The paper discusses the concept of "crisis" in the context of the city of Detroit's bankruptcy under the rule of the Governor-appointed Emergency Manager. In their recent book, Judith Butler and Athena Athanasiou discuss the concept of dispossession in all its complexity, in the context of enforced austerity measures in Europe and a global Occupy movement. The concept of “dispossession” clarifies how we actually depend on others in a sustained social world, that in fact the self is social. I will (...) use their reflections as a springboard for analysis of the imposition of an emergency manager on the City of Detroit and the subsequent bankruptcy hearings for the city, which along with the mortgage and foreclosure crisis and now recent water shut-offs have resulted in dispossessing the poorest of the poor from their modest possessions. However Detroit is also the scene of a robust response, as people take to the streets in acts of solidarity to demand their city back. As Athena and Butler caution, activists should not fall into reinforcing the disastrous concept of personhood reinforced by possession. There are other ways of engaging with each other politically to forge a common cause that escape the negative aspects of “possession.” The project of getting people together at the grassroots, knowing each other, finding strength in leaning on each other, finding confidence to challenge the status quo that is tearing communities apart – that is the activism that is ongoing in Detroit. (shrink)

We examine two different descriptions of the behavioral functions of the hippocampal system. One emphasizes spatially organized behaviors, especially those using cognitive maps. The other emphasizes memory, particularly working memory, a short-term memory that requires iexible stimulus-response associations and is highly susceptible to interference. The predictive value of the spatial and memory descriptions were evaluated by testing rats with damage to the hippocampal system in a series of experiments, independently manipulating the spatial and memory characteristics of a behavioral task. No (...) dissociations were found when the spatial characteristics of the stimuli to be remembered were changed; lesions produced a similar deficit in both spatial and nonspatial test procedures, indicating that the hippocampus was similarly involved regardless of the spatial nature of the task. In contrast, a marked dissociation was found when the memory requirements were altered. Rats with lesions were able to perform accurately in tasks that could be solved exclusively on the basis of reference memory. They performed at chance levels and showed no signs of recovery even with extensive postoperative training in tasks that required working memory. In one experiment all the characteristics of the reference memory and working memory procedures were identical except the type of memory required. Consequently, the behavioral dissociation cannot be explained by differences in attention, motivation, response inhibition, or the type of stimuli to be remembered. As a result of these experiments we propose that the hippocampus is selectively involved in behaviors that require working memory, irrespective of the type of material that is to be processed by that memory. (shrink)

Meno's Paradox from Socrates to Sextus Gail Fine. sense that they consider the issues it raises; and they argue, against its conclusion, that inquiry is possible. Like Plato and Aristotle, they also explain what makes inquiry possible; and they do ...

Pragmatic clinical trials offer important benefits, such as generating evidence that is suited to inform real-world health care decisions and increasing research efficiency. However, PCTs also present ethical challenges. One such challenge involves the management of information that emerges in a PCT that is unrelated to the primary research question, yet may have implications for the individual patients, clinicians, or health care systems from whom or within which research data were collected. We term these findings as?pragmatic clinical trial collateral findings,? (...) or?PCT-CFs?. In this article, we explore the ethical considerations associated with the identification, assessment, and management of PCT-CFs, and how these considerations may vary based upon the attributes of a specific PCT. Our purpose is to map the terrain of PCT-CFs to serve as a foundation for future scholarship as well as policy-making and to facilitate careful deliberation about actual cases as they occur in practice. (shrink)

Objectives To determine the role played by law in medical specialists9 decision-making about withholding and withdrawing life-sustaining treatment from adults who lack capacity, and the extent to which legal knowledge affects whether law is followed. Design Cross-sectional postal survey of medical specialists. Setting The two largest Australian states by population. Participants 649 medical specialists from seven specialties most likely to be involved in end-of-life decision-making in the acute setting. Main outcome measures Compliance with law and the impact of legal knowledge (...) on compliance. Results 649 medical specialists (of 2104 potential participants) completed the survey (response rate 31%). Responses to a hypothetical scenario found a potential low rate of legal compliance, 32% (95% CI 28% to 36%). Knowledge of the law and legal compliance were associated: within compliers, 86% (95% CI 83% to 91%) had specific knowledge of the relevant aspect of the law, compared with 60% (95% CI 55% to 65%) within non-compliers. However, the reasons medical specialists gave for making decisions did not vary according to legal knowledge. Conclusions Medical specialists prioritise patient-related clinical factors over law when confronted with a scenario where legal compliance is inconsistent with what they believe is clinically indicated. Although legally knowledgeable specialists were more likely to comply with the law, compliance in the scenario was not motivated by an intention to follow law. Ethical considerations (which are different from, but often align with, law) are suggested as a more important influence in clinical decision-making. More education and training of doctors is needed to demonstrate the role, relevance and utility of law in end-of-life care. (shrink)

Firearm injury in the United States is a public health crisis in which physicians are uniquely situated to intervene. However, their ability to mitigate harm is limited by a complex array of laws and regulations that shape their role in firearm injury prevention. This piece uses four clinical scenarios to illustrate how these laws and regulations impact physician practice, including patient counseling, injury reporting, and the use of court orders and involuntary holds. Unintended consequences on clinical practice of laws intended (...) to reduce firearm injury are also discussed. Lessons drawn from these cases suggest that physicians require more nuanced education on this topic, and that policymakers should consult front-line healthcare providers when designing firearm policies. (shrink)

This project continues our interdisciplinary research into computational and cognitive aspects of narrative comprehension. Our ultimate goal is the development of a computational theory of how humans understand narrative texts. The theory will be informed by joint research from the viewpoints of linguistics, cognitive psychology, the study of language acquisition, literary theory, geography, philosophy, and artificial intelligence. The linguists, literary theorists, and geographers in our group are developing theories of narrative language and spatial understanding that are being tested by the (...) cognitive psychologists and language researchers in our group, and a computational model of a reader of narrative text is being developed by the AI researchers, based in part on these theories and results and in part on research on knowledge representation and reasoning. This proposal describes the knowledge-representation and natural-language-processing issues involved in the computational implementation of the theory; discusses a contrast between communicative and narrative uses of language and of the relation of the narrative text to the story world it describes; investigates linguistic, literary, and hermeneutic dimensions of our research; presents a computational investigation of subjective sentences and reference in narrative; studies children’s acquisition of the ability to take third-person perspective in their own storytelling; describes the psychological validation of various linguistic devices; and examines how readers develop an understanding of the geographical space of a story. This report is a longer version of a project description submitted to NSF. This document, produced in May 2007, is a L ATEX version of Technical Report 89-07 (Buffalo: SUNY Buffalo Department of Computer Science, August 1989), with slightly.. (shrink)

There is growing evidence that a sense of meaning in life may emerge, in part, from the social relationships that people maintain. But it is not clear how the relationship between social ties and a sense of meaning might arise. The purpose of this study is to see if meaning in life is associated with three socially focused virtues: compassion, forgiveness of others, and providing social support to others. In the process, an effort is made to see if these social (...) virtues arise from social relationships in religious institutions. Two main findings emerge from a recent nationwide survey. First, people who are more compassionate, more forgiving, and who help others more often have a stronger sense of meaning in life. Second, individuals who receive more spiritual support from fellow church members are more likely to adopt these social virtues. The theoretical basis of these relationships is discussed. (shrink)

BackgroundThe consent process for a genetic study is challenging when the research is conducted in a group stigmatized because of beliefs that the disease is familial. Podoconiosis, also known as 'mossy foot', is an example of such a disease. It is a condition resulting in swelling of the lower legs among people exposed to red clay soil. It is a very stigmatizing problem in endemic areas of Ethiopia because of the widely held opinion that the disease runs in families and (...) is untreatable. The aim of this study was to explore the impact of social stigma on the process of obtaining consent for a study on the genetics of podoconiosis in Southern Ethiopia.MethodsWe adapted a rapid assessment tool validated in The Gambia. The methodology was qualitative involving focus-group discussions (n = 4) and in-depth interviews (n = 25) with community members, fieldworkers, researchers and staff of the Mossy Foot Treatment and Prevention Association (MFTPA) working on prevention and treatment of podoconiosis.ResultsWe found that patients were afraid of participation in a genetic study for fear the study might aggravate stigmatization by publicizing the familial nature of the disease. The MFTPA was also concerned that discussion about the familial nature of podoconiosis would disappoint patients and would threaten the trust they have in the organization. In addition, participants of the rapid assessment stressed that the genetic study should be approved at family level before prospective participants are approached for consent. Based on this feedback, we developed and implemented a consent process involving community consensus and education of fieldworkers, community members and health workers. In addition, we utilized the experience and established trust of the MFTPA to diminish the perceived risk.ConclusionThe study showed that the consent process developed based on issues highlighted in the rapid assessment facilitated recruitment of participants and increased their confidence that the genetic research would not fuel stigma. Therefore, investigators must seek to assess and address risks of research from prospective participants' perspectives. This involves understanding the issues in the society, the culture, community dialogues and developing a consent process that takes all these into consideration. (shrink)

Adolescents who believe that their parents treat them differently from their siblings have poorer psychosocial well-being than otherwise. This phenomenon, which is known as parental differential treatment or PDT occurs in up to 65% of families. Past studies have examined socio-demographic variables (e.g., child gender, age, and birth order) as predictors of PDT, but these immutable characteristics do little to inform interventions and help these adolescents. Hence, this study extends past research by investigating links among parent empathy, parent perception of (...) PDT, child perception of PDT, child perception of fairness and child well-being (self-esteem, depression, anxiety, and trust in the relationship with parents). Furthermore, this study tests whether adolescent personality (openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism), child empathy, and child perception of fairness moderate these links. This study will utilize a two-wave longitudinal design with a one-year lapse. Data will be collected from 760 Chinese adolescents studying from Secondary One to Secondary Three in 18 schools in Hong Kong and from their parents. We test our theoretical model via a multilevel structural equation model. This study both addresses (a) theoretical debates about relations among empathy, PDT, fairness, and psychosocial well-being and (b) focuses on modifiable factors and behaviors, to inform future interventions, such as parent education. (shrink)

This paper offers a novel, qualitative approach to evaluating the outcomes of integrating humanities and ethics into a newly revised pre-clerkship medical education curriculum. The authors set out to evaluate medical students’ perceptions, learning outcomes, and growth in identity development. Led by a team of interdisciplinary scholars, this qualitative project examines multiple sources of student experience and perception data, including student essays, end-of-year surveys, and semi-structured interviews with students. Data were analyzed using deductive and inductive processes to identify key categories (...) and recurring themes. Results suggest that students not only engaged with the curricular content and met the stated learning objectives but also acknowledged their experience in the humanities and ethics curriculum as an opportunity to reflect, expand their perceptions of medicine (and what it means to be “in” medicine), connect with their classmates, and further cultivate their personal and professional identities. Results of this qualitative study show how and in what ways the ethics and humanities curriculum motivates students past surface-level memorization of factual knowledge and encourages thoughtful analysis and evaluation about how the course material relates to and influences their thinking and how they see themselves as future doctors. The comprehensive qualitative approach reflects a holistic model for evaluating the integration of humanities and ethics into the pre-clerkship medical education curriculum. Future research should examine if this approach provides a protective factor against the demonstrated ethical erosion and empathy decrease during clinical training. (shrink)

At 41 weeks, the patient had been delivered by Cesarean section for failure to progress at Hospital A in the same city. Three days after birth she suffered a respiratory arrest. Resuscitation and ventilator support were initiated promptly but the child did poorly, and shortly after this first arrest, the parents were told by the child's physician that she had no chance of recovery. Nevertheless, the mother continued to insist that the child be kept on a respirator and aggressive support (...) be maintained. (shrink)

In this study we compared the ethical attitudes of a group of experienced, predominantly female, registered nurses (n = 67) with those of a group of final year, mixed sex, medical students (n = 125). The purpose was to determine the basis of differences in attitudes that could lead to ethical disagreements between these two groups when they came to work together. A questionnaire developed to explore ethical attitudes was administered and the responses of the two groups were compared using (...) t-tests. Because of the preponderance of females among the nurses an analysis of variance of the gender-adjusted scores for each group was also carried out. On comparing the responses, the nurses differed significantly from the medical students in a number of ethical domains. A potential source of conflict between these two groups is that the nurses were inclined to adopt the perspective of patients but the medical students identified with their profession. When corrected for the effects of gender, the differences persisted, indicating that it was discipline that determined the differences. We recommend that students of nursing and medicine receive ethics education together, and that more open dialogue between doctors and nurses with respect to their different ethical viewpoints is needed in the work setting. This article will be of interest to educators of students of medicine and nursing, as well as to doctors and nurses who are eager to improve their professional relations and thereby improve patient care. (shrink)

This article gives a broad sense of existing debate about Global Citizenship Education to help situate and contextualize a novel case study. Scholars for Syria originated at a small university in southern Indiana. This grassroots response to the turmoil in Syria bridges the gap between a seemingly distant crisis and a midwestern city in the United States. The unique pedagogical and curricular dimensions of the case study work as a helpful framing device for facilitating exploration of debates about the shape (...) of GCE, as well as providing new ways in which to imagine GCE curriculum, pedagogy, and embedding ethics into wider university initiatives. (shrink)

Augmentative and alternative communication brain-computer interface systems are intended to offer communication access to people with severe speech and physical impairment without requiring volitional movement. As the field moves toward clinical implementation of AAC-BCI systems, research involving participants with SSPI is essential. Research has demonstrated variability in AAC-BCI system performance across users, and mixed results for comparisons of performance for users with and without disabilities. The aims of this systematic review were to describe study, system, and participant characteristics reported in (...) BCI research, summarize the communication task performance of participants with disabilities using AAC-BCI systems, and explore any differences in performance for participants with and without disabilities. Electronic databases were searched in May, 2018, and March, 2021, identifying 6065 records, of which 73 met inclusion criteria. Non-experimental study designs were common and sample sizes were typically small, with approximately half of studies involving five or fewer participants with disabilities. There was considerable variability in participant characteristics, and in how those characteristics were reported. Over 60% of studies reported an average selection accuracy ≤70% for participants with disabilities in at least one tested condition. However, some studies excluded participants who did not reach a specific system performance criterion, and others did not state whether any participants were excluded based on performance. Twenty-nine studies included participants both with and without disabilities, but few reported statistical analyses comparing performance between the two groups. Results suggest that AAC-BCI systems show promise for supporting communication for people with SSPI, but they remain ineffective for some individuals. The lack of standards in reporting outcome measures makes it difficult to synthesize data across studies. Further research is needed to demonstrate efficacy of AAC-BCI systems for people who experience SSPI of varying etiologies and severity levels, and these individuals should be included in system design and testing. Consensus in terminology and consistent participant, protocol, and performance description will facilitate the exploration of user and system characteristics that positively or negatively affect AAC-BCI use, and support innovations that will make this technology more useful to a broader group of people.Clinical trial registrationhttps://www.crd.york.ac.uk/prospero/display_record.php?ID=CRD42018095345, PROSPERO: CRD42018095345. (shrink)

Qualitative longitudinal research (QLR) provides temporal understanding of the human response to health, illness, and the life course. However, little guidance is available for conducting QLR in the nursing literature. The purpose of this review is to describe the methodological status of QLR in nursing. With the assistance of a medical librarian, we conducted a thorough search circumscribed to qualitative, longitudinal nursing studies of patients’ and care‐givers’ experiences published between 2006 and 2016. The methodological quality of the 74 reviewed studies (...) varied tremendously; many reports lacked sufficient detail in reporting on sampling and attrition, retention strategies, and data collection and analysis, making it difficult for readers to evaluate the credibility and transferability of study findings. Based on the strengths and limitations of the studies reviewed and findings in the literature, we provide recommendations for enhancing the reporting of the research process as a supplement to the standards for qualitative research more broadly. These recommendations are offered in the spirit of encouraging dialogue among colleagues and assisting journal reviewers and editors in their evaluation of QLR. (shrink)

Responding to a major pandemic and planning for allocation of scarce resources under crisis standards of care requires coordination and cooperation across federal, state and local governments in tandem with the larger societal infrastructure. Maryland remains one of the few states with no state-endorsed ASR plan, despite having a plan published in 2017 that was informed by public forums across the state. In this article, we review strengths and weaknesses of Maryland’s response to COVID-19 and the role of the Maryland (...) Healthcare Ethics Committee Network in bridging gaps in the state’s response to prepare health care facilities for potential implementation of ASR plans. Identified “lessons learned” include: Deliberative Democracy Provided a Strong Foundation for Maryland’s ASR Framework; Community Consensus is Informative, Not Normative; Hearing Community Voices Has Inherent Value; Lack of Transparency & Political Leadership Gaps Generate a Fragmented Response; Pandemic Politics Requires Diplomacy & Persistence; Strong Leadership is Needed to Avoid Implementing ASR … And to Plan for ASR; An Effective Pandemic Response Requires Coordination and Information-Sharing Beyond the Acute Care Hospital; and The Ability to Correct Course is Crucial: Reconsidering No-visitor Policies. (shrink)

Despite general agreement that altered reward sensitivity is involved in attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), a wide range of different alterations has been proposed. We cite work showing abnormal sensitivity to delay of reward, together with abnormal sensitivity to individual instances of reward. We argue that at the cellular level these behavioural characteristics might indicate that dopamine timing is off in children with ADHD.

An interview with Gail Weiss concerning her interests and influences, especially the body and embodiment.

The concern of this work is with developing an alternative to standard categories in theology and philosophy, especially in terms of how they deal with nature. Avoiding the polemics of much contemporary reflection on nature, it shows how we are connected to nature through the unconscious and its unique way of reading and processing signs. Spinoza's key distinction between natura naturans and natura naturata serves as the governing framework for the treatise. Suggestions are made for a post-Christian way of understanding (...) religion. Robert S. Corrington's work represents the first sustained attempt to bring together the fields of semiotics, depth-psychology, pragmaticism, and a post-Monotheistic theology of nature. Its focus is on how signification functions in human and non-human orders of infinite nature. Our connection with the infinite is described in detail, especially as it relates to the use of sign systems. (shrink)

The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 12, Issue 10, Page 9-10, October 2012.

Much of the attention by social scientists to the rapidly growing organic agriculture sector focuses on the benefits it provides to consumers (in the form of pesticide-free foods) and to farmers (in the form of price premiums). By contrast, there has been little discussion or research about the implications of the boom in organic agriculture for farmworkers on organic farms. In this paper, we ask the question: From the perspective of organic farmers, does “certified organic” agriculture encompass a commitment to (...) “sustainability” that prioritizes social goals? Specifically, we aim to broaden our understanding of the relationship between social sustainability and organic agriculture by drawing attention to issues affecting farmworkers, whose labor and contribution tends to elude most discussions of organic agriculture. We present findings from a survey of organic farmers in California about the possible incorporation of social standards into organic certification criteria. Our findings suggest that, at best, lukewarm support for social certification within organic agriculture exists among certified organic farmers in California. They also question expectations that organic agriculture necessarily fosters social or even economic sustainability for most of the farmers and farmworkers involved. However, we also find exceptions to the patterns evidenced in our survey. In-depth interviews with select organic farmers demonstrate that there are individuals whose practices are atypical and demonstrate that, under some circumstances, an organic production system can be at once environmentally, economically, and socially sustainable. (shrink)

This paper is a counter to the view that names are always predicates with the same extension as a metalinguistic predicate with the form “is a thing called “N”” (the Predicate View). The Predicate View is in opposition to the Referential View of names. In this paper, I undermine one argument for the Predicate View. The Predicate View’s adherents take examples of uses of names that have the surface appearance of a predicate and generalise from these to treat uses of (...) names that do not have the surface appearance of a predicate. They show that the Predicate View can provide a unified account of these two uses and assume that the Referential account cannot. I propose an alternative view of names, the Polysemy View. This view allows one to resist the pressure to generalise from the cases with the surface appearance of predicates to all uses of names while nevertheless providing connections between the uses. On the Polysemy View names are not, in their core use, metalinguistic predicates. Names are predominantly referring expressions but they also freelance as metalinguistic predicates on occasion. They have a double life. This double life is possible because of the pragmatic and conventional connections between the two aspects of that life. My main aim in this paper is to show that the Predicate View is not the only view that can give a good account of apparently predicative uses of names. In addition, I offer some inconclusive reasons to prefer the Polysemy View over the Predicate View. My paper assumes a background framework that the Predicate and Referentialist Views share and I do not attempt to justify that framework. I ignore many other views of names (notably descriptivist views and relevance theoretic views) in order to focus on the debate between these two opponents. (shrink)

Creatures inveterately wrong in their inductions have a pathetic but praiseworthy tendency to die before reproducing their kind.- Quine (1969)We think that some facts - for example, the fact that someone is suffering, or the fact that all previously encountered tigers were carnivorous – supply us with normative reasons for action and belief. The former fact, we think, is a reason to help the suffering person; the latter fact is a reason to believe that the next tiger we see will (...) also be carnivorous. But how is the reason-giving status of such facts best understood? In particular, is it best understood as ultimately “conferred” upon these facts by our own evaluative attitudes, or do at least some facts possess normative reason-giving status in a way that is robustly independent of our attitudes? This is the modern, secular version of Plato's “Euthyphro question” - couched here in the philosophically useful, though not essential, language of normative reasons. (shrink)

Abnormalities in the ability of cells to properly degrade proteins have been identified in many neurodegenerative diseases. Recent work has implicated synaptojanin 1 (SynJ1) in Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease, although the role of this polyphosphoinositide phosphatase in protein degradation has not been thoroughly described. Here, we dissected in vivo the role of SynJ1 in endolysosomal trafficking in zebrafish cone photoreceptors using a SynJ1‐deficient zebrafish mutant, nrca14. We found that loss of SynJ1 leads to specific accumulation of late endosomes and (...) autophagosomes early in photoreceptor development. An analysis of autophagic flux revealed that autophagosomes accumulate because of a defect in maturation. In addition we found an increase in vesicles that are highly enriched for PI(3)P, but negative for an early endosome marker in nrca14 cones. A mutational analysis of SynJ1 enzymatic domains found that activity of the 5'phosphatase, but not the Sac1 domain, is required to rescue both aberrant late endosomes and autophagosomes. Finally, modulating activity of the PI(4,5)P2 regulator, Arf6, rescued the disrupted trafficking pathways in nrca14 cones. Our study describes a specific role for SynJ1 in autophagosomal and endosomal trafficking and provides evidence that PI(4,5)P2 participates in autophagy in a neuronal cell type. -/- . (shrink)

This essay focuses on the categerial expression of the metaphysics of ecstatic naturalism and the theology of deep pantheism. Naturalism, the theory that nature is all that there is, becomes the ecstatic form by stressing the continual fissuring between nature naturing and its potencies and nature natured seen as the innumerable orders of the world. Deep pantheism critiques the dualism of supernatural theism as well as the half-way theology of panentheism. Further, deep pantheism is “deep” because it focuses on the (...) churning abyss of the unconscious of nature and it’s archetypal potencies. (shrink)