Innerhalb der Komplexitat der religiosen Erscheinungswelt gibt es -Religionen-, deren Zuordnung zur Religionsgeschichte moglich wird, indem unter religionswissenschaftlichen Aspekten z.B. besonders die religionssoziologischen und religionsphanomenologischen Inhalte einer von Europa ausgehenden - aber hier fast in Vergessenheit geratenen - -Religion der Menschheit- in ihrer historischen Existenz aufgezeigt werden. Dabei geht es vor allem um den Inhalt der -Positivistischen Religion- in Brasilien und um ihre religiose, kirchliche und organisatorische Prasenz.".

Recent philosophical work on the concept of human nature disagrees on how to respond to the Darwinian challenge, according to which biological species do not have traditional essences. Three broad kinds of reactions can be distinguished: conservative intrinsic essentialism, which defends essences in the traditional sense, eliminativism, which suggests dropping the concept of human nature altogether, and constructive approaches, which argue that revisions can generate sensible concepts of human nature beyond traditional essences. The different constructive approaches pick out one or (...) two of the three epistemic roles that are fused in traditional essentialist conceptions of human nature: descriptive, explanatory, definitional, or explanatory and definitional. These turns towards diverging epistemic roles are best interpreted pluralistically: there is a plurality of concepts of human nature that have to be clearly distinguished, each with a legitimate role in respective scientific contexts. (shrink)

The aim of the Georg Büchner Yearbook, which is published at irregular intervals, is to serve Büchner research as a forum for stock-taking and innovation, reflection and debate, for documenting sources and imparting information swiftly, to support critical debate and understanding, and in so doing to cover the whole range of research findings and discussions in both their substance and their methodology. This mission statement from the foreword to the 1st volume (1981) still guides the Yearbook in all its (...) regular sections (articles debates minor contributions and glosses documents and materials reviews current bibliography). (shrink)

Heredity and reproduction have always been matters of concern. Eugenics is a story that began well before the Holocaust, but the Holocaust completely changed the way eugenics was perceived at that time. What began with Galton as a scientific movement aimed at the improvement of the human race based on the theories and principles of heredity and statistics became by the beginning of the 20th century an international movement that sought to engineer human supremacy. Eugenic ideas, however, trace back to (...) ancient Greek aristocratic ideas exemplified in Plato’s Republic, which played an important role in shaping modern eugenic social practices and government policies. Both positive and negative eugenics focused on the encouragement of healthy and discouragement of unhealthy reproduction. All these practices were often based on existing prejudices about race and disability. In this article, we will focus on the rise of eugenics, starting with the publication of Origin of Species to the Holocaust. This examination will be multidisciplinary, utilizing genetics, legal history and bioethical aspects. Through this examination, we will discuss how provisional understandings of genetics influenced eugenics-based legislation. We will also discuss the rise of biopolitics, the change of medical ethos and stance towards negative eugenics policies, and the possible power of bioethical principles to prevent such phenomena. (shrink)

This paper takes up again Grice’s Basic Model (GBM) for analysing communicative acts. We draw attention to a ’new’ fault in GBM, i.e. a fault not yet noticed in the literature: Grice’s deflniens for CA (= communicative attempt) is not only too weak (as it is not satisfying the reflexivity-condition according to which any CA implies the speaker’s intention of CA’s being understood by the hearer); it is also too strong - and just for the same reason.

This collection of original essays explores the connections between the philosophies of Alfred North Whitehead and the classical American pragmatists.

Business students from the three NAFTA countries were shown a possible Sexual Harassment scenario from Arthur Andersen's Business Ethics Program. They were asked to respond to a pre-questionnaire concerning the three characters' behaviors and possible actions and a post-questionnaire after writing a report from the points of view of the three characters in the scenario. The students were asked to consider whether the characters should report the possible harasser to their supervisor, and thus engage in whistle-blowing behavior, as well as (...) directly confront the harasser. Hypotheses are formulated for the three NAFTA countries based on Hofstede's cultural dimensions. There were significant differences, but in some cases not in the direction expected. Gender differences are also explored, but there were few significant differences. (shrink)

Business students from the three NAFTA countries were shown a possible Sexual Harassment scenario from Arthur Andersen’s Business Ethics Program. They were asked to respond to a pre-questionnaire concerning the three characters’ behaviors and possible actions and a post-questionnaire after writing a report from the points of view of the three characters in the scenario. The students were asked to consider whether the characters should report the possible harasser to their supervisor, and thus engage in whistle-blowing behavior, as well as (...) directly confront the harasser. Hypotheses are formulated for the three NAFTA countries based on Hofstede’s cultural dimensions. There were significant differences, but in some cases not in the direction expected. Gender differences are also explored, but there were few significant differences. (shrink)

This study aimed at investigating depression, anxiety, and stress symptoms among healthcare workers and examine the role of expressive flexibility and context sensitivity as key components of resilience in understanding reported symptoms. We hypothesized a significant and different contribution of resilience components in explaining depression, anxiety, and stress. A total sample of 218 Italian healthcare workers participated in this study through an online survey during the lockdown, consequently to the COVID-19. The Depression Anxiety Stress Scales-21 was used to measure depression, (...) anxiety, and stress; the Flexible Regulation of Emotional Expression scale was used to measure the ability to enhance and suppress emotional expression; the Context Sensitivity Index was used to measure the ability to accurately perceive contextual cues and determine cue absence. Demographic and work-related data were also collected. DASS-21 cut-off scores were used to verify the mental status among the respondents. Correlational analyses examined relationships between DASS-21, FREE, and CSI, followed by three regression analyses with depression, anxiety, and stress as dependent variables, controlling for age, gender, and work experience. Enhancement and suppression abilities, cue presence, and cue absence served as independent variables. The results showed a prevalence of moderate to extremely severe symptoms of 8% for depression, 9.8% for anxiety, and 8.9% for stress. Results of correlational analysis highlighted that enhance ability was inversely associated with depression and stress. Suppression ability was inversely associated with depression, anxiety, and stress. The ability to perceive contextual cues was inversely associated with depression and anxiety. The regression analysis showed that the ability to enhance emotional expression was statistically significant to explain depression among healthcare workers. In predicting anxiety, age, and the ability to accurately perceive contextual cues and determine cue absence made substantial contributions as predictors. In the last regression model, age, work experience, and the ability to suppress emotional expression were significant predictors of stress. This study’s findings can help understand the specific contributions of enhancement and suppression abilities and sensitivity to stressor context cues in predicting depression, anxiety, and stress among healthcare workers. Psychological interventions to prevent burnout should consider these relationships. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Academic dishonesty has been found to be on the increase globally, affecting the quality of education, ethics of professional practices and career outcome. Substantial literature exists on the role of religious commitment in reducing academic dishonesty, but few or no studies have examined the pathways explaining this link. The present study examined whether self-efficacy mediates the relationship between RC and AD. Undergraduates of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka completed the Academic Dishonesty Scale, Religious Commitment Inventory and New General Self-Efficacy (...) Scale and also provided relevant demographic information. Results of statistical analysis indicated that RC was negatively associated with AD. Self-efficacy was also a partial mediation in the relationship between RC and AD. This implies that self-efficacy contributes to the pathways through which RC influences AD among students. Our findings suggest that consideration of students’ level of self-judgment on their ability to cope with academic demands may be an important target toward enhancing the influence of RC in reducing academic dishonest behaviors among students. (shrink)

The twenty‐six‐year‐old patient requested a prophylactic bilateral mastectomy with reconstruction because of an extensive family history of cancer. She reported that she had developed melanoma at twenty‐five; that her mother, sister, aunts, and a cousin all had breast cancer; that a cousin had ovarian cancer at nineteen; and that a brother was treated for esophageal cancer at fifteen. The treating team was skeptical about this history, and they could find no documentation of the patient's reported melanoma. The surgeon wrote the (...) patient's primary care physician, explaining that he had seen the patient and planned to proceed with the bilateral mastectomy and reconstruction. The primary care physician responded that he was unable to substantiate several of the patient's claims; some of his colleagues believed the family history to be fabricated. Trying to make sense of the discrepancies, the genetic counselor called a counselor colleague who had met with this patient. The colleague suggested that the in‐house genetic counselor “google” the patient. The search revealed two Facebook pages linked to the patient. In one, apparently a personal profile, the patient stated that in addition to battling stage four melanoma, she had recently been diagnosed with breast cancer. She provided a link to a site where she solicited donations to attend a summit for young cancer patients. The other Facebook page featured numerous pictures of her with a bald head, as though she has been through chemotherapy. The genetic counselor showed the Facebook pages to the surgeon, who then decided not to operate. Should health care professionals “google” their patients? (shrink)

One way to detect, monitor and prevent adverse events with the help of Information Technology is by using ontologies capable of representing three levels of reality: what is the case, what is believed about reality, and what is represented. We report on how Basic Formal Ontology and Referent Tracking exhibit this capability and how they are used to develop an adverse event ontology and related data annotation scheme for the European ReMINE project.

This paper poses the question, “what are providers’ obligations to patients who lie?” This question is explored through the lens of a specific case: a 26–year–old woman who requests prophylactic bilateral mastectomy with reconstruction reports a significant and dramatic family history, but does not want to undergo genetic testing. Using a conversational–style discussion, the case is explored by a breast surgeon, genetic counselor/medical geneticist, clinical psychologist, chair of a hospital ethics committee and director of a clinical ethics consultation service.

Business students from the three NAFTA countries were shown a possible Sexual Harassment scenario from Arthur Andersen’s Business Ethics Program. They were asked to respond to a pre-questionnaire concerning the three characters’ behaviors and possible actions and a post-questionnaire after writing a report from the points of view of the three characters in the scenario. The students were asked to consider whether the characters should report the possible harasser to their supervisor, and thus engage in whistle-blowing behavior, as well as (...) directly confront the harasser. Hypotheses are formulated for the three NAFTA countries based on Hofstede’s cultural dimensions. There were significant differences, but in some cases not in the direction expected. Gender differences are also explored, but there were few significant differences. (shrink)

The association of resilience-related factors with frailty is a recent research topic. Dispositional optimism and context sensitivity are two psychological factors that differently contribute to individual resilience. This study aimed at investigating whether dispositional optimism and context sensitivity might contribute to a multifactorial model of frailty, together with established relevant factors such as cognitive and physical factors. This cross-sectional study involved 141 elderly outpatients aged ≥65 years, who were referred to the Geriatrics and Multidimensional Evaluation Clinic of the University Hospital (...) of Messina. We used the following measures: the Mini-Mental State Examination to screen for global cognitive functioning; 4-m gait speed and handgrip strength to measure physical performance; a 35-item Frailty Index to evaluate patients’ frailty status; the revised Life Orientation Test to gauge dispositional optimism; and the Context Sensitivity Index to measure context sensitivity. We found that LOT-R, CSI, and MMSE were all significantly associated with FI. Gait speed was only marginally associated with FI. The present study showed a novel association of dispositional optimism and context sensitivity with frailty among elderly outpatients. These preliminary findings support a multidimensional approach to frailty in which even peculiar psychological features might provide a significant contribution. (shrink)

This paper summarizes (in German) recent tendencies in the philosophy of the life sciences.

This volume examines some of the most contentious social justice issues present in the corpus of Augustine's writings. Whether one is concerned with human trafficking and the contemporary slave trade, the global economy, or endless wars, these essays further the conversation on social justice as informed by the writings of Augustine of Hippo.

BACKGROUND: Ontologies play a major role in life sciences, enabling a number of applications, from new data integration to knowledge verification. SNOMED CT is a large medical ontology that is formally defined so that it ensures global consistency and support of complex reasoning tasks. Most biomedical ontologies and taxonomies on the other hand define concepts only textually, without the use of logic. Here, we investigate how to automatically generate formal concept definitions from textual ones. We develop a method that uses (...) machine learning in combination with several types of lexical and semantic features and outputs formal definitions that follow the structure of SNOMED CT concept definitions. RESULTS: We evaluate our method on three benchmarks and test both the underlying relation extraction component as well as the overall quality of output concept definitions. In addition, we provide an analysis on the following aspects: How do definitions mined from the Web and literature differ from the ones mined from manually created definitions, e.g., MeSH? How do different feature representations, e.g., the restrictions of relations' domain and range, impact on the generated definition quality?, How do different machine learning algorithms compare to each other for the task of formal definition generation?, and, What is the influence of the learning data size to the task? We discuss all of these settings in detail and show that the suggested approach can achieve success rates of over 90%. In addition, the results show that the choice of corpora, lexical features, learning algorithm and data size do not impact the performance as strongly as semantic types do. Semantic types limit the domain and range of a predicted relation, and as long as relations' domain and range pairs do not overlap, this information is most valuable in formalizing textual definitions. CONCLUSIONS: The analysis presented in this manuscript implies that automated methods can provide a valuable contribution to the formalization of biomedical knowledge, thus paving the way for future applications that go beyond retrieval and into complex reasoning. The method is implemented and accessible to the public from: https://github.com/alifahsyamsiyah/learningDL. (shrink)

BackgroundBurnout is a major societal issue adversely affecting employees’ health and performance, which over time results in high sick leave costs for organizations. Traditional rehabilitation therapies show suboptimal effects on reducing burnout and the return-to-work process. Based on the health-promoting effects of nature, taking clients outdoors into nature is increasingly being used as a complementary approach to traditional therapies, and evidence of their effectiveness is growing. Theories explaining how the combination of general psychological support and outdoor-specific elements can trigger the (...) rehabilitation process in outdoor therapy are often lacking, however, impeding its systematic research.AimThe study aims to develop an intervention and evaluation model for outdoor therapy to understand and empirically evaluate whether and how such an outdoor intervention may work for rehabilitation after burnout.Methodological ApproachWe build on the exemplary case of an outdoor intervention for rehabilitation after burnout, developed by outdoor clinical psychologists in Netherlands. We combined the generic context, process, and outcome evaluation model and the burnout recovery model as an overarching deductive frame. We then inductively specified the intervention and evaluation model of outdoor therapy, building on the following qualitative data: semi-structured interviews with outdoor clinical psychologists and former clients; a content analysis of the intervention protocol; and reflective meetings with the intervention developers and health promotion experts.ResultsWe identified six key outdoor intervention elements: physical activity; reconnecting body and mind; nature metaphors; creating relationships; observing natural interactions; and experiential learning. The results further showed that the implementation of these elements may facilitate the rehabilitation process after burnout in which proximal, intermediate, and distal outcomes emerge. Finally, the results suggested that this implementation process depends on the context of the therapist, therapy, and of the clients.ConclusionThe intervention and evaluation model for outdoor therapy shows how key outdoor intervention elements may contribute to the rehabilitation process after burnout. However, our model needs to be further tested among a larger group of clients to empirically evaluate whether and how outdoor therapy can support rehabilitation. (shrink)

The pandemic has exposed the costs of job and income losses. Emergency cash transfers can mitigate the worst immediate effects on people who lack access to safety nets. This research note provides estimates for a potential Temporary Basic Income for poor and near-poor people across 132 developing countries, as well as the minimum cost of income support sufficient to mitigate the pandemic-induced poverty increase. The total monthly cost of the TBI ranges 0.27–0.63% of developing countries’ combined GDP, depending on the (...) choice: top-ups on each country’s average incomes up to a vulnerability threshold; transfers based on each country’s median standard of living; or uniform transfers. This note argues that some form of TBI is within reach and can inform a larger conversation about how to build comprehensive social protection systems that make the poor and near-poor more resilient to economic downturns in the future. (shrink)

Rationale: Deep brain stimulation (DBS) of the hippocampus is proposed for enhancement of memory impaired by injury or disease. Many pre-clinical DBS paradigms can be addressed in epilepsy patients undergoing intracranial monitoring for seizure localization, since they already have electrodes implanted in brain areas of interest. Even though epilepsy is usually not a memory disorder targeted by DBS, the studies can nevertheless model other memory-impacting disorders, such as Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI). Methods: Human patients undergoing Phase II invasive monitoring for (...) intractable epilepsy were implanted with depth electrodes capable of recording neurophysiological signals. Subjects performed a delayed-match-to-sample (DMS) memory task while hippocampal ensembles from CA1 and CA3 cell layers were recorded to estimate a multi-input, multi-output (MIMO) model of CA3-to-CA1 neural encoding and a memory decoding model (MDM) to decode memory information from CA3 and CA1 neuronal signals. After model estimation, subjects again performed the DMS task while either MIMO-based or MDM-based patterned stimulation was delivered to CA1 electrode sites during the encoding phase of the DMS trials. Each subject was sorted (post hoc) by prior experience of repeated and/or mild-to-moderate brain injury (RMBI), TBI, or no history (control) and scored for percentage successful delayed recognition (DR) recall on stimulated vs. non-stimulated DMS trials. The subject’s medical history was unknown to the experimenters until after individual subject memory retention results were scored. Results: When examined compared to control subjects, both TBI and RMBI subjects showed increased memory retention in response to both MIMO and MDM-based hippocampal stimulation. Furthermore, effects of stimulation were also greater in subjects who were evaluated as having pre-existing mild-to-moderate memory impairment. Conclusion: These results show that hippocampal stimulation for memory facilitation was more beneficial for subjects who had previously suffered a brain injury (other than epilepsy), compared to control (epilepsy) subjects who had not suffered a brain injury. This study demonstrates that the epilepsy/intracranial recording model can be extended to test the ability of DBS to restore memory function in subjects who previously suffered a brain injury other than epilepsy, and support further investigation into the beneficial effect of DBS in TBI patients. (shrink)

Emergence of the novel pathogenic coronavirus SARS‐CoV‐2 and its rapid pandemic spread presents challenges that demand immediate attention. Here, we describe the development of a semi‐quantitative high‐content microscopy‐based assay for detection of three major classes (IgG, IgA, and IgM) of SARS‐CoV‐2 specific antibodies in human samples. The possibility to detect antibodies against the entire viral proteome together with a robust semi‐automated image analysis workflow resulted in specific, sensitive and unbiased assay that complements the portfolio of SARS‐CoV‐2 serological assays. Sensitive, specific (...) and quantitative serological assays are urgently needed for a better understanding of humoral immune response against the virus as a basis for developing public health strategies to control viral spread. The procedure described here has been used for clinical studies and provides a general framework for the application of quantitative high‐throughput microscopy to rapidly develop serological assays for emerging virus infections. (shrink)