This research aims to gain insight on the perception that minors have of viral challenges as an entertainment format and the motivations behind their participation in this digital entertainment phenomenon. A qualitative study was performed by way of twelve focus groups with sixty-two minors aged between eleven and seventeen years from Spain. For minors, viral challenges represent a form of entertainment in an interactive context, perceived as innocuous, ephemeral content from which nothing more is required than for the user to (...) have a good time. This appears to lead the minors interviewed to ignore the meaning and origin of the viral challenges they visualise and share, neither do they regard this to be necessary. It is also important to underline the relativisation of risk and danger in favour of spectacularisation and virality. (shrink)

Este artículo ofrece la transcripción, la traducción y el estudio de dos nuevas inscripciones funerarias inéditas, halladas en Arjona y que están fechadas en los años 352/963 y 364/975 respectivamente. La técnica epigráfica de estas lápidas es la habitual en las inscripciones de procedencia rural.

Este artículo pretende aportar nueva información para el estudio de la epigrafía árabe en España. En él se presenta la transcripción, traducción y estudio de dos epitafios funerarios inéditos, producto de hallazgos casuales, procedentes de Cazalilla y Úbeda, en la provincia de Jaén, y fechadas en el año 271/885 y en el 361/972 respectivamente. Ambas inscripciones ofrecen algunas de las características más comunes de la epigrafía en las zonas rurales, de la que constituyen una buena muestra.

The surprise announcement in November 2018 that a Chinese researcher had implanted and brought to term two gene-edited embryos, resulting in the birth of twin girls, had the effect of galvanizing a debate that goes back decades. Should we make heritable changes in our children's DNA? Until recently, this was hypothetical only, and the easy response was to say it is too uncertain and too unnecessary to be tolerated. Suddenly, however, the possibility that there might be real uses for mitochondrial (...) DNA replacement or for germline editing has led to a more nuanced debate, ranging from calls to double-down on prohibiting this technology to discussions of how to permit it for a... (shrink)

Este artículo se postula como un aporte valioso para acercar el cine centroamericano a todas las personas que habitan la región y a los foráneos que sienten un interés particular por el cine que se realiza en Guatemala, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras, Costa Rica y Panamá. ¿Es el cine centroamericano realizado en el siglo xxi un espacio de reflexión sociopolítica?, ¿el tratamiento de sus temáticas conduce a los directores a reivindicar causas?, ¿cómo abordan los directores de cine centroamericano la ética (...) y la estética en sus producciones artísticas? En la respuesta a dichas preguntas se basa la investigación del cine centroamericano. Una importante carga de denuncia acompaña a películas que contemplan las migraciones en sus dos vertientes, forzosa y voluntaria, en búsqueda de una mejor calidad de vida. Las maras son la columna vertebral de la violencia junto a la recreación de las guerras civiles y los desaparecidos. La memoria colectiva, las persecuciones a los pueblos indígenas, la diversidad sexual, el poder de la religión en su versión evangélica y la maternidad como únicarespuesta a los embarazos no deseados, constituyen algunas de estas nuevas miradas. (shrink)

This article presents the findings of an audience research conducted with 86 young Spanish people aged 15 to 29 years. The investigation examines the modes of reception of television fiction, and the impact of the shows on the viewers. Friends’ influence on the choice of program, and the tendency to use social networks to comment on the shows and to talk about themselves, underline the crucial role played by TV fiction and new technologies in socialization processes. While most participants criticized (...) the propensity of television fiction to build extreme stereotypes, they also showed a clear predilection for Spanish programs, and admitted that their characters often offer inspiration to face everyday problems. (shrink)

Positive family functioning during adolescence is usually studied analyzing parents' competences and children's relationship abilities. We present an instrument for the assessment of parental competence, which encompasses both educational style and transmission of values. The objective of the study was to analyze its factor structure and to assess its value in predicting adolescent outcomes. We recruited 2,459 high school students, aged 12–15, in 40 schools from Spain, Peru, Mexico, and Chile. They responded to the instrument and to other questions regarding (...) lifestyles. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were carried out in order to assess the internal structure of the instrument, and internal consistency of the resulting dimensions was calculated. Finally, regression analyses were performed to establish associations between the parenting dimensions and adolescent outcomes. Factor analyses showed a consistent structure, with good fit indices in the four countries. The final four factors include parenting styles and education in values. Regression analyses showed associations with adolescent outcomes. For example, adolescents' life satisfaction was best predicted by Warmth and Education in fortitude. Practical implications are suggested. (shrink)

This essay focuses on possible nonhuman applications of CRISPR/Cas9 that are likely to be widely overlooked because they are unexpected and, in some cases, perhaps even “frivolous.” We look at five uses for “CRISPR Critters”: wild de-extinction, domestic de-extinction, personal whim, art, and novel forms of disease prevention. We then discuss the current regulatory framework and its possible limitations in those contexts. We end with questions about some deeper issues raised by the increased human control over life on earth offered (...) by genome editing. (shrink)

And who can doubt that it will lead to the worst disorders when minds created free by God are compelled to submit slavishly to an outside will? When we are told to deny our senses and subject them to the whim of others? When people devoid of whatsoever competence are made judges over experts and are granted authority to treat them as they please? These are the novelties which are apt to bring about the ruin of commonwealths and the subversion (...) of the state. —Galileo, in the margin of his own copy of Dialogue on the Great World Systems1. (shrink)

In August 2001,just after President Bush announced his stem cell funding policy and the creation of a new Presidents Council on Bioethics PCB), the new chair of the PCB, Leon Kass, set out his philosophy for constructing public bioethics bodies: There are several ways of running commissions, he said. One is to stack it with your people, make them homogenous, and force a consensus. Another is to make them heterogeneous, so that you can only come to the lowest common denominator. (...) We re not going to adopt either. We are going to allow the debate to be developed and heard. Now, three years, sixteen meetings, and five reports later, there are nagging questions about whether this council indeed has allowed the debate to be developed and heard. And the charge of politicizing public bioethics to a degree heretofore unknown and stifling the voices of dissenting members comes not from the political left but from President Bushs own appointees, including one scientist who was dismissed from further service. (shrink)

In August 2001,just after President Bush announced his stem cell funding policy and the creation of a new Presidents Council on Bioethics PCB), the new chair of the PCB, Leon Kass, set out his philosophy for constructing public bioethics bodies: There are several ways of running commissions, he said. One is to stack it with your people, make them homogenous, and force a consensus. Another is to make them heterogeneous, so that you can only come to the lowest common denominator. (...) We re not going to adopt either. We are going to allow the debate to be developed and heard. Now, three years, sixteen meetings, and five reports later, there are nagging questions about whether this council indeed has allowed the debate to be developed and heard. And the charge of politicizing public bioethics to a degree heretofore unknown and stifling the voices of dissenting members comes not from the political left but from President Bushs own appointees, including one scientist who was dismissed from further service. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Principles and PragmatismR. Alta Charo (bio)Openly, privately, or implicitly, every public ethics committee struggles with its mandate. Is its job to identify a moral ideal?; a morally acceptable minimum that, realistically, could be adopted as policy?; or an optimal political compromise that can arguably meet ethical analysis? The answer appears to be different for each committee, depending upon its subject matter, its sponsoring political body, and the details (...) of its legal mandate. What is universal, however, is that even the most well-intentioned committee is likely to experience dissension over the interpretation of its task and that this dissension will often be played out in debates over particular policy recommendations.Ruth Macklin’s description of disagreement and moral integrity in the context of the Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments demonstrates this phenomenon quite clearly (Macklin 1996). The epistemological debates concerning the evidence of past practices illuminate differing visions of the Committee’s mandate. For some it was to render moral judgment on past acts, without necessarily concluding that, if the acts were immoral, the individuals involved were themselves immoral. For others it was to use moral judgments to determine appropriate forms of restitution, thus balancing the reputational risks to past actors against the need for and feasibility of restitution to the victims. Still others appeared to focus on crafting specific political responses, and the historical data needed only be sufficient to bolster the policy recommendations.In this respect, the composition of any advisory committee becomes crucial. As fact-finders, committee members must determine the kind of evidence they will find persuasive. This determination, in turn, depends upon whether the committee sees itself primarily as (1) informational, in which case the standards employed by professional historians are probably the most appropriate, or (2) judgmental, in which case something closer to legal standards of proof might be better. The dilemma is not limited to committees looking at history; those rendering advice on science policy need to determine if they will use standards of proof prevalent in the scientific community (consensus following peer review) or the public (scientific consensus coupled with credibility of the scientific community as a whole). [End Page 319]When a committee is asked to base its judgments on ethical analysis, the conflicts only deepen. The “ethics” of policy recommendations are invariably balanced against the desire to see one’s work yield a concrete political response, the perception of political constraints on implementing an ethically “ideal” solution, and the subtle pressures exerted by the sponsoring political body to respond to the specific committee mandate, which was written with the needs of the sponsoring body in mind, not the needs of a wide-ranging ethics discussion.Another complication arises because ethics committees derive their credibility from the perception that moral truth is discoverable and unassailable. To horse trade among these moral truths undermines the credibility of their entire endeavor and can render bioethics advisory committees not only ineffective but even offensive. After all, if a moral truth exists, how ethical is it for “ethicists” to abandon it in the name of strategic concerns? If, on the other hand, no moral truth exists, then by what right do these “ethics” committees claim persuasive authority beyond that of any citizen advisory committee?This is a deep dilemma that relates to the discipline of bioethics itself. Lacking a core methodology or doctrine, bioethics has yet to justify itself to either its proponents or to the public. Bioethics scholars acknowledge that there are a variety of theories drawn from moral philosophy that could be used to guide the resolution of dilemmas that arise in the context of medical care and biomedical research. Such theories include utilitarianism, deontology, teleology, virtue theory, and justice theory, with no one theory being universally adopted by bioethics scholars and no one methodology being available to resolve conflicts among their respective conclusions. While deductivism is the predominant analytical style in the field, “[t]he central difficulty with deductivism is that there is no single comprehensive moral theory, nor even theories or principles of more limited scope, which is agreed to be true or correct” from which defensible conclusions will flow (Brock 1995).But if public ethics bodies cannot... (shrink)

The U.S. Supreme Court’s most recent pronouncement on abortion rights resembles the dieter’s dilemma: one knows exactly how to get where one is going but lacks the willpower to follow through. In an opinion filled with exceptionally progressive, equality-based arguments for reproductive freedom, the Court nonetheless manages to back away from its own ineluctably drawn conclusions. In the end it not only ignores its own best arguments but eviscerates its previous analyses of fundamental rights and judicial protection of personal liberties (...) from the excesses of the polity. (shrink)

The U.S. Supreme Court’s most recent pronouncement on abortion rights resembles the dieter’s dilemma: one knows exactly how to get where one is going but lacks the willpower to follow through. In an opinion filled with exceptionally progressive, equality-based arguments for reproductive freedom, the Court nonetheless manages to back away from its own ineluctably drawn conclusions. In the end it not only ignores its own best arguments but eviscerates its previous analyses of fundamental rights and judicial protection of personal liberties (...) from the excesses of the polity. (shrink)

Offering an original contribution to the field of luxury and fashion studies, this edited collection takes a philosophical perspective, addressing the idea that humans need luxury. From this framework it delves deep into two particular dimensions of luxury, emotions and society, and concludes with cases of brand building in order to illustrate the two dimensions at work. Comparative analysis between countries is brought together with an emphasis on China. Chapters address the ongoing growth in the market, as well as the (...) significant changes in the sector brought about by fast international expansion and an increased focus on ethical supply and sustainability, making the book an insightful read for scholars of fashion business, luxury and branding. (shrink)

The coronavirus disease 2019 lockdown meant a greatly reduced social and economic activity. Sound is of major importance to people’s perception of the environment, and some remarked that the soundscape was changing for the better. But are these anecdotal reports based in truth? Has traffic noise from cars and airplanes really gone down, so that more birdsong can be heard? Have socially distanced people quietened down? This article presents a case study of the human perception of environmental sounds in an (...) urban neighborhood in the Basque Country between 15 March and 25 May 2020. The social restrictions imposed through national legislation divided the 69-day period into three phases. We collected observations, field audio recordings, photography, and diary notes on 50 days. Experts in soundscape and architecture were presented with the recordings, in randomized order, and made two separate perceptual analyses. One group rated the recordings for pleasantness and eventfulness using an adapted version of the Swedish Soundscape Quality Protocol, and a partly overlapping group annotated perceived sound events with free-form semantic labels. The labels were systematically classified into a four-level Taxonomy of Sound Sources, allowing an estimation of the relative amounts of Natural, Human, and Technological sounds. Loudness and three descriptors developed for bioacoustics were extracted computationally. Analysis showed that Eventfulness, Acoustic Complexity, and Acoustic Richness increased significantly over the time period, while the amount of Technological sounds decreased. These observations were interpreted as reflecting changes in people’s outdoor activities and behavior over the whole 69-day period, evidenced in an increased presence of Human sounds of voices and walking, and a significant shift from motorized vehicles toward personal mobility devices, again evidenced by perceived sounds. Quantitative results provided a backdrop against which qualitative analyses of diary notes and observations were interpreted in relation to the restrictions and the architectural specifics of the site. An integrated analysis of all sources pointed at the temporary suspension of human outdoor activity as the main reason for such a change. In the third phase, the progressive return of street life and the usage of personal mobility vehicles seemed to be responsible for a clear increase in Eventfulness and Loudness even in the context of an overall decrease of Technological sounds. Indoor human activity shared through open windows and an increased presence of birdsong emerge as a novel characteristic element of the local urban soundscape. We discuss how such changes in the acoustic environment of the site, in acoustic measurements and as perceived by humans, point toward the soundscape being a crucial component of a comprehensive urban design strategy that aims to improve health and quality of life for increasingly large and dense populations in the future. (shrink)