Thousands of youth suffering from acquired brain injury or other early-life neurological disease live, mature, and learn with only limited communication and interaction with their world. Such cognitively capable children are ideal candidates for brain-computer interfaces. While BCI systems are rapidly evolving, a fundamental gap exists between technological innovators and the patients and families who stand to benefit. Forays into translating BCI systems to children in recent years have revealed that kids can learn to operate simple BCI with proficiency akin (...) to adults. BCI could bring significant boons to the lives of many children with severe physical impairment, supporting their complex physical and social needs. However, children have been neglected in BCI research and a collaborative BCI research community is required to unite and push pediatric BCI development forward. To this end, the pediatric BCI Canada collaborative network was formed, under a unified goal to cooperatively drive forward pediatric BCI innovation and impact. This article reflects on the topics and discussions raised in the foundational BCI-CAN meeting held in Toronto, ON, Canada in November 2019 and suggests the next steps required to see BCI impact the lives of children with severe neurological disease and their families. (shrink)

When it comes to communication of pain, Anna Wierzbicka (2012) takes issue with the scientific definition of pain and turns to natural semantic metalanguage (NSM). However, “pain” is not one of the 64 semantic primes in NSM, and therefore Wierzbicka suggests words such as “body,” “bad,” and “don’t want.” This blurs the boundaries between pain and other aversive sensations and it also challenges certain clinical features of the pain experience.

Les philosophes syriaques du IIe au XIVe siècle s'élancèrent à la recherche de la philosophie des Grecs, et principalement celle d'Aristote. Ils étaient les héritiers des anciens Assyriens, des Babyloniens et des Araméens. Ils traduisirent la pensée philosophique grecque en syriaque, idiome de l'araméen, et l'enseignèrent, provoquant ainsi, en Mésopotamie et en Orient, son essor et son succès.

Few studies in sub-Saharan Africa evaluate Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) capacity. The study aims to explore the composition of IRBs, training, and challenges experienced in the ethics review processes by members of research institutions and universities in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Our findings indicate that most IRBs members were trained on research ethics and good clinical practice. However, majority perceived the trainings as basic. IRB members faced several challenges including: investigators wanting rapid review; time pressure; investigators not following checklists; limited expertise (...) in reviewing clinical trials, studies on genetics, and traditional medicine; lack of IRB offices for administrative work; competing tasks; limited staffing and the lack of a standardized review system. There is need for advanced training on research ethics to meet the evolving research needs. In addition, investments in IRBs are needed in terms of funding, and physical and human resources in Addis Ababa and Ethiopia in general. (shrink)

Few studies in sub-Saharan Africa evaluate Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) capacity. The study aims to explore the composition of IRBs, training, and challenges experienced in the ethics review processes by members of research institutions and universities in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Our findings indicate that most IRBs members were trained on research ethics and good clinical practice. However, majority perceived the trainings as basic. IRB members faced several challenges including: investigators wanting rapid review; time pressure; investigators not following checklists; limited expertise (...) in reviewing clinical trials, studies on genetics, and traditional medicine; lack of IRB offices for administrative work; competing tasks; limited staffing and the lack of a standardized review system. There is need for advanced training on research ethics to meet the evolving research needs. In addition, investments in IRBs are needed in terms of funding, and physical and human resources in Addis Ababa and Ethiopia in general. (shrink)

One of the important measures of quality of education is the performance of students in academic settings. Nowadays, abundant data is stored in educational institutions about students which can help to discover insight on how students are learning and to improve their performance ahead of time using data mining techniques. In this paper, we developed a student performance prediction model that predicts the performance of high school students for the next semester for five courses. We modeled our prediction system as (...) a multi-label classification task and used support vector machine (SVM), Random Forest (RF), K-nearest Neighbors (KNN), and Multi-layer perceptron (MLP) as base-classifiers to train our model. We further improved the performance of the prediction model using a state-of-the-art partitioning scheme to divide the label space into smaller spaces and used Label Powerset (LP) transformation method to transform each labelset into a multi-class classification task. The proposed model achieved better performance in terms of different evaluation metrics when compared to other multi-label learning tasks such as binary relevance and classifier chains. (shrink)

La Philosophie Bergsonienne was Maritain’s earliest work. It has now been translated into English for the first time. Already, when the book was written, Maritain was a follower of St. Thomas; in his foreword to the present edition he modestly describes it as “probably a fair to middling account of basic Thomistic Philosophy”. As the title of the book suggests, Bergson’s thought, at least in its basic doctrines, is given not for its own sake but rather to enable us to (...) see how Thomistic thought can face up to the problems Bergson sought to answer. (shrink)

Although this is a very compact work, it presents in a competent and lucid manner some of the more essential themes of Gabriel Marcel’s thought. The author modestly describes his work as an effort to explain and popularize two important plays, namely, Un homme de Dieu and Le Monde Cassè. He indicates their metaphysical significance in his commentary, to which, as a background, we are first given in broad outline the essentials of Gabriel Marcel’s philosophy.

The present work is a series of critical appreciations of various contemporary philosophical studies that have been published in France since 1942. A very high standard is maintained by the author. When dealing with works of Louis Lavelle, René Le Senne, Gabriel Marcel, Jean Paul Sartre, the author gives a brief summary of their thought that can serve as a clear introduction to their respective philosophies. We feel the author was justified in collecting the reviews into one volume. Among the (...) books reviewed, however, there are works by authors who are themselves explaining or criticizing the teaching of other philosophers. The inclusion of these works is not so felicitous as they are merely reviews of reviews. If the author merely presented them as reviews, they would still be of considerable importance; but instead he presents them as articles on philosophy, which they are not. Thus the name of the book reviewed only appears in a footnote, and there is no general index of the books reviewed anywhere in the volume. We feel that these defects detract considerably from the value of the book as a whole. The reviews are excellent, but we have no ready means of finding out what books are reviewed. (shrink)

In the course of the present work Mr. Miller reminds us that none of the great philosophers in the past “did hold the golden thread long enough to be able to trace the spool from which it was unwinding”. In our opinion, Mr. Miller has indeed grasped many threads of truth as he borrows in an eclectic manner from many sources but he leaves those threads in a more confused and tangled state than when he found them. He, too, has (...) failed to unwind the golden thread, though the tone of this book suggests otherwise. (shrink)

In this article, we propose the Fair Priority Model for COVID-19 vaccine distribution, and emphasize three fundamental values we believe should be considered when distributing a COVID-19 vaccine among countries: Benefiting people and limiting harm, prioritizing the disadvantaged, and equal moral concern for all individuals. The Priority Model addresses these values by focusing on mitigating three types of harms caused by COVID-19: death and permanent organ damage, indirect health consequences, such as health care system strain and stress, as well as (...) economic destruction. It proposes proceeding in three phases: the first addresses premature death, the second long-term health issues and economic harms, and the third aims to contain viral transmission fully and restore pre-pandemic activity. -/- To those who may deem an ethical framework irrelevant because of the belief that many countries will pursue "vaccine nationalism," we argue such a framework still has broad relevance. Reasonable national partiality would permit countries to focus on vaccine distribution within their borders up until the rate of transmission is below 1, at which point there would not be sufficient vaccine-preventable harm to justify retaining a vaccine. When a government reaches the limit of national partiality, it should release vaccines for other countries. -/- We also argue against two other recent proposals. Distributing a vaccine proportional to a country's population mistakenly assumes that equality requires treating differently situated countries identically. Prioritizing countries according to the number of front-line health care workers, the proportion of the population over 65, and the number of people with comorbidities within each country may exacerbate disadvantage and end up giving the vaccine in large part to wealthy nations. (shrink)

Le Discours contre le Discours « De Domnus » rend compte d’un triple débat, dans lequel trois personnages interviennent sur la question des « incorporels », point difficile de la doctrine stoïcienne. La polémique rédigée par le stoïcien Bardesane, en réaction aux positions du platonicien Albinus, a été examinée par Éphrem le Syrien, chrétien et polémiste antibardesanite. Il est l’auteur du Discours et notre seule source d’information sur cette controverse. Or, la manière dont Éphrem aborde la question litigieuse est spontanément (...) platonicienne, parfois proche du stoïcisme, mais fondamentalement, il s’agit d’une étonnante lecture théologique d’un thème qui fait débat entre les écoles philosophiques. (shrink)

This article offers a translation of the hymn De Crucifixione 4 by Ephrem, the Syrian theologian, which forms part of his cycle of hymns for the celebration of Easter. The symbolic interpretation of particularly the tearing of the temple veil in this hymn – together with the cosmic signs which occurred at the death of Jesus – is investigated. An attempt is made to correlate Ephrem’s fierce anti-Jewish polemics with the intentions of the authors of the Synoptic Gospels (...) and with Ephrem’s circumstances at the probable time of composition of the hymn. (shrink)

Christology is an attempt to relate the two natures of Christ; apology on the other hand, has the dual aim of justification and attack; both these entail polar structures. It is argued in this paper that these two binary systems of opposition interfered with each other to a certain extent. This occurred because of the practice of the early church to establish institutional stability and consent via a process of polarisation. The effect of apologetic antitheses on Ephrem’s description of (...) the natures of Christ is investigated. Examples from Ephrem’s work relating to the polarity between the church and Judaism, between the nature of God and Arianism, and between the nature of God and humanity are discussed. (shrink)

Ephrem's own writings however frequently betray a familiarity with Greek philosophical ideas. This book first introduces Ephrem's intellectual context and his attitude towards learning.

In his critic of the doctrine of Bardaisan, Ephrem the Syrian devotes a lot of space to reflection on the meaning of the terms ītutā and ītyā which, as he denounces, are used inaccurately by his opponent. These Syriac terms can be translated by “being” or “essence”, but also by “substance”. This observation leads us to propose the comparison with the Greek term οὐσία, taking into account many difficulties raised by its uses in theological discourse. The article is devoted (...) to the analysis of the uses of the terms ītutā and ītyā ‑ by Ephrem and by Bardaisan ‑ in their different ways of describing the divine essence. This comparison reveals the peculiarities of the two systems of thought and also their connections with the Greek philosophical doctrines. (shrink)

« Je m'en voudrais de ne pas parler ici d'un autre Canadien, ancien élève de cette maison [Petit Séminaire de Montréal], qui jette par sa science beaucoup de lustre sur notre nom dans les milieux scientifiques de l'Europe. Le P. Éphrem Longpré nous avait été révélé par M. Étienne Gilson. L'éminent professeur de philosophic médiévale en Sorbonne avait avoué ne pas connaître d'homme plus au courant de cette difficile science que le P. Éphrem ».