COVID-19 has caused far-reaching humanitarian challenges. Amongst the emerging impacts of the pandemic is on the dynamics of human trafficking. This paper presents findings from a multi-methods study interrogating the impacts of COVID-19 on human trafficking in Sudan—a critical source, destination, and transit country. The analysis combines a systematic evidence review, semi-structured interviews, and a focus group with survivors, conducted between January and May of 2021. We find key risks have been exacerbated, and simultaneously, critical infrastructure for identifying victims, providing (...) support, and ensuring accountability of perpetrators has been impeded. Centrally, the co-occurrence of the pandemic and the democratic transition undercut the institutional and governance capacity, limiting the anti-trafficking response and exposing already vulnerable groups to increased risks of human trafficking. Findings point to increased vulnerabilities for individuals with one or more of the following identities: migrants, refugees, females, and informal labourers. (shrink)

In this paper, we introduce the Societal Readiness Thinking Tool to aid researchers and innovators in developing research projects with greater responsiveness to societal values, needs, and expectations. The need for societally-focused approaches to research and innovation—complementary to Technology Readiness frameworks—is presented. Insights from responsible research and innovation concepts and practice, organized across critical stages of project-life cycles are discussed with reference to the development of the SR Thinking Tool. The tool is designed to complement not only shortfalls in TR (...) approaches, but also improve upon other efforts to integrate RRI, sustainability, and design thinking in research and innovation cycles. Operationalization and early-stage user tests of the Tool are reported, along with discussion of potential future iterations and applications. (shrink)

Virtue ethics is on the move both in Anglo-American philosophy and in the rest of the world. This volume uniquely emphasizes non-Western varieties of virtue ethics at the same time that it includes work in the many different fields or areas of philosophy where virtue ethics has recently spread its wings. Just as significantly, several chapters make comparisons between virtue ethics and other ways of approaching ethics or political philosophy or show how virtue ethics can be applied to "real world" (...) problems. (shrink)

Using a 2×2×2 experimental design, the effects of situational and individual variables on individuals' intentions to act unethically were investigated. Specifically examined were three situational variables: (1) quality of the work experience (good versus poor), (2) peer influences (unethical versus ethical), and (3) managerial influences (unethical versus ethical), and three individual variables: (4) locus of control, (5) Machiavellianism, and (6) gender, on individuals' behavioral intentions in an ethically ambiguous dilemma in an work setting. Experiment 1 revealed main effects for quality (...) of work experience, Machiavellianism, locus of control, and an interaction effect for peer influences and managerial influences. Experiment 2 showed main effects for all three situational variables and Machiavellianism. Neither experiment supported gender differences. Limitations, future research, and implications for management are discussed. (shrink)

: Decisions about funding health services are crucial to controlling costs in health care insurance plans, yet they encounter serious challenges from intellectual property protection—e.g., patents—of health care services. Using Myriad Genetics' commercial genetic susceptibility test for hereditary breast cancer (BRCA testing) in the context of the Canadian health insurance system as a case study, this paper applies concepts from social contract theory to help develop more just and rational approaches to health care decision making. Specifically, Daniels's and Sabin's "accountability (...) for reasonableness" is compared to broader notions of public consultation, demonstrating that expert assessments in specific decisions must be transparent and accountable and supplemented by public consultation. (shrink)

Emil Fackenheim’s life work was to call upon the world at large—and on philosophers, Christians, Jews, and Germans in particular—to confront the Holocaust as an unprecedented assault on the Jewish people, Judaism, and all humanity. In this memoir, to which he was making final revisions at the time of his death, Fackenheim looks back on his life, at the profound and painful circumstances that shaped him as a philosopher and a committed Jewish thinker. Interned for three months in the Sachsenhausen (...) concentration camp after Kristallnacht, Fackenheim was released and escaped to Scotland and then to Canada, where he lived in a refugee internment camp before eventually becoming a congregational rabbi and then, for thirty-five years, a professor of philosophy. He recalls here what it meant to be a German Jew in North America, the desperate need to respond to the crisis in Europe and to cope with its overwhelming implications for Jewish identity and community. His second great turning point came in 1967, as he saw Jews threatened with another Holocaust, this time in Israel. This crisis led him on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem and ultimately back to Germany, where he continued to grapple with the question, How can the Jewish faith—and the Christian faith—exist after the Holocaust? “An ‘epoch-making’ autobiography.”—Arnold Ages, _Jewish Tribune_. (shrink)

This paper investigates how deans and directors at the top 50 global MBA programs (as rated by the "Financial Times" in their 2006 Global MBA rankings) respond to questions about the inclusion and coverage of the topics of ethics, corporate social responsibility, and sustainability at their respective institutions. This work purposely investigates each of the three topics separately. Our findings reveal that: (1) a majority of the schools require that one or more of these topics be covered in their MBA (...) curriculum and one-third of the schools require coverage of all three topics as part of the MBA curriculum, (2) there is a trend toward the inclusion of sustainability-related courses, (3) there is a higher percentage of student interest in these topics (as measured by the presence of a Net Impact club) in the top 10 schools, and (4) several schools are teaching these topics using experiential learning and immersion techniques. We note a fivefold increase in the number of stand-alone ethics courses since a 1988 investigation on ethics, and we include other findings about institutional support of centers or special programs; as well as a discussion of integration, teaching techniques, and notable practices in relation to all three topics. (shrink)

The redundant-signals paradigm (RSP) is designed to investigate response behavior in perceptual tasks in which response-relevant targets are defined by either one or two features, or modalities. The common finding is that responses are speeded for redundantly compared to singly defined targets. This redundant-signals effect (RSE) can be accounted for by race models if the response times do not violate the race model inequality (RMI). When there are violations of the RMI, race models are effectively excluded as a viable account (...) of the RSE. The common alternative is provided by co-activation accounts, which assume that redundant target signals are integrated at some processing stage. However, ‘co-activation’ has mostly been only indirectly inferred and the accounts have only rarely been explicitly modeled; if they were modeled, the RSE has typically been assumed to have a decisional locus. Yet, there are also indications in the literature that the RSE might originate, at least in part, at a non-decisional or motor stage. In the present study, using a distribution analysis of sequential-sampling models (ex-Wald and Ratcliff Diffusion model), the locus of the RSE was investigated for two bimodal (audio-visual) detection tasks that strongly violated the RMI, indicative of substantial co-activation. Three model variants assuming different loci of the RSE were fitted to the quantile reaction time proportions: a decision, a non-decision, and a combined variant both to vincentized group as well as individual data. The results suggest that for the two bimodal detection tasks, co-activation has a shared decisional and non-decisional locus. These findings point to the possibility that the mechanisms underlying the RSE depend on the specifics (task, stimulus, conditions, etc.) of the experimental paradigm. (shrink)

Three studies were conducted to explore the psychological determinants of COVID-deterrent behaviors. In Study 1, using data collected and analyzed both before and after the release of COVID-19 vaccines, mask-wearing, other preventative behaviors like social distancing, and vaccination intentions were positively related to assessments of the Coronavirus Behavioral Health Mindset ; belief in the credibility of science; progressive political orientation; less use of repressive and more use of sensitization coping; and the attribution of COVID-19 safety to effort rather than ability, (...) powerful forces, fate, or luck. In Study 2, favorable COVID-19 vaccination intentions were related to greater willingness to work, lower emotional distress, and greater customer experience mindset. Study 3 examined the personality and motives of individuals who volunteered to help deliver COVID-19 inoculations to the local community. The vaccine-giving volunteers, especially those with prosocial motives, had high CVBHM scores, belief in the credibility of science, low use of repressive coping, greater attribution of COVID-19 protection to effort, low likelihood of voting conservative, were older, and had more education than others. The majority of public health volunteers expressed prosocial motives to help people or join a cause, but many expressed the personal motives of getting the COVID-19 vaccination for themselves, conveying a public image of compassion, or structuring time. Based on the three research studies, a COVID-19 Mindset Hierarchy model is proposed to integrate the results. (shrink)

Talking About Ethics provides the reader with all of the tools necessary to develop a coherent approach to ethical decision making. Using the tools of ethical theory, the authors show how these theories play out in relation to a wide variety of ethical questions using an accessible dialogue format. The chapters follow three college students as they discuss today’s most important ethical issues with their families and friends, including:• Immigration• Capital punishment• Legalization of narcotics• Abortion• Premarital sex• Reproductive technologies• Gender (...) identity• The environment, and many moreThe engaging dialogue format illustrates how these topics often take shape in the real world, and model critical thinking and Christian ethical decision making. Study aids in each chapter include overviews, sidebars, reflection questions, glossaries, and recommended reading. Ideal as a textbook for undergraduate ethics courses, it is also accessible enough for high school classes and personal study. (shrink)

In this panel six IS researchers from varying backgrounds will discuss whether epistemological anarchy, as proposed by the controversial philosopher Paul Feyerabend, has the potential to foster research progress and can help to create new insights in the IS field. Feyerabend is well known for his notion that "anything goes" in terms of methodology, and many scholars are concerned that this seemingly anarchistic sentiment can undermine efforts to systematically build and structure an epistemological and methodological foundation for an academic discipline. (...) This panel, which will be moderated by Horst Treiblmaier, includes as panelists Andrew Burton-Jones, Shirley Gregor, Rudy Hirschheim, Michael Myers, and Tom Stafford. The outcome of this discussion will be incorporated into a paper published in the DATA BASE for Advances in Information Systems. (shrink)

The first attempt at a systematic approach to axiomatic theories of truth was undertaken by Friedman and Sheard (Ann Pure Appl Log 33:1–21, 1987). There twelve principles consisting of axioms, axiom schemata and rules of inference, each embodying a reasonable property of truth were isolated for study. Working with a base theory of truth conservative over PA, Friedman and Sheard raised the following questions. Which subsets of the Optional Axioms are consistent over the base theory? What are the proof-theoretic strengths (...) of the consistent theories? The first question was answered completely by Friedman and Sheard; all subsets of the Optional Axioms were classified as either consistent or inconsistent giving rise to nine maximal consistent theories of truth.They also determined the proof-theoretic strength of two subsets of the Optional Axioms. The aim of this paper is to continue the work begun by Friedman and Sheard. We will establish the proof-theoretic strength of all the remaining seven theories and relate their arithmetic part to well-known theories ranging from PA to the theory of ${\Sigma^1_1}$ dependent choice. (shrink)

As the world struggles through the COVID‐19 pandemic, we should also be asking what systems‐level measures will be needed to prevent this or even worse disasters from happening in the future. We argue that the pandemic is merely one of potentially myriad and pleiomorphic future global disasters generated by the same underlying dynamical system. We explain that there are four broad but easily identifiable systemic, pathologically networked conditions that are hurtling civilization toward potential self‐destruction. As long as these conditions are (...) not resolved, we should consider catastrophe as an inevitable emergent endpoint from the dynamics. All four conditions can be reversed with collective action to begin creating an enduring and thriving post‐ COVID‐19 world. This will require maximal application of the precautionary principle. (shrink)

Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 st1:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) } /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} Review of Steven B. Cowan and James S. Spiegel, The Love of Wisdom: A Christian introduction to philosophy (Nashville, TN: B&H Publishing Group, 2009), 476 pages.

The essays pay particular attention to tensions associated with attempts to balance the economic with the non-economic objectives of higher education, and ...

Objective: Deep brain stimulation targeted to the ventral intermediate nucleus of the thalamus is effective for motor symptoms in essential tremor, but there is limited data on cognitive outcomes. We examined cognitive outcomes in a large cohort of ET DBS patients.Methods: In a retrospective analysis, we used repeated-measures ANOVA testing to examine whether the age of tremor onset, age at DBS surgery, hemisphere side implanted with lead, unilateral vs. bilateral implantations, and presence of surgical complications influenced the cognitive outcomes. Neuropsychological (...) outcomes of interest were verbal memory, executive functioning, working memory, language functioning, visuospatial functioning, and general cognitive function.Results: We identified 50 ET DBS patients; 29 males; the mean age of tremor onset was 35.84 years with a median age of 38 years. The mean age at DBS was 68.18 years. There were 37 unilateral 30 left, seven right, and 13 bilateral brain implantations. In the subgroup analysis, there was a significant interaction between assessment and age of tremor onset ; F = 4.47; p = 0.043 for working memory. The post hoc testing found improvements for younger onset ET. Similarly, there was a significant interaction between assessment and complications vs. no complications subgroups; F = 4.34; p = 0.043 for verbal memory with worsening scores seen for ET patients with complications. The remaining tests were not significant.Conclusion: In this large cohort of ET patients with, DBS was not accompanied by a significant decline in many cognitive domains. These outcomes were possibly related to the selection of patients with normal cognitive functioning before surgery, unilateral DBS implantations for the majority, and selection of patients with optimal response to DBS. (shrink)

People of the Big Voice tells the visual history of Ho-Chunk families at the turn of the twentieth century and beyond as depicted through the lens of Black River Falls, Wisconsin studio photographer, Charles Van Schaick. The family relationships between those who “sat for the photographer” are clearly visible in these images—sisters, friends, families, young couples—who appear and reappear to fill in a chronicle spanning from 1879 to 1942. Also included are candid shots of Ho-Chunk on the streets of Black (...) River Falls, outside family dwellings, and at powwows. As author and Ho-Chunk tribal member Amy Lonetree writes, “A significant number of the images were taken just a few short years after the darkest, most devastating period for the Ho-Chunk. Invasion, diseases, warfare, forced assimilation, loss of land, and repeated forced removals from our beloved homelands left the Ho-Chunk people in a fight for their culture and their lives.” The book includes three introductory essays and 300-plus duotone photographs and captions in gallery style. Unique to the project are the identifications in the captions, which were researched over many years with the help of tribal members and genealogists, and include both English and Ho-Chunk names. (shrink)

This article introduces the thought of the Romanian philosopher Lucian Blaga on religion as a cultural creation that has value apart from questions of the truthfulness of religious doctrines. According to Blaga, religion has considerable aesthetic and philosophical significance. The article places this insight within the context of Blaga’s metaphysical vision and his analysis of epistemology and illustrates it with a new translation of one of his most famous poems.

Recent studies suggest that the tetracycline antibiotic minocycline, or its cousins, hold therapeutic potential for affective and psychotic disorders. This is proposed on the basis of a direct effect on microglia‐mediated frontocortical synaptic pruning (FSP) during adolescence, perhaps in genetically susceptible individuals harboring risk alleles in the complement component cascade that is involved in this normal process of CNS circuit refinement. In reviewing this field, it is argued that minocycline is actually probing and modulating a deeply evolved and intricate system (...) wherein psychosocial stimuli sculpt the circuitry of the “social brain” underlying adult behavior and personality. Furthermore, this system can generate psychiatric morbidity that is not dependent on genetic variation. This view has important ramifications for understanding “pathologies” of human social behavior and cognition as well as providing long‐sought potential mechanistic links between social experience and susceptibility to mental and physical disease. (shrink)

The following article outlines spiritual formation as it occurs at His Mansion Ministries, a communal ministry centered on Jesus Christ that focuses on helping men and women struggling with life-controlling behaviors and attitudes. Spiritual formation is argued to be a beautiful movement from self to other, a movement that is rooted in a conversion of the self to God. This movement is displayed in the community of His Mansion and the relationships therein. This spiritual movement is also seen in the (...) work and learning that is accomplished at His Mansion. The experience of relationships, work, and learning in the world is typically oriented around the self. At His Mansion Ministries, we believe that spiritual formation happens as a person, in submission to God and his love, moving from being oriented around the self to being aware of and acting for the good of others. (shrink)

Lucian Blaga was an early twentieth-century European philosopher whose work was suppressed at the height of his career by the creation of the Romanian Socialist Republic. The thesis of this book is that Blaga's philosophy can make valuable contributions to contemporary Anglo-American philosophy. Blaga's philosophical system is explained in detail.

Without doubt, Weighing Lives, like its precursor, Weighing Goods, is an excellent and thought-provoking piece of work. In the first place, it addresses a question of the most fundamental importance, namely: how should we aggregate the well-being of past, present and future members of the human race under the various possible states of the world that may, in the event, prevail? This involves, amongst other things, dealing with questions of aggregation across time, people and different states of the world; the (...) issue of what constitutes a “neutral” state of well-being and what is, in fact, the value of continuing to survive. (shrink)

Religion in Eastern Europe, Paul Mojzes and Walter Sawatsky, eds.

Researchers in the areas of prehistoric art, anthropology of art, psychology, philosophy, feminist art theory, histories of visual arts education, and the emerging field of neuroaesthetics have created new interest within education in the writings of John Dewey related to art and experiential learning as found in Art as Experience and Experience and Nature. Thus, another look at Dewey’s life experience and his philosophy of experiential art may bring renewed support for visual arts education in the twenty-first century. Dewey has (...) influenced the public education system through his philosophy of experience and his less well-known theory of aesthetics. The definition that Dewey provided for education centers on the.. (shrink)

Business ethics is currently a significant and widely debated global issue, and one that no business can afford to ignore. In this book, the authors bring together a diverse range of views on the subject, arising from an international conference on business ethics.Chapters on highly topical issues such as GM foods, child labor and bribery will make this an important tool for many businesses.

Abstract Since their inception, distributional models of semantics have been criticized as inadequate cognitive theories of human semantic learning and representation. A principal challenge is that the representations derived by distributional models are purely symbolic and are not grounded in perception and action; this challenge has led many to favor feature-based models of semantic representation. We argue that the amount of perceptual and other semantic information that can be learned from purely distributional statistics has been underappreciated. We compare the representations (...) of three feature-based and nine distributional models using a semantic clustering task. Several distributional models demonstrated semantic clustering comparable with clustering-based on feature-based representations. Furthermore, when trained on child-directed speech, the same distributional models perform as well as sensorimotor-based feature representations of children’s lexical semantic knowledge. These results suggest that, to a large extent, information relevant for extracting semantic categories is redundantly coded in perceptual and linguistic experience. Detailed analyses of the semantic clusters of the feature-based and distributional models also reveal that the models make use of complementary cues to semantic organization from the two data streams. Rather than conceptualizing feature-based and distributional models as competing theories, we argue that future focus should be on understanding the cognitive mechanisms humans use to integrate the two sources. (shrink)

Ductin is the highest conserved membrane protein yet found in eukaryotes. It is multifunctional, being the subunit c or proteolipid component of the vacuolar H+‐ATPase and at the same time the protein component of a form of gap junction in metazoan animals. Analysis of its structure shows it to be a tandem repeat of two 8‐kDa domains derived from the subunit c of the F0 proton pore from the F1F0 ATPase. Each domain contains two transmembrane α‐helices, which together may form (...) a four‐helix bundle. In both the V‐ATPase and gap junction channel, ductin is probably arranged as a hexamer of subunits forming a central channel of gap junction‐like proportions. The two functions appear to be seggregated by ductin having two orientations in the bilayer. Ductin is also the major component of the mediatophore, a protein complex which may aid in the release of neurotransmitters across the pre‐synaptic membrane. It is also a target for a class of poorly understood viral polypeptides. These polypeptides are small and highly hydrophobic and some have oncogenic activity. Ductin thus appears to be at the crossroads of a number of biological processes. (shrink)

In his excellent preface to Plantus' translation of Zalmoxis, Keith Hitchins mentions, but does not describe in detail, the philosophical system created by Lucian Blaga as a compliment to and source of his drama and poetry. In her forward, Plantus, the translator of Zalmoxis, likewise alludes to the philosophical undercurrents present in Blaga’s literary works in general and in Zalmoxis in particular. In my chapter I briefly outline this philosophical system for the readers of Zalmoxis. I do so – and (...) the translator has invited me to do so – because, while Blaga’s poetry is not slave to his philosophy, it is influenced by his philosophy, and understanding the latter will facilitate understanding and appreciating the philosophical aspects of the former. (shrink)

Carl E. Braaten, No Other Gospel! Christianity among the World's Religions Minneapolis, USA: Fortress Press, 1992. Paperback: 146 pp. including endnotes and index.

Gerald McDermott has attempted to critique David French’s defense of the Christian appropriation of Critical Race Theory. In examining McDermott’s critique, I find that he employs at least three distinct arguments. After examining each of these, I find that none of them succeeds in proving its point. Hence I conclude that McDermott’s attempt to repudiate French’s position is unsuccessful.

This is an introduction to the book Fiinta istorica (The Historical Being), written by the 20th century Romanian philosopher Lucian Blaga. Blaga was an important thinker, authoring over 30 books of philosophy and a great many articles. Unfortunatly very little of his work is translated into English. This book is the very last that he wrote. It was published posthumously.