There is a need recognized by the National Institute of Dental & Craniofacial Research and the National Cancer Institute to advance basic, translational and clinical saliva research. The goal of the Salivaomics Knowledge Base (SKB) is to create a data management system and web resource constructed to support human salivaomics research. To maximize the utility of the SKB for retrieval, integration and analysis of data, we have developed the Saliva Ontology and SDxMart. This article reviews the informatics advances in saliva (...) diagnostics made possible by the Saliva Ontology and SDxMart. (shrink)
The ji 己self is a site, storehouse, or depot of individuated allotment associated with the possession of things and qualities: wholesome and unwholesome desires (yu 欲) and aversions, emotions such as anxiety, and positive values such as humaneness and reverence. Each person's allotment is unique, and its "contents" are collected, measured, reflected on, and then distributed to others. The Analects, Mencius, Xunzi, Daodejing, and Zhuangzi each have their own vision for negotiating the space between self and other. Works as seemingly (...) dissimilar as the Analects and Daodejing both agree that positive qualities located within the self should be shared with others, and that the self can be optimized rather than maximized through sharing, emptying, or clearing. Sommer compares the ji self with other terms for body and person current in classical times. This self is strongly individuated, but it exists primarily in relation to other human beings (ren 人 ). These "others" are almost never one's own kind and are usually people who fall outside one's ascribed familial and social relationships. Negotiations between self and other often reflect apprehension regarding degrees of distance, intimacy, worth, recognition, or understanding (zhi 知) between people. (shrink)
In this article, I critique the commonly accepted distinction between commercial and altruistic surrogacy arrangements. The moral legitimacy of surrogacy, I claim, does not hinge on whether it is paid (‘commercial’) or unpaid (‘altruistic’); rather, it is best determined by appraisal of virtue-abiding conditions constitutive of the surrogacy arrangement. I begin my article by problematising the prevailing commercial/altruistic distinction; next, I demonstrate that an assessment of the virtue-abiding or non-virtue-abiding features of a surrogacy is crucial to navigating questions about the (...) moral legitimacy of surrogacy; in the final part, I reject other moral heuristics that might be proposed as alternatives to the commercial/altruistic dichotomy, and reiterate that a virtue-ethical framework is the most suitable way forward. (shrink)
BackgroundFatigue is an important factor for the safety of ships. In order to alleviate fatigue of the seafarers, the STCW Convention has made many regulations on the working time of seafarers. At present, if a crew member takes only one day off at home before returning to work on the ship, the working time on the ship must be re-calculated again. If the time spent at home is not sufficient to allow the crew to recover, the regulations of only stipulating (...) the working time, not stipulating the home vacation time, cannot guarantee the crew’s fatigue been well controlled. The aim of present study is to explore the relationship between vacation schedule and fatigue of the seafarers.MethodsIn present study, a simplified stress scale developed by the Ministry of Labor of Japan has been used as a measurement tool. The method of stratified sampling was adopted. Data collection mainly came from domestic ocean-going seafarers. Analysis was conducted using the Cross analysis and hierarchical multiple regression analysis methods.ResultsWe found that there was no difference between crew members of different positions in terms of average vacation time and on-board service time. The length of last vacation time and this service time for seafarers of different positions showed obvious differences. The rank has a significant effect on the length of the last vacation and the length of this service time. Also, the results showed that there was a significant negative correlation between the duration of vacation and overall fatigue, while there was a significant positive correlation between the length of service time on board and overall fatigue.ConclusionThe results indicated that a reasonable vacation schedule was crucial for the relief of the seafarers’ fatigue, and also played a positive role in the state of working on the ship again. (shrink)
A fundamental aspect of human cognition is the ability to parse our constantly unfolding experience into meaningful representations of dynamic events and to communicate about these events with others. How do we communicate about events we have experienced? Influential theories of language production assume that the formulation and articulation of a linguistic message is preceded by preverbal apprehension that captures core aspects of the event. Yet the nature of these preverbal event representations and the way they are mapped onto language (...) are currently not well understood. Here, we review recent evidence on the link between event conceptualization and language, focusing on two core aspects of event representation: event roles and event boundaries. Empirical evidence in both domains shows that the cognitive representation of events aligns with the way these aspects of events are encoded in language, providing support for the presence of deep homologies between linguistic and cognitive event structure. (shrink)
Natalie Stoljar posits that those who have internalized oppressive norms lack normative competence, which requires true beliefs and critical reflection. A lack of normative competence makes agents nonautonomous, according to Stoljar. This framework is thereby meant to address what she calls the “feminist intuition”—the intuition that oppressive norms are incompatible with autonomy. On my view, however, Stoljar’s normative competence account of autonomy is subject to a worrying problem. Her account misattributes nonautonomy to those who perpetrate the oppression, making those who (...) are oppressed and those who oppress count as equally nonautonomous. I argue that this is implausible and demonstrate in this paper that we can establish an asymmetry of autonomy between those who oppress others and those who are made the target of oppression. (shrink)
Ascribing autonomous status to agents is a valuable practice. As such, we ought to care about how we engage in practices of autonomy ascription. However, disagreement between first-personal experiences of an agent's autonomy and third-personal determinations of their autonomy presents challenges of ethical and epistemic concern. My view is that insights from a dialogical rather than nondialogical account of autonomy give us the resources to combat the challenges associated with autonomy ascription. I draw on Andrea Westlund's account of dialogical autonomy—on (...) which autonomy requires a dialogical disposition to hold oneself answerable to external critical perspectives—to make my case. (shrink)
This article studies the effects of social institutions on organizational corruption at the societal level by focusing on the possible interactions between the institutional pillars that have been identified in past research. Based on these three institutional aspects or pillars, this article tests the interactive effects of social institutions among societies throughout the world. The results suggest that the three institutional pillars have significant interactive effects on organizational corruption at the societal level. A discussion of the implications of the research (...) findings for researchers and practitioners is given. (shrink)
In moral and political philosophy, topics like the distributive inequities conferred via special partial relationships – family relationships, for example – have been frequently debated. However, the epistemic dimensions of such partiality are seldom discussed in the ethical context, and the topic of partial relationships rarely feature in the realm of social epistemology. My view is that the role of partial relationships is worth exploring to enrich our understanding of epistemic injustice and its transmission. I claim that epistemic features typical (...) of partial relationships make phenomena like epistemic injustice easier to mask, more difficult to identify, and harder to correct. (shrink)
Marx extrapolated the relations of production of the factories of his time into his predictions about the development of the working class. These predictions are among the most important theses of Marxism-Leninism relative to the socialist world-revolution which the working class was to carry out. The physics of Marx' era was not very developed. Marx could have no inkling of the future development of physics and of its application to technology. This is why his predictions had to be in simple (...) and direct proportion to the development of the relations of production of the time. Industry developed -- thanks in part to the development of physics -- in ways other than Marx had suspected. The use of modern physics, leading to cybernetics and automation, gradually changed the workers from forces of production to supervisory engineers. Were one to undertake today an extrapolation like that which Marx carried out, one would have to see as highly probable the disappearance of the very working class that Marx saw as carrying out the world-revolution. (shrink)
Marx extrapolated the relations of production of the factories of his time into his predictions about the development of the working class. These predictions are among the most important theses of Marxism-Leninism relative to the socialist world-revolution which the working class was to carry out.The physics of Marx'' era was not very developed. Marx could have no inkling of the future development of physics and of its application to technology. This is why his predictions had to be in simple and (...) direct proportion to the development of the relations of production of the time. (shrink)
While prior ecolabel research suggests that consumers’ trust of ecolabel sponsors is associated with their purchase of ecolabeled products, we know little about how third-party certification might relate to consumer purchases when trust varies. Drawing on cognitive theory and a stratified random sample of more than 1200 consumers, we assess how third-party certification relates to consumers’ use of ecolabels across different program sponsors. We find that consumers’ trust of government and environmental NGOs to provide credible environmental information encourages consumers’ use (...) of ecolabels sponsored by these entities, and consumers do not differentiate between certified versus uncertified ecolabels in the presence of trust. By contrast, consumers’ distrust of private business to provide credible environmental information discourages their use of business association-sponsored ecolabels. However, these ecolabels may be able to overcome consumer distrust if their sponsors certify the ecolabels using third-party auditors. These findings are important to sponsors who wish develop ecolabels that are more credible to consumers, and thus encourage more widespread ecolabel use. (shrink)
A general game player automatically learns to play arbitrary new games solely by being told their rules. For this purpose games are specified in the general Game Description Language (GDL), a variant of Datalog with function symbols that uses a few game-specific keywords. A recent extension of basic GDL allows the description of nondeterministic games with any number of players who may have incomplete, asymmetric information. In this paper, we analyse the epistemic structure and expressiveness of this language in terms (...) of modal epistemic logic and prove two main results: (1) The operational semantics of GDL entails that the situation at any stage of a game can be characterised by a multi-agent epistemic (i.e., S5-) model; (2) GDL is sufficiently expressive to model any situation that can be described by a (finite) multi-agent epistemic model. (shrink)
: The Confucian relational concept of the person has been proposed as an epistemically more cogent and ethically more attractive alternative to that of liberal individualism. Two arguments are raised against this proposal without defending liberal individualism. Ethically, Confucianism is vitiated by certain unattractive features that cannot be removed without reducing the Confucian relational concept of the person to an abstract and not very helpful notion of human relatedness. Epistemically, Confucianism commits the essentialist fallacy of treating its own concept of (...) human relations as reflecting the nature of things. In view of these limitations, the Confucian relational concept of the person does not provide a viable framework for dealing with social issues including bioethics. (shrink)
This study examines the effects of individual ethical values and organizational factors on the professional ethics of PR practitioners in Korea by considering a person–situation interactionist model. Individual ethical values are used as individual factors, and organizational factors consist of an organization’s reward and punishment for ethical/unethical behavior, the behavior of peers, and the ethical integrity of the chief ethics officer. The professional ethics of PR practitioners (the dependent variable) are classified into the following three dimensions: professional ethics for the (...) public, the client, and the PR industry. The results indicate that agency practitioners were more likely to be committed to their profession than to their organization, whereas in-house practitioners were more likely to be committed to their organization than to their profession. That is, in-house practitioners showed weak professional commitment, indicating that they perceived themselves as employees, not as PR professionals. Organizational factors such as reward, punishment, and peers’ ethical behavior had considerable influence on the professional ethics of in-house practitioners, whereas they had little influence on agency practitioners. Organizational factors as well as individual ethical values were more likely to influence the professional ethics of in-house practitioners than that of agency practitioners. Thus, to foster in-house practitioners’ professional ethics and commitment, professional associations in the PR industry should make efforts to provide in-house practitioners with more information on the PR industry and more opportunities for interacting and maintaining communication with their colleagues in the industry. (shrink)
Epistemic injustices are wrongs that agents can suffer in their capacity as knowers. In this article, I offer a conceptualisation of a phenomenon I call anticipatory epistemic injustice, which I claim is a distinct and particularly pernicious type of epistemic injustice worthy of independent analysis. I take anticipatory epistemic injustice to consist in the wrongs that agents can suffer as a result of anticipated challenges in their process of taking up testimony-sharing opportunities. I distinguish my account from paradigmatic cases of (...) epistemic injustice, such as Miranda Fricker’s concepts of testimonial injustice and hermeneutical injustice; additionally, I differentiate my view from Kristie Dotson’s account of testimonial smothering. I argue, ultimately, that anticipatory epistemic injustice is a useful addition to our current taxonomy of epistemic injustices, as it has promising explanatory potential for a range of non-standard cases of epistemic injustice. (shrink)
ABSTRACTWhat three words come to your mind in response to “happiness”? Using a free-association task [cf. Nelson, D. L., McEvoy, C. L., & Dennis, S.. What is free association and what does i...
Jaina Philosophy and Religion.Nagin Ji Saha - 1998 - Motilal Banarsidass Publishers, Bhogilal Lehar Chand Institute of Indology & Mahattara Sadhvi Shree Mrigavatiji Foundation.details
The present work is the English translation of Muni Nyayavijayaji`s (A.D. 1890-1970) original Gujarati work `Jaina Darsana` which has run into twelve editions. No one has ever explained the Jaina concepts of nine `reals`, six substances, causation, spiritual attitude, spiritualness, non-violence, austerity, God, Karma, non-absolutism, relativity of commandments, etc. as interestingly and lucidly as Nyayavijayaji has done. The work reveals his stupendous scholarship, his positive approach, his non-sectarian outlook, his wisdom and competence in attempting synthesis of conflicting views, his mastery (...) of India philosophical and religious thought, his insight into the heart of religion, freshness of his interpretation of old texts, his sensitivity to all aspects of a problem, and his spiritual craving. It attempts to arouse sympathetic responses to the ethical and spiritual aspirations of man. It deals with all the main topics of Jaina metaphysics, ethics, epistemology and logic. It covers a wide variety of problems. It is a fascinating and splendid work of constructive scholarship, and an authentic source of information about Jaina philosophy and religion that will serve as a good reference book for many years to come. (shrink)
The unsafe behavior of construction workers is one of the most important and direct causes of safety accidents. Managers usually develop effective incentives aimed at regulating worker safety behavior. Due to the large number of workers in construction projects, there are multiple differences in fairness preference, risk preference and ability level, which will lead to the complex effect of the traditional mechanism to regulate workers’ safety behavior. In order to improve the effectiveness of incentive measures for worker safety behavior, this (...) paper takes into account the multiple differences of individual workers’ fairness preference, risk preference and ability level, based on the tournament mechanism to construct a competition incentive model. By designing a tournament reward and salary distribution for heterogeneous workers, the occurrence of unsafe behaviors can be reduced. The study found that in terms of the optimal level of safety investment, workers with risk aversion attitude generally invest higher than that of workers with risk preference, no matter whether they have a strong fairness preference or not; In terms of the distribution of tournament rewards, workers with a risk aversion attitude and a higher level of fairness preference need to be given higher incentives. (shrink)
