The authors surveyed hospitals across the country on their policies regarding overlapping surgery, and found large variation between hospitals in how this practice is regulated. Specifically, institutions chose to define “critical portions” in a variety of ways, ultimately affecting not only surgical efficiency but also the autonomy of surgical trainees and patient experiences at these different hospitals.

Inflammatory responses are essential for the clearance of pathogens and the repair of injured tissues; however, if these responses are not properly controlled chronic inflammation can occur. Chronic inflammation is now recognized as a contributing factor to many age‐associated diseases including metabolic disorders, arthritis, neurodegeneration, and cardiovascular disease. Due to the connection between chronic inflammation and these diseases, it is essential to understand underlying mechanisms behind this process. In this review, factors that contribute to chronic inflammation are discussed. Further, we (...) emphasize the emerging roles of microRNAs (miRNAs) and other noncoding RNAs (ncRNA) in regulating chronic inflammatory states, making them important future diagnostic markers and therapeutic targets. Copyright Line: © 2015 The Authors BioEssays Published by Wiley‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA. (shrink)

This article examines one of the relevant concepts in the current debate on home birth—autonomy in place of birth—and its uses in general language, ethics, and childbirth health care literature. International discussion on childbirth services. A concept analysis guided by the model of Walker and Avant. The authors suggest that autonomy in the context of choosing place of birth is defined by three main attributes: information, capacity and freedom; given the antecedent of not harming others, and the consequences of accountability (...) for the outcome. Model, borderline and contrary cases of autonomy in place of birth are presented. A woman choosing place of birth is autonomous if she receives all relevant information on available choices, risks and benefits, is capable of understanding and processing the information and choosing place of birth in the absence of coercion, provided she intends no harm to others and is accountable for the outcome. The attributes of the definition can serve as a useful tool for pregnant women, midwives, and other health professionals in contemplating their moral status and discussing place of birth. (shrink)

BackgroundThe U.S. Food and Drug Administration traditionally has kept confidential significant amounts of information relevant to the approval or non-approval of specific drugs, devices, and biologics and about the regulatory status of such medical products in FDA’s pipeline.ObjectiveTo develop practical recommendations for FDA to improve its transparency to the public that FDA could implement by rulemaking or other regulatory processes without further congressional authorization. These recommendations would build on the work of FDA’s Transparency Task Force in 2010.MethodsIn 2016-2017, we convened (...) a team of academic faculty from Harvard Medical School, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Yale Medical School, Yale Law School, and Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health to develop recommendations through an iterative process of reviewing FDA’s practices, considering the legal and policy constraints on FDA in expanding transparency, and obtaining insights from independent observers of FDA.ResultsThe team developed 18 specific recommendations for improving FDA’s transparency to the public. FDA could adopt all these recommendations without further congressional action.FundingThe development of the Blueprint for Transparency at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration was funded by the Laura and John Arnold Foundation. (shrink)

In her new book Reconstructing Reality (henceforth RR), Margaret Morrison’s main target is the kind of information about the world (or, more specifically, about physical and biological systems) one can extract from the ‘reconstructive methods and practices of science’ (p. 1). To address this, Morrison focuses on three central kinds of interrelated strategies for ‘recasting nature’ (p. 2) by using reconstructive methods and practices: (i) abstract mathematical explanations and understanding (Part 1 of the book), (ii) scientific models (Part 2), (...) and (iii) computer simulations (Part 3). Hence, RR is the ambitious attempt to connect and analyse three major topics in current philosophy of science. (shrink)

This essay fills in some historical, conceptual, and pedagogical gaps that appear in the most visible and recent professional efforts to “revive” Philosophy as a Way of Life (PWOL). I present “American Philosophy and Self-Culture” as an advanced undergraduate seminar that broadens who counts in and what counts as philosophy by immersing us in the lives, writings, and practices of seven representative U.S.-American philosophers of self-culture, community-building, and world-changing: Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790), Frederick Douglass (1818–1895), William Ellery Channing (1780–1842), Henry David (...) Thoreau (1817–1862), Margaret Fuller (1810-1850), Henry Bugbee (1915–1999), and Gloria Anzaldúa (1942–2004). Students enter the class with preconceptions about who philosophers are, what they do, how they write, and the languages in which they write. Students walk out with new senses of self, place, and language that emerge through new ways of seeing, doing, and writing philosophy. (shrink)

This book examines Bertrand Russell’s complicated relationships to the women around him, and to feminism more generally. The essays in this volume offer scholarly reassessments of these relationships and their import for the history of feminism and of analytic philosophy. Russell is a founder of analytic philosophy. He has also been called a feminist due to his public, decades-long advocacy for women’s rights and equality of the sexes. But his private behavior towards wives and sexual partners, and his apparently dismissive (...) (occasionally public) responses to some women philosophers, raises the question of what sort of feminist (or chauvinist) Russell actually was. Focusing on women in Russell’s circle of acquaintance, including feminist activists and his philosophical interlocutors, this book casts new light on a timeless thinker’s feminism and the women who played critical roles in the making of analytic philosophy. (shrink)

Nearly four decades after David Raynor attributed to David Hume an allegorical Scots militia pamphlet from the early 1760s popularly known as Sister Peg, there is still no scholarly consensus about whether the author was in fact Hume or his friend Adam Ferguson. Using new evidence that has emerged since the appearance of Raynor’s edition in 1982 – including information about Sister Peg’s publication history, Ferguson’s handwritten corrections and revisions in the Abbotsford copy of the work, a 1767 newspaper article (...) by James Boswell and a copy of a 1775 letter by Sir John Dalrymple that both named Ferguson as the author, two volumes of Ferguson’s correspondence published in 1995, and a recently discovered letter by Ferguson from 1809 – this article seeks to resolve this controversy by establishing that Sister Peg was written by Ferguson, as his fellow militia agitator Alexander Carlyle asserted in his memoirs. In the process, the article refutes Raynor’s arguments about Ferguson’s supposed incapacity for writing a satirical pamphlet like Sister Peg and clarifies the nature of Hume’s views and actions in regard to the Scots militia cause during the Seven Years’ War. The article also throws light on several related issues affecting Hume and Ferguson’s circle. (shrink)

In ‘The Authorship of Sister Peg', David Raynor relies on circumstantial evidence, unsubstantiated hypotheses, and subjective analysis in an effort to dispute my article ‘Let Margaret Sleep' and claim the authorship of Sister Peg for David Hume. This reply focusses instead on the large body of documentary and testimonial evidence that has surfaced during the past forty years, which overwhelmingly and convincingly supports the attribution of Sister Peg to Adam Ferguson. New documentary evidence includes Ferguson's emendations in Sir Walter (...) Scott's copy of Sister Peg, an 1809 letter from Ferguson to Alexander Fraser Tytler and Tytler's response to it, and information about the early publishing history of the work – as well as a letter by Hume himself about his preoccupation with another project when Sister Peg was written. While no new contemporary testimonials alleging Hume's authorship have been discovered since the publication of Raynor's edition of Sister Peg in 1982, at least nine contemporary testimonials naming Ferguson as the author are now known. This reply refutes Raynor's attempts to discredit the most famous of these testimonials – the account of Ferguson's authorship in the memoirs of Alexander Carlyle – and shows that the others cannot be reduced to Carlyle’s influence. (shrink)

In Part 1, we explored how Berkeley drew from Homeric literature and used literary techniques such as satire to challenge his “freethinking” philosophical opponents in “The Pineal Gland” story published in The Guardian in 1713. Echoing the grand tours Berkeley undertook in subsequent years, Part 1 and 2 both present a “gland tour” of some motivations, influences and legacies of Berkeley's text. In particular, Part 2, explores a line of literary influence beginning with Margaret Cavendish and extending through Gabriel (...) Daniel, Berkeley and Alexander Pope. In doing so, we present anticipations of features of Berkeley's story in the writings of Margaret Cavendish amid a discussion of Berkeley's complex attitudes towards women. The paper also argues that Berkeley's story represents an underappreciated yet significant milestone in the history of speculative fiction. (shrink)

This is a review of the film Big Eyes. Adapted from a true story about artist Margaret Keane, the overarching theme of the movie is plagiarism. While most people think of written works such as books and articles being plagiarized, Big Eyes gives viewers insight into the world of stolen works of visual art, namely paintings. The victim finds moral courage through religion, while the thief lives in denial until death. Anyone with an interest in art, law, or psychiatry (...) will enjoy what Big Eyes has to offer. (shrink)

Some philosophers and physicians have argued that alcoholic patients, who are responsible for their liver failure by virtue of alcoholism, ought to be given lower priority for a transplant when donated livers are being allocated to patients in need of a liver transplant. The primary argument for this proposal, known as the Responsibility Argument, is based on the more general idea that patients who require scarce medical resources should be given lower priority for those resources when they are responsible for (...) needing them and when they are competing with patients who need the same resources through no fault of their own. Since alcoholic patients are responsible for needing a new liver and are in direct competition with other patients who need a new liver through no fault of their own, it follows that alcoholic patients ought to be given lower priority for a transplant. In this article, I argue against the Responsibility Argument by suggesting that in order for it to avoid the force of plausible counter examples, it must be revised to say that patients who are responsible for needing a scarce medical resource due to engaging in behavior that is not socially valuable ought to be given lower priority. I'll then argue that allocating organs according to social value is inconsistent or in tension with liberal neutrality on the good life. Thus, if one is committed to liberal neutrality, one ought to reject the Responsibility Argument. (shrink)

Moral Repair examines the ethics and moral psychology of responses to wrongdoing. Explaining the emotional bonds and normative expectations that keep human beings responsive to moral standards and responsible to each other, Margaret Urban Walker uses realistic examples of both personal betrayal and political violence to analyze how moral bonds are damaged by serious wrongs and what must be done to repair the damage. Focusing on victims of wrong, their right to validation, and their sense of justice, Walker presents (...) a unified and detailed philosophical account of hope, trust, resentment, forgiveness, and making amends - the emotions and practices that sustain moral relations. Moral Repair joins a multidisciplinary literature concerned with transitional and restorative justice, reparations, and restoring individual dignity and mutual trust in the wake of serious wrongs. (shrink)

Das Bild vom glaubwürdigen Wissenschaftler? vom Universalgelehrten der Renaissance zu modernen Laborspezialist*innen - ist ein kulturelles Konstrukt, das die Ansprüche seiner Zeit widerspiegelt. Wie es entsteht, wird im Galvanismusdiskurs um 1800 deutlich.Dieser Band beschäftigt sich mit den Fragen: Wer gilt um 1800 als Naturwissenschaftler? Wie findet man als junger Forscher Aufnahme in die wissenschaftliche Gemeinschaft? Und worin manifestieren sich die wissenschaftskulturellen Unterschiede in Deutschland und Großbritannien zu Beginn des 19. Jahrhunderts? Anhand der frühen Publikationen der jungen aufstrebenden Naturforscher Alexander (...) von Humboldt, Johann Wilhelm Ritter und Christian Heinrich Pfaff sowie ihrer britischen Kollegen untersucht der Autor die Konstruktion vom modernen Naturwissenschaftler durch die wissenschaftliche Gemeinschaft. (shrink)

We consider games over a finite alphabet with Gurevich-Harrington's winning conditions and restraints as in Yakhnis-Yakhnis . The game tree, the Gurevich-Harrington's kernels of the winning condition and the restraints are defined by finite automata. We give an effective criterion to determine the winning player and an effective presentation of a class of finite automata defined winning strategies.Our approach yields an alternative solution to the games considered by Büchi and Landweber . The BL algorithm is an important tool for solving (...) effectively presented games. The differences between the BL and our algorithms are as follows. Our algorithm is uniformly applicable to winning sets that correspond to boolean combinations of BL winning conditions, while the BL algorithm requires a transformation of such boolean combinations into a single BL condition. Our algorithm directly applies to a larger class of game trees for a given game alphabet than does the BL one. We describe Büchi-Landweber's class of winning conditions in a more transparent way by using finite automata and Gurevich-Harrington's form of winning conditions. Our algorithms that determine the winner of the game and find a winning strategy, are based on a translation of the events in the game in terms of the transition table of the automaton representing the game. This automaton differs from the ones that represent BL winning conditions. Both algorithms need further investigation.The algorithm determining the winner in the game, can be used as a verifier of concurrent programs. This is because programs can be viewed as strategies in Gurevich-Harrington's games and program specifications could be regarded as winning conditions for such games. The algorithm which finds a winning strategy could be used as a basis for automated concurrent program design.The present paper is a sequel to Annals of Pure and Applied Logic 48 277–297. (shrink)

This article approaches a potential tension in the work of Slavoj Žižek between his critique of communist ideology and his endorsement of the communist idea. The aim is to show how this endorsement, in effect, emerged out of Žižek’s sustained engagement with communist ideology. The article captures this transformation by focusing on his understanding of the notion of the idea and the ways in which ideology can be transgressed. The conclusion drawn is that in moving from a Kantian to a (...) Hegelian notion of the idea, Žižek also leaves behind his initial Beckettian Leninism in favor of an understanding of revolution that no longer depends on the heroic act of a subject, but on the immanent logic of the communist idea. (shrink)

Based on a two-stage questionnaire with six South Asian organizations that focus on South Asian women, this article examines the factors that determined the creation of such organizations. Through an analysis of their organizational ideology, structure, goals, and strategies, the article demonstrates their relevance and the instrumental role they play in shifting marital violence among South Asians in the United States from a “private problem” to a “social issue.” Central to the analysis is how ethnicity and gender intersect in addressing (...) social change. These organizations are a growing social movement. (shrink)

This chapter argues that the analysis of the previous chapters indicates the problems attached to conceiving of morality as rooted in a neutral or Archimedean point from which different principles can be assessed and validated, but that it is more fruitful to root morality within a particular tradition. The problem of moral scepticism and relativism and pluralism are discussed as well as the implications of this approach to moral theorizing for ethical political principles.

Gauthier and the Full‐knowledge Contract. This chapter examines Gauthier's Morals by Agreement, which generates principles of justice from the starting point of the individual agent as self‐interested utility‐maximizer.

This chapter considers the problems of adjudicating between rival claims to territory, drawing boundaries around jurisdictional units, and creating institutional arrangements that embody the principles developed thus far. It explores the implications of the collective moral right of occupancy in establishing heartlands of groups and argues that these heartlands are useful to demarcate boundaries between self-determining peoples and territories. It suggests that neither democratic theory nor justice theory can be usefully applied to the issue of drawing boundaries. After considering questions (...) of occupancy—its meaning, scope, and implications for territorial claims—the chapter concludes that the moral occupancy principle can identify ‘heartlands’ of groups but is indeterminate in certain cases. It also considers the implications of this argument for secessionist claims and for rival claims to the same territory, looking specifically at the historically contested areas of Northern Ireland, Kashmir, and Kurdish northern Iraq. (shrink)

This chapter examines non-statist theories of territory, associated principally with the works of Avery Kolers and David Miller. Both attach rights to territory to non-statist collectives: to ethnogeographic communities, in Kolers’s work; and to cultural nations, in Miller’s work. Kolers defines an ethnogeographic group by its particular ecological and environmental relationship to land. Such a group has a specific ontology of land and a distinctive pattern of land use. Miller’s account is based on five elements that are said to constitute (...) a nation: shared belief, extension in history, active in character, territorially connected, and with a distinct public culture. This chapter criticizes the two theories, as part of an argument that the political self-determination theory is superior. (shrink)

This chapter considers whether collective self-determination, which justifies a right of jurisdiction, can also generate a right to control natural resources. It discusses the limits of that argument, focusing especially on the limits of justice. Part One deals with territorial claims over unoccupied islands, the seabed, the Arctic, and Antarctica. These are viewed as resources by the rival claimants, and their respective claims should be conceived of as property claims. The second part of the chapter deals with cases where there (...) are natural resources—oil, fertile land, water, coal—on land that is co-extensive with an area occupied by a group. It develops a middle ground between a strong resource rights conception, associated with current views of state sovereignty, and the cosmopolitan view that thinks of groups as having no special claims to resources within their midst, indeed thinking of it as a kind of undeserved advantage. (shrink)

This chapter asks: under what circumstances can force be used to put right contested issues of territory? Not every territorial injustice justifies the use of force, but some do. It examines the standard case, which is the right of the state to defend itself, and particularly to defend its territory, then moves to more controversial situations involving either the defence or breach of territorial integrity. The book’s overall theory is considered in the light of what it says about: military force (...) used to regain territory or territorial rights; annexing territory that contains a majority of people who identify with the annexing state; force used by secessionists to break up an existing territorial state; force used by a majority against secessionists; and external intervention in contentious cases. (shrink)

The scaling of body parts is central to the evolution of morphology and shape. Most traits scale proportionally with each other and body size such that larger adults are essentially magnified versions of smaller ones. This pattern is so ubiquitous that departures from it – disproportionate scaling between trait and body size – pique interest because it can generate dramatically exaggerated traits. These extreme morphologies are frequently hypothesized to result from sexual selection and their study has a long history, with (...) several hypotheses seeking to explain their evolution. Despite this effort, surprisingly little progress has been made in demonstrating the forms of selection that produce different scaling patterns or in identifying the mechanisms that underlie the expression and evolution of scaling relationships. Here we review recent insights regarding the proximate mechanisms that regulate and integrate trait growth and that offer a new framework for studying the evolution of morphological scaling. (shrink)

A collection of 37 essays surveying the state of the art on metaphysical ground. -/- Essay authors are: Fatema Amijee, Ricki Bliss, Amanda Bryant, Margaret Cameron, Phil Corkum, Fabrice Correia, Louis deRosset, Scott Dixon, Tom Donaldson, Nina Emery, Kit Fine, Martin Glazier, Kathrin Koslicki, David Mark Kovacs, Stephan Krämer, Stephanie Leary, Stephan Leuenberger, Jon Litland, Marko Malink, Michaela McSweeney, Kevin Mulligan, Alyssa Ney, Asya Passinsky, Francesca Poggiolesi, Kevin Richardson, Stefan Roski, Noel Saenz, Benjamin Schnieder, Erica Shumener, Alexander Skiles, (...) Olla Solomyak, Tuomas Tahko, Naomi Thompson, Kelly Trogdon, Jennifer Wang, Tobias Wilsch, and Justin Zylstra. (shrink)

Dieser Artikel untersucht den zweideutigen Status der Rhetorik, der zwischen echter Philosophie und bloßer Sophisterei angesiedelt ist, anhand von Alan Badious drei exemplarischen Denkfiguren: dem Philosophen, dem Anti-Philosophen und dem Sophisten. Mit der jüngsten Rückkehr des Sophisten in die Politik in Form populistischer Politiker hat die zeitgenössische Rhetorikforschung die Notwendigkeit zum Ausdruck gebracht, dass die Disziplin ihr Bündnis mit der relativistischen Sophistik überdenkt. Indem Badious drei exemplarische Figuren untersucht und sie mit seinem Verständnis der drei Formen der Negation in Beziehung (...) gesetzt werden, untersucht der Artikel eine mögliche Kluft zwischen sophistischer Rhetorik und antiphilosophischem Populismus, die das vorherrschende Verständnis der Beziehung zwischen Rhetorik, Philosophie und Sophistik verkompliziert. Schließlich wirft der Artikel einige Fragen dazu auf, wie die Exemplarität im Allgemeinen und die drei exemplarischen Figuren im Besonderen in den Rahmen von Badious gesamter Philosophie eingeordnet werden können, und erörtert, wie man diesen Einschränkungen möglicherweise entgegenwirken kann. (shrink)

Corrupt behavior presents major challenges for organizations in a wide range of settings. This article embraces a complexity theoretical perspective to elucidate the causal patterns of factors underlying consumers’ unethical judgments. This study examines how causal conditions of four distinct domains combine into configurational causes of unethical judgments of two frequent forms of corrupt consumer behavior: shoplifting and fare dodging. The findings of fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analyses indicate alternative, consistently sufficient “recipes” for the outcomes of interest. This study extends prior (...) work on the topic by offering new insights into the interplay and the interconnected structures of multiple causal factors and by describing configurational causes of consumers’ ethical evaluations of corrupt behaviors. This knowledge may support practitioners and policy makers to develop education and control approaches to thwart corrupt consumer behaviors. (shrink)