Clinical ethics consultations exist to support patients, families and clinicians who are facing ethical or moral challenges related to patient care. They provide a forum for open communication, where all stakeholders are encouraged to express their concerns and articulate their viewpoints. Ethics consultations can be requested by patients, caregivers or members of a patient’s clinical or supportive team. Although patients and by extension their families are the common denominators in most ethics consultations, these constituents are the least likely to request (...) them. At many healthcare organisations in the USA, ethics consultations are overwhelmingly requested by physicians and other clinicians. We believe it is vital that healthcare institutions bridge the knowledge gaps and power imbalances over access to ethics consultation services through augmented policies, procedures and infrastructure. With enhanced education and support, patients and families may use ethics consultation to elevate their voices and prioritise their unique characteristics and preferences in the delivery of their healthcare. Empowering patients and families to request ethics consultation can only strengthen the patient/family–clinician relationship, enhance the shared decision-making model of care and ultimately lead to improved patient-centred care. (shrink)

Beyond the observation that both speakers and listeners rapidly inspect the visual targets of referring expressions, it has been argued that such gaze may constitute part of the communicative signal. In this study, we investigate whether a speaker may, in principle, exploit listener gaze to improve communicative success. In the context of a virtual environment where listeners follow computer-generated instructions, we provide two kinds of support for this claim. First, we show that listener gaze provides a reliable real-time index of (...) understanding even in dynamic and complex environments, and on a per-utterance basis. Second, we show that a language generation system that uses listener gaze to provide rapid feedback improves overall task performance in comparison with two systems that do not use gaze. Aside from demonstrating the utility of listener gaze in situated communication, our findings open the door to new methods for developing and evaluating multi-modal models of situated interaction. (shrink)

Previous studies on body ownership illusions have shown that under certain multimodal conditions, healthy people can experience artificial body-parts as if they were part of their own body, with direct physiological consequences for the real limb that gets ‘substituted’. In this study we wanted to assess (a) whether healthy people can experience ‘missing’ a body-part through illusory ownership of an amputated virtual body, and (b) whether this would cause corticospinal excitability changes in muscles associated with the ‘missing’ body-part. Forty right-handed (...) participants saw a virtual body from a first person perspective but for half of them the virtual body was missing a part of its right arm. Single pulse transcranial magnetic stimulation was applied before and after the experiment to left and right motor cortices. Motor evoked potentials (MEPs) were recorded from the first dorsal interosseous (FDI) and the extensor digitorum communis (EDC) of each hand. We found that the stronger the illusion of amputation and arm ownership, the more the reduction of MEP amplitudes of the EDC muscle for the contralateral sensorimotor cortex. In contrast, no association was found for the EDC amplitudes in the ipsilateral cortex and for the FDI amplitudes in both contralateral and ipsilateral cortices. Our study provides evidence that a short-term illusory perception of missing a body-part can trigger inhibitory effects on corticospinal pathways and importantly in the absence of any limb deafferentation or disuse. (shrink)

Current debates over inductive risk and the role of values in science have largely revolved around the question of the moral responsibilities of scientists: Do scientists have the duty to consider the potential non-epistemic consequences of theories they advocate and, if yes, what values should be taken into account in decision-making? The paper discusses two different – though potentially complementary – responses to this question: a) H. Douglas’s view that scientists should avoid causing reckless or negligent harm to others as (...) a result of the decisions they make and b) K. Elliott’s Multiple Goals Criterion. Drawing from the case of potential coronavirus transmission by sharing the Holy Communion that recently divided Greek society and medical experts, it shows the tensions emerging between autonomy and the moral responsibilities of scientists, when the boundaries of science are blurred and the epistemic goal of truth is inconsistent with alternative goals. It argues that the balance attempted between scientific principles and religious beliefs was unattainable and concludes that the need to distinguish between epistemic and non-epistemic values, which is traditionally related to the ideal of value free science, should be reconsidered and even prioritized among the responsibilities of scientists. (shrink)

A pandemic of misinformation is said to spread alongside the COVID-19 pandemic. The need to properly inform the public is stronger than ever in the fight against misinformation, but what ‘properly’ means in this context is a quite controversial issue. In what follows, I discuss the challenges we face in communicating COVID-19 health information to the public, with the aim to shed light on some ethical and policy issues emerging in science in times of crises.

This study investigates the financial effects of additions to and deletions from the most well-known social stock index: the MSCI KLD 400. Our study makes use of the unique setting that index reconstitution provides and allows us to bypass possible issues of endogeneity that commonly plague empirical studies of the link between corporate social and financial performance. By examining not only short-term returns but also trading activity, earnings per share, and long-term performance of stocks that are involved in these events, (...) we bring forward evidence of a ‘social index effect’ where unethical transgressions are penalized more heavily than responsibility is rewarded. We find that the addition of a stock to the index does not lead to material changes in its market price, whereas deletions are accompanied by negative cumulative abnormal returns. Trading volumes for deleted stocks are significantly increased on the event date, while the operational performances of the respective firms deteriorate after their deletion from the social index. (shrink)

BackgroundThe Asclepion of Epidaurus is one of the first healing environments in the world. Descendants of Asclepius, specifically medical students, have been singularly deprived of any information concerning this legacy. This article illuminates the role of Asclepion of Epidaurus and examines the view of medical students upon the subject and the possible benefits of this knowledge in their medical education.MethodsThe participants were 105 senior-year students from the Athens Medical School, who attended a multi-media assisted lecture related to the structure and (...) the role of the Asclepion of Epidaurus. Afterwards, they answered anonymously a questionnaire of 12 pairs of opposite adjectives in order to describe their view regarding the meaning of Asclepion. The method used in the evaluation of their answers was that of semantic differential.ResultsThe attitude of the students towards the meaning of Asclepion was positive, showing interest and excitement about a powerful, though unfamiliar piece of knowledge.ConclusionToday’s novice doctors have welcomed the concept of Asclepion as essential knowledge for the service they will be called to fulfill. The potential benefits of the Asclepian ideals in medical education and ethos are thoroughly discussed. (shrink)

Viruses are essentially composed of a nucleic acid (segmented or not, DNA, or RNA) and a protein coat. Despite their simplicity, these small pathogens are responsible for significant economic and humanitarian losses that have had dramatic consequences in the course of human history. Since their discovery, scientists have developed different strategies to efficiently detect viruses, using all possible viral features. Viruses shape, proteins, and nucleic acid are used in viral detection. In this review, the development of these techniques, especially for (...) plant and mammalian viruses, their strengths and weaknesses as well as the latest cutting-edge technologies that may be playing important roles in the years to come are described. (shrink)

The multitude of facial expressions that humans are capable of is particularly potent in capturing attention. Facial expressions provide crucial information regarding a person's internal state and intentions and therefore the rapid recognition of these expressions can facilitate efficient social interaction. This article reviews evidence from a number of domains and argues that common personality traits—that are distributed normally in the general population—can have a profound influence on the processing of facial expressions. It synthesizes data from behavioral and neuroimaging research (...) to illustrate that these personality traits are an important determinant of emotion processing. The article focuses on the processing of facial emotional expressions paying particular attention to the influence of common personality traits in influencing emotion processing. A complete understanding of the cognitive and neural mechanisms involved in the processing of facial expressions, should take individual differences in personality traits into account. (shrink)

The present study explores Greek parents? views on parental educational involvement and its impact on adolescent scholastic and social development. Specifically, aspects of parental involvement such as the achieved objectives of current parent?school communication, the psychological climate dominating teacher?parent interactions and parents? suggestions for improvement of current policies and practices are examined. Four hundred and seventy?five parents participated in the study. Findings showed that family?school communication is believed to be insufficient in Greece, despite the fact that parents tend to: (1) (...) regard their cooperation with teachers as determinative of adolescent academic and psychosocial development; (2) consider teachers to be friendly and caring; and (3) believe that secondary school provides some opportunities for constructive parental involvement. These paradoxes are discussed and explained as a result of radical changes in current social and educational values, principles and objectives. (shrink)

Perceived supervisor support is widely studied in terms of its positive outcomes. This paper, in contrast, investigates employees’ unethical pro-supervisor behavior as a negative consequence of perceived supervisor support. Drawing upon the multifoci approach of social exchange theory and the reciprocity principle, we hypothesized that perceived supervisor support can engender unethical pro-supervisor behavior via employees’ feelings of reciprocity towards the supervisor. Building on the instrumental reasons that underlie social exchanges, we further hypothesized that this mediation relationship is stronger for employees (...) high in Machiavellianism. We collected data for three experimental studies from full-time MBA students of a European business school and from U.S. working professionals, and the results provided consistent support for our proposed model. Taken together, the current study highlights the “dark side” of perceived supervisor support, in that it can lead to unethical behavior and that this effect can be accentuated by employees’ Machiavellianism. (shrink)

A large amount of research work in e‐business concerns the experiences and lessons learned from developing and implementing innovative e‐business models. The findings of this research usually concentrate on financial aspects or on the use of information and communication technologies in a specific company or industrial sector. While this is critical for understanding and replicating positive business results, we argue that it is as important to understand the societal context in which business models are developed; it is social issues that (...) define the broader context of e‐business adoption. This paper aims to draw research attention to these social issues and suggests societal factors that influence the adoption of e‐business models. Specifically, the paper argues that factors related to region/geography, culture, the legal and regulatory environment, economic, ethical and professional factors, as well as factors related to social capital/social networks and social structure influence, directly or indirectly, the way in which e‐business models are perceived, implemented and evaluated. Three cases are presented to show how these factors become evident in e‐business, followed by a discussion of their managerial implications. The aim of the paper is to sensitise managers and policy makers in shaping an enabling societal context for the proliferation of socially acceptable business models. (shrink)

Tato studie si klade za cíl představit antropologické a kosmologické názory ruského myslitele Nikolaje Fjodorova. Fjodorov nabízí fantastickou futuristickou vizi, v níž jsou nejen odstraněny války, nemoci a hlad, ale člověk ve snaze o své zdokonalení přemůže také smrt. Bratrství a láska povede podle Fjodorova sjednocené lidstvo k tomu, že životu vrátí všechny zemřelé předky. Tito vzkříšení lidé zabydlí zemi a později i celý vesmír. Fjodorov bývá považován za zakladatele filozofie ruského kosmismu. Mezi jeho žáky lze zařadit i Konstantina (...) Ciolkovského, který jako první uvažoval o možnosti dobytí vesmíru pomocí raket. Na Ciolkovského přímo navazují zakladatelé sovětského vesmírného programu. Autor této studie předkládá hypotézu, že myšlenka pilotovaných kosmických letů vznikla v pseudovědeckém prostředí ruského kosmismu. Přestože byly pilotované lety do vesmíru během dvacátého století tohoto svého z vědeckého hlediska problematického zdůvodnění zbaveny, dosud nikdo žádné vědecké zdůvodnění pilotovaných vesmírných letů nenabídl. (shrink)

In this paper, I examine the friction between xenophobic discourses on migration and the crisis caused by the politics of austerity in Greece. On the one hand, an ‘excessive’ influx of migration is managed through violent means by the state and the para-state; on the other, a ‘scarcity’ of domestic resources is blamed for a ‘rise’ in racist attitudes, and the political ascent of a fascist movement-cum-parliamentary party, Χρυσή Αυγή (Golden Dawn). ‘Crisis’ is said to give rise to ‘austerity’—and hostility. (...) Inverting the inverted causal relationship between crisis, austerity and hostility, I problematise representations of hostility toward migrants which construct racism as a consequence of economic conditions or even as the antidote to the ‘bitter pill’ Greeks have been forced to swallow. I examine how racialised and gendered violence secures the politics of austerity in Greece. Specifically, through an examination of three eruptions of violence (the feminicidal acid attack on Konstantina Kouneva, the murder of Shehzad Luqman, and the drowning of eleven refugees near the island of Farmakonisi), I make concrete connections between the politics of austerity and what, drawing on Sara Ahmed, might be termed an ‘affective economy of hostility’ that articulates racialised and gendered modes of belonging and estrangement. Some bodies are rendered vulnerable and precarious, while others assert an entitled relation to national space while being economically disentitled by austerity measures. (shrink)

Danišová, Nikola, 2021. Marginálie k figúre šibala v arcinaratívoch (Tematologicko-kultúrne súvislosti). Nitra: Univerzita Konštantína Filozofa v Nitre. ISBN 978-80-558-1807-8.

The category of the Ethico-Aesthetics, introduced by Søren Kierkegaard, was applied to the study of Byzantine Philosophy by the Greek philoso­pher and theologian Nikolaos Matsoukas. Matsoukas vehe­mently rejected the identification of Byzantine philosophy with a strict Christian moralism. Rather, he viewed it as an ethos which did not lead the ascetics to display Manichean contempt for the body. It was thus a kind of ‘mild asceticism’. This ethical acceptance of the body turns against Neoplatonic speculation and cultivates the (...) habitus that leads to artistic creativity. Byzantine philosophy is thus situated at the midpoint between nominalism and realism, but standing against the realism of the archetypal ideas. The paper concludes with some considerations on the pragmatics of Byzantine philosophy in a Christian world. (shrink)