Background The use of lengthy, detailed, and complex informed consent forms is of paramount concern in biomedical research as it may not truly promote the rights and interests of research participants. The extent of information in ICFs has been the subject of debates for decades; however, no clear guidance is given. Thus, the objective of this study was to determine the perspectives of research participants about the type and extent of information they need when they are invited to participate in (...) biomedical research. Methods This multi-center, cross-sectional, descriptive survey was conducted at 54 study sites in seven Asia-Pacific countries. A modified Likert-scale questionnaire was used to determine the importance of each element in the ICF among research participants of a biomedical study, with an anchored rating scale from 1 to 5. Results Of the 2484 questionnaires distributed, 2113 were returned. The majority of respondents considered most elements required in the ICF to be ‘moderately important’ to ‘very important’ for their decision making. Major foreseeable risk, direct benefit, and common adverse effects of the intervention were considered to be of most concerned elements in the ICF. Conclusions Research participants would like to be informed of the ICF elements required by ethical guidelines and regulations; however, the importance of each element varied, e.g., risk and benefit associated with research participants were considered to be more important than the general nature or technical details of research. Using a participant-oriented approach by providing more details of the participant-interested elements while avoiding unnecessarily lengthy details of other less important elements would enhance the quality of the ICF. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Introduction to the 30th Anniversary Issue of Philosophy, Psychiatry, & PsychologyJohn Z. Sadler (bio)This issue marks the 30th anniversary of Philosophy, Psychiatry, and Psychology (PPP). All of us at the journal are grateful to our authors, readers, editors, and publishers for enabling this landmark. To commemorate this event, I invited our Founding Editor and Chair of the Advisory Board, K.W.M. "Bill" Fulford to write a brief essay, along with (...) our panel of smart and industrious senior editors. Their instructions were simple: 500 words on PPP past, present, and/or future. These essays appear in the pages to follow. As Editor-in-Chief, I write about PPP's early commitments as a scholarly journal, situate these in the history of academic publishing, and muse over our current moment.Bill Fulford briefly discusses the early years of the journal in his essay. My perspective emerges from an editor's perspective. As co-editors in the early years, Bill and I were committed to an international authorship with comparable editorial oversight. We wanted to build a journal that would equally recognize clinical science and practice and philosophy, maintaining the rigor of each field. We saw philosophers and mental health practitioners as equal partners, collaborators, innovators, and educators. More important, PPP was intended to offer up the best criticism of the mental health and related fields.The scattershot history of scholarly editing has identified several functions of the editor over the centuries following Gutenberg's invention of the printing press in the mid-1440s. The earliest editors took liberties with the language of the Bible, trying to make it more accessible to the public; the printing press permitted fast and inexpensive reproduction. Not surprisingly, this popularizing of the Bible led to praise as well as outrage. The printing of other scholarly works followed quickly. In 1470, only about 25 years after the invention of the printing press, Niccolo Perroni called for Pope Paul II to censor Andrea Bussi's edition of Pliny the Elder's Natural History, an anthology of then-ancient writings about the natural world. This marked the first recorded instance of censorship of a more-or-less secular scholarly work (Monfasani, 1988). In the ensuing centuries, "editors" initially were the popularizers, and later the gatekeepers of texts worth (and not worth) reading. In the [End Page 1] ensuing centuries into the present, editors have been venerated both as defenders of good reading and reviled as censors or intellectual selfaggrandizers.The current moment, in my view, represents a crisis in the history of editing and editorship. Digital communications have liberated communications worldwide. However, this liberty has come at the cost of colossal amounts of material not worth reading and an explosion of divisive, destructive discourse. Even worse, internet "trolls" on social media have moved bullying out of the schoolyard and into international cyberspace. Determining what is worth reading has moved away from a cluster of (hopefully) responsible editors to anyone who wants to go to the small effort of silencing others through online harassment and even violent threats. Such cyberbullying does not eliminate elitism, but instead substitutes a toxic online "elite" without principle other than self-promotion and the alienation of others. Our contemporary online culture has yet to figure out how to shape what is, and is not, worth reading.My wish and intent for the future of PPP is to maintain and grow our place of rational, deliberative, and open discourse, even in the face of such disruptive cultural change.John Z. Sadler John Z. Sadler, MD, is the Editor-in-Chief of PPP. He is the Daniel W. Foster, MD, Professor of Medical Ethics at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, as well as a Professor of Psychiatry there. He has been a PPP editor since its inception.ReferenceMonfasani, J. (1988). The first call for press censorship: Niccolo Perotti, Giovanni Andrea Bussi, Antonio Moreto, and the editing of Pliny's Natural History. Renaissance Quarterly, 41, 1–31. Google ScholarCopyright © 2023 Johns Hopkins University Press... (shrink)

İnsanı diğer varlıklardan ayıran en önemli özelliği bilinç (akıl) sahibi ve seçme hürriyetine sahip olmasıdır. İnsanlık tarihi boyunca insanın hürriyeti, bu hürriyetin sınırları, mahiyeti sorgulana gelmiştir. İnsan özgürlüğü konusunda genellikle iki çeşit yaklaşım söz konusudur: Bunlardan birincisi filozofların getirmiş oldukları yaklaşım diğeri ise dinlerin getirmiş oldukları yaklaşımdır. Hürriyet kavramı katı bir tarif/tanımlama kalıbına kolayca sığabilen bir kavram değildir. Mantıkçıların “ağyârını mâni‘ efrâdını câmi‘” diye nitelendirdikleri tam ve tümel bir tanım yapılamamıştır. Dolayısıyla filozoflar, bilginler kendi çağlarının düşünce ortamına, entelektüel birikime göre (...) hürriyet kavramını temellendirmeye çalışmışlardır. Yukarıda da ifade edildiği gibi hürriyet meselesi çözümü zor bir konudur. Bu nedenden dolayı bu çalışmamızda öncelikle hürriyet kavramının etimolojik tahlilini, tanımını yaptıktan sonra Mâtürîdî kelâm düşünürlerinin hürriyet problemine yaklaşım tarzları, çözüm önerileri ve tanımlama biçimleri değerlendirilmeye çalışılacaktır. Mâtürîdî kelâm düşünürleri derken kastımız spesifik anlamda İmam Mâtürîdî ve onun en güçlü takipçisi olan Ebü’l-Muîn en-Nesefî’nin çözüm şekilleri üzerinde durulacaktır. (shrink)

Parry’s volume is not an elementary book, but it is apparently intended as an introduction to Locke’s political thought for students. While he definitely has a point of view of his own, he attempts to draw together much of the recent critical thought on Locke. Parry’s volume differs from much of the recent work on Locke in being, one might say, "sweet-tempered." He is sweet-tempered in the first place toward Locke. Unlike so much of the recent scholarly-historical literature, he clearly (...) respects Locke. In a field marked by acrimony among scholars, Parry is also remarkably sweet tempered toward other Locke scholars; he builds on the work of others where possible, rather than emphasizing his own novelty and uniqueness. He thus produces a far more balanced treatment than most. For example, he accepts willingly the Laslett-sponsored arguments that the Second Treatise is aimed against Filmer as was the First, but he refuses to toss out entirely the older view that it is aimed in some measure against Hobbes. Although Parry is probably least tolerant towards the Strauss approach to Locke, he is even able to find large areas where he endorses moderate versions of that position, for example, on the important range of similarities between Hobbes and Locke. Parry’s "harmonizing approach" shows up also in the unusually wide range of Lockean sources from which he draws. He uses not only the standard fare of the Second Treatise and the Essays on the Law of Nature, but also the works on education, toleration, and economics to good effect. Disappointingly scanty, however, is the place of the First Treatise and even the Essay. His harmonizing approach shows up most importantly, however, in his attempt to combine the two chief sorts of attention Locke has received in recent years. On the one hand, there is the Locke scholarship properly so-called. While there are several varieties and orientations within this literature, no doubt the leading one has taken a very historical approach—attempting to understand Locke in his historical context and deploying religious or theological categories as the chief means for doing so. This approach shuns "present-mindedness" above all other intellectual vices. While Parry announces his general adherence to this approach he attempts to take account of the other main sort of interest in Locke today—as a source and inspiration for a very live contemporary tradition of political thinking, represented by Nozick and Rawls. Parry uses these contemporary "Lockeans" to help interpret the Second Treatise, leaning for example on Rawls’s formulation of the problem social contact theory attempts to answer, and Nozick’s doctrine of "entitlements." Parry’s refusal to be terrified by the strictures against "present-mindedness" produce some of the best and most valuable features of the book, as when he seriously asks what Locke means today, or how other contemporary political views differ from Locke’s. On the other hand, his reading of Locke on political economy suffers a bit perhaps from over-domination by Nozick’s restatement. Parry attempts to give both devils their due by agreeing with the historical school that Locke’s thought must be read historically, as Christian or theological, in a form that could hardly be acceptable to any contemporary political thinkers, and agreeing with the contemporary Lockean tradition that "to a very considerable extent" Locke’s position "can and must be…assessed and understood apart from its theological substructure." Those theological foundations are, Parry admits, very problematical. In fact, with a post-Humean eye, "it can become difficult to persuade oneself even that Locke could have found his position consistent." Yet Parry affirms "there is no doubt that Locke found the argument satisfying." But he supplies no reason—other than the fact that Locke deployed such arguments on more than one occasion—for this conclusion. Surely gross inconsistencies in argument are grounds for doubt. Parry should have at the least entertained Leo Strauss’s hypothesis about Locke’s manner of expression in light of his own views that Locke’s expressed theological underpinnings are unacceptable philosophically, and that Locke’s position can rest on altogether independent nontheological grounds. Moreover, Parry’s concession that Locke cannot move successfully from those religious underpinnings to the all-important content of the law of nature supplies further grounds for considering the same hypothesis. Parry’s treatment shares with most of the historical approaches to Locke the defect of "slackness"—when we come to something inconsistent or difficult to understand, we write it off as the product of Locke’s faith, internally meaningful, believable to him. Only in Parry’s case this is more problematical yet, for he rightly insists that we see Locke’s position as nonarchaic, and thus makes the reader eager for probing analysis and justification rather than loose appeals to Locke’s times. In order to connect the theological underpinnings to the political arguments, Parry is driven to some most un-Lockean notions such as the duty of "an individual to stretch himself to the full." For a similar reason, we suspect, freedom, which plays an extremely large part in Parry’s exposition, nowhere receives an adequate rooting in Locke’s discussion in the Essay, nor does Locke’s hedonism play a sufficient part in Parry’s interpretation.—M.Z. (shrink)

A book which might well become a classic on Heidegger. Richardson discusses most of Heidegger's works in chronological order, offering a close analysis of each. Most chapters include a general exposition of the argument of the work discussed, a detailed analysis of the problems of Thought, Being and Dasein in the work, and a résumé. While maintaining very high standards of scholarly precision in the rendering of Heidegger's ideas and terminology, Richardson yet succeeds in making his book very readable and (...) lucid. Without "supplementing" Heidegger in any way, refraining from explanatory speculations and staying always very close to the text, he manages to clarify some of the most difficult passages of Heidegger's works. His frequent cross-references make the commentary of genuine value to the advanced student as well as to the novice. Heidegger, in his own preface to the book, criticizes Richardson for the sharp distinction between Heidegger I and Heidegger II, but gives a most important substantiation to two of the author's main theories, viz., the difference between Heidegger's Seinsdenken and Husserl's phenomenology, and the central status of the concept of Ereignis in Heidegger's philosophy. Richardson regrettably does not pursue the Heidegger III suggested by Vycinas, the Heidegger of the Geviert, the question of the nature of Being as such. In some chapters at least this omission makes the interpretation seem partial and sometimes inexact. One hopes for a sequel as good and illuminating.—E. M. Z. (shrink)

A collection of commentaries on various theories in aesthetics, similar in method and aim to Kainz's Vorlesungen. Far from placing "the study of aesthetics on a new footing" or grasping "the scope of the subject as a whole," as the dust jacket declares, it is still a useful, well organized and often illuminating manual for the student of aesthetics. Sparshott treats some problems clearly and succinctly, but many other questions, such as the mode of being of the work of art (...) or the possibility of regarding art as a cognitive form, are not even mentioned. It also seems that some familiarity with at least the main currents in aesthetics on the continent and a more systematic conception of the field of aesthetics as a whole would have brought Sparshott closer to his stated aims.—E. M. Z. (shrink)

Rudolf Carnap, remembering in his Autobiography a visit to Warsaw in November 1930, and recalling animated discussions with Lesniewski, Kotarbinski, and Tarski, expressed deep regret that stimulating and fruitful works in the field of logic and theory of knowledge, published only in the Polish language, were inaccessible to the philosophical world. An analogous opinion is expressed by Karl R. Popper who has stated that his methodological solutions were influenced by Alfred Tarski more than by anybody else. Regarding similar appraisals and (...) trying to partially eliminate the mentioned barrier of the language, D. Reidel Publishing Company has edited an anthology of methodological papers published in Poland between 1947-72. The anthology consists of thirty-three articles by twenty Polish logicians investigating the issues of the general methodology of empirical sciences. (shrink)

A brief, non-technical, well-organized presentation of a system of aesthetics which makes use of insights typical of various Gestalt psychologists and phenomenologists but claims Wittgenstein and the school of language analysis as its only source of influence. Works of art as well as the materials the artist uses are subject to "aspection" and "animation" by various images, such that "each material is featured as a little, elementary aesthetic object." Aldrich offers a theory of evaluations and normative descriptions of works of (...) art, showing that they are not purely subjective or arbitrary. Several important issues remain quite vague throughout the book, e.g., the concept of "holophrastic perception" which is supposed to give us the nature of the "material thing" as it really is. There is a complete lack of interest in anything done in aesthetics by continental philosophers.--E. M. Z. (shrink)

Unlike most anthologies in aesthetics and the philosophy of art, the present selection does not try to collect representative extracts from the writings of most, or even many, important aestheticians throughout the ages. It aims for depth rather than width and tries to do as much justice as possible to those aestheticians which it does include, without bothering much about those left out. The result is really impressive. No less than 138 pages are devoted to Plato and Aristotle alone, where (...) the reader may find not only the usual passages from the Poetics and the Rhetoric but also relevant material from De Partibus Animalium and Politica. Such an anthology, so it seems, must be an opinionated one. Thus, while it contains some 70 pages of Dewey's Art as Experience, there is not a single line of Santayana in it. Although I disagree with the choice made in this case, I cannot but admire the courage it took to make it. Another surprise is the inclusion of the relatively obscure mediaeval thinker, Marsilio Ficino, in an anthology which excludes Baumgarten, Lessing, Burke, Schiller, Coleridge, Bosanquet and Alexander, to mention but few, and whose sole contemporary representative is Heidegger. The extracts from Ficino's commentary on Plato prove, however, to be highly interesting and relatively original, too. Thus, even if Ficino is not as great as some of the aestheticians not included in this volume, I, for one, would not regret this mark of personal, off-beat, taste. The last selection, Heidegger's "The Origin of the Work of Art," appearing for the first time in English translation, comes as special bonus to the reader. The editors' introductions to each selection are generally concise, precise, and very helpful. Sometimes, however, one may find an exception: in their introduction to the Heidegger translation, the editors characterize the Kehre as a "reversal... from the stress on anxiety, nothingness... to a stress on more affirmative moods." This is, to say the least, a grossly misleading remark, which is likely to confuse the student of the later Heidegger rather than help him.—E. M. Z. (shrink)

The book can be roughly divided in two parts. The first four chapters criticize several previous systems of aesthetics, notably those of Cassirer, Croce, and their followers, and suggest an alternative based upon an interesting extension of the recently, much-discussed theory of direct perception as a "seeing-as." Hofstadter would use this model of interpretative-perception to explicate the nature of language as well. A cry will not be, thus, an "expression" of pain but rather present the pain directly; it would articulate (...) human existence in a certain way. Accepting, in addition, the idealistic theory of Categories, Language is understood by Hofstadter as the emergence of the self and the world into a meaningful and an intelligible existence. The next three chapters which, to my mind, make the weaker part of the book, distinguish three kinds of language and, hence, three kinds of truth. There is the truth of statement, which is explicated as the identity of the meant with the existent, the truth of things, which is the practical governance of things by the self's laws and ends, and the truth of spirit, being the synthesis of the former two, where the thing reaches a full realization of its own will of being. When the life-will brings itself to full realization, the thing is perfect, i.e., it is beautiful. It is unfortunate that in the development of these important and highly interesting ideas rhetoric often takes the place of philosophical rigor. The concluding chapter, exploring "the spiritual truth of art," gives a coherent application of the theory and combines a dialogue with several aestheticians, critics, and artists with an analysis of some crucial problems in aesthetics.—E. M. Z. (shrink)

The first six chapters of this book present and criticize six views of the nature of proper names, among which are theories that proper names have no meaning or connotation, that proper names have more meaning than other signs or that their meaning is infinite, that ordinary proper names should be analysed into "logically" proper names, etc. This part of the book is the best. One may find in these chapters several well-reasoned arguments which seem to totally demolish the theories (...) under investigation. Chapters seven to nine present the author's own solution to the problem. Sørensen holds that a proper name does have a meaning—otherwise it would not have been a part of language at all. The meaning of a linguistic sign, he argues, is a set of conditions to be satisfied by an extra-linguistic entity, such that this entity may be identified as denoted by the said sign. A proper name is an individual name, and its meaning is a series of necessary and sufficient conditions for the identification of the individual entity which this name is intended to denote. It is Sørensen's view that this series consists of a definite description of final length including space and time indicators. The definiens formula for proper names is thus 'P' = 'the x that... t... p....' The discussion of this proposal is, however, greatly impaired by Sørensen's utter disregard for the rich philosophical literature existing on the subject: no attempt is made to confront his view with the now standard arguments against theories of that type. Even many inner difficulties of the proposed solution are ignored. E.g., one may ask what values do 't' and 'p' take in the definition of 'Zeus'. Or take the following puzzle: are 'The x that taught Aristotle in p at t' and 'The x that studied with Socrates in p at t' both the meaning of 'Plato'? Sørensen's view that "A national register may be looked upon as a dictionary of proper names" suggests a positive answer, but surely R and S cannot be the same meaning. Many similar problems bother the reader of Sørensen's book, but, unfortunately, they are nowhere discussed.—E. M. Z. (shrink)

This book contains twenty-two papers by K. Ajdukiewicz, an outline of his memoir and philosophical evolution by J. Giedymin, and a bibliography of Ajdukiewicz’s works compiled by T. Czezowski. In the colorful introductory paper, Giedymin characterizes the personality of the famous Polish philosopher-logician as a person open not only to philosophical investigations but also to contemplation of the beauty contained in music, literature, and nature. The sketch of Ajdukiewicz’s scientific activity presents him as an excellent teacher, open-minded in understanding different (...) viewpoints but simultaneously as an independent and uncompromising thinker. (shrink)

A repulsive core force is derived which, assuming π mesons are the field particles, gives binding energies in good agreement with binding energies per nucleon of heavy nuclei. The physical model consists of a field of relatively short range, in which emission of a π meson by a nucleon and subsequent absorption by a neighboring nucleon is equivalent to a potential well. The binding energy at the equilibrium spacing of the nucleons is the self-energy of the π mesons, which is (...) calculated by analogy with classical electric fields. (shrink)

Die Historische Kommission zu Berlin betreibt die Erforschung der Landesgeschichte und der Historischen Landeskunde Berlin-Brandenburgs bzw. Brandenburg-Preußens in Form von wissenschaftlichen Untersuchungen, Vorträgen, Tagungen und Veröffentlichungen sowie durch Serviceleistungen. Dabei kooperiert die Kommission auch mit anderen Institutionen und begleitet wissenschaftliche und praktische Vorhaben von allgemeinem öffentlichen Interesse. In der Schriftenreihe werden die Ergebnisse der einzelnen wissenschaftlichen Projekte der Kommission veröffentlicht.

To consider power as not only the direct physical oppression of others, but as a production of authority through discursive knowledge and a claimed ‘expertise’ of the world, has been one of Foucault’s great legacies to critical work on mental health and illness. As arbiters of the ‘truth’ on what is and what is not mental pathology, I agree with Swerdfager that the privileged knowledge of the mental health professions and the consequential marginalization of other forms of knowledge on distress (...) can be better theorized through an investigation of the power/knowledge nexus. Practically, scholars and researchers can begin to address these... (shrink)

Although some of Helmholtz’s scientific suggestions are dated with the progress of science, his ontological statements as well as his epistemological studies are still an object of philosophical controversy. The selection of Helmholtz’s epistemological writings, edited as volume 79 in the Synthese Library, contains four papers originally published in German between 1868 and 1887. In these papers are considered among others the epistemological aspects of measuring and numbering, the issues of perceptual cognition, the theory of geometrical knowledge, and the relationship (...) between science and metaphysics. The present collection of the Helmholtz’s articles was previously edited in German, on the centenary of his birth, under the title Schriften zur Erkenntnistheorie. The editors, M. Schlick and P. Hertz, sharing the opinion that Helmholtz’s name is a symbol of a union between epistemologically oriented philosophy and science, had selected from his many epistemological writings only four—the most representative and the most complete. In order to make the papers intelligible not only to philosophers but also to general readers, Schlick and Hertz supplemented the primary texts with explanatory remarks and comments. Some of them have a general introductory character, explaining, for instance, the difference between induction and deduction or elucidating Locke’s conception of two kinds of properties; the others present useful syntheses of methodological solutions, comparing, e.g., Carnap’s or Reichenbach’s ideas with Helmholtz’s. (shrink)

A Charter on Medical Professionalism (CMA) has just recently been developed internationally, and the Canadian Medical Association is calling for public dialogue on medical professionalism now that reforms in the Canadian system of health care are imminent. We posit that good practices are at issue; we outline the essence of these in general and also specifically in the knowing, teaching and intervening components of practice. We also see challenges not to, but in, medical professionalism – first and foremost in the (...) profession's definition of good practices and the payer's confinement of insurance coverage to these. (shrink)

Nowadays, mobile telephony interruptions in our daily life activities are common because of the inappropriate ringing notifications of incoming phone calls in different contexts. Such interruptions may impact on the work attention not only for the mobile phone owners, but also for the surrounding people. Decision tree is the most popular machine-learning classification technique that is used in existing context-aware mobile intelligent interruption management model to overcome such issues. However, a single-decision tree-based context-aware model may cause over-fitting problem and thus (...) decrease the prediction accuracy of the inferred model. Therefore, in this paper, we propose an ensemble machine-learning-based context-aware mobile telephony model for the purpose of intelligent interruption management by taking into account multi-dimensional contexts and name it “E-MIIM”. The experimental results on individuals’ real-life mobile telephony data sets show that our E-MIIM model is more effective and outperforms existing MIIM model for predicting and managing individual’s mobile telephony interruptions based on their relevant contextual information. (shrink)

Concerning the ubiquity of social media, this research tried to examine the impacts of using Telegram on Iranian EFL learners’ foreign language motivation, foreign language anxiety, and attitude toward learning. To achieve these purposes, 60 Iranian EFL learners at the intermediate level were selected and randomly divided into two groups: experimental and control. After that, both groups were pretested on motivation and anxiety variables. After pretesting, the participants in the experimental class received treatmentviausing the Telegram application, and the control students (...) were trained traditionally without using any social media. After an 18-session instruction, a post-test of motivation and a post-test of anxiety were given to both groups, and also an attitude questionnaire was distributed among the experimental group to inspect their attitudes toward the Telegram application in language learning. The results of using two one-way ANCOVA tests showed significant differences between the post-tests of the control and experimental groups in favor of the experimental group. The findings demonstrated that using the Telegram application increased the motivation of the experimental group and decreased their level of foreign language anxiety. Also, the results of one sample t-test showed that the participants of the experimental group held positive attitudes toward using the Telegram application in English language learning. The implications of this research can encourage both teachers and learners to use social media-based instruments in English teaching and learning. (shrink)

The complexity of biobank research raises concerns about individuals’ understanding of the information conveyed in the consent process for such research.. We report the results of a qualitative, cognitive interview study with an ethnically, linguistically, and educationally diverse sample of 43 respondents to assess the clarity and utility of a multimedia tool developed for a biobank. Using weighted randomization, respondents were assigned to either view the multimedia tool or read a written consent document . The study illustrates the utility of (...) cognitive interviews for gaining insights from prospective research participants about the clarity of informed consent tools. Findings suggest that a multimedia tool is useful for communicating key messages but should be combined with a written consent document and personal interaction with the study staff. We recommend that the potential value of multimedia tools should be more rigorously tested in a randomized controlled trial. (shrink)

The Infectious Diseases Act entered into force officially on 14 November 2018 in Bangladesh. The Act is designed to raise awareness of, prevent, control, and eradicate infectious or communicable diseases to address public health emergencies and reduce health risks. A novel coronavirus disease was first identified in Bangladesh on 8 March 2020, and the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare issued a gazette on 23 March, listing COVID-19 as an infectious disease and addressing COVID-19 as a public health emergency. The (...) gazette empowers the government to monitor the spread of infection. Despite there being an infrastructure of research ethics committees in almost all hospitals in Bangladesh, a lack of such committees in the clinical setting often forces healthcare professionals to allocate scarce healthcare resources to the task. These personnel are often either influenced by materialistic matters or guided by the emergency policies, without reaching a consensus on how to allocate scarce resources in times of need, especially in the time of the COVID-19 pandemic. Ethical dilemmas often arise when a number of patients with COVID-19, especially in poor and middle-class areas, are denied care while elites are prioritized to receive such scarce resources. Resource allocation in healthcare during the COVID-19 pandemic in Bangladesh appears to be unethical and in direct conflict with the biomedical principles of non-maleficence and procedural justice. The findings of this study suggest that the Act needs substantive changes in the stipulation of policy directing hospitals in the provision of resource allocation framework. Furthermore, parliament should produce guidance outlining how to successfully implement the law with the aim of protecting public health in times of emergency, especially the COVID-19 pandemic. (shrink)

AimThe aim of this study was to determine the presence of depressive symptoms and understand the potential factors associated with these symptoms among physicians in Bangladesh during the COVID-19 pandemic.MethodsA cross-sectional study using an online survey was conducted in between April 21 and May 10, 2020, among physicians living in Bangladesh. Participants completed a series of demographic questions, COVID-19-related questions, and the Patient Health Questionnaire-9. Descriptive statistics, test statistics were performed to explore the association between physicians’ experience of depression symptoms (...) and other study variables. Stepwise binary logistic regression was followed while conducting the multivariable analysis.ResultA total of 390 physicians completed the survey. Of them, 283 were found to be experiencing depressive symptoms. Predictors which were significantly associated with depressive symptoms were gender, the presence of sleep disturbance, being highly exposed to media coverage about the pandemic, and fear around COVID-19 infection, being assaulted/humiliated by regulatory forces and by the general public, while traveling to and from the hospital and treating patients during the countrywide lockdown.ConclusionThe findings of this study demonstrate that there is a high prevalence of depressive symptom among physicians especially among female physicians in Bangladesh during the COVID-19 pandemic. Immediate, adequate and effective interventions addressing gender specific needs are required amid this ongoing crisis and beyond. (shrink)

The most prominent form of human communication and interaction is speech. It plays an indispensable role for expressing emotions, motivating, guiding, and cheering. An ill-intentioned speech can mislead people, societies, and even a nation. A misguided speech can trigger social controversy and can result in violent activities. Every day, there are a lot of speeches being delivered around the world, which are quite impractical to inspect manually. In order to prevent any vicious action resulting from any misguided speech, the development (...) of an automatic system that can efficiently detect suspicious speech has become imperative. In this study, we have presented a framework for acquisition of speech along with the location of the speaker, converting the speeches into texts and, finally, we have proposed a system based on long short-term memory which is a variant of recurrent neural network to classify speeches into suspicious and nonsuspicious. We have considered speeches of Bangla language and developed our own dataset that contains about 5000 suspicious and nonsuspicious samples for training and validating our model. A comparative analysis of accuracy among other machine learning algorithms such as logistic regression, SVM, KNN, Naive Bayes, and decision tree is performed in order to evaluate the effectiveness of the system. The experimental results show that our proposed deep learning-based model provides the highest accuracy compared to other algorithms. (shrink)

Stem cells are likely to be used as an alternate source of biological material for neural transplantation to treat Parkinson’s disease in the not too distant future. Among the several ethical criteria that must be fulfilled before proceeding with clinical research, a favourable benefit to risk ratio must be obtained. The potential benefits to the participant and to society are evaluated relative to the risks in an attempt to offer the participants a reasonable choice. Through examination of preclinical studies transplanting (...) stem cells in animals and the transplantation of fetal tissue in patients with Parkinson’s disease, a current set of potential benefits and risks for neural transplantation of stem cells in clinical research of Parkinson’s disease are derived. The potential benefits to research participants undergoing stem cell transplantation are relief of parkinsonian symptoms and decreasing doses of parkinsonian drugs. Transplantation of stem cells as a treatment for Parkinson’s disease may benefit society by providing knowledge that can be used to help determine better treatments in the future. The risks to research participants undergoing stem cell transplantation include tumour formation, inappropriate stem cell migration, immune rejection of transplanted stem cells, haemorrhage during neurosurgery and postoperative infection. Although some of these risks are general to neurosurgical transplantation and may not be reduced for participants, the potential risk of tumour formation and inappropriate stem cell migration must be minimised before obtaining a favourable potential benefit to risk calculus and to provide participants with a reasonable choice before they enrol in clinical studies. (shrink)

Good and evil; religious aspects; Islam.

A considerable section of the population in India accesses the services of individual private medical practitioners (PMPs) for primary level care. In rural areas, these providers include MBBS doctors, practitioners of alternative systems of medicine, herbalists, indigenous and folk practitioners, compounders and others. This paper describes the profile, knowledge and some practices of the rural doctor in India and then discusses the reasons for lack of equity in health care access in rural areas and possible solutions to the problem.

Background. Imposter syndrome, associated with self-doubt and fear despite clear accomplishments and competencies, is frequently detected in medical students and has a negative impact on their well-being. This study aimed to predict the students’ IS using the machine learning ensemble approach. Methods. This study was a cross-sectional design among medical students in Bangladesh. Data were collected from February to July 2020 through snowball sampling technique across medical colleges in Bangladesh. In this study, we employed three different machine learning techniques such (...) as neural network, random forest, and ensemble learning to compare the accuracy of prediction of the IS. Results. In total, 500 students completed the questionnaire. We used the YIS scale to determine the presence of IS among medical students. The ensemble model has the highest accuracy of this predictive model, with 96.4%, while the individual accuracy of random forest and neural network is 93.5% and 96.3%, respectively. We used different performance matrices to compare the results of the models. Finally, we compared feature importance scores between neural network and random forest model. The top feature of the neural network model is Y7, and the top feature of the random forest model is Y2, which is second among the top features of the neural network model. Conclusions. Imposter syndrome is an emerging mental illness in Bangladesh and requires the immediate attention of researchers. For instance, in order to reduce the impact of IS, identifying key factors responsible for IS is an important step. Machine learning methods can be employed to identify the potential sources responsible for IS. Similarly, determining how each factor contributes to the IS condition among medical students could be a potential future direction. (shrink)