Objective—To explore the opinions of unpaid healthy volunteers on the payment of research subjects.Design—Prospective cohort.Setting—Southern Alberta, Canada.Participants—Medically eligible persons responding to recruiting advertisements for a randomised vaccine trial were invited to take part in a study of informed consent at the point at which they formally consented or refused trial participation. Of 72 invited, 67 returned questionnaires at baseline and 54 at follow-up.Outcome measures—Proportions of persons who agreed or disagreed with three close-ended statements on the payment of research subjects; themes (...) and categories identified by content analysis of responses to an open-ended question.Results—A minority agreed with paying either patient or healthy volunteer participants. Opinions did not change over time. Participants' comments addressed: benefits and drawbacks to research participation; benefits and drawbacks to paying research participants; conditions under which payment of research subjects would be acceptable, and the nature of acceptable recognition. Acceptable conditions were to improve problematic recruitment, to reimburse costs, and to recognise participants, particularly for their time investment. Both non-monetary and monetary recognition of volunteers were thought to be appropriate.Conclusions—Most unpaid volunteers disagreed with paying research participants. The themes arising from their comments are similar to those that have been raised by ethicists and suggest that recognising the time and effort of participants should receive greater emphasis than presently occurs. (shrink)

There is considerable evidence that animals can time multiple intervals that occur separately or concurrently. Such simultaneous temporal processing occurs both in temporal discrimination procedures and in classical conditioning procedures. The first part of the chapter will consist of the review of the evidence for simultaneous temporal processing, and the conditions under which the different intervals have influences on each other. The second part of the chapter will be a brief description of two timing theories: Scalar Timing Theory and a (...) Packet Theory of Timing. Scalar Timing Theory consists of a pacemaker-switch-accumulator system that serves as a clock, a memory that consists of examples of previously reinforced intervals, and a decision process that involves a comparison of ratios to a criterion; the Packet Theory of Timing consists of a conditional expected time function that serves as a clock, a memory that consists of weighted sums of these values, and a probabilistic decision process that produces packets of responses. Both of these theories will be applied to an example of simultaneous temporal processing by rats, and will serve as the basis for some general comments about the basis for selecting and evaluating quantitative theories of timing. (shrink)

Memory representation for time was studied in two settings. First, an analysis of timing in a laboratory analog of a foraging situation revealed that departure times from a patchy resource followed a Weber Law-like property implied by scalar timing. A trial-by-trial analysis was then pursued in a similar but more structured experimental paradigm, the Peak procedure. Study of covariance structures in the data implicated scalar variance in the memory for time as well as in the decision process, but the correlation (...) pattern ruled out multiple access to memory within a trial. (shrink)

A survey of 106 medical students assessing their interest in and attitudes to medical ethics in the curriculum is reported by the authors. Results indicate that 64 per cent of the students rated the importance of medical ethics to good medical care as high or critical and 66 per cent desired to learn more about the topic. However, in reports of patient encounters identifying ethical issues, less than six per cent of the students reported a frequency of more than one (...) such patient encounter per week. The students also demonstrated a greater awareness of more obvious ethical issues than of more subtle, less publicised issues. When asked how medical ethics should be taught, the students clearly affirmed a desire for an integrated exposure to the subject throughout the medical curriculum. Possible implications of these findings for medical education are discussed. (shrink)

Global challenges such as climate change, food security, or public health have become dominant concerns in research and innovation policy. This article examines how responses to these challenges are addressed by governance actors. We argue that appeals to global challenges can give rise to a ‘solution strategy' that presents responses of dominant actors as solutions and a ‘negotiation strategy' that highlights the availability of heterogeneous and often conflicting responses. On the basis of interviews and document analyses, the study identifies both (...) strategies across local, national, and European levels. While our results demonstrate the co-existence of both strategies, we find that global challenges are most commonly highlighted together with the solutions offered by dominant actors. Global challenges are ‘wicked problems' that often become misframed as ‘tame problems’ in governance practice and thereby legitimise dominant responses. (shrink)

Bazzocchi disposes the text of the Tractatus in a user-friendly manner, exactly as Wittgenstein's decimals advise. This discloses the logical form of the book by distinct reading units, linked into a fashioned hierarchical tree. The text becomes much clearer and every reader can enjoy, finally, its formal and literary qualities.

The present study assessed the language teachers' pedagogical beliefs and orientations in integrating technology in the online classroom and its effect on students' motivation and engagement. It utilized a cross-sectional correlational research survey. The study respondents were the randomly sampled 205 language teachers (μ= 437, n= 205) and 317 language students (μ= 1800, n= 317) of select higher educational institutions in the Philippines. The study results revealed that respondents hold positive pedagogical beliefs and orientations using technology-based teaching in their language (...) classroom. Test of difference showed that female teachers manifested a firmer belief in student-centered online language teaching than their male counterparts. However, the utilization and attitude towards technology in the language classroom is favorably associated with the male teachers. As to students' level of language learning motivation and engagement, it was found out that male and female students have high level of language learning engagement. Further, the test of relationship showed that the higher the teachers' belief in utilizing student-centered teaching to integrate technology in the language classroom, the higher the students are motivated and engaged in learning. In like manner, it was also revealed that teacher-centered belief is negatively correlated to student’s motivation and engagement in online language learning. In this regard, the pedagogical assumptions that hold EFL teachers positively to integrate technology in the language classroom. This study generally offers implications for enhancing language teacher's digital literacy to promote motivating, fruitful, and engaging language lessons for 21ts century learning. (shrink)

Objective: To pilot informed consent materials developed for Aboriginal parents in a vaccine trial, and evaluate their design and the informed consent process.Methods: Cross sectional quantitative and qualitative survey of 20 Aboriginal and 20 non-Aboriginal women in Alice Springs. Information about the proposed research was presented to Aboriginal participants by an Aboriginal researcher, using purpose designed verbal, visual, and written materials. Non-Aboriginal participants received standard materials developed by the sponsor. Questionnaires were used to evaluate recall and understanding immediately and five (...) days later. Qualitative analysis of Aboriginal participants’ interviews was performed.Results: There were no differences between the groups in understanding of diseases prevented by the vaccine, the potential risks of participating, or the voluntary nature of participation. Most Aboriginal participants had difficulty with the concept of a “licensed” versus “unlicensed” vaccine. The non-Aboriginal group had a good understanding of this. Aboriginal participants identified the use of the flipchart, along with a presentation by a doctor and Aboriginal health worker, as preferred delivery modes. Group presentations were preferred rather than one-on-one discussions. The use of the questionnaire posed considerable methodological difficulties.Conclusions: A one-off oral presentation to Aboriginal participants is unlikely to produce “informed consent”. Key but unfamiliar concepts require identification and particularly considered presentation. (shrink)

Cognitive neuroscience aims to map mental processes onto brain function, which begs the question of what “mental processes” exist and how they relate to the tasks that are used to manipulate and measure them. This topic has been addressed informally in prior work, but we propose that cumulative progress in cognitive neuroscience requires a more systematic approach to representing the mental entities that are being mapped to brain function and the tasks used to manipulate and measure mental processes. We describe (...) a new open collaborative project that aims to provide a knowledge base for cognitive neuroscience, called the Cognitive Atlas, and outline how this project has the potential to drive novel discoveries about both mind and brain. (shrink)

Is it harder to acquire knowledge about things that really matter to us than it is to acquire knowledge about things we don't much care about? Jason Stanley 2005 argues that whether or not the relational predicate 'knows that' holds between an agent and a proposition can depend on the practical interests of the agent: the more it matters to a person whether p is the case, the more justification is required before she counts as knowing that p. The evidence (...) for Stanley's thesis includes a number of intuitive judgments about examples. In this paper we provide parallel examples for which Stanley's thesis requires unwelcome knowledge-attributions, and argue that this is possible because his thesis conflicts with familiar and plausible principles about knowledge. (shrink)

Current debates about “Darwinizing culture” have typically focused on the validity of memetics. In this article we argue that meme-like inheritance is not a necessary requirement for descent with modification. We suggest that an alternative and more productive way of Darwinizing culture can be found in the application of phylogenetic methods. We review recent work on cultural phylogenetics and outline six fundamental questions that can be answered using the power and precision of quantitative phylogenetic methods. However, cultural evolution, like biological (...) evolution, is often far from treelike. We discuss the problems reticulate evolution can cause for phylogenetic analyses and suggest ways in which these problems can be overcome. Our solutions involve a combination of new methods for the study of cultural evolution , and the triangulation of different lines of historical evidence. Throughout we emphasize that most debates about cultural phylogenies can only be settled by empirical research rather than armchair speculation. (shrink)

Describes the influence of the anti-federalists in American political tradition.