We have seen through many examples that data science and artificial intelligence can reinforce structural inequalities like sexism and racism. Data is power, and that power is distributed unequally. This book offers a vision for a feminist data science that can challenge power and work towards justice. This book takes a stand against a world that benefits some (including the authors, two white women) at the expense of others. It seeks to provide concrete steps for data scientists seeking to learn (...) how feminism can help them work towards justice, and for feminists seeking to learn how their own work can carry over to the growing field of data science. It is addressed to professionals in all fields where data-driven decisions are being made, as well as to communities that want to better understand the data that surrounds them. It is written for everyone who seeks to better understand the charts and statistics that they encounter in their day-to-day lives, and for everyone who seeks to better communicate the significance of such charts and statistics to others. This is an example-driven book written with a broad audience of scholars, students, and practitioners in mind. It offers a way of thinking about data, both their uses and their limits, that is informed by direct experience, by a commitment to action, and by the ideas associated with intersectional feminist thought. (shrink)

This book explores the work of activists in the Americas who are documenting feminicide, arguing that feminist activists at the margins have much to teach mainstream data scientists about data ethics: how to work with data ethically amidst extreme and durable structural inequalities.

This article theorizes the relationship between two ways of “seeing” and organizing urban mobility markets: the abstract, algorithmic vision of the mobility platform and the experiential, relational vision of the platform driver. Using the case of mobility platforms in Jakarta, we empirically demonstrate how drivers experience the limitations of the platform's visions and how they deploy their own alternative visions of work and the city. We offer this drivers’ “View from Within” as a counterpoint to the visions of the platform, (...) decentering the platform's visions as the sole arbiter of change and optimization in the city. At the same time, we disrupt the assumed binary between these views, showing how they exist in a complex dance of complementarity and contestation. We conclude with a discussion on the opportunities this entanglement presents for worker agency in the algorithmic market, the hurdles toward more “worker centered design” in platform economies and the tensions between globalizing technological solutions and their localized instantiations. Through this article, we argue for seeing deep, embedded relationships as culturally and historically important modes of urban life which technology has to interact with but cannot fully capture nor do away with. (shrink)

This essay offers seven intersectional feminist principles for equitable and actionable COVID-19 data, drawing from the authors' prior work on data feminism. Our book, Data Feminism, offers seven principles which suggest possible points of entry for challenging and changing power imbalances in data science. In this essay, we offer seven sets of examples, one inspired by each of our principles, for both identifying existing power imbalances with respect to the impact of the novel coronavirus and its response, and for beginning (...) the work of change. (shrink)

This paper explores three cases of Do-It-Yourself, open-source technologies developed within the diverse array of topics and themes in the communities around the Public Laboratory for Open Technology and Science. These cases focus on aerial mapping, water quality monitoring and civic science practices. The techniques discussed have in common the use of accessible, community-built technologies for acquiring data. They are also concerned with embedding collaborative and open source principles into the objects, tools, social formations and data sharing practices that emerge (...) from these inquiries. The focus is on developing processes of collaborative design and experimentation through material engagement with technology and issues of concern. Problem-solving, here, is a tactic, while the strategy is an ongoing engagement with the problem of participation in its technological, social and political dimensions especially considering the increasing centralization and specialization of scientific and technological expertise. The authors also discuss and reflect on the Public Lab’s approach to civic science in light of ideas and practices of citizen/civic veillance, or “sousveillance”, by emphasizing people before data, and by investigating the new ways of seeing and doing that this shift in perspective might provide. (shrink)

Organelles transported along microtubules are normally moved to precise locations within cells. For example, synaptic vesiceles are transported to the neruronal synapse, the Golgi apparatus is generally found in a perinuclear location, and the membranes of the endoplasmic reticulum are actively extended to the cell periphery. The correct positioning of these organelles depends on microtubules and microtubule motors. Melanophores provide an extreme example of organized organelle transport. These cells are specialized to transport pigment granules, which are coordinately moved towards or (...) away from the cell center, and result in the cell appearing alternately light or dark. Melanophores have proved to be an ideal system for studying the mechanisms by which the cell controls the direction of its organelle transport. Pigment granule dispersion (the movement away from the cell center) requires protein phosphorylation, while pigment aggregation (the movement towards the cell center) requires protein dephosphorylation. The target of this phosphorylation and dephosphorylation event is a protein that interacts with the microtubule motor protein, kinesin. Thus, the direction of organelle transport along microtubules may be regulated by controlling the activity of a microtubule motor. (shrink)

During public health crises including the COVID-19 pandemic, resource scarcity and contagion risks may require health systems to shift—to some degree—from a usual clinical ethic, focused on the well-being of individual patients, to a public health ethic, focused on population health. Many triage policies exist that fall under the legal protections afforded by “crisis standards of care,” but they have key differences. We critically appraise one of the most fundamental differences among policies, namely the use of criteria to categorically exclude (...) certain patients from eligibility for otherwise standard medical services. We examine these categorical exclusion criteria from ethical, legal, disability, and implementation perspectives. Focusing our analysis on the most common type of exclusion criteria, which are disease-specific, we conclude that optimal policies for critical care resource allocation and the use of cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) should not use categorical exclusions. We argue that the avoidance of categorical exclusions is often practically feasible, consistent with public health norms, and mitigates discrimination against persons with disabilities. (shrink)

Tetris provides a difficult, dynamic task environment within which some people are novices and others, after years of work and practice, become extreme experts. Here we study two core skills; namely, choosing the goal or objective function that will maximize performance and a feature-based analysis of the current game board to determine where to place the currently falling zoid so as to maximize the goal. In Study 1, we build cross-entropy reinforcement learning models to determine whether different goals result in (...) different feature weights. Two of these optimization strategies quickly rise to performance plateaus, whereas two others continue toward higher but more jagged heights. In Study 2, we compare the zoid placement decisions made by our best CERL models with those made by 67 human players. Across 370,131 human game episodes, two CERL models picked the same zoid placements as our lowest scoring human for 43% of the placements and as our three best scoring experts for 65% of the placements. Our findings suggest that people focus on maximizing points, not number of lines cleared or number of levels reached. They also show that goal choice influences the choice of zoid placements for CERLs and suggest that the same is true of humans. Tetris has a repetitive task structure that makes Tetris more tractable and more like a traditional experimental psychology paradigm than many more complex games or tasks. Hence, although complex, Tetris is not overwhelmingly complex and presents a right-sized challenge to cognitive theories, especially those of integrated cognitive systems. (shrink)

Tetris provides a difficult, dynamic task environment within which some people are novices and others, after years of work and practice, become extreme experts. Here we study two core skills; namely, choosing the goal or objective function that will maximize performance and a feature-based analysis of the current game board to determine where to place the currently falling zoid so as to maximize the goal. In Study 1, we build cross-entropy reinforcement learning models to determine whether different goals result in (...) different feature weights. Two of these optimization strategies quickly rise to performance plateaus, whereas two others continue toward higher but more jagged heights. In Study 2, we compare the zoid placement decisions made by our best CERL models with those made by 67 human players. Across 370,131 human game episodes, two CERL models picked the same zoid placements as our lowest scoring human for 43% of the placements and as our three best scoring experts for 65% of the placements. Our findings suggest that people focus on maximizing points, not number of lines cleared or number of levels reached. They also show that goal choice influences the choice of zoid placements for CERLs and suggest that the same is true of humans. Tetris has a repetitive task structure that makes Tetris more tractable and more like a traditional experimental psychology paradigm than many more complex games or tasks. Hence, although complex, Tetris is not overwhelmingly complex and presents a right-sized challenge to cognitive theories, especially those of integrated cognitive systems. (shrink)

The real history of the covey of attention-artists who call themselves "The Birds." A great deal of uncertainty--and even some genuine confusion--surrounds the origin, evolution, and activities of the so-called Avis Tertia or "Order of the Third Bird." Sensational accounts of this "attentional cult" emphasize histrionic rituals, tragic trance-addictions, and the covert dissemination of obscurantist ontologies of the art object. Hieratic, ecstatic, and endlessly evasive, the Order attracts sensual misfits and cabalistic aesthetes--both to its ranks, and to its scholarship. In (...) recent years, however, the revisionist work of the research collective ESTAR(SER) has done much to clear the air, bringing archival precision to the history of this covey of attention-artists who call themselves "The Birds." Gathering the best articles of the last twenty years of The Proceedings of ESTAR(SER), this volume represents a landmark in the history of aesthetic practices, and will be a point of departure for future work wading the muddy marshes at the limits of historicism."--Publisher description. (shrink)

Photography has become a pervasive component of contemporary communication. Recent technological advances in creating and manipulating images have provided renewed impetus to decades-long debates on use of photographs in science. With increase in the potential for inappropriate image manipulation, fears about misrepresentation have heightened concern among journal editors and scholars about the 'accuracy' of published images. We discuss how science has responded to growing concerns surrounding falsification and inaccuracy of photography. We document progress in implementing a variety of complementary approaches (...) to addressing the problem. These include digital forensics, photo member checking and the implementation of codes of ethics to enhance the veracity of published photographs in science research. We conclude by acknowledging the irreducible conflict likely to remain between use of the photograph as a creative work of art and employment of this medium as a source of information in the progress of science. (shrink)

Much can be gained by specifying the operation of the emulation process. A brief review of studies from diverse domains, including complex motor-skill representation, emotion perception, and face memory, highlights that emulation theory offers precise explanations of results and novel predictions. However, the neural instantiation of the emulation process requires development to move the theory from armchair to laboratory.

This article recounts the development of the Professional/problem-based Ethics Program, the original physicians’ professional ethics remediation course. Since 1992, more than 1,200 healthcare professionals of many disciplines have been mandated to attend ProBE by licensing boards and other oversight entities. Using a small-group, interprofessional setting, the ProBE Program assists participants to discover and articulate ethical underpinnings violated by their misconduct; appreciate professional responsibilities that are societal, regulatory, and ethical; and recommit to professional ideals. The authors describe the rationale for developing (...) ProBE, its curriculum, participant demographics, and infractions and reconsider medical professionalism in light of two decades of ProBE. (shrink)

Pour le chrétien qui cherche Dieu, pour le théologien qui veut penser la question de Dieu, la problématique de l’accès au mystère s’avère incontournable. Les théologies contemporaines, soucieuses de « sortir la doctrine trinitaire de son isolement », et conscientes de l’enjeu tant pastoral que théologique d’une telle réouverture de l’accès pour la conscience croyante, témoignent d’une avancée impressionnante mais aussi d’une hésitation sur le mode de cet accès, en même temps que d’une impossibilité à penser le mode de l’unité (...) divine. L’expérience mystique, de par son appartenance à ce mystère, se montre alors capable d’ouvrir à un véritable « franchissement » : elle fait en effet briller plus vivement et de l’intérieur les vérités de la foi. La radicalité de l’itinéraire de Jean de la Croix et la force de son enseignement font ici autorité. Dans le processus exceptionnellement élevé pour l’âme de l’union transformante, tel que celui-ci le qualifie de « contact substantiel », Dieu se rend en effet accessible selon lui-même à la pensée. La mystique chrétienne pourrait ainsi permettre à la théologie contemporaine d’entrer davantage dans l’intériorité du mystère, et la notion de contact, telle que définie par le Docteur mystique, devenir principe d’intelligibilité renouvelée du mode même de l’unité divine. For the Christian who is seeking God and for the theologian who wishes to reflect on the question of God, the issue of access to the mystery proves to be inescapable. Contemporary theologies are eager to “bring Trinitarian doctrine out of its isolation” and are aware of the pastoral and theological stakes of re-opening this access for the believing conscience. They testify to impressive progress but have some hesitation about how this access is achieved as well as to the impossibility of thinking the mode of divine unity. Thus, mystical experience, because it belongs to this mystery, shows itself capable of opening up to a genuine “going beyond”: indeed, it makes the truths of the faith shine more vividly from within. The radical nature of the itinerary of John of the Cross and the power of his teachings are accepted as the authority here. In the exceptionally elevated process of a transforming union for the soul, which he qualifies as “substantial contact,” God renders Himself accessible to thought according to Himself. Christian mysticism could thereby enable contemporary theology to enter more fully into the interiority of the mystery, and the notion of contact, such as it is defined by the mystical Doctor, to become the principle of renewed intelligibility of the very mode of divine unity itself. (shrink)

Living labs are interdisciplinary and participatory initiatives aimed at bringing research closer to practice by involving stakeholders in all stages of research. Living labs align with the principles of participatory research methods as well as recent insights about how participatory ways of generating knowledge help to change practices in concrete settings with respect to specific problems. The participatory, open, and discussion‐oriented nature of living labs could be ideally suited to accompany ethical reflection and changes ensuing from reflection. To our knowledge, (...) living labs have not been explicitly trialed and reported in ethics literature. In this discussion paper, we report and discuss four initial issues that marked the process of setting up a living lab in ethics: (1) determining the goals and expected outcomes of an ethics living lab; (2) establishing operational procedures; (3) selecting communities and defining pilot projects; and (4) adopting a lens to tackle emerging questions and challenges. We explain these four issues and present the paths taken based on the novel and specific orientation, that is, living ethics, at the basis of this project. In alignment with living ethics and É‐LABO, we approach challenges as learning opportunities to ask not only “how” questions but also “why” questions. We hope that this discussion paper informed by our experience helps to clarify the theoretical, methodological, and practical approaches necessary to successfully adopt and employ living labs in ethics. (shrink)

Background: Recent research has demonstrated that depressed individuals show impairments in inhibiting irrelevant emotional material, and that these impairments are linked to rumination. Cognitive inhibition, however, is not a unitary construct but consists of several components which operate at different stages of information processing. The present study was designed to assess two components of inhibition and examine their relation to depression and rumination in a sample of clinically depressed and healthy control participants. Methods: Twenty-two individuals diagnosed with a current depressive (...) episode and 27 never-disordered control participants completed an Emotional Flanker Task to assess individual differences in interference control and a modification of the Working Memory Selection Task to assess individual differences in the ability to discard no longer relevant emotional material from working memory. Participants completed self-report measures to assess depressive symptoms and rumination. Results: Clinically depressed compared to control participants showed significantly reduced interference control of irrelevant negative information. The groups, however, did not differ in their ability to discard no longer relevant negative information from working memory. In contrast, rumination was associated with difficulty removing no longer relevant negative material from working memory but not with deficits in interference control. Conclusions: Results highlight the importance of differentiating among components of inhibition to gain a better understanding of cognitive mechanisms underlying depression and rumination. (shrink)

_Riassunto_: Il presente lavoro affronta il delicato tema dell’isolamento digitale e della profonda svolta antropologica scaturita dall’uso delle nuove tecnologie elettroniche. Le nostre relazioni amicali, lavorative e familiari fanno sempre più ricorso alla comunicazione telematica e meno al confronto personale. La conversazione vis-à-vis, che è quella più umanizzante, sta lasciando il posto a quella mediata da computer e smartphone. Tutto questo rischia di provocare un nocivo isolamento digitale, interrompendo ogni forma di dialogo e di introspezione personale. L’isolamento viene spesso abbinato (...) a un utilizzo intenso di Internet e di videogiochi. Le relazioni _online _non possono sostituire completamente quelle che nascono nel mondo reale né, d’altra parte, è pensabile frenare l’avanzata dei contesti virtuali entro i quali siamo immersi consapevolmente e, talvolta, inconsapevolmente. Non si tratta di essere pro o contro la tecnologia. Bisogna solo ritrovare il gusto dell’incontro, della conversazione faccia a faccia, della relazione fisica. Dislocare le nostre relazioni fisiche nel mondo digitale non ha nulla di rischioso. Il pericolo, semmai, è determinato dal contrario. Se la navigazione sul web diventa lo spazio esistenziale in cui vagare liberi e senza meta, con la convinzione che solo lì è possibile ottenere un’immagine vera di sé stessi, il rischio di rimanere prigionieri della propria solitudine potrebbe essere alto. Se, al contrario, le tecnologie sono usate coscientemente, possono portare a riflessioni capaci di esplorare il nostro Io. _Internet _non può eludere il bisogno di avere a che fare con gli altri nel mondo reale, perché solo questo tipo di rapporto fa di noi ciò che siamo realmente. _Parole chiave_: Inclusione digitale; Solitudine; Connessione; Empatia; Salute mentale _A contactless era? From empathic I to digital self_ _Abstract_: This paper addresses the sensitive issue of digital isolation and the profound anthropological shift that has resulted from the use of new electronic technologies. Friendship, work, and family relationships all increasingly rely more on telematic communication and less on personal encounters; face-to-face communication is giving way to modes of communication mediated by computers and smartphones. Does circumventing all forms of dialogue and personal introspection lead to dangerous digital isolation? The risk is real. Only through a balanced use of digital resources can we mitigate the harmful effects of social isolation. _Online _relationships cannot completely replace those that take place in the real world. At the same time, we cannot stop the advance of the virtual contexts within which we are consciously and sometimes unconsciously immersed. It is not a question of being for or against technology. We just need to rediscover our taste for human encounters, face-to-face conversations, and physical relationships. Displacing our physical relationships to the digital world is not in itself risky. The danger, if any, arises from another direction. If web surfing becomes the existential space in which we can roam freely and aimlessly, in the belief that only there is it possible to obtain a true image of oneself, then the risk of remaining a prisoner of one's own lonelinesss rises with devastating consequences at a psychological level. In contrast, technologies are used consciously, they can lead to valuable reflections that help us explore ourselves. The Internet should never circumvent or replace our need to deal with each other in the real world, because it only these kinds of real world relationship that make us who we really are. _Keywords_: Digital inclusion; Loneliness; Connection; Empathy; Mental Health. (shrink)

This paper presents our work on textual inference and situates it within the context of the larger goals of machine reading. The textual inference task is to determine if the meaning of one text can be inferred from the meaning of another and from background knowledge. Our system generates semantic graphs as a representation of the meaning of a text. This paper presents new results for aligning pairs of semantic graphs, and proposes the application of natural logic to derive inference (...) decisions from those aligned pairs. We consider this work as first steps toward a system able to demonstrate broad-coverage text understanding and learning abilities. (shrink)

ObjectiveIn this study, we extend the impact of mindfulness to the concept of least-worst decision-making. Least-worst decisions involve high-uncertainty and require the individual to choose between a number of potentially negative courses of action. Research is increasingly exploring least-worst decisions, and real-world events (such as the COVID-19 pandemic) show the need for individuals to overcome uncertainty and commit to a least-worst course of action. From sports to business, researchers are increasingly showing that “being mindful” has a range of positive performance-related (...) benefits. We hypothesized that mindfulness would improve least-worst decision-making because it would increase self-reflection and value identification. However, we also hypothesized that trait maximization (the tendency to attempt to choose the “best” course of action) would negatively interact with mindfulness.MethodsThree hundred and ninety-eight participants were recruited using Amazon MTurk and exposed to a brief mindfulness intervention or a control intervention (listening to an audiobook). After this intervention, participants completed the Least-Worst Uncertain Choice Inventory for Emergency Responders (LUCIFER).ResultsAs hypothesized, mindfulness increased decision-making speed and approach-tendencies. Conversely, for high-maximizers, increased mindfulness caused a slowing of the decision-making process and led to more avoidant choices.ConclusionsThis study shows the potential positive and negative consequences of mindfulness for least-worst decision-making, emphasizing the critical importance of individual differences when considering both the effect of mindfulness and interventions aimed at improving decision-making. (shrink)

Plato recognizes faction as a serious threat to any political community. The Republic’s proposed solution to faction relies on bringing citizens into a relation of ὁμόνοια. On the dominant line of interpretation, ὁμόνοια is understood along the lines of “explicit agreement” or “consensus.” Commentators have consequently thought that the καλλίπολις becomes resistant to faction when all or most of its members explicitly agree with one another about certain fundamentals of their political association—for example, they agree regarding who should govern in (...) the καλλίπολις.We argue that ὁμόνοια in Plato’s political philosophy has been under-analyzed and misunderstood. We show that, in Alcibiades I, rendering ὁμόνοια simply as agreement results in confusion about how expertise, political friendship, and civic unity are compossible in a well-ordered political community. In our view, Plato refines and adds philosophical depth to the concept of ὁμόνοια in the Republic. We claim that ὁμόνοια is a relation of psychological “like-mindedness” that obtains among members of different occupational classes in a political community. A community is rendered resistant to faction, then, when its members are, in some significant way, psychologically alike. Additionally, while Platonic ὁμόνοια can naturally be expected to result in substantive agreement among citizens, we argue that Platonic ὁμόνοια does not consist solely in agreement. (shrink)

The Peruvian sociologist Aníbal Quijano is widely considered to be a foundational figure of the decolonial perspective grounded on three basic concepts: coloniality, coloniality of power, and colonial matrix of power. His decolonial theorizations of these three concepts have transformed the principles and assumptions of the very idea of knowledge, impacted the social sciences and humanities, and questioned the myth of rationality in natural sciences. The essays in this volume encompass nearly thirty years of Quijano’s work, bringing them to an (...) English reading audience for the first time. This volume is not simply an introduction to Quijano’s work; it achieves one of his unfulfilled goals: to write a book that contains his main hypotheses, concepts, and arguments. In this regard, the collection encourages a fuller understanding and broader implementation of the analyses and concepts that he developed over the course of his long career. Moreover, it demonstrates that the tools for reading and dismantling coloniality originated outside the academy in Latin America and the former Third World. (shrink)

As a theory of skill acquisition, the instance theory of automatization posits that, after a period of training, algorithm‐based performance is replaced by retrieval‐based performance. This theory has been tested using alphabet‐arithmetic verification tasks (e.g., is A + 4 = E?), in which the equations are necessarily solved by counting at the beginning of practice but can be solved by memory retrieval after practice. A way to infer individuals’ strategies in this task was supposedly provided by the opportunistic‐stopping phenomenon, according (...) to which, if individuals use counting, they can take the opportunity to stop counting when a false equation associated with a letter preceding the true answer has to be verified (e.g., A + 4 = D). In this case, such within‐count equations would be rejected faster than false equations associated with letters following the true answers (e.g., A + 4 = F, i.e., outside‐of‐count equations). Conversely, the absence of opportunistic stopping would be the sign of retrieval. However, through a training experiment involving 19 adults, we show that opportunistic stopping is not a phenomenon that can be observed in the context of an alphabet‐arithmetic verification task. Moreover, we provide an explanation of how and why it was wrongly inferred in the past. These results and conclusions have important implications for learning theories because they demonstrate that a shift from counting to retrieval over training cannot be deduced from verification time differences between outside and within‐count equations in an alphabet‐arithmetic task. (shrink)

ObjectiveOverweight and obesity [body mass index ≥ 25 kg/m2] are associated with poorer prognosis among women with breast cancer, and weight gain is common during treatment. Symptoms of depression and anxiety are also highly prevalent in women with breast cancer and may be exacerbated by post-diagnosis weight gain. Altered brain function may underlie psychological distress. Thus, this secondary analysis examined the relationship between BMI, psychological health, and resting state functional connectivity among women with breast cancer.MethodsThe sample included 34 post-menopausal women (...) newly diagnosed with Stage 0-IIa breast cancer who were enrolled in a 6-month randomized controlled trial of aerobic exercise vs. usual care. At baseline prior to randomization, whole-brain analyses were conducted to evaluate the relationship between BMI and seed-to-voxel rsFC of the hippocampus and amygdala. Connectivity values from significant clusters were then extracted and examined as predictors of self-reported depression and anxiety.ResultsMean BMI was in the obese range. For both seeds examined, higher BMI was associated with lower rsFC with regions of prefrontal cortex, including ventrolateral PFC, dorsolateral PFC, and superior frontal gyrus. Hippocampal connectivity with the vlPFC was negatively correlated with self-reported anxiety.ConclusionHigher BMI was associated with lower hippocampal and amygdala connectivity to regions of PFC implicated in cognitive control and emotion regulation. BMI-related differences in hippocampal and amygdala connectivity following a recent breast cancer diagnosis may relate to future worsening of psychological functioning during treatment and remission. Additional longitudinal research exploring this hypothesis is warranted. (shrink)

This is French version of John Stuart Mill's essay "On Nature" accompanied by a introduction by the translator and a lexicon of English words (used in moral philosophy) often wrongly translated into French and a short reflection on the two senses of the word "law" that often cause confusion.

This article summarizes a virtual live‐streamed panel event that occurred in August 2020 and was cosponsored by the International Philosophy of Nursing Society (IPONS) and the University of California, Irvine's Center for Nursing Philosophy. The event consisted of a series of three self‐contained panel discussions focusing on the past, present and future of IPONS and was moderated by the current Chair of IPONS, Catherine Green. The first panel discussion explored the history of IPONS and the journal Nursing Philosophy. The (...) second panel involved a reflection on the challenges of doing nursing philosophy in a research‐intensive context of a Canadian university and the history and current movements in nursing philosophy in the Nordic countries. The final panel involved presentations on the future potential for philosophy in/and for nursing, the critical connections between nursing philosophy and nursing theory, dismantling racism in nursing and the potential for process philosophy to help explore nursing's unique efficacy in creating possibilities for health. The panels were followed by a lively Q&A session with participants, of which there were 252 registrants from across the globe. The event underscored the wide and diverse interests of nurses in philosophical discussion and the need for more virtual events and other connective modalities bringing nurses together to discuss and analyze the value and potential of philosophy to better understand and advance nursing theory and practice. (shrink)

Background This paper examines the degree of agreement among simple dichotomous self-report, validated screening results, and biochemical screening results of prenatal alcohol and other drug use among pregnant women. Method Secondary analysis was conducted on a cohort of pregnant women 16 years or older, presenting for prenatal care in the greater Cape Town, South Africa. Dichotomous verbal screening is a standard of care, and pregnant patients reporting alcohol and other drug use in dichotomous verbal screenings were asked to engage in (...) screening using the Alcohol Smoking and Substance Involvement Screening Test and urinalysis. Results Significant agreements between dichotomous and ASSIST scores were observed. A higher rate of self-reported alcohol use was detected, relative to urine screening with a predictive value of 34.9; while underreporting of illicit substance use was observed with an overall predictive value of 50.0. Conclusion Dichotomous verbal screening was considered valid after comparison with the ASSIST; however, combined use with urine screenings can be recommended especially for identifying illicit substance use in order to accurately detect alcohol and other drug use in pregnancy, so that women can be identified and referred for appropriate interventions where needed. (shrink)

Studies exploring how students learn and understand science processes such as diffusion and natural selection typically find that students provide misconceived explanations of how the patterns of such processes arise (such as why giraffes’ necks get longer over generations, or how ink dropped into water appears to “flow”). Instead of explaining the patterns of these processes as emerging from the collective interactions of all the agents (e.g., both the water and the ink molecules), students often explain the pattern as being (...) caused by controlling agents with intentional goals, as well as express a variety of many other misconceived notions. In this article, we provide a hypothesis for what constitutes a misconceived explanation; why misconceived explanations are so prevalent, robust, and resistant to instruction; and offer one approach of how they may be overcome. In particular, we hypothesize that students misunderstand many science processes because they rely on a generalized version of narrative schemas and scripts (referred to here as a Direct-causal Schema) to interpret them. For science processes that are sequential and stage-like, such as cycles of moon, circulation of blood, stages of mitosis, and photosynthesis, a Direct-causal Schema is adequate for correct understanding. However, for science processes that are non-sequential (or emergent), such as diffusion, natural selection, osmosis, and heat flow, using a Direct Schema to understand these processes will lead to robust misconceptions. Instead, a different type of general schema may be required to interpret non-sequential processes, which we refer to as an Emergent-causal Schema. We propose that students lack this Emergent Schema and teaching it to them may help them learn and understand emergent kinds of science processes such as diffusion. Our study found that directly teaching students this Emergent Schema led to increased learning of the process of diffusion. This article presents a fine-grained characterization of each type of Schema, our instructional intervention, the successes we have achieved, and the lessons we have learned. (shrink)