Consideration of the property of action is proposed to provide a more meaningful definition of efficient energy use and sustainable production in ecosystems. Action has physical dimensions similar to angular momentum, its magnitude varying with mass, spatial configuration and relative motion. In this article, the relationship of action to thermodynamic processes such as the spontaneous increase in entropy of the second law is explained and the utility of action for measuring changes in energy and material distribution is promoted. In particular, (...) the view that increases in entropy and action are equivalent to disorder is challenged. Given that the development of action states may be assigned an economic value and the various sources of free energy assigned a price, action theory may provide a novel mechanism for the economic allocation of resources. The importance of the diversity and redundancy of energy resources and work processes to optimize action is highlighted. (shrink)

Informed by the critical humanisms of Hannah Arendt, Frantz Fanon, and Paul Gilroy, the authors argue for an orientation to teaching and learning that troubles the continuing effects of dehumanizing race logic. Reflecting on Paul Haggis's Oscar award winning film Crash from 2004, they suggest that the metaphor of racial 'crashing' captures what happens when we act out from experiences of racial injury instead of being touched by it. They propose a psychoanalytic pedagogy of emotions as a method for reading (...) representation beyond the limits of detached rational critique. Learning from the affect of racial injury as it is made manifest in representation, they suggest, is an important ethical starting point for generating new insights into what it might mean to live within and beyond contemporary legacies of racial hatred. (shrink)

This paper is a discussion and a criticism of the account of the Philosophy of Resemblances which appears in the first chapter of Professor H. H. Price's Thinking and Experience.

This article shows how there is a great kinship between Polanyi's thought and that of Bernard Haring, "the father of modern moral theology" in the Roman Catholic Church. Haring advocated an ethics of personal responsibility that calls for an epistemology such as Polanyi developed for history and social sciences in The Study of Man.

The authors are members of the British Association Committee on Social Concern and Biological Advances. Following earlier discussions of legal and social problems arising from certain medical advances, they undertook, independently, to examine the Law Commission's study.

Reconstructive allografts using Vascularized Composite Allotransplantation are providing individuals living with upper limb loss and facial disfigurement with new opportunities for a sensate, esthetically acceptable, and functional alternative to current treatment strategies. Important research attention is being paid to how best to assess and screen candidates for VCA, measure optimal patient outcomes, and support patient adherence to lifelong behaviors and medical regimens. Far less attention, however, has been dedicated to the team science required for these complex VCA teams to form, (...) prepare, and provide the highest quality clinical and psychosocial care to those receiving VCA. VCA teams are unique in that they require specialized team members whose scope of practice may not otherwise overlap. The team also needs to constantly negotiate balancing patient safety with multiple risks throughout the transplant process. This study aimed to elucidate the team science needed for this highly innovative and complex area of medicine. Using in-depth qualitative interviews with 14 VCA team members and observations at team meetings, we found that careful consideration of team composition, team structure, and organizational commitment influences team performance and patient outcomes, but that to be efficient and truly effective, teams need to commit to developing processes that foster collaboration. These processes are action-oriented, strategic and interpersonal. Dedication and commitment to team science allows teams to manage conflict under stress and exercise ways to leverage strengths to provide optimal performance or patient psychosocial and clinical outcomes. This study can provide insight into quality improvement efforts for VCA teams and guidance for other transplant programs that wish to consider expansion into VCA. (shrink)

The motivation of someone who is locked-in, that is, paralyzed and mute, is to find relief for their loss of function. The data presented in this report is part of an attempt to restore one of those lost functions, namely, speech. An essential feature of the development of a speech prosthesis is optimal decoding of patterns of recorded neural signals during silent or covert speech, that is, speaking “inside the head” with output that is inaudible due to the paralysis of (...) the articulators. The aim of this paper is to illustrate the importance of both fast and slow single unit firings recorded from an individual with locked-in syndrome and from an intact participant speaking silently. Long duration electrodes were implanted in the motor speech cortex for up to 13 years in the locked-in participant. The data herein provide evidence that slow firing single units are essential for optimal decoding accuracy. Additional evidence indicates that slow firing single units can be conditioned in the locked-in participant 5 years after implantation, further supporting their role in decoding. (shrink)

ObjectiveTo compare techniques for computing clustering and switching scores in terms of agreement, correlation, and empirical value as predictors of incident cognitive impairment.MethodsWe transcribed animal and letter F fluency recordings on 640 cases of ICI and matched controls from a national epidemiological study, amending each transcription with word timings. We then calculated clustering and switching scores, as well as scores indexing speed of responses, using techniques described in the literature. We evaluated agreement among the techniques with Cohen’s κ and calculated (...) correlations among the scores. After fitting a base model with raw scores, repetitions, and intrusions, we fit a series of Bayesian logistic regression models adding either clustering and switching scores or speed scores, comparing the models in terms of several metrics. We partitioned the ICI cases into acute and progressive cases and repeated the regression analysis for each group.ResultsFor animal fluency, we found that models with speed scores derived using the slope difference algorithm achieved the best values of the Watanabe–Akaike Information Criterion, but with good net reclassification improvement only for the progressive group. For letter fluency, different models excelled for prediction of acute and progressive cases. For acute cases, NRI was best for speed scores derived from a network model, while for progressive cases, the best model used clustering and switching scores derived from the same network model. Combining variables from the best animal and letter F models led to marginal improvements in model fit and NRI only for the all-cases and acute-cases analyses.ConclusionSpeed scores improve a base model for predicting progressive cognitive impairment from animal fluency. Letter fluency scores may provide complementary information. (shrink)

Offers both theoretical and practical insights into the dialogue between adults and children as a democratic model for schooling.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:AN ITALIAN VIEW OF THE DEBATE ON VIRTUE TERENCE KENNEDY, C.Ss.R. Accademia Alfonsiana Rome, Italy FATHER GIUSEPPE ABBA, S.B.D., professor of moral philosophy at the Pontifical Salesian University in Rome, has written two volumes of prime importance for the theory of the moral virtues. Although writing in Italian, he has entered into the thick of debate in other languages, especially English. The first, Lex et Virtus: Studi sull'evoluzione (...) delta dottrina morale di san Tommaso d'Aquino (Las-Roma, 1983, 293 pp.) is every bit as wide ranging as its title suggests. His thesis is that St. Thomas's moral thought underwent a long and radical evolution that issued in "a new science" in the Secunda Pars of the Summa Theologiae totally centered in the virtues. His book is neatly divided in two parts: humanity under the regime of law and humanity under the regime of virtue. He argues that the Scriptum super Sententiis presents virtue as the capacity to put law into practice in life. Here law has priority because it is conceived as participation in the divine rectitude, and virtue is derivative in as far as it facilitates compliance with God's law, making our response easy, pleasurable and spontaneous by restraining the disorderly influence of passion on our moral response. The De V eritate, he maintains, follows the same descending schema. Truth is communicated downwards through the hierarchy of intellectual beings so that the human virtues are seen mainly in terms of how they reflect the divine truth, especially in the moral knowledge involved in free choice or liberum arbitrium. The Summa Contra Gentiles III classifies morality under the rubric of the law as rational submission to divine government through 123 124 TERENCE KENNEDY, c.ss.R. Providence. In this vision, our return to God as final end is given focal emphasis before being considered the fruit of our effort. Abba makes a strong case that in the Secunda Pars St. Thomas passes from a conception of morality based in law to one founded in the virtues. Morality assumes deeper significance in its own right because the human person is no longer viewed mainly as a direct reflection of divine truth but truly as imago Dei having dominion over his acts in freedom and deliberation. God, the subjectum of theology, is known through his effects in creation and the motus hominis in Deum provides matter for the speculative discipline of theology as the study of God. Morality unveils the mystery of God through how He works in our free activity drawing us to Himself. St. Thomas thus has very little in common with those contemporary moralists who are wholly taken up with the rightness of actions in normative ethics. Abba maintains that in the Summa St. Thomas was the first to afford morality its rightful place as an integral part in his theological synthesis. This involved a reworking of the idea of virtue beginning, with a fresh approach to habitus in the Ia!Jae. The determination of a habit ad unum is necessary because of the way a specifically human form is received in particular matter. This determination means not just a further specification of the matter, but the coming into being of new abilities, a creative enablement. of our nature with original energies so that it can reach its enc(' efficaciously. Virtue now has priority over law, because facility, pleasure and spontaneity are only the effects of this new interior transformation of our nature. Thus the originality of virtue arises not from our mode of acting firmiter, faciliter, delectabiliter, but from the new interior capacities by which we can realize our moral selves, naturally and supernaturally. Law is thereafter thought of in relation to its service of virtue as an external command promulgated for the government of a collectivity. It is given precisely so as to educate the collectivity to virtue. In the community governed by God's divine law it is not possible to follow His law without being enlivened by the infused virtues. The eternal law is not exhausted by our understanding of the precepts of divine law THE DEBATE ON VIRTUE 125 but it embraces God's complete idea... (shrink)