Maternity careproviders often have strong views concerning a woman’s choice of where to give birth. These views may be based on the ethical principle of autonomy, or on the principle of beneficence. The authors propose that an approach utilizing shared decision making allows careproviders and women to move beyond disagreements regarding which evidence on risk should “count,” instead adopting a process of increased knowledge and support for women and their partner while they make choices regarding place of birth.

In contrast to the views put forth by Stein & Glasier, we support the use of inbred strains of rodents in studies of the immunobiology of neural transplants. Inbred strains demonstrate homology of the major histocompatibility complex (MHC). Virtually all experimental work in transplantation immunology is performed using inbred strains, yet very few published studies of immune rejection in intracerebral grafts have used inbred animals.

Task unrelated thought (TUT) refers to thought directed away from the current situation, for example a daydream. Three experiments were conducted on healthy participants, with two broad aims. First, to contrast distributed and encapsulated views of cognition by comparing the encoding of categorical and random lists of words (Experiments One and Two). Second, to examine the consequences of experiencing TUT during study on the subsequent retrieval of information (Experiments One, Two, and Three). Experiments One and Two demonstrated lower levels of (...) TUT and higher levels of word-fragment completion whilst encoding categorical relative to random stimuli, supporting the role of a distributed resource in the maintenance of TUT. In addition the results of all three experiments suggested that experiencing TUT during study had a measurable effect on subsequent retrieval. TUT was associated with increased frequency of false alarms at retrieval (Experiment One). In the subsequent experiments TUT was associated with no advantage to retrieval based on recollection, by manipulating instructions at encoding (Experiment Two), and/or at retrieval (Experiment Three). The implications of the results of all three experiments are discussed in terms of recent accounts of memory retrieval and conscious awareness. (shrink)

In _The Body in Late-Capitalist USA_, Donald M. Lowe explores the varied social practices that code and construct the body. Arguing that our bodily lives are shaped by a complex of daily and ongoing practices—how we work, what we buy and consume—Lowe contends that as a result of the commodification of these and other social practices in the late-twentieth century, what we often understand to be the needs of the body are in fact means for capital accumulation. Moving beyond studies (...) of representations and images of the body, Lowe focuses on the intersection of body practices, language, and the Social to describe concretely the reality of a lived body. His strongly synthetic work brings together Marxist critique, semiotics, Foucaultian discourse analysis, and systems and communications theory to examine those practices that construct the body under late capitalism: habits of work and consumption, the ways we give birth and raise children, socialization, mental and physical healing, reconstructions and contestations of sexuality and gender. Lowe draws upon a wide range of sources, including government and labor studies and statistics, diagnostic and statistical manuals on mental illness, computer manuals, self-help books, and guides to work-related stress disorders, to illustrate the transformation of the body into a nexus of exchange value in postmodern society. (shrink)

Contour adaptation is a recently described paradigm that renders otherwise salient visual stimuli temporarily perceptually invisible. Here we investigate whether this illusion can be exploited to study visual awareness. We found that CA can induce seconds of sustained invisibility following similarly long periods of uninterrupted adaptation. Furthermore, even fragmented adaptors are capable of producing CA, with the strength of CA increasing monotonically as the adaptors encompass a greater fraction of the stimulus outline. However, different types of adaptor patterns, such as (...) distinctive shapes or illusory contours, produce equivalent levels of CA suggesting that the main determinants of CA are low-level stimulus characteristics, with minimal modulation by higher-order visual processes. Taken together, our results indicate that CA has desirable properties for studying visual awareness, including the production of prolonged periods of perceptual dissociation from stimulation as well as parametric dependencies of that dissociation on a host of stimulus parameters. (shrink)

Research is crucial to advancing knowledge about dementia, yet the burden of the disease currently outpaces research activity. Research often excludes people with dementia and other cognitive impairments because researchers and ethics committees are concerned about issues related to capacity, consent, and substitute decision-making. In Australia, participation in research by people with cognitive impairment is governed by a national ethics statement and a patchwork of state and territorial laws that have widely varying rules. We contend that this legislative variation precludes (...) a consistent approach to research governance and participation and hinders research that seeks to include people with impaired capacity. In this paper, we present key ethical principles, provide a comprehensive review of applicable legal rules in Australian states and territories, and highlight significant differences and ambiguities. Our analysis includes recommendations for reform to improve clarity and consistency in the law and reduce barriers that may exclude persons with dementia from participating in ethically approved research. Our recommendations seek to advance the national decision-making principles recommended by the Australian Law Reform Commission, which emphasize the rights of all adults to make their own decisions and for those with impaired capacity to have access to appropriate supports to help them make decisions that affect their lives. (shrink)

Questions surrounding the assessment of medical school applicants' morality are difficult but they are nevertheless important for medical schools to consider. It is probably inappropriate to attempt to assess medical school applicants' ethical knowledge, moral reasoning, or beliefs about ethical issues as these all may be developed during the process of education. Attitudes towards ethical issues and ethical sensitivity, however, might be tested in the context of testing for personality attributes. Before any “ethics” testing is introduced as part of screening (...) for admission to medical school it would require validation. We suggest a number of ways in which this might be achieved. (shrink)

The popular press and academic research has focused primarily on the characteristics of corporate leaders. Subordinates have been studied much less frequently than leaders and yet they play a pivotal role in destructive leadership processes. An area holding significant potential to bring clarity to subordinates’ ability to withstand (or succumb) to pressures from superiors is dispositional affect. In our exploratory study, we examine how specific affective states influence subordinates’ unethical behavior. We performed an experiment with 63 mid-level managers having significant (...) work experience. Participants were given ethical scenarios and asked to assess their intentions to comply with their superiors’ requests to engage in unethical conduct. The participants also completed the positive affect negative affect schedule (PANAS) which provides measures of affective states. Our results provide support for theory-based predictions. The findings of our study make important contributions and have implications to both practice and theory. First, we identify certain affective states that encourage subordinates to adopt the behavior of a conformer or colluder and thus be susceptible to their superiors’ unethical directives. Second, our results suggest the need for training programs to assist employees in managing affect in the work place and consideration of organizational changes that provide a culture of empowerment of its employees. Third, unlike a large majority of prior research, we measured naturally occurring affective states rather than providing a contrived (and potentially exaggerated) triggering event to elicit affective states. Fourth, we examined specific affective states rather than examining only general positive and negative valence categories. (shrink)

Research is crucial to advancing knowledge about dementia, yet the burden of the disease currently outpaces research activity. Research often excludes people with dementia and other cognitive impairments because researchers and ethics committees are concerned about issues related to capacity, consent, and substitute decision-making. In Australia, participation in research by people with cognitive impairment is governed by a national ethics statement and a patchwork of state and territorial laws that have widely varying rules. We contend that this legislative variation precludes (...) a consistent approach to research governance and participation and hinders research that seeks to include people with impaired capacity. In this paper, we present key ethical principles, provide a comprehensive review of applicable legal rules in Australian states and territories, and highlight significant differences and ambiguities. Our analysis includes recommendations for reform to improve clarity and consistency in the law and reduce barriers that may exclude persons with dementia from participating in ethically approved research. Our recommendations seek to advance the national decision-making principles recommended by the Australian Law Reform Commission, which emphasize the rights of all adults to make their own decisions and for those with impaired capacity to have access to appropriate supports to help them make decisions that affect their lives. (shrink)

Task unrelated thought (TUT) refers to thought directed away from the current situation, for example a daydream. Three experiments were conducted on healthy participants, with two broad aims. First, to contrast distributed and encapsulated views of cognition by comparing the encoding of categorical and random lists of words (Experiments One and Two). Second, to examine the consequences of experiencing TUT during study on the subsequent retrieval of information (Experiments One, Two, and Three). Experiments One and Two demonstrated lower levels of (...) TUT and higher levels of word-fragment completion whilst encoding categorical relative to random stimuli, supporting the role of a distributed resource in the maintenance of TUT. In addition the results of all three experiments suggested that experiencing TUT during study had a measurable effect on subsequent retrieval. TUT was associated with increased frequency of false alarms at retrieval (Experiment One). In the subsequent experiments TUT was associated with no advantage to retrieval based on recollection, by manipulating instructions at encoding (Experiment Two), and/or at retrieval (Experiment Three). The implications of the results of all three experiments are discussed in terms of recent accounts of memory retrieval and conscious awareness. (shrink)

There have been two Japanese Nobel laureates in chemistry, three in physics, and one in the category of medicine or physiology. This relatively small number has been attributed to shortcomings in Japanese science. The award of the Physics Prize in 1949 to Hideki Yukawa and to his colleague Sin'itirô Tomonaga in 1965 gave public evidence of how Japanese could make outstanding individual contributions to science. Paradoxically, the Prize also reinforced a belief that such men formed part of a traditional hierarchical (...) system. This essay examines how the Nobel Prize has been represented in Japan. (shrink)

Emerging Moral Vocabularies challenges the broad assertion that Western post-industrial societies are inevitably becoming more individualistic and self-centered, and instead encourages scholars to examine emerging forms for moral and ethical meaning, which form new moral boundaries.

Previous research (Kielbasa, Pomerantz, Krohn, & Sullivan, 2004; Pomerantz & Segrist, 2006) indicates that when psychologists consider a client with symptoms of depression or anxiety, payment method significantly influences diagnostic decisions. This study extends the scope of the previous research to consider clients with symptoms of social phobia and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Psychologists in independent practice responded to vignettes of clients whose descriptions deliberately included subclinical impairment. Half of the participants were told that the clients would pay via (...) managed care; the other half were told that the clients would pay out-of-pocket. Confirming previous studies, payment method had a highly significant impact on diagnosis such that compared to out-of-pocket clients, managed care clients were much more likely to be assigned Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed. [DSM-IV]; American Psychiatric Association, 1994) diagnoses. Ethical implications relate to informed consent, accuracy and truthfulness in diagnosis, and psychologists' integrity. (shrink)

Recent literature has highlighted issues of racial discrimination in medicine. In order to explore the sometimes subtle influence of racial determinants in decisions about resource allocation, we present the case of a 53-year-old Australian Aboriginal woman with end-stage renal failure. The epidemiology of renal failure in the Australian Aboriginal population and amongst other indigenous peoples is discussed. We show that the use of utilitarian outcome criteria for resource allocation may embody subtle racial discrimination where consideration is not given to issues (...) of justice, race, culture and gender. It is only where the processes by which resources are allocated are transparent, clearly defined and based upon consultation with individual patients that issues and justice are likely to be adequately addressed. (shrink)

Models of risk-taking as used in the social sciences may be improved by including concepts from life history theory, particularly environmental unpredictability and life expectancy. Community college students completed self-report questionnaires measuring these constructs along with several well-known correlates. The frequency of risk-taking was higher for those with higher future unpredictability beliefs and shorter lifespan estimates (as measured by the Future Lifespan Assessment developed for this study), and unpredictability beliefs remained significant after accounting for standard predictors, such as sex and (...) temperament. The results demonstrate the usefulness of applying concepts from life history theory to enhance our understanding of human behavior. (shrink)

Meat is a multi-billion-dollar industry that relies on people performing risky physical work inside meat-processing facilities over long shifts in close proximity. These workers are socially disempowered, and many are members of groups beset by historic and ongoing structural discrimination. The combination of working conditions and worker characteristics facilitate the spread of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. Workers have been expected to put their health and lives at risk during the pandemic because of government and industry pressures to keep (...) this “essential industry” producing. Numerous interventions can significantly reduce the risks to workers and their communities; however, the industry’s implementation has been sporadic and inconsistent. With a focus on the U.S. context, this paper offers an ethical framework for infection prevention and control recommendations grounded in public health values of health and safety, interdependence and solidarity, and health equity and justice, with particular attention to considerations of reciprocity, equitable burden sharing, harm reduction, and health promotion. Meat-processing workers are owed an approach that protects their health relative to the risks of harms to them, their families, and their communities. Sacrifices from businesses benefitting financially from essential industry status are ethically warranted and should acknowledge the risks assumed by workers in the context of existing structural inequities. (shrink)

The resting-state human electroencephalogram power spectrum is dominated by alpha and theta oscillations, and also includes non-oscillatory broadband activity inversely related to frequency. Gratton proposed that alpha and theta oscillations are both related to cognitive control function, though in a complementary manner. Alpha activity is hypothesized to facilitate the maintenance of representations, such as task sets in preparation for expected task conditions. In contrast, theta activity would facilitate changes in representations, such as the updating of task sets in response to (...) unpredicted task demands. Therefore, theta should be related to reactive control, while alpha may be more relevant to proactive control. Less is known about the possible relationship between 1/f activity and cognitive control, which was analyzed here in an exploratory fashion. To investigate these hypothesized relationships, we recorded eyes-open and eyes-closed resting-state EEG from younger and older adults and subsequently tested their performance on a cued flanker task, expected to elicit both proactive and reactive control processes. Results showed that alpha power and 1/f offset were smaller in older than younger adults, whereas theta power did not show age-related reductions. Resting alpha power and 1/f offset were associated with proactive control processes, whereas theta power was related to reactive control as measured by the cued flanker task. All associations were present over and above the effect of age, suggesting that these resting-state EEG correlates could be indicative of trait-like individual differences in cognitive control performance, which may be already evident in younger adults, and are still similarly present in healthy older adults. (shrink)

IntroductionLittle is known about risk factors for both Long COVID and somatic symptoms that develop in individuals without a history of COVID-19 in response to the pandemic. There is reason to assume an interplay between pathophysiological mechanisms and psychosocial factors in the etiology of symptom persistence.ObjectiveTherefore, this study investigates specific risk factors for somatic symptom deterioration in a cohort of German adults with and without prior SARS-CoV-2 infection.MethodsGerman healthcare professionals underwent SARS-CoV-2 IgG antibody testing and completed self-rating questionnaires at baseline (...) and 21 months later between April 2020 and February 2022. Differences in variables between the time points were analyzed and a regression analysis was performed to predict somatic symptom deterioration at follow-up.ResultsSeven hundred fifty-one adults completed both assessments. Until follow-up, n = 58 had contracted SARS-CoV-2 confirmed by serology. Between baseline and follow-up, signs of mental and physical strain increased significantly in the sample. Symptom expectations associated with COVID-19 and a self-reported history of COVID-19, but not serologically confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection, significantly predicted somatic symptom deterioration at follow-up. A further predictor was baseline psychological symptom burden.ConclusionsThis study supports a disease-overarching biopsychosocial model for the development of burdensome somatic symptoms during the COVID-19 pandemic and supports research findings that symptom burden may be more related to the psychosocial effects of the pandemic than to infection itself. Future studies on Long COVID should include SARS-CoV-2 negative control groups and consider symptom burden prior to infection in order to avoid an overestimation of prevalence rates. (shrink)

[FIRST PARAGRAPH] During the last decade of the nineteenth century, the Engineer was only one of many British and American publications that took an avid interest in the rapid rise of Japan to the status of a fully industrialized imperial power on a par with major European nations. In December 1897 this journal published a photographic montage of "Pioneers of Modem Engineering Education in Japan" (Figure I), showing a selection of the Japanese and Western teachers who had worked to bring (...) about this singular transformation.' The predominance of Japanese figures in this representation is highly significant: it is an acknowledgment by British observers that the industrialization of Japan-the "Britain of the East"-was not a feat accomplished solely by Western experts who transferred their science and technology to passive Japanese recipients. Yet in focusing primarily on native teachers active in Japan after 1880, this image excludes several of the very foreigners who had trained this indigenous workforce in the preceding decade. Rather than attempting to assess the careers of each of the many international experts involved in Western encounters with Japan before and after the Meiji restoration in 1868, we will focus on disaggregating the highly individualized responses of just some of the Englishspeaking characters. In documenting their diverse encounters with Japanese people and technologies, we will look at the complex phenomena of cultural exchange in which they participated, not always without chauvinism or resistance. (shrink)

This collection of papers from the workshop serves as the initial volume in the new series Texts in Logics and Games—touching on research in logic, mathematics, computer science, and game theory. “A wonderful demonstration of ...

The lateralized ERP N2pc component has been shown to be an effective marker of attentional object selection when elicited in a visual search task, specifically reflecting the selection of a target item among distractors. Moreover, when targets are known in advance, the visual search process is guided by representations of target features held in working memory at the time of search, thus guiding attention to objects with target-matching features. Previous studies have shown that manipulating working memory availability via concurrent tasks (...) or within task manipulations influences visual search performance and the N2pc. Other studies have indicated that visual vs. spatial working memory manipulations have differential contributions to visual search. To investigate this the current study assesses participants' visual and spatial working memory ability independent of the visual search task to determine whether such individual differences in working memory affect task performance and the N2pc. Participants completed a visual search task to elicit the N2pc and separate visual working memory and spatial working memory assessments. Greater SPWM, but not VWM, ability is correlated with and predicts higher visual search accuracy and greater N2pc amplitudes. Neither VWM nor SPWM was related to N2pc latency. These results provide additional support to prior behavioral and neural visual search findings that spatial WM availability, whether as an ability of the participant's processing system or based on task demands, plays an important role in efficient visual search. (shrink)

The Global Code of Conduct for Research in Resource-Poor Settings (GCC) aims to stop the export of unethical research practices from higher to lower income settings. Launched in 2018, the GCC was immediately adopted by European Commission funding streams for application in research that is situated in lower and lower-middle income countries. Other institutions soon followed suit. This article reports on the application of the GCC in two of the first UK-funded projects to implement this new code, one situated in (...) India and one in Pakistan. Through systematic ethics evaluation of both projects, the practical application of the GCC in real-world environments was tested. The findings of this ethics evaluation suggest that while there are challenges for implementation, application of the GCC can promote equity in international research collaborations. (shrink)

The role of followers in financial statement fraud has not been widely examined, even though these frauds typically involve collusion between followers and destructive leaders. In a study with 140 MBA students in the role of followers, we examined whether two follower personality traits were associated with behavioral intentions to comply with the demands of an unethical chief executive officer to be complicit in committing financial statement fraud. These personality traits are self-sacrificing self-enhancement, a form of maladaptive narcissism characterized by (...) seemingly altruistic behaviors that are actually intended to boost self-esteem and proactivity, a trait characterized by behaviors reflecting efforts to positively change one’s environment. As predicted, follower SSSE was positively associated with follower behavioral intentions to comply with CEO pressure to commit fraud, while follower proactivity was negatively associated with fraud compliance intentions. Also as predicted, follower SSSE interacted with follower proactivity, such that followers high in SSSE and high in proactivity reported greater intentions to resist pressure from the unethical CEO to commit fraud compared to low-SSSE followers. Implications for future research and corporate governance are discussed. (shrink)

IntroductionThis case study describes the process faculty at a large research university undertook to build a stand-alone online academic integrity course for first-year and transfer students. Because academic integrity is decentralized at the institution, building a more systematic program had to come from the bottom-up (faculty developed) rather than from the top down (institutionally mandated).Case descriptionUsing the learning management system, faculty and e-learning designers collaborated to build the course. Incorporating nuanced scenarios for six different types of misconduct (consistent with the (...) University’s Code of Student Rights, Responsibilities & Conduct), a pre- and post-test, and assessments for each scenario, the course provides experience in recognizing and avoiding academic misconduct.Discussion and evaluationAs a stand-alone course, the faculty who created it maintain control over content and are able to analyze student performance across the institution. In the ten months since its launch, the course has been eagerly adopted by faculty (n = 1853 students have completed the course) and post-test scores indicate students are learning from the course.ConclusionsAfter the successful launch of the student course, the next step, already underway, is the launch of learning modules for faculty and teaching assistants. (shrink)

Peter Abelard (1079–1142 ce) was the most wide‐ranging philosopher of the twelfth century. He quickly established himself as a leading teacher of logic in and near Paris shortly after 1100. After his affair with Heloise, and his subsequent castration, Abelard became a monk, but he returned to teaching in the Paris schools until 1140, when his work was condemned by a Church Council at Sens. His logical writings were based around discussion of the “Old Logic”: Porphyry's Isagoge, aristotle'S Categories and (...) On Interpretation and boethius'S textbook on topical inference. They comprise a freestanding Dialectica (“Logic”; probably c.1116), a set of commentaries (known as the Logica [Ingredientibus], c. 1119) and a later (c. 1125) commentary on the Isagoge (Logica Nostrorum Petititoni Sociorum or Glossulae). In a work Abelard called his Theologia, issued in three main versions (between 1120 and c.1134), he attempted a logical analysis of trinitarian relations and explored the philosophical problems surrounding God's claims to omnipotence and omniscience. The Collationes (“Debates,” also known as “Dialogue between a Christian, a Philosopher and a Jew”; probably c.1130) present a rational investigation into the nature of the highest good, in which the Christian and the Philosopher (who seems to be modeled on a philosopher of pagan antiquity) are remarkably in agreement. The unfinished Scito teipsum (“Know thyself,” also known as the “Ethics”; c.1138) analyses moral action. (shrink)