Global health conceives the notion of partnership between North and South as central to the foundations of this academic field. Indeed, global health aspires to an equal positioning of Northern and Southern actors. While the notion of partnership may be used to position the field of global health morally, this politicization may mask persisting inequalities in global health. In this paper, we reflect on global health partnerships by revisiting the origins of global health and deconstructing the notion of partnership. We (...) also review promising initiatives that may help to rebalance the relationship. Historical accounts are helpful in unpacking the genesis of collaborative research between Northerners and Southerners – particularly those coming from the African continent. In the 1980s, the creation of a scientific hub of working relationships based on material differences created a context that was bound to create tensions between the alleged “partners”. Today, partnerships provide assistance to underfunded African research institutions, but this assistance is often tied with hypotheses about program priorities that Northern funders require from their Southern collaborators. African researchers are often unable to lead or contribute substantially to publications for lack of scientific writing skills, for instance. Conversely, academics from African countries report frustrations at not being consulted when the main conceptual issues of a research project are discussed. However, in the name of political correctness, these frustrations are not spoken aloud. Fortunately, initiatives that shift paternalistic programs to formally incorporate a mutually beneficial design at their inception with equal input from all stakeholders are becoming increasingly prominent, especially initiatives involving young researchers. Several concrete steps can be undertaken to rethink partnerships. This goes hand in hand with reconceptualizing global health as an academic discipline, mainly through being explicit about past and present inequalities between Northern and Southern universities that this discipline has thus far eluded. Authentic and transformative partnerships are vital to overcome the one-sided nature of many partnerships that can provide a breeding-ground for inequality. (shrink)

Conflicting demands of love and justice are among the most vexing problems of social philosophy, moral theology, and public policy. They often have life-and-death consequences for millions. This book examines how and why love-justice conflicts arise to begin with and what we can do to reconcile their competing claims.

En la literatura publicada a lo largo del siglo XX y lo que va del XXI encontramos de manera constante lo que podemos denominar una serie literaria sobre el tema de la homosexualidad. La historia literaria costarricense muestra, en los inicios del siglo XX, el caso de Jenaro Cardona, de manera particular con La esfinge del sendero (1914). Más adelante, apenas pasada la primera mitad de siglo, encontramos el caso de José León Sánchez con La isla de los hombre solos (...) (1963), en donde la homosexualidad es presentada como parte de los arrebatosy de la violencia carcelaria.Teníamos que llegar a las últimas décadas del siglo pasado para que, de alusiones que marginalizaban aún más todo lo que tuviera que ver con la sexualidad, se pasara a una nueva manera de comenzar a sacar del closet literario, ya no solo el tema de la homosexualidad, sino en general el de la sexualidad misma. El valor enunciativo de la publicación de esta literatura plantea una relectura del Estado costarricense mismo y del papel de sus instituciones. De ahí la significación de ese gesto fundante y provocador, producto de esta nueva serie de textos en la Costa Rica contemporánea, de una manera como no había sucedido antes en el país. (shrink)

In the development of Roman Catholic social thought from the teachings of the scholastics to the modern social encyclicals, changes in normative economics reflect the transformation of an economic terrain from its feudal roots to the modern industrial economy. The preeminence accorded by the modern market to the allocative over the distributive function of price broke the convenient convergence of commutative and distributive justice in scholastic just price theory. Furthermore, the loss of custom, law, and usage in defining the boundaries (...) of economic behavior led to a depersonalization of economic relationships that had previously provided effective informal means of protecting individual well-being. Hence, recent economic ethics has had to look for nonprice, nonmarket mechanisms for distributive justice. This is reflected, for example, in the shift in attitude from the medieval antipathy toward unions to the contemporary defense of organized labor on moral grounds. (shrink)

The marketplace is a remarkable social institution that has greatly extended our reach so shoppers in the West can now buy fresh-cut flowers, vegetables, and tropical fruits grown halfway across the globe even in the depths of winter. However, these expanded choices have also come with considerable moral responsibilities as our economic decisions can have far-reaching effects by either ennobling or debasing human lives. Albino Barrera examines our own moral responsibilities for the distant harms of our market transactions from (...) a Christian viewpoint, identifying how the market's division of labour makes us unwitting collaborators in others' wrongdoing and in collective ills. His important account covers a range of different subjects, including law, economics, philosophy, and theology, in order to identify the injurious ripple effects of our market activities. (shrink)

Qu'est-ce qui relie, dans les tréfonds de notre être-au-monde, les entreprises créatives de la musique et des mathématiques? Qu'est-ce qui fait des mathématiques une musique des nombres et de la musique une mathématique des sons? Cet ouvrage essaye de répondre à ces questions. Prenant son départ dans la phénoménologie de l'acte créatif, l'analyse atteint la région où la phénoménologie touche la dimension du symbolique. C'est la volonté de rester dans ce no man's land, là où les dimensions du phénoménologique et (...) du symbolique s'entrecroisent et se mélangent, qui permet d'apercevoir la place où chaque homme impliqué dans l'activité créatrice trouve ses moyens et ses limites. La constitution d'un espace-temps qui est, en même temps, mathématique et musical, est le centre de cette entreprise. Le milieu où le musical et le mathématique se transforment et se confondent l'un dans l'autre devient alors le lieu où l'analyse peut étudier des objets qui ne sont pas complètement donnés, des objets qui demeurent in fieri. Ces constitutions partielles, toujours sur le point de se condenser en produits de la langue logique ou de disparaître dans une sorte de babillage créatif, assurent la tenue et la possibilité des institutions symboliques des mathématiques et de la musique. Mais surtout ces objets assurent l'étrange capacité de ces deux institutions symboliques : la capacité de se nourrir et de proliférer mystérieusement de et sur elles-mêmes, en y trouvant les raisons de leur futur. (shrink)

Rooted in a reasoned understanding of what it is to be a human being in community, Catholic social principles are accessible to a pluralistic, even secular, audience. Instead of being used separately in an ad hoc manner, these principles can be applied as a single analytical framework in examining ethical questions. Doing so allows the manifold dimensions of social problems to surface. The paper applies this framework on the issue of whether currency markets ought to be taxed in order to (...) deter speculation. (shrink)

Markets can often be harsh in compelling people to make unpalatable economic choices any reasonable person would not take under normal conditions. Thus, workers laid off in mid-career accept lower-paid jobs that are beneath their professional experience for want of better alternatives. Economic migrants leave their families and cross borders in search of a livelihood. These are examples of economic compulsion. These economic ripple effects have been virtually ignored in ethical discourse because they are generally accepted to be the very (...) mechanisms that generate the market's much-touted allocative efficiency. Albino Barrera argues that Christian thought on economic security offers an effective framework within which to address the consequences of economic compulsion. (shrink)

The United States, Europe and Japan provide farm subsidies at a rate of one billion USD per day. The bulk of this is captured by large corporate entities. Damage to less developed countries is extensive and deep. Besides the farmers who are harmed because of the resulting lower agricultural prices, these negative effects ripple through the rest of the economy, due to the central importance of the agricultural sector for developing nations. Besides being direct beneficiaries of these subsidies, farming corporations, (...) including their ancillary support industries, have lobbied heavily to resist the growing international clamor to remove or at least substantially alter thesesubsidies. This paper examines the economics and ethics of international corporate responsibility on the issue of farm subsidies. (shrink)

What is the appropriate criterion to use for distributive justice? Is it efficiency, need, contribution, entitlement, equality, effort, or ability? Globalization and Economic Ethics maintains that far from being rival principles of distributive justice, efficiency and need satisfaction are, in fact, complementary norms in our emerging knowledge economy. After all, human capital plays the central role in effecting and sustaining long-term efficiency in the Digital Age. This book explores the vital link between human capital formation and allocative efficiency using the (...) properties of the market and the knowledge economy as analytical tools. (shrink)

O presente artigo apresenta os principais resultados do projeto de pesquisa “Mídia Cidadã e Desenvolvimento Sustentável: mapeamento e análise de rádios comunitárias em áreas de pressão socioambiental na Amazônia”, que busca entender a dimensão e o papel potencial das rádios comunitárias nos embates discursivos pelo desenvolvimento da região amazônica. O objeto da investigação são rádios comunitárias situadas em áreas de potencial conflito socioambiental na Amazônia Legal, o que inclui disputas por território ou pelo uso de recursos naturais, considerando-se grandes obras (...) de impacto, mas também Unidades de Conservação e Terras Indígenas nos noves estados da região. Como produto central do projeto foi gerada uma cartografia digital sobre comunicação cidadã e desenvolvimento sustentável na região, na perspectiva de gerar insumos para o fortalecimento da comunicação comunitária como espaço de contra-hegemonia midiática e consequente empoderamento de grupos locais nas decisões que afetem seu bem-estar. (shrink)

RESUMO: nas últimas décadas, a temática da consciência tem atraído atenção de pesquisadores em filosofia da mente, e em diversas disciplinas científicas e tecnológicas. O objetivo desta pesquisa foi realizar uma revisão das principais escalas e métodos de avaliação do nível de consciência utilizados na área da saúde, no âmbito internacional, tendo em vista responder a indagações que emergem no contexto da prática dos profissionais de saúde. O procedimento metodológico consistiu em adotar o Monismo de Duplo Aspecto e o Monismo (...) Reflexivo como referencial teórico, e levantar os principais procedimentos relativos à avaliação do nível de consciência na área de saúde, para então discutir se aborda o fenômeno de modo conceitualmente apropriado. Concluímos que os critérios utilizados pelas escalas de avaliação do nível de consciência e pelas escalas de profundidade anestésica avaliam possibilidades de ocorrência da experiência consciente. (shrink)

In his celebrated_ Essay on Population_, Thomas Malthus raised the puzzle of why a benevolent Creator would permit material scarcity in human existence. Albino Barrera revisits this question using Thomas Aquinas’s metaphysics of participation and Sacred Scripture’s invitation to covenant fidelity and kingdom discipleship as analytical lenses with which to examine the seeming incongruity of scarcity in God’s providence. Barrera concludes that scarcity turns out to be a signal opportunity for economic agency to receive, internalize, and communicate God’s goodness (...) and righteousness within the human community. Written for theologians, philosophers, social scientists, and policymakers interested in the theological and philosophical foundations of economics, this study argues that precarious, subsistence living is not an immutable law of nature. Rather, such a chronic, dismal condition reflects personal and collective moral failure. In this carefully researched study, Barrera argues that scarcity serves as an occasion for God to provide for us through each other and that there are strong metaphysical and scriptural warrants for enacting progressive social policies for a better sharing of the goods of the earth. "This is a very big, very important work that takes up a large and urgent issue and follows it through with vigorous, meticulous study." —_Walter Brueggemann, Columbia Theological Seminary_ "Professor Barrera addresses an important theological question: 'Why would a benevolent God create a world of material scarcity with all the suffering accompanying this fact?' He goes beyond answering this question by showing that the sacrifices demanded to deal with the challenge of scarcity create virtues and situations that are deeply Christian. Barrera's well-written, jargon-free book will capture the attention of anyone interested in this topic." —_Wilfried Ver Eecke, Georgetown University_. (shrink)

One of the main challenges in medicine is to guarantee an appropriate drug supply according to the real needs of patients. Closed-loop strategies have been widely used to develop automatic solutions based on feedback variables. However, when the variable of interest cannot be directly measured or there is a lack of knowledge behind the process, it turns into a difficult issue to solve. In this research, a novel algorithm to approach this problem is presented. The main objective of this study (...) is to provide a new general algorithm capable of determining the influence of a certain clinical variable in the decision making process for drug supply and then defining an automatic system able to guide the process considering this information. Thus, this new technique will provide a way to validate a given physiological signal as a feedback variable for drug titration. In addition, the result of the algorithm in terms of fuzzy rules and membership functions will define a fuzzy-based decision system for the drug delivery process. The method proposed is based on a Fuzzy Inference System whose structure is obtained through a decision tree algorithm. A four-step methodology is then developed: data collection, preprocessing, Fuzzy Inference System generation, and the validation of results. To test this methodology, the analgesia control scenario was analysed. Specifically, the viability of the Analgesia Nociception Index as a guiding variable for the analgesic process during surgical interventions was studied. Real data was obtained from fifteen patients undergoing cholecystectomy surgery. (shrink)

A large part of technological advances, especially in the field of industry, have been focused on the optimization of productive processes. However, the detection of anomalies has turned out to be a great challenge in fields like industry, medicine or stock markets. The present work addresses anomaly detection on a control level plant. We propose the application of different intelligent techniques, which allow to obtain one-class classifiers using real data taken from the correct plant operation. The performance of each classifier (...) is assessed and validated with real created faults, achieving successful overall results. (shrink)

This article examines the role of social media and journalistic media in presidential electoral processes. A systematic review of scientific articles published from 2012 to 2022 was conducted. The results indicate that the media has a significant influence on public perception and the political agenda during election campaigns. Furthermore, the importance of evaluating political leaders in the voters' decision-making process is emphasized. In summary, the article provides valuable insights into how the media can shape the narrative and public opinion during (...) presidential elections. (shrink)