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)

In this paper, we first briefly survey the main responses to the challenge that experimental philosophy poses to the method of cases, given the common assumption that the latter is crucially based on intuitive judgments about cases. Second, we discuss two of the most popular responses in more detail: the expertise defense and the mischaracterization objection. Our take on the expertise defense is that the available empirical data do not support the claim that professional philosophers enjoy relevant expertise in their (...) intuitive judgments about cases. In contrast, the mischaracterization objection seems considerably more promising than its largely negative reception has suggested. We argue that the burden of proof is thus on philosophers who still hold that the method of cases crucially relies on intuitive judgments about cases. Finally, we discuss whether conceptual engineering provides an alternative to the method of cases in light of the challenge from experimental philosophy. We argue that this is not clearly the case, because conceptual engineering also requires descriptive information about the concepts it aims to improve. However, its primarily normative perspective on our concepts makes it largely orthogonal to the challenge from experimental philosophy, and it can also benefit from the empirical methods of the latter. (shrink)

In close collaboration with the late Matthew Lipman, Ann Margaret Sharp pioneered the theory and practice of ‘the community of philosophical inquiry’ (CPI) as a way of practicing ‘Philosophy for Children’ and prepared thousands of philosophers and teachers throughout the world in this practice. In Community of Inquiry with Ann Margaret Sharp represents a long-awaited and much-needed anthology of Sharp’s insightful and influential scholarship, bringing her enduring legacy to new generations of academics, postgraduate students and researchers in the fields of (...) education, philosophy, philosophy of education, Philosophy for Children and philosophy of childhood. Sharp developed a unique perspective on the interdependence of education, philosophy, personhood and community that remains influential in many parts of the world. This perspective was shaped not only by Sharp’s work in philosophy and education, but also by her avid studies in literature, feminism, aesthetic theory and ecumenical spirituality. Containing valuable contributions from senior figures in the fields in which Sharp produced her most focused scholarship, the chapters in this book present a critical overview of how Sharp’s ideas relate to education, philosophy of education, and the Philosophy for Children movement as a whole. The historical and philosophical nature of this collection means that it will be a vital resource for philosophers and educators. It should also be of great interest to teacher educators and those involved in the study of pragmatism and feminism, as well as the history of education across the globe, particularly in the United States of America. (shrink)

In their article, Navin, Brummett, and Wasserman (2022) advance the idea that there are qualitatively different types of decision-making capacity (DMC) for treatment refusals. Departing from what t...

From the perspective of praxeological scientific research as well as quantitative methods and on the basis of archival materials, it becomes apparent that it is not in the ›geistesgeschichtliche‹ method, but in the implicit recognition of disciplinary, methodological, and theoretical plurality that the unity of literary studies lies that the DVjs expects from its articles.

To date, the primary focus of research in the field of corporate social responsibility (CSR) has been on the strategic implications of CSR for corporations and less on an evaluation of CSR from a wider political, economic and social perspective. In this paper, we aim to address this gap by critically engaging with marketing campaigns of so-called ‘ethical’ bottled water. We especially focus on a major CSR strategy of a range of different companies that promise to provide drinking water for (...) (what they name as) ‘poor African people’ by way of Western consumers purchasing bottled water. Following Fairclough's approach, we unfold a three-step critical discourse analysis of the marketing campaigns of 10 such ‘ethical’ brands. Our results show that bottled water companies try to influence consumers' tastes through the management of the cultural meaning of bottled water, producing a more ‘ethical’ and ‘socially responsible’ perception of their products/brands. Theoretically, we base our analysis on McCracken's model of the cultural meaning of consumer goods, which, we argue, offers a critical perspective of the recent emergence of CSR and business ethics initiatives. We discuss how these marketing campaigns can be framed as historical struggles associated with neo-liberal ideology and hegemony. Our analysis demonstrates how such CSR strategies are part of a general process of the reproduction of capitalist modes of accumulation and legitimation through the usage of cultural categories. (shrink)

We conduct the first comparative analysis of the financial performance of European green, black and conventional mutual funds. Based on a unique dataset of 175 green, 259 black and 976 conventional mutual funds, the investigation contrasts the financial performance of the three dissimilar investment orientations over the 1991–2014 period. Over the full sample period, green mutual funds significantly underperform relative to conventional funds, while no significant risk-adjusted performance differences between green and black mutual funds could be established during the same (...) period. Environmentally friendly investment vehicles display a significant exposure to small cap and growth stocks, while black funds are more exposed to value stocks. Remarkably, the green funds’ risk-adjusted return profile progressively improves over time until no difference in the performance of the green and the conventional classes could be discerned. Further evidence suggests that the green funds are beginning to significantly outperform their black peers, especially over the 2012–2014 investment window. (shrink)

To date, the primary focus of research in the field of corporate social responsibility (CSR) has been on the strategic implications of CSR for corporations and less on an evaluation of CSR from a wider political, economic and social perspective. In this paper, we aim to address this gap by critically engaging with marketing campaigns of so‐called ‘ethical’ bottled water. We especially focus on a major CSR strategy of a range of different companies that promise to provide drinking water for (...) (what they name as) ‘poor African people’ by way of Western consumers purchasing bottled water. Following Fairclough's approach, we unfold a three‐step critical discourse analysis of the marketing campaigns of 10 such ‘ethical’ brands. Our results show that bottled water companies try to influence consumers' tastes through the management of the cultural meaning of bottled water, producing a more ‘ethical’ and ‘socially responsible’ perception of their products/brands. Theoretically, we base our analysis on McCracken's model of the cultural meaning of consumer goods, which, we argue, offers a critical perspective of the recent emergence of CSR and business ethics initiatives. We discuss how these marketing campaigns can be framed as historical struggles associated with neo‐liberal ideology and hegemony. Our analysis demonstrates how such CSR strategies are part of a general process of the reproduction of capitalist modes of accumulation and legitimation through the usage of cultural categories. (shrink)

Transitional Justice (TJ) focuses on the processes of dealing with the legacy of large-scale past abuses (in the aftermath of traumatic experiences such as war or authoritarianism) with the aim of fostering domestic justice and creating the basis for a sustainable peace. TJ however also entails the problem of how a torn society may be able to become a self-determining member of a just international order. This paper presents a minimal conception of TJ, which departs from Rawls' conception of normative (...) stability of the international order, which suggests disentangling the two goals of fostering democracy within torn societies and TJ itself. The scope of TJ is therefore limited to enabling these societies to create minimal internal conditions for joining a just international order on equal footing. This paper makes an original contribution to two different debates, namely normative research on TJ, and post-Rawlsian literature in general. First, it provides a new direction for normative theorizing about TJ which takes both its domestic and international dimensions seriously into consideration. Second, it extends Rawls' political liberal outlook to an area where it is not usually understood to apply. (shrink)

Volume 20, Issue 8, August 2020, Page 88-90.

The use of qualitative research in empirical bioethics is becoming increasingly popular, but its implementation comes with several challenges, such as difficulties in aligning moral epistemology and methods. In this paper, we describe some problems that empirical bioethics researchers may face; these problems are related to a tension between the different poles on the spectrum of scientific paradigms, namely a positivist and interpretive stance. We explore the ideas of narrative construction, ‘genres’ in medicine and dominant discourses in relation to empirical (...) research. We also reflect on the loss of depth and context that may occur with thematic or content analyses of interviews, and discuss the need for transparency about methodologies in empirical bioethics. Drawing on insights from narrative approaches in the social sciences and the clinical-educational discipline of Narrative Medicine, we further clarify these problems and suggest a narrative approach to qualitative interviewing in empirical bioethics that enables researchers to ‘listen (and read) in new ways’. We then show how this approach was applied in the first author’s research project about euthanasia decision-making. In addition, we stress the important ethical task of scrutinizing methodologies and meta-ethical standpoints, as they inevitably impact empirical outcomes and corresponding ethical judgments. Finally, we raise the question whether a ‘diagnostic’, rather than a ‘problem-solving’, mindset could and should be foregrounded in empirical ethics, albeit without losing a commitment to ethics’ normative task, and suggest further avenues for theorizing about listening and epistemic (in)justice in relation to empirical (bio)ethics. (shrink)

Humans routinely modify their walking speed to adapt to functional goals and physical demands. However, damage to the central nervous system often results in abnormal modulation of walking speed and increased risk of falls. There is considerable interest in treatment modalities that can provide safe and salient training opportunities, feedback about walking performance, and that may augment less reliable sensory feedback within the CNS after injury or disease. Fully immersive virtual reality technologies show benefits in boosting training-related gains in walking (...) performance; however, they lack views of the real world that may limit functional carryover. Augmented reality and mixed reality head-mount displays provide partially immersive environments to extend the virtual reality benefits of interacting with virtual objects but within an unobstructed view of the real world. Despite this potential advantage, the feasibility of using MR-HMD visual feedback to promote goal-directed changes in overground walking speed remains unclear. Thus, we developed and evaluated a novel mixed reality application using the Microsoft HoloLens MR-HMD that provided real-time walking speed targets and augmented visual feedback during overground walking. We tested the application in a group of adults not living with disability and examined if they could use the targets and visual feedback to walk at 85%, 100%, and 115% of each individual’s self-selected speed. We examined whether individuals were able to meet each target gait speed and explored differences in accuracy across repeated trials and at the different speeds. Additionally, given the importance of task-specificity to therapeutic interventions, we examined if walking speed adjustment strategies were consistent with those observed during usual overground walking, and if walking with the MR-HMD resulted in increased variability in gait parameters. Overall, participants matched their overground walking speed to the target speed of the MR-HMD visual feedback conditions. The percent inaccuracy was approximately 5% across all speed matching conditions and remained consistent across walking trials after the first overall walking trial. Walking with the MR-HMD did not result in more variability in walking speed, however, we observed more variability in stride length and time when walking with feedback from the MR-HMD compared to walking without feedback. The findings offer support for mixed reality-based visual feedback as a method to provoke goal-specific changes in overground walking behavior. Further studies are necessary to determine the clinical safety and efficacy of this MR-HMD technology to provide extrinsic sensory feedback in combination with traditional treatments in rehabilitation. (shrink)

Gareth B. Matthews, The Child’s Philosopher brings together groundbreaking essays by renowned American philosopher Gareth B. Matthews in three fields he helped to initiate: philosophy in children’s literature, philosophy for children, and philosophy of childhood. In addition, contemporary scholars critically assess Matthews’ pioneering efforts and his legacy. Matthews (1929-2011) was a specialist in ancient and medieval philosophy who had conversations with young children, discovering that they delight in philosophical puzzlement and that their philosophical thinking often enriched his own understanding. Those (...) conversations became the impetus for a substantial component of Matthews’ scholarship, from which this book features essays spanning the length of his career. Contemporary contributors to the book critically evaluate Matthews’ scholarship, showing where he broke new ground and identifying developments and debates in the fields he helped to initiate. They take up pressing challenges, including biased idealizations of childhood in children’s literature; the tensions between teaching philosophy to, and doing philosophy with young people; the merits of theorizing childhood without theorizing children; and how professional philosophy at once desires and resists a return to childhood. This second volume in the Philosophy for Children Founders series is an important resource for philosophers, educators, and anyone interested in children’s philosophical thinking, developmental psychology, what it means to philosophize with children, the nature of childhood, and how children’s literature goes philosophical. It will guide and inspire those who share Matthews’ conviction that the impulse to philosophize begins in early childhood. (shrink)

In recent decades, many studies have examined gender-related differences in paid employment and the reconciliation of family and employment. Considering perceptions of time conflicts with regards to work at home and leisure activities, this article contributes to a more encompassing understanding of attitudes toward reconciliation problems. Special attention is given to the role of external child care services. The use of an original data set from 60 Swiss municipalities and hierarchical multiresponse regression models enable an analysis of the various aspects (...) of time conflicts simultaneously, and a consideration of how different policy contexts shape these attitudes. This study provides evidence that the communal provision of external child care is related to gender-specific perceptions of time conflicts. Most interestingly, men seem to be affected most strongly by communal policy conditions, whereby the provision of external child care is related to systematically higher levels of time conflicts. (shrink)

Marshall and colleagues (2024) contribute to the literature on autonomy and decision-making capacity by focusing on the case of individuals with opioid use disorder who refuse to remain in the hosp...

Where humans can manipulate and integrate the information they receive in subtle and ever-changing ways from context to context, computers need structured and context-free background information of a sort which ontologies can help to provide. A domain ontology captures the stable, highly general and commonly accepted core knowledge for an application domain. The domain at issue here is that of the life sciences, in particular molecular biology and bioinformatics. Contemporary life science research includes components drawn from physics, chemistry, mathematics, medicine (...) and many other areas, and all of these dimensions, as well as fundamental philosophical issues, must be taken into account in the construction of a domain ontology. Here we describe the basic features of domain ontologies in the life sciences and show how they can be used. (shrink)

This is the introduction to the Special Issue ‘Foundational Issues in Conceptual Engineering’. The issue contains contributions by James Andow, Delia Belleri, David Chalmers, Catarina Dutilh Novaes, Eugen Fischer, Viktoria Knoll, Edouard Machery and Amie Thomasson. We, the editors, provide a brief introduction to the main topics of the issue and then summarize its contributions.

In this essay, we analyze the Black Mirror episode "Arkangel" alongside Nietzsche’s critique of religion. After providing an overview of his critique, we argue that the episode demonstrates how a world enframed by technology itself ends up being just as decadent, or just as pathological, repressive, corrupt, anti-life, and unredemptive as Nietzsche accuses Christianity of being. Nietzsche thought, at one point, that science and technology might provide a non-metaphysical or non-theological solution to what he calls our “metaphysical need.” However, Arkangel (...) shows how technology does not overcome problems of idolatrous forms of religion and can be just another tool for manipulation that produces the same kinds of pathologies. Nietzsche insists that the only way to overcome religion as an oppressive system is to “philosophize with a hammer,” or to deconstruct its idolatrous strictures and the “all too human” forces behind it. Ultimately, this deconstruction requires declaring “the death of God.”. (shrink)

Any account of extrapolation from animal models to humans must confront two basic challenges: explain how extrapolation can be justified even when there are causally relevant differences between model and target, and explain how the suitability of a model can be established given only limited information about the target. We argue that existing approaches to extrapolation—either in terms of capacities or mechanisms—do not adequately address these challenges. However, we propose a further elaboration of the mechanisms approach that provides a better (...) treatment of this issue. The central concept in our proposal is what we term comparative process tracing. (shrink)

: In this brief commentary, we reflect on the recent study by Siminoff, Burant, and Youngner of public attitudes toward "brain death" and organ donation, focusing on the implications of their findings for the rules governing from whom organs can be obtained. Although the data suggest that many seem to view "brain death" as "as good as dead" rather than "dead" (calling the dead donor rule into question), we find that the study most clearly demonstrates that understanding an individual's definition (...) of death is neither a straightforward task nor a good predictor of views about donation. Reflecting on the implications for ongoing debates over the dead donor rule, we suggest that perhaps it is not a change in policy that is warranted, but rather a change in the priorities that have garnered such intense focus on this issue within the field of bioethics. (shrink)

This title makes social-emotional learning approachable and easy! The book profiles the physical dimension of wellness. Informative, thought-provoking text examines the core elements and the practices that support physical wellness, including yoga flow, sip in time water bottle, and more. Woven throughout the main text are activities and projects encouraging readers to explore wellness in a creative way. Aligned to Common Core Standards and correlated to state standards. Checkerboard Library is an imprint of Abdo Publishing, a division of ABDO.

Wellness wheel -- Mind muscle -- Lifelong learning -- Solving problems -- Critical thinking -- Stay curious -- Get creative -- Wellness wrap-up.

It would be difficult to find a major figure in the history of European political thought who would not have attempted to say something about how authority emerges, or is justified and critiqued, in the world beyond the single polity. Quite frequently, that effort would have involved some idea about a legal order, or at least a set of rules or regularities applicable in that world. Thomas Hobbes was neither the first nor the last major thinker who believed that the (...) 'international' realm was characterised by the independence of states existing 'in the state and posture of gladiators', thus apparently denying that legal rules or practices or legal thinking could have much relevance therein. Yet others believed, as Immanuel Kant did, that without a constitutional vocabulary not much that was meaningful could be said about the human pursuit of freedom, and that silence about the latter would not only constitute a moral failure but an intellectual and perhaps political mistake. For a long time, the idiom of natural law claimed to offer a universally valid frame for thinking about the nature of the political, as well as providing authority for lawyers' speculations about the rules and principles governing the conduct of individuals and corporate bodies wherever they might move. The name of the relevant discipline at German universities from the late seventeenth century onwards-ius naturae et gentium, the law of nature and of nations-revealed the full scope of its ambition. That discipline may have died away (although that is a debatable proposition) but any political thinking worth its salt will today (perhaps especially in the twenty-first century) aim to say something about how authority emerges, is maintained or critiqued not only within but also outside the single state. The world of 'nations' or even 'humanity' is established as an important theme of political and legal speculation. (shrink)

Am 22. und 23 November 2003 fand, ausgerichtet vom Atelier Neue Musik in der Hochschule für Künste Bremen in Zusammenarbeit mit der Gesellschaft für Musik uns Ästhetik, der Kongress "ars humana) - Zur Position des Menschen in den Künsten unserer Zeit " statt. Dieser Band versammelt die Vorträge und die Abschlussdiskusion. Die beiden CDś dokumentieren die Konzerte.

Content and substance (Gehalt) in music is the difficult theme of this volume. The central questions are: in what manner is music more than immanence, structure and autonomous meaning, and to what degree do "extramusical" ideas and conceptions shape the work so that more appears to be in it than music alone. This theme is above all relevant for contemporary music of the 21st century, as ever more composers are interested both in cultural discourse and in a content-orientation for their (...) music. This volume presents essays by twelve composers who were invited to ponder the relationship between musical structure and the substance of music in light of their own musical practices. (shrink)

Philosophers analyze the last of the great rock stars.

Come into my office. Usually it is an office of teaching and writing and research. Today the function shifts, as it does periodically throughout the semester. It becomes a space where my students t...

O priming semântico é um tipo de memória implícita que se caracteriza pelo efeito facilitador de um estímulo precedente no processamento de um estímulo posterior, causado pela relação semântica existente entre os dois. O objetivo deste estudo foi verificar relações entre os efeitos de priming semânt..