At the 2019 and 2021 International Conference on Environmental Psychology, discussions were held on the future of conferences in light of the enormous greenhouse gas emissions and inequities associated with conference travel. In this manuscript, we provide an early career researcher perspective on this discussion. We argue that travel-intensive conference practices damage both the environment and our credibility as a discipline, conflict with the intrinsic values and motivations of our discipline, and are inequitable. As such, they must change. This change (...) can be achieved by moving toward virtual and hybrid conferences, which can reduce researchers’ carbon footprints and promote equity, if employed carefully and with informal exchange as a priority. By acting collectively and with the support of institutional change, we can adapt conference travel norms in our field. To investigate whether our arguments correspond to views in the wider community of ECRs within environmental psychology, we conducted a community case study. By leveraging our professional networks and directly contacting researchers in countries underrepresented in those networks, we recruited 117 ECRs in 32 countries for an online survey in February 2022. The surveyed ECRs supported a change in conference travel practices, including flying less, and perceived the number of researchers wanting to reduce their travel emissions to be growing. Thirteen percent of respondents had even considered leaving academia due to travel requirements. Concerning alternative conference formats, a mixed picture emerged. Overall, participants had slightly negative evaluations of virtual conferences, but expected them to improve within the next 5 years. However, ECRs with health issues, facing visa challenges, on low funding, living in remote areas, with caretaking obligations or facing travel restrictions due to COVID-19 expected a switch toward virtual or hybrid conferences to positively affect their groups. Participants were divided about their ability to build professional relationships in virtual settings, but believed that maintaining relationships virtually is possible. We conclude by arguing that the concerns of ECRs in environmental psychology about current and alternative conference practices must be taken seriously. We call on our community to work on collective solutions and less travel-intensive conference designs using participatory methods. (shrink)

Historisch-filosofische studie over het verloop van de confrontatie tussen het joods-christelijke gedachtengoed en de Griekse filosofie.

Filosofisch-historische bijdrage aan de discussie over de christelijke identiteit van de Vrije Universiteit.

A. P. Martinich's The Two Gods of Leviathan appeared in 1992, and J. R. Collins's The Allegiance of Thomas Hobbes in 2005. Martinich offered a revisionist interpretation of Thomas Hobbes's religious commitments. He rebuked the conventional view that Hobbes was an atheist and placed him within particular traditions of reformed Christian theology. Collins's book strongly differed from these conclusions, and reasserted Hobbes's hostility to traditional Christianity as part of a general contextualization of his writings within the period of the (...) English Revolution. The following exchange between Martinich and Collins was first aired in 2007 as a debate at the Southwestern Political Science Association's Annual Conference. (shrink)

Skin pigment pattern formation is a paradigmatic example of pattern formation. In zebrafish, the adult body stripes are generated by coordinated rearrangement of three distinct pigment cell‐types, black melanocytes, shiny iridophores and yellow xanthophores. A stem cell origin of melanocytes and iridophores has been proposed although the potency of those stem cells has remained unclear. Xanthophores, however, seemed to originate predominantly from proliferation of embryonic xanthophores. Now, data from Singh et al. shows that all three cell‐types derive from shared stem (...) cells, and that these cells generate peripheral neural cell‐types too. Furthermore, clonal compositions are best explained by a progressive fate restriction model generating the individual cell‐types. The numbers of adult pigment stem cells associated with the dorsal root ganglia remain low, but progenitor numbers increase significantly during larval development up to metamorphosis, likely via production of partially restricted progenitors on the spinal nerves. (shrink)

Engels is the author of three articles devoted to the origins of Christianity. In 1882 the magazine Per Sozialdemokrat carried his "Bruno Bauer and Early Christianity," conceived of as an evaluation of Bauer's contribution to the treatment of this complex problem. The following year, in the English journal Progress, Engels published an article titled "The Book of Revelation," a characterization of Christianity as it appears according to the Apocalypse of St. John. Finally, in 1894-1895, shortly before his death, Engels published (...) in Die Neue Zeit a studied titled "A Contribution to the History of Early Christianity.". (shrink)

A. P. Martinich's The Two Gods of Leviathan appeared in 1992, and J. R. Collins's The Allegiance of Thomas Hobbes in 2005. Martinich offered a revisionist interpretation of Thomas Hobbes's religious commitments. He rebuked the conventional view that Hobbes was an atheist and placed him within particular traditions of reformed Christian theology. Collins's book strongly differed from these conclusions, and reasserted Hobbes's hostility to traditional Christianity as part of a general contextualization of his writings within the period of the (...) English Revolution. The following exchange between Martinich and Collins was first aired in 2007 as a debate at the Southwestern Political Science Association's Annual Conference. (shrink)

Thomas Hobbes’s _Leviathan_ is the greatest work of political philosophy in English and the first great work of philosophy in English. Beginning with premises that were sometimes controversial, such as that every human action is caused by the agent’s desire for his own good, Hobbes derived shocking conclusions, such as that the civil government enjoys absolute control over its citizens and that the sovereign has the right to determine which religion is to be practiced in a commonwealth. Hobbes’s contemporaries recognized (...) the power of arguments in _Leviathan_ and many of them wrote responses to it; selections by John Bramhall, Robert Filmer, Edward Hyde, George Lawson, William Lucy, Samuel Pufendorf, and Thomas Tenison are included in this edition. _Leviathan _is divided into four parts: In the first part, Of Man, Hobbes presents a view of human beings and of the natural world in general that is materialistic and mechanistic. In the second part, Of Commonwealth, he defends the theory of absolute sovereignty, the view that the government has all the political power and has the right to control any aspect of life. In the third part, Of a Christian Commonwealth, he critiques concepts like revelation, prophets, and miracles in such a way that it becomes doubtful whether they can be rationally justified. In the fourth part, Of the Kingdom of Darkness, he explains various ways in which priestly religion has corrupted religion and transgressed the rights of the sovereign. (shrink)

The earlier volume in this series dealt with two religions of Indian origin, namely, Buddhism and Jainism. The Indian religious scene, however, is characterized by not only religions which originated in India but also by religions which entered India from outside India and made their home here. Thus religious life in India has been enlivened throughout its history by the presence of religions of foreign origin on its soil almost from the very time they came into existence. This volume covers (...) three such religions—Zoraoastrianism, Judaism, and Islam. In the case of Zoraostianism, even its very beginnings are intertwined with India, as Zoroastrianism reformed a preexisting religion which had strong links to the Vedic heritage of India. This relationship took on a new dimension when a Zoroastrian community, fearing persecution in Persia after its Arab conquest, sought shelter in western India and ultimately went on to produce India’s pioneering nationalist in the figure of Dadabhai Naoroji ( 1825-1917), also known as the Grand Old Man of India. Jews found refuge in south India after the destruction of the Temple by the Romans in 70 C.E. and have remained a part of the Indian religious scene since then, some even returning to Israel after it was founded in 1948. Islam arrived in Kerala as soon as it was founded and one of the earliest mosques in the history of Islam is found in India. Islam differs from the previously mentioned religions inasmuch as it went on to gain political hegemony over parts of the country for considerable periods of time, which meant that its impact on the religious life of the subcontinent has been greater compared to the other religions. It has also meant that Islam has existed in a religiously plural environment in India for a longer period than elsewhere in the world so that not only has Islam left a mark on India, India has also left its mark on it. Indeed all the three religions covered in this volume share this dual feature, that they have profoundly influenced Indian religious life and have also in turn been profoundly influenced by their presence in India. (shrink)

The earlier volume in this series dealt with two religions of Indian origin, namely, Buddhism and Jainism. The Indian religious scene, however, is characterized by not only religions which originated in India but also by religions which entered India from outside India and made their home here. Thus religious life in India has been enlivened throughout its history by the presence of religions of foreign origin on its soil almost from the very time they came into existence. This volume covers (...) three such religions—Zoraoastrianism, Judaism, and Islam. In the case of Zoraostianism, even its very beginnings are intertwined with India, as Zoroastrianism reformed a preexisting religion which had strong links to the Vedic heritage of India. This relationship took on a new dimension when a Zoroastrian community, fearing persecution in Persia after its Arab conquest, sought shelter in western India and ultimately went on to produce India’s pioneering nationalist in the figure of Dadabhai Naoroji ( 1825-1917), also known as the Grand Old Man of India. Jews found refuge in south India after the destruction of the Temple by the Romans in 70 C.E. and have remained a part of the Indian religious scene since then, some even returning to Israel after it was founded in 1948. Islam arrived in Kerala as soon as it was founded and one of the earliest mosques in the history of Islam is found in India. Islam differs from the previously mentioned religions inasmuch as it went on to gain political hegemony over parts of the country for considerable periods of time, which meant that its impact on the religious life of the subcontinent has been greater compared to the other religions. It has also meant that Islam has existed in a religiously plural environment in India for a longer period than elsewhere in the world so that not only has Islam left a mark on India, India has also left its mark on it. Indeed all the three religions covered in this volume share this dual feature, that they have profoundly influenced Indian religious life and have also in turn been profoundly influenced by their presence in India. (shrink)

First published in 1913, this collection of essays was created with the intention of promoting Christianity as a valid system in the face of scientific rationalism. Specifically written for young men experiencing a crisis of belief between childhood and adulthood, the 'Interregnum' of the title, the book avoids dogmatic assertions in favour of a sympathetic approach towards the potential reader, one that emphasises openness within religious faith. The text is divided into two parts: part one argues for the ethical and (...) practical benefits of Christianity; part two constitutes an argument for the truth value of the Christian system in the face of scepticism from rival modes of thought. This volume will be of value to anyone with an interest in theology and the crisis of faith caused by scientific development. (shrink)

Throughout his authorship, Kierkegaard appears remarkably uninterested in the tradition of Christian mysticism. Indeed, in the only two places in the authorship where he broaches the topic directly, the discussion is disclaimed in such a way as to suggest that Kierkegaard really has nothing to say about it at all. However, attending to the successive incarnations of the character(s) named “Ludvig” throughout the authorship – an appellation that harbors an especially self-referential dimension for Kierkegaard – the present paper attempts (...) to elucidate what may, with due reservation, be referred to as the mystical element in Kierkegaard’s thought. The ultimate yield of this endeavor is a vision of “mysticism” that is more act than thought oriented, and a vision of the author “Kierkegaard” that is more delightful than melancholy. (shrink)

The advancement of human reproductive technology has made it possible for parents with a child affected by a haematological disorder to select and bring into being, a prospective child who can act as a matched stem cell donor. This can be done through the use of preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) coupled with human leukocyte antigen (HLA) typing (PGD-HLA typing), or HLA tying as a standalone procedure, where a healthy embryo, which is an HLA match to the existing sick sibling, is (...) chosen for implantation. The creation of such a sibling (saviour sibling) is normally taken as a last resort when there is no related or unrelated matched donor. While the conception of a saviour sibling may serve as a reliable and realistic treatment option for the ailing child, it also poses new moral questions that challenge a religiously pluralistic society such as Malaysia. The use of PGD-HLA typing may be controversial as it involves creating a life to save a life, selection of compatible human embryos and destruction of the unselected embryos. At present, there is no legal framework regulating the conception of saviour siblings. The development of ethically sound and appropriate local laws and policies should consider the views of religious communities, especially when it involves a controversial subject such as the conception of saviour siblings. This article seeks to explore the perceptions of religious scholars and representatives of the major religions professed and practised in Malaysia, namely Islam, Buddhism, Christianity and Hinduism, through qualitative interviews. (shrink)

Mass media ethics and the classical liberal ideal of the autonomous individual are historically linked and professionally dominant--yet the authors of this work feel this is intrinsically flawed. They show how recent research in philosophy and social science--together with a longer tradition in theological inquiry--insist that community, mutuality, and relationship are fundamental to a full concept of personhood. The authors argue that "persons-in-community" provides a more defensible grounding for journalists' professional moral decision-making in crucial areas such as truthtelling, privacy, organizational (...) culture, and balanced coverage. With numerous examples drawn from life as well as from theory, this book will interest journalists, editors, and professionals in media management as well as students and scholars of media ethics, reporting, and media law. (shrink)

Three experts in media ethics reexamine ethical behaviour in news gathering and reporting. The book combines a wide range of real-life and hypothetical examples of ethical dilemmas in news reporting with a thoughtful critique of the underlying individualistic theories of mainstream media ethics.

Most people who are regular consumers of psychoactive drugs are not drug addicts, nor will they ever become addicts. In neurobiological theories, non-addictive drug consumption is acknowledged only as a “necessary” prerequisite for addiction, but not as a stable and widespread behavior in its own right. This target article proposes a new neurobiological framework theory for non-addictive psychoactive drug consumption, introducing the concept of “drug instrumentalization.” Psychoactive drugs are consumed for their effects on mental states. Humans are able to learn (...) that mental states can be changed on purpose by drugs, in order to facilitate other, non-drug-related behaviors. We discuss specific “instrumentalization goals” and outline neurobiological mechanisms of how major classes of psychoactive drugs change mental states and serve non-drug-related behaviors. We argue that drug instrumentalization behavior may provide a functional adaptation to modern environments based on a historical selection for learning mechanisms that allow the dynamic modification of consummatory behavior. It is assumed that in order to effectively instrumentalize psychoactive drugs, the establishment of and retrieval from a drug memory is required. Here, we propose a new classification of different drug memory subtypes and discuss how they interact during drug instrumentalization learning and retrieval. Understanding the everyday utility and the learning mechanisms of non-addictive psychotropic drug use may help to prevent abuse and the transition to drug addiction in the future. (shrink)

Organizational deviance represents a costly behavior to many organizations. While some precursors to deviance have been identified, we hope to add to our predictive capabilities. Utilizing social cognitive theory and psychological contract theory as explanatory concepts, we explore the role of moral disengagement and turnover intentions, testing our hypotheses using two samples: a sample of 44 nurses from a hospital system in the Southwestern United States (Study 1), and a sample of 52 working adults collected from an online survey system (...) (Study 2). Results strongly supported our hypotheses in both samples, indicating that the self-regulatory deactivation inherent in moral disengagement led to increased organizational deviance; effects that were much more pronounced when turnover intentions were high. Our findings support the increased role of cognition in determining behavior when environmental pressures stemming from the psychological contract have been altered, leading to a number of theoretical and practical implications, particularly in industries with high turnover rates. (shrink)

This article discusses the dual interpretation of the Jeffreys-Lindley paradox associated with Bayesian posterior probabilities and Bayes factors, both as a differentiation between frequentist and Bayesian statistics and as a pointer to the difficulty of using improper priors while testing. I stress the considerable impact of this paradox on the foundations of both classical and Bayesian statistics. While assessing existing resolutions of the paradox, I focus on a critical viewpoint of the paradox discussed by Spanos in Philosophy of Science.

BackgroundThe preferable position of Deep Brain Stimulation electrodes is proposed to be located in the dorsolateral subthalamic nucleus to improve general motor performance. The optimal DBS electrode localization for the post-operative improvement of balance and gait is unknown.MethodsIn this single-center, retrospective analyses, 66 Parkinson’s disease patients were assessed pre- and post-operatively by using MDS-UPDRS, freezing of gait score, Giladi’s gait and falls questionnaire and Berg balance scale. The clinical outcome was related to the DBS electrode coordinates in x, y, z (...) plane as revealed by image-based reconstruction. Binomial generalized linear mixed models with fixed-effect variables electrode asymmetry, parkinsonian subtype, medication, age class and clinical DBS induced changes were analyzed.ResultsSubthalamic nucleus-deep brain stimulation improved all motor, balance and FoG scores in MED OFF condition, however there were heterogeneous results in MED ON condition. DBS electrode reconstructed coordinates impacted the responsiveness of axial symptoms. FoG and balance responders showed slightly more medially located STN electrode coordinates and less medio-lateral asymmetry of the electrode reconstructed coordinates across hemispheres compared to non-responders.ConclusionDeep brain stimulation electrode reconstructed coordinates, particularly electrode asymmetry on the medio-lateral axis affected the post-operative responsiveness of balance and FoG symptoms in PD patients. (shrink)

© 2017. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.We present new observations of the low-mass companion to HD 984 taken with the Gemini Planet Imager as a part of the GPI Exoplanet Survey campaign. Images of HD 984 B were obtained in the J and H bands. Combined with archival epochs from 2012 and 2014, we fit the first orbit to the companion to find an 18 au orbit with a 68% confidence interval between 14 and 28 au, an eccentricity (...) of 0.18 with a 68% confidence interval between 0.05 and 0.47, and an inclination of 119°with a 68% confidence interval between 114°and 125°. To address the considerable spectral covariance in both spectra, we present a method of splitting the spectra into low and high frequencies to analyze the spectral structure at different spatial frequencies with the proper spectral noise correlation. Using the split spectra, we compare them to known spectral types using field brown dwarf and low-mass star spectra and find a best-fit match of a field gravity M6.5 ±1.5 spectral type with a corresponding temperature of K. Photometry of the companion yields a luminosity of log=2.88 ± 0.07 dex with DUSTY models. Mass estimates, again from DUSTY models, find an age-dependent mass of 34 ±1 to 95 ±4 M Jup. These results are consistent with previous measurements of the object. (shrink)

Reinforcement learning approaches to cognitive modeling represent task acquisition as learning to choose the sequence of steps that accomplishes the task while maximizing a reward. However, an apparently unrecognized problem for modelers is choosing when, what, and how much to reward; that is, when (the moment: end of trial, subtask, or some other interval of task performance), what (the objective function: e.g., performance time or performance accuracy), and how much (the magnitude: with binary, categorical, or continuous values). In this article, (...) we explore the problem space of these three parameters in the context of a task whose completion entails some combination of 36 state–action pairs, where all intermediate states (i.e., after the initial state and prior to the end state) represent progressive but partial completion of the task. Different choices produce profoundly different learning paths and outcomes, with the strongest effect for moment. Unfortunately, there is little discussion in the literature of the effect of such choices. This absence is disappointing, as the choice of when, what, and how much needs to be made by a modeler for every learning model. (shrink)

In this paper, we set out to inquire into how exactly testimony is and should be placed within the framework of virtue epistemology, and more specifically within Ernest Sosa’s exposition and defense thereof. We begin this inquiry (in Sect. 3.2) by formulating conditions of adequacy that can be extracted from recent criticisms of virtue epistemological approaches more generally. In Sect. 3.3, we reconstruct two branches of Sosa’s treatment of testimony, with respect to which we point out problems of inner coherence (...) and compatibility. We won’t stop there but then go on to see first (in Sect. 3.4) whether and, if so, how the two branches can be balanced out within the architecture of Sosa’s theory of knowledge. And second (in Sect. 3.5), we offer and outline a more comprehensive account that solves not just the problems formulated at the outset, but also a number of problems identified along the way. (shrink)

How do people interleave attention when multitasking? One dominant account is that the completion of a subtask serves as a cue to switch tasks. But what happens if switching solely at subtask boundaries led to poor performance? We report a study in which participants manually dialed a UK-style telephone number while driving a simulated vehicle. If the driver were to exclusively return his or her attention to driving after completing a subtask (i.e., using the single break in the xxxxx-xxxxxx representational (...) structure of the number), then we would expect to see a relatively poor driving performance. In contrast, our results show that drivers choose to return attention to steering control before the natural subtask boundary. A computational modeling analysis shows that drivers had to adopt this strategy to meet the required performance objective of maintaining an acceptable lateral position in the road while dialing. Taken together these results support the idea that people can strategically control the allocation of attention in multitask settings to meet specific performance criteria. (shrink)

We report the results of a dual-task study in which participants performed a tracking and typing task under various experimental conditions. An objective payoff function was used to provide explicit feedback on how participants should trade off performance between the tasks. Results show that participants’ dual-task interleaving strategy was sensitive to changes in the difficulty of the tracking task and resulted in differences in overall task performance. To test the hypothesis that people select strategies that maximize payoff, a Cognitively Bounded (...) Rational Analysis model was developed. This analysis evaluated a variety of dual-task interleaving strategies to identify the optimal strategy for maximizing payoff in each condition. The model predicts that the region of optimum performance is different between experimental conditions. The correspondence between human data and the prediction of the optimal strategy is found to be remarkably high across a number of performance measures. This suggests that participants were honing their behavior to maximize payoff. Limitations are discussed. (shrink)

This paper is an extended review of the book Error and Inference, edited by Deborah Mayo and Aris Spanos, about their frequentist and philosophical perspective on testing of hypothesis and on the criticisms of alternatives like the Bayesian approach.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Sound of Two Hands Clapping: The Education of a Tibetan Buddhist MonkChristian P. B. HaskettThe Sound of Two Hands Clapping: The Education of a Tibetan Buddhist Monk. By Georges B. J. Dreyfus. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003. 445 + xv pp.Georges Dreyfus is a uniquely valuable contributor to the academic study of Tibetan Buddhism. He is the first Westerner to have received the Geshe degree, signifying (...) a thorough mastery of the curriculum of the Geluk (dge lugs) school, and in his latest work, The Sound of Two Hands Clapping, he not only displays the critical acumen produced by that education, but also candidly reveals the personal details of life as a monk in a Buddhist monastic university. This alone should commend this project to the attention of readers seriously interested in Buddhism; however, Dreyfus also gives us a work of scholarship of religion that is exemplary in its capacity to use a single topic as a starting point to explain vast swathes of religion and culture. A brief overview of the chapters precedes my assessment of the book's successes and its importance for Buddhist-Christian studies.The first chapter gives a brief historical overview of Tibetan Buddhism. Those with a passing acquaintance with Tibetan history will find little new information here, but Dreyfus does manage to succinctly and accurately present 1300 years of religious history in a mere fifteen pages. Chapter 2, "Tibetan Monasticism," takes up the context in which most Buddhist scholastic activity occurs, "describing...some of its characteristics and discussing its strengths without hiding its drawbacks" (p.33). Dreyfus moves from a depiction of the Indian precedents and textual foundations of monasticism in general to a discussion of the mass monastic movement in Tibet. His assessment is unsparing but nonjudgmental as he describes monks as tax collectors, ritual actors, priests, and even "punk-monks." In the third chapter "Becoming a Monk," the personal and autobiographical nature of Two Hands Clapping begins to emerge as Dreyfus relates his own personal experience of entering [End Page 192] monastic life interwoven with accounts of both the normative Tibetan standards and the present-day situation of Tibetan monastics. These vivid reports detail the sleep deprivation, poor diet, and rigorous lives of exiled monks, and the genuine affection that those who endure these circumstances feel for one another. This chapter also examines the differing roles of teachers as housemasters, scholastic preceptors, and gurus, and begins introducing several teachers with whom Dreyfus studied. These three chapters comprise the first section, "The Context."Despite the title and cover picture of a debating monk, this book is a study of the full range of scholastic monastic practices. Dreyfus begins his far-ranging comparisons to other religious educational traditions such as yeshivas and medieval European monasticism in the second section, "Tibetan Scholastic Practices." Chapter 4 looks at reading and memorization, considering literacy and education in Tibet first. His discussion of memorization comprises details of memorization practices and a good but not overwhelming discussion of modern psychological theory on memorization and mind. Chapter 5 presents the curriculum followed by Tibetan monks and identifies a key element of scholasticism: commentary. The section on comparative perspective is particularly good, comparing Shi'ite, Christian, and Tibetan models and citing theorists including Foucault and Halbertal to elucidate how commentary is used to create sectarian positions out of shared canonical texts. While the sixth chapter begins by comparing curricula and practices followed by both Ge-luk and non-Ge-luk monasteries, it concludes with a detailed section on the role of scholasticism in the production of authority and orthodox, accounting for the emergence of sectarian divisions within Tibetan Buddhism within a sociopolitical context. This return to the history provided in chapter 1 explains the history of sectarian divisions in Tibet and demonstrates both the centrality and scope of the impact of scholasticism in Tibetan religion. In chapter 7, "Scholasticism and Orality," Dreyfus gives the sort of detailed and nuanced testimony that only a long and careful observer of and participant in Buddhism could. He carefully dissects the role of orality in memorization and recitation on the one hand, and of oral commentary in pedagogy on the... (shrink)

Proposing a change to the view on psychoactive drug use in non-addicts touches a sensitive issue because of its potential implications to addiction prevention, therapeutic practice, and drug policy. Commentators raised nine questions that ranged from clarifications, suggested extensions of the model to supporting data previously not regarded, to assumptions on the implications of the model. Here, we take up the suggestions of the commentators to expand the model to behavioral addictions, discuss additional instrumentalization goals, and review the evidence from (...) laboratory animal studies on drug instrumentalization. We consider further the role of sociocultural factors and individual development in the establishment in drug instrumentalization and addiction. Finally, we clarify which implications we think this model may have. We conclude that drug instrumentalization theory can be further applied to other behaviors but will require a sensitive debate when used for drug and addiction policy that directly affects prevention and treatment. (shrink)

The use of evidence in medicine is something we should continuously seek to improve. This book seeks to develop our understanding of evidence of mechanism in evaluating evidence in medicine, public health, and social care; and also offers tools to help implement improved assessment of evidence of mechanism in practice. In this way, the book offers a bridge between more theoretical and conceptual insights and worries about evidence of mechanism and practical means to fit the results into evidence assessment procedures.

Since the choice of a particular loss function strongly influences the resulting inference, it seems necessary to rely on “intrinsic” losses when no information is available about the utility function of the decision-maker, rather than to call for classical losses like the squared error loss. Since this setting is quite similar to the derivation of noninformative priors in Bayesian analysis, we first recall the conditions of this derivation and deduce from these conditions some requirements on the intrinsic losses. It then (...) appears that these loss functions should only depend on the sampling distribution and that they should be independent of the parameterization of the distribution. The resulting estimators are therefore transformation equivariant. We study the properties of two natural intrinsic losses, namely entropy and Hellinger losses, and show that they can be expressed in closed form for exponential families. Moreover, the entropy loss also provides analytic expressions of Bayes estimators under conjugate priors; the derivation of Bayes estimators associated with the Hellinger loss is more cumbersome, as shown in Poisson and Gamma cases, while leading to similar estimators. (shrink)

Behavioural phenotypes have been explained by genetic and environmental factors (E) and their interaction. Here we suggest a rethinking of the E factor. Passively incurred environmental influences (E pass) and actively copied information and behaviour (E act) may be distinguished at shared and non-shared level. We argue that E act underlies mutation and selection and is the base of gene-independent heritability.

Biological ontologies are used to organize, curate, and interpret the vast quantities of data arising from biological experiments. While this works well when using a single ontology, integrating multiple ontologies can be problematic, as they are developed independently, which can lead to incompatibilities. The Open Biological and Biomedical Ontologies Foundry was created to address this by facilitating the development, harmonization, application, and sharing of ontologies, guided by a set of overarching principles. One challenge in reaching these goals was that the (...) OBO principles were not originally encoded in a precise fashion, and interpretation was subjective. Here we show how we have addressed this by formally encoding the OBO principles as operational rules and implementing a suite of automated validation checks and a dashboard for objectively evaluating each ontology’s compliance with each principle. This entailed a substantial effort to curate metadata across all ontologies and to coordinate with individual stakeholders. We have applied these checks across the full OBO suite of ontologies, revealing areas where individual ontologies require changes to conform to our principles. Our work demonstrates how a sizable federated community can be organized and evaluated on objective criteria that help improve overall quality and interoperability, which is vital for the sustenance of the OBO project and towards the overall goals of making data FAIR. Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest. (shrink)

Science has needed a dispassionate valuation of psychoactive drugs, but a motivational analysis should be conducted with respect to long-term reward rather than reproductive fitness. Because of hyperbolic overvaluation of short-term rewards, an individual's valuation depends on the time she forms it and the times she will revisit it, sometimes making her best long-term interest lie in total abstinence.

9 Eastern Christianity and Jesuit Scholarship on Arabic and Islam: Modern History and Contemporary Theological Reflections -- 10 Autonomy, Dignity, Human Rights: Correcting a Popular Error -- 11 Liberal and Authoritarian Approaches to Raising Good Citizens -- 12 Stewardship as Welcome and Respect for the Dignity of the Vulnerable: An Essay in Bioethics -- 13 Dialogue in a Pluralist Context: Theological Ethics and the New Interest in Happiness -- Index.