The focus of this paper is one of James Prescott Joule’s scientific contributions: the laws of heat production by electric currents in conductors. In 1841, the 22 years old Joule published a paper with the title “On the heat evolved by metallic conductors of electricity, and in the cells of a battery during electrolysis” where he presented an experimental study of that phenomenon and proposed two laws that were allegedly supported by his trials. On closer inspection, both his laboratory work (...) and his inferences can be challenged. The emphasis of this article is an attempt to understand Joule’s experimental undertaking, its highpoints and shortcomings, by a detailed analysis of this specific episode and by studying the precedents of his work and subsequent advancements. It is possible to point out several serious deficiencies of that investigation, and Joule’s contemporaries, such as Edmond Becquerel and Heinrich Lenz, did criticize some of his flaws and undertook new experiments to provide a sound basis for those laws. Besides providing a historical examination of that specific episode, this article uses this case study to tackle some features of the nature of science that may contribute to scientific education. (shrink)

Introduction: The actions taken by the government to deal with the consequences of the coronavirus diseases 2019 pandemic caused different levels of restriction on the mobility of the population. The need to continue offering physical exercise to individuals after stroke became an emergency. However, these individuals may have barriers to adhere to the programs delivered remotely. There is a lack of evidence related to adherence, attendance, safety, and satisfaction of remote exercise programs for this population.Objective: The aim was to evaluate (...) adherence and barriers to attend a remote physical exercise program for individuals after stroke. We aimed to identify adherence and attendance rate of the remote physical exercise program ; to identify the safety of a remote physical exercise program ; and to identify the overall experience to participate in a remote program.Materials and methods: This is a longitudinal study, including 36 stroke survivors who already attended a face-to-face physical exercise program prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. The remote physical exercise program included sessions for 2 days/week for a duration of 22 weeks, with a total of 44 sessions, which were delivered asynchrony via recorded video sessions. As outcome measures, we performed two questionnaires to identify attendance, barriers, safety, and overall experience related to the program.Results: The adherence rate was 86. The attendance rate was 19, with a total of 8 sessions. The main barriers for lower attendance rate were as follows: lack of motor skills and physical fitness to workout in 80 reports, followed by no exercise companion in 44 reports. The remote physical program has been shown to be safe, and the overall experience was positive from the perspectives of the participants and the family members.Conclusion: Although the adherence rate was high, the attendance rate was low on the remote physical exercise program. The main barriers to attending the program remotely reflect the need of tailoring individually an asynchrony mode of delivering the sessions to individuals after stroke. Our results also indicate how the COVID-19 impacted the health conditions of stroke survivors. The program was safe, and the overall experience indicated a change in the mental, physical, and social health of individuals after stroke and their family members. (shrink)

The use of robots had already been proven to encourage the promotion of social interaction and skills lacking in children with Autism Spectrum Disorders, who typically have difficulties in recognizing facial expressions and emotions. The main goal of this research is to study the influence of a humanoid robot to develop socio-emotional skills in children with ASD. The children’s performance in game scenarios aiming to develop facial expressions recognition skills is presented. Along the sessions, children who performed the game scenarios (...) with the robot and the experimenter had a significantly better performance than the children who performed the game scenarios without the robot. The main conclusions of this research support that a humanoid robot is a useful tool to develop socio-emotional skills in the intervention of children with ASD, due to the engagement and positive learning outcome observed. (shrink)

In this article, we examine how the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child can be useful in pediatric bioethics. Adopted in 1989, the CRC reflects norms that have been deliberated upon for a long period of time and endorsed by most nations. The United States is now the only country that has not ratified the CRC.1 International human rights law shares many key moral concepts with clinical pediatric bioethics, and the CRC provides a considered language common to many (...) jurisdictions that can assist bioethicists in their daily practice and help health-care organizations in their policy development and international interactions. There may, however, be practical challenges with using the CRC in the practice of.. (shrink)

Our goal was to explore self‐care practices among men who have sex with men in the context of Mpox in Brazil. This study used qualitative research methods, including interviews and thematic analysis, to collect and analyze data from male participants across the Brazilian territory. The narratives unveil men's perspectives on self‐care, risk reduction, and health beliefs during the Mpox pandemic. Our findings highlight a multifaceted approach to self‐care among men, encompassing hygiene, physical contact management, mask usage, skin lesion vigilance, and (...) adherence to official guidelines. Men's attitudes toward sexual behaviors emphasize the importance of reducing sexual partners, practicing safe sex, and combating misinformation through accurate information dissemination. The development of these behaviors and self‐care practices can be facilitated by nurses guided by Dorothea Orem's Self‐Care Theory, supported by patient‐centered care, with strategies to address and confront the stigma associated with the disease and provide emotional support. Thus, the study underscores the pivotal role of self‐care in mitigating infection risks, especially in the context of emerging infectious diseases. It acknowledges the impact of socio‐cultural factors and healthcare policies on men's preventive measures. However, it also recognizes limitations, such as potential bias due to stigma concerns and a nonrepresentative sample. Ultimately, the research advocates for tailored education, promotion of gender equity, and healthcare empowerment to effectively manage health risks in such contexts. (shrink)

Making research data readily accessible during a public health emergency can have profound effects on our response capabilities. The moral milieu of this data sharing has not yet been adequately explored. This article explores the foundation and nature of a duty, if any, that researchers have to share data, specifically in the context of public health emergencies. There are three notable reasons that stand in opposition to a duty to share one’s data, relating to: (i) data property and ownership, (ii) (...) just distribution of benefits and burdens and (iii) the contemporary ethos of science. We argue each reason can be successfully met with corresponding rationale in favour of data sharing. Further support for data sharing has been echoed in policies of health agencies, funding bodies and academic institutions; in documents on the ethical conduct of biomedical research; and in discussions on the nature of public health. From this, we ascertain that sharing data is the morally sound default position. This article then highlights the key roles reciprocity and solidarity play in supporting the practice of data sharing. We conclude with recommendations to regard public health research data as a common-pool resource in order to build a framework for stable data sharing management. (shrink)

The distinction between propositional and doxastic justification has been of undisputed theoretical importance in a wide range of contemporary epistemological debates. Yet there are a host of intimately related issues that have rarely been discussed in connection with this distinction. For instance, the distinction not only applies to an individual’s beliefs, but also to group beliefs and to various other attitudes that both groups and individuals can take: credence, commitment, suspension, faith, and hope. Moreover, discussions of propositional and doxastic justification (...) have rarely focused on broader meta-epistemological issues, and yet meta-epistemological positions can have important implications for first-order views about this distinction. This volume addresses these and other issues by bringing together 16 essays that advance the state-of-the-art thinking on propositional and doxastic justification and explore how such thinking shapes and is shaped by a range of issues previously neglected in contemporary epistemology. (shrink)

Partindo do presuposto de que Heidegger foi o autor que mais influenciou a obra de Hans-Georg Gadamer, o presente artigo visa esclarecer os contornos desta influência, analisando alguns dos principais temas do pensamento gadameriano, a saber: a historicidade da existência humana, a reabilitação da categoria do preconceito, a arte, a linguagem e a verdade. Mostra ainda como a orientação humanista de Gadamer constitui o principal ponto de divergência relativamente a Heidegger. Defende, por conseguinte, que a hermenêutica filosófica de Gadamer pode (...) ser interpretada como uma apropriação humanista do pensamento heideggeriano. /// Taking for granted that Heidegger was the author that most deeply influenced Gadamer's work, the present article aims at a clarification of such influence by examining some of the key themes of Gadamer's thought: the historicity of human existence, the rehabilitation of prejudice, as well as the reflection on art, language, and truth. The article explains thus how Gadamer's humanism constitutes the main point of divergence from Heidegger. It claims, moreover, that Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics can be considered a humanistic appropriation of Heidegger's thought. (shrink)

Background: Demand for organisational ethics capacity is growing in health organisations, particularly among managers. The role of clinical ethicists in, and perspective on, organisational ethics has not been well described or documented in the literature. Objective: To describe clinical ethicists’ perspectives on organisational ethics issues in their hospitals, their institutional role in relation to organisational ethics, and their perceived effectiveness in helping to address organisational ethics issues. Design and Setting: Qualitative case study involving semi-structured interviews with 18 clinical ethicists across (...) 13 health organisations in Toronto, Canada. Results: From the clinical ethicists’ perspective, the most pressing organisational ethics issues in their organisations are: resource allocation, staff moral distress linked to the organisation’s moral climate, conflicts of interest, and clinical issues with a significant organisational dimension. Clinical ethicists were consulted in particular on issues related to staff moral distress and clinical issues with an organisational dimension. Some ethicists described being increasingly consulted on resource allocation, conflicts of interest, and other corporate decisions. Many clinical ethicists felt they lacked sufficient knowledge and understanding of organisational decision-making processes, training in organisational ethics, and access to organisational ethics tools to deal effectively with the increasing demand for organisational ethics support. Conclusion: Growing demand for organisational ethics expertise in healthcare institutions is reshaping the role of clinical ethicists. Effectiveness in organisational ethics entails a re-evaluation of clinical ethics training to include capacity building in organisational ethics and organisational decision-making processes as a complement to traditional clinical ethics education. (shrink)

Although various scholars underscore the importance of innovating responsibly in view of today's societal challenges, less attention has been paid to the entrepreneurial skillset, that is, the range of individual skills and organizational capabilities, that innovation-based organizations mobilize to deliver new responsible products and services. This paper thus explores the relationships between the entrepreneurial skillsets of 16 Canadian and Brazilian for-profit and not-for-profit organizations producing Responsible Innovations in Health (RIH) and their degree of responsibility. Our mixed methods study includes interviews (...) with entrepreneurs (n = 23) and fieldnotes as well as quantitative results from the RIH Assessment Tool. Our findings identify four skillset orientations—Technical, Technical + Business, Social, and Social + Business—that not only reflect (co)founders' training and entrepreneurial motivations but also a proclivity toward the consolidation of either “Technical” or “Social” skills and capabilities. Such consolidation is made possible by recruiting high-level executives with diverse backgrounds or by tapping on external knowledge sources (e.g., boards of directors, incubators, or volunteers). As five enterprises had no formal business skills, patterns associated to their overall RIH score (ranging from 1 to 5) reveal intriguing results. Organizations with a Social + Business skillset have a slightly lower RIH score (4.1) than those with a Social skillet (4.4) and those with a Technical + Business skillset have a slightly higher score (3.5) than those with a Technical skillset (3.0). The presence of business skills thus appears to mediate the relationship between entrepreneurial skillsets and the degree of responsibility, which may be linked to the distinct roles of ordinary (“doing things right”) and dynamic capabilities (“doing the right things”). These exploratory findings have scholarly and practical implications. First, the tensions and synergies characterizing responsible value creation should be approached by examining the complementary skills and capabilities that need to be assembled and consolidated. Second, the eight cases with a Social + Business skillset clarify the unique capabilities needed to produce highly responsible health innovations. Third, entrepreneurs with a scientific or engineering background should recognize that a Technical skillset is not enough. Fourth, recognizing that “falling in love with the cause” of RIH is not sufficient, investors and boards of directors should adequately support responsible entrepreneurs towards the proper orchestration of skills and capabilities that can reconcile economic and social goals. (shrink)

SummaryFrom 1996 to 2006, Nepal experienced a substantial fertility decline, with the total fertility rate dropping from 4.6 to 3.1 births per woman. This study examines the associations between progress towards universal primary and secondary schooling and fertility decline in rural Nepal. Several hypotheses regarding mechanisms through which education affects current fertility behaviour are tested, including: the school environment during women's childhood; current availability of schools; knowledge of educational costs; and women's own educational attainment. Data for the analysis come from (...) the 2003–04 Nepal Living Standards Survey, a nationally representative random sample of households, which includes detailed data on fertility, household expenditure, educational attainment, demographic characteristics and the use of social services. Census and administrative data are also used to construct district-level gross enrolment ratios for primary and secondary schools during the women's childhood. Discrete dependent variable modelling techniques are used to estimate the effects of the following variables on the probability of women giving birth in a given year: district-level gross enrolment ratios for primary and secondary schools during women's childhood; having had a child previously in school; women's own educational level; current school availability; and other covariates. Separate models are estimated for the overall sample of rural women of reproductive age, and for parity-specific sub-samples. The results suggest that district-level gross enrolment ratios for secondary schools and, in some instances, having had a previous child enrolled in school are significant determinants of fertility in rural areas. These results are highly independent of women's own educational levels. Overall, the results suggest that, in the rural Nepal context, mass schooling influences the fertility transition through both community- and household-level pathways. (shrink)

Historians and philosophers of science have examined the relationship between language and practice for a long time. Scholars have made important contributions to the field by attending to the social, cultural and economic contexts in which scientific paradigms are created and re-created. However, this article posits that while it is true that scientific practice and the artifacts they generate are both socially and discursively constructed and therefore, inextricable from the human contexts that produce them, these artifacts are not only texts (...) to be deciphered, but material things. This essay shows that the recalcitrant material dimension of my case study, a robotic moth, shapes the results of an experiment into the laws of aerodynamics in ways incommensurate with exclusively textual and/or rhetorical critiques. (shrink)

This book highlights some of the most pressing safety, ethical, legal and societal issues related to the diverse contexts in which robotic technologies apply. Focusing on the essential concept of well-being, it addresses topics that are fundamental not only for research, but also for industry and end-users, discussing the challenges in a wide variety of applications, including domestic robots, autonomous manufacturing, personal care robots and drones.

Context: Research in the contemplative field has focused on trainable capacities that foster self-regulation and integration. From a psychological perspective, mindfulness and personality research ….

Ion channels are transport proteins present in the lipid bilayers of biological membranes. They are involved in many physiological processes, such as the generation of nerve impulses, hormonal secretion, and heartbeat. Conformational changes in the ion channel-forming protein allow the opening or closing of pores to control the ionic flux through the cell membranes. The opening and closing of the ion channel have been classically treated as a random kinetic process, known as a Markov process. Here the time the channel (...) remains in a given state is assumed to be independent of the condition it had in the previous state. More recently, however, several studies have shown that this process is not random but a deterministic one, where both the open and closed dwell-times and the ionic current flowing through the channel are history-dependent. This property is called long memory or long-range correlation. However, there is still much controversy regarding how this memory originates, which region of the channel is responsible for this property, and which models could best reproduce the memory effect. In this article, we provide a review of what is, where it is, its possible origin, and the mathematical methods used to analyze the long-term memory present in the kinetic process of ion channels. (shrink)

Progressive supranuclear palsy is a movement disorder with prominent tau neuropathology. Brain diseases with abnormal tau deposits are called tauopathies, the most common of which is Alzheimer's disease. Environmental causes of tauopathies include repetitive head trauma associated with some sports. To identify common genetic variation contributing to risk for tauopathies, we carried out a genome-wide association study of 1,114 individuals with PSP and 3,247 controls followed by a second stage in which we genotyped 1,051 cases and 3,560 controls for the (...) stage 1 SNPs that yielded P ≤ 10-3. We found significant previously unidentified signals associated with PSP risk at STX6, EIF2AK3 and MOBP. We confirmed two independent variants in MAPT affecting risk for PSP, one of which influences MAPT brain expression. The genes implicated encode proteins for vesicle-membrane fusion at the Golgi-endosomal interface, for the endoplasmic reticulum unfolded protein response and for a myelin structural component. © 2011 Nature America, Inc. All rights reserved. (shrink)

IntroductionTranscranial magnetic stimulation is a consolidated procedure for the treatment of depression, with several meta-analyses demonstrating its efficacy. Theta-burst stimulation is a modification of TMS with similar efficacy and shorter session duration. The geriatric population has many comorbidities and a high prevalence of depression, but few clinical trials are conducted specifically for this age group. TBS could be an option in this population, offering the advantages of few side effects and no pharmacological interactions. Therefore, our aim is to investigate the (...) efficacy of TBS in geriatric depression.Clinical trial registration[https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/], identifier [NCT04842929]. (shrink)

Alternatives to convenience sampling (CS) are needed for HIV/STI surveillance of most-at-risk populations in Latin America. We compared CS, time space sampling (TSS), and respondent driven sampling (RDS) for recruitment of men who have sex with men (MSM) and transgender women (TW) in Lima, Peru. During concurrent 60-day periods from June-August, 2011, we recruited MSM/TW for epidemiologic surveillance using CS, TSS, and RDS. A total of 748 participants were recruited through CS, 233 through TSS, and 127 through RDS. The TSS (...) sample included the largest proportion of TW (30.7 %) and the lowest percentage of subjects who had previously participated in HIV/STI research (14.9 %). The prevalence of newly diagnosed HIV infection, according to participants' self-reported previous HIV diagnosis, was highest among TSS recruits (17.9 %) compared with RDS (12.6 %) and CS (10.2 %). TSS identified diverse populations of MSM/TW with higher prevalences of HIV/STIs not accessed by other methods. (shrink)

Yoga is believed to have beneficial effects on cognition, attenuation of emotional intensity and stress reduction. Previous studies were mainly performed on eastern experienced practitioners or unhealthy subjects undergoing concomitant conventional therapies. Further investigation is needed on the effects of yoga per se, as well as its possible preventive benefits on healthy subjects. We investigated the effects of yoga on memory and psychophysiological parameters related to stress, comparing yoga practice and conventional physical exercises in healthy men . Memory tests, salivary (...) cortisol levels and stress, anxiety, and depression inventories were assessed before and after 6 months of practice. Yoga practitioners showed improvement of the memory performance, as well as improvements in psychophysiological parameters. The present results suggest that regular yoga practice can improve aspects of cognition and quality of life for healthy individuals. An indirect influence of emotional state on cognitive improvement promoted by yoga practice can be proposed. (shrink)

During the early years of the COVID-19 pandemic, preclinical and clinical research were sped up and scaled up in both the public and private sectors and in partnerships between them. This resulted in some extraordinary advances, but it also raised a range of issues regarding the ethics, rigour, and integrity of scientific research, academic publication, and public communication. Many of the failures of scientific rigour and integrity that occurred during the pandemic were exacerbated by the rush to generate, disseminate, and (...) implement research findings, which not only created opportunities for unscrupulous actors but also compromised the methodological, peer review, and advisory processes that would usually identify sub-standard research and prevent compromised clinical or policy-level decisions. While it would be tempting to attribute these failures of science and its translation solely to the “unprecedented” circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic, the reality is that they preceded the pandemic and will continue to arise once it is over. Existing strategies for promoting scientific rigour and integrity need to be made more rigorous, better integrated into research training and institutional cultures, and made more sophisticated. They might also need to be modified or supplemented with other strategies that are fit for purpose not only in public health emergencies but in any research that is sped-up and scaled up to address urgent unmet medical needs. (shrink)