As Jan Christoph Bublitz (2024) rightly notes, the first international declaration on neurotechnologies and human rights would set the tone for further international and domestic regulations. For t...

Ubiquitous healthcare is an emerging area of technology that uses a large number of environmental and patient sensors and actuators to monitor and improve patients' physical and mental condition. Tiny sensors gather data on almost any physiological characteristic that can be used to diagnose health problems. This technology faces some challenging ethical questions, ranging from the small-scale individual issues of trust and efficacy to the societal issues of health and longevity gaps related to economic status. It presents particular problems in (...) combining developing computer/information/media ethics with established medical ethics. This article describes a practice-based ethics approach, considering in particular the areas of privacy, agency, equity and liability. It raises questions that ubiquitous healthcare will force practitioners to face as they develop ubiquitous healthcare systems. Medicine is a controlled profession whose practise is commonly restricted by government-appointed authorities, whereas computer software and hardware development is notoriously lacking in such regimes. (shrink)

To decode the function and molecular recognition of several recently discovered cytosine derivatives in the human genome – 5-hydroxymethylcytosine, 5-formylcytosine, and 5-carboxylcytosine – a detailed understanding of their effects on the structural, chemical, and biophysical properties of DNA is essential. Here, we review recent literature in this area, with particular emphasis on features that have been proposed to enable the specific recognition of modified cytosine bases by DNA-binding proteins. These include electronic factors, modulation of base-pair stability, flexibility, and radical changes (...) in duplex conformation. We explore these proposals and assess whether or not they are supported by current biophysical data. This analysis is focused primarily on the properties of epigenetically modified DNA itself, which provides a basis for discussion of the mechanisms of recognition by different proteins. 5-hydroxymethylcytosine, 5-formylcytosine, and 5-carboxylcytosine have recently been discovered in mammalian DNA and appear to have essential regulatory roles. Here, we summarize recent investigations into their effects on the structural, chemical, and biophysical properties of DNA, an understanding of which is essential to decoding their behavior in the genome. (shrink)

This study examines how heightened expectations of board responsibility and accountability affect the socio-cognitive decision-making of boards and their collective task performance. Using data from the directors of 60 boards who served before and after the enactment of Sarbanes–Oxley, this study provides insight into the potential negative impact that this tightened accountability environment can have on a board’s task performance. Examining several socio-cognitive elements of board decision-making, board authority is found to have a positive main effect on board task performance, (...) while relative CEO power and affective conflict have curvilinear relationships with board task performance. Cohesiveness also moderates the relationship between a board’s perceived uncertainty and affective conflict with board task performance. In sum, the model shows how a new era of director accountability can affect the social cognitions of board decision-making that underlie board task performance. (shrink)

This Special Issue commemorates the 60th anniversary of Business & Society with nine rigorous literature reviews that address important societal problems and provide opportunities for theory development in the business and society field; in this introduction we present an overview of the Special Issue. With the theme “Building on Its Past,” the nine articles address a host of contemporary issues, including climate change, wicked problems, business and human rights, human health, certifications standards, the governance of artificial intelligence, stakeholder engagement, stakeholder (...) theory, and corporate political activity. Together, these reviews offer a wealth of suggested themes, theories and approaches that can drive our research forward for the next decades in business and society research and practice. Using the lens of a miner-prospector continuum to categorize the diversity of articles within this special issue, a common theme emerges across the portfolio of reviews: they all call for a more systemic and integrative perspective toward studying the complex interactions that link business and society actors and issues. Building on these findings, we encourage future scholars to fill long-standing researched gaps through a more open systems approach, which supports both contextually sensitive and multi-level and multi-disciplinary approaches to address grand societal challenges. We conclude with specific suggestions as to how business and society scholars might use an open systems approach, including embracing methodologies to address complex causal pathways, theorizing with a view towards spanning external and internal elements of an organization, and reflecting on the temporal and spatial dynamics of complex systems. (shrink)

Understanding how chemical energy is converted into directed movement is a fundamental problem in biology. In higher organisms this is accomplished through the hydrolysis of ATP by three families of motor proteins: myosin, dynein and kinesin. The most abundant of these is myosin, which operates against actin and plays a central role in muscle contraction. As summarized here, great progress has been made towards understanding the molecular basis of movement through the determination of the three‐dimensional structures of myosin and actin (...) and through the establishment of systems for site‐directed mutagenesis of this motor protein. It now appears that the generation of movement is coupled to ATP hydrolysis by a series of domain movements within myosin. (shrink)

Three claims about what makes a theory “physically complete” are (1) Shimony's assertion that a complete theory says “all there is to say” about nature; (2) EPR's requirement that a complete theory describe all “elements of reality”; and (3) Ballentine and Jarrett's claim that a “predictively complete” theory must obey a condition used in Bell deviations. After introducing “statistical completeness” as a partial formalization of (1), we explore the logical and motivational relationships connecting these completeness conditions. We find that statistical (...) completeness motivates but does not imply Jarrett's completeness condition, because Jarrett's condition encodes further intuitions about locality and causality. We also dispute Ballentine and Jarrett's claim that EPR-completeness implies Jarrett's completeness condition. (shrink)

This volume brings together works written by international theorists since the fall of the Berlin Wall, showing how today's crisis-ridden global capitalism is making Marxist theory more relevant and necessary than ever. This collection of key texts by prominent and lesser-known thinkers from Latin America, Asia, Africa, America, and Europe showcases an area of scholarly analysis whose impact on academic and popular discourses as well as political action will only grow in the coming years. It reflects today's sense of planetary (...) eco-emergency and a heightened interest in political economy that follows discontentment with the growing inequalities in the West and the unequal nature of development in the "global South." The work is organized thematically, with sections covering the present historical conjuncture, the contemporary shapes of the social, philosophical concepts, theories of culture, and the status of the political today. This new formulation of the unity and nature of contemporary Marxist theory will be an invaluable resource to any humanities and social science student learning about social and political thought and theory. (shrink)

This pioneering anthology of Middle English prologues and other excerpts from texts written between 1280 and 1520 is one of the largest collections of vernacular literary theory from the Middle Ages yet published and the first to focus attention on English literary theory before the sixteenth century. It edits, introduces, and glosses some sixty excerpts, all of which reflect on the problems and opportunities associated with writing in the "mother tongue" during a period of revolutionary change for the English language. (...) The excerpts fall into three groups, illustrating the strategies used by medieval writers to establish their cultural authority, the ways they constructed audiences and readerships, and the models they offered for the process of reading. Taken together, the excerpts show how vernacular texts reflected and contributed to the formation of class, gender, professional, and national identity. They open windows onto late medieval debates on women's and popular literacy, on the use of the vernacular for religious instruction or Bible translation, on the complex metaphorical associations contained within the idea of the vernacular, and on the cultural and political role of the "courtly" writing associated with Chaucer and his successors. Besides the excerpts, the book contains five essays that propose new definitions of medieval literary theory, discuss the politics of Middle English writing, the relation of medieval book production to notions of authorship, and the status of the prologue as a genre, and compare the role of the medieval vernacular to that of postcolonial literatures. The book includes a substantial glossary that constitutes the first mapping of the language and terms of Middle English literary theory. _The Idea of the Vernacular_ will be an invaluable asset not only to Middle English survey courses but to courses in English literary and cultural history and courses on the history of literary theory. (shrink)

There is a legitimate trade in personalities, but what are its bounds and rules? The author is on the staff of The Independent.

An extensive survey by Heathcote et al. (in press) found that the Law of Practice is closer to an exponential than a power form. We show that this result is hard to obtain for models using leaky competitive units when practice affects only the input, but that it can be accommodated when practice affects shunting self-excitation.

This paper provides practitioner and academic insights into the importance of examining non-technical skills in a multiteam system emergency response. The case of public health professionals is highlighted, illustrated with unique qualitative field data which focused upon the use of non-technical skills at a meso level of analysis. Results reflected the importance of context upon the multiteam system and highlighted seven non-technical skills used by public health professionals to support an effective response. Recommendations for future research and implications for practice (...) are noted for this hard to access professional group, located within emerging advances in the scientific inquiry of complex and increasingly evident, multi-team systems. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:Global multi-stakeholder initiatives are important instruments that have the potential to improve the social and environmental sustainability of global supply chains. However, they often fail to comprehensively address the needs and interests of various supply-chain participants. While voluntary in nature, MSIs have most often been implemented through coercive approaches, resulting in friction among their participants and in systemic problems with decoupling. Additionally, in those cases in which deliberation was constrained between and amongst participants, collaborative approaches have often failed to materialize. (...) Our framework focuses on two key aspects of these breakdowns: assumptions about the orientation of MSI participants, and the deliberation processes that participants use to engage with each other to create these initiatives and sustain them over time. Drawing from stakeholder and deliberation theories, we revisit the concept of MSIs and show how their deliberative capacity may be enhanced in order to encourage participants to collaborate voluntarily. (shrink)

Critical Realism and Marxism addresses controversial debates, revealing a potentially fruitful relationship; deepening our understanding of the social world and contibuting towards eliminating barbarism in contemporary capitalism.

This article presents the results of an inductive, interpretive case study. We have adopted a narrative approach to the analysis of organizational processes in order to explore how individuals in a financial institution dealt with relatively novel issues of corporate social responsibility (CSR). The narratives that we reconstruct, which we label 'idealism and altruism', 'economics and expedience' and 'ignorance and cynicism' illustrate how people in the specific organizational context of a bank ('Credit Line') sought to cope with an attempt at (...) narrative imposition. In particular, our work exemplifies how people in organizations draw on shared discursive resources in order to make sense of themselves and their organizations. We illustrate how many people within the bank found it hard to integrate the normative case for CSR with their version of a narrative identity which had, and continued to be, centred on economic imperatives for new initiatives. Our article demonstrates both the value of the analysis of shared narratives, and represents an attempt to deal adequately with the polyphony of organizational voices, in case studies of CSR. (shrink)

First published in France in 1936 as a journal article, The Transcendence of the Egowas one of Jean-Paul Sartre's earliest philosophical publications. When it appeared, Sartre was still largely unknown, working as a school teacher in provincial France and struggling to find a publisher for his most famous fictional work, Nausea. The Transcendence of the Egois the outcome of Sartre's intense engagement with the philosophy of Edmund Husserl, the founder of phenomenology. Here, as in many subsequent writings, Sartre embraces Husserl's (...) vision of phenomenology as the proper method for philosophy. But he argues that Husserl's conception of the self as an inner entity, 'behind' conscious experience is mistaken and phenomenologically unfounded. The Transcendence of the Egooffers a brilliant diagnosis of where Husserl went wrong, and a radical alternative account of the self as a product of consciousness, situated in the world. This essay introduces many of the themes central to Sartre's major work, Being and Nothingness: the nature of consciousness, the problem of self-knowledge, other minds, anguish. It demonstrates their presence and importance in Sartre's thinking from the very outset of his career. This fresh translation makes this classic work available again to students of Sartre, phenomenology, existentialism, and twentieth century philosophy. It includes a thorough and illuminating introduction by Sarah Richmond, placing Sartre's essay in its philosophical and historical context.t of consciousness, situated in the world. This essay introduces many of the themes central to Sartre's major work, Being and Nothingness: the nature of consciousness, the problem of self-knowledge, other minds, anguish. It demonstrates their presence and importance in Sartre's thinking from the very outset of his career. This fresh translation makes this classic work available again to students of Sartre, phenomenology, existentialism, and twentieth century philosophy. It includes a thorough and illuminating introduction by Sarah Richmond, placing Sartre's essay in its philosophical and historical context. (shrink)

We argue that in implanted neurotechnology research, participants and researchers experience what Henry Richardson has called “moral entanglement.” Participants partially entrust researchers with access to their brains and thus to information that would otherwise be private, leading to created intimacies and special obligations of beneficence for researchers and research funding agencies. One of these obligations, we argue, is about continued access to beneficial technology once a trial ends. We make the case for moral entanglement in this context through exploration of (...) participants’ vulnerability, uncompensated risks and burdens, depth of relationship with the research team, and dependence on researchers in implanted neurotechnology trials. (shrink)

The philosophers of Late Antiquity have sometimes appeared to be estranged from society. 'We must flee everything physical' is one of the most prominent ideas taken by Augustine from Platonic literature. This collection of new studies by leading writers on Late Antiquity treats both the principles of metaphysics and the practical engagement of philosophers. It points to a more substantive and complex involvement in worldly affairs than conventional handbooks admit.

Sentience is the capacity to have feelings, such as feelings of pain, pleasure, hunger, thirst, warmth, joy, comfort and excitement. It is not simply the capacity to feel pain, but feelings of pain, distress or harm, broadly understood, have a special significance for animal welfare law. Drawing on over 300 scientific studies, we evaluate the evidence of sentience in two groups of invertebrate animals: the cephalopod molluscs or, for short, cephalopods (including octopods, squid and cuttlefish) and the decapod crustaceans or, (...) for short, decapods (including crabs, lobsters and crayfish). We also evaluate the potential welfare implications of current commercial practices involving these animals. (shrink)

Browning and Kilmister review the nature and possibility of critical political economy in the light of recent post-modern and cultural theory. They provide an historical understanding of critical political economy, focusing on the development of the critical perspectives on capitalism of Hegel and Marx. They then review post-Marxist, post-structuralist, ecological and feminist standpoints that challenge notions of critical political economy sustained in the Hegelian-Marxist tradition. This study of critical and post-critical political economy concludes by arguing for the integration or these (...) standpoints within a revitalized critical perspective. (shrink)

This editorial introduces the Journal of Consciousness Studies special issue on "Animal Consciousness". The 15 contributors and co-editors answer the question "How should we study animal consciousness scientifically?" in 500 words or fewer.

Life is a compelling addition to the Darwin College Lecture Series, in which eight distinguished authors each present an essay from their area of expertise devoted to the theme of 'life'. The book forges connections between art, science and the humanities in a vibrant and thought-provoking collection that exposes both conventional and unconventional views on the meaning of life, the enigmatic boundaries between the living and the dead, and what may or may not follow afterwards. This collection arises from the (...) Darwin College Lecture Series of 2012 and includes contributions from eight distinguished scholars, all of whom are held in esteem not only for their research, but also for their ability to communicate their subject to popular audiences. (shrink)

This paper develops and tests a model of fingerpointing behaviors that board members experience because of regulatory reforms. We present the partial results of a large study of 138 board members on 54 publicly traded boards in the United States. We found that recent governance reforms that mandate increased accountability of board members are associated with less board cohesion and thatlower board cohesion is associated with fingerpointing behaviors. These findings suggest that the stages of institutionalization following regulatory shock falter when (...) negative group behaviors develop under scrutiny. (shrink)