Ras proteins function as critical relay switches that regulate diverse signaling pathways between cell surface receptors and the nucleus. Over the past 2‐3 years researchers have identified many components of these pathways that mediate Ras activation and effector function. Among these proteins are several guanine nucleotide exchange factors (GEFs), which are responsible for directly interacting with and activating Ras in response to extracellular stimuli. Analogous GEFs regulate Ras‐related proteins that serve other diverse cellular functions. In particular, a growing family of (...) proteins (Dbl homology proteins) has recently been identified, which may function as GEFs for the Rho family of Ras‐related proteins. This review summarizes our current knowledge of the structure, biochemistry and biology of Ras and Rho family GEFs. Additionally, we describe mechanisms of GEF activation of Ras in signal transduction and address the potential that deregulated GEFs might contribute to malignant transformation through chronic Ras protein activation. (shrink)

This study examines local communities’ lived experiences and organizations’ care-giving processes regarding four oil and gas projects deployed in three countries. Analyzing the empirical data through the lens of ethics of care reveals that, together with mature justice, the inclination to care conceived at the focal organization creates an ethical culture encouraging caring activities by individuals at the local level. Through close communications with communities, project decision makers at the local level recognize the demanded care of local communities and develop (...) organizations’ caring capacity. The empirical analysis revealed that the care-giving process can also be influenced by the power dynamics of the network of stakeholders. This research emphasizes on the success of a bottom-up approach in caring for local communities, and sheds light on the capability of large organizations in giving care to their distal stakeholders by adopting this approach. Furthermore, it indicates that justice and care both have some useful characteristics and are complementary but, most importantly, are socially constructed and not mutually exclusive. (shrink)

Contract cheating is a challenging problem facing higher and further education providers (HE and FE) worldwide. In the UK, contract cheating has been identified as a growing problem by the HEA and, more recently, the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education and the Department for Education. The high rate of contact cheating among students suggests that 8–9% of degrees awarded in the UK are unsafe. To address this issue, the current study with a new approach seeks to investigate student’s motivations, (...) experiences, and rationale for using contract cheating from their point of view. Collected data has been subjected to content analysis and the findings show different phases and drivers in this process. This study will help increase awareness among UK academics and education providers about the processes involved in contract cheating and propose a set of recommendations for the future. (shrink)

Background Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, different countries sought to manufacture and supply effective vaccines to control the disease and prevent and protect public health in society. The implementation of vaccination has created many ethical dilemmas for humans, which must be recognized and resolved. Therefore, the present study was conducted to analyze the ethical considerations in vaccination against COVID-19 from the perspective of service providers. Methods The present qualitative research was conducted in 2022 in the north of Iran. (...) The participants included 23 health workers with at least five years of work experience and members of the COVID-19 vaccination team. The data were initially collected through systematic semi-structured interviews, then snowball sampling and finally continued until data saturation. The next steps were transcription of interviews, identification of meaning units, coding, categorization based on similarity and symmetry, extraction of themes and the analysis of themes through content analysis. Results The analysis of participants’ experiences led to the extraction of five main categories of themes and fifteen sub-categories of the ethical considerations of COVID-19 vaccination. Safe and standard vaccine production, vaccine supply, fairness, respect for autonomy, and accountability were the main categories. The subcategories included compliance with scientific and ethical procedures, effectiveness and profitability of vaccine, absence of severe adverse effects, allocation of resources for vaccine supply, vaccine availability, diversity and comprehensiveness of alternative vaccines, vaccination prioritization, prioritization of the vulnerable populations of society, autonomy of patient (equal rights), autonomy of community, autonomy of service providers, reporting correct information, reporting vaccine side effects, public trust and acceptance. Conclusion The health system managers should be adequately prepared to solve the ethical problems posed by COVID-19 vaccination. Therefore, it is recommended to avoid haste in vaccination and pay more attention to vaccination safety standards, provide sufficient resources for a comprehensive vaccine supply, pay close attention to collective interests versus individual interests, and meet community needs. (shrink)

Should the regulation of production and distribution in a socialist society be based on the law of value? In this article we ask (1) Is this question not based on an ontological understanding of labour, on a rational and therefore conceptual understanding of abstract labour and, ultimately, a transhistorical understanding of value and the so-called ‘law of value’?; (2) is it not precisely this deception and power of the fetishism of commodities that, by eternalising value and the ‘law of value’, (...) limits the horizon and perspective of ‘realistic politics’ (Realpolitik)?; and (3) whether this question does not treat socialism as a political situation where the solution to its ‘economic’ problem is unrelated to its very identity? In order to answer these questions, we provide a novel understanding of Marx’s fundamental category of value, its substance, form and magnitude, with the help of the German expression Formgehalt, translated as form-content. (shrink)

This study examines the subtle and complex importance of food and eating in contemporary female fiction. It reveals how the chief concern with food, its consumption and the body are central to the work of writer like Margaret Atwood. Two novels in particular, Cat’s Eye (1988) and Alias Grace (1996) will be considered as they feature female protagonists who experience intense conflicts concerning their bodies, conflicts that result in or are a response to violence. This violence takes the form of (...) eating disorders. They highlight this form of bodily violence which supports their on going critique of dualistic thinking. In their fictions, Atwood shows the artificial bifurcation of human existence into body and self which tends to result in self-alienation or the splitting of the subject. This writer draws on feminist and sociological theory to engage with a diverse range of issues, including eating disorders as a form of self-violence or mutilation, to demonstrate the direct relationship of food and eating or not-eating with gender and cultural politics to manifest the role of using food in assumed association of the womanly body which leads to splitting of the subject. (shrink)

This article examines how migrant ‘illegality’ is experienced in the Swedish context. How do ‘illegal‘ migrants manage work, housing, healthcare, safety and a family life in the absence of access to formal provisions? What are their survival strategies? I use direct quotations from undocumented migrants themselves to build a multifaceted picture of migrant ‘illegality’. Following Willen's (2007) call for a ‘critical phenomenology of illegality’, I move beyond the socio-political situation of undocumented migrants to their embodied experiences of being ‘illegal’. I (...) conclude that undocumented migrants are not excluded but are excepted; they have not been thrown out, but neither are they considered participants. Undocumented migrants are included in society without being recognised as members. (shrink)

Pascal’s Wager is one of the most important and challenging arguments for the existence of God and the rationality of religious believes. According to this argument, where the rational and theoretical arguments for the existence of God are not satisfying, still in practice and decision-making, living on the basis of belief in God and other religious doctrines like life after death, is the most prudential and rational option and the best bet; although these believes are not rationally and certainly provable; (...) Avoiding the probable loss of atheism, namely eternal and infinite damnation in afterlife – that is more important than certain utility and restricted and finite pleasure of life in this world, is the ground of rationality of this decision-making. The psychological use of this argument is very effective, but the justificatory use of it have many difficulties; This article is concerned with the most important criticisms of this argument in terms of plurality of religions, rationalism, evidentialism, ethics of belief, voluntarism and probabilities calculus. (shrink)

Background The principle of human dignity is woven into the ethical principles of the midwifery profession, noted as both an obligation and a human right. Research Objectives The aim of this study is to explore the experiences of midwifery students regarding threats to women's dignity during childbirth. Research Design This is a qualitative study with explorative design. Participants and Research Context: The research was carried out in 2022 at Kermanshah University of Medical Sciences, involving 32 midwifery students in individual interviews (...) that lasted between 30 and 90 minutes. These participants aged 21 to 28 years, with an average age of 23.5 years, provided their perspectives on the matter. Results Four key themes described the threats to women’s dignity during childbirth: 1) professional incompetence, 2) abuse of power imbalance, 3) caring only for physical and not mental health, and 4) structural issues within the healthcare system. Professional incompetence was characterized by outdated practices and lack of adherence to evidence-based medicine. Abuse of power imbalance was demonstrated in instances where the authoritative position of healthcare providers was misused, thereby disrupting the respectful care that women are entitled to receive. The disproportionate emphasis on physical health over mental health was evidenced by the disregard for mothers' psychological well-being during childbirth. Lastly, systemic structural issues emerged as significant impediments, revealing the need for system-wide changes. Ethical considerations: This study was approved by the Ethics Committee of the Research Deputy at Kermanshah University. Participation was voluntary and the confidentiality were maintained. Conclusion The findings underscore the role that unprofessional behavior, ethical lapses in medical practices, and systemic challenges play in undermining maternal dignity during childbirth. These threats necessitate urgent attention and must be adequately addressed in policy development and program implementation to safeguard the dignity of mothers during childbirth. (shrink)

Our world suffers. Some people suffer more than others. Since the first part of 2020, ours is justly described as a time of uncertainty, threat, and upheaval. In this article, we offer reflections threaded narratively, told from the specificity of our societal contexts in Iran, Canada, and Australia. What might we learn in the present and anticipated future from people living chronically within conditions of uncertainty and immobility and also those experiencing uncertainty and immobility for the first time? We argue (...) that reflexive comparative analysis bridging social and visual analysis, anchored in embodied conditions of such people, offers a way to learn from responses to COVID-19 while also being an exercise in ethical research practice. This reflection builds on and extends from our scholarly collaborations that have been ongoing since 2015. Our title recognizes this specific virus as stealthy. Importantly, our choice of words identifies resident Iranians—whose experiences were the original impetuses for this paper, and whose lives provide its empirical basis —as equally steely. (shrink)

The goal of the present study was to explain the pattern of familiar and unfamiliar relationships influencing moral judgments. In this qualitative study, relationship-based moral judgments were examined according to the constructivist theory. The studied sample included 27 individuals, including 14 women and 13 men (both young and old), living in Tehran. A purposeful sampling method was used. In order to collect data, participants were faced with moral dilemmas using semi-structured interviews. The results showed that emotional intimacy, lack of tolerance (...) for loss of loved ones and avoiding future regrets, group loyalty and common goals, and real or symbolic threats and a negative relationship were factors involved in relationship-based moral judgments. These factors, alone or together with cognitive biases, lead to unfair moral judgments, and after recognizing moral concerns related to ignoring the principle of equality, people tend to use Moral Disengagement mechanisms to reduce self-blame. -/- . (shrink)

In this paper, we define the notion of PC-lattice, as a generalization of finite positive implicative BCK-algebras with condition and bounded commutative BCK-algebras. We investiate some results for Pc-lattices being a new class of BCK-lattices. Specially, we prove that any Boolean lattice is a PC-lattice and we show that if X is a PC-lattice with condition S, then X is an involutory BCK-algebra if and only if X is a commutative BCK-algebra. Finally, we prove that any PC-lattice with condition is (...) a distributive BCK-algebra. (shrink)

The aviation industry is one of the most widely used applications in transportation. Due to the limited capacity of aircraft, revenue management in this industry is of high significance. On the other hand, the hub location problem has been considered to facilitate the demands assignment to hubs. This paper presents an integrated p-hub location and revenue management problem under uncertain demand to maximize net revenue and minimize total cost, including hub establishment and transportation costs. A fuzzy programming model and a (...) genetic algorithm are developed to solve the proposed model with different sizes. The mining and petroleum industry is used for case studies. Results show that the proposed algorithm can obtain a suitable solution in a reasonable amount of time. (shrink)

Abstract:Nicolette Bragg asks Grant Farred about the legacy of his text Martin Heidegger Saved My Life and what it means to think.

As systems based on opaque Artificial Intelligence (AI) continue to flourish in diverse real-world applications, understanding these black box models has become paramount. In response, Explainable AI (XAI) has emerged as a field of research with practical and ethical benefits across various domains. This paper not only highlights the advancements in XAI and its application in real-world scenarios but also addresses the ongoing challenges within XAI, emphasizing the need for broader perspectives and collaborative efforts. We bring together experts from diverse (...) fields to identify open problems, striving to synchronize research agendas and accelerate XAI in practical applications. By fostering collaborative discussion and interdisciplinary cooperation, we aim to propel XAI forward, contributing to its continued success. Our goal is to put forward a comprehensive proposal for advancing XAI. To achieve this goal, we present a manifesto of 27 open problems categorized into nine categories. These challenges encapsulate the complexities and nuances of XAI and offer a road map for future research. For each problem, we provide promising research directions in the hope of harnessing the collective intelligence of interested stakeholders. (shrink)

Background: Moral reasoning is a vital skill in the nursing profession. Teaching moral reasoning to students is necessary toward promoting nursing ethics. Objectives: The aim of this study was to compare the effectiveness of problem-based learning and lecture-based methods in ethics education in improving moral decision-making, moral reasoning, moral development, and practical reasoning among nursing students. Research design: This is a repeated measurement quasi-experimental study. Participants and research context: The participants were nursing students in a University of Medical Sciences in (...) west of Iran who were randomly assigned to the lecture-based or the problem-based learning groups. The subjects were provided nursing ethics education in four 2-h sessions. The educational content was similar, but the training methods were different. The subjects completed the Nursing Dilemma Test before, immediately after, and 1 month after the training. The data were analyzed and compared using the SPSS-16 software. Ethical considerations: The program was explained to the students, all of whom signed an informed consent form at the baseline. Findings: The two groups were similar in personal characteristics. A significant improvement was observed in the mean scores on moral development in the problem-based learning compared with the lecture-based group. Although the mean scores on moral reasoning improved in both the problem-based learning and the lecture-based groups immediately after the training and 1 month later, the change was significant only in the problem-based learning group. The mean scores on moral decision-making, practical considerations, and familiarity with dilemmas were relatively similar for the two groups. Conclusion: The use of the problem-based learning method in ethics education enhances moral development among nursing students. However, further studies are needed to determine whether such method improves moral decision-making, moral reasoning, practical considerations, and familiarity with the ethical issues among nursing students. (shrink)

Background Providing quality care is of the fundamental elements of holistic nursing practice, and burnout and moral intelligence of nurses be mentioned as the important factors influencing the quality of nursing care. The present study was conducted to investigate the relationship between moral intelligence, burnout, and the quality of nursing care. Methods This descriptive-correlative study was conducted on 125 nurses working in Sari-based Educational hospitals affiliated to Mazandaran University of Medical Sciences, Iran, between June and August 2020. The sample was (...) selected via random sampling. The data were collected by the Maslach Burnout Inventory, Lennick and Kiel Moral Intelligence Scale, and Quality of Patient Care Scale. The data were analyzed by SPSS-21 and Amos-24. Results A direct and significant relationship was found between the quality of nursing care and moral intelligence ( r = 0.285, p = 0.001). Quality of care had an inverse relationship with subscales of frequency of burnout including emotional exhaustion ( r = −0.369, p < 0.001) and depersonalization ( r = −0.471, p < 0.001) and also, a direct relationship with personal accomplishment ( r = 0.226, p = 0.011). The findings also showed an inverse relationship between quality of care and subscales of the intensity of burnout. Amos software yielded results that demonstrated moral intelligence as a robust mediator between burnout and the quality of care. Conclusion The findings implied the necessity for more attention to moral intelligence as a mediator in order to come up with properly managing the personality traits influencing the nurses’ burnout reduction, which can ultimately lead to improved quality of nursing care. (shrink)

This collection of essays marks the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Frantz Fanon’s classic study of anticolonial struggle, _The Wretched of the Earth_. Scholars explore the relevance of Fanon’s work for current modes of psychoanalysis, postcolonial theory, and political thought. One contributor reposes a classic question of postcolonial scholarship: what does it mean for a colonial Caribbean man to practice a Continental intellectual tradition? Others identify Fanon’s experiences working at a mental institution in colonial French Algeria as a powerful (...) influence on his psychoanalytic perspective. This issue revitalizes Fanon’s canonical status as Third World theorist by asserting that the main imperatives of Fanon’s work remain as urgent as ever: combating the psychic and physical violence of colonialism, achieving real forms of liberation for colonized peoples, and ending the degradation of people of color. Contributors: Matthew Abraham, Gerard Aching, John E. Drabinski, Grant Farred, Nigel C. Gibson, Priyamvada Gopal, Joy James, Ranjana Khanna, Alfred J. López, Miguel Mellino, Simon Morgan Wortham, Richard Pithouse Grant Farred is Professor of Africana Studies and English at Cornell University. He is the former editor of the _South Atlantic Quarterly_ and the author, most recently, of_ Long Distance Love: A Passion for Football_. (shrink)

The article investigates the significance of syntax in the multilingual EU law. It attempts to respond to the question whether syntax is apt to contribute to the uniformity of that law and how, with regard to this function, it relates to the (widely disputed yet uncontested) semantic and pragmatic methods of achieving such a uniformity. In order to respond to this question, the article firstly, recalls fundamental concepts which would help conceptualize the endeavour and, secondly, presents examples of analysis of (...) syntax arrangements which can be deemed representative for the study of the said problem of contribution. The study finds that EU law (expressed in 24 official languages which have equal authentic status) relies on diversified syntax of its respective constitutive languages. Syntax structures used in respective language versions of EU law represent narrower, law-specific, form of syntax structures available in these languages. Its specificity is determined mostly by legislative traditions of respective EU member states. Syntactic structures of EU law produced in different official languages do not represent a single pattern because of diversified mode of producing illocutionary value of provisions in which strongly idiomatic modal verbs (modal operators) and even special modal structures (not necessarily containing modal verbs) are used to express legal norms. They also differ when it comes to their law-specific compositionality, i.e. flexibility of different syntax structure to produce the same meaning and, in the same time, to preserve their genre/register informational value. Notwithstanding, these structures have well pronounced and system-significant common features within respective Germanic, Romanic, and Slavic families of languages in which EU law is mostly reproduced. The sentence structure and the relevant register of EU law provisions are the same for respective versions of EU texts of law expressed in the languages belonging to the respective three language families which were examined for the sake of this study. These common features are re-enforced by the synoptic mode of producing EU law which imposes formal resemblance of provisions reproduced in respective EU official languages to each other. The multilingual EU legislator also uses patterns which grant legal text the relevant register, yet its specific EU character ultimately transpires through semantic aspects of EU texts rather than their mere syntax. The unity of the system is achieved most strongly through the EU specific interpretation, where the teleological methods (which can be conceived as a language means to achieve EU law goals and objectives at the pragmatic level) are of utmost importance. Thus, there is no EU-specific syntax which would, as such, contribute to unity of EU law. Instead, unity is achieved in the area of semantics and pragmatics. The well exposed anaphoric character of EU law (as any other type of law) may contribute to narrowing down possibility for differentiation of respective language versions of EU law. (shrink)

In _Entre Nous_ Grant Farred examines the careers of international football stars Lionel Messi and Luis Suarez, along with his own experience playing for an amateur township team in apartheid South Africa, to theorize the relationship between sports and the intertwined experiences of relation, separation, and belonging. Drawing on Jean-Luc Nancy's concept of relation and Heideggerian ontology, Farred outlines how various relationships—the significantly different relationships Messi has with his club team FC Barcelona and the Argentine national team; Farred's shifting modes (...) of relation as he moved between his South African team and his Princeton graduate student team; and Suarez's deep bond with Uruguay's national team coach Oscar Tabarez—demonstrate the ways the politics of relation both exist within and transcend sports. Farred demonstrates that approaching sports philosophically offers particularly insightful means of understanding the nature of being in the world, thereby opening new paths for exploring how the self is constituted in its relation to the other. (shrink)

Introduction: sport and the event -- Ron Artest: the black body at rest (Alain Badiou) -- Eric Cantona: the body in motion (Gilles Deleuze) -- Zinedine Zidane: coup de boule (Jacques Derrida) -- Epilogue: being, event, and the philosophy of sport.

This essay uses Derrida's concept of autoimmunity to critique Homeland, a television show that deals with an American prisoner of war who has been ‘turned’ into an operative for an al Queda-like movement. Autoimmunity is critical to thinking the ways in which the existence of a turned POW within the state, who belongs visibly to the state, presents a particularly heteronomic challenge to how the distinction between Self and Other operates. This Self who has taken up the cause of the (...) Other presents, this essay argues, an infinitely greater threat to the state precisely because it cannot be identified as Other, precisely because bears no ostensible traces of the Other. (shrink)

Philosophical anthropology is a tradition that is as old as philosophy itself, so much so that it might be said to be indistinguishable from philosophy itself. Philosophical anthropology, extending as it does from Socrates to Sartre, best describes the work of V.Y. Mudimbe. Anthropology, broadly conceived as the science that studies human origins, the material and cultural development of humanity, is always Mudimbe’s first line of philosophical inquiry. It is certainly Mudimbe’s interest in anthropology that allows him to conduct his (...) investigations into Africa, its modes of thinking, and colonialism and its continuing effects on the continent. Writing on the latter issue in The Invention of Africa, Mudimbe, with his customary deftness of mind, argues that colonialism and its aftermath cannot by itself account for the continent’s extant condition: “The colonizing structure, even in its most extreme manifestations... might not be the only explanation for Africa’s present-day marginality. Perhaps this marginality could, more essentially, be understood from the perspective of wider hypotheses about the classification of beings and societies.” [ Making sense of Africa, in Mudimbe’s terms, must begin with a hypothesization that explicates how “beings and societies” come to be classified, the anthropological undertaking par excellence, which also requires a study of the forces that construct, implement and maintain these classifications. (shrink)

It is dwelling that allows mortals to initiate themselves in time and space. As such, dwelling constitutes the event of being. In his essay “Building Dwelling Thinking,” Martin Heidegger stipulates that dwelling can only be achieved through harmonious relations among the constituents, earth, sky, mortals and gods, of the “fourfold.” Heidegger writes, “To preserve the fourfold, to save the earth, to receive the sky, to await the divinities, to initiate mortals – this fourfold preserving is the simple essence of dwelling.” (...) Initiating themselves in time and space is the great difficulty that the residents of Ilmorog, the remote village in postcolonial Kenya in which Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s novel Petals of Blood is set, experience; in Petals of Blood, dwelling is what defines mortals’ being. (shrink)

This essay considers James Baldwin's The Fire Next Time as a philosophical contemplation on love. Drawing on sources such as the Bible, Jacques Derrida, and a host of Baldwin critics, this essay understands the Christian love of The Fire Next Time as asymmetrical. The asymmetry of love derives from its understanding of love as the responsibility to Self and Other that demands no reciprocation. Asymmetrical love makes itself vulnerable before the Other and, most importantly, it is a love that risks (...) itself absolutely by offering love to those who will do violence to the subject who gives love. (shrink)

“The Fourth Spartacus” uses Alain Badiou’s work, especially Logics of Worlds, to critique the 1976 Soweto student rebellion. Soweto 1976 is one of the key events in black South African anti-apartheid history. Taking its cue from the figure of Spartacus, a figure that assumes many iterations in political history, this essay argues for a fidelity to the event of Soweto 1976: the recognition that Soweto 1976 must be understood as a radical moment that is not continuous with the preceding and, (...) particularly, successive moments of anti-apartheid struggle. Soweto 1976, “The Fourth Spartacus” insists, did not culminate, as the dominant political narrative in post-apartheid South Africa claims, in the democratic elections of 1994. More than anything, the event of Soweto 1976 stands determinedly opposed to the democratic materialism of post-apartheid South Africa. (shrink)