This elegant, accessible artfully illuminates the concept of infinity with its striking drawings.

PREFACE In this book on the Einstein Theory of Relativity the attempt is made to introduce just enough mathematics to HELP and NOT to HINDER the lay reader/ lay ...

Violence sells, Americans have what sometimes seems to be an insatiable appetite for it. Depictions and descriptions of violence saturate our culture. songs urge us to rape women, kill police officers, and commit suicide. Movies portray-indeed they glorifyviolence as an intrinsic element of every imaginable plot line.Despite substantial evidence that an individual’s repeated exposure to portrayals of violence is associated with significantly increased likelihood that the individual will commit aggressive acts against others, no legal regime currently regulates such portrayals either (...) on television, in music, in movies, or in video games. Neither Congress, the Federal Communications Commission, the Federal Trade Commission, nor any state legislature has yet mustered the political will to impose substantial or systematic legal constraints upon producers or purveyors of violent images. Official censorship is rightly to be feared, but unreflective invocations of our commitment to freedom of speech provide incomplete justification for our legal regime’s apparent indifference to the possibility that media-induced violence may impose substantial costs on innocent victims. (shrink)

Violence sells, Americans have what sometimes seems to be an insatiable appetite for it. Depictions and descriptions of violence saturate our culture. songs urge us to rape women, kill police officers, and commit suicide. Movies portray-indeed they glorifyviolence as an intrinsic element of every imaginable plot line.Despite substantial evidence that an individual’s repeated exposure to portrayals of violence is associated with significantly increased likelihood that the individual will commit aggressive acts against others, no legal regime currently regulates such portrayals either (...) on television, in music, in movies, or in video games. Neither Congress, the Federal Communications Commission, the Federal Trade Commission, nor any state legislature has yet mustered the political will to impose substantial or systematic legal constraints upon producers or purveyors of violent images. Official censorship is rightly to be feared, but unreflective invocations of our commitment to freedom of speech provide incomplete justification for our legal regime’s apparent indifference to the possibility that media-induced violence may impose substantial costs on innocent victims. (shrink)

Advances in immunotherapy pave the way for vaccines that target not only infections, but also unhealthy behaviors such as smoking. A nicotine vaccine that eliminates the pleasure associated with smoking could potentially be used to prevent children from adopting this addictive and dangerous behavior. This paper offers an ethical analysis of such vaccines. We argue that it would be permissible for parents to give their child a nicotine vaccine if the following conditions are met: (1) the vaccine is expected to (...) result in a net benefit to each individual vaccinated, (2) the expected harms from the side effects of the vaccine are lower than the non-voluntary harms of smoking, and (3) there are no less manipulative methods available that are as effective at preventing smoking initiation. Finally, we show how the framework developed here could be used to analyze the ethics of other chemical interventions designed to modify children’s behavior. (shrink)

Unlike the most well‐characterized prokaryotic polymerase, E. Coli DNA pol I, none of the eukaryotic polymerases have their own 5′ to 3′ exonuclease domain for nick translation and Okazaki fragment processing. In eukaryotes, FEN‐1 is an endo‐and exonuclease that carries out this function independently of the polymerase molecules. Only seven nucleases have been cloned from multicellular eukaryotic cells. Among these, FEN‐1 is intriguing because it has complex structural preferences; specifically, it cleaves at branched DNA structures. The cloning of FEN‐1 permitted (...) establishment of the first eukaryotic nuclease family, predicting that S. cerevisiae RAD2 (S. pombe Rad13) and its mammalian homolog, XPG, would have similar structural specficity. The FEN‐1 nuclease family includes several similar enzymes encoded by bacteriophages. The crystal structures of two enzymes in the FEN‐1 nuclease family have been solved and they provide a structural basis for the interesting steric requirements of FEN‐1 substrates. Because of their unique structural specificities, FEN‐1 and its family members have important roles in DNA replication, repair and, potentially, recombination. Recently, FEN‐1 was found to specifically associate with PCNA, explaining some aspects of FEN‐1 function during DNA replication and potentially in DNA repair. (shrink)

It has been unclear why certain defined DNA regions are consistently sites of chromosomal translocations. Some of these are simply sequences of recognition by endogenous recombination enzymes, but most are not. Recent progress indicates that some of the most common fragile sites in human neoplasm assume non‐B DNA structures, namely deviations from the Watson–Crick helix. Because of the single strandedness within these non‐B structures, they are vulnerable to structure‐specific nucleases. Here we summarize these findings and integrate them with other recent (...) data for non‐B structures at sites of consistent constitutional chromosomal translocations. BioEssays 28: 480–494, 2006. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Human severe combined immune deficiency (SCID) is the most serious inherited immunological deficit. Recent work has revealed defects in the predominant pathway for double‐strand break repair called nonhomologous DNA end joining, or NHEJ. Progress in the biochemistry and genetics of NHEJ and of human SCID has proven to be synergistic between these two fields in a manner that covers the range from biochemical etiology to considerations about possible gene therapy for the B− SCID patients. BioEssays 25:1061–1070, 2003. © 2003 Wiley (...) Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Suicide among Veterans experiencing or at risk for homelessness remains a significant public health concern. Conducting research to understand and meet the needs of this at-risk population remains challenging due to myriad factors. To address this challenge, the United States Department of Veterans Affairs convened the Health Services Research and Development Suicide Prevention in Veterans Experiencing Homelessness: Research and Practice Development meeting, bringing together subject-matter experts in the fields of homelessness and suicide prevention, both from within and outside of VA. (...) During the meeting, attendees identified 10 potential research priorities at the intersection of suicide prevention and homelessness. After the meeting, Delphi methodology was used to achieve consensus on the relative importance of the identified research domains. Through this iterative Delphi process, agreement was reached regarding the need to increase understanding of barriers and facilitators to suicide risk assessment and emergency intervention for Veterans experiencing homelessness by examining the perspectives of both Veterans and healthcare providers. Elucidating the complex relationships between risk periods, subgroups, suicide means, and drivers of suicide among Veterans experiencing homelessness was also considered a top priority. This article documents the Delphi process and provides a research agenda for researchers, funding agencies, and policymakers to prioritize the most relevant and potentially impactful research domains aimed at preventing suicide among Veterans experiencing or at risk for homelessness. (shrink)

De senere år har pleie- og omsorgstjenesten i mange norske kommuner startet med ulike former for etikkarbeid, oftest initiert av KS’ prosjekt “Samarbeid om etisk kompetanseheving”. Hensikten med vår studie var å evaluere innsatsen i de kommunene som deltok i prosjektet fra starten av, med vekt på hvilke tiltak som var iverksatt, hvilke virksomheter dette omfattet, og om tiltakene har fortsatt utover prosjektperioden. Studien har et kvalitativt design. Materialet er hovedsakelig basert på telefonintervjuer med kontaktpersoner for etikksatsingen i 34 kommuner. (...) Det transkriberte materialet er analysert ved kvalitativ innholdsanalyse. Med unntak av fem kommuner som aldri kom i gang med etikkarbeidet, hadde de fleste startet etikkrefleksjon innenfor flere tjenester, oftest i sykehjem og hjemmetjenester. Noen kommuner hadde imidlertid ikke klart å videreføre etikkarbeidet utover en prosjektperiode. Det var stor variasjon både i etikkarbeidets forankring i kommunen, omfang, hyppighet og metoder. Et gjennomgående funn er vektlegging av behovet for etikkkompetanse og oppfølging av dem som skal lede etikkarbeidet. Flertallet av kommunene som fortsatt gjennomfører etikkrefleksjon, tar utgangspunkt i egen praksis, men et mindretall anvender strukturerte metoder. Dersom etikkarbeidet i kommunen skal være levedyktig over tid, bør arbeidet forankres på flere nivåer i organisasjonen, og de som skal lede dette arbeidet, bør få styrket sin kompetanse i etikk og etikkrefleksjon.Nøkkelord: etikk, evaluering, kommunehelsetjenestenEnglish summary: Building ethical competence in Norwegian municipalities: What has been done and what has been sustainable?“Cooperation for building ethics competence” is a national project aimed to stimulate moral reflection and build competence in ethics in community health services in Norway. This article is based on an evaluation of the activities implemented by the first 34 participating municipalities, exploring which measures were implemented, which services and employees were involved, and if the measures are sustainable. The study has a qualitative design, and the data mainly consists of telephone interviews with “key” persons in 34 municipalities. With the exception of five municipalities that never really started ethics work, the majority had implemented ethical reflection in several areas, most often in nursing homes and home care services. There was great variation with regard to the implementation. Many had tried a variety of reflection models, and only a minority of the municipalities were using a structured method of ethical reflection. A consistent finding is the need for more competence; many of those who run ethical reflection are reported to need more competence both in ethics and methods for systematic reflection. There were also great variations in how well the ethics projects were anchored within the municipality. To make ethical interventions sustainable, this study indicates the importance of strong anchoring within the municipality, the need for ethical competence, as well as good methods for structuring ethical reflection. (shrink)

This essay on the social history of logic instruction considers the programmatic writings of Carnap/Neurath, but especially in the widely read book by Lillian Lieber, Mits, Wits and Logic, where Mits is the man in the street and Wits the woman in the street. In the ‘pre-Toulmin’ days it was seriously argued that the intense study of formal logic would create a more rational frame of mind and have many beneficial effects upon the social and political life. It (...) arose from the conviction that most metaphysical conundrums, religious and political problems and even fanaticism had their root in the irrationality of ordinary discourse, which had to be replaced by the more logical ‘ideal language’ of Principia Mathematica. The enthusiastic promotion of formal logic occurred at a time when it was widely thought that minds could be ‘made over’, ‘reprogrammed’ by proper intervention. This stands in stark contrast to the motivation for teaching informal logic and critical thinking, as it becomes apparent in a 1981 exchange between Ralph Johnson and Gerald Massey in Teaching Philosophy. Most of this essay focuses on Lillian Lieber, an earnest and enthusiastic advocate of the cause of formal logic, and on the reasons for the widespread conviction that, for the sake of peace and social harmony, formal logic should, if possible, be taught to every man, woman and child. (shrink)

In recent years, there has been a wide-ranging debate about the neo-republican principle of non-domination. Neo-republicans argue that domination is a capacity for one to intentionally use arbitrary power to interfere in someone’s life. Critics of neo-republicanism argue that this definition of freedom as non-domination precludes a structural analysis of domination, which would explain and critique the ways in which societies produce structural domination unintentionally. The article focuses on capitalism’s labor process and its labor markets. It argues that critics are (...) correct to think that the neo-republican principle of non-domination has an insufficient scope, but that an alternative account of structural domination should still support the neo-republican idea that agency must be involved. Otherwise, we might simply fail to explain the social processes that reproduce structural domination. What is needed is to explain how the labor process creates incentives for agents to intentionally produce structures that have unintended, yet dominating effects, and in turn, how the intentions of agents are conditioned by their social positions. Domination is thus agential and structural. (shrink)

This article explores an under-examined theme, which is who or what is the working class and what is wrong with the situation that members of this class share. It argues that class divisions impose a unique harm for a diverse and interdependent group within capitalist societies both in spite and because of differences among group members. Class matters not just because it creates economic groups in which some are rich and others are poor, but because competition creates conditions that militate (...) against solidarity, toward cleavage and conflict. Class is a constraint on collective self-determination and, therefore, a source of domination. (shrink)

In this article, I will outline an assessment model that allows instructors to continuing assigning term papers and argumentative papers without compromising the authenticity of student assessment. This path forward relies upon a pseudo flipped classroom model in which students will complete a scaffolded term paper through a series of in-class assessments that build upon previously completed components. The final steps of completing this assignment will require producing a draft and final version of a traditional term paper outside of the (...) classroom but only after the instructor ensures they have critically thought through the preceding components independently. The intention is to maintain the nuance, critical thinking, engagement with primary and secondary sources, and depth of content comprehension that a thoughtful paper requires, while also ensuring that students are completing the work themselves and not merely outsourcing bits and pieces of it to LLMs. (shrink)

Розкрито сутність поняття «рейтинг». Доведено значущість рейтингової оцінки для суб’єктів фінансового ринку, зокрема для страхових компаній, потенційних страхувальників, інвесторів та кредиторів.

The relationship between traumatic experiences and subsequent distress is not well understood, and little research focuses on the lived experience of psychological trauma. I draw on Louis Sass’s phenomenological taxonomy to address this lacuna. I present his differentiation between relations of phenomenological causality and implication and demonstrate that his taxonomy can be applied to experiences of trauma. Relations of phenomenological causality and implication can be identified in the genesis and constitution of post-traumatic distress. My adaptation of Sass’s taxonomy will furthermore (...) offer an extension and development of his account, applying it to the study of post-traumatic experiences and elaborating it in the process. I shall demonstrate that whether experiences occur synchronically or diachronically is not essential to their categorization in terms of phenomenological implication and causality, respectively. I will show that an alteration in perception or behavior post trauma might temporally succeed the traumatizing event while, at the same time, being implied in the experience of the event. Thereby, I demonstrate how phenomenology may contribute to a detailed understanding of experiences of trauma. Scrutiny of traumatic experiences furthermore promises to contribute to the philosophical discourse on causality, implication, and temporal experience. (shrink)

Systematic ethics support in community health services in Norway is in the initial phase. There are few evaluation studies about the significance of ethics reflection on care. The aim of this study was to evaluate systematic ethics reflection in groups in community health , - from the perspectives of employees participating in the groups, the group facilitators and the service managers. The reflection groups were implemented as part of a research and development project.

Their nursing experience and/or training may lead students preparing for the nursing profession to have less moral distress and more favorable attitudes towards a hastened death compared with those preparing for other fields of study. To ascertain if this was true, 66 undergraduates (54 women, 9 men, 3 not stated) in southeastern USA completed measures of moral distress and attitudes towards hastening death. Unexpectedly, the results from nursing and non-nursing majors were not significantly different. All the present students reported moderate (...) moral distress and strong resistance to any efforts to hasten death but these factors were not significantly correlated. However, in the small sample of nurses in training, the results suggest that hastened death situations may not be a prime reason for moral distress. (shrink)

Ethics support in primary health care has been sparser than in hospitals, the need for ethics support is probably no less. We have, however, limited knowledge about how to develop ethics support that responds to primary health-care workers’ needs. In this article, we present a survey with a mixture of closed- and open-ended questions concerning: How frequent and how distressed various types of ethical challenges make the primary health-care workers feel, how important they think it is to deal with these (...) challenges better and what kind of ethics support they want. Five primary health-care institutions participated. Ethical challenges seem to be prominent and common. Most frequently, the participants experienced ethical challenges related to scarce resources and lack of knowledge and skills. Furthermore, ethical challenges related to communication and decision making were common. The participants welcomed ethics support responding to their challenges and being integrated in their daily practices. (shrink)

I thank Jane Sedlakova and Manuel Trachsel for their work on situating conversational artificial intelligence’s (CAI) potential role in psychotherapy. In their article, Sedlakova and Trachsel argue...

Using samples from the U.S. and Puerto Rico, we examine cross-cultural differences in cultural value dimensions, and relate these to act and rule utilitarian orientations, and ethical decision making of business professionals. Although these places share the same legal environment, culturally they are distinct. In addition to tests of between-group differences, a model in which utilitarian orientation mediates the influence of cultural values on ethical decisions was evaluated at the individual level of analysis. Results indicated national culture differences on three (...) cultural values, but no between-group differences on utilitarian orientations and ethical decisions. Significant indirect effects were found; act utilitarian orientation mediated the effects of two values activity orientation and universalism on ethical decision making. Implications for international management practices and business ethics are discussed. (shrink)

With my research, I wish to contribute to the discussion of post-traumatic psychopathologies from a phenomenological perspective. The main question I pursue is to what extent PTSD can be understood as an intersubjective psychopathology and which implications this view might have. In this paper, I argue that the mode of perception allowing for intersubjective experience is vulnerable to disruptions through traumatic events. I begin with a short elaboration on what intersubjectivity entails before proceeding to illustrate how it can be impaired. (...) Then, I focus on the concept of empathy as a mode of perception: I propose that due to a disruption of the ability to empathize an individual suffering from PTSD may cease to experience the other as another subject that offers possibilities for interaction. The traumatized individual is thus unable to establish meaningful connections with others. I offer some implications this view might entail for thinking about trauma treatment. (shrink)

The Norwegian Parliament has decided to give priority to ethics in municipal health services. This priority is supposed to raise competence in ethics within municipal health services. As part of the national project, the participating municipalities were encouraged to develop and carry out local projects. In this article, we present a local ethics project in one of the participating municipalities in central eastern Norway. The local project for raising competence in ethics was carried out in cooperation with researchers at the (...) Centre for Medical Ethics (CME) at the University of Oslo. Most people agree that ethics are important in health services. However, there are many ways to increase competence in ethics and to stimulate ethical reflection. In this article we present a broad overview of this local ethics project, but special focus will be put on presenting the actions that have been used for increasing the level of ethical competence and stimulating ethical reflection among the participants. We describe our evaluation of the project and the research we carried out. Explanations will be given for the thought process behind the decisions that were made. (shrink)

This study ascertained reports of assent (affirmative agreement) and permission (agreement by an adult fully capable of being informed) in 114 children's research articles in 1990 in Child Development (CD), Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology (JCCP), Journal of Pediatric Psychology, and Journal of Clinical Child Psychology. Of the research projects, 43% failed to specify permission, and 68.5% failed to specify assent. JCCP reported assent significantly more than CD. Assent was reported significantly more in research with older children than with (...) younger children. This lack of sensitivity to assent and permission suggests that many authors, reviewers, and editors consider reporting assent and permission unessential. We recommend specifying assent and permission in all manuscripts, highlighting children's research issues in graduate training, and using specific safeguards when conducting research with children. (shrink)

The treatment of employees during downsizing and corporate restructuring raises many ethical issues. To provide a common framework for understanding ethical decisions facing organizations delivering the news of dismissal to affected employees, Integrative Social Contracts Theory and the research on social exchange was used to integrate existing research on employee dismissal. Of particular importance was determining the criteria necessary to manage the dismissal process within ethical boundaries. Three basic criteria, which together represent a variety of contractual and transactional obligations, are (...) proposed as necessary for an ethical approach to dismissal; 1) advance warning of the job loss, 2) open communication, and 3) institutionalized support services. The frequency with which organizations meet these criteria is examined using a geographically dispersed, cross-organizational sample of 770 involuntarily displaced professional employees. In addition, the effect of such an ethical approach to dismissal on individual psychological and financial outcomes is examined. Findings are discussed as they relate to the implicit contract between employee and employer and organizations' responsibility to employees during corporate restructuring. (shrink)