To enhance the treatment of relations in biomedical ontologies we advance a methodology for providing consistent and unambiguous formal definitions of the relational expressions used in such ontologies in a way designed to assist developers and users in avoiding errors in coding and annotation. The resulting Relation Ontology can promote interoperability of ontologies and support new types of automated reasoning about the spatial and temporal dimensions of biological and medical phenomena.

I examine social capital’s impact on financial reports. Based on the social capital literature, I predict that the quality of the financial reports is higher when a firm is headquartered in a region with high social capital. Consistent with this prediction, I find that the firms that are headquartered in this type of region in the USA have a lower probability of committing fraud by misrepresenting financial information. Further, I find that the firms in regions with high social capital have (...) lower levels of discretionary accruals and much more readable annual reports. (shrink)

Anand Pandian: Crooked Stalks Cultivating Virtue in South India Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-2 DOI 10.1007/s10806-011-9308-4 Authors A. Whitney Sanford, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL USA Journal Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics Online ISSN 1573-322X Print ISSN 1187-7863.

This volume provides an overview of issues arising in work on the foundations of decision theory and social choice. The collection will be of particular value to researchers in economics with interests in utility or welfare, but also to any social scientist or philosopher interested in theories of rationality or group decision-making.

Reflections on certain religious issues; particularly with reference to India.

Many medicines currently available on the market are simply too expensive for millions around the world to afford. Many medicines available in the developing world are only available to a small percentage of the population due to economic inequities. The profit-seeking behavior of pharmaceutical companies exacerbates this problem. In most cases, the price reductions required to make drugs affordable to a broader class of people in the developing world are not offset by the resultant increase in sales volume. Simply stated, (...) in most of the developing world, it is more profitable to sell drugs to the very wealthy at high prices than it is to sell cheaper drugs to a greater number of people. As a result, medicines remain unaffordable for the vast majority of people in many parts of the world. While this might be an acceptable outcome for certain commodities, such as luxury goods, it is completely unacceptable for life-saving medicines. Therefore, in order to effectively address the global lack of access to medicines, the role pharmaceutical companies play in the international intellectual property regime must be critically examined. (shrink)

Approximately two billion people lack access to medicines globally. People living with HIV, cancer patients, those suffering from tuberculosis or malaria, and other populations in desperate need of life-saving medicines are increasingly unable to access existing preventative, curative, and life-prolonging treatments. In many cases, treatment may be unavailable or inaccessible for even some of the most common and readily treatable health concerns, such as hypertension. In the developing world, many of the factors that contribute to making the world’s most vulnerable (...) and marginalized populations particularly susceptible to illness also operate to restrict their access to medicines. As a result of dramatic economic inequities and widespread poverty, it is not profitable for most originator pharmaceutical companies to develop new medicines for sale in developing markets or to lower the cost of existing drugs so that they are affordable for the majority of these populations. (shrink)

The Unified Medical Language System and the Gene Ontology are among the most widely used terminology resources in the biomedical domain. However, when we evaluate them in the light of simple principles for wellconstructed ontologies we find a number of characteristic inadequacies. Employing the theory of granular partitions, a new approach to the understanding of ontologies and of the relationships ontologies bear to instances in reality, we provide an application of this theory in relation to an example drawn from the (...) context of the pathophysiology of hypertension. This exercise is designed to demonstrate how, by taking ontological principles into account we can create more realistic biomedical ontologies which will also bring advantages in terms of efficiency and robustness of associated software applications. (shrink)

Images are an important source of data and information in the agricultural sciences. The use of image-processing techniques has outstanding implications for the analysis of agricultural operations. Fruit and vegetable classification is one of the major applications that can be utilized in supermarkets to automatically detect the kinds of fruits or vegetables purchased by customers and to determine the appropriate price for the produce. Training on-site is the underlying prerequisite for this type of arrangement, which is generally caused by the (...) users having little or no expert knowledge. We explored various methods used in addressing fruit and vegetable classification and in recognizing fruit disease problems. We surveyed image-processing approaches used for fruit disease detection, segmentation and classification. We also compared the performance of state-of-the-art methods under two scenarios, i.e., fruit and vegetable classification and fruit disease classification. The methods surveyed in this paper are able to distinguish among different kinds of fruits and their diseases that are very alike in color and texture. (shrink)

Sen’s capabilities approach offers a radical generalisation of the conventional approach to welfare economics. It has been highly influential in development and many researchers are now beginning to explore its implications for health care. This paper contributes to the emerging debate by discussing two examples of such applications: first, at the individual decision making level, namely the right to die, and second, at the social choice level. For the first application, which draws on Nussbaum’s list of capabilities, it is argued (...) that many capabilities are ambiguously or indirectly related to the right to die, but the ability to form a concept of the good life and plan one’s own life provides a direct justification for such a right. In the second application, the focus is specifically on healthcare rationing and it is argued that, although not committed to age based rationing, the capabilities approach provides a more natural justification of age related access to health care than the fair innings argument, which is often used to justify the alleged ageism inherent in quality adjusted life years maximisation. (shrink)

_Disaster Psychiatry: Intervening When Nightmares Come True_ captures the state of disaster psychiatry in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. This emergent psychiatric specialty, which is increasingly separated from trauma and grief psychiatry on one hand and military psychiatry on the other, provides psychotherapeutic assistance to victims during, and in the weeks and months following, major disasters. As such, disaster psychiatrists must operate in the widely varying locales in which natural and man-made disasters occur, and they (...) must establish their role among the chaotic array of organizations involved in direct disaster response. Editors Anand Pandya and Craig Katz have captured the challenge and promise of disaster psychiatry through first-person narratives. We hear from psychiatrists who have encountered disasters at various stages of their career and in widely varying social, political, and personal contexts. Accounts of psychiatric involvement with adults and children during and after 9/11 have understandable pride of place in this collection. But they are balanced by richly informative narratives about other domestic and international disasters. Fraught with the drama attendant to the events they describe, these essays delineate the dizzying array of challenges that confront the disaster psychiatrist. They range from the intense emotional responses that are part of the aftermath of any disaster, to the need to legitimize a psychiatric presence within diverse cultural and medical contexts, to the subtle task of providing therapeutic boundaries at a time when all rules seem to be suspended. Special attention is given to the daunting task of working with children whose parents' are disaster victims. What emerges from these testimonies is compelling documentation of skilled and compassionate psychiatrists at the outer limits of their specialty, pursuing their calling into uncharted realms of therapeutic engagement. (shrink)

There are three theories in the epistemology of modality that have received sustained attention over the past 20 years: conceivability-theory, counterfactual-theory, and deduction-theory. In this paper we argue that all three face what we call the problem of modal epistemic friction. One consequence of the problem is that for any of the three accounts to yield modal knowledge, the account must provide an epistemology of essence. We discuss an attempt to fend off the problem within the context of the internalism (...) versus externalism debate about epistemic justification. We then investigate the effects that the PMEF has on reductive and non-reductive theories of the relation between essence and modality. (shrink)

"A rough spade for a rugged landscape" : on savage selves and more civil places -- "What remains of the harvest when the fence grazes the crop?" : on the proper violence of agrarian citizenship -- "The life of the thief leaves the belly always boiling" : on the nature and restraint of the criminal animal -- "Millets sown yield millets, evil sown yields evil" : on the moral returns of agrarian toil -- "Let the water for the paddy also (...) irrigate the grass" : on the sympathies of an aqueous self. (shrink)

Ancient and modern cosmopolitanisms -- The rise of economic individualism and the development of the commercial community -- Martha Nussbaum and the individual at the center: liberties and capabilities, theory and practice -- Jürgen Habermas and the individual in community: freedom and responsibility in the nation-state -- David Held: freedom and accountability beyond the nation-state -- Cosmopolitan virtues for a modern world -- Cosmopolitanism law -- Conclusion: our futures, together.

This study was conducted to gain opinions about euthanasia from nurses who work in intensive care units. The research was planned as a descriptive study and conducted with 186 nurses who worked in intensive care units in a university hospital, a public hospital, and a private not-for-profit hospital in Adana, Turkey, and who agreed to complete a questionnaire. Euthanasia is not legal in Turkey. One third (33.9%) of the nurses supported the legalization of euthanasia, whereas 39.8% did not. In some (...) specific circumstances, 44.1% of the nurses thought that euthanasia was being practiced in our country. The most significant finding was that these Turkish intensive care unit nurses did not overwhelmingly support the legalization of euthanasia. Those who did support it were inclined to agree with passive rather than active euthanasia (P = 0.011). (shrink)

The intended beneficiaries of the Norwegian Oil Fund are current and future generations of Norwegians, with the interests of current generations served through the expenditure of revenues on public...

The hard problem of consciousness arises in most incarnations of present day physicalism. Why should certain physical processes necessarily be accompanied by experience? One possible response is that physicalism itself should be modified in order to accommodate experience: But, modified how? In the present work, we investigate whether an ontology derived from quantum field theory can help resolve the hard problem. We begin with the assumption that experience cannot exist without being accompanied by a subject of experience (SoE). While people (...) well versed in Indian philosophy will not find that statement problematic, it is still controversial in the analytic tradition. Luckily for us, Strawson has elaborately defended the notion of a thin subject—an SoE which exhibits a phenomenal unity with different types of content (sensations, thoughts etc.) occurring during its temporal existence. Next, following Stoljar, we invoke our ignorance of the true physical as the reason for the explanatory gap between present day physical processes (events, properties) and experience. We are therefore permitted to conceive of thin subjects as related to the physical via a new, yet to be elaborated relation. While this is difficult to conceive under most varieties of classical physics, we argue that this may not be the case under certain quantum field theory ontologies. We suggest that the relation binding an SoE to the physical is akin to the relation between a particle and (quantum) field. In quantum field theory, a particle is conceived as a coherent excitation of a field. Under the right set of circumstances, a particle coalesces out of a field and dissipates. We suggest that an SoE can be conceived as akin to a particle—a SelfOn—which coalesces out of physical fields, persists for a brief period of time and then dissipates in a manner similar to the phenomenology of a thin subject. Experiences are physical properties of selfons with the constraint (specified by a similarity metric) that selfons belonging to the same natural kind will have similar experiences. While it is odd at first glance to conceive of subjects of experience as akin to particles, the spatial and temporal unity exhibited by particles as opposed to fields and the expectation that selfons are new kinds of particles, paves the way for cementing this notion. Next, we detail the various no-go theorems in most versions of quantum field theory and discuss their impact on the existence of selfons. Finally, we argue that the time is ripe for a rejuvenated Indian philosophy to begin tackling the three-way relationship between SoEs (which may become equivalent to jivas in certain Indian frameworks), phenomenal content and the physical world. With analytic philosophy still struggling to come to terms with the complex worlds of quantum field theory and with the relative inexperience of the western world in arguing the jiva-world relation, there is a clear and present opportunity for Indian philosophy to make a worldcentric contribution to the hard problem of experience. (shrink)

Recently, Kit Fine's (1994) view that modal truths aretrue in virtue of,grounded in, orexplained byessentialist truths has been under attack. In what follows we offer two responses to the wave of criticism against his view. While the first response is pretty straightforward, the second is based on the distinction between, what we call,Reductive Finean EssentialismandNon-Reductive Finean Essentialism. Engaging the work of Bob Hale onNon-Reductive Finean Essentialism, we aim to show that the arguments against Fine's view are unconvincing, while we acknowledge (...) the presence of a deep standoff between the two views. (shrink)

Breaking from prevailing conceptions of ethics and morality as matters of moral rule or principle, this volume calls attention to ethical life in South Asia—the moral dispositions at work in lived experience, and the embodied practices of ethical engagement through which such dispositions may be cultivated and shared. Taking up themes such as the transmission of tradition, ethical engagements with modernity, ethical practices of the self, and moral relations between self and others, this volume puts South Asian traditions of ethical (...) life into conversation with the Aristotelian, Christian, and liberal traditions that have been so consequential for ethical life in the West. (shrink)

This is an in-depth review of "The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience" by Francisco Varela, Evan Thompson and Eleanor Rosch.

ABSTRACTApproach-avoidance training has been shown to be effective in both clinical and laboratory research. However, some studies have failed to show the effects of AAT. Therefore, finding m...

This study sought to identify content on the federal budget, national debt, and budget deficit in the 12 most commonly used high school and college-leveleconomics textbooks. Our systematic review of these sources leads to two key findings: (1) Textbooks are similar in how they represent fiscal policy yet treatthe federal budget, deficit, and debt differently across the sample, and (2) Textbooks treat the federal budget, budget deficit, and national debt as theoretical, without an examination of values and systemic electoral and (...) budgetary politics. These findings lead us to argue that curriculum is needed that will permit a careful examination of how everyday citizens can gain knowledge, acknowledge values, and work towards a reasoned and realitybased view of what is at stake with regard to these issues in the 21st Century. (shrink)

We provide a methodology for the creation of ontological partitions in biomedicine and we test the methodology via an application to the phenomenon of blood pressure. An ontology of blood pressure must do justice to the complex networks of intersecting pathways in the organism by which blood pressure is regulated. To this end it must deal not only with the anatomical structures and physiological processes involved in such regulation but also with the relations between these at different levels of granularity. (...) For this purpose our ontology offers a variety of distinct partitions � of substances, processes and functions � and integrates these together within a single framework via transitive networks of part-whole and dependence relations among the entities in each of these categories. The paper concludes with a comparison of this methodology with the approaches of GOTM, KEGG, DIP and BIND and provides an outline of how the methodology is currently being applied in the field of biomedical database integration. (shrink)

Research work on Buddhist philosophy and doctrines.

Introduction: An ethnographer among the anthropologists -- The world at hand: between scientific and literary inquiry -- A method of experience: reading, writing, teaching, fieldwork -- For the humanity yet to come: politics, art, fiction, ethnography -- Coda: The anthropologist as critic.

The National Cancer Institute’s Thesaurus (NCIT) has been created with the goal of providing a controlled vocabulary which can be used by specialists in the various sub-domains of oncology. It is intended to be used for purposes of annotation in ways designed to ensure the integration of data and information deriving from these various sub-domains, and thus to support more powerful cross-domain inferences. In order to evaluate its suitability for this purpose, we examined the NCIT’s treatment of the kinds of (...) entities which are fundamental to an ontology of colon carcinoma. We here describe the problems we uncovered concerning classification, synonymy, relations and definitions, and we draw conclusions for the work needed to establish the NCIT as a reference ontology for the cancer domain in the future. (shrink)

Comparative study of the negative theory of meaning (Apohavāda) in Mimamasa philosophy and Buddhist logic.

Contributed articles on eighteen Indic philosophers and grammarians flourishing between 400 B.C. to 1600 A.D.