Background: The Declaration of Helsinki, the World Medical Association’s statement of ethical guidelines regarding medical research, is published in the three official languages of the WMA: English, French and Spanish.Methods: A detailed comparison of the three official language versions was carried out to determine ways in which they differed and ways in which the wording of the three versions might illuminate the interpretation of the document.Results: There were many minor linguistic differences between the three versions. However, in paragraphs 1, 6, (...) 29, 30 and in the note of clarification to paragraph 29, there were differences that could be considered potentially significant in their ethical relevance.Interpretation: Given the global status of the Declaration of Helsinki and the fact that it is translated from its official versions into many other languages for application to the ethical conduct of research, the differences identified are of concern. It would be best if such differences could be eliminated but, at the very least, a commentary to explain any differences that are unavoidable on the basis of language or culture should accompany the Declaration of Helsinki. This evidence further strengthens the case for international surveillance of medical research ethics as has been proposed by the WMA. (shrink)

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)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 20 (2000) 115-125 [Access article in PDF] Pretending to Be Buddhist and Christian: Thich Nhat Hanh and the Two Truths of Religious Identity Jeffrey CarlsonDePaul University Nagarjuna replies: "The teaching by the Buddhas of the dharma has recourse to two truths: / The world-ensconced truth and the truth which is the highest sense. / Those who do not know the distribution (vibhagam) of the two kinds of (...) truth / Do not know the profound 'point' (tattva) in the teaching of the Buddha. / The highest sense [of the truth] is not taught apart from practical behavior, / And without having understood the highest sense one cannot understand nirvana. / Emptiness, having been dimly perceived, utterly destroys the slow-witted. / It is like a snake wrongly grasped or [magical] knowledge incorrectly applied." 1I would like to offer a response to Thich Nhat Hanh's book Living Buddha, Living Christ, a response which suggests that Nhat Hanh embodies and propounds this classical Buddhist notion of "two truths," in a way that sheds much light on the very notion of "religious identity."The fact that Buddhist teachings involve two kinds of truths is a familiar one in Buddhist studies. T.R.V. Murti describes worldly truth as "truth so called; truth as conventionally believed in common parlance.... It is the truth that does not do any violence to what obtains in our everyday world, being in close conformity with linguistic conventions and ideas." 2 Edward Conze notes that "... in some places the Buddhas have spoken of a 'self', in others they have taught a 'notself', and in addition they have also taught that there is neither a self nor a notself. Candrakirti convincingly explains this aphorism by pointing out that the Buddhas are physicians rather than teachers, that they always consider the mentality and spiritual maturity of their interlocutors, and vary their teachings accordingly." 3Ultimate truth, again characterized by Streng, is "the realization of dependent coorigination whereby there is no attachment to fabricated 'things'--not even to the formulation of dependent coorigination." 4 [End Page 115] 1. Thich Nhat Hanh on Conventional Truth and Religious Identity Thich Nhat Hanh writes: "We need roots to be able to stand straight and grow strong. When young people come to Plum Village, I always encourage them to practice in a way that will help them go back to their own tradition and get re-rooted. If they succeed at becoming reintegrated, they will be an important instrument in transforming and renewing their tradition." 5 An advocate of interreligious dialogue, he nonetheless maintains that "sharing does not mean wanting others to abandon their own spiritual roots and embrace your faith. That would be cruel. People are stable and happy only when they are firmly rooted in their own tradition and culture. To uproot them would make them suffer. There are already enough people uprooted from their tradition today, and they suffer greatly, wandering around like hungry ghosts, looking for something to fill their spiritual needs. We must help them return to their tradition." 6He cites the suffering caused by Christian missionaries who, he writes, "came to Vietnam several hundred years ago, [and] urged us to abandon the cult of ancestral worship and to abandon our Buddhist tradition. Later, when they offered to help us in refugee camps in Thailand and Hong Kong, they also urged us to give up our roots. The good will to help and to save us was there, but the correct understanding was not. People cannot be happy if they are rootless." 7Nhat Hanh tells a compelling story of six children he met in Sri Lanka. Coming upon them Nhat Hanh began chanting in Pali, "I take refuge in the Buddha. I take refuge in the Dharma. I take refuge in the Sangha." Nhat Hanh recounts that four of the children joined their palms and chanted, while the other two stood respectfully. "I motioned to the two children who were not chanting to join us. They smiled, placed their palms together and chanted in Pali, 'I... (shrink)

Millions of people in various parts of the world and within each country are presently surviving in categories described as “mere”, “miserable”, “idealistic”, “irresponsible”, and “acceptable”. The term “acceptable survival” is proposed as a bioethical goal of global survival, looking beyond the 21st century to the year 3000 and beyond. The frequently used alternative term is “sustainable development”, but in most contexts this is an economic concept and does not imply any moral or ethical constraints, except where these are spelled (...) out. Acceptable survival, broadly defined, means acceptable to a universal sense of what is morally right and good and what will continue in the long term. The expanding dominant, but irresponsible, world culture is not an acceptable type of development because it cannot survive in the long term. [M&GS 1995:185–191]. (shrink)

Throughout Christianity, its activities are in one way or another connected to the historical reality of its time. Usually, for different epochs, the strength of these bonds was different, but during the Middle Ages, they were significantly stronger than before and after. It is here that perhaps the most important moment was the rise of Christianity, which spread over a relatively short period of time almost throughout Europe. It was then - and never again in all its history - that (...) the Church was able to participate in the formation of all aspects of its contemporary life, in accordance with its spirit. When solving this task, it inevitably came in close contact with the "world" and the various forms in which it was represented. (shrink)

In this paper, we describe the use of legal ontologies as a basis to improve IT support for professional judges. As opposed to most legal ontologies designed so far, which are mostly based on dogmatic and normative knowledge, we emphasize the importance of professional knowledge and experience as an important pillar for constructing the ontology. We describe an intelligent FAQ system for junior judges that intensively use the ontology.

The state of globalization that modern humanity has entered, translates the problem of morality from the plan of choosing an individual into a social and even planetary context. This brings us back to the original moral concept of P. Teillard de Chardin, which is the subject of analysis in this article.

Teyyar eschatology, as a doctrine of the ultimate destiny of mankind, is deeply rooted in the concept of the ultimate goal, which is regarded as a true result, though it emerges as a tool designed to fill some of the emptiness created by humanity in the course of natural science practice. Teillard felt that the deplorable state of modern mankind was the result of his neglect of eschatology, his inability to adapt to the needs of his activities, and his lack (...) of courage in further design. "A lighter skyscraper of hope is being constructed," G. Grespi notes. The belief that the Earth is exhausting its limited resources necessarily leads to the thought of the destruction of the Earth. (shrink)

There Could Not Be A More Fundamental Approach To The Various Problems Of Education Than The One That The Learned Author, Who Is A Doyen In The Field Of ...

The issues related to the multilingual situation in modern Bashkiria are discussed in the article, configuration of multilingualism is given on the basis of extensive and representative data of the latest census. Multilingual issues are discussed in the context of the social functions of philology, as well as a set of measures of a regulatory nature undertaken by the government and society to ensure social, ethno-cultural and inter-ethnic stability. The author believes that the language situation with multilingualism depends on a (...) number of sociolinguistic variables, but the invariant feature of all modifications of multilingualism in Bashkiria should be considered as a factor of the maximum level of language loyalty towards the Russian language. This factor provides a comprehensive and decisive impact on the conditions and status of multilingualism in the republic. (shrink)