MRI. First, participants learned to associate a sensory stimulus with reward delivery. Then, reward delivery was omitted whenever this stimulus was presented simultaneously with a different sensory stimulus, the conditioned inhibitor. Both reward presentation and the reward-predictive cue activated midbrain dopamine regions, insula and orbitofrontal cortex. While we found significant activity at an uncorrected threshold for the CI in the habenula, consistent with our predictions, it did not survive correction for multiple comparisons and awaits further replication. Additionally, the pallidum and putamen regions of the basal ganglia showed modulations of activity for the inhibitor that did not survive the corrected threshold. (shrink)

Despite increasing scientific interest in self-generated thought-mental content largely independent of the immediate environment-there has yet to be any comprehensive synthesis of the subjective experience and neural correlates of affect in these forms of thinking. Here, we aim to develop an integrated affective neuroscience encompassing many forms of self-generated thought-normal and pathological, moderate and excessive, in waking and in sleep. In synthesizing existing literature on this topic, we reveal consistent findings pertaining to the prevalence, valence, and variability of emotion in (...) self-generated thought, and highlight how these factors might interact with self-generated thought to influence general well-being. We integrate these psychological findings with recent neuroimaging research, bringing attention to the neural correlates of affect in self-generated thought. We show that affect in self-generated thought is prevalent, positively biased, highly variable (both within and across individuals), and consistently recruits many brain areas implicated in emotional processing, including the orbitofrontal cortex, amygdala, insula, and medial prefrontal cortex. Many factors modulate these typical psychological and neural patterns, however; the emerging affective neuroscience of self-generated thought must endeavor to link brain function and subjective experience in both everyday self-generated thought as well as its dysfunctions in mental illness. (shrink)

When faced with transgressions in their peer groups, children must navigate a series of situational cues (e.g., type of transgression, transgressor gender, transgressor intentionality) to evaluate the moral status of transgressions and to inform their subsequent behavior toward the transgressors. There is little research on which cues children prioritize when presented together, how reliance on these cues may be affected by certain biases (e.g., gender norms), or how the prioritization of these cues may change with age. To explore these questions, (...) 138 5- to 7-year-olds (younger children) and 8- to 10-year-olds (older children) evaluated a series of boy and girl characters who partook in physical or relational aggression with ambiguous or purposeful intent. Children were asked to provide sociomoral evaluations (i.e., acceptability, punishment, and intention attribution judgments) and social preferences. Transgressor gender only impacted children’s social preferences. Conversely, aggression form and transgressor intent shifted children’s sociomoral judgments: they were harsher toward physical transgressors with purposeful intent over those with ambiguous intent but made similar evaluations for relational transgressors regardless of intentionality. The present results suggest that gender is perhaps not uniformly relevant to children across all contexts, as other cues were prioritized for children’s sociomoral judgments. Since children likely have less familiarity with relational aggression compared to physical aggression, it follows that intent would only shift judgments about physical transgressors. This research provides insight about how children simultaneously navigate multiple cues in aggression contexts, which is likely reflective of their real-world experiences. (shrink)

Gaulin, McBurney, and Brakeman-Wartell (1997) found that college students reported both matrilateral and sex biases in the investment of aunts and uncles (aunts invested more than uncles). They interpreted the matrilateral bias as a consequence of paternity uncertainty. We replicated that study with Orthodox Jewish college students, selected because they come from a population we presume to have higher paternity certainty than the general population. The Orthodox sample also showed matrilateral and sex biases. Comparing the two data sets, the Orthodox (...) sample reported more investment, and slightly less matrilateral and sex biases, but the differences were not statistically significant. We did find an interaction between sex of relative and group membership, resulting from greater investment by Orthodox uncles. We interpret the results as reflecting the operation of a facultative investment mechanism whose upper limit is tuned to the maximum levels of paternity certainty found in ancestral environments. Lack of a difference in matrilateral bias between groups may result from levels of paternity certainty near to, or above, that maximum in both groups. (shrink)

Development of and influence on ethical beliefs were surveyed at a major research university campus. Courses were ranked by faculty and students as most important. Mentors were ranked eighth in a list of nine factors. Of the 1,152 returned student questionnaires, 97 (8.4%) made the effort to write comments, and of the 610 faculty questionnaires returned, 64 (10%) wrote comments. These comments were rich in detail and description.

Background Policy decisions about childhood vaccination require consideration of multiple, sometimes conflicting, public health and ethical imperatives. Examples of these decisions are whether vaccination should be mandatory and, if so, whether to allow for non-medical exemptions. In this article we argue that these policy decisions go beyond typical public health mandates and therefore require democratic input.Methods We report on the design, implementation, and results of a deliberative public forum convened over four days in Ontario, Canada, on the topic of childhood (...) vaccination.Results 25 participants completed all four days of deliberation and collectively developed 20 policy recommendations on issues relating to mandatory vaccinations and exemptions, communication about vaccines and vaccination, and AEFI (adverse events following immunization) compensation and reporting. Notable recommendations include unanimous support for mandatory childhood vaccination in Ontario, the need for broad educational communication about vaccination, and the development of a no-fault compensation scheme for AEFIs. There was persistent disagreement among deliberants about the form of exemptions from vaccination (conscience, religious beliefs) that should be permissible, as well as appropriate consequences if parents do not vaccinate their children.Conclusions We conclude that conducting deliberative democratic processes on topics that are polarizing and controversial is viable and should be further developed and implemented to support democratically legitimate and trustworthy policy about childhood vaccination. (shrink)

Most research on mind-wandering has characterized it as a mental state with contents that are task unrelated or stimulus independent. However, the dynamics of mind-wandering—how mental states change over time—have remained largely neglected. Here, we introduce a dynamic framework for understanding mind-wandering and its relationship to the recruitment of large-scale brain networks. We propose that mind-wandering is best understood as a member of a family of spontaneous-thought phenomena that also includes creative thought and dreaming. This dynamic framework can shed new (...) light on mental disorders that are marked by alterations in spontaneous thought, including depression, anxiety and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. (shrink)

The Ontology for Biomedical Investigations (OBI) is an ontology that provides terms with precisely defined meanings to describe all aspects of how investigations in the biological and medical domains are conducted. OBI re-uses ontologies that provide a representation of biomedical knowledge from the Open Biological and Biomedical Ontologies (OBO) project and adds the ability to describe how this knowledge was derived. We here describe the state of OBI and several applications that are using it, such as adding semantic expressivity to (...) existing databases, building data entry forms, and enabling interoperability between knowledge resources. OBI covers all phases of the investigation process, such as planning, execution and reporting. It represents information and material entities that participate in these processes, as well as roles and functions. Prior to OBI, it was not possible to use a single internally consistent resource that could be applied to multiple types of experiments for these applications. OBI has made this possible by creating terms for entities involved in biological and medical investigations and by importing parts of other biomedical ontologies such as GO, Chemical Entities of Biological Interest (ChEBI) and Phenotype Attribute and Trait Ontology (PATO) without altering their meaning. OBI is being used in a wide range of projects covering genomics, multi-omics, immunology, and catalogs of services. OBI has also spawned other ontologies (Information Artifact Ontology) and methods for importing parts of ontologies (Minimum information to reference an external ontology term (MIREOT)). The OBI project is an open cross-disciplinary collaborative effort, encompassing multiple research communities from around the globe. To date, OBI has created 2366 classes and 40 relations along with textual and formal definitions. The OBI Consortium maintains a web resource providing details on the people, policies, and issues being addressed in association with OBI. (shrink)

The data showed in this review exposes basic aspects that define organic foods and some factors that influence consumption by the population, ie, its production in the country and the motivations for the consumption of food produced in this system. This way of production, originated in the early decades in the 20th century, nowadays involves environmental, social and health aspects. Although the environment is a more evident aspect than other ones, economic output and potential beneficial to health are discussed further (...) in this description about organic foods. Brazil, has excelled in the growth of this type of farming, however holds the 6th position in the world and 2nd producer in Latin America, with grains and vegetables being the main products, although the livestock reaches the largest area. The consumption of these products is primarily motivated by the perception of organic food as healthier than other kinds of food. However, there are no conclusive studies about better nutritional value, where nutrient concentrations are often unchanged. In contrast the presence of more phytochemicals compounds and reduced pesticides’ content in vegetables, and lipid profile in animal products can justify the health benefits of the products obtained from the organic production system. (shrink)