BackgroundPeople with upper extremity amputations report receiving insufficient information about treatment options. Furthermore, patients commonly report not knowing what questions to ask providers. A question prompt sheet, or list of questions, can support patient-centered care by empowering patients to ask questions important to them, promoting patient-provider communication, and increasing patient knowledge. This study assessed information needs among people with UE amputations about UE vascularized composite allotransplantation and developed a UE VCA-QPS.MethodsThis multi-site, cross-sectional, mixed-methods study involved in-depth and semi-structured interviews with (...) people with UE amputations to assess information needs and develop a UE VCA-QPS. Qualitative data were analyzed by thematic analysis; quantitative data were analyzed by descriptive statistics. The initial UE VCA-QPS included 130 items across 18 topics.ResultsEighty-nine people with UE amputations participated. Most were male, had a mean age of 46 years, and had a unilateral and below-elbow amputation. Participants desired information about UE VCA eligibility, evaluation process, surgery, risks, rehabilitation, and functional outcomes. After refinement, the final UE VCA-QPS included 35 items, across 9 topics. All items were written at a ≤ 6th grade reading level. Most semi-structured interview participants reported being ‘completely’ or ‘very’ likely to use a UE VCA-QPS.ConclusionPeople with UE amputations have extensive information needs about UE VCA. The UE VCA-QPS aims to address patients’ information needs and foster patient-centered care. Future research should assess whether the UE VCA-QPS facilitates patient-provider discussion and informed decision-making for UE VCA. (shrink)

For several decades, Dr. Morris has worked primarily with two problems: the development of a general theory of signs, and the development of a general theory of value. He approached both problems in terms of George Mead's theory of action or behavior. This book brings together these two lines of development.In many languages there is a term like the English "meaning" which has two poles: that which something signifies and the value or significance of what is signified. The nature of (...) signification and significance, as well as their relations within human behavior, is the subject matter of this book.This book is addressed to philosophers and to students of the behavioral sciences, but it will also appeal to anyone seriously interested in the study of human communication. (shrink)

Attentional scanning was studied in anxious and non-anxious participants, using a modified change detection paradigm. Participants detected changes in pairs of emotional scenes separated by two task irrelevant slides, which contained an emotionally valenced scene and a visual mask. In agreement with attentional control theory, change detection latencies were slower overall for anxious participants. Change detection in anxious, but not non-anxious, participants was influenced by the emotional valence and exposure duration of distractor scenes. When negative distractor scenes were presented at (...) subliminal exposure durations, anxious participants detected changes more rapidly than when supraliminal negative scenes or subliminal positive scenes were presented. We propose that for anxious participants, subliminal presentation of emotionally negative distractor scenes stimulated attention into a dynamic state in the absence of attentional engagement. Presentation of the same scenes at longer exposure times was accompanied by conscious awareness, attentional engagement, and slower change detection. (shrink)

In a congressional hearing in the spring of 1996, talk show host Kathie Lee Gifford was charged with endorsing clothing made in Honduran sweatshops by exploited children. Resulting media coverage focused public attention on a seamy underside of the "global economy." Redemption strategies used by Gifford and her public relations consultant, and repeated and promoted through the mass media, fed a larger controversy over the meaning of the concept of the global economy and its ethical implications for the American public.

Previous research has demonstrated that attitudes are a primary determinant of intention to gamble on electronic gaming machines consistent with the Theory of Reasoned Action. This paper aims to address how biases in judgment can contribute to attitudes and subsequently behavior, including maladaptive problematic gambling behavior. We take a novel approach by viewing overconfidence in one’s understanding of how outcomes are determined on EGMs as an indication of cognitive distortions. The novelty of this paper is further increased as we compare (...) attitudes to existing EGMs with novel EGMs which include a skill component, referred to as skill-based gaming machines, which enables a better controlled comparison between actual and perceived skill. In Study 1, 232 US-based participants were recruited online who were shown various slot machines and SGMs and asked a series of questions about perceived skill and chance in determining outcomes to assess their understanding, then were asked their confidence in their understanding, attitudes toward the machines and they completed the Problem Gambling Severity Index. In Study 2, 246 Australian participants were recruited through community and university student samples; they attended a laboratory where they were randomly allocated to play a real EGM or SGM without money and completed the same measures as in Study 1. In Study 2, participants were randomly told that the outcomes on the machine they would play were determined entirely by chance, skill, or a mixture of both. In both studies, our findings suggest that there are more extreme values in overconfidence in how EGMs work, whereas individuals are more similar in their confidence in understanding SGMs. We also find a relationship between overconfidence in EGM understanding and positive attitudes toward EGMs, but no such relationship with SGMs. There was no impact from controlling for demographics, problem gambling severity, or labeling of machines on these relationships. (shrink)

Among bioethicists and members of the public, genetics is often regarded as unique in its ethical challenges. As medical researchers and clinicians increasingly combine genetic information with a range of non-genetic information in the study and clinical management of patients with common diseases, the unique ethical challenges attributed to genetics must be re-examined. A process of genetic routinisation that will have implications for research and clinical ethics, as well as for public conceptions of genetic information, is constituted by the emergence (...) of new forms of genetic medicine, in which genetic information is interpreted in a multifactorial frame of reference. Although the integration of genetics in medical research and treatment may be a helpful corrective to the mistaken assumptions of genetic essentialism or determinism, the routinisation of genetics may have unintended consequences for the protection of genetic information, perceptions of non-genetic information and the loss of genetic research as a laboratory for exploring issues in research and clinical ethics. Consequently, new ethical challenges are presented by the increasing routinisation of genetic information in both biomedical and public spheres. (shrink)

The past three years have seen a dramatic increase in our understanding of the structural organization and expression strategies of the dispersed, repetitive yeast transposon, Ty. These studies have led to a logical comparison of Ty with retroviral proviruses and other mobile, repetitive elements. Such comparisons have culminated in the hypotheses that transposition occurs via the formation of Ty‐encoded virus‐like particles and that these particles represent a basic unit of all ‘retro‐systems’.

Scientific networks are often credited with bringing about institutional change and professional advancement, but less attention has been paid to their instability and occasional failures. In the 1970s optimism among academic women was high as changing US policies on sex discrimination in the workplace, including higher education, seemed to promise equity. Encouraged by colleagues, Shyamala Rajender charged the University of Minnesota with sex discrimination when it failed to consider her for a tenure-track position. The widely cited case of this chemist (...) was not, however, settled easily and involved nearly a decade of university grievance procedures and litigation that grew to a class action lawsuit. As the case gained national attention and internal resistance stiffened, the clusters of women who had been encouraging flickered, faded and sometimes regrouped. A negotiated settlement (consent decree) ended Rajender’s case, and it opened the door for hundreds of others to present their grievances regarding gender discrimination. Networks and support groups proved important but also unstable for individuals who sought equity before and during the implementation of the decree. The Rajender case thus exposes the painful, balky and inevitably contentious process of fighting discrimination. It also demonstrates the power and limits of institutions and litigation, as well as the possibilities and disappointments of informal and formal women’s networks. (shrink)

In Book VII, p. 520, Socrates describes the arguments by which the philosophers must be induced to “return to the cave,” that is to say, to resume the practical business of politics from which they have escaped into the better life of contemplation. They must be shown that this sacrifice is a debt which they owe to the city in return for the opportunity which it has afforded them of becoming philosophers. “Will our pupils,"1 he continues, “when they hear this, (...) refuse to share in turn the toils of state, when they are allowed to spend the greater part of their time with one another in the heaven of ideas?” “Impossible,” Glaucon replies; “for they are just men, and the commands which we impose on them are just; there can be no doubt that every one of them will take office as a stern necessity, and not like our present ministers of state’. (shrink)

Scientific advances in health care have been disproportionately distributed across social strata. Disease burden is also disproportionately distributed, with marginalized groups having the highest risk of poor health outcomes. Social determinants are thought to influence health care delivery and the management of chronic diseases among marginalized groups, but the current conceptualization of social determinants lacks a critical focus on the experiences of people within their environment. The purpose of this article was to integrate the literature on marginalization and situate the (...) concept in the framework of social determinants of health. We demonstrate that social position links marginalization and social determinants of health. This perspective provides a critical lens to assess the societal power dynamics that influence the construction of the socio‐environmental factors affecting health. Linking marginalization with social determinants of health can improve our understanding of the inequities in health care delivery and the disparities in chronic disease burden among vulnerable groups. (shrink)

Fieldworkers (FWs) are community members employed by research teams to support access to participants, address language barriers, and advise on culturally appropriate research conduct. The critical role that FWs play in studies, and the range of practical and ethical dilemmas associated with their involvement, is increasingly recognised. In this paper, we draw on qualitative observation and interview data collected alongside a six month basic science study which involved a team of FWs regularly visiting 47 participating households in their homes. The (...) qualitative study documented how relationships between field workers and research participants were initiated, developed and evolved over the course of the study, the shifting dilemmas FWs faced and how they handled them. Even in this one case study, we see how the complex and evolving relationships between fieldworkers and study participants had important implications for consent processes, access to benefits and mutual understanding and trust. While the precise issues that FWs face are likely to depend on the type of research and the context in which that research is being conducted, we argue that appropriate support for field workers is a key requirement to strengthen ethical research practice and for the long term sustainability of research programmes. (shrink)

_The essential companion to Simone de Beauvoir's celebrated novel._.

This paper examines the proposition that adopting a socially responsible, or philanthropic, management posture is not antithetic to the capitalist business model but rather can be seen as a sound approach to the development of long-term sustainability in business in a modern business environment, wherein a strand of corporate social responsibility is one core aspect of the composite utility function of the modern business. We suggest further that for many of the prominent/significant examples of the successful adoption of a policy (...) of informed benevolence in the management of employees that policy seems to be faith rooted – be that faith Christian, Buddhist, Jewish, Muslim or other. Indeed, even if one observed an organisation subject to an humanist or even atheistic based socially responsible management, one could see that as being rooted in that organisation’s ‘non-faith’ faith, or ethical bubble. Our argument also gives the lie to the proposition, in currency in some circles, that the term ‘business ethics’ is an oxymoron. To underpin the argument we cite examples (/set out mini-cases, or a mixture of these) from a range of faith based traditions including, Buddhism, the Quaker-Christian tradition, Judaism and Islam. (shrink)

Influences on the perception of affordances (i.e., opportunities for actions) have been primarily studied by manipulating the functional morphology of the body. However, affordances are not just determined by the functional morphology of the perceiver, but also by the physiological state of the perceiver. States of anxiety have been shown to lead to marked changes in individuals’ physiological state and their behaviour. To assess the influence of emotional state on affordance perception, the perception of action capabilities in near space was (...) examined after participants completed an anxiety-provoking task. Anxiety was induced immediately prior to tasks that assessed participants' perceived reaching ability in Experiment 1, grasping ability in Experiment 2, and the ability to pass their hands through apertures in Experiment 3. Results indicated that those participants who experienced changes in anxiety underestimated their reaching, grasping, and passing ability compared to non-anxious participants. In other words, anxious participants were more conservative in their estimations of their action capabilities. These results suggest that anxiety influences the perception for affordances in near space and are consistent with the notion that anxiety induces withdrawal behaviours. (shrink)

This book examines the theory and practice of argument in primary, secondary and tertiary education. Several of its chapters offer theoretical discussion of the forms and functions of argument within social, philosophical, historical and rhetorical contexts.