The latest Omicron variant of the novel coronavirus has itself created a novel situation—bringing attention to the topic of healthcare rationing among hospitalized pediatric patients. This may be the first time that many pediatricians, nurses, parents, and public health officials have been compelled to engage in uncomfortable discussions about the allocation of medical care/resources. Simply put, finite budgets, resources, and a dwindling healthcare workforce do not permit all patients to receive unlimited medical care. Triage and bedside rationing decisions are happening (...) in a range of difficult everyday circumstances both implicitly and explicitly, but in ways not recognized by even the best ethically framed intentions. Clinicians and hospital administrators have largely been left on their own “to flatten the rationing curve” in hopes that resources never have to be explicitly rationed at their facility. Unfortunately, the downstream result is a misinformed and distrustful public (i.e. parents, guardians, and caregivers) filled with people who are already burdened with inflammatory pseudoscience narratives and deficits in health literacy. This paper aims to elevate a more thoughtful conversation about healthcare rationing by analyzing some existing ethical principles/framework developed for rationing decision making during previous emergency responses and drawing from the day-to-day clinical perspectives of a frontline pediatric acute care/hospitalist. (shrink)

The term “dao” (道) has been playing the theoretically paradigmatic role in almost all East Asian philosophies, religions, and cultures. The meanings of the term “dao” in the Dao De Jing and other ancient East Asian texts have remained hermeneutically problematic up to this point in time. This article argues that one of the main causes of this hermeneutical problematic is the failure to establish a theoretically formal typology of the “dao.” It further suggests that a hermeneutically disciplined reading of (...) the 76 uses of the term “dao” in the Dao De Jing accomplishes two important goals: (1) it demonstrates that a typological approach may enhance an understanding of the Laoian Dao, and (2) it provides some good data to begin reconstructing such a theoretically formal dao-typology. (shrink)

Anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) is a part of the brain's limbic system. Classically, this region has been related to affect, on the basis of lesion studies in humans and in animals. In the late 1980s, neuroimaging research indicated that ACC was active in many studies of cognition. The findings from EEG studies of a focal area of negativity in scalp electrodes following an error response led to the idea that ACC might be the brain's error detection and correction device. In (...) this article, these various findings are reviewed in relation to the idea that ACC is a part of a circuit involved in a form of attention that serves to regulate both cognitive and emotional processing. Neuroimaging studies showing that separate areas of ACC are involved in cognition and emotion are discussed and related to results showing that the error negativity is influenced by affect and motivation. In addition, the development of the emotional and cognitive roles of ACC are discussed, and how the success of this regulation in controlling responses might be correlated with cingulate size. Finally, some theories are considered about how the different subdivisions of ACC might interact with other cortical structures as a part of the circuits involved in the regulation of mental and emotional activity. (shrink)

Electroencephalogram plays an essential role in analysing and recognizing brain-related diseases. EEG has been increasingly used as a new type of biometrics in person identification and verification systems. These EEG-based systems are important components in applications for both police and civilian works, and both areas process a huge amount of EEG data. Storing and transmitting these huge amounts of data are significant challenges for data compression techniques. Lossy compression is used for EEG data as it provides a higher compression ratio (...) than lossless compression techniques. However, lossy compression can negatively influence the performance of EEG-based person identification and verification systems via the loss of information in the reconstructed data. To address this, we propose introducing performance measures as additional features in evaluating lossy compression techniques for EEG data. Our research explores if a common value of CR exists for different systems using datasets with lossy compression that could provide almost the same system performance with those using datasets without lossy compression. We performed experiments on EEG-based person identification and verification systems using two large EEG datasets, CHB MIT Scalp and Alcoholism, to investigate the relationship between standard lossy compression measures and our proposed system performance measures with the two lossy compression techniques, discrete wavelet transform—adaptive arithmetic coding and discrete wavelet transform—set partitioning in hierarchical trees. Our experimental results showed a common value of CR exists for different systems, specifically, 70 for person identification systems and 50 for person verification systems. (shrink)

Hoarding disorder is a psychiatric condition characterized by difficulty discarding items and accumulation of clutter. Although studies have established the negative impact of HD and compulsive hoarding behavior, fewer have examined the impact on quality of life of hoarding behavior independent of obsessive–compulsive disorder. Moreover, specific aspects of QoL such as success in work/academics or satisfaction with interpersonal relationships have not been well-investigated. In this study, we examined, in a sample of 2100 adult participants obtained from Amazon Mechanical Turk, the (...) relationships between hoarding, OCD, and depression symptomatology and four QoL domains derived from a factor analysis of the Quality of Life Inventory. We performed linear regressions to examine associations between psychiatric symptomatology and QoL domains and then conducted mediation analyses to investigate the role of depressive symptomatology in the identified relationships. We found that while hoarding and obsessive–compulsive symptoms were both negatively associated with QoL, they were associated with different domains [hoarding was significantly associated, and was less strongly associated with success or enrichment. Mediation analyses confirmed the role of depression as a complete mediator of hoarding’s effect on total, environment, and family QoL, and as a partial mediator of hoarding’s effect on success and enrichment QoL. Further examination of the relationship between hoarding symptoms and QoL in those with mild, moderate, and severe depression indicated that in those with more severe depression, hoarding was associated with improved QoL, indicating a possible buffering or compensatory effect. The findings suggest a differential impact of hoarding and obsessive–compulsive symptoms on QoL and emphasize the importance of considering co-morbid depressive symptoms in designing more targeted interventions. Future studies should continue to investigate these complex relationships, given the high co-morbidity of hoarding and depression. (shrink)

To create a programming environment for contract dispute resolution, we propose an extension of assumption-based argumentation into modular assumption-based argumentation in which different modules of argumentation representing different knowledge bases for reasoning about beliefs and facts and for representation and reasoning with the legal doctrines could be built and assembled together. A distinct novel feature of modular argumentation in compare with other modular logic-based systems like Prolog is that it allows references to different semantics in the same module at the (...) same time, a feature critically important for application of argumentation in legal domains like contract dispute resolution where the outcomes of court cases often depend on whether credulous or skeptical modes of reasoning were applied by the contract parties. We apply the new framework to model the doctrines of contract breach and mutual mistake. (shrink)

We provide a logical analysis of private international law, a rather esoteric, but increasingly important, domain of the law. Private international law addresses overlaps and conflicts between legal systems by distributing cases between the authorities of such systems (jurisdiction) and establishing what rules these authorities have to apply to each case (choice of law). A formal model of the resulting interactions between legal systems is proposed based on modular argumentation. It is argued that this model may also be useful for (...) governing the interactions between heterogeneous agents, belonging to different and differently regulated virtual societies, without recourse to a central regulatory agency. The model also provides for multiple interpretations concerning rules of private international law as well as substantive rules of the different legal systems. (shrink)

Night eating syndrome is currently classified as an Other Specified Feeding or Eating Disorder under the Diagnostic Statistical Manual−5. This systematic review aims to consolidate the studies that describe the sociodemographic, clinical and psychological features of NES in a population of patients with eating disorders, obesity, or those undergoing bariatric surgery, and were published after the publication of the DSM-5. A further aim was to compare, where possible, NES with BED on the aforementioned variables. Lastly, we aimed to appraise the (...) quality of the studies being included in the review. We conducted a systematic search on three databases which resulted in the selection of 22 studies for the review. We included the articles that studied patients with NES and their sociodemographic, clinical and psychological features in a clinical population, through a quantitative study design. Articles were excluded if the NES patients included in the study had a comorbid psychological disorder, and/or the sample was collected from a university/non-clinical population, and/or the study design was qualitative, and/or NES features were compared with any other disorder, except BED. Our study found that no conclusions about the link between any sociodemographic feature and an NES diagnosis could be made. Further, NES patients presented with elevated ED pathology and higher occurrence of depressive symptoms than controls. Contrary to the literature suggesting that NES and Binge Eating Disorder patients often report overlapping features, questioning the validity of NES as an ED diagnosis, we found that BED can be differentiated from NES by the higher occurrence of emotional eating, body related concerns and abnormal eating episodes. The review also suggested an overlap between NES and Sleep-Related Eating Disorder. We recommend that it is essential to study NES as an independent disorder to further develop its diagnostic criteria and treatment options, thereby, increasing the quality of life of the patients suffering from this syndrome. (shrink)

Unification in description logics has been proposed as a novel inference service that can, for example, be used to detect redundancies in ontologies. The inexpressive description logic EL is of particular interest in this context since, on the one hand, several large biomedical ontologies are defined using EL. On the other hand, unification in EL has been shown to be NP-complete and, thus, of considerably lower complexity than unification in other description logics of similarly restricted expressive power. However, EL allows (...) the use of the top concept, which represents the whole interpretation domain, whereas the large medical ontology SNOMED CT makes no use of this feature. Surprisingly, removing the top concept from EL makes the unification problem considerably harder. More precisely, we will show that unification in EL without the top concept is PSPACE-complete. In addition to the decision problem, we also consider the problem of actually computing EL−⊤-unifiers. (shrink)

Organizational leaders are eager to unlock the creative potential of followers. Yet, there is growing evidence that creativity can also have a dark side within organizations. Building on research linking creativity and unethical behavior, we develop the construct of creative unethicality—behavior that is both unethical and novel. We draw on social exchange theory to develop a model that identifies both why and when creative unethicality emerges within organizations. Specifically, we investigate the exchange dynamics through which creative support provided by empowering (...) leaders facilitates creative unethicality under conditions of high performance pressure. Across two multi-wave, multi-source field studies with employee-coworker and leader-subordinate dyads and an experimental study with a novel unethicality measure in a business simulation, we find convergent support for our theoretical model. These findings have important theoretical and practical implications for fostering creativity in organizations without simultaneously facilitating creative unethicality. (shrink)

How, and how well, do people switch between exploration and exploitation to search for and accumulate resources? We study the decision processes underlying such exploration/exploitation trade‐offs using a novel card selection task that captures the common situation of searching among multiple resources (e.g., jobs) that can be exploited without depleting. With experience, participants learn to switch appropriately between exploration and exploitation and approach optimal performance. We model participants' behavior on this task with random, threshold, and sampling strategies, and find that (...) a linear decreasing threshold rule best fits participants' results. Further evidence that participants use decreasing threshold‐based strategies comes from reaction time differences between exploration and exploitation; however, participants themselves report non‐decreasing thresholds. Decreasing threshold strategies that “front‐load” exploration and switch quickly to exploitation are particularly effective in resource accumulation tasks, in contrast to optimal stopping problems like the Secretary Problem requiring longer exploration. (shrink)

The explanatory power of structures in analytical sociologists’ agent-based models brings into question methodological individualism. We defend that from an explanatory point of view, the syntactic properties of models require semantic conditions of interpretation drawn from a conceptual research framework; in such a framework, social/relational structures have only partial, explanatory power ; and taking the explanation further through generative mechanism modeling necessitates calling upon methodological individualism’s generic framework of interpretation that relies on social actors’ rational capacity. According to this interpretive (...) framework, forces in action in society are governed by the subjective meaning of/the reasons for individual actions. (shrink)

A significant body of research has emerged in order to better understand unethical behavior at work and how gender plays a role in the process. In this study, we look to add to this literature by exploring how perpetrator gender influences reactions to distinct types of unethicality. Rather than viewing unethical behavior as a unitary construct, where all forms of lying, cheating, and stealing are the same, we integrate theories and concepts from the criminal justice and moral psychology literatures to (...) categorize certain unethical behaviors as either impulsive or premeditated. Given the agentic nature of premeditated unethical behavior, we draw from role congruity theory to predict that women will be punished more severely than men for their role incongruous actions. Impulsive unethical behavior, on the other hand, will be less likely to elicit perceptions of congruity or incongruity, leading to less of a gender effect. Results from three studies sampling both undergraduates and working adults in the United States, Singapore, and South Korea showed that participants were more likely to associate premeditated unethical behavior with a male perpetrator because it was seen as less feminine, and female perpetrators who engaged in premeditated unethical behavior received more severe punishment than male perpetrators due to the perceived role incongruity of their actions. Implications are discussed as well as possible limitations and directions for future research. (shrink)

Working memory (WM) is a fundamental cognitive ability to support complex thought, but it is limited in capacity. WM training has shown the potential to make benefit for those in need. Many studies have shown the potential of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) to transiently enhance WM performance by delivering low current to the brain cortex of interest via electrodes on the scalp. TDCS has also been revealed as a promising intervention to augment WM training in a few studies. However, (...) those few tDCS-paired WM training studies focused more on the effect of tDCS on WM enhancement and its transferability after training but paid less attention to the variation of cognitive performance during the training procedure. The current study attempted to explore the effect of tDCS on the variation of performance during WM training in healthy young adults. All the participant received WM training with the load-adaptive verbal N-back task for five days. During the training procedure, active/sham anodal high-definition tDCS (HD-tDCS) was used to stimulate the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC). To examine the training effect, pre- and post-test were performed respectively one-day before and after the training sessions respectively. At the beginning of each training session, stable-load WM tasks were performed to examine the performance variation during training. Compared to the sham stimulation, higher learning rates of performance metrics during the training procedure were found when WM training was combined with active anodal HD-tDCS. The performance improvements (post-pre) of the active group were also found to be higher than those of sham group and were transferred to a similar untrained WM task. Further analysis revealed that the negative relation between the training improvements and baseline performance. These findings show the potential that tDCS may be leveraged as an intervention to facilitate WM training for those in need of higher WM ability. (shrink)

In this paper, we discuss the weakness of current action languages for sensing actions with respect to modeling domains with multi-valued fluents. To address this problem, we propose a language with sensing actions and multi-valued fluents, called AMK, provide a transition function based semantics for the language, and demonstrate its use through several examples from the literature. We then define the entailment relationship between action theories and queries in AMK, denoted by ⊧AMK, and discuss some properties about AMK.

In the Western tradition, at least since the 14th century, the philosophy of knowledge has been built around the idea of knowledge as a representation [BOU 99]. The question of the evaluation of knowledge refers at the same time (1) to the object represented (which one does one represent?), (2) to the process of knowledge formation, in particular with the role of the knowing subject (which one does one represent and how does one represent it?), and finally (3) to the (...) relationship between the representation and the represented object. Criteria of evaluation such as “validity”, “adequacy” or “truth”, as mentioned in [AMB 07], make sense only with respect to these three dimensions. An evaluation can thus (1) depend on the ontological nature of the object of knowledge, (2) relate to the relationship between subject and object—including the structures (cognitive, social) which organize this relationship, or (3) relate to the relation of similarity between the object and its representation as well. The relevant criteria of evaluation thus depend on the points of view adopted on these questions. As there are indeed a plurality of points of view in this field, the goal of this appendix is to summarize, as briefly as possible, the various positions adopted by the philosophers and to refer to the relevant texts of reference for more information (for a first outline [CHA 76, SCH 01]). The first section 1 introduces useful discussions about the philosophy of theoretical knowledge and general epistemology, from a quasi-historical perspective. Section two 2 discusses the intermediary but central notion of models. Section three 3, more exploratory, introduces an approach to simulation as “concrete experiment”. It suggests that such a frequent claim in the literature, when precisely evaluated, can, to some extent, renew both the representational and the linguistic views on simulation. (shrink)

We study the semantics of dialectical proof procedures. As dialectical proof procedures are in general sound but not complete wrt admissibility semantics, a natural question here is whether we could give a more precise semantical characterization of what they compute. Based on a new notion of infinite arguments representing loops, we introduce a stricter notion of admissibility, referred to as strict admissibility, and show that dialectical proof procedures are in general sound and complete wrt strict admissibility.

Der Wahrheitswert der Literatur ist in der Philosophie seit der Antike umstritten. Im 20. Jahrhundert konkurrieren Hermeneutik, Dekonstruktion und Analytische Philosophie um die Deutungshoheit für literarische Kunstwerke. Der Vergleich der unterschiedlichen philosophischen Wahrheitstheorien kann dazu beitragen, einen Begriff der Poetik zu entwickeln, der in der Literatur mehr sieht als einen Unfall der Sprache. Im 20. Jahrhundert differenzieren sich unterschiedliche theoretische Ansätze heraus, die eine Antwort auf die Frage nach der Wahrheit der Literatur zu geben versuchen. Ausgehend von den Gründungsvätern der (...) Phänomenologie und der Analytischen Philosophie, Husserl und Frege, zeichnet die Studie diesen Prozess der Ausdifferenzierung nach, um am Beispiel von Heidegger, Gadamer, Derrida, Davidson, Rorty und Cavell die Spannung zwischen philosophischer und literarischer Wahrheit herauszustellen. Im Mittelpunkt der kritischen Auseinandersetzung mit den jeweiligen philosophischen Wahrheitstheorien steht ein Begriff der Poetik, der zwischen den unterschiedlichen Ansprüchen von Philosophie und Literatur zu vermitteln vermag. (shrink)