Ptolemy wrote the Planetary Hypotheses for both astronomers and instrument-makers. Most studies of this text concentrate on its meaning for the former, but there remain many questions surrounding its meaning for the latter.1 This article investigates the purpose of Ptolemy’s Planetary Hypotheses in light of what he says about instrument-making. It takes up the following questions: what kind of instrument does Ptolemy describe? And, could such an instrument have been constructed? I argue that he did not have one specific design (...) in mind, but instead he offered craftsmen options for the content, design, and operational methods. In addition to exhibiting his astronomical models and estimating planetary positions, the... (shrink)

PurposeIf an individual has been blind since birth due to a treatable eye condition, ocular treatment is urgent. Even a brief period of visual deprivation can alter the development of the visual system. The goal of our structured scoping review was to understand how we might better support children with delayed access to ocular treatment for blinding conditions.MethodWe searched MEDLINE, Embase and Global Health for peer-reviewed publications that described the impact of early and extended bilateral visual deprivation.ResultsOf 551 reports independently (...) screened by two authors, 42 studies met our inclusion criteria. Synthesizing extracted data revealed several trends. The data suggests persistent deficits in visual acuity, contrast sensitivity, global motion, and visual-motor integration, and suspected concerns for understanding complex objects and faces. There is evidence for resilience in color perception, understanding of simple shapes, discriminating between a face and non-face, and the perception of biological motion. There is currently insufficient data about specific habilitation strategies to update low vision services, but there are several insights to guide future research in this domain.ConclusionThis summary will help guide the research and services provision to help children learn to see after early and extended blindness. (shrink)

Research Ethics, Volume 18, Issue 2, Page 132-150, April 2022. Limited research has been done among pregnant people participating in investigational drug trials. To enhance the ethical understanding of pregnant people’s perspectives on research participation, we sought to describe motives and risk perceptions of participants in a phase 1 trial of ledipasvir/sofosbuvir treatment for chronic Hepatitis C virus during pregnancy. Pregnant people with chronic HCV infection enrolled in an open-label, phase 1 study of LDV/SOF participated in semi-structured, in-depth interviews to (...) explore their reasons for participation and experiences within the study. Pregnant people took 12 weeks of LDV/SOF and were interviewed at enrollment and at the end of study. We recorded the interviews, transcribed them verbatim, coded them using NVivo software, and performed inductive thematic analysis. Nine women completed the study yielding 18 interview transcripts. We identified two themes regarding motives and one regarding risk perception. Motives— Women conceptualized study participation as part of the caregiving role they associate with motherhood; participating was viewed as an act of caregiving for their infants, their families, themselves, and other pregnant women with chronic HCV. Women also noted that they faced multiple barriers to treatment prior to pregnancy that created a desire to receive therapy through trial participation. Risk perception— Women acknowledged personal and fetal risk associated with participation. Acceptance of risk was influenced by women’s concepts of motherhood, preexisting knowledge of HCV and medical research, family members, intimate partners, or by the study design. Women enrolled in a phase 1 trial for chronic HCV therapy during pregnancy acknowledged risks of participation and were motivated by hopes for fetal and personal benefit and by lack of prenatal access to treatment. Ethical inclusion of pregnant people in research should acknowledge structural factors that contribute to vulnerability and data deficiencies for treatment in pregnancy. (shrink)

This article explores two central notions of ‘dialectics’ and ‘dialogics’ based on the work of Vygotsky and Bakhtin respectively, as well their varying interanimations within Stalin-Marxist Russian societyIt is proposed that these two positions are incommensurably located alongside one another in contemporary education. I argue that Bakhtin offers diametrically oppositional educational provocations to those of Vygotsky.The implications of these interpretations will be explored with consideration of their underlying philosophical incompatibilities and contradictions, as well as the opportunities such a consideration pose (...) for educational practice today. (shrink)

The circumstances of a public health emergency shape reasoning and decision-making in ways that deviate from routine circumstances, where adherence to established values, principles, and methodologies is expected. Understanding what drives these deviations is critical to assessing their ethical consequences. In this paper we describe four conditions that influence decision-making during PHEs, in particular regarding the deployment and conduct of research on experimental or novel biomedical interventions. These four conditions are politicization, urgency, uncertainty, and fear. We argue that taken together (...) these four conditions create pressure to address the most visible targets of immediate crisis events, driving emphasis on research and development of biomedical interventions. However, this emphasis raises ethical concerns regarding the extent to which attention to and investment in the underlying causes of PHEs, particularly impoverished global public health infrastructure, is diminished as a result. (shrink)

This article provides a broad survey of issues facing rural communities and suggests that medicalization of poverty concepts and interventions need to be tailored to those populations. Rural poverty may be both broader and deeper than in urban areas. Those challenges seem to produce a constellation of health conditions, as rural residents struggle with unemployment and lack of opportunities. Relatedly, rural communities struggle to maintain financially viable hospitals and specialty providers. The article closes by offering a snapshot of rural-specific strategies (...) to address these issues. (shrink)

‘The new city presupposes that the cables of the interhuman relations are switched reversibly, not in bundles as with television, but in real networks, respons(e)ibly, as in the telephone network. These are technical questions; and they are to be solved by urbanists and architects.’ (Vilém Flusser 1990). To reinforce the significance of public space we have to deal with at least two ‘publics’ - the global and the local public - by creating spheres where local and global public space can (...) fuse and interchange. (shrink)

Iannis Xenakis (1922–2001), composer, architect, engineer and media artist, designed together with Le Corbusier the Philips-pavilion for the 1958 Brussels World Fair. This pavilion is an early example of (“hybrid”) combined media and architectural space as it contained a Poème Électronique, an electronic synthesis of visual projections (conceived by Le Corbusier ) and acoustic events (composed by Varèse). The pavilion's architecture with its hyperbolic-paraboloid shells had a dynamic expression. Xenakis continued this research into complex material architectural forms. He also worked (...) on the complex ephemeral architectures of light and sound events. What is specific to Xenakis is the way he used forms in different fields and transferred them from one field to another, from engineering to music, from music to architecture and visual events. This experience of working simultaneously and applying the same (mental) structures in different fields opened him the way (partly supported by the universal computer instrument) for the practice of transferring mathematical-scientific structures into artistic production. In this context Xenakis pleads for the development of a “General Morphology”, a research concerned with the understanding of form and its generation. Xenakis's ‘material’ architectural work is to be seen in continuity with his architectures of music and light. (shrink)

If one wants to know what happened in Hellenistic poetic theory, Philodemus' survey of poetic theories in the fifth book of his On Poems is an excellent guide. Even though the survey is well preserved, it has been neglected. Jensen, who published the first complete edition of On Poems 5 in 1923, did not discuss this part of the text; and it has been treated only briefly by others. This is a pity because, as Philodemus shows, the Hellenistic period was (...) an era of great diversity and innovation in literary theory. Philodemus gives evidence of: a refined and highly systematic critical vocabulary; a new concern with verbal form; a new notion of mimesis; and in general, a great proliferation of theories that present alternatives to those of Plato and Aristotle. Hellenistic literary theorists studied Plato and Aristotle critically; some revised or elaborated their views, whereas others opposed them. Ancient poetic theory did not come to a standstill with Aristotle any more than philosophy did. (shrink)

An atomistic model of society leads us to address injustices in terms of individual rights, but rights are curious possessions and don't always give the protection that's needed. Examples are patient's rights, children's rights and a fetus's right to life, all of which go wrong because they assume that the subjects are independent and autonomous. This assumption often fails. Rights work where people are in a position to press them; for others they give only a caricature of justice.

What happens when adjudication signals its own artifice? Or when jurisprudence is animated by what Maksymilian Del Mar calls ‘legal artifacts’ that invite us to suspend certain of our prevailing no...

This article is based on interviews with a small number of cohabitants who are critical of conventional marriage. It examines some of the ways in which the distinction between heterosexual cohabitation and marriage is rendered in the New Zealand context. Culturally available distinctions, like that between cohabitation and marriage, are used in the production of resistant counterdiscourses. However, difference can be rewritten as deviance and in this form is central to the exercise of disciplinary power. Contextual shifts in the assertion (...) of a cohabitational self and a marital self contribute to the blurring of the distinction, further exposing the dilemmas of resistance based on difference. (shrink)