The purpose of this article is to investigate how cultural meanings associated with the left ventricular assist device inform acceptance and experience of this innovative technology when it is used as a destination therapy. We conducted open-ended, semistructured interviews with family caregivers and patients who had undergone LVAD-DT procedures at six U.S. hospitals. A grounded theory approach was used for the analysis. Thirty-nine patients and 42 caregivers participated. Participants described a sense of obligation to undergo the procedure because of its (...) promise for salvation. However, once the device was implanted, patients described being placed into a liminal state of being neither sick nor healthy, with no culturally scripted role. Consideration of end-of-life decisions was complicated by the uncertainties about how patients with LVADs die. Pre-implantation communications among patient, family, and clinicians should take into account the impact of the technology on meaning, identity, and patient experience. (shrink)

The onset of the Covid-19 pandemic has disrupted the lives of families in the United States and across the world, impacting parent mental health and stress, and in turn, the parent-child relationship. Music is a common parent-child activity and has been found to positively impact relationships, but little is known about music’s role in parent-child interactions during a pandemic. The current study utilized an online questionnaire to assess the use of music in the home of young children and their parents (...) in the United States and Canada during Covid-19 and its relationship with parents’ affective attachment with their child. Musical activity was high for both parents and children. Parents reported using music for both emotion regulation and to socially connect with their children. Parent-child musical engagement was associated with parent-child attachment, controlling for relevant parent variables including parent distress, efficacy, education, and parent-child engagement in non-musical activities. These results indicate that music may be an effective tool for building and maintaining parent-child relationships during a period of uncertainty and change. (shrink)

Discussions about ethics of Big Data often focus on the ethics of data processing: collecting, storing, handling, analysing and sharing data. Data-based systems, however, do not come from nowhere. They are designed and brought into being within social spaces – or social milieu. This paper connects philosophical considerations of individual and collective capacity to enact practical reason to the influence of social spaces. Building a deeper engagement with the social imaginaries of technology development through analysis of two years of fieldwork (...) with start-ups working on Internet of Things, this paper suggests that different action positions can emerge, with consequences for how data is understood and valued. The Disengaged, Pragmatist and Idealist ethical action positions identified in the paper reveal the ways individuals and groups negotiate possibilities for ethical action, through justifications, explanations and structuring of system features. (shrink)

This article aims to understand what role Steve Biko and the Black Consciousness Movement, and the Soweto Uprising, played in Christian activism between the early 1970s and late 1980s. The question is: did the Black Consciousness Movement and the Soweto Uprising influence Christian activists to engage differently with notions such as reconciliation during the struggle against apartheid? The article revisits the actions and thinking of Christian activists before 1994 to understand some of their views on reconciliation, but most importantly, to (...) understand their interactions, engagement with the Black Consciousness Movement and the Soweto Uprising. The article focuses on some of the church leaders and liberation theologians who were inspired and encouraged by Black Consciousness movements, including Allan Boesak and Desmond Tutu. To revisit their thinking and actions, in the heart of the struggle against apartheid, may help us understand current struggles on reconciliation, particularly in connection with the new generation of activists known as the Fallists. We may discover that the new generation is opening ‘old or new’ debates around reconciliation in South Africa. (shrink)

How do essentialist beliefs about categories arise? We hypothesize that such beliefs are transmitted via language. We subject large language models (LLMs) to vignettes from the literature on essentialist categorization and find that they align well with people when the studies manipulated teleological information -- information about what something is for. We examine whether in a classic test of essentialist categorization -- the transformation task -- LLMs prioritize teleological properties over information about what something looks like, or is made of. (...) Experiments 1 and 2 find that telos and what something is made of matter more than appearance. Experiment 3 manipulates all three factors and finds that what something is for matters more than what it's made of. Overall, these studies suggest that language alone may be sufficient to give rise to essentialist beliefs, and that information about what something is for matters more. (shrink)

Enūma eliš and Erra and Išum are richly intertextual poems that both make sophisticated allusions to Anzû. Both do so in competitive ways: Enūma eliš reshapes earlier motifs towards its goal of elevating Marduk and Babylon over the gods and cities that came before them, while Erra and Išum uses allusions to undermine the image of Marduk that Enūma eliš creates. Tiʼāmtu’s blood carried on the wind to announce Marduk’s victory and the tablet of destinies which Tiʼāmtu fastens to Qingu’s (...) chest are two well-known examples of borrowings from Anzû in Enūma eliš. This article traces them through all three poems and shows how they are transformed in each. In the case of Enūma eliš the way that the poem deploys these allusions has previously been called clumsy because they stand out and do not appear to fit seamlessly into the narrative. Yet a closer analysis reveals that they have been much better integrated than is usually recognized, and that their subtleties make important contributions to the program of Marduk supplanting Ninurta. In Erra and Išum the chain becomes ever more complex: the motifs refer back both to their original contexts in Anzû and to their occurrences in Enūma eliš, implying a self-conscious awareness and exploitation of techniques used by earlier poets. (shrink)

This note considers Marduk’s use of the net in Enūma eliš. This weapon is usually assumed to be a net for catching birds inherited from Marduk’s relationship to Ninurta mythology, since Ninurta’s opponent in battle was the demonic bird Anzû. Here it is suggested that the net can also be used as a fishing net and portrays Marduk as a fisherman. This coheres with the nature of Marduk’s opponent, Ti’āmtu, whose name means sea, and also fits into the depiction of (...) Marduk taking over from Enlil as chief god in Enūma eliš, since Enlil is also described as both fisher and fowler in Sumerian texts. Thus an image that is sometimes thought to be awkwardly borrowed is shown to be coherently integrated after all, adding another dimension to the depiction of Marduk in battle. (shrink)

El presente estudio tiene como finalidad validar un instrumento de actitudes docentes de las academias disciplinares de primer semestre del nivel medio superior respecto del uso de las TIC de su práctica en el marco de la nueva normalidad educativa, centrándose en el contexto referencial de la escuela preparatoria número uno perteneciente a la Universidad Autónoma del Estado de Hidalgo (UAEH), organismo institucional con carácter público y autónomo. Para esta investigación, se seleccionaron los indicadores asociados a la dimensión actitudinal ante (...) el uso de TIC: actitud positiva, abierta y crítica, empatía, percepción de auto conocimiento, resiliencia y/o adaptación al cambio. (shrink)

BackgroundThis paper considers ethical dilemmas arising where a patient asks their General Practitioner for advice and their personal opinion regarding whether or not to have an abortion. Patients often seek their General Practitioner’s advice regarding treatments and procedures, which may occasionally lead to the General Practitioner facing a difficult dilemma of whether to share their personal opinion with their patient. As General Practitioners are more accessible as the first point of contact for patients and often have a closer relationship with (...) them, they may be particularly exposed to such situations. Additionally, the significance of abortion as a sensitive topic and the fact the General Practitioner may have their own personal viewpoint on its morality may make it particularly difficult for them to know how to respond to such a request.Main textThis paper explores the difficulties arising in such a situation and considers whether it could ever be ethically justifiable for General Practitioners to express their opinions on such a matter. We consider the duties of a doctor, and highlight the need for clearer guidance for healthcare professionals on managing tensions in their professional boundaries between their personal moral views and their professional responsibilities. A range of ethical viewpoints are considered to explore how a doctor might ap, in particular the principle of autonomy, virtue ethics, and consequentialism.ConclusionsThis article recognises that a General Practitioner in a situation such as this faces many ethical challenges. We propose that offering their opinion to the patient where specifically requested may be morally justifiable. A virtue ethics approach in particular requires that the General Practitioner applies practical wisdom to make this decision, and where they do disclose their opinion ensure this is done so in such a manner that it does not harm the patient and promotes flourishing. We encourage GPs and other healthcare professionals to consider their own moral perspectives on sensitive issues such as abortion, and reflect on how their moral viewpoints have the potential to influence their practice. In doing so, we hope clinicians can be better should they be faced with a situation such as this. (shrink)

This article proposes that Ranciere offers an accurate account of contemporary art’s self-understanding of its politicality, explaining his widespread appreciation and influence by the sector. For this reason the critique of Ranciere’s notion of politics and the demonstration of its deliberate disavowal of specific political determination allow for a systemic argument against contemporary art’s critical ambitions as in any way politically adequate.

A received criticism of information is that it is an instrumentalization of knowledge. This article questions the conditions for such a critique. Examining developmental systems theory, biology and social sciences, it argues that information is a situated event; that it is intrinsic to the development and structuring of mnemic organization at a number of levels; and that such developmental systems are epigenetically constituted. This concept of information leads to: a critique of the statistical-quantitative determination of information that is put forward (...) as its mathematical theorization; a review of characterizations of ‘information societies’; and comprehending instrumentalization as a variant of the event of information at the specific level of the constitution of the human understood as an anthropotechnical complex. (shrink)

Taking globalization to be in large part a consequence of American domination, we follow Derrida's characterization of this domination as being a mode of sovereignty of world-scale institutions and force. Such sovereignty, which is also a roguery, is the primary actual condition for a global knowledge. Bataille's characterization of rogue sovereignty, however, proposes that knowledge is eclipsed under such a condition by an experience that is irreducibly an unknowing. Knowledge is thus corroded by – or, at best, in a critical (...) relation to – the manifestation of a global experience generated by the actual conditions of globalization. (shrink)

Ewing, Selena R Sometimes we find a question in bioethics that seems so mundane and common that nobody cares to consider it, and yet it has no easy answer. The question of my current research project is this. When an elderly person, perhaps your parent or your patient, says 'I don't want to be a burden,' what do they mean and how should we respond?

Ewing, Selena This paper is part of a larger body of research which was partly supported by a grant from the Mary Phillippa Brazill Foundation.

Ewing, Selena R Sometimes we find a question in bioethics that seems so mundane and common that nobody cares to consider it, and yet it has no easy answer. The question of my current research project is this. When an elderly person, perhaps your parent or your patient, says 'I don't want to be a burden,' what do they mean and how should we respond?

Analyzing the reception of Nietzsche’s work in the years following World War I is a delicate and important task, one that Nietzsche nella Rivoluzione conservatrice seeks to accomplish by focusing on the so-called Conservative Revolutionary movement and the prominent intellectuals who orbited it. The book is a rich summary of the eponymous congress held in Bologna, promoted by the University of Bologna and the Fondazione Gramsci Emilia-Romagna, and it contains fifteen essays from both young and established scholars, including the editors (...) of the volume, preceded by a short yet informative introduction. “Conservative Revolutionary” is an almost paradoxical expression, chosen by... (shrink)

Una lunga lettura filologica di Nietzsche allena all’attenzione per i testi, in ogni loro parola. Il volume di Pietro Gori dichiara nel titolo ciò che le sue pagine realizzano, donando un saggio del pensiero prospettivistico all’opera. Lungi dal limitarsi a fornire un ulteriore contributo alla già ricca riflessione sul prospettivismo nietzschiano, Gori intercetta il desiderio della comunità scientifica in merito al tema declinandolo secondo cinque diverse prospettive, atte a rendere conto del...

The matter of truth in Nietzsche’s thought is one of the most studied and debated topics in recent scholarship. It is a topic of great interest and has generated much scholarship, but rarely does such work offer anything new. The book, Teorie e pratiche della verità in Nietzsche, edited by Pietro Gori and Paolo Stellino, is an exception to this trend, as it offers important and original contributions to this area of study.The text—which is the result of a workshop by (...) the same name held in Valencia in May 2011— develops an original approach on two different levels. On the one hand, the authors acknowledge in the preface not only the importance of the search for truth in Nietzsche’s philosophy, but also the... (shrink)

Undergraduate ethics teaching has made significant progress in the past decade, with evidence showing that students and trainee doctors feel more confident in identifying and analysing ethical issues. There is general consensus that ethics education should enable students and doctors to take ethically appropriate actions, and nurture moral integrity. However, the literature reports that doctors continue to find it difficult to take action when faced with perceived unethical behaviour. This has been evident in recent healthcare scandals, in which care has (...) fallen below acceptable ethical standards, despite the presence of professional ethical guidelines and competencies. The National Foundation Training Programme forms the first 2 years of training for new UK doctors. We designed a Foundation Doctor -led teaching programme in which medical students were invited to bring cases and experiences from clinical placements for small group discussion facilitated by FDs. The aim was to enable students to act ethically in practice through developing moral sensitivity and moral identity, together with skills in ethical reasoning and tools to address barriers to taking ethical action. FDs were chosen as facilitators, based on the evidence that near-peer is an effective form of teaching in medicine and may provide positive role models for students. This article reviews the background rationale for the programme and its design. Important themes emerging from the case discussions are explored. Student and FD facilitator feedbacks are evaluated, and practical challenges to the implementation of this type of programme are discussed. (shrink)

Landslide is a critical natural geological hazard that causes severe damage to property, infrastructure, and humans. In general, some location-specific factors trigger a landslide. Wireless sensor network is an enabling technology to monitor most of the parameters associated with these factors. A challenge in landslide monitoring through WSN is that each sensed data item might be critical whereas the underlying wireless communication is often unreliable. In case of landslides, the terrains have irregular shapes, providing harsh conditions for wireless communication thereby (...) more data loss may be expected. This study focuses on the effect of lossy communication in WSN on the efficiency and accuracy of landslide monitoring systems. To this end, collaborative local data analysis is used to enable each node to decide locally whether its sensed data corresponds to a potential event-of-interest. Through extensive simulations, the performance of various landslide prediction and detection models has been evaluated. By and large, the study lets a significant insight into landslide monitoring before implementing a parameterized application for real-world deployment. (shrink)

The widespread use of online search engines to answer the general public’s needs for information has raised concerns about possible biases and the emerging of a ‘filter bubble’ in which users are isolated from attitude-discordant messages. Research is split between approaches that largely focus on the intrinsic limitations of search engines and approaches that investigate user search behavior. This work evaluates the findings and limitations of both approaches and advances a theoretical framework for empirical investigations of cognitive biases in online (...) search activities about health-related topics. We aim to investigate the interaction between the user and the search engine as a whole. Online search activity about health-related topics is considered as a hypothesis-testing process. Two questions emerge: whether the retrieved information provided by the search engines are fit to fulfill their role as evidence, and whether the use of this information by users is cognitively and epistemologically valid and unbiased. (shrink)

This study adds to business ethics research by examining how employees’ religiosity might enhance their propensity to engage in change-oriented citizenship behavior, as well as how this effect may be invigorated in adverse organizational climates with respect to voluntarism. Two-wave survey data collected from employees in Pakistan show that change-oriented citizenship activities increase to the extent that employees can draw on their personal resource of religiosity and perceive little adversity, measured in this study with respect to whether voluntarism is encouraged. (...) Further, the relative usefulness of religiosity for spurring change-oriented citizenship behavior is particularly strong when employees experience high levels of this organizational adversity, because employees with high religiosity tend to believe that such behavior is more needed in these organizational contexts. For organizations, these results demonstrate that the energy derived from religiosity may stimulate voluntary efforts that invoke organizational change, and the perceived value of such energy allocation is greater when employees perceive organizational environments that provide little encouragement to go beyond formal job duties. (shrink)

Word co‐occurrence patterns in language corpora contain a surprising amount of conceptual knowledge. Large language models (LLMs), trained to predict words in context, leverage these patterns to achieve impressive performance on diverse semantic tasks requiring world knowledge. An important but understudied question about LLMs’ semantic abilities is whether they acquire generalized knowledge of common events. Here, we test whether five pretrained LLMs (from 2018's BERT to 2023's MPT) assign a higher likelihood to plausible descriptions of agent−patient interactions than to minimally (...) different implausible versions of the same event. Using three curated sets of minimal sentence pairs (total n = 1215), we found that pretrained LLMs possess substantial event knowledge, outperforming other distributional language models. In particular, they almost always assign a higher likelihood to possible versus impossible events (The teacher bought the laptop vs. The laptop bought the teacher). However, LLMs show less consistent preferences for likely versus unlikely events (The nanny tutored the boy vs. The boy tutored the nanny). In follow‐up analyses, we show that (i) LLM scores are driven by both plausibility and surface‐level sentence features, (ii) LLM scores generalize well across syntactic variants (active vs. passive constructions) but less well across semantic variants (synonymous sentences), (iii) some LLM errors mirror human judgment ambiguity, and (iv) sentence plausibility serves as an organizing dimension in internal LLM representations. Overall, our results show that important aspects of event knowledge naturally emerge from distributional linguistic patterns, but also highlight a gap between representations of possible/impossible and likely/unlikely events. (shrink)

BackgroundValue-driven career attitude is considered a dimension of a protean career attitude. Individuals with this attitude seek out personally meaningful experiences and set their own psychological career success standards. This study investigates the association between value-driven career attitude and job performance. It looks at how organizational citizenship behavior affects the relationship between value-driven career attitudes and job performance.MethodsA self-reported questionnaire was used to collect data from 400 random employees of SMEs in Pakistan during the early pandemic. We chose Cochran’s formula (...) to determine the appropriate sample size, and PLS-SEM was used to analyze the model. P-O fit and self-determination theory is the theoretical lenses used in this study. The underpinning theories to this study enable the researchers to establish a link between VDCA, OCB, and job performance.ResultsBy analyzing a sample of 400 employees from active enterprises, we discover that VDCA contributes to an improvement in job performance. Furthermore, OCB plays an intervening effect in the relationship between VDCA and job performance. Thus, the study provided evidence for the underpinning models of P-O fit and self-determination theory.ConclusionThis study adds to the body of knowledge by investigating the connections between VDCA, OCB, and job performance in SMEs. The existing literature sheds scant light on these linkages, leaving a gap that this study will address. The current study expands on other themes to provide an in-depth analysis of many under-explored PCA outcomes, which may open up new avenues for future researchers to broaden and strengthen PCA with other constructs. (shrink)

To help ensure the ethical conduct of research, many have recommended educational efforts in research ethics to investigators and members of research ethics committees (RECs). One type of education activity involves multi-day workshops in research ethics. To be effective, such workshops should contain the appropriate content and teaching techniques geared towards the learning styles of the targeted audiences. To ensure consistency in content and quality, we describe the development of a curriculum guide, core competencies and associated learning objectives and activities (...) to help educators organize research ethics workshops in their respective institutions. The curriculum guide is divided into modular units to enable planners to develop workshops of different lengths and choose content materials that match the needs, abilities, and prior experiences of the target audiences. The content material in the curriculum guide is relevant for audiences in the Middle East, because individuals from the Middle East who participated in a Certificate Program in research ethics selected and developed the training materials (e.g., articles, powerpoint slides, case studies, protocols). Also, many of the activities incorporate active-learning methods, consisting of group work activities analyzing case studies and reviewing protocols. The development of such a workshop training curriculum guide represents a sustainable educational resource to enhance research ethics capacity in the Middle East. (shrink)