This paper seeks to explore the implementation of corporate ethical culture and policies as an adjunct to formal forms of corporate governance. The insurance industry utilises a variety of external governance structures, but is almost unique in that stock companies (which are exposed to an external market for corporate control) and mutual companies (which are owned by a subset of their customers) are in active competition. A questionnaire survey of senior executives in U.K. insurance companies was undertaken to explore the (...) implementation of ethical policies and codes, to investigate ethical attitudes, and to analyze the extent to which these policies and attitudes varied among companies. The results suggest that ethical policies have a higher profile and ethical attitudes and behaviour are more positive in mutual as opposed to stock insurance companies. These findings support the contention that a strong corporate ethical culture may be utilised to enhance formal corporate governance instruments. (shrink)

DNA topoisomerases are enzymes that can modify, and may regulate, the topological state of DNA through concerted breaking and rejoining of the DNA strands. They have been believed to be directly involved in DNA excision repair, and perhaps to be required for the control of repair as well. The vicissitudes of this hypothesis provide a noteworthy example of the dangers of interpreting cellular phenomena without genetic information and vice versa.

Tara Smith's book on Rand's ethics is reviewed by Stephen Hicks for *Philosophy in Review.*.

This essay results from a common interest in the history of emotions shared by an academic with appointments in philosophy and psychiatry (Charland) and a literary historian (White). Where our interests converge is in the early modern concept of 'the passions,' as explanatory of what we now call mental illness. The task we have set ourselves is to see how this might: (a) be exemplified in a 'case study' of the dramatic revelation of Leontes's jealousy in the first half of (...) William Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale, and his 'cure' which takes sixteen years. Both events have troubled literary critics as implausible, lacking in realistic motivation, and clumsy as narrative devices, but can be explained in terms of theories of the passions ; and (b) open up a greater, modern understanding of irrational, pathological states, their onset and termination, by using as an explanatory model the early modern understanding of passions as revived and refined in the nineteenth century by Théodule Ribot. Janus-like, this chapter faces into the past and the future (our present) via a play written in 1610 that is still performed to receptive audiences today. We hope to show that the theory can illuminate a playtext, and that the play can revivify the theory, and to contend that historical analysis can shed light on modern clinical problems. The particular historical distinction which lies at the heart of our approach derives from early modern terminology offered by Thomas Wright in his book, The Passions of the Minde in Generall (first published in 1601; corrected, enlarged and augmented in 1604), and presented in more modern fashion in the nineteenth century by Théodule Ribot, in his La Psycholgie des sentiments * We dedicate this essay to Philippa Maddern, whose inspiration has generated so much inter-disciplinary research in the history of emotions and has brought so many like-minded scholars into fertile contact—in our cases, linking Western Ontario and Western Australia. (shrink)

We argue that there is a conflict among classical theism's commitments to divine simplicity, divine creative freedom, and omniscience. We start by defining key terms for the debate related to classical theism. Then we articulate a new argument, the Aloneness Argument, aiming to establish a conflict among these attributes. In broad outline, the argument proceeds as follows. Under classical theism, it's possible that God exists without anything apart from Him. Any knowledge God has in such a world would be wholly (...) intrinsic. But there are contingent truths in every world, including the world in which God exists alone. So, it's possible that God contingently has wholly intrinsic knowledge. But whatever is contingent and wholly intrinsic is an accident. So, God possibly has an accident. This is incompatible with classical theism. Finally, we consider and rebut several objections. (shrink)

The central theme of this book concerns the structure of narratives and the analysis of a special class of narrative sentences. This seemingly specialized technical job has surprisingly broad and fruitful application. In the course of a single connected argument the author manages to throw light on a wide range of problems that have puzzled philosophical students of history including the relation between speculative philosophy of history and history proper, the verification of statements about the past, the alleged relativism of (...) historical interpretation, the distinction between "history" and "chronicle," the nature of historical explanation, and the debate about methodological individualism. The argument also draws upon and contributes to discussions dealing with some broader issues generally carried on outside the context of the philosophy of history such as the logic of temporal language and the problem of future contingencies. The approach is fresh and exciting, the style both clear and lively.—R. C. S. (shrink)

Current UK legislation is impacting upon the feasibility and cost-effectiveness of medical record-based research aimed at benefiting the NHS and the public heath. Whereas previous commentators have focused on the Data Protection Act 1998, the Health and Social Care Act 2001 is the key legislation for public health researchers wishing to access medical records without written consent. The Act requires researchers to apply to the Patient Information Advisory Group for permission to access medical records without written permission. We present a (...) case study of the work required to obtain the necessary permissions from PIAG in order to conduct a large scale public health research project. In our experience it took eight months to receive permission to access basic identifying information on individuals registered at general practices, and a decision on whether we could access clinical information in medical records without consent took 18 months. Such delays pose near insurmountable difficulties to grant funded research, and in our case £560 000 of public and charitable money was spent on research staff while a large part of their work was prohibited until the third year of a three year grant. We conclude by arguing that many of the current problems could be avoided by returning PIAG’s responsibilities to research ethics committees, and by allowing “opt-out” consent for many public health research projects. (shrink)

Some practical problems in the teaching of ethics to medical students are described. The definition of the objectives of the course remains the central aspect, and is more important than the specific content. The use of student projects, buzz groups, case histories and discussion points is described. There is a need for student assessment or examination at the end of the course. The teachers require a broad background in philosophy, clinical medicine and teaching skills. The learning of the teachers may (...) be as important as that of the students. (shrink)

Aim To explore the views in non-Western cultures about ending the lives of damaged newborns.Method 254 university students from India and 150 from Kuwait rated the acceptability of ending the lives of newborns with genetic defects in 54 vignettes consisting of all combinations of four factors: gestational age ; severity of genetic defect ; the parents’ attitude about prolonging care ; and the procedure used .Results Four clusters were identified by cluster analysis and subjected to analysis of variance. Cluster I, (...) labelled ‘Never Acceptable’, included 4% of the Indians and 59% of the Kuwaitis. Cluster II, ‘No Firm Opinion’, had little variation in rating from one scenario to the next; it included 38% of the Indians and 18% of the Kuwaitis. In Cluster III, ‘Parents’ Attitude+Severity+Procedure’, all three factors affected the ratings; it was composed of 18% of the Indians and 16% of the Kuwaitis. Cluster IV was called ‘Severity+Parents’ Attitude’ because these had the strongest impact; it was composed of 40% of the Indians and 7% of the Kuwaitis.Conclusions In accordance with the teachings of Islam versus Hinduism, Kuwaiti students were more likely to oppose ending a newborn's life under all conditions, Indian students more likely to favour it and to judge its acceptability in light of the different circumstances. (shrink)

We have considered a simple word game called the word-morph. After making our participants play a stipulated number of word-morph games, we have analyzed the experimental data. We have given a detailed analysis of the learning involved in solving this word game. We propose that people are inclined to learn landmarks when they are asked to navigate from a source to a destination. We note that these landmarks are nodes that have high closeness-centrality ranking.

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) was introduced in 2018 to harmonize data privacy and security laws across the European Union (EU). It applies to any organization collecting personal data in the EU. To date, service-level consent has been used as a proportionate approach for clinical trials, which implement low-risk, routine, service-wide interventions for which individual consent is considered inappropriate. In the context of public health research, GDPR now requires that individuals have the option to choose whether their data may (...) be used for research, which presents a challenge when consent has been given by the clinical service and not by individual service users. We report here on development of a pragmatic opt-out solution to this consent paradox in the context of a partner notification intervention trial in sexual health clinics in the UK. Our approach supports the individual’s right to withhold their data from trial analysis while routinely offering the same care to all patients. (shrink)

How many words is a bilingual 2-year-old supposed to know or say in each of her languages? Speech and language therapists or researchers lack the tools to answer this question, because several factors have an impact on bilingual language skills: gender, amount of exposure, mode of acquisition, socio-economic status and the distance between L1 and L2. Unfortunately, these factors are usually studied separately, making it difficult to evaluate their weight on a unique measure of vocabulary. The present study measures the (...) contribution of the following factors to the vocabulary scores of bilingual toddlers: i) gender; ii) sibling ranking; iii) relative amount of exposure to each language; iv) mode of exposure; v) SES; vi) linguistic distance; vii) language spoken between parents. Close to the child’s second birthday, parents of 278 UK-based bilinguals completed successively: a 100-word version of the Oxford-CDI, the CDI in the child’s Additional Language, a family questionnaire, and the Language Exposure Questionnaire. Thirty-six British-English-AL pairs were considered, with languages contrasted on a second-language-learning scale : for example, Dutch and French are close to British-English, while Polish or Cantonese are more distant. Data from the corpus were included in two mixed-effect models, one with the English scores in comprehension as the dependent variable, and the other with production scores. The seven factors listed above were included as predictors. The amount of English exposure was the strongest predictor of comprehension scores = 9.35, p <.005, β = 0.02, t = 3.08, p <.005), followed by the language that parents speak between themselves = 14.94, p <.001, β = 1.37, t = 3.76, p <.0005), linguistic distance = 6.92, p <.01, β = -0.74, t = -2.66, p <.01) and age = 4.86, p <.05, β = 0.55, t = 2.17, p <.05). In production, gender = 13.57, p <.0005, β = -0.91, t = -03.72, p <.0005), amount of exposure to English = 13.57, p <.0005, β = -0.91, t = -03.72, p <.0005), the language that parents speak between themselves = 11.85, p <.005, β = 1.09, t = 3.41, p <.001), and the mother’s occupation = 4.51, p <.05, β = 0.63, t = 2.13, p <.05) were the significant predictors. The more English parents use to address one another, the more English words the child says and understands. This surprising result could be simply explained by the fact that parents who speak English together are also more likely to speak English to their child. The main results of this study is that linguistic distance is a powerful predictor of toddlers’ vocabulary in English, with children learning two close languages growing their vocabulary faster than those learning distant languages. (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)

THE MOST SACRED FREEDOM includes eight essays that were first presented at the 2014 A.V. Elliott Conference on Great Books and Ideas, the seventh annual conference sponsored by Mercer Universitys Thomas C. and Ramona E. McDonald Center for Americas Founding Principles. Together, these essays explore the great principle of religious liberty by charting its development in the Western tradition and reconsidering its place at Americas founding. The book begins with a comparison between the flood accounts in Genesis and the Mesopotamian (...) Atra-Has's and advances all the way to the 2014 Supreme Court case Burwell v. Hobby Lobby. The intervening chapters examine the contributions of figures such as Emperor Julian, Roger Williams, Cecilius Calvert, John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and the American Founders. Contributors to the volume are Steven Grosby, Jeremiah H. Russell, Maura Jane Farrelly, Daniel Cullen, John Witte, Jr., Scott Yenor, David Ramsey, and Michael Novak. (shrink)

It is quite clear that sin like any other evil involves the privation of a requisite perfection, that it has what is called a negative malice. But is that all? Even a superficial examination of a sin of transgression shows that there is another element, an act, which is something positive: peccatum non est pura privatio, sed est actus debito ordine privatus; peccatum est actus inordinatus. Is this positive element the formal constituent of sin, so that sin may be said (...) not only to have a negative malice, but also a positive one? Or, in other words, is a sin bad not only on account of what it lacks, of what it is not, but also—and principally—on account of what it is? (shrink)