Professional engineers are under increasing pressure to practice in an environmentally sensitive way. To prepare engineers for this new reality, changes in engineering education are needed. For example, engineering hydrology has traditionally been taught with an emphasis on the interpretation of numerical data bout rainfall and runoff in watersheds. However, to do environmentally sensitive hydrology work, it is necessary to also understand the life forms that share the watershed. In 1997, a project was undertaken in the Department of Civil Engineering (...) at the University of Toronto to enhance an introductory hydrology course by adding information about how hydrological phenomena affect fish. Through carefully structured assignments and exam questions, an assessment was made of the effectiveness of the enhancements in increasing students’ awareness of the life context of hydrology. The project has resulted in a commitment to increased environmental information in the hydrology curriculum, and the implementation of an assessment process for all students, to monitor changes in their environmental knowledge and attitudes. It has also raised questions about ultimate objectives in engineering education. (shrink)

The standardized precipitation index is one of the most widely used indices for characterizing and monitoring drought in various regions. SPI's applicability has regional and time-scale constraints when it observes in several homogeneous climatic regions with similar characteristics. It also does not provide sufficient knowledge about precipitation deficits and the spatiotemporal evolution of drought. Therefore, a new method, the regional spatially agglomerative continuous drought probability monitoring system, is proposed to obtain spatiotemporal information and monitor drought characteristics more expeditiously. The (...) proposed framework uses spatially agglomerative precipitation and copulas’ functions to continuously monitor the drought probability in the homogenous region. The RSACDPMS is validated in the region of the Northern area of Pakistan. The outcomes of the current study provide a better quantitative way to obtain appropriate information about precipitation deficits and the spatiotemporal evolution of drought. (shrink)

Currently, there are no computerized tools enabling objective interpretation of observational gait assessment based on Wisconsin Gait Scale, which is a reliable and well-tested tool. The solution envisaged by us may provide a practical tool for assessing gait deviations in patients with hemiparesis after stroke. The present study assessed agreement between a new application software for computerized WGS and 3-dimensional gait analysis, and reliability of the application. The study involved 33 individuals with hemiparesis after stroke. The software was developed (...) based on a model designed taking into account components of the WGS and incorporating auxiliary lines passing through the relevant anthropometric points on the patient’s body, as well as measurements of angular values, distances and duration of the specific gait phases, which make it possible to substantiate assessment based on this scale. Series of videos were made to record gait of the qualified patients. After the gait evaluation was carried out using the app, the data were retrieved from the software. The gait assessment was performed separately by three independent examiners who reviewed the video recording using the new app twice. Additionally, 3DGA was carried out for all the subjects, and the results of the app-aided assessment were compared to those acquired using 3DGA. The findings show statistically significant correlations between majority of the WGS items measured using the new app, and the relevant spatiotemporal and kinematic parameters identified by 3DGA. Agreement between the scores reported by the three examiners was high in both measurements, as reflected by Cronbach’s alpha exceeding 0.8. The findings reflect very good intra-observer reliability and inter-observer reliability of the new application software for computerized WGS. The opportunities offered by the observational gait scale objectified through our new software for computerized WGS result from the fact that the tool provides a useful low-cost and time-effective feedback to monitor ongoing treatments or formulate hypotheses. (shrink)

The purpose of this study was to assess the presence of ethics committees in rural critical access hospitals across the United States. Several studies have investigated the presence of ethics committees in rural health care facilities. The limitation of these studies is in the definition of ‘rural hospital’ and a regional or state focus. These limitations have created large variations in the study findings. In this nation-wide study we used the criteria of a critical access hospital (CAH), as defined by (...) the Medicare Rural Hospital Flexibility Program (Flex Program, 2007), to bring consistency and clarity to the assessment of the presence of ethics committees in rural hospitals. The Flex Monitoring Team conducted a national telephone survey of 381 CAH administrators throughout the United States. The survey covered a wide variety of questions concerning hospitals’ community benefit, impact activities, and whether the hospital had a formally established an ethics committee. About 230 (60%) of the respondents indicated they had a formally established ethics committee or ethics consultation program at their CAH. The prevalence of ethics committees declined as the CAH location became increasingly rural along a rural–urban continuum. Unlike CAHs, all rural Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Centers have ethics committees. The results of this study provide an understanding of the limited presence of ethics committee in rural America and the need to consider new approaches for providing ethics assistance. A virtual ethics committee network may be the most efficient and effective way of providing rural hospitals access to a knowledgeable ethics committee or consultant. (shrink)

Drought is a creeping phenomenon that slowly holds an area over time and can be continued for many years. The impacts of drought occurrences can affect communities and environments worldwide in several ways. Thus, assessment and monitoring of drought occurrences in a region are crucial for reducing its vulnerability to the negative impacts of drought. Therefore, comprehensive drought assessment techniques and methods are required to develop adaptive strategies that a region can undertake to reduce its vulnerability to drought (...) substantially. For this purpose, this study proposes a new method known as a regional comprehensive assessment of meteorological drought. The Standardized Precipitation Index, Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index, and Standardized Precipitation and Temperature Index are jointly used for the development of the RCAMD. Further, the RCAMD employs Monte Carlo feature selection and steady-state probabilities to comprehensively collect information from various stations and drought indices. Moreover, the RCAMD is validated on the six selected stations in the northern areas of Pakistan. The outcomes associated with the RCAMD provide a comprehensive regional assessment of meteorological drought and become the initial source for bringing more considerations to drought monitoring and early warning systems. (shrink)

Different approaches have been proposed in order to achieve knowledge integration for coronary care monitoring applications, usually in the form of expert systems. The clinical impact of these expert systems, which are based only on "shallow" knowledge, has not been remarkable due to the difficulties associated with the construction and maintenance of a complete knowledge base. Model-based systems represent an alternative to these problems because they allow efficient integration of the "deep" knowledge on the underlying physiological phenomena being monitored. In (...) this work, a brief review of existing model-based systems for cardiac rhythm interpretation is presented, followed by the description of a new system forCardiac Arrhythmia Recognition by Model-Based ECG Matching (CARMEM). Fundamental characteristics of CARMEM are presented; in particular, its ability to provide on-line parameter adaptation to simulate complex rhythms and to match observed ECG signals. The proposed model can be useful for the explanation of the origin of cardiac arrhythmias and contribute towards their robust characterization in the context of coronary care units. (shrink)

Background: Screen time among adults represents a continuing and growing problem in relation to health behaviors and health outcomes. However, no instrument currently exists in the literature that quantifies the use of modern screen-based devices. The primary purpose of this study was to develop and assess the reliability of a new screen time questionnaire, an instrument designed to quantify use of multiple popular screen-based devices among the US population. -/- Methods: An 18-item screen-time questionnaire was created to quantify use of (...) commonly used screen devices (e.g. television, smartphone, tablet) across different time points during the week (e.g. weekday, weeknight, weekend). Test-retest reliability was assessed through intra-class correlation coefficients (ICCs) and standard error of measurement (SEM). The questionnaire was delivered online using Qualtrics and administered through Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk). -/- Results: Eighty MTurk workers completed full study participation and were included in the final analyses. All items in the screen time questionnaire showed fair to excellent relative reliability (ICCs = 0.50–0.90; all < 0.000), except for the item inquiring about the use of smartphone during an average weekend day (ICC = 0.16, p = 0.069). The SEM values were large for all screen types across the different periods under study. -/- Conclusions: Results from this study suggest this self-administered questionnaire may be used to successfully classify individuals into different categories of screen time use (e.g. high vs. low); however, it is likely that objective measures are needed to increase precision of screen time assessment. (shrink)

In this paper we describe the development and initial psychometric evaluation of a new measure, the values in scientific work. This scale assesses the level of importance that investigators attach to different VSW. It taps a broad range of intrinsic, extrinsic, and social values that motivate the work of scientists, including values specific to scientific work and more classic work values in the context of science. Notably, the values represented in this scale are relevant to scientists regardless of their career (...) stage and research focus. We administered the VSW and a measure of global values to 203 NIH-funded investigators. Exploratory factor analyses suggest the delineation of eight VSW, including autonomy, research ethics, social impact, income, collaboration, innovation and growth, conserving relationships, and job security. These VSW showed predictable and distinct associations with global values. Implications of these findings for work on research integrity and scientific misconduct are discussed. (shrink)

Introduction The goal of this project was to develop and validate a new tool to evaluate learners' knowledge and skills related to research ethics. Methods A core set of 50 questions from existing computer-based online teaching modules were identified, refined and supplemented to create a set of 74 multiple-choice, true/false and short answer questions. The questions were pilot-tested and item discrimination was calculated for each question. Poorly performing items were eliminated or refined. Two comparable assessment tools were created. These (...) assessment tools were administered as a pre-test and post-test to a cohort of 58 Indian junior health research investigators before and after exposure to a new course on research ethics. Half of the investigators were exposed to the course online, the other half in person. Item discrimination was calculated for each question and Cronbach's α for each assessment tool. A final version of the assessment tool that incorporated the best questions from the pre-/post-test phase was used to assess retention of research ethics knowledge and skills 3 months after course delivery. Results The final version of the REKASA includes 41 items and had a Cronbach's α of 0.837. Conclusion The results illustrate, in one sample of learners, the successful, systematic development and use of a knowledge and skills assessment tool in research ethics capable of not only measuring basic knowledge in research ethics and oversight but also assessing learners' ability to apply ethics knowledge to the analytical task of reasoning through research ethics cases, without reliance on essay or discussion-based examination. These promising preliminary findings should be confirmed with additional groups of learners. (shrink)

In this paper, we report on the development and validity of the Professional Decision-Making in Research measure, a vignette-based test that examines decision-making strategies used by investigators when confronted with challenging situations in the context of empirical research. The PDR was administered online with a battery of validity measures to a group of NIH-funded researchers and research trainees who were diverse in terms of age, years of experience, types of research, and race. The PDR demonstrated adequate reliability and parallel form (...) correlation. As hypothesized, the PDR was significantly negatively correlated with narcissism, cynicism, moral disengagement, and compliance disengagement; it was not correlated with socially desirable responding. In regression analysis, the strongest predictors of higher PDR scores were low compliance disengagement, speaking English as a native language, conducting clinical research with human subjects, and low levels of narcissism. Given that the PDR was written at an eighth grade reading level to be suitable for use with English as a second language participants and that only one-fourth of items focused on clinical research, further research into the possible roles of culture and research ethics training across specialties is warranted. This initial validity study demonstrates the potential usefulness of the PDR as an educational outcome assessment measure and a research instrument for studies on professionalism and integrity in research. (shrink)

Legal assessment of the provisions of the Federal Law "On Freedom of Conscience and Religious Associations", which contradict the Constitution of the Russian Federation and generally accepted norms of international law.

In this paper, we report on the development and validity of the Professional Decision-Making in Research measure, a vignette-based test that examines decision-making strategies used by investigators when confronted with challenging situations in the context of empirical research. The PDR was administered online with a battery of validity measures to a group of NIH-funded researchers and research trainees who were diverse in terms of age, years of experience, types of research, and race. The PDR demonstrated adequate reliability and parallel form (...) correlation. As hypothesized, the PDR was significantly negatively correlated with narcissism, cynicism, moral disengagement, and compliance disengagement; it was not correlated with socially desirable responding. In regression analysis, the strongest predictors of higher PDR scores were low compliance disengagement, speaking English as a native language, conducting clinical research with human subjects, and low levels of narcissism. Given that the PDR was written at an eighth grade reading level to be suitable for use with English as a second language participants and that only one-fourth of items focused on clinical research, further research into the possible roles of culture and research ethics training across specialties is warranted. This initial validity study demonstrates the potential usefulness of the PDR as an educational outcome assessment measure and a research instrument for studies on professionalism and integrity in research. (shrink)

Examines the nature of cognitive penetrability hypothesis, which holds that our beliefs, desires, and possibly our emotions literally affect how we see the world. Assesses both cognitive penetrability and impenetrability and explores their philosophical consequences.

In “Risk Based Passenger Screening in Aviation Security: Implications and Variants of a New Paradigm”, Sebastian Weydner-Volkmann describes the current paradigm shift from ‘traditional’ forms of screening to ‘risk based passenger screening’ (RBS) in aviation security. This paradigm shift is put in the context of the wider historical development of risk management approaches. Through a discussion of Michel Foucault, Herfried Münkler and Ulrich Beck, Weydner-Volkmann analyses the shortcomings of such approaches in public security policies, which become especially evident in the (...) aviation security context. As he shows, the turn towards methods of RBS can be seen as an attempt to address a trade-off ‘trilemma’ between the effective provision of security, the implied costs for industry and passengers, and the ethical, legal and societal implications of the screening procedures. In order to analyse foreseeable outcomes of embracing RBS, he differentiates three prototypical variants of the new paradigm on the basis of their main referent and rationale. For each variant, he then subsequently assesses the implications for the ‘trilemma’, after having unveiled the criteria of analysis that will necessarily have to be followed within a serious appraisal of RBS methods. (shrink)

A new multi-stage deterministic model for the transmission dynamics of syphilis, which incorporates disease transmission by individuals in the early latent stage of syphilis infection and the reversions of early latent syphilis to the primary and secondary stages, is formulated and rigorously analysed. The model is used to assess the population-level impact of preventive and therapeutic measures against the spread of the disease in a community. It is shown that the disease-free equilibrium of the model is globally-asymptotically stable whenever the (...) associated control reproduction number is less than unity. A special case of the model is shown to have a unique and globally-asymptotically stable endemic equilibrium whenever the associated reproduction number exceeds unity. Uncertainty and sensitivity analysis of the model, using parameter values and ranges relevant to syphilis transmission dynamics in Nigeria, show that the top three parameters that drive the syphilis infection are the disease transmission rate, compliance in condom use and efficacy of condom. Numerical simulations of the model show that the targeted treatment of secondary syphilis cases is more effective than the targeted treatment of individuals in the primary or early latent stage of syphilis infection. (shrink)

Synthetic biology is regarded as one of the key technosciences of the future. The goal of this paper is to present some fundamental considerations to enable procedures of a technology assessment of synthetic biology. To accomplish such an early “upstream” assessment of a not yet fully developed technology, a special type of TA will be considered: Prospective TA. At the center of ProTA are the analysis and the framing of “synthetic biology,” including a characterization and assessment of (...) the technological core. The thesis is that if there is any differentia specifica giving substance to the umbrella term “synthetic biology,” it is the idea of harnessing self-organization for engineering purposes. To underline that we are likely experiencing an epochal break in the ontology of technoscientific systems, this new type of technology is called “late-modern technology.” —I start this paper by analyzing the three most common visions of synthetic biology. Then I argue that one particular vision deserves more attention because it underlies the others: the vision of self-organization. I discuss the inherent limits of this new type of late-modern technology in the attempt to control and monitor possible risk issues. I refer to Hans Jonas’ ethics and his early anticipation of the risks of a novel type of technology. I end by drawing conclusions for the approach of ProTA towards an early societal shaping of synthetic biology. (shrink)

This essay aims to show how feminist theoretical and practical perspectives have enriched and deepened debate about moral and social issues generated by the proliferation and commodification of new reproductive techniques. It evaluates alternative feminist appraisals beginning with the first group to organize a collective response to the medicalization of infertility and explores several weaknesses working within their assessment: objectification of infertile women, naturalizing constructions of motherhood, hostility to technology, and an overly simplistic conception of power relations. Next, it (...) shows how subsequent feminists have reframed the issues to overcome these weaknesses, drawing on themes prominent in recent theoretical debates: the need to reclaim women's agency, to revalue mothering, and to reappraise power relations. Lastly, it weighs the prospects for a collaborative politics that is sensitive to the social marginalization of vulnerable women and suggests practical strategies for responding to mounting pressures to procreate at any price. (shrink)

Whilst offering extensive new opportunities, technological developments also tend to pose serious challenges and difficult ethical questions. Developments in—for example, biotechnology, information technology, transport technology, and nuclear technology have for decades been the subject of intense public debate and a principal object for philosophical reflection and ethical analysis. The Concise Encyclopedia of the Ethical Assessment of New Technologies is a collection of articles, thoughtfully edited by Ruth Chadwick, which addresses a range of the ethical issues pertaining to contemporary technology. (...) The editor’s objective in this collection appears to be to describe general methodological issues in ethical analysis and to give an account of the practical application of ethical theory to issues surrounding new technologies. …. (shrink)

Modelling data in applied areas particularly in reliability engineering is a prominent research topic. Statistical models play a vital role in modelling reliability data and are useful for further decision-making policies. In this paper, we study a new class of distributions with one additional shape parameter, called a new generalized exponential-X family. Some of its properties are taken into account. The maximum likelihood approach is adopted to obtain the estimates of the model parameters. For assessing the performance of these estimators, (...) a comprehensive Monte Carlo simulation study is carried out. The usefulness of the proposed family is demonstrated by means of a real-life application representing the failure times of electronic components. The fitted results show that the new generalized exponential-X family provides a close fit to data. Finally, considering the failure times data, the Bayesian analysis and performance of Gibbs sampling are discussed. The diagnostics measures such as the Raftery–Lewis, Geweke, and Gelman–Rubin are applied to check the convergence of the algorithm. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In this paper we report the development of a scale measuring Christian ethical beliefs. Three studies refined the Christian Ethical Beliefs Scale from 63 expert-generated potential items. Studies 1 and 3 sampled undergraduate students at private, Christian colleges, and Study 2 utilized a diverse, online sample. Participants responded to an electronic survey of Likert scale items and demographic questions. Following careful assessment of reliability and validity, we present a 20-item scale divided across five factors: Divine Moral Authority, Privacy (...) of Faith, Moral Individualism, Cognition Essential to Personhood, and Value of all Human Beings. This brief scale offers a new way to measure ethical beliefs in religious or nonreligious populations. (shrink)

IntroductionThe National Institute for Health and Care Excellence guidelines acknowledge the importance of the parent–infant relationship for child development but highlight the need for further research to establish reliable tools for assessment, particularly for parents of children under 1 year. This study explores the acceptability and psychometric properties of a co-developed tool, ‘Me and My Baby’.Study designA cross-sectional design was applied. The MaMB was administered universally with mothers during routine 6–8-week Health Visitor contacts. The sample comprised 467 mothers. Dimensionality (...) of instrument responses were evaluated via exploratory and confirmatory ordinal factor analyses. Item response modeling was conducted via a Rasch calibration to evaluate how the tool conformed to principles of ‘fundamental measurement’. Tool acceptability was evaluated via completion rates and comparing ‘completers’ and ‘non-completers’ demographic differences on age, parity, ethnicity, and English as an additional language. Free-text comments were summarized. Data sharing agreements and data management were compliant with the General Data Protection Regulation, and University of York data management policies.ResultsHigh completion rates suggested the MaMB was acceptable. Psychometric analyses showed the response data to be an excellent fit to a unidimensional confirmatory factor analytic model. All items loaded statistically significantly and substantially on a single underlying factor. The item response modeling showed that most MaMB items fitted the Rasch model. item reliability was high yet the test yielded little information on each respondent, as highlighted by the relatively low ‘person separation index’ of 0.1.Conclusion and next stepsMaMB reliably measures a single construct, likely to be infant bonding. However, further validation work is needed, preferably with ‘enriched population samples’ to include higher-need/risk families. The MaMB tool may benefit from reduced response categories and some modest item wording amendments. Following further validation and reliability appraisal the MaMB may ultimately be used with fathers/other primary caregivers and be potentially useful in research, universal health settings as part of a referral pathway, and clinical practice, to identify dyads in need of additional support/interventions. (shrink)

An essential requirement for increasing human confidence in computer systems is knowing an event’s origin. Therefore, it is necessary to have an efficient method to record such information. It is especially challenging in robotics, where unexpected behaviours can have unpredictable consequences, endangering the interests of people or even their safety. Furthermore, to analyse an incident’s cause or anticipate future behaviours, we must identify the events that cause a specific action. Although it is common to use logging systems for such purposes, (...) issues such as partial recording of events, unhelpful data or the impact on robot performance suggest conceiving new accountability solutions that assist when determining the responsible entities or the provenance of specific information. This paper presents a general-purpose approach to developing an accountability system for autonomous robots. It consists of four main components: a system event logger, a message producer, a distributed event streaming platform and a database. Our proposal is completely decoupled from the monitored system and allows real-time analysis, improving flexibility, besides system protection and transparency. Finally, the need to reduce the impact of the audit process and logging tasks on robot performance has promoted the development of different assessment scenarios to determine the best strategy for providing accounting services. (shrink)

Anna J Dare,1 Anthony RJ Phillips,1–3 Michael Chu,1 Anthony JR Hickey,2 Adam SJR Bartlett1–31Department of Surgery, 2Maurice Wilkins Centre for Biodiscovery, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand; 3New Zealand Liver Transplant Unit, Auckland City Hospital, Auckland, New ZealandBackground: Hepatic steatosis is increasingly encountered among organ donors. Currently, there is no consensus guideline as to the type or degree of donor steatosis considered acceptable for liver transplantation, and little is known about local practices in this area. The aim of this survey (...) was to evaluate current clinical practices amongst liver transplant surgeons in Australia and New Zealand in the evaluation and use of steatotic donor livers in LT.Methods: An anonymous online twelve-question survey was emailed to all practicing LT surgeons in ANZ in January 2010.Results: The response rate was 83%. Estimated prevalence of steatosis in donor livers was between 40% and 60%. In determining suitability for LT, 90% of respondents reported rejecting organs with "severe" steatosis based on visual and palpation grounds alone. A total of 68% sought further histological assessment if the donor liver looked bad and there were risk factors for steatosis. The majority of respondents performed only one biopsy of the liver, using hematoxylin and eosin staining for fat assessment. There was wide variation in the upper limit of steatosis considered to be acceptable for LT. A total of 21% of respondents still considered microvesicular steatosis a risk factor for primary graft nonfunction.Conclusion: This survey highlights the significant variation in the appraisal and use of steatotic grafts by LT surgeons in ANZ. Accurate evaluation and judicious use of mild and moderately steatotic grafts is required if we are to utilize the available donor pool best.Keywords: liver transplantation, steatosis, fatty liver, organ donors. (shrink)

This paper offers a new concept of the firm that aims at balancing the corporate economic, social, and environmental responsibilities and goes beyond the stakeholder approach. It intends to provide a conceptual and operationalizable basis to fairly assess corporate conduct from both inside and outside the companies. To a large extent these different responsibilities may overlap and reinforce each other. However, if they conflict, they should be clearly evaluated for their own sake and in terms of wealth creation. Only then (...) can a balanced approach be realized. Section 1 briefly discusses some general aspects of the relationship between concepts and measurement. In Section 2, a concept of the firm is developed that is based on the notion of responsibility and balances economic, social and environmental responsibilities. According to these concepts, different ways of measuring corporate planning and performance are examined in Section 3, followed up by a summary and conclusions. (shrink)

BackgroundVarious forms of Clinical Ethics Support (CES) have been developed in health care organizations. Over the past years, increasing attention has been paid to the question of how to foster the quality of ethics support. In the Netherlands, a CES quality assessment project based on a responsive evaluation design has been implemented. CES practitioners themselves reflected upon the quality of ethics support within each other’s health care organizations. This study presents a qualitative evaluation of this Responsive Quality Assessment (...) (RQA) project.MethodsCES practitioners’ experiences with and perspectives on the RQA project were collected by means of ten semi-structured interviews. Both the data collection and the qualitative data analysis followed a stepwise approach, including continuous peer review and careful documentation of the decisions.ResultsThe main findings illustrate the relevance of the RQA with regard to fostering the quality of CES by connecting to context specific issues, such as gaining support from upper management and to solidify CES services within health care organizations. Based on their participation in the RQA, CES practitioners perceived a number of changes regarding CES in Dutch health care organizations after the RQA: acknowledgement of the relevance of CES for the quality of care; CES practices being more formalized; inspiration for developing new CES-related activities and more self-reflection on existing CES practices.ConclusionsThe evaluation of the RQA shows that this method facilitates an open learning process by actively involving CES practitioners and their concrete practices. Lessons learned include that “servant leadership” and more intensive guidance of RQA participants may help to further enhance both the critical dimension and the learning process within RQA. (shrink)

This paper focuses on performance assessment of a freight network with stochastic capacities by using reliability analysis, in which a node denotes a supplier, a transfer center, a distribution center, or a market, while an arc denotes a logistics service provider offering the freight traffic service for a pair of nodes. Due to some uncertainties in real environment, the available capacity of the provider along each arc is stochastic. Thus, network reliability that at least d units of commodity demand (...) can be successfully delivered from the source to the destination denotes the operational performance of such a freight network. A d-minimal path–based method is developed to evaluate the freight network reliability. To advance the efficiency of solving d-minimal paths, an improved model is established by redefining capacity bounds of arcs and minimal paths. Furthermore, a new concept of expected capacity grounded on network reliability is presented to measure the service performance of the freight network. A practical case related to the coal delivery network is studied to demonstrate the implications of both network reliability and expected capacity. (shrink)

Calling for an expanded framework of EuroAmerican science's methodology whose perspective acknowledges both quantitative/etic and qualitative/emic orientations is the broad focus of this article. More specifically this article argues that our understanding of shamanic and/or other related states of consciousness has been greatly enhanced through ethnographic methods, yet in their present form these methods fail to provide the means to fully comprehend these states. They fail, or are limited, because this approach is only a “cognitive interpretation” or “metanarrative” of the (...) actual experience and not the experience itself. Consequently this perspective is also limited because the researcher continues to assess his or her data through the lens of their symbolic constructs, thereby preventing them from truly experiencing shamanic and psi/spirit approaches to knowing since the data collection process does not “in and of itself” affect the observer. We, therefore, need expanded ethnographic methods that include within their approaches an understanding of methods and techniques to experientially encounter these states of consciousness—and become transformed by them. Our becoming transformed and then recollecting our ethnoautobiographical experiences is the means toward a new kind of science and its methods of inquiry that this article seeks to encourage. (shrink)

This article examines the concurrent validity of the Kinder, Lydenberg, Domini Research & Analytics corporate social performance measures. Because KLD changed its evaluation methods to richer approaches, a new look at the concurrent validity of the indicators is necessary. To do this new look, the authors examine the new “Binary” and “Continuous” versions of the KLD and compare them with previous versions of KLD. The results suggest that the continuous scores provide better measurement characteristics than do the binary version. Overall, (...) the new versions of the KLD data demonstrate concurrent validity with the original version. (shrink)

Routine management of geriatric problems often raises ethical problems, particularly regarding autonomy of the old person. The carers or children may be unaware of the sensitivity of role reversal in dealing with the financial affairs; the need for a residential carer may compromise the old person’s privacy. Attending a day centre confers much benefit, but one must understand the old person’s resistance to change in the proposal of a new daily regimen. Similarly his or her autonomy must be the priority (...) in planning for admittance to an old age home, and not the assumption that the family knows best. A common dilemma is the assessment of an old person’s competency in decision making, either about management of his affairs, or regarding consent to treatment, or participation in research. Because cognitive capacity is not always identical with competency, meaningful tools have recently been developed in which the emphasis is on the specific situation to be investigated. (shrink)

Objective:To evaluate the effect of an intervention on the understanding and use of DNR orders by physicians; to assess the impact of understanding the importance of involving competent patients in DNR decisions.Design:Prospective clinical interventional study.Setting:Internal medicine department (70 beds) of the hospital of La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland.Participants:Nine junior physicians in postgraduate training.Intervention:Information on the ethics of DNR and implementation of new DNR orders.Measurements and main results:Accurate understanding, interpretation, and use of DNR orders, especially with respect to the patients’ involvement in the (...) decision were measured. Junior doctors writing DNR orders had an extremely poor understanding of what DNR orders mean. The correct understanding of the definition of a DNR order increased from 31 to 93% (p<0.01) after the intervention and the patients’ involvement went from 17% to 48% (p<0.01). Physicians estimated that 75% of their DNR patients were mentally competent at the time of the decision.Conclusion:An intervention aimed at explaining the ethical principles and the definition of DNR orders improves understanding of them, and their implementation, as well as patient participation. Specific efforts are needed to increase the involvement of mentally competent patients in the decision. (shrink)

New fetal therapies offer important prospects for improving health. However, having to consider both the fetus and the pregnant woman makes the risk–benefit analysis of fetal therapy trials challenging. Regulatory guidance is limited, and proposed ethical frameworks are overly restrictive or permissive. We propose a new ethical framework for fetal therapy research. First, we argue that considering only biomedical benefits fails to capture all relevant interests. Thus, we endorse expanding the considered benefits to include evidence-based psychosocial effects of fetal therapies. (...) Second, we reject the commonly proposed categorical risk and/or benefit thresholds for assessing fetal therapy research. Instead, we propose that the individual risks for the pregnant woman and the fetus should be justified by the benefits for them and the study’s social value. Studies that meet this overall proportionality criterion but have mildly unfavorable risk–benefit ratios for pregnant women and/or fetuses may be acceptable. (shrink)

This article proposes to identify risk factors for moral distress from the literature, validate them through expert analysis and provide the basis for a new tool to assess the risk of moral distress among nurses. Moral distress is related to the psychological, emotional and physiological aspects of nursing. It arises from constraints caused by various circumstances and can lead to significant negative consequences. A scoping review and validation through expert analysis were used. The research question guiding this study was as (...) follows: What is known about risk factors for moral distress in nursing? The research was conducted using multiple sources including electronic databases and lists of references from relevant literature. The final sample consisted of 38 studies. A validation analysis was conducted by experts during December 2014 and June 2015. To exclude a risk factor item, at least 80% of the experts had to agree with the exclusion. In total, 53 risk factors for moral distress were identified, reviewed by the experts and grouped to form a new instrument that may help to identify risk for moral distress and to address its consequences. (shrink)

When making an assessment of animal welfare, it is important to take environmental (housing) or animal-based parameters into account. An alternative approach is to focus on the behavior and appearance of the animal, without making actual measurements or quantifying this. None of these tell the whole story. In this paper, we suggest that it is possible to find common ground between these (seemingly) diametrically opposed positions and argue that this may be the way to deal with the complexity of (...) animal welfare. The model will have to be acceptable for the different parties that will be affected by it and real benefits for the animal should result from it. This will be the basis of a practical ethical approach. All this can be condensed into a model that essentially is made up out of three basic elements: the classical welfare analysis with an existing welfare assessment tool, an assessment of the stockholder, and an implementation of the Free Choice Profiling technique. This new framework does not pretend to be a different or better animal welfare matrix; it is intended to integrate existing knowledge and to provide a practical tool to improve animal welfare. It identifies whether there are welfare problems on a farm, if present whether these problems are caused by the housing system or the stockholder, and what can be done to improve the situation. (shrink)

This paper analyzes the reasons for which the incorporeal ultimate reality called the “Gnostic Body” (jñānakāya) is categorized as a “body” in the Kālacakra tradition. It examines the diverse ways in which the body imagery is applied to ultimate reality within this tradition. Although conceptions of the Gnostic Body (jñāna-kāya) as a special category of the Buddha-body have been included in all of the unexcelled yoga-tantras (anuttara-yoga-tantras), they are most extensively elaborated upon in the Kālacakra literature. For this reason, the (...) analysis is primarily based on the Indian Kālacakratantra literary corpus (11th century) (From among the Kālacakratantra literature, I consulted the Kālacakratrantra with the Vimalaprabhā, Nāropā’s Sekoddeśaṭīkā, Sādhuputra’s Sekoddeśaṭipaṇī, and the Ṣaḍṅngayoga of Anupamarakṣita.) and to the closely related Mañjuśrīnāmasaṃgīti, Raviśrījñāna’s commentary on the Mañjuśrīnāmasaṃgīti, the Amṛtakaṇikāṭippaṇī, and Vibhūticandra’s subcommentary Amṛtakaṇikodyotanibandha (12th–13th centuries). In so doing, it will bring forth the evaluative and classificatory usages of the term jñāna-kāya in the aforementioned sources, and the analysis is concerned with both the heuristic and provocative functions of their discourses. It also addresses the interpretative framework through which the Kālacakra tradition constructs the notions of embodiment and suggests that Buddhist esoteric discourse can be useful in demonstrating that the concept of a body can be understood as a broader category that extends from a physical body, to an immaterial perceptible form, and to the pure nondual awareness. An analysis of the multileveled constructions of the Gnostic Body (jñāna-kāya) in the Indian Vajrayāna tradition opens new questions and new avenues of investigation with respect to critical assessments of the rubric of the “body,” while bringing to light new models of embodiment. (shrink)

This paper describes a second generation Simulator for Engineering Ethics Education. Details describing the first generation activities of this overall effort are published in Chung and Alfred (Sci Eng Ethics 15:189–199, 2009). The second generation research effort represents a major development in the interactive simulator educational approach. As with the first generation effort, the simulator places students in first person perspective scenarios involving different types of ethical situations. Students must still gather data, assess the situation, and make decisions. The approach (...) still requires students to develop their own ability to identify and respond to ethical engineering situations. However, were as, the generation one effort involved the use of a dogmatic model based on National Society of Professional Engineers’ Code of Ethics, the new generation two model is based on a mathematical model of the actual experiences of engineers involved in ethical situations. This approach also allows the use of feedback in the form of decision effectiveness and professional career impact. Statistical comparisons indicate a 59 percent increase in overall knowledge and a 19 percent improvement in teaching effectiveness over an Internet Engineering Ethics resource based approach. (shrink)

Background: The high disease burden of Africa, the emergence of new diseases and efforts to address the 10/90 gap have led to an unprecedented increase in health research activities in Africa. Consequently, there is an increase in the volume and complexity of protocols that ethics review committees in Africa have to review. Methods: With a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the African Malaria Network Trust (AMANET) undertook a survey of 31 ethics review committees (ERCs) across sub-Saharan Africa (...) as an initial step to a comprehensive capacity-strengthening programme. The number of members per committee ranged from 3 to 21, with an average of 11. Members of 10 institutional committees were all from the institution where the committees were based, raising prima facie questions as to whether independence and objectivity could be guaranteed in the review work of such committees. Results: The majority of the committees (92%) cited scientific design of clinical trials as the area needing the most attention in terms of training, followed by determination of risks and benefits and monitoring of research. The survey showed that 38% of the ERC members did not receive any form of training. In the light of the increasing complexity and numbers of health research studies being conducted in Africa, this deficit requires immediate attention. Outcome: The survey identified areas of weakness in the operations of ERCs in Africa. Consequently, AMANET is addressing the identified needs and weaknesses through a 4-year capacity-building project. (shrink)

This is a comprehensive, authoritative and innovative account of Pythagoras and Pythagoreanism, one of the most enigmatic and influential philosophies in the West. In twenty-one chapters covering a timespan from the sixth century BC to the seventeenth century AD, leading scholars construct a number of different images of Pythagoras and his community, assessing current scholarship and offering new answers to central problems. Chapters are devoted to the early Pythagoreans, and the full breadth of Pythagorean thought is explored including politics, religion, (...) music theory, science, mathematics and magic. Separate chapters consider Pythagoreanism in Plato, Aristotle, the Peripatetics and the later Academic tradition, while others describe Pythagoreanism in the historical tradition, in Rome and in the pseudo-Pythagorean writings. The three great lives of Pythagoras by Diogenes Laertius, Porphyry and Iamblichus are also discussed in detail, as is the significance of Pythagoras for the Middle Ages and Renaissance. (shrink)

Psychological studies of touch and blindness have been fraught with controversy. Within this field there remains an important theoretical divide. Many researchers have taken a cognitive approach to the study of touch and blindness, relating these to higher order processes, such as memory and concept formation. Others adopt a theoretical perspective, arguing that it not necessary to consider the 'internal representation' of the stimuli, when investigating touch - thus people make use of information from the physical biomechanical properties of their (...) limbs as they assess the physical properties of objects. In addition, psychologists differ in the relative importance they place on the modality of sensory stimulation for subsequent perceptual experiences. Some psychologists argue that touch can do many of the things that are accomplished by vision, and claim that the mode of sensory stimulation is not critically important for perception, arguing that much information can be obtained through non-visual modalities. Others suggest that there are important consequences of a lack of visual experience, arguing for the importance of multiple forms of sensory input for conceptual development. New to the Debates in Psychology series, Touch, Representation, and Blindness brings together the leading investigators in these areas, each presenting the evidence for their side of the debate. An introductory chapter sets the theoretical and historical stage for the debate, and a concluding chapter draws together the different views and ideas set forth by the contributors, summarizing and resolving the discussion. (shrink)

Most donated organs in the United States come from brain dead donors, while a small percentage come from patients who die in “controlled,” or expected, circumstances, typically after the family or surrogate makes a decision to withdraw life support. The number of organs available for transplant could be substantially if donations were permitted in “uncontrolled” circumstances–that is, from people who die unexpectedly, often outside the hospital. According to projections from the Institute of Medicine, establishing programs permitting “uncontrolled donation after circulatory (...) determination of death,” or uDCDD, throughout the United States has the potential to provide 22,000 more donation opportunities annually. In contrast, U.S. controlled donation after circulatory determination of death, or cDCDD, cases have increased progressively over the past decade from 87 to 848 donors, but currently account for only 10.6 percent of all deceased donors. Following the IOM recommendations, several projects exploring the feasibility of uDCDD were funded by the federal government, including a grant from the Health Resources and Services Administration that supported a pilot project in New York City in which the authors of this article participated.A key feature of our protocol, and indeed of many uDCDD protocols, is the initiation of preservation methods such as chest compressions and extracorporeal membrane oxygenation shortly after death in order to perfuse and preserve the donor's organs. Critics of uDCDD argue that the means of determining death deviates from generally ascribed principles. They assert that reinstituting circulation in order to preserve organs has the effect of “undoing” the prior determination of death. The result is that cDCDD is widely accepted and practiced routinely even though it only marginally increases the number of organs available for transplantation, and uDCDD is widely considered unacceptable despite being ethically embraced and proven to significantly increase organ donation opportunities in other countries. This article explores the evolution of this counterintuitive state of affairs and calls for a policy that, in line with the IOM report, allows for both cDCDD and uDCDD protocols. (shrink)

We reported a series of experiments carried out to confront the underlying intuitions of value-based argumentation frameworks (VAFs) with the intuitions of ordinary people. Our goal was twofold. On the one hand, we intended to test VAF as a descriptive theory of human argument evaluations. On the other, we aimed to gain new insights from empirical data that could serve to improve VAF as a normative model. The experiments showed that people’s acceptance of arguments deviates from VAF’s semantics and is (...) rather correlated with the importance given to the promoted values, independently of the perceptions of argument interactions through attacks and defeats. Furthermore, arguments were often perceived as promoting more than one value with different relative strengths. Individuals’ analyses of scenarios were also affected by external factors such as biases and arguments not explicit in the framework. Finally, we confirmed that objective acceptance, that is, the acceptance of arguments under any order of the values, was not a frequent behavior. Instead, participants tended to accept only the arguments that promoted the values they subscribe. (shrink)

In programs of acoustic survey, the amount of data collected and the lack of automatic routines for their classification and interpretation can represent a serious obstacle to achieving quick results. To overcome these obstacles, we are proposing an ecosemiotic model of data mining, ecoacoustic event detection and identification, that uses a combination of the acoustic complexity indices and automatically extracts the ecoacoustic events of interest from the sound files. These events may be indicators of environmental functioning at the scale of (...) individual vocal species, the acoustic community, the sound marks, or the soundscape. The EEDI model is represented by three procedural steps: 1) selecting acoustic data according to environmental variables, 2) detecting the events by creating an ecoacoustic event space produced by plotting ACIft and its evenness, 3) identifying events according to the level of correlation between the acoustic signature of the detected events and an ad hoc library of previously identified events. The EEDI procedure can be extensively used in basic and applied research. In particular, EEDI may be used in long-term monitoring programs to assess the effect of climate change on individual vocal species behavior, population, and acoustic community dynamics. The EEDI model can be also used to investigate acoustic human intrusion in natural systems and the effect in urban areas. (shrink)

Background:Surveillance technology such as tag and tracking systems and video surveillance could increase the freedom of movement and consequently autonomy of clients in long-term residential care settings, but is also perceived as an intrusion on autonomy including privacy.Objective:To explore how clients in residential care experience surveillance technology in order to assess how surveillance technology might influence autonomy.Setting:Two long-term residential care facilities: a nursing home for people with dementia and a care facility for people with intellectual disabilities.Methods:Ethnographic field study.Ethical considerations:The boards (...) representing clients and relatives/proxies of the clients were informed of the study and gave their written consent. The clients’ assent was sought through a special information leaflet. At any time clients and/or proxy were given the option to withdraw from the study. The research protocol was also reviewed by a medical ethics committee.Findings:Our findings show a pattern of two themes: (1) coping with new spaces which entailed clients: wandering around, getting lost, being triggered, and retreating to new spaces and (2) resisting the surveillance technology measure because clients feel stigmatized, missed the company, and do not like being “watched.”Conclusion:Client experiences of surveillance technology appear to entail a certain ambivalence. This is in part due to the variety in surveillance technology devices, with each device bringing its own connotations and experiences. But it also lies in the devices’ presupposition of an ideal user, which is at odds with the actual user who is inherently vulnerable. Surveillance technology can contribute to the autonomy of clients in long-term care, but only if it is set in a truly person-centered approach. (shrink)