BackgroundIn the Canadian Alliance for Healthy Hearts and Minds (CAHHM) cohort, participants underwent magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the brain, heart, and abdomen, that generated incidental findings (IFs). The approach to managing these unexpected results remain a complex issue. Our objectives were to describe the CAHHM policy for the management of IFs, to understand the impact of disclosing IFs to healthy research participants, and to reflect on the ethical obligations of researchers in future MRI studies.MethodsBetween 2013 and 2019, 8252 participants (...) (mean age 58 ± 9 years, 54% women) were recruited with a follow-up questionnaire administered to 909 participants (40% response rate) at 1-year. The CAHHM policy followed a restricted approach, whereby routine feedback on IFs was not provided. Only IFs of severe structural abnormalities were reported.ResultsSevere structural abnormalities occurred in 8.3% (95% confidence interval 7.7–8.9%) of participants, with the highest proportions found in the brain (4.2%) and abdomen (3.1%). The majority of participants (97%) informed of an IF reported no change in quality of life, with 3% of participants reporting that the knowledge of an IF negatively impacted their quality of life. Furthermore, 50% reported increased stress in learning about an IF, and in 95%, the discovery of an IF did not adversely impact his/her life insurance policy. Most participants (90%) would enrol in the study again and perceived the MRI scan to be beneficial, regardless of whether they were informed of IFs. While the implications of a restricted approach to IF management was perceived to be mostly positive, a degree of diagnostic misconception was present amongst participants, indicating the importance of a more thorough consent process to support participant autonomy.ConclusionThe management of IFs from research MRI scans remain a challenging issue, as participants may experience stress and a reduced quality of life when IFs are disclosed. The restricted approach to IF management in CAHHM demonstrated a fair fulfillment of the overarching ethical principles of respect for autonomy, concern for wellbeing, and justice. The approach outlined in the CAHHM policy may serve as a framework for future research studies.Clinical trial registrationhttps://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/nct02220582. (shrink)

Anything comic has got to be basically serious – that’s what makes it funny. If there wasn’t anything at issue in comedy there wouldn’t be anything to laugh at. Similarly, if you’re writing about multiple universe theory, or whatever it happens to be, you can’t help seeing the funny side of it, because there are many, many funny aspects to a lot of philosophical and scientific ideas and it’s absolutely impossible to write them all with a completely straight face.

This article considers how seventeenth-century writer John Milton engages in modes of thinking that register the obstetric revolution occurring during the period. During a time when physicians were gaining entry to the birthing room, a medical rhetoric of childbirth was developing that cast childbirth in new pathological terms. Milton's A Masque Presented at Ludlow Castle demonstrates how childbirth was influenced by emerging obstetrical language and practice, as well as the ways in which a writer might question such influence. Finally, this (...) article also draws links between disrupted historical rituals of childbirth and modern anxieties about medically-centred birthing practices. (shrink)

This essay presents ecosemiotics as an approach to interpreting Heidegger in environmental philosophy. Comparisons between Heidegger’s philosophy and ecosemiotics have often focused on the 1929–1930 lecture course where Heidegger discusses Jakob von Uexküll’s notion of Umwelt. These and other ecological interpretations reach an impasse with the sharp ontological boundary Heidegger places between Dasein and more-than-human lifeforms. This essay revisits the theme by focusing on a central concept from Heidegger’s later work: enframing [Gestell]. Enframing, it is argued, can be understood as (...) a rupture between human (cultural) and natural signs, which is a consequence of technological modernity. Although this interpretation diverges from Heidegger’s philosophy, such critical readings may be necessary if Heidegger’s work is to speak to today’s technologies and ecological issues. (shrink)

This article uncovers the historical connection between anarchism and vegetarianism in France. In doing so, it restores the significance of a little-known branch of the libertarian movement, namely individualist anarchism. Individualist anarchists sought to transform themselves by applying anarchist principles in their daily lives instead of waiting for a future revolution. Retracing the thoughts and deeds of these forgotten pioneers of the ecological and animal liberation movements, I show that vegetarianism is a striking illustration of anarcho-individualist prefigurative politics and that (...) their aspiration to find their place within nature is as topical as ever. (shrink)

The advent of simple in vitro fertilisation techniques has provided the reproductive biologist with an invaluable system for assaying sperm fertilising ability. In particular, they provide a useful way of identifying and characterising gamete‐specific proteins that play a role in sperm‐egg interactions, and in recent years, a growing number of sperm surface proteins have been identified that appear to be involved in these processes. Fertilin β was one of the first sperm membrane proteins to be implicated in egg interactions and (...) it has been proposed that this is mediated by means of binding of its disintegrin‐like domain to cognate integrin receptors on the egg plasma membrane. A recent paper in Science by Cho and colleagues [Cho et al. 1998. Fertilisation defects in sperm from mice lacking fertilin β. Science 281:1857–1859 (Ref. 1)] provides preliminary data on a fertilin β knockout mouse. Whilst fertilin βnull males had greatly reduced fertility, somewhat surprisingly, this could be largely attributed to causes other than impaired binding to the egg plasma membrane. BioEssays 21:183–187, 1999. © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (shrink)

Abstinence from meat has been a subject of much controversy and friction from the dawn of Christian history. Relatively widespread in the early Church, it was praised when it formed part of a temporary ascetic fasting regimen, but condemned if it amounted to a permanent rejection of animal flesh, as it would be associated with heretical ideas found in various dissident groups, gnostic sects, and pagan philosophical schools. Nevertheless, several patristic authors put forth a number of compelling arguments in defense (...) of a meatless diet, all of which would be revisited by future generations of Christian thinkers. Laying the emphasis upon the ethical incentives for abstaining from animal flesh, as well as upon enduring ambivalent attitudes toward vegetarian dietary practices, this article offers a brief overview of abstinence from meat throughout Christian history. (shrink)

This article examines the monastic diet during the high and late medieval periods. The evolution of this central aspect of daily life gives us greater insight into contemplative monks’ increasing worldliness. Monks not only fell short of their forefathers’ ideals, but also of their own codes of behavior. Their diet gradually became more akin to that of noblemen than to that of their ancient brothers and sisters. Frugality and temperance all too often gave way to indulgence and debauchery. Days on (...) which one should have expected to endure the austerity of fasting were sometimes more reminiscent of the lavishness of feasts. In addition to mead, merriment, and music, meat invaded the cloister. (shrink)

What do we really know? What are we in relation to the world around us? Here, the acclaimed playwright and novelist takes on the great questions of his career—and of our lives Humankind, scientists agree, is an insignificant speck in the impersonal vastness of the universe. But what would that universe be like if we were not here to say something about it? Would there be numbers if there were no one to count them? Would the universe even be vast, (...) without the fact of our smallness to give it scale? With wit, charm, and brilliance, this epic work of philosophy sets out to make sense of our place in the scheme of things. Our contact with the world around us, Michael Frayn shows, is always fleeting and indeterminate, yet we have nevertheless had to fashion a comprehensible universe in which action is possible. But how do we distinguish our subjective experience from what is objectively true and knowable? Surveying the spectrum of philosophical concerns from the existence of space and time to relativity and language, Frayn attempts to resolve what he calls “the oldest mystery”: the world is what we make of it. In which case, though, what are we? All of Frayn’s novels and plays have grappled with these essential questions; in this book he confronts them head-on. (shrink)

Often created by colonial societies characterized by violence and oppression, historical artefacts such as monuments are increasingly under criticism for perpetuating violent attitudes. While the links between artefacts and society are well understood, there has been little work that finds the opportunity for resistance to violence in these artefacts themselves. Developing a ‘spectrum of violence’ for artefacts, I argue that ambiguous artefacts move us towards non-violence by provoking critique, while absolute artefacts move us away from it by stilling critique. Applying (...) this spectrum to a discussion of a graffitied New York monument in 2020, I propose that the act of ‘refacement’ can turn absolute artefacts into ambiguous ones. In so doing, the artefacts that once upheld colonial values might be transformed to resist them. This paper offers a timely exploration of monuments and violence, and seeks to better understand how cultural artefacts can lay the foundations for a non-violent future. (shrink)

This essay presents ecosemiotics as an approach to interpreting Heidegger in environmental philosophy. Comparisons between Heidegger’s philosophy and ecosemiotics have often focused on the 1929–1930 lecture course where Heidegger discusses Jakob von Uexküll’s notion of Umwelt. These and other ecological interpretations reach an impasse with the sharp ontological boundary Heidegger places between Dasein and more-than-human lifeforms. This essay revisits the theme by focusing on a central concept from Heidegger’s later work: enframing [Gestell]. Enframing, it is argued, can be understood as (...) a rupture between human and natural signs, which is a consequence of technological modernity. Although this interpretation diverges from Heidegger’s philosophy, such critical readings may be necessary if Heidegger’s work is to speak to today’s technologies and ecological issues. (shrink)

In his Philosophical Inquiry concerning Human Liberty (1717), the English deist Anthony Collins proposed a complete determinist account of the human mind and action, partly inspired by his mentor Locke, but also by elements from Bayle, Leibniz and other Continental sources. It is a determinism which does not neglect the question of the specific status of the mind but rather seeks to provide a causal account of mental activity and volition in particular; it is a ‘volitional determinism’. Some decades later, (...) Diderot articulates a very similar determinism, which seeks to recognize the existence of “causes proper to man” (as he says in the Réfutation d’Helvétius). The difference with Collins is that now biological factors are being taken into account. Obviously both the ‘volitional’ and the ‘biological’ forms of determinism are noteworthy inasmuch as they change our picture of the nature of determinism itself, but my interest here is to compare these two determinist arguments, both of which are broadly Spinozist in nature – and as such belong to what Jonathan Israel called in his recent book “the radical Enlightenment,” i.e. a kind of underground Enlightenment constituted by Spinozism – and to see how Collins’ specifically psychological vision and Diderot’s specifically biological vision correspond to their two separate national contexts: determinism in France in the mid-1750s was a much more medico-biological affair than English determinism, which appears to be on a ‘path’ leading to Mill and associationist psychology. (shrink)

J. Willard Gibbs derived the following equation to quantify the maximum work possible for a chemical reaction$${\text{Maximum work }} = \, - \Delta {\text{G}}_{{{\text{rxn}}}} = \, - \left( {\Delta {\text{H}}_{{{\text{rxn}}}} {-}{\text{ T}}\Delta {\text{S}}_{{{\text{rxn}}}} } \right) {\text{ constant T}},{\text{P}}$$ Maximum work = - Δ G rxn = - Δ H rxn - T Δ S rxn constant T, P ∆Hrxn is the enthalpy change of reaction as measured in a reaction calorimeter and ∆Grxn the change in Gibbs energy as measured, if (...) feasible, in an electrochemical cell by the voltage across the two half-cells. To Gibbs, reaction spontaneity corresponds to negative values of ∆Grxn. But what is T∆Srxn, absolute temperature times the change in entropy? Gibbs stated that this term quantifies the heating/cooling required to maintain constant temperature in an electrochemical cell. Seeking a deeper explanation than this, one involving the behaviors of atoms and molecules that cause these thermodynamic phenomena, I employed an “atoms first” approach to decipher the physical underpinning of T∆Srxn and, in so doing, developed the hypothesis that this term quantifies the change in “structural energy” of the system during a chemical reaction. This hypothesis now challenges me to similarly explain the physical underpinning of the Gibbs–Helmholtz equation$${\text{d}}\left( {\Delta {\text{G}}_{{{\text{rxn}}}} } \right)/{\text{dT}} = - \Delta {\text{S}}_{{{\text{rxn}}}} \left( {\text{constant P}} \right)$$ d Δ G rxn / dT = - Δ S rxn constant P While this equation illustrates a relationship between ∆Grxn and ∆Srxn, I don’t understand how this is so, especially since orbital electron energies that I hypothesize are responsible for ∆Grxn are not directly involved in the entropy determination of atoms and molecules that are responsible for ∆Srxn. I write this paper to both share my progress and also to seek help from any who can clarify this for me. (shrink)

Experimental Phenomena of Consciousness is the definitive collection of consciousness phenomena in which awareness emerges as an experimental variable. With its comprehensive yet succinct entries, arranged alphabetically, this dictionary will be a valuable reference tool for libraries and researchers at all levels in psychology, neuroscience, and philosophy, who are investigating consciousness, cognition, perception, and attention. It will also be an important addition to the reading lists of courses on consciousness and cognition. Most entries include illustrations and a list of references (...) where a more thorough treatment of the topic can be found. The text is supported by a web page that provides dynamic illustrations and other supplemental material. As the first reference book on the topic, Experimental Phenomena of Consciousness will be a valuable tool for undergraduates, graduate students, professional researchers, and anyone who has an interest in the subject of consciousness. (shrink)