This paper investigates the behavior of contestants in the game show “Quiz Taxi” when faced with the decision whether to bet the winnings they have acquired on a final “double or nothing” question. The decision in this natural experiment is made by groups of two or three persons. This setup enables the decision-making process to be studied with regard to group and communication characteristics. The contestants show fairly risk averse behavior. There is also a significant heterogeneity in attitude (...) to risk. In particular, all-female groups are much less likely to go for the risky option. Furthermore, decision-making behavior appears to vary across differently composed groups and prior performance. The study also documents the importance of discussions: The propensity to gamble increases with discussion length, and the correlation between communication content and the final choice is strong, indicating that time and subjective context are important features of decisions made under risk. (shrink)

Sticker use is an increasingly popular part of daily messaging activity. However, little is known regarding the types, functions, and outcomes of sticker use in authentic online communications. To investigate these phenomena, we analysed sticker use in five small mobile-messaging-facilitated discussion groups initiated by students for course projects in an Asian university. The students used four types of stickers, among which ‘animated picture without text’ was the most frequent. Sticker functions fell into two main categories: as a tone (...) indicator with scope over a textual message, and as a stand-alone illocutionary act. Based on interviews with seven participants, we found disparities between the sender’s intention and the receiver’s interpretation for 34.7% of the stickers, but these disparities did not adversely affect the communication. Implications of the findings are discussed. (shrink)

Deliberative and participatory approaches to democracy seek to directly include citizens in decision-making and agenda-setting processes. These methods date back to the very foundations of democracy in Athens, where regular citizens shared the burden of governance and deliberated every major issue. However, thinkers at the time rightly believed that these methods could not function beyond the scale of the city-state, or polis. Representative democracy as an innovation improved on the scalability of collective decision making, but in doing so, sacrificed the (...) extent to which regular citizens could participate in deliberation. Modern technology, including advances in computational power, machine learning algorithms, and data visualization techniques, presents a unique opportunity to scale out deliberative processes. Here we describe Polis, an open source web application capable of collecting and synthesizing feedback from people in a scalable and distributed fashion. Polis has shown itself capable of building shared understanding, disincentivizing counterproductive behavior, and cultivating points of consensus. It has done this in the context of journalistic and academic research, and directly as part of decision-making bodies at local and national levels, directly affecting legislation. These results demonstrate that deliberative processes can be scaled up beyond the constraints of in-person gatherings and small groups. (shrink)

Organic evolution, or change, among the diatoms has proceeded with considerable regularity. The origins, the extinctions, and the increases in numbers of species and genera, on the whole, have submitted to law and order, as rules-within-limits . The changes of evolution have followed from two sorts of phenomena — 1) the origin and extinction of shortlived or unstable species, in a proportion which has been more or less constant, but different in the two groups of diatoms, Centricae and Pennatae; (...) these short-lived species died out in the subperiod of their origin even under favourable enough environment or surrounding conditions, because of the innate instability of these particular species: and 2) the origin of new species which demonstrated their innate capacity for permanence by remaining in the living condition from their origins mostly up to the present time. The continued or continual additions of new and long-living species, in proportion to the number available as possible and parental species, has given the geometrical progressions.Consequently evolution in the diatoms has been monopodial, or one-stemmed, and not sympodial or not with many substitutions of one species after another in successions. The two kinds of species-durations are well-known in other classes of plants and animals. Exactly the same processes of additions, subtractions, and multiplications, particularly as found in the centric diatoms, are very probable in these classes of plants and animals which have given the same answer or arithmetical result for the whole of their previous histories, in the form of the frequency distribution of the present sizes of their genera.The rules-within-limits of this basic evolution are described, defined, and discussed in their relations to various theories of evolution which perhaps only concern the working of factors of superimposed modifications that reduce the results of the pattern or plan of basic evolution.Die phylogenetische Entwicklung wurde im Bereich der Kieselalgen von bestimmten Gesetzmässigkeiten beherrscht. Die Entstehung neuer Arten und Gattungen, ihr Wiederverschwinden und die Zunahme des Formenreichtums, resultierend aus der Zahl der neuentstandenen, vermindert um die der wieder verschwindenen Arten und Gattungen und vollzog sich nach Regeln , die durch folgende Phänomene gekennzeichnet sind: Zwischen der Zahl der neuentstehenden und der Zahl der in der gleichen geologischen Subperiode aus inneren Gründen wieder aussterbenden Arten besteht eine mehr oder wenig feste Beziehung. Diese ist für die Centricae und Pennatae verschieden. Ein bestimmter Anteil der neuentstandenen Arten und Gattungen erwies sich aus inneren Gründen als „ausdauernd” und blieb bis auf den heutigen Tag erhalten. Die Zunahme der Arten- Zahl durch das Hinzukommen langlebiger Formen war stetig und vollzog sich nach Massgabe geometrischer Progressionen.Diese Tatsachen führen zu dem Schluss, dass die phylogenetische Entwicklung der Kieselalgen nach monopodialem, und nicht nach sympodialem Muster vorsichging. Auch in andern Pflanzengruppen und im Tierreich durften die gleichen Gesetzmässigkeiten herrschend sein. Am klarsten gelangen sie bei den Centricae zum, Ausdruck und werden vom Autor als das Fazit von Additions-, Subtraktions-, und Multiplikationsprozessen aufgefasst. Die heutige Situation bezüglich Häufigkeit der Grössen der Gattungen, in Zahl der Arten, ist das Endergebnis der summativen Wirkung dieser Einzelprozesse.Diese als ‚rules-within-limits’ bezeichneten Gesetzmässigkeiten werden im einzelnen beschrieben, erklärt und zusammenfassend dargestellt. Zu andern Evolutionstheorien in Beziehung gebracht, werden sie schliesslich für Erörterung des Problems benutzt, inwieweit noch andere evolutionsgeschichtliche Prozesse als übergeordnete Faktoren in den vom Verfasser dargestellten Grundplan des Evolutionsgeschehens eingreifen können.L'évolution organique ou le changement parmi les Diatomées s'est effectué avec une régularité considérable. Les origines et les extinctions, et les accroissements des nombres des espèces et des genres, se sont soumis en tout aux lois et aux ordres, commes des régularités à l'intérieur de légères déviations. Le changement de l'évolution fut la conséquence de deux sortes de phénomène: l'origine et l'extinction des espèces éphémères dans une proportion plus ou moins déterminée mais différente pour les deux classes des Diatomées, Centricae et Pennatae; ces espèces éphémères moururent dans la subpériode de leur origines malgré le caractère assez favorable des circonstances environnantes, à cause de l'évanescence inhérente aux espèces particulières, et l'origine des espèces nouvelles qui démontrèrent leur qualité innée de permanence tout en continuant de vivre depuis leurs origines, pour la plupart, jusqu'à présent. Les additions continuelles d'espèces nouvelles et permanentes, en nombres proportionnés aux nombres disponibles comme espèces parentes et possibles, donnèrent des accroissements par progressions géométriques.Par conséquent, l'évolution parmi les Diatomées fut monopodiale et non pas sympodiale. Les deux sortes d'espèces-durées sont bien connues parmi beaucoup d'autres classes de plantes et d'animaux. Les mêmes procédés d'additions, de soustractions et de multiplications, particulièrement tels qu'on les trouve dans les Centricae, sont très probables pour ces classes de plantes et d'animaux qui ont donné un résultat le plus semblable pour la somme totale de leur histoire précédente, sous la forme de la répartition des fréquences de leurs grandeurs générique actuelles.Les régularités à l'intérieur de légères déviations de cette évolution fondamentale sont détaillées, définies et discutées dans leurs relations aux diverses théories touchant les autres méthodes de l'évolution qui jouent le rôle de facteurs modifiants superposés au dessin général ou au dessein de l'évolution fondamentale. (shrink)

GS 341 is one of the most familiar of Nietzsche’s writings. This article proposes a new reading that stands in contrast with most English-language Nietzsche scholarship. The text presents a communication and its reception. A ‘demon’ makes an announcement, and a hearer responds in one way or another. But there is also another narrative altogether, whose conceptual vocabulary comes from a dynamic world-view. In this an interaction of forces leads to a new situation. If the hearer is not crushed (...) by the ‘greatest weight’, there must be an inner force that counteracts its impact. I argue that what Nietzsche calls amor fati is a state that allows our drives to achieve full expression, and so makes possible a collective strength able to withstand the greatest impact. The final sentence refers to a “confirmation and sealing”. What happens is that the demon’s message makes an impression on the receptive hearer. For Nietzsche this is a working metaphor, not a turn of phrase. In a draft from this period he writes: “Let us stamp the image of eternity on our life!” That sudden and forceful act, embodying an evaluative judgement, is the event that GS 341 is all about. (shrink)

Food policy increasingly attempts to accommodate a wider and more diverse range of stakeholder interests. However, the emerging influence of different communities and networks of actors with localized concerns and interests around how food should be produced and traded, can challenge attempts to achieving more open, sustainable and globally-integrated food chains. This article analyses how cultural factors internal to a developed country can disrupt the export of food to a developing country. A framing analysis is applied to examine how activists (...) using social media to interact with the traditional news media in Australia were able to inflame public opinion and provoke outrage to disrupt the policy agenda. The paper contains a case study analysis of the media controversy in 2011 around the slaughter of beef cattle in Indonesian abattoirs and the subsequent banning of live cattle exports to Indonesia by Australia. The analysis draws on the theory of binary cultural oppositions to examine how practices in relation to the slaughter of beef cattle in Indonesia were reframed, through extensive media coverage of moral outrage into a critique of the values and cultural practices of Indonesian society. (shrink)

Large Groups are not constituted simply by adding further members to small groups. There is a qualitative difference between the social actions which take place in small communities and those in large ones. Large communities are irreducibly characterized by anonymity, i.e., the members of large groups don’t know of most of the other members as individual. Therefore, social action in large groups is based on a sign process: each member of a large group is (...) understood as a representative of the other anonymous members of the group as well as a sign for the group as a whole. (shrink)

This paper is based on the findings of research into the attitudes towards business ethics of a group of business students in Western Australia. The questionnaire upon which the research was based was originally used by Preble and Reichel (1988) in an investigation they undertook into the attitudes towards business ethics held by two similar groups of United States and Israeli business students. The specific purpose of the current investigation was to administer the same questionnaire with one minor modification (...) to: (1) two groups of Curtin University students; (2) a group of Asian students from the Australian Institute of Business and Technology (AIBT), a privately funded tertiary institution affiliated with Curtin University; and (3) a group of managers from the Australian Institute of Management (AIM), many of whom would not have been university graduates. The questionnaire was preceded by a profile inventory to establish the participant''s age, sex, occupation, course of study, whether or not they were born in Australia, their attitudes towards religion, and whether or not they saw themselves as ethically minded persons. In the original questionnaire, Preble and Reichel had asked the US and Israeli students to indicate on a five point scale, their attitudes towards a selection of business ethics situations by reflecting on thirty statements. In the replicate study, the means and standard deviations of each response of the four groups of Western Australian students were calculated and then compared with the means and standard deviations of the US and Israeli students. In summary, statistically significant differences in the scores of the original study were noted between nineteen out of thirty of the US and Israeli students in their attitudes towards business ethics. However, a closer examination and interpretation showed several of these differences to have little meaning. (p. 946) The purpose of this current study therefore, was to see if the Curtin, AIBT and AIM students'' results were statistically significant (different) to the US and Israeli student scores. The implications of understanding the way a selected group of business students in Western Australia react towards a range of ethical issues ought to have relevance for those involved in developing management education courses, particularly in view of the current economic and business climate. Studies into attitudes towards ethical issues in business have, as yet, received little attention in Australasia. This present study will hopefully lead to more thoughtful discussion of these issues. (shrink)

This is a study of ethical and moral behavior, or perhaps unethical behavior, in two different societies. One society, contemporary Australia and in particular the state of Western Australia, is currently undergoing an exhaustive Royal Commission into the shenanigans of a number of well-known business men and former leading politicians who seem to have been playing fast and loose with large amounts of other peoples' money. While this was initially the major focus of the paper, a secondary focus developed based (...) on the interest shown in acquiring an historical background by a group of business policy students. The opportunity to acquire an appreciation of historical events and in particular, the development of a sense of history seems to be lacking in the curricula of modern day business students. The secondary focus of the paper therefore illustrated that malfeasance, misfeasance and other forms of malpractice in business and administration were just as common in Greco-Roman times as today. In this context, reference has been made to a selection of the writings of some of the more well-known writers of this period. The paper ends on a nonpositive note, raising the (rhetorical) question, that if, after two thousand years people are still continuing to engage in sharp business practices whenever the occasion arises is there any point in developing and offering courses in moral behavior and business ethics? (shrink)

Summary In Part 1 Small describes her discovery that an array of depicted cubes produces another and completely different illusion from that of a single cube. When a group of such cubes are viewed at an angle, they turn into rectangular boxes, and as the angle gets more severe, they become narrow ribbons. The illusion works only in one direction. In Part 2, Todorović manipulates the image to demonstrate various transformations and offers an explanation of how and why they (...) work the way they do. (shrink)

The subject of the study is the works of contemporary St. Petersburg artists of different generations and creative trends, as well as the forms and features of their communication with each other and with the general as well as professional public. The trends of artistic communication in the city are determined by the activities of such institutions as art and non-art museums, art galleries and exhibition centers, which are a classic form of presentation of contemporary art; alternative venues (...) such as creative spaces and art clusters. The field of attention also includes the attraction of St. Petersburg authors to the organization of small artistic associations, mainly art groups, for example, "Unconquered", "North-7", "Parasites", etc. In addition to works of art, theoretical works and reflections by researchers of contemporary art in St. Petersburg and the spaces of its public presentation are involved. The methodological basis is the analysis of the works of St. Petersburg masters of the beginning of the XXI century in the context of the development of urban institutions of artistic communication. The research is based on theoretical works devoted to the problem of artistic communication and trends in the current art process. Comparative-interpretative and typological methods are used to compare the works of artists and forms of artistic communication. The problem of artistic communication in the field of fine art in St. Petersburg is becoming the subject of a separate study. This area of city life is currently developing quite dynamically, as new art associations, curatorial practices and alternative classical platforms for the presentation of the work of authors belonging to different generations and art movements are emerging. Traditional museums and galleries, as well as creative spaces, art clusters and other often non-core institutions, such as libraries and cafes, are involved in this process. Against this background, the features of St. Petersburg artistic communication crystallize, which is characterized by a desire to organize communities, to fuse realistic traditions and current trends, to escapism and symbolism, as well as an interest in oriental themes and stylistics. (shrink)

This paper presents the results of computer simulations with a community of actors playing a large number of voluntarily iterated two-person-PD. The simulations are designed to enable uncooperative actors to exploit partners, leave them and find a new partner who knows nothing about their previous behavioral history. Hit-and-run exploitation should thrive under these conditions. However, as Schuessler (1989; 1990) has shown, the setting is highly unfavorable to uncooperative players. The present study extends this result to a wider set of strategies (...) which can alternatively stay with defectors {and try to improve them) or leave them quickly. In addition, a class of seemingly clever strategies is introduced which try to exploit the expected dynamics of looking for a partner. Still, a high amount of egoistical cooperation can persist in the present scenario. (shrink)

The current approaches to equality law in South Africa and Canada place these jurisdictions at the forefront of serious and comprehensive judicial at tempts to give effect to substantive equality. These attempts to overcome formalism are processes, judicially acknowledged as such, and as yet far from complete. At the conceptual center of the development of substantive equality is the legal realization of human dignity: not an abstract, individualistic notion, but a concept about the relation between the individual and state, and (...) individual and group, which is circumscribed by concern, respect and consideration.But substantive equality is not possible only through the case law. The current issues surrounding intersectional discrimination and the contextual appreciation of a claimant’s circumstances are urgent reminders that the methods and remedies afforded by the structure of litigation of equality rights claims simply cannot accommodate many instances which call for relief. The fact that these inadequacies of court enforced claims are beginning to be laid bare by some of the problems being faced by the Courts in equality claims is perhaps not a failing of equality law and the concept of dignity, but its strength. The methodology of human rights litigation in countries like Canada and South Africa supports a dialogue between court and legislature. As substantive equality develops in these jurisdictions, the limits of judicial development will be challenged. That is ultimately to be welcomed, if the legislatures are responsive to the definition of human dignity and substantive equality in development judicially, and respond with efforts to support and promote these developments. (shrink)

Most donated organs in the United States come from brain dead donors, while a small percentage come from patients who die in “controlled,” or expected, circumstances, typically after the family or surrogate makes a decision to withdraw life support. The number of organs available for transplant could be substantially if donations were permitted in “uncontrolled” circumstances–that is, from people who die unexpectedly, often outside the hospital. According to projections from the Institute of Medicine, establishing programs permitting “uncontrolled donation after (...) circulatory determination of death,” or uDCDD, throughout the United States has the potential to provide 22,000 more donation opportunities annually. In contrast, U.S. controlled donation after circulatory determination of death, or cDCDD, cases have increased progressively over the past decade from 87 to 848 donors, but currently account for only 10.6 percent of all deceased donors. Following the IOM recommendations, several projects exploring the feasibility of uDCDD were funded by the federal government, including a grant from the Health Resources and Services Administration that supported a pilot project in New York City in which the authors of this article participated.A key feature of our protocol, and indeed of many uDCDD protocols, is the initiation of preservation methods such as chest compressions and extracorporeal membrane oxygenation shortly after death in order to perfuse and preserve the donor's organs. Critics of uDCDD argue that the means of determining death deviates from generally ascribed principles. They assert that reinstituting circulation in order to preserve organs has the effect of “undoing” the prior determination of death. The result is that cDCDD is widely accepted and practiced routinely even though it only marginally increases the number of organs available for transplantation, and uDCDD is widely considered unacceptable despite being ethically embraced and proven to significantly increase organ donation opportunities in other countries. This article explores the evolution of this counterintuitive state of affairs and calls for a policy that, in line with the IOM report, allows for both cDCDD and uDCDD protocols. (shrink)

Despite the evidence showing the promise of HIV treatment as prevention (TasP) in reducing HIV incidence, a variety of ethical questions surrounding the implementation and “scaling up” of TasP have been articulated by a variety of stakeholders including scientists, community activists and government officials. Given the high profile and potential promise of TasP in combatting the global HIV epidemic, an explicit and transparent research priority-setting process is critical to inform ongoing ethical discussions pertaining to TasP.

What is the relationship between biotechnology employees’ beliefs about the moral outcomes of a controversial transgenic research project and their attitudes of acceptance towards the project? To answer this question, employees (n=466) of a New Zealand company, AgResearch Ltd., were surveyed regarding a project to create transgenic cattle containing a synthetic copy of the human myelin basic protein gene (hMBP). Although diversity existed amongst employees’ attitudes of acceptance, they were generally: in favor of the project, believed that it should be (...) allowed to proceed to completion, and that it is acceptable to use transgenic cattle to produce medicines for humans. These three items were aggregated to form a project acceptance score. Scales were developed to measure respondents’ beliefs about the moral outcomes of the project for identified stakeholders in terms of the four principles of common morality (benefit, non-harm, justice, and autonomy). These data were statistically aggregated into an Ethical Valence Matrix for the project. The respondents’ project Ethical Valence Scores correlated significantly with their project acceptance scores (r=0.64, p<0.001), accounting for 41% of the variance in respondents’ acceptance attitudes. Of the four principles, non-harm had the strongest correlation with attitude to the project (r=0.59), followed by benefit and justice (both r=0.54), then autonomy (r=0.44). These results indicate that beliefs about the moral outcomes of a research project, in terms of the four principles approach, are strongly related to, and may be significant determinants of, attitudes to the research project. This suggests that, for employees of a biotechnology organization, ethical reasoning could be a central mechanism for the evaluation of the acceptability of a project. We propose that the Ethical Valence Matrix may be used as a tool to measure ethical attitudes towards controversial issues, providing a metric for comparison of perceived ethical consequences for multiple stakeholder groups and for the evaluation and comparison of the ethical consequences of competing alternative issues or projects. The tool could be used to measure both public and special interest groups’ ethical attitudes and results used for the development of socially responsible policy or by science organizations as a democratizing decision aid to selection amongst projects competing for scarce research funds. (shrink)

This section is focused on some areas of concern which were identified in The Report of the Royal Commission into Commercial Activities of Government and Other Matters (1990–1992). In the Report a number of situations were examined in which some individuals acted without recourse to any ethical guidelines. Most of the people mentioned in the Report held responsible positions in either Government or the private sector, and all were very well known in the community. The Report of the Royal Commission (...) made a number of findings of serious impropriety on the part of several individuals, although there was comparatively little evidence of illegal or corrupt conduct. This section shows what happened to a governmental system in an Australian state when a number of Ministers and their advisors placed their personal or party advantage over their constitutional obligation to act in the community''s interests.Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. (shrink)

The emergence of collective intelligence has been studied in much greater detail in small groups than in larger ones. Nevertheless, in groups of several hundreds or thousands of members, it is well-known that the social environment exerts a considerable influence on individual behavior. A few recent papers have dealt with some aspects of large group situations, but have not provided an in-depth analysis of the role of interactions among the members of a group in the creation of (...) ideas, as well as the group’s overall performance. In this study, we report an experiment where a large set of individuals, i.e., 789 high-school students, cooperated online in real time to solve two different examinations on a specifically designed platform (Thinkhub). Our goal of this paper 6 to describe the specific mechanisms of idea creation we were able to observe and to measure the group’s performance as a whole. When we deal with communication networks featuring a large number of interacting entities, it seems natural to model the set as a complex system by resorting to the tools of statistical mechanics. Our experiment shows how an interaction in small groups that increase in size over several phases, leading to a final phase where the students are confronted with the most popular answers of the previous phases, is capable of producing high-quality answers to all examination questions, whereby the last phase plays a crucial role. Our experiment likewise shows that a group’s performance in such a task progresses in a linear manner in parallel with the size of the group. Finally, we show that the controlled interaction and dynamics foreseen in the system can reduce the spread of “fake news” within the group. (shrink)

Abstract This paper reports the results obtained in an aid project designed to improve transport in the municipal area of Jocotán (Guatemala). The rural road network of an area occupied by indigenous people was analysed and a road chosen for repair using the labour-intensive method–something never done before in this area. The manpower required for the project was provided by the population that would benefit from the project; the involvement of outside contractors and businesses was avoided. All payment for labour (...) went into the pockets of the local people. The small earth movements made and the use of local materials guaranteed the project’s environmental sustainability, while the on-site training of the local community prepared its members for the continued maintenance of the road, thus investing the project with social sustainability. Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-24 DOI 10.1007/s11948-011-9290-2 Authors Rodrigo Ares, BIPREE Research Group, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Madrid, Spain José-María Fuentes, BIPREE Research Group, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Madrid, Spain Eutiquio Gallego, BIPREE Research Group, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Madrid, Spain Francisco Ayuga, BIPREE Research Group, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Madrid, Spain Ana-Isabel García, BIPREE Research Group, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Madrid, Spain Journal Science and Engineering Ethics Online ISSN 1471-5546 Print ISSN 1353-3452. (shrink)

Being social creatures in a complex world, we do things together. We act jointly. While cooperation, in its broadest sense, can involve merely getting out of each other’s way, or refusing to deceive other people, it is also essential to human nature that it involves more active forms of collaboration and coordination (Tomasello 2009; Sterelny 2012). We collaborate with others in many ordinary activities which, though at times similar to those of other animals, take unique and diverse cultural and psychological (...) forms in human beings. But we also work closely and interactively with each other in more peculiar and flexible practices which are in distinctive ways both species-specific and culturally and historically contingent: from team sports to shared labour, from committee work to mass demonstrations, from dancing to reminiscing together about old times. (shrink)

Communication is a crucial component of scientific activity (as of virtually any other domain of human activity, especially in this "communication age" in which we live). As researchers and as citizens, we should all be concerned with the communication of science as well as with communication within science. In this paper, I will deal with one of the key aspects of this topic ג€“ the question whether scientific communication is or should be ג€�transparentג€�. The view (...) that this is or should be the case is often taken for granted both by scientists and the general public. I will challenge this view and suggest that we should learn to live without the illusion that scientific communication is or should be transparent. This idea is closely related, if not derived from, the traditional epistemological conception according to which scientific method is the privileged tool we have for penetrating beyond appearances and discovering the true ג€�nature of thingsג€�, in terms of which all observable phenomena should be ultimately explained. Applying the scientific method should, thus, yield a fully intelligible representation of the world, which in its turn should be transparently communicable. The trouble with this enticing ideal is that it does not correspond to actual practice. Again and again we experience the fact that the ג€�true picture of the worldג€� remains veiled for everyone but a small group of initiated experts in a narrow domain. Is this only a technical problem having to do with the phenomenon of specialization and with the inevitable complexity of the language(s) of science, as it is often suggested? (shrink)

The ‘epistemic calculus of groups’ posits functions to group-generated knowledge. In this article, those same epistemic group functions are now re-evaluated as means by which group members may tackle two contemporary and increasing challenges, or even obstructions, to knowledge. These obstructions, namely the liminality, the increasingly transitional nature of both ‘common sense’ and ‘common word meanings,’ occur, as our mass and social media practices change. Can groups still remain as ‘epistemic communities’ and regenerate common sense or common word (...) meanings? As a response to media developments and to counterarguments by the analytic social epistemologists, I reconceptualize the functions of the ´epistemic calculus of groups´ as skills, and present a synthetic approach toward thinking in small groups to enable the regeneration of common meanings. As a basis in the analysis of the notions of common sense and common word meanings, I use the theory of psychologic: a theory built on formal logic. F... (shrink)

The effect of nutrition on fertility and its contribution thereby to population dynamics are assessed in three social groups (elite, tradesmen and subsistence) in a marginal, pre-industrial population in northern England. This community was particularly susceptible to fluctuations in the price of grains, which formed their basic foodstuff. The subsistence class, who formed the largest part of the population, had low levels of fertility and small family sizes, but women from all social groups had a characteristic and (...) marked subfecundity in the early part of their reproductive lives. The health and nutrition of the mother during pregnancy was the most important factor in determining fertility and neonatal mortality. Inadequate nutrition had many subtle effects on reproduction which interacted to produce a complex web of events. A population boom occurred during the second half of the 18th century; fertility did not change but there was a marked improvement in infant mortality and it is suggested that the steadily improving nutritional standards of the population, particularly during crucial periods in pregnancy (i.e. the last trimester), probably made the biggest contribution to the improvement in infant mortality and so was probably the major factor in triggering the boom. (shrink)

Catholic Relief Services , the international humanitarian agency of the U.S. Catholic community, has worked in Rwanda since 1963. The 1994 Rwandan genocide killed five of its staff, countless co-workers, friends and relatives; its offices were looted and operations destroyed. The genocide marked a turning point in the agency’s history. Since then CRS has made justice, peacebuilding, and solidarity agency priorities, and has committed itself to fully integrate them into all of its partnerships and programming. The focus of this study (...) is an innovative microfinance methodology, Savings and Internal Lending Communities , which CRS recently introduced in Rwanda. While the purpose of CRS’ SILC programming in Rwanda is to promote greater economic security, particularly for Orphans and other Vulnerable Children , and women’s empowerment, this essay explores its peacebuilding potential in the country. It raises the question of whether it is possible to conceive of Rwanda’s SILC groups as social spaces for peace where a culture of peace and peacebuilding skills may already be being generated. It suggests that if identified as such and developed more intentionally, CRS’ SILC programming in Rwanda could play a more significant and integral role in securing the peace Rwandans long for.In July 2008 five Villanova University faculty members and I traveled to Rwanda, spending a total of eight days in country.1 The purpose of the trip was to learn more about the 1994 genocide, the effort to rebuild the country, and in particular, the U.S. Catholic community’s contribution to that effort through Catholic Relief Services . In addition to visiting memorials to the victims of the genocide and meeting with representatives from the Rwandan Catholic Church, the University of Rwanda, and the Rwandan government, we had the opportunity to observe some of CRS’ programming and meet with CRS’ small U.S. staff and its much larger Rwandan staff working with its Rwandan partner agencies. We visited a field hospital where patients were being treated for HIV/AIDS; agricultural projects aimed at containing cassava blight and improving yield; projects to teach orphans and other vulnerable children and the blind trades to enable them to earn income to support themselves and their families; elementary school classrooms; a retreat center where diocesan justice and peace animators were being trained in grassroots peacebuilding skills; and a Savings and Internal Lending Community group. In this article, I would like to focus on CRS’ SILC programming, and in particular, what I believe to be its potential to contribute to peacebuilding in Rwanda. (shrink)

To be relevant to the constantly changing work patterns of the real world, effective learning in universities often occurs in small groups facilitated by collaborative environments where participants are dynamically involved in purposeful activities. The research described in this paper is an investigation of purposeful group work devised for experiential learning where a variety of socio-technical tools were used to support asynchronous tasks and communication among the learners. In order to explore the complexity of this collaborative activity (...) a distinctive inductive research approach has been adopted using reflective developmental methods. The data collection and the analysis part of the research involved the reflection of participants on their activity being requested as reports within their course work. Student reports were subject to content analysis using a computer-based tool that creates a conceptual map of collections of documents comparing the ratings and relationships of concepts among different sets of participants. The study was enhanced by the use of Q-methodology that allows the participants to outline their views and to make individual decisions on the relative importance that they place upon the available views of the larger group. Concepts from Activity Theory allowed the researchers to take a holistic contextual approach both to the design of the research and the interpretation of the findings to make some sense of the complexity of the dynamic work-learning dialectic in a socio-technical collaborative setting. (shrink)

A significant part of responsible innovation is engagement with diverse groups of stakeholders; this remains true for projects investigating responsible innovation practices. This chapter discusses strategies for engaging small and medium-sized enterprises in co-creating visions of and plans for implementing responsible innovation, drawing on the example of engagement with United Kingdom cyber security companies. The key aspect of the engagement was building trust between the responsible innovation researchers and the companies. Trust was built by a movement away from (...) traditional recruitment procedures for research projects, towards proactive engagement with the culture and traditions of the sector – participating in company sponsored talks and conferences, finding ways to communicate effectively, and ensuring a tailored message that fit the expectations and requirements of the sector. This chapter reviews the context in which the recruitment took place, the assumptions made prior to recruitment, the approaches taken, the revisions made to these approaches, and ultimately offers some general recommendations for industry engagement in responsible innovation activities. (shrink)

This paper explores small-scale farmers’ cultural beliefs about the causes of drought events and the reasoning behind their beliefs. Cultural beliefs vary across countries, regions, communities, and social groups; this paper takes the case of farmers from Gaza Province in southern Mozambique as its focus. Findings show that the farmers have a limited knowledge and understanding of the scientific explanation about drought. Thus, farmers’ beliefs about the causes of drought are strongly based on the indigenous and Christian philosophies (...) that attribute drought to supernatural forces, such as ancestors or God, and as a punishment for wrongdoings. Farmers have a distinct and under-explored repertoire of possible wrongdoings to justify the punishments driven by those cultural beliefs. Some of their reasoning is static, while some is mutable, and is based on their observation and perception of the negative, unexpected, or harmful recent or current events which happen in their surrounding environment, and which they believe could be avoided or prevented. Farmers’ beliefs about drought causes, and their underlying reasoning for those beliefs, are what will primarily influence their perception of their own capacity to adapt, their motivation to respond, and their behavioral responses. Yet, their social groups exert a great influence on their choices of response. The paper concludes that more context-specific investigations into the socio-psychological nature of farmers’ beliefs are required prior to interventions in order to better help farmers to respond to future drought risks. (shrink)

Purpose To examine process factors that either facilitate or inhibit learning medical ethics during case-based learning. Methods A qualitative research approach using microanalysis of transcribed videotaped discussions of three consecutive small-group learning sessions on medical ethics teaching for three groups, each with 10 students. Results This research effort revealed 12 themes of learning strategies, divided into 6 coping and 6 evasive strategies. Cognitive-based strategies were found to relate to Kamin's model of critical thinking in medical education, thereby supporting (...) our distinction between the themes of coping and evasive strategies. The findings also showed that cognitive efforts as well as emotional strategies are involved in discussions of ethical dilemmas. Based on Kamin's model and the constructivist learning theory, an examination of the different themes within the two learning strategies—coping and evasive—revealed that these strategies may be understood as corresponding to process factors either facilitating or inhibiting MET in SGL, respectively. Conclusions Our classification offers a more nuanced observation, specifically geared to pinpointing the desired and less desired process factors in the learning involved in MET in the SGL environment. Two key advantages of this observation are: it brings to the forefront process factors that may inhibit and not merely facilitate MET in SGL and it acknowledges the existence of emotional and not just cognitive process factors. Further enhancement of MET in SGL may thus be achieved based on these observations. (shrink)

Environmental change requires individuals and institutions to facilitate adaptive governance. However, facilitating adaptive governance may be difficult because resource users' perceptions of desirable ways of life vary. These perceptions influence preferences related to environmental governance and may stem from the ways individuals subjectively value their work and their connections to their environment. This paper uses a value-based approach to examine individual and institutional preferences for adaptive governance in Carelmapu, Chile. We show that two groups had different value frames rooted (...) in divergent ontologies which influenced their actions related to adaptive governance, creating conflict. (shrink)

Maswood and Rajaram examine the transmission of false memories across small and larger networks. While the spread of false memories is not inherently beneficial, Maswood & Rajaram argued that a better understanding of the formation and propagation of false memories has practical and societal implications. For example, by better understanding how false memories transmit across groups, we might be better equipped to prevent detrimental behaviors that arise as a result of “fake news.”.

The principles of classical and quantum holography are used to develop the theoretical basis for a non-phonemic method of detecting membership in secret social groups, such as cults, criminal gangs, drug cartels, and terrorist cells. Grounded in the basic sociological premise that every group develops a distinctive sociocultural order, the theory postulates that the primary features of a group's collective identity will be encoded, via a multilevel socio-psycho-physiological process, into the field of bio-emotional relations connecting group members. The principles (...) of classical holography (Gabor 1948) are used to describe how this information is recorded in the members' brains and communicated in interaction by a holographic-like process as a tacit signature of group affiliation —a constancy in group-related interactions. It is hypothesized that the identity signature is enfolded as a hologram in the energy spectra of vocal interactions among group members. The principles of quantum holography (Gabor 1946) are used to provide a description of the group's ongoing interactions as a dynamic process—a continuous, quantized series of snapshots (quantum holograms). Linked together, two forms of holography provide a model of how the group's collective identity evolves and is communicated over time to its members, as the group adapts to the ever-changing reality of its endogenous and exogenous circumstances. Using spectral analysis techniques, it should be possible to detect the group's identity signature in the recordings of relatively small samples of vocal interactions. In clandestine groups, the effort to remain hidden actually enhances the signal strength of the identity signature. It is predicted, therefore, that detection of unknown members can be achieved by using the spectral commonality identified in the analysis of recordings of vocal interactions among known members as a reference signature for comparison with those of the vocal spectra of suspected or potential members. (shrink)

I advocate the use of small group learning in the philosophy classroom because it engages a broad cross-section of students and because it proves to be an effective way to teach critical thinking. In this article, I suggest small group activities that are useful for developing philosophical skills, and I propose methods for circumventing common logistical problems that can arise when implementing small group learning in the classroom. Ultimately, I show that small group learning is a (...) pedagogically powerful and logistically feasible supplement to traditional teaching methods. (shrink)

This study examines interactions in which students help each other with their learning during classroom instruction, forming groups in the process. From a conversation analytic perspective, helping is assumed to be a sequentially organized activity jointly accomplished by the participants. As an activity that proceeds alongside other ongoing classroom activities, helping can be conceived as part of a multiactivity that poses students with multi-faceted interactional and moral challenges. While previous research on helping in educational contexts has primarily focused on (...) the influence of helping on learning outcomes and social dynamics in helping interactions, the present study investigates how students cope with the intricacies of moral commitments inherent in helping as a concurrent activity. The aim of this paper is two-fold. First, we aim to elaborate on how students’ dual involvements – i.e., their involvement in classroom activities while simultaneously providing help – manifest in the ways in which groups are constituted, maintained, and dissolved. The analyses reveal that both the compatibility of helping with the activity already in progress as well as the students’ problem definition are consequential for the sequential and bodily-spatial unfolding of the help interaction, inducing different arrangements that constitute a continuum, at each end of which there is a dominant orientation toward the shared space of helping or toward the individual/collective space. Furthermore, from a methodological perspective, our study aims to demonstrate the extent to which multimodal interaction analysis is applicable when examining naturally occurring groups, in this case, in interactive processes of helping. The study is based on a data corpus that comprises video recordings of mathematics and German lessons from two fifth-grade classrooms. (shrink)

BackgroundThe potential contribution of community engagement to addressing ethical challenges for international biomedical research is well described, but there is relatively little documented experience of community engagement to inform its development in practice. This paper draws on experiences around community engagement and informed consent during a genetic cohort study in Kenya to contribute to understanding the strengths and challenges of community engagement in supporting ethical research practice, focusing on issues of communication, the role of field workers in 'doing ethics' (...) on the ground and the challenges of community consultation.MethodsThe findings are based on action research methods, including analysis of community engagement documentation and the observations of the authors closely involved in their development and implementation. Qualitative and quantitative content analysis has been used for documentation of staff meetings and trainings, a meeting with 24 community leaders, and 40 large public and 70 small community group meetings. Meeting minutes from a purposive sample of six community representative groups have been analysed using a thematic framework approach.ResultsField workers described challenges around misunderstandings about research, perceived pressure for recruitment and challenges in explaining the study. During consultation, leaders expressed support for the study and screening for sickle cell disease. In community meetings, there was a common interpretation of research as medical care. Concerns centred on unfamiliar procedures. After explanations of study procedures to leaders and community members, few questions were asked about export of samples or the archiving of samples for future research.ConclusionsCommunity engagement enabled researchers to take account of staff and community opinions and issues during the study and adapt messages and methods to address emerging ethical challenges. Field workers conducting informed consent faced complex issues and their understanding, attitudes and communication skills were key influences on ethical practice. Community consultation was a challenging concept to put into practice, illustrating the complexity of assessing information needs and levels of deliberation that are appropriate to a given study. (shrink)

By convening a multidisciplinary team(the Monitoring Team) that included farmers,university and agency researchers, andnon-profit staff; a small group of farmers insoutheast Minnesota, U.S.A., bolstered thelegitimacy of the sustainable agriculturemovement. Through the experience of forming ateam and working with individuals who operatedwithin the mainstream knowledge paradigm,farmers gained validation of their knowledgeabout farming, while researchers came to valuealternative knowledge systems. In the contextof a socially embedded movement, farmers wereempowered by sharing their knowledge withresearchers, and ultimately contributed to thesustainable agriculture movement by (...) challengingtraditional patterns of knowledge exchange. (shrink)

Medical ethics prohibits caregivers from discriminating and providing preferential care to their compatriots and comrades. In military medicine, particularly during war and when resources may be scarce, ethical principles may dictate priority care for compatriot soldiers. The principle of nondiscrimination is central to utilitarian and deontological theories of justice, but communitarianism and the ethics of care and friendship stipulate a different set of duties for community members, friends, and family. Similar duties exist among the small cohesive groups that (...) typify many military units. When members of these groups require medical care, there are sometimes moral grounds to treat compatriot soldiers ahead of enemy or allied soldiers regardless of the severity of their respective wounds. (shrink)

Dense pairs of geometric topological fields have tame open core, that is, every definable open subset in the pair is already definable in the reduct. We fix a minor gap in the published version of van den Dries's seminal work on dense pairs of o-minimal groups, and show that every definable unary function in a dense pair of geometric topological fields agrees with a definable function in the reduct, off a small definable subset, that is, a definable set (...) internal to the predicate. For certain dense pairs of geometric topological fields without the independence property, whenever the underlying set of a definable group is contained in the dense-codense predicate, the group law is locally definable in the reduct as a geometric topological field. If the reduct has elimination of imaginaries, we extend this result, up to interdefinability, to all groups internal to the predicate. (shrink)

Despite the reservations of many, digital spaces are useful and are here to stay. Most of us have witnessed that usefulness in action over the last two years, since the outbreak of COVID-19, and ma...