Free will can be understood as a novel form of action control that evolved to meet the escalating demands of human social life, including moral action and pursuit of enlightened self-interest in a cultural context. That understanding is conducive to scientific research, which is reviewed here in support of four hypotheses. First, laypersons tend to believe in free will. Second, that belief has behavioral consequences, including increases in socially and culturally desirable acts. Third, laypersons can reliably distinguish free actions from (...) less free ones. Fourth, actions judged as free emerge from a distinctive set of inner processes, all of which share a common psychological and physiological signature. These inner processes include self-control, rational choice, planning, and initiative. (shrink)

Further Thoughts on Counterfactuals, Compatibilism, Conceptual Mismatches, and Choices: Response to Commentaries Content Type Journal Article Pages 31-34 DOI 10.1007/s12152-010-9067-3 Authors Roy F. Baumeister, Department of Psychology, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL USA A. William Crescioni, Department of Psychology, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL USA Jessica L. Alquist, Department of Psychology, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL USA Journal Neuroethics Online ISSN 1874-5504 Print ISSN 1874-5490 Journal Volume Volume 4 Journal Issue Volume 4, Number 1.

Tick and tick-borne diseases, especially East Coast fever, caused byTheileria parva, are amongst the most important factors limiting cattle production in Eastern, Central, and Southern Africa. In the past, they have been controlled mainly by the use of acaricides to kill ticks. Immunization has been shown to be an effective alternative method of control of tick-borne diseases in limited field trials. A development program has been initiated to produce vaccines and implement immunization on a wide scale in the region in (...) a sustainable manner as part of an integrated tick and tickborne disease control program. The consequent reduction in cattle mortality is expected to have far-reaching benefits for the region. (shrink)

Throughout his life, John Tyler Bonner contributed to major transformations in the fields of developmental and evolutionary biology. He pondered the evolution of complexity and the significance of randomness in evolution, and was instrumental in the formation of evolutionary developmental biology. His contributions were vast, ranging from highly technical scientific articles to numerous books written for a broad audience. This historical vignette gathers reflections by several prominent researchers on the greatness of John Bonner and the implications of his work.

Animal welfare involves societal and human values, ethical concerns and moral considerations since it incorporates the belief of what is right or what is wrong in animal treatment and care. This paper aims to ascertain whether the different dimensions of individual attitudes toward animal welfare in food choices may be characterized by general human values, as identified by Schwartz. For this purpose, an EU-wide survey was carried out, covering almost 2500 nationally representative individuals from five European countries. Compared with the (...) previous literature this study shows a twofold novelty: it develops a general framework to link individual enduring beliefs and attitudes toward animal welfare attributes in food choices; the framework is analyzed within a broad-based cross-country study. Our empirical results prove that human values related to self-transcendence are strongly associated to overall animal welfare attitudes and especially to those explicitly related to food choices, while values related to the spheres of self-enhancement and conservatism are significantly associated to less sensitive attitudes to animal welfare. Moreover, our results appear to indicate that a determinant of animal welfarism in food choices is potentially associated to individual concerns regarding food safety issues. (shrink)

Health care is provided in many contexts—not just hospitals, clinics, and community health settings. Different institutional settings may significantly influence the design and delivery of health care and the ethical obligations and practices of health care practitioners working within them. This is particularly true in institutions that are established to constrain freedom, ensure security and authority, and restrict movement and choice. We describe the results of a qualitative study of the experiences of doctors and nurses working within two women’s prisons (...) in the state of New South Wales (NSW), Australia. Their accounts make clear how the provision and ethics of health care may be compromised by the physical design of the prison, the institutional policies and practices restricting movement of prisoners and practitioners, the focus on maintaining control and security, and the very purpose of the prison and prison system itself. The results of this study make clear the impact that context has on professional practice and illustrate the importance of sociology and anthropology to bioethics and to the development of a more nuanced account of professional ethics. (shrink)

An excellent account of one of those rare occasions in history when a number of great minds, working on a common problem independently, come up with sufficiently new answers as to send their science, and in this case a good part of human thinking, in a completely new direction.

Technological innovations such as next generation sequencing and DNA hybridisation enrichment have resulted in multi‐fold increases in both the quantity of ancient DNA sequence data and the time depth for DNA retrieval. To date, over 30 ancient genomes have been sequenced, moving from 0.7× coverage (mammoth) in 2008 to more than 50× coverage (Neanderthal) in 2014. Studies of rapid evolutionary changes, such as the evolution and spread of pathogens and the genetic responses of hosts, or the genetics of domestication and (...) climatic adaptation, are developing swiftly and the importance of palaeogenomics for investigating evolutionary processes during the last million years is likely to increase considerably. However, these new datasets require new methods of data processing and analysis, as well as conceptual changes in interpreting the results. In this review we highlight important areas of future technical and conceptual progress and discuss research topics in the rapidly growing field of palaeogenomics. -/- . (shrink)

(1884). MINUTES OF PROCEEDINGS. Transactions of the South African Philosophical Society: Vol. 4, No. 1, pp. xxi-xxvii.

A total of 1918 loci, detected by the hybridization of 938 expressed sequence tag unigenes from 26 Triticeae cDNA libraries, were mapped to wheat homoeologous group 4 chromosomes using a set of deletion, ditelosomic, and nulli-tetrasomic lines. The 1918 EST loci were not distributed uniformly among the three group 4 chromosomes; 41, 28, and 31% mapped to chromosomes 4A, 4B, and 4D, respectively. This pattern is in contrast to the cumulative results of EST mapping in all homoeologous groups, as reported (...) elsewhere, that found the highest proportion of loci mapped to the B genome. Sixty-five percent of these 1918 loci mapped to the long arms of homoeologous group 4 chromosomes, while 35% mapped to the short arms. The distal regions of chromosome arms showed higher numbers of loci than the proximal regions, with the exception of 4DL. This study confirmed the complex structure of chromosome 4A that contains two reciprocal translocations and two inversions, previously identified. An additional inversion in the centromeric region of 4A was revealed. A consensus map for homoeologous group 4 was developed from 119 ESTs unique to group 4. Forty-nine percent of these ESTs were found to be homoologous to sequences on rice chromosome 3, 12% had matches with sequences on other rice chromosomes, and 39% had no matches with rice sequences at all. Limited homology was found between wheat ESTs on homoeologous group 4 and the Arabidopsis genome. Forty-two percent of the homoeologous group 4 ESTs could be classified into functional categories on the basis of blastX searches against all protein databases. (shrink)

A total of 944 expressed sequence tags generated 2212 EST loci mapped to homoeologous group 1 chromosomes in hexaploid wheat. EST deletion maps and the consensus map of group 1 chromosomes were constructed to show EST distribution. EST loci were unevenly distributed among chromosomes 1A, 1B, and ID with 660, 826, and 726, respectively. The number of EST loci was greater on the long arms than on the short arms for all three chromosomes. The distribution of ESTs along chromosome arms (...) was nonrandom with EST clusters occurring in the distal regions of short arms and middle regions of long arms. Duplications of group 1 ESTs in other homoeologous groups occurred at a rate of 35.5%. Seventy-five percent of wheat chromosome 1 ESTs had significant matches with rice sequences, where large regions of conservation occurred between wheat consensus chromosome 1 and rice chromosome 5 and between the proximal portion of the long arm of wheat consensus chromosome 1 and rice chromosome 10. Only 9.5% of group 1 ESTs showed significant matches to Arabidopsis genome sequences. The results presented are useful for gene mapping and evolutionary and comparative genomics of grasses. (shrink)

Veterinarians play an essential role in the animal-based food chain. They are professionally responsible for the health of farm animals to secure food safety and public health. In the last decades, food scandals and zoonotic disease outbreaks have shown how much animal and human health are entangled. Therefore, the concept of One Health is broadly promoted within veterinary medicine. The profession embraces this idea that the health of humans, animals and the environment is inextricably linked and supports the related call (...) for transdisciplinary collaboration. Especially in zoonotic disease control, the benefits of the cooperation between veterinarians and human doctors seem evident. However, applying a One Health approach also makes moral problems explicit. For instance, how should veterinarians deal with situations in which measures to protect public health negatively affect animal health? This creates a conflict of professional responsibilities. To deal with such moral problems and to strengthen the veterinarian’s position, the starting point is a holistic perspective on One Health. We will argue for an ‘encapsulated health’ argument: the best way to safeguard human health is to promote the health of animals and the environment. This also holds for the responsibility of the veterinary profession: to serve public health, the central responsibility of veterinarians should be to be experts in animal health and welfare. We elaborate this point by using a case study on the role of the veterinary profession in antimicrobial resistance policies in the Netherlands. (shrink)

Our goal was to explore self‐care practices among men who have sex with men in the context of Mpox in Brazil. This study used qualitative research methods, including interviews and thematic analysis, to collect and analyze data from male participants across the Brazilian territory. The narratives unveil men's perspectives on self‐care, risk reduction, and health beliefs during the Mpox pandemic. Our findings highlight a multifaceted approach to self‐care among men, encompassing hygiene, physical contact management, mask usage, skin lesion vigilance, and (...) adherence to official guidelines. Men's attitudes toward sexual behaviors emphasize the importance of reducing sexual partners, practicing safe sex, and combating misinformation through accurate information dissemination. The development of these behaviors and self‐care practices can be facilitated by nurses guided by Dorothea Orem's Self‐Care Theory, supported by patient‐centered care, with strategies to address and confront the stigma associated with the disease and provide emotional support. Thus, the study underscores the pivotal role of self‐care in mitigating infection risks, especially in the context of emerging infectious diseases. It acknowledges the impact of socio‐cultural factors and healthcare policies on men's preventive measures. However, it also recognizes limitations, such as potential bias due to stigma concerns and a nonrepresentative sample. Ultimately, the research advocates for tailored education, promotion of gender equity, and healthcare empowerment to effectively manage health risks in such contexts. (shrink)

There is a Mexican, as well as a Canadian version of the American Dream. What drives political idealism in Mexico is less the idea of individual right, or respect for the rights of communities, than it is the 'indigenous' right of an historically oppressed people to a political culture and life wholly their own.

Corruption is consciously taking advantage of one's special position, power or wealth for personal gain. It is spreading because there is ignorance and absence of adequate knowledge on the subject and how to correct and control it. Added to this is the innocence of the believers in the infallibility of the legal, political, bureau cratic and other social systems. They become the victims of the exploiters of the system who know the system weaknesses and how to take advantage of it (...) for their personal gain. There are two levels of corruption—the grand corruption of those in power and the petty corruption of the lower levels. Corruption is a malady affecting both affluent and poor nations. while affluent nations do not exhibit much evidence of petty cor ruption, poor nations are subject to the effects of both grand and petty corruption from within their own bor ders and the effects of the grand corruption by the affluent. Social systems, value education, spiritual leam ing and character building are necessary to eradicate this cancer. (shrink)

The use of genomic selection in agricultural animal breeding is in academic literature generally considered an ethically unproblematic development, but some critical views have been offered. Our paper shows that an important preliminary question for any ethical evaluation of genomic selection is how the scope of discussion should be set, that is, which ethical issues and perspectives ought to be considered. This scope is determined by three partly overlapping choices. The first choice is which ethical concepts to include: an ethical (...) discussion of genomic selection approaches may draw on concepts central to applied ethics, but some critical views have been based on concepts from critical animal studies and continental philosophy. A related choice is to what extent discussion should focus on new ethical issues raised or on existing ethical issues that will be ameliorated, perpetuated or aggravated by an innovation in genomic selection. The third choice is to treat an innovation in genomic selection either as a technique on itself or as a part of specific practices. We argue that ethical discussion should not limit attention to new issues or ignore the implications of particular ways of applying genomic selection in practice, and this has some consequences for which ethical concepts ought to be included. Limiting the scope of discussion may be defensible in some contexts, but broader ethical discussion remains necessary. (shrink)