Trust features prominently in a number of policy documents that have been issued in recent years to facilitate data sharing and international collaboration in medical research. However, it often remains unclear what is meant by ‘trust’. By exploring a concrete international collaboration between Denmark and Pakistan, we develop a way of unpacking trust that shifts focus from what trust ‘is’ to what people invest in relationships and what references to trust do for them in these relationships. Based on interviews in (...) both Pakistan and Denmark with people who provide blood samples and health data for the same laboratory, we find that when participants discuss trust they are trying to shape their relationship to researchers while simultaneously communicating important hopes, fears and expectations. The types of trust people talk about are never unconditional, but involve awareness of uncertainties and risks. There are different things at stake for people in different contexts, and therefore it is not the same to trust researchers in Pakistan as it is in Denmark, even when participants donate to the same laboratory. We conclude that casual references to ‘trust’ in policy documents risk glossing over important local differences and contribute to a de-politicization of basic inequalities in access to healthcare. (shrink)

As science focuses exclusively on the physical, it seems to assume that the brain has a key role in the origin if not also the constitution of our consciousness; and thus the destruction of the brain, the nervous system, and the body makes it pointless or even absurd to think of any personal consciousness after death. But one need not be convinced by this. However, any effort to investigate a possible post-mortem life depends on forming a coherent conception of what (...) such a life could be. Can we speak, without incoherence or contradiction, of a person continuing to exist after death in a disembodied state? Our concern in this study lies here. Based on Lund’s view, we will present and defend an argument that one can conceive of a self who is fully embedded in the natural world and deeply embodied in a physical organism, and yet could have a rich variety of experiences in an afterworld encountered after death. In this theory, the close association of the mental and the physical is due to a causal connection - a connection that fails to establish that the physical brings the mental into existence and is compatible with theories that the source of consciousness is not in the brain. (shrink)

Old stories, rather than being a means to shorten the long winter nights or make children's eyelids heavy, were the hidden treasures of peoples’ social and psychological history. They contained, more than anything else, archetypal motifs which were expressed through various symbols. One such old stories was SamakAyyar which appeared in the north-eastern region of the Iranian plateau. The initial narrators of SamakAyyar were most probably the Aryan branch of the Indo-Aryan settlers. The fact that Aryans were neighbouring the Hindu (...) cultures on the one hand, and the common ancestors as well as ideas of the two nations on the other, resulted in the footprints of Buddhist beliefs and Hindu rituals in this story. The influence of these beliefs can clearly be observed in the description of the buildings which appear in the story.Suchbuildings become sacred due to their association with the story plot, i.e. the journey from childhood to maturity. Whether a prison, palace or a castle, the structural image of these buildings, generally and frequently, resemble the Hindu temple. It seems as though such similarity follows the same sense as that in the construction of sacred buildings, especially Hindu temples. The inner journey, moving in circular directions, and the relationship between heaven and earth are instances of this holy meaning. Such concepts are discussed in the analysis of the symbolic meaning of the buildings in the story. (shrink)

When humans are required to perform two or more tasks concurrently, their performance declines as the tasks get closer together in time. Here, we investigated the mechanisms of this cognitive performance decline using a dual-task paradigm in a simulated driving environment, and using drift-diffusion modeling, examined if the two tasks are processed in a serial or a parallel manner. Participants performed a lane change task, along with an image discrimination task. We systematically varied the time difference between the onset of (...) the two tasks and measured its effect on the amount of dual-task interference. Results showed that the reaction times of the two tasks in the dual-task condition were higher than those in the single-task condition. SOA influenced the RTs of both tasks when they were presented second and the RTs of the image discrimination task when it was presented first. Results of drift-diffusion modeling indicated that dual-task performance affects both the rate of evidence accumulation and the delays outside the evidence accumulation period. These results suggest that a hybrid model containing features of both parallel and serial processing best accounts for the results. Next, manipulating the predictability of the order of the two tasks, we showed that in unpredictable conditions, the order of the response to the two tasks changes, causing attenuation in the effect of SOA. Together, our findings suggest higher-level executive functions are involved in managing the resources and controlling the processing of the tasks during dual-task performance in naturalistic settings. (shrink)

It has been quite a year so far(!) and as the wenches we are, we have been taking our time to collect our thoughts and reflections before sharing them at the start of this issue of the journal. In this editorial we think through the COVID-19 pandemic and its devastating effects on the world, on our lives and on our editorial processes. We renew our commitment to improving our operations as a journal and its health along with our own as (...) we deploy wench tactics to restore, sustain and slow down to negotiate this new reality, this new world. We conclude with an introduction to the fascinating contents of this issue along with a collaborative statement of values on open access as part of a collective of intersectional feminist and social justice editors. Through all of the pain and suffering we focus our gaze on hope: hope that we can come through this global crisis together engaging in critical conversations about how we can be better and do better as editors, academics and individuals for ourselves, our colleagues and our journal. (shrink)

The term fuzzy logic is used in this paper to describe an imprecise logical system, FL, in which the truth-values are fuzzy subsets of the unit interval with linguistic labels such as true, false, not true, very true, quite true, not very true and not very false, etc. The truth-value set, , of FL is assumed to be generated by a context-free grammar, with a semantic rule providing a means of computing the meaning of each linguistic truth-value in as a (...) fuzzy subset of [0, 1].Since is not closed under the operations of negation, conjunction, disjunction and implication, the result of an operation on truth-values in requires, in general, a linguistic approximation by a truth-value in . As a consequence, the truth tables and the rules of inference in fuzzy logic are (i) inexact and (ii) dependent on the meaning associated with the primary truth-value true as well as the modifiers very, quite, more or less, etc. (shrink)

ZusammenfassungWas ist praktisches Wissen?Die Diskussion über diese Frage hat sich in den letzten Jahrzehnten darauf konzentriert, das praktische Wissen als ein Wissen- wie aufzufassen. Im Folgenden wird eine weitere Differenzierung dieser Ansicht vorgenommen, indem durch eine Analyse der Syntax des klinischpraktischen Wissens dafür geworben wird, dieses Wissen als eine Kategorie von bedingten Geboten für das ärztliche Handeln in der klinischen Entscheidungsfindung zu betrachten. Syntaktisch gesehen, sind diese Gebote deontische Normen („conditional obligations“). Da sie durch die diagnostisch-therapeutische Forschung (= klinische Forschung) (...) aufgestellt und erforscht werden, muss die klinische Forschung als eine deontische Disziplin angesehen werden. Sie ist deshalb dem Bereich der normativen Ethik zuzuordnen. Im direkten Zusammenhang damit ist die klinische Praxis – als eine überzeitliche Institution, nicht als das Handeln von Einzelpersonen – als praktizierte Moral im Dienste der Menschen („Karitas“) einzustufen, weil sie aus dem Versuch besteht, jene Gebote umzusetzen. (shrink)

It has been three years since we held the Feminism, Legality and Knowledge seminar to respond to our developing frustrations and excitement around feminist legal studies and academic publishing. In the wake of our 25th anniversary in 2018, we critically reflect further on our original intention to stock up on decolonising techniques to mix feminism, legality and knowledge whilst building on previous consideration of our self-proclaimed ‘international’ status. These reflections are prompted by editorial board members’ experiences as participants in the (...) Cardiff Law and Global Justice Centre’s British Academy-funded Global South Socio-Legal Writing Workshops in Accra, Nairobi and Recife in 2018. Following an explanation of the concerns with academic publishing that have prompted this reflection, we provide a narrative of our experiences in each of the three workshops exploring the lessons learned and their impact on our practice as editors and scholars in feminist legal studies. We finish with a renewal of our commitment to decolonise our minds and practices by continuing to struggle to earn the label ‘international’ for the journal now and in future. A brief introduction to the contents of this issue of FLS follows the reflection. (shrink)

It has been argued that metaphor and emotion processing are tightly linked together. Here we explore whether neuroscientific evidence supports this claim.

Background Moral distress is a common challenge among professional nurses when caring for their patients, especially when they need to make rapid decisions. Therefore, leaving moral distress unconsidered may jeopardize patient quality of care, safety, and satisfaction. Aim To estimate moral distress among nurses. Methods This systematic review and meta-analysis conducted systematic search in Scopus, PubMed, ProQuest, ISI Web of Knowledge, and PsycInfo up to end of February 2022. Methodological quality of included studies was assessed using the Newcastle Ottawa checklist. (...) Data from included studies were pooled by meta-analysis with random effect model in STATA software version 14. The selected key measure was mean score of moral distress total score with its’ 95% Confidence Interval was reported. Subgroup analyses and meta-regressions were conducted to identify possible sources of heterogeneity and potentially influencing variables on moral distress. Funnel plots and Begg’s Tests were used to assess publication bias. The Jackknife method was used for sensitivity analysis. Ethical consideration The protocol of this project was registered in the PROSPERO database under decree code of CRD42021267773. Results Eighty-six manuscripts with 19,537 participants from 21 countries were included. The pooled estimated mean score of moral distress was 2.55 on a 0–10 scale [95% Confidence Interval: 2.27–2.84, I2: 98.4%, Tau2:0.94]. Publication bias and small study effect was ruled out. Moral distress significantly decreased in the COVID-19 pandemic versus before. Nurses working in developing countries experienced higher level of moral distress compared to their counterparts in developed countries. Nurses' workplace (e.g., hospital ward) was not linked to severity of moral disturbance. Conclusion The results of the study showed a low level of pooled estimated score for moral distress. Although the score of moral distress was not high, nurses working in developing countries reported higher levels of moral distress than those working in developed countries. Therefore, it is necessary that future studies focus on creating a supportive environment in hospitals and medical centers for nurses to reduce moral distress and improve healthcare. (shrink)

This study examined the performances of three groups of participants in interpreting metaphors in three different conditions: congruent gesture-prime conditions, opposite gesture-prime conditions, and no-prime conditions. In congruent gesture-prime conditions, each metaphor was preceded by the congruent gestural representation of metaphor schema. In opposite gesture-prime conditions, each metaphor was preceded by the opposite gestural representation of metaphor schema. The results showed that participants of congruent gesture-prime conditions had the best performance in interpreting metaphors, while participants of opposite gesture-prime conditions had (...) the worst performance. It is suggested that metaphor schema is an important part of metaphorical meaning of a metaphor. Therefore, when this part of meaning is activated by a gestural prime, metaphor comprehension is facilitated. Furthermore, when a schema is used to metaphorically describe a concept or an event, that schema and the neural network that represents it become one part of a larger interconnected neural network that represents the meaning of the metaphor. It could mean that the activation of one part of it could facilitate the activation of the whole of the network. Finally, it is emphasized that a gesture that depicts the schema of a metaphor is in fact the embodied realization of that metaphor. (shrink)

Representational transformation is a technique for deepening our understanding of mathematical concepts and facilitating the process of solving mathematical problems. This article suggests that representational transformation can contribute to thought processes in four ways. Firstly, representational transformation helps people employ a wider range of cognitive resources. When one representation of a concept or a problem is transformed into another representation, the sensory-motor resources that are involved in the processing of the base representation are employed to process the target representation. Secondly, (...) representational transformation helps in the process of organizing scattered information into suitable units. This gives structure to various parts of information and makes them much easier to handle. Thirdly, representational transformation helps in the process of suppressing irrelevant information and unnecessary elements of problems. This is a key step in organizing and structuring information. Fourthly, representational transformation helps in the process of discovering general rules and turning them into explicit knowledge. (shrink)

This study measured hand and head action strengths of eight typical emotional states using an authentic but implicit emotion elicitation task. Participants listened to and then retold five stories in which eight typical emotional states were experienced by the narrators. The number of hand and head gestures that occur naturally while experiencing an emotional state was used as an index to determine the hand and head action strength of that emotional state. Results showed a larger number of head gestures than (...) hand gestures, suggesting that head action strengths of the eight emotional states are stronger than their hand action strengths. These findings are consistent with the data extracted from Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (LSN), although the two sets of data were gathered in two completely different experimental conditions and in two different languages. Furthermore, our data showed a prototypical directionality effect for the typical emotional states, specifically, happiness, anger and pride were primarily accompanied by upward gestures but downward gestures for sadness and shame; surprise was primarily accompanied by forward gestures but backward gestures for fear and disgust. (shrink)

Medical practice is practiced morality, and clinical research belongs to normative ethics. The present book elucidates and advances this thesis by: 1. analyzing the structure of medical language, knowledge, and theories; 2. inquiring into the foundations of the clinical encounter; 3. introducing the logic and methodology of clinical decision-making, including artificial intelligence in medicine; 4. suggesting comprehensive theories of organism, life, and psyche; of health, illness, and disease; of etiology, diagnosis, prognosis, prevention, and therapy; and 5. investigating the moral and (...) metaphysical issues central to medical practice and research. Many systems of (classical, modal, non-classical, probability, and fuzzy) logic are introduced and applied. Fuzzy medical deontics, fuzzy medical ontology, fuzzy medical concept formation, fuzzy medical decision-making and biomedicine and many other techniques of fuzzification in medicine are introduced for the first time. -/- . (shrink)

Construction cost estimation is one of the essential processes in construction management. Project cost is a complex engineering problem due to various factors affecting the construction industry. Accurate cost estimation is important in construction management and significantly impacts project performance. Artificial intelligence models have been effectively implemented in construction management studies in recent years owing to their capability to deal with complex problems. In this research, extreme gradient boosting is developed as an advanced input selector algorithm and coupled with three (...) AI models, including random forest, artificial neural network, and support vector machine for cost estimation. Datasets were gathered based on a survey conducted on 90 building projects in Iraq. Statistical indicators and graphical methods were used to evaluate the developed models. Several input predictors were used, and XGBoost highlighted inflation as the most crucial parameter. The results indicated that the best prediction was attained by XGBoost-RF using six input parameters, with r-squared and the mean absolute percentage error equal to 0.87 and 0.25, respectively. The comparison results revealed that all AI models showed good prediction performance when applied to datasets affected by more than two parameters. The outcomes of this research revealed an optimistic strategy that can help decision makers select the influencing parameters in the early phases of project management. Also, developing a prediction model with high precision results can assist the project’s estimators in decreasing the errors in the cost estimation process. (shrink)

Patrick Suppes' set-theoretical approach to the analysis of theories, and Joseph D. Sneed's metatheory are briefly outlined. The notions of observation, illusion and hallucination are reconstructed according to these approaches. It is argued that the terms ‘perception’ and ‘truth’ are theoretical with respect to observation but nontheoretical with respect to illusion and hallucination. Hallucination is construed as a special kind of illusion.

Social representations research is often undertaken by scholars who seek to ‘give voice’ to knowledge that are held by socially disenfranchised individuals and groups. However, this endeavour poses a number of problems in practice, not least because it assumes that the ‘voices’ voiced by individuals and/or groups in social research will be unambiguous and uniform, and unchanged by the research encounter. Despite the growth of attention to the critical potential of social representations theory, there remains a lack of scholarship on (...) the relationship between the theory's emphasis on the relational, or dialogical, nature of social life and the implications of this for critical research. In this article, I argue that the dialogical epistemology from which social representations research must depart incites reflection upon the design of empirical studies, which must equally attend to both ‘Ego’ and ‘Alter’, and the researcher-researched relationship, which may itself be best viewed as an Ego-Alter interaction. I make the case for adopting dialogical epistemology in critical social psychology, and argue that this is essential to undertaking ethical social research. I conclude by suggesting that claims to ‘giving voice’ have little place in critical social psychology in general, and social representations scholarship in particular. (shrink)

Practical Mysticism in Islam and Christianity offers a comparative study of the works of the Sufi-poet Jalal al-Din Rumi (1207-1273) and the practical teachings of the German Dominican, Meister Eckhart (c1260-1327/8). Rumi has remained an influential figure in Islamic mystical discourse since the thirteenth century, while also extending his impact to the Western spiritual arena. However, his ideas have frequently been interpreted within the framework of other mystical, philosophical, or religious systems. Through its novel approach, this book aims to reformulate (...) Rumi's practical mysticism by employing four methodological principles: a) mysticism is a coherent structure with mutual interconnection between its parts; b) the imposition of alien structures to interpret any particular mysticism damages its inward coherency; c) practical mysticism consists of two main parts, namely practices and stages; and d) the proper use of comparative methodology enables a deeper understanding of each juxtaposed system. Eckhart's speculative mysticism, which differs from and enjoys similarities with the love-based mysticism of Rumi, provides a "mirror" that highlights the special features of Rumi's practical mysticism. Such comparison also allows a deeper comprehension of Eckhart's practical thought. Offering a critical examination of practical mysticism, this book is a valuable resource for students and scholars of Islamic studies, comparative mysticism, and the intellectual history of Islam. (shrink)

The effect of arousal safety has been analyzed on purchase intention, then attitude towards the advertisement and attitude towards the brand have been incorporated as intervening variables between the relationships. The interaction effect of self-monitoring and message arguments have also been taken in to consideration for better understanding of the consumer’s response. The data has been gathered from 206 respondents by using purposive sampling method. The research instrument was comprised of summated rating/additive scale and semantic differential scaling. Confirmatory Factor Analysis (...) has been applied after the application of preliminary tests on the data. Structure Equation Modeling and moderation and mediation analysis have also been applied to test the hypotheses. Arousal safety in the advertisements shape consumers response and it proved to be a fully mediated model. Self-monitoring also probes the relationship. Message arguments haven’t had any affect as moderator, hence can be used as a focal predictor. The study is a starting point for future research to provide a coherent methodology for capturing the necessary data, processing the underlying information and evaluating the effects of arousal safety in advertisements. The study extends the field of advertising in the direction of arousal safety effects. In comparison to previous research, empirical evidence on the arousal safety in television advertising and purchase intention in relation with moderating and mediating variables is provided. (shrink)

Understanding why individuals opt out of living donation is crucial to enhancing protections for all living donors and to identify modifiable barriers to donation. We developed an ethical approach to conducting research on individuals who opted out of living kidney donation and applied it in a small-scale qualitative study at one US transplant centre. The seven study participants had varied reasons for opting out, the most prominent of which was concern about the financial burden from lost wages during the postoperative (...) period. Several reported feeling alone during their decision-making process. Although no participants used an alibi, a centre-provided statement of non-eligibility to donate, all believed that centres should offer alibis to help preserve donor autonomy. Given the complexity of participants' decisions and the emotions they experienced before and after deciding not to donate, we suggest approaches for independent living donor advocates to support this population. This study demonstrates that research on individuals who opt out of donation is feasible and yields valuable insight into methods to improve the evaluation experience for potential living donors. (shrink)

The rate of human health care-associated infections caused by Acinetobacter baumannii has increased significantly in recent years for its remarkable resistance to desiccation and most antibiotics. Phospholipases, capable of destroying a phospholipid substrate, are heterologous group of enzymes which are believed to be the bacterial virulence determinants. There is a need for in silico studies to identify potential vaccine candidates. A. baumannii phospholipase D role has been proved in increasing organism’s resistance to human serum, destruction of host epithelial cell and (...) pathogenesis in murine model. In this in silico study high potentials of A. baumannii PLD in elicitation of humoral and cellular immunities were elucidated. Thermal stability, long half-life, non-similarity to human and gut flora proteome and non-allergenicity were in a list of A. baumannii PLD positive properties. Potential epitopic sequences were also identified that could be used as peptide vaccines against A. baumannii and various other human bacterial pathogens. (shrink)