The US neutrino community gathered at the Workshop on the Intermediate Neutrino Program at Brookhaven National Laboratory February 4-6, 2015 to explore opportunities in neutrino physics over the next five to ten years. Scientists from particle, astroparticle and nuclear physics participated in the workshop. The workshop examined promising opportunities for neutrino physics in the intermediate term, including possible new small to mid-scale experiments, US contributions to large experiments, upgrades to existing experiments, R&D plans and theory. The workshop was organized into (...) two sets of parallel working group sessions, divided by physics topics and technology. Physics working groups covered topics on Sterile Neutrinos, Neutrino Mixing, Neutrino Interactions, Neutrino Properties and Astrophysical Neutrinos. Technology sessions were organized into Theory, Short-Baseline Accelerator Neutrinos, Reactor Neutrinos, Detector R&D and Source, Cyclotron and Meson Decay at Rest sessions.This report summarizes discussion and conclusions from the workshop. (shrink)

This volume has 41 chapters written to honor the 100th birthday of Mario Bunge. It celebrates the work of this influential Argentine/Canadian physicist and philosopher. Contributions show the value of Bunge’s science-informed philosophy and his systematic approach to philosophical problems. The chapters explore the exceptionally wide spectrum of Bunge’s contributions to: metaphysics, methodology and philosophy of science, philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of physics, philosophy of psychology, philosophy of social science, philosophy of biology, philosophy of technology, moral philosophy, social and political (...) philosophy, medical philosophy, and education. The contributors include scholars from 16 countries. Bunge combines ontological realism with epistemological fallibilism. He believes that science provides the best and most warranted knowledge of the natural and social world, and that such knowledge is the only sound basis for moral decision making and social and political reform. Bunge argues for the unity of knowledge. In his eyes, science and philosophy constitute a fruitful and necessary partnership. Readers will discover the wisdom of this approach and will gain insight into the utility of cross-disciplinary scholarship. This anthology will appeal to researchers, students, and teachers in philosophy of science, social science, and liberal education programmes. 1. Introduction Section I. An Academic Vocation Section II. Philosophy Section III. Physics and Philosophy of Physics Section IV. Cognitive Science and Philosophy of Mind Section V. Sociology and Social Theory Section VI. Ethics and Political Philosophy Section VII. Biology and Philosophy of Biology Section VIII. Mathematics Section IX. Education Section X. Varia Section XI. Bibliography. (shrink)

In this paper, I attempt to synthesize the two most influential contemporary ethical approaches that appeal to moral intuitions, viz., Rawlsian reflective equilibrium and Audi’s moderate intuitionism. This paper has two parts. First, building upon the work of Audi and Gaut, I provide a more detailed and nuanced account of how these two approaches are compatible. Second, I show how this novel synthesis can both (1) fully address the main objections to reflective equilibrium, viz., that it provides neither necessary nor (...) sufficient conditions for the justification of our moral beliefs and (2) help ethical intuitionism to deal with the fundamental problem of peer disagreement over our basic moral intuitions. In doing so, I sketch out a novel and attractive diachronic way of thinking about peer disagreement more generally. (shrink)

We are drowning in information, while starving for wisdom.Are the smartest people also the wisest? Not necessarily. While traditional intellectual reasoning and procedural knowledge have helped build the communities we live in, there is a growing scientific understanding that we need emotionally balanced and better-fitting prosocial frameworks for coping with the uncertainties and complexities of life and addressing new challenges of the modern world. We are now poised on the edge of a new science of wisdom.The concept of wisdom, long (...) considered the “pinnacle of insight into the human condition”, has been that of an intangible, subjective, culturally specific entity—an unscientific... (shrink)

Bioethics is defined by the authors as a form of knowledge about the permissible limits of manipulating human life in the range from birth to dying. A comparative analysis of the materials of the Conference in Jerusalem and the «Handbook on Bioethics for Judges» prepared by the UNESCO Department of Bioethics in Haifa, on the one hand, and Statements of the Church and Social Council on Biomedical Ethics of the Russian Orthodox Church, on the other, was conducted. It proves that (...) bioethics as a type of modern medical ethics exists and will exist in the near future in conservative and liberal forms. Disclosure of their content contributes to solving the problem of finding compromises in specific situations of medical practice. (shrink)

Detecting sensitive information considering privacy is a relevant issue on Online Social Networks (OSNs). It is often difficult for users to manage the privacy associated with their posts on social networks taking into account all the possible consequences. The aim of this work is to provide information about the sensitivity of the content of a publication when a user is going to share it in OSN. For this purpose, we developed a privacy-assistant agent that detects sensitive information. Based on this (...) information, the agent provides a message through a nudge mechanism warning about the possible risks of sharing the message. To avoid being annoying, the agent also considers the user’s previous behaviour (e.g. if he previously ignored certain nudges) and adapts the messages it sends to give more relevance to those categories that are more important to the user from the point of view of the privacy risk. This agent was integrated into the social network Pesedia. We analysed the performance of different models to detect a set of sensitive categories (i.e. location, medical, drug/alcohol, emotion, personal attacks, stereotyping, family and association details, personal details and personally identifiable information) in a dataset of tweets in Spanish. The model that obtained the best results (i.e. F1 and accuracy) and that was finally integrated into the privacy-assistant agent was transformer-based. (shrink)

Background: During the COVID-19 pandemic, frontline workers faced a series of challenges balancing family and work responsibilities. These challenges included making decisions about how to reduce COVID-19 exposure to their families while still carrying out their employment duties and caring for their children. We sought to understand how frontline workers made these decisions and how these decisions impacted their experiences.Methods: Between October 2020 and May 2021, we conducted 61 semi-structured interviews in English or Spanish, with individuals who continued to work (...) outside of the home during the pandemic and had children living at home. Interviews were recorded, transcribed verbatim, and analyzed using abductive methods.Results: Frontline workers experienced moral distress, the inability to act in accordance with their values and obligations because of internal or external constraints. Their moral distress was a result of the tensions they felt as workers and parents, which sometimes led them to feel like they had to compromise on either or both responsibilities. Individuals felt morally conflicted because 1) their COVID-19 work exposures presented risk that often jeopardized their family’s health; 2) their work hours often conflicted with their increased childcare responsibilities; and 3) they felt a duty to their colleagues, patients/customers, and communities to continue to show-up to work.Conclusions: Our findings point to a need to expand the concept of moral distress to include the perspectives of frontline workers outside of the healthcare professions and the fraught decisions that workers make outside of work that may impact their moral distress. Expanding the concept of moral distress also allows for a justice-based framing that can focus attention on the disparities inherent in much frontline work and can justify programmatic recommendations, like increasing paid childcare opportunities, to alleviate moral distress. (shrink)

Background Regulations on research ethics in France have evolved considerably over the past four years: the implementation of the Jardé law and of the General Data Protection Regulations have changed the landscape of research ethics for research involving or not involving human persons. In a context of creation of an Institutional Review Board at the University of Bordeaux, France, we sought to explore research ethics practices and perceptions in the medical community of our University Hospital. Methods A short questionnaire was (...) sent to all physicians of the University Hospital of Bordeaux. The questionnaire included closed questions and main topics were: physicians’ education in research ethics, ethics practices concerning researches non implying human persons, and physicians’ perceptions about current regulations. Results 86 questionnaires were sent back. If a majority of physicians have validated Good Clinical Practices trainings, there was a low rate of specific training on fundamental references in research ethics and a high proportion of responders do not consider themselves as educated in research ethics after completion of GCPs. Regulations on research ethics have many implications on medical research, especially by inducing changes in protocols in order to alleviate ethical requirements. Malpractices were acknowledged like false mention of positive opinion from an ethics committee. If If a majority of responders considers regulations as a positive answer to research ethics, a large majority considers it as a constraint and a complexification of research process. For 58%, regulations in research ethics are perceived as a hindrance for research initiatives. Conclusion Because of their impact on research process, regulations seem to constitute a scarecrow for physicians. Lack of training, bad representations and questionable practices highlight the need to improve education and to propose concrete guidance for medical researchers. (shrink)

The aim of the present investigation was to describe and to classify significant ethical problems encountered by the members of the staff during the daily clinical work at a hospital medical department. A set of definitions was prepared for the purpose, including the definition of a 'significant ethical problem'. During a three month period 426 inpatients and 173 outpatients were admitted. Significant ethical problems were encountered during the management of 106 in-patients (25 per cent) and 9 out-patients (5 per cent). (...) No significant difference was found between the frequency of ethical problems in female and male patients, but a positive correlation was noted between the number of problems and the patients' age. The problem types were classified according to a problem list. The results of this investigation suggest that greater attention must be paid to discussions about ethical problems among doctors and other categories of health personnel and that, among others, medical students ought to be taught the analysis of ethical problems. (shrink)

A total of 1918 loci, detected by the hybridization of 938 expressed sequence tag unigenes from 26 Triticeae cDNA libraries, were mapped to wheat homoeologous group 4 chromosomes using a set of deletion, ditelosomic, and nulli-tetrasomic lines. The 1918 EST loci were not distributed uniformly among the three group 4 chromosomes; 41, 28, and 31% mapped to chromosomes 4A, 4B, and 4D, respectively. This pattern is in contrast to the cumulative results of EST mapping in all homoeologous groups, as reported (...) elsewhere, that found the highest proportion of loci mapped to the B genome. Sixty-five percent of these 1918 loci mapped to the long arms of homoeologous group 4 chromosomes, while 35% mapped to the short arms. The distal regions of chromosome arms showed higher numbers of loci than the proximal regions, with the exception of 4DL. This study confirmed the complex structure of chromosome 4A that contains two reciprocal translocations and two inversions, previously identified. An additional inversion in the centromeric region of 4A was revealed. A consensus map for homoeologous group 4 was developed from 119 ESTs unique to group 4. Forty-nine percent of these ESTs were found to be homoologous to sequences on rice chromosome 3, 12% had matches with sequences on other rice chromosomes, and 39% had no matches with rice sequences at all. Limited homology was found between wheat ESTs on homoeologous group 4 and the Arabidopsis genome. Forty-two percent of the homoeologous group 4 ESTs could be classified into functional categories on the basis of blastX searches against all protein databases. (shrink)

Malignant cells are characterized by an increased content of endogenous formaldehyde formed as a by‐product of biosynthetic processes. Accumulation of formaldehyde in cancer cells is combined with activation of the processes of cellular formaldehyde clearance. These mechanisms include increased ALDH and suppressed ADH5/FDH activity, which oncologists consider poor and favorable prognostic markers, respectively. Here, the sources and regulation of formaldehyde metabolism in cancer cells are reviewed. The authors also analyze the participation of oncoproteins such as fibulins, FGFR1, HER2/neu, FBI‐1, and (...) MUC1‐C in the control of genes related to formaldehyde metabolism, suggesting the existence of two mutually exclusive processes in cancer cells: 1) production and 2) oxidation and elimination of formaldehyde from the cell. The authors hypothesize that the study of the anticancer properties of disulfiram and alpha lipoic acid – which affect the balance of formaldehyde in the body – may serve as the basis of future anticancer therapy. (shrink)

Volume 40, Issue 3, August 2019, Page 298-303.

L'ordre du discours is the inaugural lecture read by Foucault when he became the successor of J. Hyppolite at the Collège de France. The booklet is a good introduction to the work of the author. It gives a summary of his key ideas, with here and there a couple of suggestive examples. At the end we find an outline of the work the author hopes to fulfill in the future. Foucault sees human history and human civilization as a big effort (...) of discourse-creation. To engage in a discourse though, is a dangerous activity. This danger might be avoided by diminishing the quality of the discourse. It is, however, tricky to escape discourse itself. Foucault now, analyzes the mechanisms by which civilization tries to maintain the quality of the discourse while at the same time protecting the individual against the dangers of it. The author mentions three series of mechanisms: 1) Exclusion: Not every thing can be said. Things are prohibited of entering the discourse. Societies also exclude persons such as the fools from human discourse. Finally, human talk is divided between true and false talk, of which only true talk is to be taken seriously. 2) Appropriation of the unknown: Certain forms of discourse have been given priority, such as commentaries, pieces written by known authors and pieces fulfilling the formal characteristics of a discipline. 3) Limitation of speakers: Not everybody is allowed to use all forms of discourse. Rituals make sure that only appropriate persons talk. The existence of societies protecting a monopoly on certain forms of discourse or the attempt of doctrinal groups to impose orthodoxy are two further examples of the attempt to limit the possible speakers. This being the case, Foucault claims that his philosophical method will not try to find the truth of a discourse, but rather he will in the future show that there is a discontinuous variety of discourses; that a discourse is essentially a violation of the world of things and that we cannot hope to understand the inner meaning of a discourse. The two most provocative ideas put forward in this booklet are that truth is not in the first place an act of intelligence but an act of the will. Foucault talks of a will to truth. The second provocative idea is that all discourse is a violation of the world of the things. To sacrifice the search of truth for the search of the structure of discourse is the essence of structuralism, of which Foucault is the philosophical standard-bearer.—W. V. E. (shrink)

Purpose. Research of the phenomenon of human destructiveness in the context of metaphysical images and violence practices of late Modernism. Theoretical basis. The problem is that the philosophical reflection of violence as objectified, realized destructiveness of man is usually contextual in nature and is on the periphery of understanding its external manifestations. Accordingly, anthropological crisis remains behind the scenes, as evidenced by the devaluation of the humanistic potential of modern culture. That is why one should turn the focus from the (...) obvious, objectively conditioned incarnations of violence in the XXI century to the internal factors that are in the realm of existential. The departure from the consideration of violence as an abstract, faceless or ideologically colored evil allowed us to focus on man, his way of thinking, life and social orientations, feelings and internal contradictions, which find their expression in one or another form of destructiveness. Originality. Based on the works of M. Scheler and E. Fromm defining for philosophical anthropology and psychoanalysis, for the first time the conceptualization of positive and negative forms of manifestation of human destructiveness against the background of sociocultural transformations of late Modernism was carried out. It has been proved that its ontological principles are rooted in specifically human existence and relations with other members of society, while anthropological ones are directly connected with the endless struggle of the life, the vital with the spirit in man. Conclusions. Violence is a tool and a product of man’s transition to more mature and complex forms of existence. The interdependence of the violence and nonviolence practices ensures the progressive movement of humanity towards society humanization. This progress is accompanied by a natural internal conflict of personality, which can be both progressive and regressive. At the metaphysical level, destructiveness appears as a connection between the entropy of world existence as a whole and the instability of human existence itself, which is a complexly organized and open to the world system. Self-transcendence as an anthropological prerequisite for human destructiveness has a dual nature and combines negative and positive characteristics, the content and significance of which were revealed in the study. The authors are convinced that there is no other way to overcome the negative, malignant destructiveness, except for the incessant, daily gathering of life meanings around them and their development. After all, the loss of such core structures of the existence as the meaning, purpose and value of life has become a truly global problem for the modern world. Emphasis is placed on the need to keep in harmony the trinity of body-soul-spirit, which will allow a person in any social transformation to preserve and increase his integrity. (shrink)

Gauvin has, for many years, published articles about Hegel’s Phänomenologie des Geistes. What is novel about these articles is that they introduce a new method for the study of Hegel’s Phenomenology. What is exciting about these articles, is that Gauvin’s new method has allowed him to make important clarifications of Hegel’s thought. Thus his article "'Entfremdung’ et ‘Entäusserung’ dans la Phénoménologie de l'Esprit de Hegel" established that Hegel makes a systematic distinction between ‘Entfremdung’ and ‘Entäusserung’, although the first is the (...) result and the limit of the second. (shrink)

The appearance of Jesus Christ in his time was inevitable. Plato's ideas were to find a material embodiment on earth. The image of Christ as a balance, the harmony of light-spirit and darkness-matter, is the materialization of the ideal image.

The Kiki-Bouba effect comprises a relation between two abstract figures and two non-words: the star-shaped figure is called 'Kiki' and the rounded figure 'Bouba'. The effect is explained by a sound-vision synaesthesia: certain sounds are associated with certain shapes in a non-arbitrary manner.When we asked the participants to decide which of the two figures, the star-shaped or the rounded one, to call yin and which yang, some 85% choose the star-shaped figure as yin. There are previous cases of synaesthesia where (...) personality is attributed to numbers or letters. In our results, the word Kiki is overall happy, clever, small, thin, young, unpleasant, and nervous. The starshaped figure is overall clever, tall, small, slim, nervous, unpleasant, and upper-class. That is, the correspondence above all concerns the qualifying adjectives clever, unpleasant, and nervous, as well as the physical appearance small and thin. This brings us to the fat-thin effect. Cinema, literature, comics, and children's programmes are full of contrasting figures: Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, Laurel and Hardy , Asterix and Obelix, Tintin and Captain Haddock, Bert and Ernie , or the Spanish comic about very naughty twin boys called Zipi and Zape . Our main conclusion is that first names and last names are not entirely arbitrary. There is a correspondence between names and physical characteristics and concepts . The Kiki-Bouba effect is a semantic one. (shrink)

Prominent thinkers such as Jurgen Habermas and Michael Sandel are warning that biomedical enhancements will undermine fundamental political values. Yet whether biomedical enhancements will undermine such values depends on how biomedical enhancements will function, how they will be administered and to whom. Since only few enhancements are obtainable, it is difficult to tell whether these predictions are sound. Nevertheless, such warnings are extremely valuable. As a society we must, at the very least, be aware of developments that could have harmful (...) consequences. Indeed, if important values were to be jeopardized, we should take appropriate measures to protect them. This paper focuses on four central values: solidarity, personal responsibility, equality and autonomy. It delineates the conditions under which biomedical enhancements would undermine these values. It also details the circumstances under which these values would be unaffected by enhancements as well as those under which they would be promoted. Specifying these conditions is valuable; it would enable society to prepare appropriate ethical guidelines and policy responses in advance. (shrink)

Aims and background: The present work assessed the impact of two decrees on ethics committees in Italy, aimed at bringing the national laws on the conduct of clinical trials into line with the rest of the EC, and regulating and facilitating not-for-profit research.Material and methods: Prospectively collected data from an Italian multicentre study were examined with respect to the ethics review process. Administrative and time elements of the review process were audited. Main outcome measures were time between the application submission (...) and the ethics committee definitive opinion, type and number of application submission forms, number of ethics committees that refused fee exemption, and time between the ethics committee approval and the administrative authorisation.Results: A total of 134 local research ethics committees were approached. Application submission procedures and application forms varied greatly; paper submission was mandatory. The median time from submission to approval was 72 days. Only two LRECs refused the fee exemption. The median time from LREC approval to administrative agreement was 50 days and only 9.6% of local authorities came to a verbal agreement with the sponsor.Conclusions: Italian LRECs are still not sufficiently efficient in complying with the Directive 2001/20/EC requirement . Better coordination of LRECs work is needed although the optimal level of coordination between them is still not known. In the meantime, national guidelines are needed concerning the application of Directive 2001/20/EC. The behaviour of Italian LRECs towards not-for-profit research was excellent although only the fee exemption was requested. (shrink)