Technology tends toward perpetual innovation. Technology, enabled by both political and economic structures, propels society forward in a kind of technological evolution. The moment a novel piece of technology is in place, immediately innovations are attempted in a process of unending betterment. Bernard Stiegler suggests that, contra Heidegger, it is not being-toward-death that shapes human perception of time, life, death, and meaning. Rather, it is technological innovation that shapes human perception of time, life, death, and meaning. In fact, (...) for Stiegler, human evolution has always been part of technological evolution. While one can quibble with the notion of human-technology co-evolution, there is something to be said for the way in which human perception of time, of ageing, and of death seems to be judged against the horizon of perpetual evolution of technological innovation. In this technological imaginary, of which modern medicine is constituent, ageing and death seemingly may be infinitely deferred, and it is this innovating deferral that shapes the contemporary social imaginary around ageing and death in modern medicine. Yet, the reality of living and dying always manifests itself differently than the scripts given to us by the technological imaginary with its myth of endless innovation. In fact, I shall argue that, where the Church created an ars moriendi, the technological imaginary gives us an ars ad mortem when it becomes clear that ageing and death cannot be infinitely deferred. And further, I shall argue that the Church must revivify its ars vivendi—that is to say, its liturgies, its arts, its technics—as a counter narrative to the myth of perpetual innovation that shapes the technological imaginary. (shrink)

The interconnections, common interests, and other linkages between the Jewish and Islamic traditions have long been a matter of interest to academics. Today the need to understand these relationships, and to emphasize commonalities rather than conflicts, is of the greatest public interest. The present volume of studies, likely the first such collection in the scholarly literature, explores the full range of interconnections between Jews and Muslims in all fields (intellectual history, religion, philosophy, social history, etc.) and in all periods, from (...) the Middle Ages till today. The essays have been written by some twenty distinguished scholars from North America, Europe, and Israel. The volume is dedicated to our esteemed colleague Joel L. Kraemer, John Barrows Professor Emeritus in the Divinity School and on the Committee on Social Thought of the University of Chicago. In the course of his distinguished career Professor Kraemer has made major contributions to our understanding of the intellectual and cultural history of the Jews in the Arabic world, Islamic and Jewish philosophy and their sources in ancient philosophy, the humanistic renaissance in Islam (on which he published two seminal monographs), and Maimonides (on which he has published many important papers and is completing a biography and a translation of Maimonides' letters, to appear in the Yale Judaica Series). (shrink)

The purpose of the startup approach is to find an appropriate course of action that adds value to the economy’s development. This study is aimed to determine the effect of the lean startup approach with mediating effect of business coaching to foster innovative work behavior in women entrepreneurs. Additionally, the study also examines the moderating effect of age on the lean startup approach and innovative work behavior. A quantitative approach was employed. The findings show that the relationship between the lean (...) startup approach and innovative work behavior is significant. Moreover, the findings also revealed a significant mediating effect of business coaching and moderating effect of age. This research encourages practitioners and scholars to deal with women entrepreneurship incubation initiatives in the lean startup methodology. Furthermore, this study also leads to a deeper understanding of women’s ideas for business exploration, growth, and implementation. The study contends that guidelines and directives are critical for creative entrepreneurial behavior. (shrink)

Praised as a panacea for resolving all societal issues, and self-evidently presupposed as technological innovation, the concept of innovation has become the emblem of our age. This is especially reflected in the context of the European Union, where it is considered to play a central role in both strengthening the economy and confronting the current environmental crisis. The pressing question is how technological innovation can be steered into the right direction. To this end, recent frameworks of Responsible (...) Innovation focus on how to enable outcomes of innovation processes to become societally desirable and ethically acceptable. However, questions with regard to the technological nature of these innovation processes are rarely raised. For this reason, this paper raises the following research question: To what extent is RI possible in the current age, where the concept of innovation is predominantly presupposed as technological innovation? On the one hand, we depart from a post-phenomenological perspective to evaluate the possibility of RI in relation to the particular technological innovations discussed in the RI literature. On the other hand, we emphasize the central role innovation plays in the current age, and suggest that the presupposed concept of innovation projects a techno-economic paradigm. In doing so, we ultimately argue that in the attempt to steer innovation, frameworks of RI are in fact steered by the techno-economic paradigm inherent in the presupposed concept of innovation. Finally, we account for what implications this has for the societal purpose of RI. (shrink)

The concept of innovation has entered a turbulent age. On the one hand, it is uncritically understood as ‘technological innovation’ and ‘commercialized innovation.’ On the other hand, ongoing research under the heading responsible research and innovation suggests that current global issues require innovation to go beyond its usual intent of generating commercial value. However, little thought goes into what innovation means conceptually. Although there is a focus on enabling outcomes of innovation processes to (...) become more responsible and desirable, the technological and commercial nature of these processes is rarely questioned. For these reasons, this paper poses the following research question: what concept of innovation is implicitly taken up by the RRI discourse and what implications does this concept have for the societal purpose of RRI? As a first step, we analyze the extent to which the concept of innovation in the RRI literature is uncritically presupposed to be technological. Subsequently, we examine the diverse meanings innovation has had over time and argue that while innovation originally had a political connotation it is only recently restricted to the meaning of technological innovation. We go on to show that even though the concept of technological innovation can contribute to the societal purpose of RRI, this requires certain conditions that are difficult to guarantee. Consequentially, we argue that future research should explore alternative understandings of innovation that better enable the overall feasibility of the emerging frameworks of RRI. (shrink)

in this article, we explore how responsible research and innovation (RRI) interacts with the current political context. We examine the (1) possible consequences for RRI and related agendas if values associated with ‘populist’ movements become more pervasive, (2) the role that a lack of RRI has potentially played in the development of this political context, and (3) how RRI as a concept, practice, and research agenda should respond. We argue that whilst RRI is threatened, it is now more important (...) than ever. We propose that RRI needs to go beyond being a method for facilitating societal input into research and innovation and for highlighting desired impacts. RRI needs to evolve to provide an effective conduit for criticisms and the input of critical thinking and reflexivity into science and innovation, including in terms of economic policy and politics. (shrink)

Praised as a panacea for resolving all societal issues, and self-evidently presupposed as technological innovation, the concept of innovation has become the emblem of our age. This is especially reflected in the context of the European Union, where it is considered to play a central role in both strengthening the economy and confronting the current environmental crisis. The pressing question is how technological innovation can be steered into the right direction. To this end, recent frameworks of Responsible (...) Innovation (RI) focus on how to enable outcomes of innovation processes to become societally desirable and ethically acceptable. However, questions with regard to the technological nature of these innovation processes are rarely raised. For this reason, this paper raises the following research question: To what extent is RI possible in the current age, where the concept of innovation is predominantly presupposed as technological innovation? On the one hand, we depart from a post-phenomenological perspective to evaluate the possibility of RI in relation to the particular technological innovations discussed in the RI literature. On the other hand, we emphasize the central role innovation plays in the current age, and suggest that the presupposed concept of innovation projects a techno-economic paradigm. In doing so, we ultimately argue that in the attempt to steer innovation, frameworks of RI are in fact steered by the techno-economic paradigm inherent in the presupposed concept of innovation. Finally, we account for what implications this has for the societal purpose of RI. (shrink)

Science and technology policy is both faced by unprecedented challenges and itself undergoing seismic shifts. First, policy is increasingly demanding of science that it fixes a set of epochal and global crises. On the other hand, practices of scientific research are changing rapidly regarding geographical dispersion, the institutions and identities of those involved and its forms of knowledge production and circulation. Furthermore, these changes are accelerated by the current upheavals in public funding of research, higher education and technology development in (...) the wake of the economic crisis. The paper outlines an agenda for science & technology policy studies in terms of a research programme of a ‘cultural political economy of research and innovation’ (CPERI). First, the implications of the overlapping crises for science policy analysis are discussed. Secondly, three rough constellations of contemporary approaches to science policy are critically compared, namely: a techno-statist Keynesian governance; a neoliberal marketplace of ideas; and co-productionist enabling of democratic debate. CPERI is then introduced, showing how it builds on the strengths of co-production while also specifically targeting two major weaknesses that are of heightened importance in an age of multiple crises, namely neglect of political economy and the concept of power. (shrink)

Besides offering opportunities in both clinical and non-clinical domains, the application of novel neuroimaging technologies raises pressing dilemmas. ‘Responsible Research and Innovation’ (RRI) aims to stimulate research and innovation activities that take ethical and social considerations into account from the outset. We previously identified that Dutch neuroscientists interpret “responsible innovation” as educating the public on neuroimaging technologies via the popular press. Their aim is to mitigate (neuro)hype, an aim shared with the wider emerging RRI community. Here, we (...) present results of a media-analysis undertaken to establish whether the body of articles in the Dutch popular press presents balanced conversations on neuroimaging research to the public. We found that reporting was mostly positive and framed in terms of (healthcare) progress. There was rarely a balance between technology opportunities and limitations, and even fewer articles addressed societal or ethical aspects of neuroimaging research. Furthermore, neuroimaging metaphors seem to favour oversimplification. Current reporting is therefore more likely to enable hype than to mitigate it. How can neuroscientists, given their self-ascribed social responsibility, address this conundrum? We make a case for a collective and shared responsibility among neuroscientists, journalists and other stakeholders, including funders, committed to responsible reporting on neuroimaging research. (shrink)

In the age of globalization, economic growth and the welfare of nations decisively depend on basic innovations. Therefore, education and knowledge is an important advantage of competition in highly developed countries with high standards of salaries, but raw material shortage. In the twenty-first century, innovations will arise from problem-oriented research, crossing over traditional faculties and disciplines. Therefore, we need platforms of interdisciplinary dialogue to choose transdisciplinary problems and to cluster new portfolios of technologies. The clusters of research during the excellence (...) initiative at German universities are examples of converging sciences. The integration of natural and engineering sciences as well as medicine can only be realized if the research training programs generate a considerable added value in terms of multidisciplinary experience, international networking, scientific and entrepreneurial know-how, and personality development. The Carl von Linde-Academy is presented as an example of an interdisciplinary center of research and teaching at the Technical University of Munich. (shrink)

Rapid advancement of technologies continues to revolutionize healthcare foundations and outlook. Technological progress in medicine are not only continuing to improve quality of individual life but also generally improving quality of healthcare services. As a matter of fact, the most significant change in healthcare systems was the shift from standardized, patronizing and rigid physician–patient relationship to more patient-focused, personalized and participatory practice. With this shift came increased attention to the assurance of patient’s right to autonomy. Therefore, this article aims to (...) discuss principal problematic aspects of patient’s right to autonomy hereby the patient’s role in the context of technologies and innovation. It is argued, that one of the effective ways to ensure patient’s right to autonomy is implementation of legal instruments, such as informed consent, advance directives and Ulysses contracts. However, this article also proposes, that with a potential of new technologies and artificial intelligence, these legal instruments need to be reconsidered and transformed in more efficient and eligible model, presenting information in more individualized, appealing and convenient manner. (shrink)

In recent years we may observe increasing interest in the development of social innovation both regarding theory as well as the practice of responding to social problems and challenges. One of the crucial challenges at the beginning of the 21st century is population ageing. Various new and innovative initiatives, programs, schemes, and projects to respond to negative consequences of this demographic process are emerging around the world. However, social theories related to ageing are still insufficiently combined with these new (...) practices, social movements, organisational models, and institutions. Many scholars are still using notions and tools from classical theories of social gerontology or the sociology of ageing such as disengagement theory, activity theory, and successful and productive ageing. Such theories do not sufficiently explain ageing in the context of, for example, a broad use of the information and communications technologies including robotics and automation, new healthcare and long-term care models, advancements in the development and governance of age-friendly environments, and public engagement of older adults into co-production of services delivered by public, private, non-governmental as well as non-formal entities. (shrink)

Social entrepreneurship is usually understood as an economic activity which focuses at social values, goals, and investments that generates surpluses for social entrepreneurs as individuals, groups, and startups who are working for the benefit of communities, instead of strictly focusing mainly at the financial profit, economic values, and the benefit generated for shareholders or owners. Social entrepreneurship combines the production of goods, services, and knowledge in order to achieve both social and economic goals and allow for solidarity building. From a (...) broader perspective, entities that are focused on social entrepreneurship are identified as parts of the social and solidarity economy. These are, for example, social enterprises, cooperatives, mutual organizations, self-help groups, charities, unions, fair trade companies, community enterprises, and time banks. Social innovation is a key element of social entrepreneurship. Social innovation is usually understood as new strategies, concepts, products, services, and organizational forms that allow for the satisfaction of needs. Such innovations are created in particular in the contact areas of various sectors of the social system. For example, these are spaces between the public sector, the private sector, and civil society. These innovations not only allow the solving of problems but also extend possibilities for public action. (shrink)

Foreword: Mathesis as a philosophy of the beauty of music -- The constructive relationships between music and mathematics : the Pythagorean conception of universal music and its spread in the worldview of later periods -- Semantic interpretation of the interaction between music and mathematics : mystic middle ages and the sacral baroque -- Constructive aspects of the interaction between music and other arts -- Musica mathematica in practice : aspects of analysis -- Constructive aspects of music composition -- Semantic aspects (...) of music composition -- The mathematized musical graph -- Implications of modern mathematical theories. (shrink)

How can humanist principles of respect, dignity, and care inform and improve design for non-human lifeforms? This paper uses ageing and dying urban trees to understand how architectural, urban, and landscape design respond to nonhuman concerns. It draws on research in plant sciences, environmental history, ethics, environmental management, and urban design to ask: how can more-than-human ethics improve multispecies cohabitation in urban forests? The paper hypothesises that concepts of dignity and respect can underline the capabilities of nonhuman lifeforms and lead (...) to improved designs for multispecies cohabitation. To investigate the implications of this ethical framework, we 1) indicate injustices of current management in relation to natural and cultural histories of trees; 2) outline a conceptual framework that includes large old trees as stakeholders in urban communities; and 3) use this framework in a thought experiment with urban trees in Melbourne, outlining comparative design outcomes. Our findings show that the expansion of dignity to include nonhuman life is possible and plausible. Such an extension can justify and encourage design innovation for multiple species and sites. The resulting design practices will lead to improvements by supporting communities of trees at all stages of their life-cycles, including old age, death, and rebirth. This approach requires substantial shifts in accepted thinking and practices including history, ethics, aesthetics, regulation, and education. Design can play a significant role in the necessary transitions by demonstrating tangible and positive outcomes. In this context, history emerges as an essential tool that can extend societal imagination by situating possible future places in the context of ancient and ongoing geological, evolutionary, ecological, and cultural processes. (shrink)

Despite the prodigious inventiveness of the Middle Ages, the era is often characterized as deeply suspicious of novelty. But if poets and philosophers urged caution about the new, Patricia Clare Ingham contends, their apprehension was less the result of a blind devotion to tradition than a response to radical expansions of possibility in diverse realms of art and science. Discovery and invention provoked moral questions in the Middle Ages, serving as a means to adjudicate the ethics of invention and opening (...) thorny questions of creativity and desire. The Medieval New concentrates on the preoccupation with newness and novelty in literary, scientific, and religious discourses of the twelfth through sixteenth centuries. Examining a range of evidence, from the writings of Roger Bacon and Geoffrey Chaucer to the letters of Christopher Columbus, and attending to histories of children's toys, the man-made marvels of romance, the utopian aims of alchemists, and the definitional precision of the scholastics, Ingham analyzes the ethical ambivalence with which medieval thinkers approached the category of the new. With its broad reconsideration of what the "newfangled" meant in the Middle Ages, The Medieval New offers an alternative to histories that continue to associate the medieval era with conservation rather than with novelty, its benefits and liabilities. Calling into question present-day assumptions about newness, Ingham's study demonstrates the continued relevance of humanistic inquiry in the so-called traditional disciplines of contemporary scholarship. (shrink)

A board of directors consists of a set of key personnel that hold vital positions in a company. Based on the premise of the resource dependence theory, we explore the association between board diversity and innovation performance in Malaysia. The sample consists of 220 companies from the industrial product sector of the main market of Bursa Malaysia for the financial year 2013. Board diversity is represented by a comprehensive score that includes age, gender, ethnicity, nationality, education, tenure, area of (...) experience and directorship in other companies. Results of the regression analysis show that there is a positive association between board diversity and innovation performance. Our findings contribute to the policy involving the diversity of corporate boards by suggesting that policy, such as one of gender diversity in Malaysia, is expanded to include multi-dimensional aspects of board diversity that better represent the economic, legal and cultural environment of a country. (shrink)

Dignity is a central value in care for aged adults, and it must be protected and respected. With demographic changes leading to an aging population, health ministries are increasingly investing in digitalization. However, using unfamiliar digital technology can be challenging and thus impact aged adults' dignity and well‐being. The INNOVATEDIGNITY project aims to research new, dignified ways of engaging with aged adults to shape digital developments in care delivery. This qualitative study aimed to explore how innovative digitally‐led healthcare have (...) influenced aged adults' well‐being and dignity through three studies conducted as part of the INNOVATEDIGNITY project: a scoping review, an empirical study and a policy analysis. The three documents were analysed to uncover meanings relevant to the research problem revealing four main themes: the advantages of new technologies in facilitating aged adults' well‐being, the rupture of dignity due to bewilderment in the digital world, aged adults' dignity is affected by their worries about human face of care being replaced by technology and preserving aged adults' dignity in digitally‐led healthcare. Digitalization in healthcare impacts aged adults' well‐being as providing new opportunities for care, but preserving aged adults' dignity when working with unfamiliar digital innovations is challenging. Aged adults need to be informed about the use of technology in their care and supported to develop the necessary digital skills to better adapt to digitally‐led healthcare. The circumstances, conditions and needs of individuals should remain central when implementing new technologies in healthcare settings in a dignified way. (shrink)

Gerontology together with its subfields, such as social gerontology, geragogy, educational gerontology, political gerontology, environmental gerontology, and financial gerontology, is still a relatively new academic discipline that is currently intensively developing, expanding research fields and combining various theoretical and practical perspectives. The interdisciplinarity, transdisciplinarity, and multidisciplinarity of research on ageing and old age, despite its vast thematic, methodological and theoretical diversity, have a common denominator, which is the focus of research work on improving the quality of life of older people. (...) It is the concern for the components of quality of life such as welfare and well-being as well as focus on learning about phenomena conditioning successful ageing that has become motivators and premises hidden or visible in many texts included in the Research Topic “Perspectives and Theories of Social Innovation for Ageing Population.” The Research Topic that we are presenting to our readers is unique not only because of its size but above all because of its novelty and social involvement, visible in the content of individual chapters. The presented collection includes 17 articles prepared in total by 76 authors from the following countries: China, Finland, Germany, Ghana, Hungary, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Two journals were combined with this Research Topic: “Frontiers in Public Health” and “Frontiers in Sociology.” The presented Research Topic contains seven types of articles covering: two community case studies, eight original research articles, two perspective articles, one hypothesis and theory paper, one policy and practice review, one methods article, and two book reviews. The rationale to start work on this set of texts was the desire to continue and deepen the research analyses of the editors of this set, which concern the development of social innovations for the ageing population as well as changes of public policy on ageing. This Research Topic deals with topics covering issues such as social learning, intergenerational transmission, senior entrepreneurship, creative content creation by older adults, care services, raising the independence of older people in their living environments, dementia challenges, the image of the older generation in local social policies, new trends in qualitative research on old age, strategies for dealing with chronic diseases, the use of digital tools in health education, the silver economy/longevity economy, age-friendly environments, the diversity of structures and social services, preparation for old age, and food safety. The wide variety of submitted texts shows several selected and, according to the authors, current challenges that contemporary seniors have to face. The articles comprising this Research Topic are organized according to five themes. (shrink)

Startery Podlaskiej Gospodarki. Analiza Gospodarczych Obszarów Wzrostu I Innowacji Województwa Podlaskiego: Sektor Rehabilitacji Geriatrycznej (Podlasie Economy Starters. Analysis of Economic Growth and Innovation Areas of Podlaskie: Geriatric Rehabilitat Bogusław Plawgo, Magdalena Klimczuk, Mariusz Citkowski, Marta Juchnicka & Andrzej Klimczuk Wojewódzki Urz¸Ad Pracy W Białymstoku (2009) .

Responsible innovation is centered around the ideal that societal stakeholders are entitled to participate in scientific and technological decision-making by voicing their needs and worries. Individuals who believe in science conspiracies (referred to here as ‘science conspiracists’) pose a challenge to implementing this ideal because it is not clear under what conditions their inclusion in responsible innovation exercises is possible and advisable. Yet precisely because of this uncertain status, science conspiracists constitute an instructive case in point to travel (...) towards the edges of inclusion and understand how we draw the line between ‘includables' and ‘unincludables’. In this paper, we seek to explore this relationship between responsible innovation and science conspiracism by using the method of thought experimentaiton. We test four possible exclusion criteria for science conspiracists. We conclude by revisiting the relationship between conspiracism and responsible innovation and sketching a novel perspective on the ideal of stakeholder inclusion. (shrink)

During the century following the Council of Trent, two trends within Catholic religious orders matured: the first consisted in unifying and strengthening the Order’s culture by focussing on one author of reference; the other in elaborating a new way of presenting that author’s doctrines. In the case of the Friars Minor Conventuals, these trends were fostered in the second decade of the seventeenth century by the minister general of the Order, Giacomo Montanari, who promoted the idea that providing the Order (...) with new works featuring innovative didactic characteristics and a renewed defence of the doctrines of John Duns Scotus was a prime way to lead an authentic religious life. Bartolomeo Mastri and Bonaventura Belluto’s “philosophiae cursus ad mentem Scoti” was probably the major result of this impulse. This essay examines the ways in which this process occurred and the outcomes to which it led. (shrink)

Le Glossaire du latin philosophique est un fichier d'environ 230.000 à 260.000 fiches consacré au vocabulaire philosophique du moyen âge. Une équipe du CNRS, au départ sous la direction de Pierre Michaud-Quantin, y a travaillé durant de nombreuses années. Récemment, il a été transporté de la Sorbonne à l'Institut de Recherche et d'Histoire des Textes, où il est désormais consultable à la Section latine. À l'occasion de l'arrivée du Glossaire du latin philosophique à l'Institut de Recherche et d'Histoire des Textes (...) et pour marquer un nouveau départ, une journée d'étude consacrée à ce fi chier a eu lieu à l'IRHT, le jeudi 15 mai 2008, sous le titre "Les innovations du vocabulaire latin à la fin du moyen âge:autour du Glossaire du latin philosophique." -- P. [4} of cover. (shrink)

In the main body of colleges and universities, the effect of college teaching psychology management is an important standard to test the quality of college teaching psychology management and its effects on the development of college teaching psychology management. However, the psychology management system used by traditional colleges and universities is challenging to meet the needs of the innovation of the new talent training model of higher vocational education. The construction of the new micro-level teaching organization inevitably requires the (...) psychology management practice, structure, process, and technology at the medium and macro-levels to adapt to it. However, there are many mismatches in Higher Vocational Colleges’ internal and external administrative systems in China, such as low administrative efficiency, generalization of administrative power, low degree of specialization in administrative psychology management, and unreasonable administrative and organizational structure. This paper innovates the psychology management of colleges and universities reforms in combination with the characteristics of the digital age. Based on the collaborative innovation theory of colleges and universities, this paper puts forward the collaborative psychology management innovation network model of colleges and universities. The model combines the psychology management theory with the practical research of collaborative innovation in colleges and universities, expands the application and research field of innovation network theory, constructs the evaluation index system of students’ satisfaction in teaching psychology management in colleges and universities, and discusses it through reading and consulting materials and communication with teachers and students. A questionnaire of college teaching psychology management based on student satisfaction is formed. The experiment shows that teaching satisfaction is improved by nearly 31% compared with before innovation and reform. It can initially get the effect of innovation and reform, meet students’ needs, and promote the improvement of teaching psychology management quality. (shrink)

The article is devoted to innovative postmodern requests for the liberalization of education. Postmodernism influenced education not only methodologically, but also by changing the very pedagogical culture of teaching. Now the relevance of the research topic is due to the problems of forming information content and methodological support for the introduction of distance learning technology in mobile form. The introduction of IT in education, the improvement of smart devices, the formation of an electronic information and educational environment have created the (...) basis for such forms of education as mobile learning and blended learning. In both cases, the student situationally himself forms the educational process, turns from an object of training into its subject. The humanistic potential of mobile learning in the sense of ensuring equal access to education for people with different abilities is noted. The opinion is expressed about the importance of student motivation and IT competence of teachers to provide information content, intensify the introduction of e-learning and mobile-oriented learning technologies. It is argued that learning based only on mobile learning technology, using smart devices without classroom or office work, real communication with the teacher is not didactically self-sufficient, which would provide adequate language skills. Effectiveness in learning foreign languages is achieved by synergy of technologies distance mobile and traditional classroom or classroom training, real communication with the teacher. (shrink)

A certain kind of externalism—"the view from nowhere"—lies at the heart of evidence-based medicine (EBM). As a consequence, the individual case glides out of focus. However, to judge to what extent external knowledge is applicable to an individual case, the clinician has to rely on some sort of knowledge of the case at hand. The article focuses on the tension between the externalism of EBM and the "internal evidence" one has to presuppose when making clinical judgments.

The rapidly expanding aging population presents an urgent global challenge cutting through just about every dimension of worldly life, including the social, political, cultural, and economic. Developing innovations in health and assistive technology (AT) are poised to support effective and sustainable health care in the face of this challenge, yet there is scant (but growing) discussion of the ethical issues surrounding AT for older persons with dementia. Demands for ethical frameworks that can respond to frontline dilemmas regarding AT development (...) and provision, and how the needs of aging persons themselves are defined throughout this development process, are increasing. This article suggests that fulfilling the promises of AT to provide effective and ethically informed solutions may demand shifting away from standard bioethical analyses that centralize the principle of respect for autonomy. An autonomy-centric paradigm is dubiously equipped to theorize the foundational ethical issues in dementia care and to effectively guide AT development and implementation. An agency-centered approach to dementia care, which could engage more adaptively with the perspectives and choices of older persons themselves while offering strong support to AT research and stakeholders, may offer an attractive alternative. (shrink)

Combining information from two or possibly several blocks of data is gaining increased attention and importance in several areas of science and industry. Typical examples can be found in chemistry, spectroscopy, metabolomics, genomics, systems biology and sensory science. Many methods and procedures have been proposed and used in practice. The area goes under different names: data integration, data fusion, multiblock analyses, multiset analyses and a few more. This book is an attempt to give an up-to-date treatment of the most used (...) and important methods within an important branch of the area; namely methods based on so-called components or latent variables. These methods have already obtained an enormous attention in for instance chemometrics, bioinformatics, machine learning and sensometrics and have proved to be important both for prediction and interpretation. The book is primarily a description of methodologies, but most of the methods will be illustrated by examples from the above-mentioned areas. The book is written such that both users of the methods as well as method developers will hopefully find sections of interest. In the end of the book there is a description of a software package developed particularly for the book. This package is freely available in R and covers many of the methods discussed. To distinguish the different type of methods from each other, the book is divided into five parts. Part I is introduction and preliminary concepts. Part II is the core of the book containing the main unsupervised and supervised methods. Part III deals with more complex structures and, finally, Part IV discusses alternative unsupervised and supervised methods. The book ends with Part V discussing the available software. Our recommendation for reading the book are as follows. A minimum read of the book would involve chapters 1, 2, 3, 5 and 7. Chapters 4, 6 and 8 are more specialized and chapters 9 and 10 contain methods we think are more advanced or less obvious to use. We feel privileged to have so many friendly colleagues who were willing to spend their time on helping us to improve the book by reading separate chapters. We would like to express our thanks to: Rasmus Bro, Margriet Hendriks, Ulf Indahl, Henk Kiers, Ingrid MaÌ⁽ge, Federico Marini, AÌ⁽smund Rinnan, Rosaria Romano, Lars Erik Solberg, Marieke Timmerman, Oliver Tomic, Johan Westerhuis and Barry Wise. Of course, the correctness of the final text is fully our responsibility! (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Medicine-Based Values?Åge Wifstad (bio)KeywordsEthics committees, judgment, common moralityToulmin's DiagnosisIn his classical article with the unforgettable title "How medicine saved the life of ethics" (Toulmin 1982), Stephen Toulmin claims that medicine saved ethics by giving the philosophers a positive reality check through medical challenges: (1) Ethics in medicine is a serious topic, not just something to discuss at seminars. If, for example, both A and B need treatment and there (...) are only enough resources for one, the fundamental interests of these two people compete against each other. (2) In clinical medicine, the individual case might demand a different approach than that suggested by theory. Similarly, an ethicist who is confronted by a diversity of medical cases becomes aware of the fact that solutions drawn from ethical theory can be irrelevant in practice. (3) The moral philosopher has often focused on the individual and his or her universal commitments. The fact that ethical dilemmas can have deep roots in practical challenges and must be understood within a certain context has been "forgotten." (4) In clinically relevant ethics, it is important to find solutions that all involved parties find reasonable. This revitalizes central Aristotelian schools of thought on, for example, ethical judgment and situational understanding.Today, there is a common understanding that in both the education of doctors and in the implementation of medical knowledge and technology there needs to be ethical guidelines and control. Toulmin wants us to see that the background for this agreement is multifaceted. It was not just the ethicists who saved the doctors. The doctors helped the ethicists to escape their academic isolation.Ethics CommitteesThe establishment of ethics committees is perhaps the most interesting example of this. Here it is especially clear how ethical judgment establishes a basis for decision making: Each case presented to an ethics committee is special because one cannot reference decisions made in similar cases. At the same time, we are expected to handle similar cases equally. Consideration of the concrete, individual case must be balanced with the principle of similar treatment. Second, as a committee member, one must interpret and respect ethical principles that cannot be easily defined. Every principle must be interpreted and implemented within a specific and concrete context. Third, one must consider the law, but seen isolated, the implications of relevant rules can be difficult to determine. Fourth, the status of principles and rules are open for interpretation. The most important example of this is the Declaration of Helsinki, which was established through cooperation between the worlds' doctors unions. The strength and end result of such a document can be discussed. Fifth, multiple but partly conflicting juridical and ethical considerations can be [End Page 179] relevant at the same time. An example: Decisions about confidentiality can prevent data gathering that is crucial in ensuring that a research project is scientifically acceptable. Two important ethical considerations are then put up against one another. As a sixth and final point, it can be mentioned that the ethics committee is expected to make a qualitative, scientific judgment. But what kind of quality judgment and how detailed it should be is up for discussion.Two Definitions of Ethical JudgmentThe fact that the committee must base their holistic decision on ethical judgment means that the committee, in an important sense of the word, stands freely: It can be difficult to refer to specific ethical rules or laws when making an external review of the committee's decision. Unless the committee has clearly not followed known principles and rules, then the committee is able to confront criticism by replying that the decision is based on holistic considerations, where many views have been taken into account. In this way, the usage of ethical judgment makes sure that the committee has freedom to act. The catch here is that the committee's responsibility becomes even more obvious. One cannot simply say that the decision is made based on rules and principles formulated by others, such as the state. The committee must, as a unit, be able to defend their decision.The complexity of the work of the committee can, however, make it more tempting to think about ethics in... (shrink)

DNA methylation plays a key role in neural cell fate and provides a molecular link between early life stress and later-life behavioral phenotypes. Here, studies that combine neuroimaging methods and DNA methylation analysis in pediatric population with a history of adverse experiences were systematically reviewed focusing on: targeted genes and neural correlates; statistical models used to examine the link between DNA methylation and neuroimaging data also considering early life stress and behavioral outcomes. We identified 8 studies that report associations between (...) DNA methylation and brain structure/functions in infants, school age children and adolescents faced with early life stress condition. Results showed that several genes were investigated and different neuroimaging techniques were performed. Statistical model used ranged from correlational to more complex moderated mediation models. Most of the studies considered DNA methylation and neural correlates as mediators in the relationship between early life stress and behavioral phenotypes. Understanding what role DNA methylation and neural correlates play in interaction with early life stress and behavioral outcomes is crucial to promote theory-driven studies as the future direction of this research fields. (shrink)

This book uses an innovative and original theoretical framework for the understanding of Christian consciousness in the age of pluralism, drawing on Georg Simmel’s social theory as well as philosophers such as Heidegger, Beauvoir, Sartre, Ferrara, and MacIntyre and classical and contemporary sociologists and anthropologists.

As a central part of the regulation of contemporary economies, intellectual property (IP) is central to all aspects of our lives. It matters for the works we create, the brands we identify and the medicines we consume. But if IP is power, what kind of power is it, and what does it do? Building on the work of Michel Foucault, Gordon Hull examines different ways of understanding power in copyright, trademark and patent policy: as law, as promotion of public welfare, (...) and as promotion of neoliberal privatization. He argues that intellectual property policy is moving toward neoliberalism, even as that move is broadly contested in everything from resistance movements to Supreme Court decisions. This work should be read by anyone interested in understanding why the struggle to conceptualize IP matters. (shrink)

In this essay, the author reflects on a decade’s old essay on baseball and bioethics inspired by a conversation with the late David Thomasma. In a reprise of his earlier paper, Fins worries that modernity has come to baseball with the advent of the pitch clock and that this innovation brings age discrimination to a timeless pastime.

This book offers an approach to Christian ethics. It does so first by organizing Christian ethics around the virtue of practical wisdom and suggesting what the guiding vision of a Christian practical wisdom should be. Second, it provides an account of practical wisdom that integrates literature drawn from the fields of philosophy, psychology, evolutionary theory, and the neurosciences. Reconceptualizing Christian ethics in this way can help us address-but not resolve once and for all-in a faithful way the challenges of our (...) divided age. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:DisaffiliationsBeauvoir and Gorz on Masculinity as AgingPenelope DeutscherThe same drama of flesh and spirit, and of finitude and transcendence, plays itself out in both sexes; both are eaten away by time, stalked by death.The Second Sex, 763Simone de Beauvoir wrote her second large theoretical work in 1970, La Vieillesse (V), some nine years after André Gorz published a two-part article, “Le Vieillissement,” in Les Temps Modernes, in 1961 and (...) 1962. These were essays in which Gorz did not hesitate to refer to the “conflict between generations.” He found unremarkable the constant transitions involved in what he saw as a combat between younger and older age groups, unremarkable that the young would resent the domination of the aged and find themselves resented in turn. The aged would bear heavily on the young, but eventually find themselves demeaned if not subordinated by them.Since Gorz was one of the many references in La Vieillesse, Beauvoir was using resources that could have prompted her to think of youth and aging as a further domain of group-based conflict and hostility. Instead, she preferred a different language. Stories that might have seemed to be those of inter-generational conflict were present in her work—she mentions a story from the Brothers Grimm of three generations: son, father, and grandfather. The father treats the grandfather abusively until he learns that his son accordingly anticipates repeating the same treatment toward him. But Beauvoir does not narrate the story as one of conflict between groups who should be understood as “generations.”1 For Gorz, by contrast, such relations seem inevitable. He writes [End Page 88] of young men frustrated by their disenfranchisement by older men, who are in turn disenfranchised as young men eventually manage to usurp them.Just as the language of group-based conflict seems to Gorz obvious to describe such relations, so does the tacit (though not overtly noted) masculinity of their experience. But because he does not directly note that the conflict, on his own account, occurs between the younger and older generations of males, it is not clear how a vision of generational conflict might be inflected by a sense that such relations are also those of sexual difference. How might that affect relations between the sexes or relations among women of different ages?For her part, Beauvoir did refer to tensions between younger and older women, both in The Second Sex (SS) and Old Age(OA), but these were largely references to relations between mothers and daughters. They were familial stories. Certainly, they were refracted through structure and social context: It is the impoverished status and history of women that, in Beauvoir’s view, inhibits their lives to the point that mothers and daughters resent each other. But describing such tensions, Beauvoir does not present them as competition between groups. Her visions are those of individual experiences occurring in family contexts, not those of a generation of women of a particular age group, understanding each other as engaged in some kind of potentially conflictual group relations with a group of women understood as generationally younger or older. This is not to say that Beauvoir ought to have preferred the language of generational conflict in considering aging. But in understanding that she turned away, without saying so, from a model that might well have seemed most plausible, we can think further about the interpretation that did seem more plausible to her.How, then, do aging and sex interact for Beauvoir? Her presentation of aging in The Second Sex is characteristically ambivalent. She describes middle-aged women who have bet on the norms of femininity—“She has counted on her sexual attributes far more than man has” (SS, 620)—only to be confronted with the dilemmas of the transformation brought by time. Beauvoir takes this transformation to be largely negative—comprehended in terms of loss rather than possible gain. She describes the physical transformation of aging in terms of degeneration and the passing of youth, beauty, health, innovation, capacity. She also claims, albeit with an important exception, that it is experienced by the woman negatively, with accompanying effects of shock, discontinuity, crisis, anxious concern, denial... (shrink)