The apolipoprotein E gene plays an important role in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer's disease , and amyloid plaque comprised mostly of the amyloid-beta peptide ) is one of the major hallmarks of AD. However, the relationship between these two important molecules is poorly understood. We examined how A treatment affects APOE expression in cultured cells and tested the role of the transcription factor NF-B in APOE gene regulation. To delineate NF-B's role, we have characterized a 1098 nucleotide segment containing the (...) 5'-flanking region of the human APOE gene . Sequence analysis of this region suggests the presence of two potential NF-B elements. To demonstrate promoter activity, the region was cloned upstream of a promoterless luciferase gene. This segment was able to drive expression of luciferase in transient transfections of human fetal glial cells. Promoter activity was stimulated twofold by A treatment. Pretreatment with double-stranded DNA decoy oligonucleotides against NF-B reduced A stimulation. Deletion and mutagenetic analyses demonstrated that the distal NF-B element was functional and showed a strong DNA-protein complex band in gel shift analysis, similar to that from control NF-B consensus element. An anti-inflammatory and anti-NF-B drug, sodium salicylate, significantly blocked A-induced APOE promoter function. Our data provide evidence that upregulation of APOE by A in astroglial cells is mediated by an NF-B-element present in the 5'-flanking region of the APOE gene. (shrink)

In the middle of the 17th century, Sheikh Wang Daiyu was one of China’s most famous Muslim scholars after Muhammad bin Abdullah bin Elias in China in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties. and at a time when the sheikh lived, Islam in China was evolving progressively after it had had a weak presence, so Sheikh Wang Daiyu started writing books and scholarly articles in which he employed some Confucian terms... to explain Islamic ideas from the Holy Qur’an and (...) the Sunnah of the Prophet. He thus took upon himself the role of missionary caller to Islam, as well as the mission of spreading its culture by aiming to reconcile Confucian ideas with Islamic ones. The Sheikh systematically presented his ideas about the progress of Islam at that time in China. The present study mainly focuses on the biographical account of the Sheikh, on his scholarly and non-scholarly works, and on how he sought to reconcile Chinese culture with Islamic culture. We hereby seek to demonstrate that, during his time and owing to his efforts, Islam gained momentum in China, and that this momentum was achieved through the accommodative and integrating approach of Sheikh Wang Daiyu between the Arabo-Islamic culture and Chinese culture. Also, this study aims to get the world to understand China better, and thus musters the national advocacy of "Chinese storytelling" approach, in introducing the Chinese Muslim scholars who, for over a millennium, advocated Islam and strove to spread it and its culture, and, thus, we hope to draw attention to the contributions they have made within the national legacy of China. And in order to be able to conduct this research as fully as possible, we used the historical method and the analytical method, and the study is committed to covering and encapsulating the following: An examination of the Sheikh’s biographical account and his scholarly writings; A study of the challenges that Islam faced during his time; And an assessment of the Sheikh’s approach in fusing together Chinese and the Arabo-Islamic Civilizations. (shrink)

In this paper, we argue that promoting patient values is a legitimate goal of medicine. Our view offers a justification for certain current practices, including birth control and living organ donation, that are widely accepted but do not fit neatly within the most common extant accounts of the goals of medicine. Moreover, we argue that recognising value promotion as a goal of medicine will expand the scope of medical practice by including some procedures that are sometimes rejected as being outside (...) the scope of acceptable medical practice, such as certain forms of physician-assisted death. We then rebut some common and possible objections to this view. Our aim is not to argue that other accounts are mistaken—except when they argue for a single goal that does not include patient values—but rather to show that value promotion should play a more central role in discussions about the goals of medicine. (shrink)

Promotion is the relation between an act and a desire that obtains when the act advances or serves the desire. Under what conditions does an act promote a desire? Probabilistic accounts of promotion, the most prominent accounts, analyze promotion in terms of an increase in the probability of the desire’s satisfaction. In this paper, we clarify the promotion relation and explain why probabilistic accounts are attractive. Then we identify two questions probabilistic accounts must answer: the Baseline Question and the Interpretation (...) Question. We discuss and reject the three answers to the Baseline Question found in the literature, and explain the challenge future attempts at answering this question will face. Proponents of probabilistic accounts have not adequately addressed the Interpretation Question. We survey three answers to this question, finding each unsatisfactory. We conclude that no satisfactory probabilistic account has yet been offered, and that there are significant hurdles to providing one in the future. (shrink)

What is required for an action to promote the satisfaction of a desire? We reject extant answers and propose an alternative. Our account differs from competing answers in two ways: first, it is contrastive, in that actions promote the satisfaction of desires only as contrasted with other possible actions. Second, it employs a notion of expected fit between desire and world, defined as the weighted sum of the fit between the desire and the world in all possible outcomes, where each (...) weight is given by the probability of the agent’s obtaining the relevant outcome. According to our proposal, then, an action promotes a desire when the expected fit for the desire given that the agent performs the action is greater than the expected fit of the desire given that the agent performs the contrasting action. We highlight this account’s attractive features and explain how it improves on its competitors. (shrink)

In their article on the limited duty to reinterpret genetic variants, Watts and Newson argue that clinical labs are not morally obligated to conduct routine reinterpretation despite its potential clinical and personal value.1 We endorse the authors’ argument for a circumscribed duty to reclassify genomic variants in certain cases, including to promote diagnostic equity for racial and ethnic minority populations that have been historically excluded from and exploited by genomic research and medicine. However, given the history and resilience of scientific (...) racism, the use of socially constructed racial and ethnic categories to enhance diagnostic equity raises several ethical and practical challenges. In the short term, using socially constructed racial and ethnic categories to identify patients for variant reclassification is a practical approach for addressing concerns of diagnostic equity. In contrast, diagnostic accuracy depends on patients’ genetic similarity to reference genomes, rather than their socially determined race or ethnicity.2 Thus, in the long term, securing both diagnostic equity and diagnostic accuracy through targeted variant reclassification will require a shift away from relying on race and ethnicity and towards assessing genetic similarity. Critically, the identification of patients for genomic variant reclassification using socially constructed race or ethnicity runs the risk of perpetuating the harmful …. (shrink)

When it comes to improving the health of the general population, mHealth technologies with self-monitoring and intervention components hold a lot of promise. We argue, however, that due to various factors such as access, targeting, personal resources or incentives, self-monitoring applications run the risk of increasing health inequalities, thereby creating a problem of social justice. We review empirical evidence for “intervention-generated” inequalities, present arguments that self-monitoring applications are still morally acceptable, and develop approaches to avoid the promotion of health inequalities (...) through self-monitoring applications. (shrink)

There is an increasing push by journals to ensure that data and products related to published papers are shared as part of a cultural move to promote transparency, reproducibility, and trust in the scientific literature. Yet few journals commit to evaluating their effectiveness in implementing reporting standards aimed at meeting those goals (1, 2). Similarly, though the vast majority of journals endorse peer review as an approach to ensure trust in the literature, few make their peer review data available to (...) evaluate effectiveness toward achieving concrete measures of quality, including consistency and completeness in meeting reporting standards. Remedying these apparent disconnects is critical for closing the gap between guidance recommendations and actual reporting behavior. We see this as a collective action problem requiring leadership and investment by publishers, who can be incentivized through mechanisms that allow them to manage reputational risk and through continued innovation in journal assessment. (shrink)

This paper identifies and addresses some dilemmas to be faced in promoting educational projects concerned with human rights. Part of the difficulty that human rights education initiatives must cope with is the way in which value has been historically conferred upon particular notions such as freedom and justice. I argue here that a just education must grapple head‐on with the conceptual dilemmas that have been inherited and refuse to shy away from the implications of those dilemmas. To do this I (...) address the fundamental fictions upon which rights are based and view those fictions as nonetheless useful for opening up the ethical terms of human rights education. With reference to the work of Arendt, Lyotard and Levinas, I conclude that the real potential of human rights education lies in its capacity to provoke insights that help youth live with ambiguity and dilemma, where freedom, justice, and responsibility cannot be dictated to them, but rather involve tough decisions that must be made in everyday life. (shrink)

We often have some reason to do actions insofar as they promote outcomes or states of affairs, such as the satisfaction of a desire. But what is it to promote an outcome? I defend a new version of 'probabilism about promotion'. According to Minimal Probabilistic Promotion, we promote some outcome when we make that outcome more likely than it would have been if we had done something (anything) else. This makes promotion easy and reasons cheap.

The ethical and community challenges that the current society poses to new generations are proving to be increasingly complex. Therefore, the role of schools in identifying effective proposals aimed at fostering the harmonious growth of students as individuals and as global citizens has become crucial. In line with this need, an educative and research project that focused on friendship as an ethical virtue was set up, aimed at promoting ethics for citizenship at a primary school. The project was conducted according (...) to the educative research approach, offering children good educational experiences and evaluating their effectiveness. The article, after a presentation of the project and its theoretical principles, discusses the results of the qualitative analysis of the data that emerged from two particular activities implemented. The results are discussed in light of the connections between ethics education for citizenship and Social and Emotional Learning, highlighting the implications for educational and teaching practice. (shrink)

Throughout the biological and biomedical sciences there is a growing need for, prescriptive ‘minimum information’ (MI) checklists specifying the key information to include when reporting experimental results are beginning to find favor with experimentalists, analysts, publishers and funders alike. Such checklists aim to ensure that methods, data, analyses and results are described to a level sufficient to support the unambiguous interpretation, sophisticated search, reanalysis and experimental corroboration and reuse of data sets, facilitating the extraction of maximum value from data sets (...) them. However, such ‘minimum information’ MI checklists are usually developed independently by groups working within representatives of particular biologically- or technologically-delineated domains. Consequently, an overview of the full range of checklists can be difficult to establish without intensive searching, and even tracking thetheir individual evolution of single checklists may be a non-trivial exercise. Checklists are also inevitably partially redundant when measured one against another, and where they overlap is far from straightforward. Furthermore, conflicts in scope and arbitrary decisions on wording and sub-structuring make integration difficult. This presents inhibit their use in combination. Overall, these issues present significant difficulties for the users of checklists, especially those in areas such as systems biology, who routinely combine information from multiple biological domains and technology platforms. To address all of the above, we present MIBBI (Minimum Information for Biological and Biomedical Investigations); a web-based communal resource for such checklists, designed to act as a ‘one-stop shop’ for those exploring the range of extant checklist projects, and to foster collaborative, integrative development and ultimately promote gradual integration of checklists. (shrink)

The cultural nature of religion is closely linked with the characteristics of religion. The interaction between religious culture and secular culture is shown as the alternation and coexistence of benign and malignant. In fact, the development of religious culture has a very close relationship with human beings in ancient times. Some activities of human worship, summarized and promoted from generation to generation, have gradually spread and developed widely among various nationalities and regions, and finally formed a series of spiritual theories (...) and behavior norms, which are more systematic. In terms of the external communication of religious culture, we should also pay attention to it. Although the help of mass media has appeared in this regard, it has had little effect. It enables the believers to change from passive to active, and understand and accept the religious culture more deeply. This paper analyzes the relationship between traditional religious culture and Chinese calligraphy art, and discusses how to better inherit Chinese calligraphy art. In religious and cultural communication, the eastward communication of calligraphy has existed in ancient times and has become mature, while the westward communication has become a focus of attention in recent years under the influence of comprehensive factors such as the national cultural development strategy and cultural soft power competition. (shrink)

The relationship between pleasure and asceticism has been at the core of debates on western subjectivity at least since Nietzsche. Addressing this theme, this article explores the emergence of ‘non-authoritarian’ health campaigns, which do not propagate abstention from harmful substances but intend to foster a ‘well-balanced subject’ straddling pleasure and asceticism. The article seeks to develop the Foucauldian analytical framework by foregrounding a strategy of subjectivation that integrates desire, pleasure and enjoyment into health promotion. The point of departure is the (...) overwhelming emphasis in the governmentality literature on ‘prudence’, ‘self-responsibility’ or ‘risk calculation’, such that pleasure and desire remain largely absent from the framework. Some insights from Žižek’s work are introduced to help us obtain a firmer grasp on the problematic of ‘the well-balanced subject’. The article argues that, in order to analyse the transformation of interpellation in recent health promotion, we must recognize the mechanism of self-distance or dis-identification as an integral part of the procedure of subjectification. (shrink)

Given that personal source of information is preferred by the customers over company-generated marketing communications, promoting advocacy behavior among customers is of much importance for every organization. Literature suggests that an organization's corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities significantly influence individual behavior. However, the advocacy behavior of customers (ADB), from a CSR perspective, did not receive due attention. To address this literature gap, the current study attempts to explore the relationship among CSR and ADB with the intervening role of brand admiration (...) (BA). To collect the data, customers of a large fast-food service organization in Pakistan were approached. The proposed relationships were tested through the structural equation modeling (SEM) technique. The statistical evidence verifies a positive link between CSR and ADB, while BA mediated this relationship. These findings will be supportive to the fast-food business to realize the critical role of CSR for a meaningful customer-company relationship in the face of competition. (shrink)

Sometimes a belief that p promotes having true beliefs, whether or not p is true. This gives reasons to believe that p, but most epistemologists would deny that it gives epistemic reasons, or that these reasons can epistemically justify the belief that p. Call these reasons to believe “truth promoting non-evidential reasons for belief.” This paper argues that three common views in epistemology, taken together, entail that reasons of this sort can epistemically justify beliefs. These three claims are: epistemic oughts (...) are normative, epistemic oughts have a source, and the source of epistemic oughts is an end that has true belief as a necessary component. These claims would be hard for many epistemologists to deny, but accepting them, and thus accepting that truth promoting non-evidential reasons can justify beliefs, has significant consequences for epistemology. The paper considers accounts of epistemic oughts that endorse these claims but might seem to avoid the consequence that truth promoting non-evidential reasons generate real epistemic oughts, and shows that none do. (shrink)

This article considers the extent to which health promotion strategies pose a threat to individual freedom. It begins by taking a look at health promotion strategies and at the historical development of health promotion in Britain. A theoretical context is then developed in which Berlin’s distinction between negative and positive liberty is used alongside the ideas of John Stuart Mill, Charles Taylor and T.H. Green to discuss the politics of health promotion and to identify the implications of conflicting perspectives on (...) freedom. The final section looks at current health promotion policy in Britain and beyond and argues that, if freedom is seen in terms of empowerment, health promotion can enhance individual freedom. (shrink)

In a recent public engagement study on heritable human genome editing (HHGE) conducted among South Africans, participants approved of using HHGE for serious health conditions—viewing it as a means of bringing about valuable social goods—and proposed that the government should actively invest resources to ensure everyone has equal access to the technology for these purposes. This position was animated by the view that future generations have a claim to these social goods, and this entitlement justified making HHGE available in the (...) present. This claim can be ethically justified in the Ubuntu ethic (deriving from South Africa) as it (a) emphasizes the interests of the community, and (b) espouses a metaphysical conception of the community that transcends the present generation and includes past and future generations. On this basis, a compelling claim can be made on behalf of prospective persons in favor of equal access to HHGE. (shrink)

The article deals with the development of gastronomic tourism as one of the important areas of tourism. The subject of the study is the food culture in the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia). The object of this research is the promotion of food culture based on the technologies of gastronomic tourism on the example of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia). The article considers the food culture of the Yakut ethnic group, the trends of the restaurant market, as well as local catering (...) enterprises that specialize in the national Yakut cuisine. The concepts of tourism and gastronomic tourism and their state in the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) are studied. The problems of popularization of national cuisine are touched upon. The article is devoted to the promotion of Yakut cuisine at the interregional and international levels. The necessity of promoting the food culture of the Yakut ethnic groups on the basis of participation in gastronomic festivals is identified and justified. The fundamental methodology for the study is a descriptive method, which includes the method of observation, interpretation, comparison, generalization. The presented article is relevant due to the fact that currently in modern culture there is a growing interest in the field of everyday food culture. In this regard, the term "food culture" correlates with the accumulated experience of the people, the bearer of culture, of satisfying the need for food. In modern science, everyday food culture correlates with the definition of "gastronomic culture", although to date there is no unambiguous understanding of this multidimensional cultural phenomenon, which is a specific attribute of each nation. The purpose of this study was to identify the features of everyday life through theoretical aspects and practical provisions that reveal the specifics of gastronomic tourism in the region, and the use of everyday food culture of the Yakut ethnic group for its further improvement and development. Based on the conducted study, the reasons for the positive impact of participating in gastronomic festivals are listed. (shrink)

In this paper we provide a critical discussion of how the most progressive parental leave policies are doing with respect to three goods which we identify as essential for liberal egalitarian feminists interested in parental leaves: the good of parental care, the good of gender fairness, and the good of individual choice. Then we offer our own model, based on the power of defaults, which promotes the goods of parental care and gender justice by sacrificing as little as possible of (...) the good of individual choice. (shrink)

This paper argues against two prominent accounts of what it is to "promote a desire," found in the work of Stephen Finlay and Mark Schroeder.

Interdisciplinary research has been a topic of interest for many decades – perhaps longer. And yet, even now, there is still much we do not understand about how to stimulate collaboration across research disciplines. This article reports the results of a systematic review of the academic literature on strategies for promoting new interdisciplinary research collaborations, which returned only a very small number of empirical studies. A broader review of the scholarship in this area reveals a literature that is highly theorized, (...) but not adequately operationalized for empirical investigation of how to enable new collaborations. A shift toward a better formulation of research questions, with a view toward generating more empirical data on practical strategies for connecting researchers and encouraging them to work together across disciplinary boundaries, will be required to further the research agenda on interdisciplinary collaboration. (shrink)

Cet article présente les politiques de promotion des sciences humaines poursuivies par le gouvernement coréen au cours des dernières années. Il explique l’importance accordée à ces disciplines dans le contexte du développement économique du pays et insiste sur l’importance que revêt une formation humaniste pour une compétitivité accrue de la Corée à l’échelle globale. Il détaille les actions et programmes principaux mis en place ainsi que les perspectives d’avenir. L’auteur dirige la Division de affaires universitaires auprès du Ministère de l’Éducation, (...) de la Science et de la Technologie de la République de Corée. (shrink)

Given the abrupt global disruption caused by SARS-CoV-2, one might think that the COVID pandemic was an unpredictable event. But in the years leading up to the emergence of the COVID pandemic, several documents had already been warning of the increasing occurrences of new disease outbreaks with pandemic potential and lack of corresponding policies to promote pandemic preparedness and response. In this article, we call these documents “early warnings”. We argue that a survey of early warnings can help science communicators (...) to promote the public understanding of evidence-based pandemic preparedness and response policies at local or international level. Our proposal differs from other approaches to pandemic preparedness and response in that it highlights the relevance of documents published before the COVID outbreak. We show that the early warnings did not become outdated after the COVID outbreak, but, rather, that they are even more pressing now. (shrink)

There is a growing need to identify what really can converge classroom learning to the real-life practising of ethical principles. We examine if the effectiveness of ethics education can be improved through meditation-based mindfulness intervention. Our baseline experiment is a procedurally modified version of the anagram exercise (Ruedy and Schweitzer 2010) for measuring unethical behaviour. We introduce a brief meditation intervention to induce instant mindfulness. Our findings indicate substantive evidence confirming the positive effect of the state of mindfulness on ethical (...) behaviour. Subjects in the meditation group engage in more low-level cheating compared to the control group who cheated more severely. Gender and academic grade do not influence ethical behaviour. Mindfulness fosters composure, mental poise, and a conducive environment for upholding ethical values, as indicated by a lower incidence of cheating in our study. We propose to promote a learning environment with mindfulness intervention in educational programmes. (shrink)

Pharmaceutical promotion is a negative influencing force for prescribing. However, very few regulatory initiatives are taken to overcome this unwarranted influence. The present research was conducted in such context with an attempt to review the regulatory documents related to pharmaceutical promotion in Bangladesh including Code of Pharmaceutical Marketing Practices (CPMP), and to compare CPMP with different global guidelines. The studied guidelines demonstrate effort to regulate promotion, though that varies to a great extent, particularly in enforcement aspects. Clearly defined ethical and (...) legal prohibitions, provisions of punishment for violations and entrusted agency with defined authority are crucial. (shrink)

Curiosity is a wonder of the human mind. It goes to the heart of modernity, as a driving force for learning, novel insights, and innovation, both for individuals and communities. In societies dependent on science and development, finding out what promotes or hampers curiosity and wonder in school curricula and science education is accordingly essential. In this conceptual article, I suggest a framework for curiosity-based science education and I explore options for its wellbeing and development during preschool, preadolescence, and adolescence. (...) In preschool, curiosity and wonder are triggered by perceptive beauty rather than by facts, and a method emphasizing maximism as a complementary factor in preschool science education is proposed. In prepuberty, curiosity is encouraged by exploring the diversity of the world. Facts and clear-cut knowledge constitute a firm foundation for scientific thinking. In high school, curiosity is ignited by means of a better balance between models and phenomenology. Criticism has arisen over the one-sided use of models in high school science education, which limits scientific thinking to frameworks defined by the actual model. Possible solutions to maintain students’ curiosity and ideas to improve the balance between phenomenology and models are discussed. (shrink)

In this article, we develop a non-rights-based argument based on beneficence (i.e., the welfare of individuals and communities) and justice as the disposition to act justly to promote equity in health care resource allocation. To this end, we structured our analysis according to the following main sections. The first section examines the work of Amartya Sen and his equality of capabilities approach and outlines a framework of health care as a fundamental human need. In the subsequent section, we provide a (...) definition of health equity based on the moral imperative to guarantee that every individual ought to have the freedom to pursue health goals and well-being. In the later part of the article, we outline a non-right approach to health care based on three pillars: (1) human flourishing, (2) justice as a disposition not a process, and (3) solidarity. (shrink)

Sustainable development in education is one of the goals promoted by United Nations in relation to human development. It is also a great challenge for most countries, including China. Achieving educational equity is one of the keys to the success of the sustainable development in education. Faced with the complex challenges of regional, urban-rural and inter-school disparities in education, China's central and local governments have been working in order to promote sustainable development in education and improve educational equity. A variety (...) of solutions have been proposed to address inequities and achieve significant results. In the process of practice, some reflections on encountered and potential problems have also been made, accompanied by discussions. (shrink)

In a competitive and morally imperfect world, business people are often faced with serious ethical challenges. Harboring suspicions about the ethics of others, many feel justified in engaging in less-than-ideal conduct to protect their own interests. The most sophisticated moral arguments are unlikely to counteract this behavior. We believe that this morally defensive behavior is responsible, in large part, for much undesirable deception in negotiation. Drawing on recent work in the literature of negotiations, we present some practical guidance on how (...) negotiators might build trust, establish common interests, and secure credibility for their statements, thereby promoting honesty. We also point out the types of social and institutional arrangements, many of which have become commonplace, that work to promote credibility, trust, and honesty in business dealings. Our approach is offered not only as a specific response to the problem of deception in negotiation, but as one model of how research in business ethics might offer constructive advice to practitioners. (shrink)

This chapter examines some of the social science data concerning the relationship between happiness and achievement. The chapter explores further the idea that there are causal links between happiness and achievement, focusing on what common sense has to say about these matters. Reflective common sense supports a bidirectional model of causation: good moods often cause achievement and achievement often causes good moods. Before looking at the studies in support of the claim that happiness promotes achievement, the chapter considers the notion (...) of ‘effect size’. The question of whether positive affect causes achievement can be addressed by two sorts of studies. One type is longitudinal studies; the other is laboratory studies. Correlation, longitudinal, and experimental studies converge to show that positive moods and emotions cause achievement. Social science research suggests that those who are happier than average will be doubly blessed: they are happier and, on average, they will achieve more. (shrink)

Este trabajo tiene como objetivo fundamentar la necesidad de la promoción y educación para la salud en la prevención de las infecciones respiratorias agudas. Se realizó una revisión bibliográfica de los últimos diez años que incluyó 53 artículos publicados en bases de datos biomédicas. Se concluye que las acciones educativas propuestas para la promoción y prevención las infecciones respiratorias agudas permitirán una labor educativa, para intervenir en la población con el fin de formar o modificar el estilo de vida y (...) prevenir la aparición de estas enfermedades, basado en la educación, a la vez que se le transfiere al individuo la responsabilidad de su propia salud. The objective of this work was to establish the need for health promotion and education in the prevention of acute respiratory infections. A literature review of the last ten years was made, which included 53 articles published in biomedical databases. It is concluded that the educational actions proposed for the promotion and prevention of acute respiratory infections will allow an educational task, to intervene in the population in order to form or modify the lifestyle and prevent the appearance of these diseases, based on education, transferring responsibility for their own health to the individual. (shrink)

The essay problematizes the incorporation of LGBTI rights promotion into the US and EU foreign policies. First, the paper examines the two actors’ key documents, speeches, and policies devoted to the promotion of LGBTI rights abroad, the similarities and differences between the two actors’ approaches, attending to the tendencies of their evolution and the ongoing development. Second, the article discusses the internal conditions in target countries that are conducive to the success and failure of international support of LGBTI rights. Finally, (...) the study makes a critical overview of the measures that are argued to be necessary to increase the efficiency of LGBTI rights promotion in countries with most negative current trends in and/or poorest records on LGBTI rights. (shrink)

A promising but underexplored view about normative reasons is contrastivism, which holds that considerations are fundamentally reasons for things only relative to sets of alternatives. Contrastivism gains an advantage over non-contrastive theories by holding that reasons relative to different sets of alternatives can be independent of one another. But this feature also raises a serious problem: we need some way of constraining this independence. I develop a version of contrastivism that provides the needed constraints, and that is independently motivated by (...) the widespread idea that reasons involve the promotion of various kinds of objectives. (shrink)

Many philosophers accept the idea that there are duties to promote or create just institutions. But are the addressees of such duties supposed to be individuals – the members of the citizenry? What does it mean for an individual to promote or create just institutions? According to the ‘Simple View’, the citizenry has a collective duty to create or promote just institutions, and each individual citizen has an individual duty to do their part in this collective project. The simple view (...) appears to work well with regard to – you guessed it – ‘simple’ scenarios but it is riddled with further questions and problems. In this chapter, we raise five problems for the Simple View: (a) We suggest that one cannot develop a view concerning the citizenry’s duty to promote just institutions in isolation from a conception of the ontological relationship between the state and its citizens; (b) We argue that it is not obvious that the citizenry is the right entity to be attributed duties in the first place; (c) We show that a plausible account of collective duties to promote just institutions must not remain silent on the complexities and difficulties amorphous, unorganized group face in vis-à-vis collective action; (d) We contend that without allocation principles for contributory duties amongst the citizenry, or – alternatively – a method for practical deliberation that is action-guiding in collective action contexts, the claim that the citizens have a collective duty to promote just institutions remains moot; and, finally, (e) We demonstrate that the problem of reasonable disagreement is a serious threat to a collective duty to promote or create just institutions – it potentially undermines such a duty altogether and allows for conflicting contributory duties amongst the citizenry. We hope that our discussion will ultimately help improve existing theories and conceptual frameworks with a view to better understanding citizens’ obligations to promote justice under non-ideal conditions. (shrink)

We wholeheartedly agree with Schmidt and colleagues’ efforts to promote equity in intensive care unit triage. We also take issue with their characterisation of the New Jersey allocation framework for ICU beds and ventilators, which is modelled after the multi-principle allocation framework we developed early in the pandemic. They characterise it as a two-criterion allocation framework and claim—without evidence—that it will ‘compound disadvantage for black patients’. However, the NJ triage framework—like the model allocation policy we developed—actually contains four allocation criteria: (...) the two criteria that the authors mentioned and two criteria that they failed to mention which we included to promote equity: giving priority to frontline essential workers and giving priority to younger patients. These omissions are problematic both for reasons of factual accuracy and because the two criteria they failed to acknowledge would likely mitigate rather than exacerbate racial disparities during triage. (shrink)

We argue that contemporary conceptualizations of “persons” have failed to achieve the moral goals of “person-centred care” (PCC, a model of dementia care developed by Tom Kitwood) and that they are detrimental to those receiving care, their families, and practitioners of care. We draw a distinction between personhood and selfhood, pointing out that continuity or maintenance of the latter is what is really at stake in dementia care. We then demonstrate how our conceptualization, which is one that privileges the lived (...) experiences of people with dementia, and understands selfhood as formed relationally in connection with carers and the care environment, best captures Kitwood’s original idea. This conceptualization is also flexible enough to be applicable to the practice of caring for people at different stages of their dementia. Application of this conceptualization into PCC will best promote the well-being of people with dementia, while also encouraging respect and dignity in the care environment. (shrink)

This book develops the term 'Sustainable Innovations' and defines it on the basis of plant variety innovations that, by their very nature, (i) permit the in situ conservation of agrobiodiversity and genetic variability in diverse geographic and climatic conditions, (ii) do not exclude any potential innovators from the process of innovation, and thereby (iii) ensure that both formal and informal innovations can continue to take place in the generations to come (in both the developed and developing world). The book studies (...) the Indian Plant Variety Protection Act, the UPOV Acts and associated agricultural policies from a legal, philosophical, historical and economic perspective with the aim of determining the means of promoting sustainable innovations in plant varieties and identifying laws, policies and practices that are currently acting as impediments to promoting the same. (shrink)

According to Humean promotionalism about practical reasons, the fact that I have a reason to φ holds in virtue of the fact that φ-ing promotes one or more of my desires. The topic of this discussion note is the question of how best to understand the promotion relation. In particular, I defend a probabilistic understanding of promotion against a line of argument recently brought forth by Jeff Behrends, Joshua DiPaolo, and Nate Sharadin. Roughly, their argument is that probabilistic promotion leads (...) to implausible results in cases in which the relevant desires are certain to be satisfied. In these cases, a probabilistic understanding tells us that we do not have a reason to φ because the probability of desire satisfaction is 1 already. Contrary to Behrends', DiPaolo's, and Sharadin's claims, I argue that this is precisely the result a Humean theory of reasons should generate. According to Humeanism, we have reasons for actions because these actions make a difference to the occurrence of desire satisfaction - where the causal route to desire satisfaction is normatively irrelevant. Thus, if desire satisfaction is dead certain, we have no reason to do anything. (shrink)

Political theorists have written a great deal about the ethics of “intervention,” defined as states using coercion or force to interfere in foreign societies’ politics. But this work leaves much of global politics un-analyzed—both because non-state actors play an increasingly significant role in it and because its practitioners use many tactics besides force and coercion.We need an ethics of foreign influence to help us navigate the global political arena in all its complexity. Here, I begin to develop a unified theory (...) of the ethics of deliberate attempts to promote justice in foreign societies, whether undertaken by state or non-state actors, and whatever tactics they employ. I identify two important but under-appreciated dimensions along which instances of foreign influence can differ and argue that, once we appreciate the full range of forms foreign influence can take, we’ll see it’s often immune to the common moral objections against intervention. (shrink)

When it comes to improving the health of the general population, mHealth technologies with self-monitoring and intervention components hold a lot of promise. We argue, however, that due to various factors such as access, targeting, personal resources or incentives, self-monitoring applications run the risk of increasing health inequalities, thereby creating a problem of social justice. We review empirical evidence for “intervention-generated” inequalities, present arguments that self-monitoring applications are still morally acceptable, and develop approaches to avoid the promotion of health inequalities (...) through self-monitoring applications. (shrink)

To explore the effect of horticultural therapy on cultivating College Students’ positive psychological quality and to provide reference for college students’ mental health education, 176 college students were randomly divided into experimental group and control group. The experimental group was intervened by horticulture therapy, and the Chinese college students’ mental health evaluation system and Chinese college students’ positive psychological quality scale were used to test the experimental group and the control group. There was no difference in the six dimensions of (...) positive psychological quality between the experimental group and the control group in the pre-test. After 9 weeks of intervention, the differences between the experimental group and the control group in the “cognitive dimension” and “emotional dimension” were significant. The scores of emotional dimension and transcendental dimension in the experimental group were higher than those in the pre-test ; meanwhile, there is no difference in the other four dimensions. Horticultural therapy can promote the positive psychological quality of college students. (shrink)

HALLETT C and WAGNER L. Nursing Inquiry 2011; 18: 359–368 Promoting the health of Europeans in a rapidly changing world: a historical study of the implementation of World Health Organisation policies by the Nursing and Midwifery Unit, European Regional Office, 1970–2003The World Health Organisation (WHO) was inaugurated in 1948. Formed in a period of post‐war devastation, WHO aimed to develop and meet goals that would rebuild the health of shattered populations. The historical study reported here examined the work of the (...) Nursing and Midwifery Unit (NMU) of WHO’s European Regional Office during the later part of the twentieth century. The study examined archive sources lodged at the NMU archive. The sources included manuscripts relating to important NMU initiatives, reports and papers published by WHO, and a range of secondary sources. The study identified three main driving forces in the work of the NMU of the European Regional Office of WHO. One of the strongest of these was a drive to develop and promote the nursing profession within the countries of the European Region. The second was the promulgation and implementation of the positive public health strategies of WHO, particularly its ‘38 Targets for Health for All by the Year 2000’. The third focussed on securing equity across the European continent and on promoting the development of the nursing professions in poorer and less‐developed countries. The study concludes that the nursing professions in European states grew in strength and influence, and that the health of populations improved throughout the continent between 1970 and 2003. It discusses the extent to which the role of the NMU in these advances may have been significant. (shrink)

Ethics is a foundational competency in healthcare inherent in everyday nursing practice. Therefore, the promotion of qualified nurses’ and nursing students’ moral competence is essential to ensure ethically high-quality and sustainable healthcare. The aim of this integrative literature review is to identify the factors contributing to the promotion of qualified nurses’ and nursing students’ moral competence. The review has been registered in PROSPERO (CRD42023386947) and reported according to the PRISMA guideline. Focusing on qualified nurses’ and nursing students’ moral competence, a (...) literature search was undertaken in January 2023 in six scientific databases: CINAHL, Cochrane Library, PsycINFO, PubMed Medline, Scopus and Web of Science. Empirical studies written in English without time limitation were eligible for inclusion. A total of 29 full texts were retrieved and included out of 5233 citations. Quality appraisal was employed using Joanna Briggs Institute checklists and the Mixed Method Appraisal Tool. Data were analysed using inductive content analysis. Research about the factors contributing to the promotion of qualified nurses’ and nursing students’ moral competence is limited and mainly explored using descriptive research designs. The contributing factors were identified as comprising two main categories: (1) human factors, consisting of four categories: individual, social, managerial and professional factors, and ten sub-categories; and (2) structural factors, consisting of four categories: educational, environmental, organisational and societal factors, and eight sub-categories. This review provides knowledge about the factors contributing to the promotion of qualified nurses’ and nursing students’ moral competence for the use of researchers, nurse educators, managers, organisations and policymakers. More research about the contributing factors is needed using complex intervention, implementation and multiple methods designs to ensure ethically sustainable healthcare. (shrink)