On April 3, 1995, the Fourth Circuit upheld the right of a Maryland hospital to terminate a surgeon who was HIV-positive ). A resident in the University of Maryland Neurosurgical Training Program was dismissed when hospital administrators learned of his infection with HIV. The resident, known as Dr. Doe, claimed that his termination violated federal laws protecting persons with disabilities. The court upheld the hospital's actions as lawful and affirmed the trial court's grant of summary judgment for the hospital.Dr. Doe (...) charged that his dismissal from the training program violated the Rehabilitation Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act. (shrink)

The advent of personal genomics companies offering direct translation of scientific data into personal health information, calls into question traditional policies to refuse disclosure of such scientific data to research participants. This seems especially true for population biobanks, as they collect not only genotype information but also associated phenotype information, and thus may be in a unique position to translate their scientific findings into personal health information for their participants. Disclosure of such information seems mandated by the expectations raised by (...) biobanks and their participants' rights to know health information, to know clinical research results, to life and health and particularly their right to benefit. Refusals to disclose such information can be grounded in the lack of analytical validity and/or clinical utility of most findings, the need to avoid the therapeutic misconception, the complexity and costs involved in translation and disclosure and the disproportionate burden resulting from the obligation to respect participants' right not to know before any disclosure can be made. Currently, any demands by participants in population biobanks for full disclosure of all pertinent personal health information potentially resulting from the biobank's scientific findings are unlikely to be granted by a Dutch court under Dutch and international law. As the law stands now, a population biobank is neither a doctor nor a personal genomics company. However, in view of the rapid scientific, medical, technological, commercial and social developments, population biobanks must prepare to take more care of their participants' legitimate interest in receiving as much validated personal health information as reasonably possible, in a timely fashion, by developing appropriate translation and disclosure mechanisms. This paper examines whether population biobank participants have the right, under Dutch civil law and international law, to full disclosure, i.e. to all information generated by the biobank that is pertinent to their present and future health. It pioneers the format of a hypothetical court case to elucidate the legal and policy arguments" for and against full disclosure. (shrink)

There is a growing consensus in Britain on the importance of character, and on the belief that the virtues that contribute to good character are part of the solution to many of the challenges facing modern society. Parents, teachers and schools understand the need to teach basic moral virtues to pupils, such as honesty, self-control, fairness, and respect, while fostering behaviour associated with such virtues today. However, until recently, the materials required to help deliver this ambition have been missing in (...) Britain. The Knightly Virtues Programme, devised by the Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues, aims to help solve this challenge. The programme, designed for 9 to 11 year olds, draws on selected classic stories to help teach moral character in schools. This approach has proved to be popular with children and teachers, with more than 5,000 pupils from one hundred schools having participated in the programme so far. Fifty-five of these schools and 3,272 pupils were directly involved in different stages of the research. Based at the University of Birmingham, the Jubilee Centre houses leading academics dedicated to researching the various ways in which good character, which underpins the building blocks of society, can be developed. Recent research from the Centre has shown that the qualities that make up character can be learnt and taught, and suggests that we need a new emphasis on their importance in schools and in professional education. This report from the Centre into the use of classic literature within schools sets out the ways in which the Knightly Virtues Programme is able to develop the virtue literacy of school pupils, and the extent to which an understanding and awareness of good moral character can make positive changes to behaviour. The impact of the programme has been tested using several rigorous research methods, detailed in this report alongside their findings, which provide substantial empirical evidence for the effectiveness of using stories to develop virtue literacy. (shrink)

Public acceptance is often seen as a key reason why water-recycling technology is rejected. A common assumption is that projects fail because the general public is unable to comprehend specialist information about risk and the belief that if the public were better informed, they would accept change more readily. This article suggests that rhetoric about acceptance is counterproductive in progressing sustainability as it does not address issues relating to institutional arrangements and reinforces a dichotomy between expert and lay groups. Instead, (...) it is argued that institutional change is needed to build opportunities for constructive public engagement. The failure to implement sustainable water use through recycling can be understood as the result of several factors including present cost structures for water, institutional conservatism, administrative fragmentation, and inadequate involvement of communities in planning. Achieving sustainable water use through recycling may require better coordination between agencies and integrated government policies. (shrink)

We present the opinion of some authors who believe there is no force between a stationary charge and a stationary resistive wire carrying a constant current. We show that this force is different from zero and present its main components: the force due to the charges induced in the wire by the test charge and a force proportional to the current in the resistive wire. We also discuss briefly a component of the force proportional to the square of the current (...) which should exist according to some models and another component due to the acceleration of the conduction electrons in a curved wire carrying a dc current (centripetal acceleration). Finally, we analyze experiments showing the existence of the electric field proportional to the current in resistive wires. (shrink)

The aim of the My Character project was to develop a better understanding of how interventions designed to develop character might enhance moral formation and futuremindedness in young people. Futuremindedness can be defined as an individual’s capacity to set goals and make plans to achieve them. Establishing goals requires considerable moral reflection, and the achievement of worthwhile aims requires character traits such as courage and the capacity to delay gratification. The research team developed two new educational interventions – a website (...) and a hard-copy journal – with the specific aim of developing future-mindedness. After development, the website and journal were piloted over a one-year period by over 1,000 11–14 year olds in six schools across England. Various research methods, including group interviews and case studies, were implemented to assess impact. In addition, a pilot RCT was conducted to assess the feasibility of using experimental methods to measure character. The main findings from the research are that: - Students benefit from opportunities in school to think about future-mindedness; this can be successfully taught through character education. - Harnessing new technology, such as the Internet, offers exciting opportunities for character education. - It is beneficial to investigate the impact of new character education resources in order to bring greater clarity about ‘what works’. The most useful approach is a mixed methods one that allows for triangulation of evidence. - It is possible to run RCTs and other experimental research in schools to assess developmental projects of this kind, but applying the method in schools and creating suitable outcome measures present challenges for researchers. - A positive indicator of the success is that five out of the six pilot schools have embedded My Character into their curriculum. In addition, many new schools, both in Britain and internationally, have started to use the website and / or journal. This report describes the research, analyses the impact of My Character and concludes with recommendations for policy makers, practitioners and researchers embarking on similar projects. These recommendations include: i) advocating that schools create space in the curriculum to teach future-mindedness through character education; ii) enhancing traditional character education teaching methods with opportunities brought by Internet technologies; iii) evaluating character education interventions using triangulated evidence drawn from a mixture of research methods. (shrink)

In this work we analyze the case of resistive conductor plates carrying constant currents, utilizing surface charge distributions. We obtain the electric potential in the plates and in the space surrounding them. We obtain a non-vanishing electric field outside the conductors. We compare the theoretical results with experimental data present in the literature.

ABSTRACT Despite Institutional Review Board concerns about psychological harm arising from research participation, evidence from trauma-questionnaire research suggests that participation is typically well-tolerated by participants. Yet, it is unclear how participant experiences of in-lab trauma simulations align with IRB ethical guidelines. Thus, we compared reactions to a trauma film paradigm with reactions to a positive film task or cognitive tasks. Overall, relative to other conditions, the trauma film was well-tolerated by participants: they generally reported low-to-moderate negative emotions, moderate benefits, and (...) that participation was not worse than everyday stressors. Our results have implications for the research community in designing trauma-based research. (shrink)

We consider the relation between versions of Ramsey’s Theorem and König’s Infinity Lemma, in the absence of the axiom of choice.

We consider the relation between versions of Ramsey’s Theorem and König’s Infinity Lemma, in the absence of the axiom of choice.

This book ranges over all the conventionally acknowledged fields of philosophy and, despite or perhaps because of its title, its author concedes at the outset that he has sacrificed depth for breadth. In view of its wide compass, not to mention its sometimes evasive dialectical style, it will not be possible to summarize here the book’s main arguments or positions. Instead, attention will be directed to the following areas and corresponding chapters: Theory of Knowledge, Metaphysics, Philosophical Anthropology, and Philosophy of (...) Religion. (shrink)

McCloskey presents a powerful case for the view, already well argued in briefer form by Mackie, Flew, McCloskey, and others, that the existence of evil—any and particularly actual evil-is, if not logically, morally incompatible with the existence of an omnipotent, omniscient, all-good creator. While he promises to "take up the challenge" of certain theists who claim no logical contradiction is implied in the position God and evil exist, aside from a few ad hominem arguments directed Plantinga’s way he seems finally (...) to concede their point. The early chapters are of a preliminary nature and aim at defining traditional and parallel forms of the problem of evil, describing the enormity of actual evil, and establishing, by way of assessing particular ethical and linguistic theories, the presuppositions required for the problem to appear as a real one. It is in the later chapters, however, that the author makes his case. Here he considers and rejects for numerous reasons the view that physical evil, pain and suffering, can be justified by the virtuous and other goods they make possible, and the view that they are justified theologically, as punishment for sin. The former view implies an ethic, unacceptable to McCloskey, in which evil befalling a person can be willed or approved as a means. The latter view fails in the case of undeserved suffering, e.g., animals and undeserving children. (shrink)

Tarski [5] showed that for any set X, its set w(X) of well-orderable subsets has cardinality strictly greater than that of X, even in the absence of the axiom of choice. We construct a Fraenkel-Mostowski model in which there is an infinite strictly descending sequence under the relation |w (X)| = |Y|. This contrasts with the corresponding situation for power sets, where use of Hartogs' ℵ-function easily establishes that there can be no infinite descending sequence under the relation |P(X)| = (...) |Y|. (shrink)

J. L. Austin (1911-1960) exercised in Post-war Oxford an intellectual authority similar to that of Wittgenstein in Cambridge. Although he completed no books of his own and published only seven papers, Austin became through lectures and talks one of the acknowledged leaders in what is called ‘Oxford philosophy’ or ‘ordinary language philosophy’. Few would dispute that among analytic philosophers Austin stands out as a great and original philosophical genius. Three volumes of his writing, published after his death, have become classics (...) in analytical philosophy: Philosophical Papers ; Sense and Sensibilia ; and How to Do Things with Words . First published in 1969, this book is a collection of critical essays on Austin’s philosophy written by well-known philosophers, many of whom knew Austin personally. A number of essays included were especially written for this volume, but the majority have appeared previously in various journals or books, not all easy to obtain. (shrink)

We present Helmholtz's argument against Weber's electrodynamics. It is related with a fixed charged nonconducting spherical shell and a charged particle moving inside it. Then we utilize Weber's electrodynamics plus Schrödinger's expression for gravitational interactions in order to obtain the equation of motion and to study this situation. We show that this approach avoids the problems pointed out by Helmholtz. Moreover, it indicates that the effective inertial mass of the charged particle will depend not only on the electrostatic potential of (...) the shell but also on its velocity. This is a relevant aspect of Weber's theory. (shrink)

J. L. Austin exercised in Post-war Oxford an intellectual authority similar to that of Wittgenstein in Cambridge. Although he completed no books of his own and published only seven papers, Austin became through lectures and talks one of the acknowledged leaders in what is called 'Oxford philosophy' or 'ordinary language philosophy'. Few would dispute that among analytic philosophers Austin stands out as a great and original philosophical genius. Three volumes of his writing, published after his death, have become classics in (...) analytical philosophy: Philosophical Papers; Sense and Sensibilia; and How to Do Things with Words. First published in 1969, this book is a collection of critical essays on Austin's philosophy written by well-known philosophers, many of whom knew Austin personally. A number of essays included were especially written for this volume, but the majority have appeared previously in various journals or books, not all easy to obtain. (shrink)

JL Austin exercised in Post-war Oxford an intellectual authority similar to that of Wittgenstein in Cambridge. Although he completed no books of his own and published only seven papers, Austin became through lectures and talks one of the acknowledged leaders in what is called ‘Oxford philosophy’ or ‘ordinary language philosophy’. Few would dispute that among analytic philosophers Austin stands out as a great and original philosophical genius. Three volumes of his writing, published after his death, have become classics in analytical (...) philosophy: _Philosophical Papers_; _Sense and Sensibilia_; and _How to Do Things with Words_. First published in 1979, this book is a collection of critical essays on Austin’s philosophy written by well-known philosophers, many of whom knew Austin personally. A number of essays included were especially written for this volume, but the majority have appeared previously in various journals or books, not all easy to obtain. (shrink)

Distributional models of semantics learn word meanings from contextual co‐occurrence patterns across a large sample of natural language. Early models, such as LSA and HAL (Landauer & Dumais, 1997; Lund & Burgess, 1996), counted co‐occurrence events; later models, such as BEAGLE (Jones & Mewhort, 2007), replaced counting co‐occurrences with vector accumulation. All of these models learned from positive information only: Words that occur together within a context become related to each other. A recent class of distributional models, referred to as (...) neural embedding models, are based on a prediction process embedded in the functioning of a neural network: Such models predict words that should surround a target word in a given context (e.g., word2vec; Mikolov, Sutskever, Chen, Corrado, & Dean, 2013). An error signal derived from the prediction is used to update each word's representation via backpropagation. However, another key difference in predictive models is their use of negative information in addition to positive information to develop a semantic representation. The models use negative examples to predict words that should not surround a word in a given context. As before, an error signal derived from the prediction prompts an update of the word's representation, a procedure referred to as negative sampling. Standard uses of word2vec recommend a greater or equal ratio of negative to positive sampling. The use of negative information in developing a representation of semantic information is often thought to be intimately associated with word2vec's prediction process. We assess the role of negative information in developing a semantic representation and show that its power does not reflect the use of a prediction mechanism. Finally, we show how negative information can be efficiently integrated into classic count‐based semantic models using parameter‐free analytical transformations. (shrink)

The catastrophe of the eye -- A new view of seeing -- Applying the new view of seeing -- The illusion of seeing everything -- Some contentious points -- Towards consciousness -- Types of consciousness -- Phenomenal consciousness, raw feel, and why they're hard -- Squeeze a sponge, drive a porsche : a sensorimotor account of feel -- Consciously experiencing a feel -- The sensorimotor approach to color -- Sensory substitution -- The localization of touch -- The phenomenality plot -- (...) Consciousness. (shrink)

The informed consent process presents challenges for psychological trauma research (e.g. Institutional Review Board [IRB] apprehension). While previous research documents researcher and IRB-member perspectives on these challenges, participant views remain absent. Thus, using a mixed-methods approach, we investigated participant views on consent guidelines in two convenience samples: crowdsourced (N = 268) and undergraduate (N = 265) participants. We also examined whether trauma-exposure influenced participant views. Overall, participants were satisfied with current guidelines, providing minor feedback and ethical reminders for researchers. Moreover, (...) participant views for consent were similar irrespective of trauma-exposure. Our study has implications for IRBs and psychological researchers. (shrink)

The editor has arranged forty-nine essays on and by Santayana into eight chapters representing major areas of Santayana's thought such as "Materialism and Idealism," "Essence, Substance, and Existence," "Art and Beauty." The essays supposedly speak to their chapter titles and to each other to create "the sense of dialogue"; with a few exceptions they were not written as deliberate conversation. This "dialogue" treats the reader to a fine display of the variety of minds and interests at work in philosophy and (...) illustrates the fact that one man's philosophical arena is rarely another man's. From J. H. Randall, Jr. to John Crowe Ransom, a recurring point of contention is Santayana's conception of Essences and their relationship to Matter. The range of interpretation on this issue goes from plaintive objections that "Essences don't do anything!" to appreciative acknowledgment that "Essences don't do anything!". Arguments over "isms" abound; realism, idealism, epiphenominalism are examined from many angles besides Santayana's. Santayana is highlighted nicely, arranged in this way beside his critics. His ability to locate the vital force behind an idea and to indicate where specific thrusts of thought will lead evinces his title of philosopher and master critic. This collection is not limited in appeal to Santayana aficionados.--A. K. T. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: “I'm shocked, I tell you, shocked!” The Preacher and the Porn Star Picnic Sex and the Prudes “Don't look, Ethel!” Tease Me, Whip Me, Persuade Me Biting the Bullet Hard Cases If Porn Isn't Free Speech, What Is It? Notes.

BackgroundIn the Canadian Alliance for Healthy Hearts and Minds (CAHHM) cohort, participants underwent magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the brain, heart, and abdomen, that generated incidental findings (IFs). The approach to managing these unexpected results remain a complex issue. Our objectives were to describe the CAHHM policy for the management of IFs, to understand the impact of disclosing IFs to healthy research participants, and to reflect on the ethical obligations of researchers in future MRI studies.MethodsBetween 2013 and 2019, 8252 participants (...) (mean age 58 ± 9 years, 54% women) were recruited with a follow-up questionnaire administered to 909 participants (40% response rate) at 1-year. The CAHHM policy followed a restricted approach, whereby routine feedback on IFs was not provided. Only IFs of severe structural abnormalities were reported.ResultsSevere structural abnormalities occurred in 8.3% (95% confidence interval 7.7–8.9%) of participants, with the highest proportions found in the brain (4.2%) and abdomen (3.1%). The majority of participants (97%) informed of an IF reported no change in quality of life, with 3% of participants reporting that the knowledge of an IF negatively impacted their quality of life. Furthermore, 50% reported increased stress in learning about an IF, and in 95%, the discovery of an IF did not adversely impact his/her life insurance policy. Most participants (90%) would enrol in the study again and perceived the MRI scan to be beneficial, regardless of whether they were informed of IFs. While the implications of a restricted approach to IF management was perceived to be mostly positive, a degree of diagnostic misconception was present amongst participants, indicating the importance of a more thorough consent process to support participant autonomy.ConclusionThe management of IFs from research MRI scans remain a challenging issue, as participants may experience stress and a reduced quality of life when IFs are disclosed. The restricted approach to IF management in CAHHM demonstrated a fair fulfillment of the overarching ethical principles of respect for autonomy, concern for wellbeing, and justice. The approach outlined in the CAHHM policy may serve as a framework for future research studies.Clinical trial registrationhttps://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/nct02220582. (shrink)

Warning research participants and patients about potential risks associated with participation/treatment is a fundamental part of consent. However, such risk warnings might cause negative expectations and subsequent nocebo effects (i.e., negative expectations cause negative outcomes) in participants. Because no existing review documents how past research has quantitatively examined nocebo effects – and negative expectations – arising from consent risk warnings, we conducted a pre-registered scoping review (N = 9). We identified several methodological issues across these studies, which in addition to (...) mixed findings, limit conclusions about whether risk warnings cause nocebo effects. (shrink)