Building on evidence for embodied representations, we investigated whether Spanish spatial terms map onto the NEAR/FAR perceptual division of space. Using a long horizontal display, we measured congruency effects during the processing of spatial terms presented in NEAR or FAR space. Across three experiments, we manipulated the task demands in order to investigate the role of endogenous attention in linguistic and perceptual space mapping. We predicted congruency effects only when spatial properties were relevant for the task but not when attention (...) was allocated to other features. Results showed faster responses for words presented in Near-space in all experiments. Consistent with our hypothesis, congruency effects were observed only when a reaching estimate was requested. Our results add important evidence for the role of top-down processing in congruency effects from embodied representations of spatial terms. (shrink)

Building on evidence for embodied representations, we investigated whether Spanish spatial terms map onto the NEAR/FAR perceptual division of space. Using a long horizontal display, we measured congruency effects during the processing of spatial terms presented in NEAR or FAR space. Across three experiments, we manipulated the task demands in order to investigate the role of endogenous attention in linguistic and perceptual space mapping. We predicted congruency effects only when spatial properties were relevant for the task but not when attention (...) was allocated to other features. Results showed faster responses for words presented in Near-space in all experiments. Consistent with our hypothesis, congruency effects were observed only when a reaching estimate was requested. Our results add important evidence for the role of top-down processing in congruency effects from embodied representations of spatial terms. (shrink)

This volume is a serious attempt to open up the subject of European philosophy of science to real thought, and provide the structural basis for the interdisciplinary development of its specialist fields, but also to provoke reflection on the idea of ‘European philosophy of science’. This efforts should foster a contemporaneous reflection on what might be meant by philosophy of science in Europe and European philosophy of science, and how in fact awareness of it could assist philosophers interpret and motivate (...) their research through a stronger collective identity. The overarching aim is to set the background for a collaborative project organising, systematising, and ultimately forging an identity for, European philosophy of science by creating research structures and developing research networks across Europe to promote its development. (shrink)

This volume is a serious attempt to open up the subject of European philosophy of science to real thought, and provide the structural basis for the interdisciplinary development of its specialist fields, but also to provoke reflection on the idea of ‘European philosophy of science’. This efforts should foster a contemporaneous reflection on what might be meant by philosophy of science in Europe and European philosophy of science, and how in fact awareness of it could assist philosophers interpret and motivate (...) their research through a stronger collective identity. The overarching aim is to set the background for a collaborative project organising, systematising, and ultimately forging an identity for, European philosophy of science by creating research structures and developing research networks across Europe to promote its development. (shrink)

Antonio Argandoña, Norbert Bilbeny, Victòria Camps, Miquel Calsina, Àngel Castiñeira, Cristian Palazzi, Ferran Requejo, Raimon Ribera, Begoña Román, Ferran Sàez, Miquel Seguró, Francesc Torralba, Josep Maria Vallès, Rosamund Thomas Ramon Llull Journal of Applied Ethics 2012 3(3):9-16.

The problem of how the brain produces consciousness, subjectivity and "something it is like to be" remains one of the greatest challenges to a complete science of the natural world. While various scientists and philosophers approach the problem from their own unique perspectives and in the terms of their own respective fields, Biophysics of Consciousness: A Foundational Approach attempts a consilience across disparate disciplines to explain how it is possible that an objective brain produces subjective experience. This volume unites the (...) cr me de la cr me of physicists, neuroscientists, and psychiatrists in the attempt to understand consciousness through a foundational approach encompassing ontological, evolutionary, neurobiological, and Freudian interpretations with the focus on conscious phenomena occurring in the brain. By integrating the perspectives of these diverse disciplines with the latest research and theories on the biophysics of the brain, the book tries to explain how what John Searle calls a "conscious field" can be an adaptive and causal element in the natural world. (shrink)

The sensitive dependence on initial conditions (SDIC) associated with nonlinear models imposes limitations on the models’ predictive power. We draw attention to an additional limitation than has been underappreciated, namely, structural model error (SME). A model has SME if the model dynamics differ from the dynamics in the target system. If a nonlinear model has only the slightest SME, then its ability to generate decision-relevant predictions is compromised. Given a perfect model, we can take the effects of SDIC into account (...) by substituting probabilistic predictions for point predictions. This route is foreclosed in the case of SME, which puts us in a worse epistemic situation than SDIC. (shrink)

The United Kingdom Climate Impacts Programme’s UKCP09 project makes high-resolution projections of the climate out to 2100 by post-processing the outputs of a large-scale global climate model. The aim of this paper is to describe and analyse the methodology used and then urge some caution. Given the acknowledged systematic, shared errors of all current climate models, treating model outputs as decision-relevant projections can be significantly misleading. In extrapolatory situations, such as projections of future climate change, there is little reason to (...) expect that post-processing of model outputs can correct for the consequences of such errors. This casts doubt on our ability, today, to make trustworthy probabilistic projections at high resolution out to the end of the century. (shrink)

The United Kingdom Climate Impacts Program’s UKCP09 project makes high-resolution forecasts of climate during the 21st century using state of the art global climate models. The aim of this paper is to introduce and analyze the methodology used and then urge some caution. Given the acknowledged systematic errors in all current climate models, treating model outputs as decision relevant probabilistic forecasts can be seriously misleading. This casts doubt on our ability, today, to make trustworthy, high-resolution predictions out to the end (...) of this century. (shrink)

When sharing a task with another person that requires turn taking, as in doubles games of table tennis, performance on the shared task is similar to performing the whole task alone. This has been taken to indicate that humans co-represent their partner’s task share, as if it were their own. Task co-representation allows prediction of the other’s responses when it is the other’s turn, and leads to response conflict in joint interference tasks. However, data from our lab cast doubt on (...) the view that task co-representation and resulting response conflict are the only or even primary source of effects observed in task sharing. Recent findings furthermore suggest another potential source of interference in joint task performance that has been neglected so far: Self-other discrimination and conflict related to agent identification (i.e., determining whether it is “my” or the other’s turn). Based on these findings we propose that participants might not always co-represent what their partner is supposed to do, but instead co-represent that another agent is responsible for part of the task, and when it is his turn. We call this account the actor co-representation account. (shrink)

Climate change and decarbonization raise complex justice questions that researchers and policymakers must address. The distributions of greenhouse gas emissions rights and mitigation efforts have dominated justice discourses within scenario research, an integrative element of the IPCC. However, the space of justice considerations is much larger. At present, there is no consistent approach to comprehensively incorporate and examine justice considerations. Here we propose a conceptual framework grounded in philosophical theory for this purpose. We apply this framework to climate mitigation scenarios (...) literature as proof of concept, enabling a more holistic and multidimensional investigation of justice. We identify areas of future research, including new metrics of service provisioning essential for human well-being. [Can be freely read by clicking the ReadCube link below.]. (shrink)

Machine ethics and robot rights are quickly becoming hot topics in artificial intelligence and robotics communities. We will argue that attempts to attribute moral agency and assign rights to all intelligent machines are misguided, whether applied to infrahuman or superhuman AIs, as are proposals to limit the negative effects of AIs by constraining their behavior. As an alternative, we propose a new science of safety engineering for intelligent artificial agents based on maximizing for what humans value. In particular, we challenge (...) the scientific community to develop intelligent systems that have human-friendly values that they provably retain, even under recursive self-improvement. (shrink)

En el Gorgias, Platón distingue el modo de ser y actuar propio del filósofofrente al modo de ser y actuar propio del retórico. Para esto, usa comocriterio a la misma retórica a partir de la distinción retórica aduladora – retóricacientífica. Frente a esto, Aristóteles realiza una toma de posición quereformula las críticas platónicas referentes a la posibilidad de una technêretórica. El presente texto confrontara las condiciones que según el Gorgiasdebe cumplir la retórica para llegar a ser technê con las características (...) que,según Aristóteles, tiene la retórica a partir de su relación con la dialéctica. (shrink)

Over the past decade, ethical leadership has increasingly become one of the most popular topics in the areas of leadership and business ethics. As a result, there now exists a substantial body of empirical research addressing ethical leadership issues, but the findings reported by this body of research are highly fragmented. The topic has advanced to the stage where a review and synthesis of existing literature can provide great value and help move the scholarly conversation forward. The primary purposes of (...) this article are to review empirical findings from the ethical leadership literature utilizing a framework consisting of the antecedents, mediators, moderators and outcomes of ethical leadership, and suggest a set of interesting research opportunities, thereby facilitating future investigation. We base our synthesis on a review of 62 empirical studies on ethical leadership that were published between 2005 and mid-2015. (shrink)

Wittgenstein's conception of the general form of a truth function given in thesis 6 can be presented as a sort of a trade-off: the author of the Tractatus is unable to reconcile the simplicity of his original idea of a series of forms with the simplicity of his generalisation of Sheffer's stroke; therefore, he is forced to sacrifice one of them. As we argue in this paper, the choice he makes – to weaken the logical constraints put on the concept (...) of a series of forms, thus effectively metaphorising that concept for the sake of upholding the N-operation's role of generating the series – is unfortunate. An actual expansion of a series of truth functions as defined in 6 would require either making decisions at each step (Anscombe) or outwardly rejecting the concept of a series (Sundholm). However, neither is faithful to Wittgenstein's own fundamental intuitions regarding the nature of logic. For this reason, a different trade-off that prioritises upholding the basic features of a series of forms over the simplicity of the operation that generates that series seems to be much more reasonable. We offer such a trade-off by developing the schema already present in the Tractatus (5.101). The key element of our alternative solution is the construction of an operation that can perform the task of producing all consecutive truth functions of a given collection of atomic propositions as an invariant difference between any base and its successor throughout the series. We define it as a composition of three functions (in an algebraic sense): the first turns a symbol of a given truth function into a binary number, the second increments that number, the third turns the result back into a symbol of another truth function. We also show how the operation can be defined by means of a different notation without invoking binary arithmetic. (shrink)

We introduce a tool for analysing models of $\text {CT}^-$, the compositional truth theory over Peano Arithmetic. We present a new proof of Lachlan’s theorem that the arithmetical part of models of $\text {CT}^-$ are recursively saturated. We also use this tool to provide a new proof of theorem from [8] that all models of $\text {CT}^-$ carry a partial inductive truth predicate. Finally, we construct a partial truth predicate defined for a set of formulae whose syntactic depth forms a (...) nonstandard cut which cannot be extended to a full truth predicate satisfying $\text {CT}^-$. (shrink)

In a recent paper, Jie Gao (Synthese 194:1901–17, 2017) has argued that there are acceptance-based counterexamples to the knowledge norm for practical reasoning (KPR). KPR tells us that we may only rely on known propositions in practical reasoning, yet there are cases of practical reasoning in which we seem to permissibly rely on merely accepted propositions, which fail to constitute knowledge. In this paper, I will argue that such cases pose no threat to a more broadly conceived knowledge-based view of (...) practical reasoning. I will first motivate the view that rational acceptance depends on a knowledge-based condition being met. I will then show how KPR can be amended—yielding what I call KPR+—to include this condition. I will argue that KPR+ not only avoids Gao’s counterexample, but harbours additional explanatory power by providing an account of the normative role of acceptance in practical reasoning. Finally, I will defend KPR+ against objections by employing theoretical tools that are readily available to those sympathetic to knowledge-based views. (shrink)

Using the behavioral agency model, we analyze how two compensation design characteristics, pay-performance sensitivity and duration of CEO compensation, affect corporate social performance. We find that the performance sensitivity of CEO pay is negatively associated with poor social performance but also negatively affects strong social performance. These results suggest that pay-performance sensitivity increases the relevance of potential negative consequences of poor social performance. However, the ‘insurance’ benefits of strong social performance may also become less relevant. With respect to the duration (...) of CEO compensation, we find that it reduces poor social performance. This finding confirms arguments that a long-term compensation time horizon increases the perceived threat that the negative effects of poor social performance will become visible. With our findings, we integrate behavioral agency theory with the traditional stakeholder views. (shrink)

What is the future of Philosophy of education? Or as many of scholars and thinkers in this final ‘future-focused’ collective piece from the philosophy of education in a new key Series put it, what are the futures—plural and multiple—of the intersections of ‘philosophy’ and ‘education?’ What is ‘Philosophy’; and what is ‘Education’, and what role may ‘enquiry’ play? Is the future of education and philosophy embracing—or at least taking seriously—and thinking with Indigenous ethicoontoepistemologies? And, perhaps most importantly, what is that (...) ‘Future’? These debates have been located in the work of diverse scholars: from the West, from Global South, from indigenous thinkers. In this collective piece, we purposefully juxtapose diverse takes on the future of these intersections. We have given up the urge to organise, place together, separate with subheadings or connect the paragraphs that follow. Instead, we let these philosophers of education and thinkers who use philosophical texts and ideas to sit together in one long read as potentially ‘strange and unusual bedfellows’. This text urges us to understand how these scholars and thinkers perceive our educational philosophical futures, and how the work and thinking they have done on thinking about what the future of that new key in philosophy of education may look like is embedded in a much deeper and richer literature, and personal experience. (shrink)

The current research is based on Senninger’s Learning Zone Model applied to the tourists’ comfort zone. This model was created in 2000 and it proved to be useful in many applied areas: Psychology, Sociology, Marketing and Management. This modes is a behavioral one and shows how a person can justify his action based on previous tested experiences or dares to step beyond in fear, learn or growth zone. Our research is extending the existent area of expertise to tourism. We aimed (...) at exploring whether the tourists’ apprehension toward choosing their next destination from a comfort zone perspective or rather from the other zones’ perspectives such as fear, learning or growth. To meet this purpose we conducted a mixed method: firstly a qualitative one, an in-depth interview based on Delphi method with 10 tourism specialists and secondly an online survey on 208 Generation Z tourists. The interviews were meant to help developing a 20 items scale to measure from which of the 4 zones are the respondents making the choice of the future travel destination. Our conclusions show that Gen Z tourists display behaviors that can be associated with learning or growth zones rather than the comfort zone. This is relevant when choosing the next travel destination, because our findings could bring about a new approach to promoting tourist destinations as part of various products. As a result, a large range of managerial tools can better adapt the promotion messages to the target market from a new psychological perspective. (shrink)

Plagiarism and other transgressions of the norms of academic integrity appear to be a persistent problem among upper secondary students. Numerous surveys have revealed high levels of infringement of what appear to be clearly stated rules. Less attention has been given to students’ understanding of academic integrity, and to the potential misconceptions and false beliefs that may make it difficult for them to comply with existing rules and handle complex real-life situations.In this paper we report findings from a survey of (...) European upper secondary students’ views on issues relating to academic integrity. We relate these findings to the students’ training about academic integrity, self-reported level of questionable behavior and country of study.A total of 1654 students at 51 institutions located in 6 European countries participated in the study. The participants generally believed they had a good understanding of the rules applying to them and knew how to behave in compliance with norms of academic integrity. The results indicate, however, that often, in practice, this belief was mistaken. Many students had an inadequate understanding of core elements of academic integrity. They were uncertain about how to act, and they struggled in the handling of complex situations that require context-sensitive judgement. While some differences between countries were identified, they were modest and exhibited no clear pattern. Our results also suggest that reducing students’ level of uncertainty and, to a lesser degree, improving their level of knowledge could lead them to engage less in certain types of questionable behaviours. Surprisingly, the effect of academic training is modest and ambiguous. The study also confirms that perception of peer behaviour has the strongest association with student engagement in questionable behaviours. Thus, academic integrity at the upper secondary level cannot be explained simply in terms of individual ethics or knowledge. (shrink)

This article is about an early period in the history of Adventism as a future world-class denomination. The activity of the most famous theologian scientists whose works influenced the formation of the foundations of Adventist doctrine is depicted. The formation of the organizational structure of Adventists in North America, as well as in other continents, is being scrutinized.

This paper presents an in-depth analysis of the anatomy of both thermodynamics and statistical mechanics, together with the relationships between their constituent parts. Based on this analysis, using the renormalization group and finite-size scaling, we give a definition of a large but finite system and argue that phase transitions are represented correctly, as incipient singularities in such systems. We describe the role of the thermodynamic limit. And we explore the implications of this picture of critical phenomena for the questions of (...) reduction and emergence. (shrink)

The article looks into the issues, outlined in M. Baker's The Atoms of Language: The Mind's Hidden Rules of Grammar. This work is notable for the parametric theory of the languages, set out in it, according to which languages are different, nevertheless retaining the ability to be compared. That can be further supported by the assertion that the differences among languages are determined by "a smallish number of discreet elements, called parameters."What is more, the diversity of language reveals a certain (...) regularity, very much resembling that of Mendeleev's periodic table of chemical elements. Our research team of professional linguists and philosophers put this claim to a critical analysis, the results of which are featured in this article. One of the major ones among them is the supposition that Baker, in accordance with the traditions of Chomsky generative linguistics, turns temporal continuums into special relations. He did that without discussing the consequences of such move, which made it impossible to develop the psychological and linguistic aspect of the subject raised by him. (shrink)

In this study, we implemented a new numerical method known as the Chebyshev Pseudospectral method for solving nonlinear delay differential equations having fractional order. The fractional derivative is defined in Caputo manner. The proposed method is simple, effective, and straightforward as compared to other numerical techniques. To check the validity and accuracy of the proposed method, some illustrative examples are solved by using the present scenario. The obtained results have confirmed the greater accuracy than the modified Laguerre wavelet method, the (...) Chebyshev wavelet method, and the modified wavelet-based algorithm. Moreover, based on the novelty and scientific importance, the present method can be extended to solve other nonlinear fractional-order delay differential equations. (shrink)

The need for innovative development of healthcare institutions is determined by the necessity to increase the efficiency of organizational processes based on the formation of new models of cooperation, which will make it possible to get access to new technologies and knowledge. The goal of the study is to determine the parameters of the impact of innovative open cooperation strategy and the strategy of innovative closed cooperation of healthcare institutions on the effectiveness of their organizational structure in the context of (...) dissemination and the use of knowledge. Simulation modeling was applied to generate the most effective organizational management structure in the context of innovative cooperation and knowledge exchange within the organizational processes “Inside-out” and “Inside-in”. It is substantiated that the strategies of innovative cooperation “Open Innovation/Closed Innovation” have a significant impact on the organizational structure of management of healthcare institutions in terms of the “degree of centralization” (Dci), “degree of mediation” (Dii), and “degree of centralization of powers” (Dpi). The values of the selected criteria range from 25,52% to 61,50% in the case of Dii, and from 34,53% to 52,63% in the case of Dci, which indicates a higher efficiency of organizational knowledge exchange processes in healthcare institutions, which adhere to the Open Innovation strategy of innovative cooperation. Therefore, there are significant differences in the effectiveness of the management’s organizational structure depending on the degree of openness of innovative cooperation of healthcare institutions. The strategy of innovative openness allows increasing the number and quality of connections in the context of knowledge exchange between the subjects (actors, agents) of the organizational structure (in a broad sense, considering internal and external levels of externality) of healthcare institutions, regardless of the distance between them and the level of similarity. (shrink)

Whether nature is valuable on its own (intrinsic values) or because of the benefits it provides to humans (instrumental values) has been a long-standing debate. The concept of relational values has been proposed as a solution to this supposed dichotomy, but the empirical validation of its intuitiveness remains limited. We experimentally assessed whether intrinsic/relational values of sentient beings/non-sentient beings/ecosystems better explain people’s sense of moral duty towards global nature conservation for the future. Participants from a representative sample of the population (...) of Singapore (n = 1508) were randomly allocated to two “the last human” scenarios. We found that the best predictor of such a sense of moral duty for future nature conservation is the recognition of the intrinsic values of sentient beings. Our results suggest that the concern for animal welfare may enhance rather than compete with the sense of moral duty towards nature conservation. (shrink)

In recent publications we have drawn attention to the fact that if the dynamics of a model is structurally unstable, then the presence of structural model error places in-principle limits on the model’s ability to generate decision-relevant probability forecasts. Writing with a varying array of co-authors, Eric Winsberg has now produced at least four publications in which he dismisses our points as unfounded; the most recent of these appeared in this journal. In this paper we respond to the arguments of (...) Winsberg and his co-workers, and we point out that their criticisms fail. We take this as an opportunity to restate and explain our arguments, and to point to fruitful directions for future research. (shrink)

This new and revised edition provides a comprehensive dictionary of Indian philosophical terms. Terms are provided in both devanagari and roman transliteration along with their English translations.

The received wisdom in statistical mechanics is that isolated systems, when left to themselves, approach equilibrium. But under what circumstances does an equilibrium state exist and an approach to equilibrium take place? In this paper we address these questions from the vantage point of the long-run fraction of time definition of Boltzmannian equilibrium that we developed in two recent papers. After a short summary of Boltzmannian statistical mechanics and our definition of equilibrium, we state an existence theorem which provides general (...) criteria for the existence of an equilibrium state. We first illustrate how the theorem works with a toy example, which allows us to illustrate the various elements of the theorem in a simple setting. After a look at the ergodic programme, we discuss equilibria in a number of different gas systems: the ideal gas, the dilute gas, the Kac gas, the stadium gas, the mushroom gas and the multi-mushroom gas. In the conclusion we briefly summarise the main points and highlight open questions. (shrink)

Faculty continue to address academic dishonesty in their classes. In this follow-up to an earlier study on general perceived faculty student cheating, using a sample of business school faculty, we compared three levels of faculty classification: full-time non-tenure track, full-time tenured/tenure-track, and part-time adjuncts. Results showed that NTTs perceived higher levels for three different types of student cheating, i.e., paper-based, forbidden teamwork, and hiring someone to take an exam. In addition, NTTs were more likely to report a student for cheating. (...) NTTs reported a higher course load and average class size, and average class size was positively related to all five types of cheating measured. Given the predicted increase in NTTs across all disciplines, making sure that all faculty,, have the resources needed to deter student cheating is important. All faculty have an obligation to hold students accountable for their behavior. Individual integrity is paramount; and it is what employers expect. Regardless of the chosen field or discipline, an employer’s expectations, in terms of character, is to hire individuals who possess a level of honesty that is above reproach. Addressing cheating is an obligation that all faculty need to address purposefully. Providing resources to help faculty address cheating is critical. Resources might include conflict resolution training to provide instructors with the necessary guidance so that they can better handle these difficult situations. This is important not only for the student while in school, but also for a university/college’s reputation. (shrink)

That we may rely on our knowledge seems like a platitude. Yet, the view that knowledge is sufficient for permissible reliance faces a major challenge: when much hangs on whether we know, relying on our knowledge seems to license irrational action. Unfortunately, extant proposals to meet this challenge (Hawthorne & Stanley, 2008; Williamson, 2005a; Schulz, 2017, 2021b) either fail to make the correct predictions about high-stakes cases or, as I will argue, face a substantial objection. In this paper, I will (...) offer two novel proposals for defending the sufficiency of knowledge for permissible reliance. My favoured proposal, which I call Flexible Fallibilism, is based on the idea that stakes can affect how we rely on our knowledge and how our knowledge determines what is rational for us to do. Besides making the correct predictions about high-stakes cases, I will argue that Flexible Fallibilism also provides us with a knowledge-based account of when to simplify our practical reasoning. Afterwards, I will present another proposal, which I call Dual Infallibilism, that combines two recent claims by Moss (2013, 2018) and Jackson (2019a) about credal knowledge and the metaphysics of doxastic states. While the offered proposals share various virtues, I will argue that we ultimately should prefer Flexible Fallibilism. (shrink)

Scientific discourse is rife with passages that appear to be ordinary descriptions of systems of interest in a particular discipline. Equally, the pages of textbooks and journals are filled with discussions of the properties and the behavior of those systems. Students of mechanics investigate at length the dynamical properties of a system consisting of two or three spinning spheres with homogenous mass distributions gravitationally interacting only with each other. Population biologists study the evolution of one species procreating at a constant (...) rate in an isolated ecosystem. And when studying the exchange of goods, economists consider a situation in which there are only two goods, two perfectly rational agents, no restrictions on available information, no transaction costs, no money, and dealings are done immediately. Their surface structure notwithstanding, no competent scientist would mistake descriptions of such systems as descriptions of an actual system: we know very well that there are no such systems. These descriptions are descriptions of a model-system, and scientists use model-systems to represent parts or aspects of the world they are interested in. Following common practice, I refer to those parts or aspects as target-systems. What are we to make of this? Is discourse about such models merely a picturesque and ultimately dispensable façon de parler? This was the view of some early twentieth century philosophers. Duhem (1906) famously guarded against confusing model building with scientific theorizing and argued that model building has no real place in science, beyond a minor heuristic role. The aim of science was, instead, to construct theories, with theories understood as classificatory or representative structures systematically presented and formulated in precise symbolic.. (shrink)

Ethical concerns of Internet users continue to rise. Accordingly, several scholars have called for systematic empirical research to address these issues. This study examines the conceptualization and measurement of consumers' perceptions regarding the ethics of online retailers. Also, this research represents a first step into the analysis of the relationship between CPEOR, consumers' general Internet expertise and reported positive word of mouth. Results, from a convenience sample of 357 online shoppers, suggest that CPEOR can be operationalized as a second-order construct (...) composed of four dimensions: security, privacy, fulfillment, and non-deception. Our findings also indicate that consumers' general Internet expertise significantly improves CPEOR and CPEOR are strongly predictive of consumers' WOM. Managerial and research implications are offered. (shrink)

This is an extensive review of recent work on the foundations of statistical mechanics.

Proteoglycan 4 (PRG4), first identified in synovial fluid, is an extracellular matrix structural protein in the joint implicated in reducing shear at the cartilage surface as well as controlling adhesion‐dependent synovial growth and regulating bulk protein deposition onto the cartilage. However, recent evidence suggests that it can bind to and effect downstream signaling of a number of cell surface receptors implicated in regulating the inflammatory response. Therefore, we pose the hypothesis: Does PRG4 regulate the inflammatory response and maintain tissue homeostasis? (...) Based on these novel findings implicating PRG4 as an inflammatory signaling molecule, we will present and discuss several hypotheses regarding potential mechanisms by which PRG4 may be able to regulate inflammation. If future studies can demonstrate that PRG4 is a potent inflammatory mediator, this will change current paradigms in the musculoskeletal and ophthalmological fields regarding the how the inflammatory microenvironment is regulated in these tissues and potentially others. (shrink)