Business Ethics: A European Review, EarlyView.

The active debate about the return of incidental or secondary findings in research has primarily focused on return to research participants, or in some cases, family members. Particular attention has been paid to return of genomic findings. Yet, research may generate other types of findings that warrant consideration for return, including findings related to the pathology of donated biospecimens. In the case of deceased biospecimen donors who are also organ and/or tissue transplant donors, pathology incidental findings may be relevant not (...) to family members, but to potential organ or tissue transplant recipients. This paper will describe the ethical implications of pathology incidental findings in the Genotype-Tissue Expression project, the process for developing a consensus approach as to if/when such findings should be returned, possible implications for other research projects collecting postmortem tissues and how the scenario encountered in GTEx fits into the larger return of results/incidental findings debate. (shrink)

Peer review is a widely accepted instrument for raising the quality of science. Peer review limits the enormous unstructured influx of information and the sheer amount of dubious data, which in its absence would plunge science into chaos. In particular, peer review offers the benefit of eliminating papers that suffer from poor craftsmanship or methodological shortcomings, especially in the experimental sciences. However, we believe that peer review is not always appropriate for the evaluation of controversial hypothetical science. We argue that (...) the process of peer review can be prone to bias towards ideas that affirm the prior convictions of reviewers and against innovation and radical new ideas. Innovative hypotheses are thus highly vulnerable to being “filtered out” or made to accord with conventional wisdom by the peer review process. Consequently, having introduced peer review, the Elsevier journal Medical Hypotheses may be unable to continue its tradition as a radical journal allowing discussion of improbable or unconventional ideas. Hence we conclude by asking the publisher to consider re-introducing the system of editorial review to Medical Hypotheses. (shrink)

Parental age at offspring conception often influences offspring longevity, but the mechanisms underlying this link are poorly understood. One mechanism that may be important is telomeres, highly conserved, repetitive sections of non‐coding DNA that form protective caps at chromosome ends and are often positively associated with longevity. Here, the potential pathways by which the age of the parents at the time of conception may impact offspring telomeres are described first, including direct effects on parental gamete telomeres and indirect effects on (...) offspring telomere loss during pre‐ or post‐natal development. Then a surge of recent studies demonstrating the effects of parental age on offspring telomeres in diverse taxa are reviewed. In doing so, important areas for future research and experimental approaches that will enhance the understanding of how and when these effects likely occur are highlighted. It is concluded by considering the potential evolutionary consequences of parental age on offspring telomeres. (shrink)

In this paper we continue, from [2], the development of provably recursive analysis, that is, the study of real numbers defined by programs which can be proven to be correct in some fixed axiom system S. In particular we develop the provable analogue of an effective operator on the set C of recursive real numbers, namely, a provably correct operator on the set P of provably recursive real numbers. In Theorems 1 and 2 we exhibit a provably correct operator on (...) P which is discontinuous at 0; we thus disprove the analogue of the Ceitin-Moschovakis theorem of recursive analysis, which states that every effective operator on C is (effectively) continuous. Our final theorems show, however, that no provably correct operator on P can be proven (in S) to be discontinuous. (shrink)

The Argonautica of Apollonius Rhodius deals with a band of heroes one generation before the great warriors at Troy, and the narrative does not really concern itself directly with the later generation. Some of the familiar heroes of Homer may never seem very far from Apollonius' narrative, but they tend not to appear in the poem themselves. One who does is Achilles, twice in fact: once in the first book and once in the last. Both of these passages deal with (...) his early life: the first when he is in the care of Chiron and his wife , the second when he is in the family home with Peleus and Thetis . In the former the gods of heaven and nymphs of Pelion are described as watching the departure of the Argo from Thessaly bound for Colchis. Chiron then comes down from Pelion and waves the heroes goodbye. His wife meanwhile holds Achilles on her arm and shows the child to his father Peleus as he departs with the Argonauts. The later passage describes the failed attempt of Thetis to make her son immortal. In this account Thetis addresses Peleus for the first time since their separation , and then vanishes into the depths of ocean. Their separation occurred some time earlier when she disappeared in anger after her failure to make the young Achilles immortal. She tried to do this by placing him in the fire during the night, and anointing him with ambrosia during the day :The attempt fails when Peleus happens to see his son's immersion in the flames, and gives out a terrible cry, whereupon Thetis throws the boy down, goes away herself, and does not return. (shrink)

In this article, we review approaches to modeling a connection between spatial and mathematical thinking across development. We critically evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of factor analyses, meta-analyses, and experimental literatures. We examine those studies that set out to describe the nature and number of spatial and mathematical skills and specific connections between these abilities, especially those that included children as participants. We also find evidence of strong spatial-mathematical connections and transfer from spatial interventions to mathematical understanding. Finally, we map (...) out the kinds of studies that could enhance our understanding of the mechanisms by which spatial and mathematical processing are connected and the principles by which mathematical outcomes could be enhanced through spatial training in educational settings. (shrink)

Biological ontologies are used to organize, curate, and interpret the vast quantities of data arising from biological experiments. While this works well when using a single ontology, integrating multiple ontologies can be problematic, as they are developed independently, which can lead to incompatibilities. The Open Biological and Biomedical Ontologies Foundry was created to address this by facilitating the development, harmonization, application, and sharing of ontologies, guided by a set of overarching principles. One challenge in reaching these goals was that the (...) OBO principles were not originally encoded in a precise fashion, and interpretation was subjective. Here we show how we have addressed this by formally encoding the OBO principles as operational rules and implementing a suite of automated validation checks and a dashboard for objectively evaluating each ontology’s compliance with each principle. This entailed a substantial effort to curate metadata across all ontologies and to coordinate with individual stakeholders. We have applied these checks across the full OBO suite of ontologies, revealing areas where individual ontologies require changes to conform to our principles. Our work demonstrates how a sizable federated community can be organized and evaluated on objective criteria that help improve overall quality and interoperability, which is vital for the sustenance of the OBO project and towards the overall goals of making data FAIR. Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest. (shrink)

Mounting evidence shows that nature contact is associated with affective benefits. However, the psychological mechanisms responsible for these effects are not well understood. In this study, we examined whether more time spent in nature was associated with higher levels of positive affect in general, and lower levels of negative affect and rumination in general. We also conducted a cross-sectional mediation analysis to examine whether rumination mediated the association of nature contact with affect. Participants reported their average time spent in nature (...) each week, as well as their general levels of positive and negative affect, and the degree to which they typically engaged in rumination in daily life. We then used structural equation modeling to test our hypotheses. Our results support the hypothesis that nature contact is associated with general levels of affect, and that rumination mediates this association for negative affect, and marginally mediates this association for positive affect. (shrink)

Reproduced from Robert J.C. Young, Torn Halves. Pages: 256. ISBN: 0-7190-477-3 ; 0-7190-4776-5. Price: 14.99 ; 40.00.

In this essay I contrast Freud’s account of mourning in Mourning and Melancholia to that of Merleau-Ponty in Phenomenology of Perception. In suggesting a somatic as well as a psychic response, Merleau-Ponty, I argue, more accurately accounts for the ways in which we experience loss and why, contrary to Freud’s suggestion, mourning’s work is never completed.

When the COVID-19 surge hit New York City hospitals, the Division of Medical Ethics at Weill Cornell Medical College, and our affiliated ethics consultation services, faced waves of ethical issues sweeping forward with intensity and urgency. In this article, we describe our experience over an eight-week period (16 March through 10 May 2020), and describe three types of services: clinical ethics consultation (CEC); service practice communications/interventions (SPCI); and organizational ethics advisement (OEA). We tell this narrative through the prism of time, (...) describing the evolution of ethical issues and trends as the pandemic unfolded. We delineate three phases: anticipation and preparation, crisis management, and reflection and adjustment. The first phase focused predominantly on ways to address impending resource shortages and to plan for remote ethics consultation, and CECs focused on code status discussions with surrogates. The second phase was characterized by the dramatic convergence of a rapid increase in the number of critically ill patients, a growing scarcity of resources, and the reassignment/ redeployment of staff outside their specialty areas. The third phase was characterized by the recognition that while the worst of the crisis was waning, its medium- and long-term consequences continued to pose immense challenges. We note that there were times during the crisis that serving in the role of clinical ethics consultant created a sense of dis-ease as novel as the coronavirus itself. In retrospect we learned that our activities far exceeded the familiar terrain of clinical ethics consultation and extended into other spheres of organizational life in novel ways that were unanticipated before this pandemic. To that end, we defined and categorized a middle level of ethics consultation, which we have termed service practice communication intervention (SPCI). This is an underappreciated dimension of the work that ethics consult services are capable of in times of crisis. We believe that the pandemic has revealed the many enduring ways that ethics consultation services can more robustly contribute to the ethical life of their institutions moving forward. (shrink)

Do the rich descriptions and narrative shapings of literature provide a valuable resource for readers, writers, philosophers, and everyday people to imagine and confront the ultimate questions of life? Do the human activities of storytelling and complex moral decision-making have a deep connection? What are the moral responsibilities of the artist, critic, and reader? What can religious perspectives—from Catholic to Protestant to Mormon—contribute to literary criticism? Thirty well known contributors reflect on these questions, including iterary theorists Marshall Gregory, James Phelan, (...) and Wayne Booth; philosophers Martha Nussbaum, Richard Hart, and Nina Rosenstand; and authors John Updike, Charles Johnson, Flannery O'Connor, and Bernard Malamud. Divided into four sections, with introductory matter and questions for discussion, this accessible anthology represents the most crucial work today exploring the interdisciplinary connections between literature, religion and philosophy. (shrink)

Psychiatry is rapidly adopting digital phenotyping and artificial intelligence/machine learning tools to study mental illness based on tracking participants’ locations, online activity, phone and text message usage, heart rate, sleep, physical activity, and more. Existing ethical frameworks for return of individual research results (IRRs) are inadequate to guide researchers for when, if, and how to return this unprecedented number of potentially sensitive results about each participant’s real-world behavior. To address this gap, we convened an interdisciplinary expert working group, supported by (...) a National Institute of Mental Health grant. Building on established guidelines and the emerging norm of returning results in participant-centered research, we present a novel framework specific to the ethical, legal, and social implications of returning IRRs in digital phenotyping research. Our framework offers researchers, clinicians, and Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) urgently needed guidance, and the principles developed here in the context of psychiatry will be readily adaptable to other therapeutic areas. (shrink)

This long-awaited new edition contains eight of the dialogues of Plato, and is the first in a new five-volume complete edition of his works in the OCT series.

This unique volume introduces and discusses the methods of validating computer simulations in scientific research. The core concepts, strategies, and techniques of validation are explained by an international team of pre-eminent authorities, drawing on expertise from various fields ranging from engineering and the physical sciences to the social sciences and history. The work also offers new and original philosophical perspectives on the validation of simulations. Topics and features: introduces the fundamental concepts and principles related to the validation of computer simulations, (...) and examines philosophical frameworks for thinking about validation; provides an overview of the various strategies and techniques available for validating simulations, as well as the preparatory steps that have to be taken prior to validation; describes commonly used reference points and mathematical frameworks applicable to simulation validation; reviews the legal prescriptions, and the administrative and procedural activities related to simulation validation; presents examples of best practice that demonstrate how methods of validation are applied in various disciplines and with different types of simulation models; covers important practical challenges faced by simulation scientists when applying validation methods and techniques; offers a selection of general philosophical reflections that explore the significance of validation from a broader perspective. This truly interdisciplinary handbook will appeal to a broad audience, from professional scientists spanning all natural and social sciences, to young scholars new to research with computer simulations. Philosophers of science, and methodologists seeking to increase their understanding of simulation validation, will also find much to benefit from in the text. (shrink)

The exogenous cycles and population dynamics of the community at Penrith, Cumbria, England, have been studied (1557-1812) using aggregative analysis, family reconstitution and time series analysis. This community was living under marginal conditions for the first 200 years and the evidence presented is of a homeostatic regime where famine, malnutrition and epidemic disease acted to regulate the balance between resources and population size. This provides an ideal historic population for an investigation of the direct and indirect effects of malnutrition. Throughout (...) the period studied, a short wavelength oscillation in grain prices was apparently the major external factor that drove exogenous cycles in mortality, birth rate, and migration. In particular, the different responses of children to variations in food supply are emphasised; fluctuations in poor nutrition correlated significantly with the variations in mortality rates for infants (probably indirectly during pregnancy and directly during the first year of life) and for young children (via susceptibility to lethal infectious diseases). Migratory movements contributed to the maintenance of homeostasis in the population dynamics. A medium wavelength cycle in low winter temperatures was associated with a rise in adult mortality which, in turn, promoted an influx of migrants into this saturated habitat. A model incorporating these interacting associations between vital events and exogenous cycles is presented: grain prices were an important density-dependent factor and constituted the major component of the negative feedback of this population and drove the exogenous, short wavelength mortality cycles. Cycles of births and immigration provide a positive feedback for the build-up of susceptibles and the initiation of smallpox epidemics and increased population size. (shrink)

This book is a rich blend of analyses by leading experts from various cultures and disciplines. A compact introduction to a complex field, it illustrates biotechnology's profound impact upon the environment and society. Moreover, it underscores the vital relevance of cultural values. This book empowers readers to more critically assess biotechnology's value and effectiveness within both specific cultural and global contexts.

This book provides practical and research-based chapters that offer greater clarity about the particular kinds of teacher reflection that matter and avoids talking about teacher reflection generically, which implies that all kinds of reflection are of equal value.

Plato is one of the key ancient authors studied by both classicists and philosophers. This long-awaited new edition contains seven of the dialogues of Plato, and is the first in the five-volume complete edition of his works in the Oxford Classical Texts series. The result of many years of painstaking scholarship, the new volume will replace the now nearly 100 year old original edition, and is destined to become just as long-lasting a classic.

We are printing in its entirety the discussion document which sets out a code of professional conduct for nurses published by the Royal College of Nursing in November 1976 together with commentaries by the Assistant Secretary of the British Medical Association, a professor of nursing studies, student nurses and a lawyer. The image of the nurse is still that of one of Florence Nightingale's young ladies or of a member of a religious order who is wholly dedicated to caring (...) for the sick. Today, as this document and the comments upon it show, 'dedication' is still part of the motive which leads a man or woman to become a nurse but in addition, and this is where the public may be ignorant or choose to be ignorant, nursing offers a career where intellectual achievement and the satisfaction of a demanding job bring their proper financial reward and place in the professional community. We are grateful to the Royal College of Nursing for permission to publish this document. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Objective: To identify perceived barriers to capacity building for local research ethics oversight in El Salvador, and to set an agenda for international collaborative capacity building. Methods: Focus groups were formed in El Salvador which included 17 local clinical investigators and members of newly formed research ethics committees. Information about the proposed research was presented to participants during an international bioethics colloquium sponsored and organized by the St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in collaboration with the National Ethics Committee of (...) El Salvador and the University of El Salvador. Interviews with the focus group participants were qualitatively analyzed. Results: Participants expressed the need to tailor the informed consent process and documentation to the local culture; for example, allowing family members to participate in decision‐making, and employing shorter consent forms. Participants indicated that economic barriers often impede efforts in local capacity building. Participants valued international collaboration for mutual capacity building in research ethics oversight. Conclusions: Research ethics committees in El Salvador possess a basic knowledge of locally relevant ethical principles, though they need more training to optimize the application of bioethical principles and models to their particular contexts. Challenges increase the value of collaborative exchanges with ethics committee members in the United States. Further research on facilitating communication between host country and sponsor country ethics committees can maximize local research ethics expertise, and thus raise the standard of protecting human participants involved in international research. (shrink)

Recent controversy over philosophical advocacy of infanticide (or the comically-styled euphemism ‘postnatal abortion’) reveals a surprisingly common premise uniting many of the opponents and supporters of the practice. This is the belief that the moral status of the early fetus or embryo with respect to a right to life is identical to that of a newly born or even very young baby. From this premise, infanticidists and strong anti-abortionists draw opposite conclusions, the former that the healthy newly born have (...) no inherent right to life and the latter that minute embryos and the very early fetus have the same right to life as young babies. (Indeed strong anti-abortionists tend to regard this right to life as identical to that possessed by adult humans.) This paper argues that these opposed conclusions are both deeply implausible and that the implausibility resides in the common premise. The argument requires some attention to the structure of the philosophical case underpinning the supposed vice of speciesism that has been given intellectual currency by many philosophers, most notably Peter Singer, and also to the reasoning behind the strong anti-abortionist adoption of the common premise. (shrink)

Aims. Currently, methylphenidate (MPH, trade name Ritalin) is the most widely prescribed medication for attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). We examined the ability of repeated MPH administration to produce a sensitized appetitive eagerness type response in laboratory rats, as indexed by 50-kHz ultrasonic vocalizations (50-kHz USVs). We also examined the ability of MPH to reduce play behavior in rats which may be partially implicated in the clinical efficacy of MPH in ADHD. Design. 56 adolescent rats received injections of either 5.0 mg/kg (...) MPH, or vehicle each day for 8 consecutive days, and a week later received a challenge injection of either MPH or vehicle. Measurements. Both play behavior (pins) and 50-kHz USVs were recorded after each drug or vehicle administration. Results. MPH challenge produced a substantial 73% reduction in play behavior during the initial treatment phase, and during the last test (1 week post drug), 50-kHz USVs were elevated approximately threefold only in animals with previous MPH experience. Conclusions. These data suggest that MPH treatment may lead to psychostimulant sensitization in young animals, perhaps by increasing future drug-seeking tendencies due to an elevated eagerness for positive incentives. Further, we hypothesize that MPH may be reducing ADHD symptoms, in part, by blocking playful tendencies, whose neuro-maturational and psychological functions remain to be adequately characterized. (shrink)