BackgroundInformed consent is an ethical and legal requirement for research involving human participants. However, few studies have evaluated the process, particularly in Africa.Participants in a case control study designed to identify correlates of immune protection against tuberculosis (TB) in South Africa. This study was in turn nested in a large TB vaccine efficacy trial.The aim of the study was to evaluate the quality of consent in the case control study, and to identify factors that may influence the quality of consent.Cross-sectional (...) study conducted over a 4 month period.MethodsConsent was obtained from parents of trial participants. These parents were asked to complete a questionnaire that contained questions about the key elements of informed consent (voluntary participation, confidentiality, the main risks and benefits, etc.). The recall (success in selecting the correct answers) and understanding (correctness of interpretation of statements presented) were measured.ResultsThe majority of the 192 subjects interviewed obtained scores greater than 75% for both the recall and understanding sections. The median score for recall was 66%; interquartile range (IQR) = 55%–77% and for understanding 75% (IQR = 50%–87%). Most (79%) were aware of the risks and 64% knew that they participated voluntarily. Participants who had completed Grade 7 at school and higher were more likely (OR = 4.94; 95% CI = 1.57 – 15.55) to obtain scores greater than 75% for recall than those who did not. Participants who were consented by professional nurses who had worked for more than two years in research were also more likely (OR = 2.62; 95% CI = 1.35–5.07) to obtain such scores for recall than those who were not.ConclusionNotwithstanding the constraints in a developing country, in a population with low levels of literacy and education, the quality of informed consent found in this study could be considered as building blocks for establishing acceptable standards for public health research. Education level of respondents and experience of research staff taking the consent were associated with good quality informed consent. (shrink)

This comprehensive compendium provides a rigorous framework to tackle the daunting challenges of designing correct and efficient algorithms. It gives a uniform approach to the design, analysis, optimization, and verification of algorithms. The volume also provides essential tools to understand algorithms and their associated data structures. This useful reference text describes a way of thinking that eases the task of proving algorithm correctness. Working through a proof of correctness reveals an algorithm's subtleties in a way that a typical description does (...) not. Algorithm analysis is presented using careful definitions that make the analyses mathematically rigorous. (shrink)

Democracy faces threats from an emerging right-wing movement in democratic governments around the world. This may be even more prevalent in the United States because there is an evil that uses rhetorical tropes to undermine the anchor institutions of democracy: press, courts, universities, and Congress. This evil has a personification--former President Donald Trump. All the rhetorical critiques of Trump, that he is a demagogue, an authoritarian, a serial liar, a populist on steroids, fail to take into account the evil that (...) is fomented by his angry and vengeful rhetoric. Pictures of evil in Scripture, philosophy, and rhetoric bear a striking resemblance to Trump. It is not enough to say that he is dangerous to democracy. Kennedy claims that he is the evil seed in democracy that is even now sprouting new versions of the Trump rhetoric as each acolyte attempts to outrage the next. Good and Evil in the Garden of Democracy screams at the evil, fights against the evil, and then attempts to sing the songs of goodness and democracy from poets, prophets, and rhapsodes. For the health of democracy these words have been written. (shrink)

The late eleventh and twelfth centuries were Europe's first age of pamphlet warfare, of invective and satire. The perceived failure, or at least hypocrisy, of its new institutions-the new monastic orders and the reformed papacy-gave rise to the phenomenon, and it was shaped by the study of grammar and rhetoric in the new Schools. The central figures in the texts in the present book are Bernard of Clairvaux, the powerful ostensible founder of the Cistercian order, and the popular and influential (...) teacher Peter Abelard, leader of the radical faction in the Schools of Paris. The event which sparked this controversy was the Church council at Sens in 1141 which had led to the condemnation of Abelard's doctrines. Abelard proposed to use reason to explain the mysteries of faith, and this had led him into all kinds of difficulties with established church doctrine. The leading light in the atttack on his ideas was Bernard, the famous abbot of Clairvaux, a group of whose letters, written to gather support for it before and after the Council, are presented here. A little while later Abelard was defended by the vituperative but otherwise unknown Berengar, who wrote an outrageous Apology attacking Bernard; we also edit his remaining polemical works: his Letter to the Carthusians, and his Letter to the Bishop of Mende. None of Berengar's works has been translated before. An extensive introductory essay describes the course of the debate and the personnel, and analyses the invective employed by both Bernard and Berengar. There is full annotation identifying the writers' sources and clarifying the issues."-- Back cover. (shrink)

Artificial intelligence research has foundered on the issue of representation. When intelligence is approached in an incremental manner, with strict reliance on interfacing to the real world through perception and action, reliance on representation disappears. In this paper we outline our approach to incrementally building complete intelligent Creatures. The fundamental decomposition of the intelligent system is not into independent information processing units which must interface with each other via representations. Instead, the intelligent system is decomposed into independent and parallel activity (...) producers which all interface directly to the world through perception and action, rather than interface to each other particularly much. The notions of central and peripheral systems evaporateeverything is both central and peripheral. Based on these principles we have built a very successful series of mobile robots which operate without supervision as Creatures in standard office environments. (shrink)

Die Entwicklung eines philosophischen Systems ist für den Autor Folge der persönlichen Auseinandersetzung mit der Frage nach dem Lebenssinn und der Stellung des Menschen in der Welt. Die Frage nach dem Sinn des menschlichen Lebens ist die zentrale Frage des Menschen. Die zentrale Stellung bekommt diese Frage dadurch, dass der Mensch selbst - mehr unbewusst als bewusst - sie in seinem Verhalten, seinen Absichten und in seiner Lebensweise, in dem, was er vom Leben im Allgemeinen und von seinem persönlichen Leben (...) im Besonderen fordert und in ihm erreichen will, beantwortet. Diese Frage wird durch die Möglichkeit eines konkret bestimmten individuellen Lebensvollzugs gestellt und durch den Vollzug dieses individuellen, persönlichen Lebens beantwortet. Das eigentliche Problem eines jeden einzelnen Menschen ist seine Orientierung in der Welt. Den «Kompass» für die Orientierung in der Welt kann er nur in der Erkenntnis der Wirklichkeit finden. (shrink)

The uncanniness of Freud's uncanny -- Alligators, crocodiles and the monstrous uncanny -- The uncanny urban underside -- The uncanniness of Schelling's uncanny -- The uncanny and the work of Walter Benjamin -- The uncanny cyborg -- The uncanny and the fictional -- The uncanny and the modern adult literary fairy tale -- The uncanny and the gothic vampire romance -- The uncanny and the detective story -- The uncanny and the weird horror story -- The uncanny and the dystopian (...) science fiction novel -- The uncanny and the historiographic metafictional novel -- The uncanny commonwealth of Christianity -- The living Polytheism of the Fung Loy Kok institute of Taoism/Taoist Tai Chi. (shrink)

After Modernity summarizes archaeological approaches to the contemporary past, and suggests a new agenda for the archaeology of late modern societies.

The emergence of private authority has become a feature of the post-Cold War world. The contributors to this volume examine the implications of this erosion of the power of the state for global governance. They analyse actors as diverse as financial institutions, multinational corporations, religious terrorists and organised criminals. The themes of the book relate directly to debates concerning globalization and the role of international law, and will be of interest to scholars and students of international relations, politics, sociology and (...) law. (shrink)

Placebo cures. Global warming. Extraterrestrial life. Psychokinesis. In a time when scientific claims can sound as strange as science fiction--and can have a profound effect on individual life or public policy--assessing the merits of a far-out, supposedly scientific idea can be as difficult as it is urgent. Into the breach between helpless gullibility and unyielding skepticism steps physicist Robert Ehrlich, with an indispensable guide to making sense of "scientific" claims. A series of case studies of some of the most (...) controversial (and for the judging public, deeply vexing) topics in the natural and social sciences, Ehrlich's book serves as a primer for evaluating the evidence for the sort of strange-sounding ideas that can shape our lives. A much-anticipated follow-up to his popular Nine Crazy Ideas in Science, this book takes up issues close to readers' everyday reality--issues such as global warming, the dangers of cholesterol, and the effectiveness of placebos--as well as questions that resonate through (and beyond) civic life: Is intelligent design a scientific alternative to evolution? Is homosexuality primarily innate? Are people getting smarter or dumber? In each case, Ehrlich shows readers how to use the tools of science to judge the accuracy of strange ideas and the trustworthiness of ubiquitous "experts." As entertaining as it is instructive, his book will make the work of living wisely a bit easier and more reliable for scientists and nonscientists alike. (shrink)

"Written in a racy, persuasive style, the book impresses the reader as a work of significant scholarship...I encourage students of comparative religions- and especially those of Islamic economics- to read it with great care."&$151; Islamic Studies The worlds of economics and theology rarely intersect. The former appears occupied exclusively with the concrete equations of supply and demand, while the latter revolves largely around the less tangible concerns of the soul and spirit. Intended as an interfaith clarification of the relationship between (...) the material and the spiritual worlds, this volume first inspects secular beliefs about the relationship between economics and ethics. Exploring the differences and similarities between the treatment of economic issues in each of the great monotheistic religions, Rodney Wilson reveals how each tradition considers such subjects as individual wealth, lending, economic regulation, usury, insurance capitalism, socialism, and banking. He concludes with an intriguing epilogue on the rapidly expanding field of business ethics. (shrink)

In this paper I shall outline the approach to consciousness adopted by ethnomethodology and its `associate'conversation analysis. I shall attempt to do this by taking a minimalist stance, namely a basic formulation of the elements of these approaches, trying to strip away the ornate superstructures which have been erected upon that basis. I shall proceed in two ways. First, I shall seek to define ethnomethodology and conversation analysis by contrasting them to varying degrees with a variety of other approaches: symbolic (...) interactionism and, derivatively, the work of Goffman, the -social psychology of Rom Harre and his associates and with Norbert Wiley. Secondly, I shall give some examples of the use of the notion of `self'held by ethnomethodologists and conversation analysts that take a definitive turn towards a non-ironic, non-mentalist, non-essentialist and non-cognitivist approach to knowledge, consciousness and self. (shrink)

The challenge that confronts corporate decision-makers in connection with global labor conditions is often in identifying the standardsby which they should govern themselves. In an effort to provide greater direction in the face of possible global cultural conflicts, ethicistsThomas Donaldson and Thomas Dunfee draw on social contract theory to develop a method for identifying basic human rights: Integrated Social Contract Theory (ISCT). In this paper, we apply ISCT to the challenge of global labor standards, attempting to identify labor rights that (...) could serve as guides for corporations producing or outsourcing outside of their home country. In addition to identifying areas of universal agreement, we also examine whether ISCT is, in fact, a sufficient basis for determining worker rights; we seek to define the parameters of the “sweatshop” problem; we include the application and results of our ISCT analysis as applied to labor standards: the global labor rights hypernorms; and conclude that ISCT is sufficient only for rights that are universal. We also discuss whether market-driven decisions can identify the boundaries of labor rights, or at least assure that market outcomes are compatible with maintaining labor rights, in order to respond to the shortcomings of ISCT. We conclude with some comments on directions of analysis for labor rights determination. (shrink)

Most animals have significant behavioral expertise built in without having to explicitly learn it all from scratch. This expertise is a product of evolution of the organism; it can be viewed as a very long term form of learning which provides a structured system within which individuals might learn more specialized skills or abilities. This paper suggests one possible mechanism for analagous robot evolution by describing a carefully designed series of networks, each one being a strict augmentation of the previous (...) one, which control a six legged walking machine capable of walking over rough terrain and following a person passively sensed in the infrared spectrum. As the completely decentralized networks are augmented. the robot’s performance and behavior repetoire demonstrably improve. The rationale for such demonstrations is that they may provide a hint as to the requirements for automatically building massive networks to carry out complex sensory-motor tasks. The experiments with an actual robot ensure that an essence of reality is maintained and that no critical disabling problems have been ignored. (shrink)

In order to build autonomous robots that can carry out useful work in unstructured environments new approaches have been developed to building intelligent systems. The relationship to traditional academic robotics and traditional artificial intelligence is examined. In the new approaches a tight coupling of sensing to action produces architectures for intelligence that are networks of simple computational elements which are quite broad, but not very deep. Recent work within this approach has demonstrated the use of representations, expectations, plans, goals, and (...) learning, but without resorting to the traditional uses, of central, abstractly manipulable or symbolic representations. Perception within these systems is often an active process, and the dynamics of the interactions with the world are extremely important. The question of how to evaluate and compare the new to traditional work still provokes vigorous discussion. (shrink)

Improving the Odds: Raising the Class is a book aimed at legislators, school administrators, home school advocates, and college and university professors which examines the education system and provides a paradigm for improvement. The aim of this book is to find simple ways to approach improving the school system in America based on a belief that we need to build a system that has improvement built into the process of training and educating both teacher and students.

This is an exciting time for brain science. Recent progress has been such that it now seems realistic to look toward an explanation of mind in terms of the brain's anatomy and physiology. Models based on artificially symmetrical arrays of idealized neurons are now being superseded by ones which properly take into account the brain's actual circuitry. This book presents a comprehensive overview of the current state of brain modeling, containing contributions from many leading researchers in this field. It will (...) be of interest not only to researchers in the fields of brain science and neurobiology, but also to psychologists and those involved in the study of artificial intelligence. (shrink)

This paper provides a philosophical analysis of some of the things faculty do to maximize their Student Evaluation of Teachers scores. It examines 28 practices that are claimed to be unethical methods for maximizing SET scores. The paper offers an argument concerning the morality of each behavior and concludes that 13 of the 28 practices suggest unethical behavior. The remaining 15 behaviors are morally permissible.

When Herbert Marcuse's essay entitled “Repressive tolerance” was published in the mid-1960s it was trenchantly criticised because it was anti-democratic and defied the academic canon of value neutrality. Yet his argument is attracting renewed interest in the 21st century, particularly when, post 9/11, the thresholds or limits of tolerance are being contested. This article argues that Marcuse's original essay was concerned to problematise the dominant social understandings of tolerance at the time, which were more about insisting that individual citizens tolerate (...) government policy than governments encourage debate and dissent. The article shows how Marcuse attempted to demonstrate the social production of knowledge about tolerance, and how he diagnosed the social function performed by “impartiality” and “relativism”, and by “neutrality” and “objectivity”, which contributed to tolerance being repressive. In the sense that he was concerned about what counted socially as tolerance, and how it was socially defended and justified, his article can helpfully be conceived as an exercise in social epistemology. (shrink)