According to a widely credited model in the business ethics literature, ethical decisions are a function of two kinds of factors, personal(individual) and situational, and these factors interact with each other. According to a contrary view of decision making that is widely held in some areas of business research, individuals’ decisions about ethical issues (and subsequent actions) are purely a function of their self-interest.The laboratory experiment reported in this paper provides a test of the person-situation interactionist model, using the general (...) theoretical and experimental framework used in the experimental economics literature. One individual and two situational factors relating to moral intensity were examined which may influence decisions to misrepresent information in the course of business activities.The individual and one situational variable were significantly related to participants’ actions. The interactions among individual andsituation variables were not individually significant, although the model including interactions had a much higher level of statistical significance. Gender was significant, both directly and in interaction with moral development, suggesting that it may be worthy of further examination. (shrink)

BackgroundThe attitudes of patients' to consent have changed over the years, but there has been little systematic study of the attitudes of anaesthetists and surgeons in this process. We aimed to describe observations made on the attitudes of medical professionals working in the UK to issues surrounding informed consent.MethodA questionnaire made up of 35 statements addressing the process of consent for anaesthesia and surgery was distributed to randomly selected anaesthetists and surgeons in Queen's Medical Centre, Royal Sussex County Hospital and (...) Eastbourne District General Hospital during 2007. Participants were asked to what extent they agreed with statements regarding consent.ResultsOf 234 questionnaires distributed, 63% were returned. Of the respondents 79% agreed that the main purpose of the consent process is to respect patient autonomy. While 55% of the examined cohort agreed that the consent process maybe inappropriate as patients do not usually remember all the information given to them. Furthermore, 84% of the participants agreed that what the procedure aims to achieve should be explained to the patient during the consent process. While of the participants, over 70% agreed that major risks of incidence greater than 1/100 should be disclosed to the patient as part of the consent process.ConclusionsThe majority of respondents appear to hold attitudes in standing with current guidelines on informed consent however there was still a significant minority who held more paternalistic views to the consent process bringing into question the need for further training in the area. (shrink)

The primary purpose of this randomized controlled trial (RCT) was to evaluate the efficacy of an unguided, two-week internet-based training program to overcome procrastination, called ON.TOP. Because adherence is a typical problem among individuals who tend to procrastinate, especially with internet-based interventions, the secondary purpose of the present study was to investigate whether adding SMS support increases subjects’ frequency of engagement in training. In a three-armed RCT (N = 161), the effects of the intervention alone and intervention with daily SMS-support (...) were compared to a waiting list control condition in a sample of students. The primary outcome of interest was procrastination. The secondary outcome of interest was the extent of training behavior. Baseline (T0), immediate post-treatment (T1) and 8-week post-treatment (T2) assessments were conducted. Results indicated that procrastination decreased significantly only with intervention group with daily SMS support, relative to control. Moreover, incorporating SMS support also may enhance extent of training behavior. (shrink)

Case law retrieval is the task of locating truly relevant legal cases given an input query case. Unlike information retrieval for general texts, this task is more complex with two phases (legal case retrieval and legal case entailment) and much harder due to a number of reasons. First, both the query and candidate cases are long documents consisting of several paragraphs. This makes it difficult to model with representation learning that usually has restriction on input length. Second, the concept of (...) relevancy in this domain is defined based on the legal relation that goes beyond the lexical or topical relevance. This is a real challenge because normal text matching will not work. Third, building a large and accurate legal case dataset requires a lot of effort and expertise. This is obviously an obstacle to creating enough data for training deep retrieval models. In this paper, we propose a novel approach called supporting model that can deal with both phases. The underlying idea is the case–case supporting relation and the paragraph–paragraph as well as the decision-paragraph matching strategy. In addition, we propose a method to automatically create a large weak-labeling dataset to overcome the lack of data. The experiments showed that our solution has achieved the state-of-the-art results for both case retrieval and case entailment phases. (shrink)

La politique d'accessibilité par le numérique a ouvert aux personnes sourdes un service national d'écoute et de secours, par fax et SMS depuis 2011, par e-mail, texte en temps réel (TTR) et vidéo depuis 2019. Cet article analyse comment les spécificités des interactions textuelles, numériques, et du « français sourd » sont prises en compte dans les appels d'urgence par SMS, et quelles « prises », ou indices, sont mobilisés par les agents pour percevoir le niveau de détresse ou la (...) gravité d'une urgence. Dans ce contexte et au regard de ces enjeux, comment se jouent le dévoilement de l'identité et de la situation singulière de ces requérants? L'analyse de ces pratiques de communication, a fortiori de ces pratiques professionnelles, révèle la prise en compte incontournable des compétences linguistiques, langagières et interactionnelles en jeu. (shrink)

This paper examines the justifications for using infinite systems to ‘recover’ thermodynamic properties, such as phase transitions, critical phenomena, and irreversibility, from the micro-structure of matter in bulk. Section 2 is a summary of such rigorous methods as in taking the thermodynamic limit to recover PT and in using renormalization group approach to explain the universality of critical exponents. Section 3 examines various possible justifications for taking TL on physically finite systems. Section 4 discusses the legitimacy of applying TL to (...) the problem of irreversibility and assesses the repercussions for its legitimacy on its home turf. (shrink)

This paper examines the justifications for using infinite systems to 'recover' thermodynamic properties, such as phase transitions (PT), critical phenomena (CP), and irreversibility, from the micro-structure of matter in bulk. Section 2 is a summary of such rigorous methods as in taking the thermodynamic limit (TL) to recover PT and in using renormalization (semi-) group approach (RG) to explain the universality of critical exponents. Section 3 examines various possible justifications for taking TL on physically finite systems. Section 4 discusses the (...) legitimacy of applying TL to the problem of irreversibility and assesses the repercussions for its legitimacy on its home turf. (shrink)

Critical review of theory of re-enchantment by Darius Shayegan, a prominent thinker, cultural theorist and comparative philosopher.

We present the bundle (Aff(3)⊗ℂ⊗Λ)(ℝ3), with a geometric Dirac equation on it, as a three-dimensional geometric interpretation of the SM fermions. Each (ℂ⊗Λ)(ℝ3) describes an electroweak doublet. The Dirac equation has a doubler-free staggered spatial discretization on the lattice space (Aff(3)⊗ℂ)(ℤ3). This space allows a simple physical interpretation as a phase space of a lattice of cells.We find the SM SU(3) c ×SU(2) L ×U(1) Y action on (Aff(3)⊗ℂ⊗Λ)(ℝ3) to be a maximal anomaly-free gauge action preserving E(3) symmetry and symplectic (...) structure, which can be constructed using two simple types of gauge-like lattice fields: Wilson gauge fields and correction terms for lattice deformations.The lattice fermion fields we propose to quantize as low energy states of a canonical quantum theory with ℤ2-degenerated vacuum state. We construct anticommuting fermion operators for the resulting ℤ2-valued (spin) field theory.A metric theory of gravity compatible with this model is presented too. (shrink)

Cyber scam, a subculture in Nigeria, especially among youths, has been under-investigated from the linguistic perspective. This study thus explores discursive-manipulative strategies in scam emails and SMS/messages in Nigeria, drawing samples from a corpus of over 200 emails and 50 SMS documented between 2018 and 2022. With insights from Brown and Levinson’s face, Mey’s pragmatic act and McCronack’s information manipulation theories, it is observed that discursive manipulative strategies such as positive and negative false alarm, self-denigration, formulaic, and evocation of theistic (...) and religious context project the Nigerian realities in scam emails and SMS. Embedded in these manipulative strategies are face-saving and face-threatening acts strategically woven round the violation of the maxims of quality and quantity. (shrink)

Analisa-se o sentido histórico-social das expressões rûªH yhwh (“espírito de Yahweh”), rûªH-rä`â më´ët yhwh (“espírito mau desde junto de Yahweh”), rûªH-´élöhîm rä`â (“espírito mau de Deus”), rûªH-´élöhîm (“espírito de Deus”) e rûªH härä`â (“espírito mau”), de e em 1 Sm 16,14-23. Postula-se a identidade comum de todos esses personagens noológicos. Guiado por um exercício de crítica aplicada a versões da passagem, bem como pela consulta crítica por amostragem de comentários internacionais, aplica-se análise retórica e histórico-social à narrativa. Conclui-se que, no (...) horizonte de produção do texto, concebia-se essa figura celeste como o equivalente noológico de oficiais a serviço de reis, incumbidos de atividades que tanto podiam ser classificadas eticamente como boas quanto más, correspondendo tal concepção teológica ao estado da cultura judaico-israelita pré-persa. Não se trata de dois personagens: o “espírito de Yahweh” / o “espírito de Deus”, de um lado, e o “espírito mau (de Yahweh ou de Deus)” de outro, mas da descrição diferenciada da mesma figura em conformidade com a ação interpretada como realizada por ele no exercício de sua prestação de serviços ao deus-rei. Palavras-chave : 1 Sm 16,14-23. Espírito de Yahweh. Espírito de Deus. Espírito mau de Yahweh. Espírito mau de Deus. Espírito mau.The sociohistorical meaning of the expressions rûªH yhwh (“spirit of Yahweh”), rûªH-rä`â më´ët yhwh (“evil spirit from Yahweh”), rûªH-´élöhîm rä`â (“evil spirit of God”), rûªH-´élöhîm (“spirit of God”) and rûªH härä`â (“evil spirit”) of and in 1 Sm 16.14-23 is analyzed. The common identity of all these noological characters is postulated. Guided by an exercise of criticism applied to versions of the passage as well as the critical search of samples of international commentaries, rhetoric and the social-historical analysis is applied to the narrative. It is reasoned that, in the text’s production horizon, this celestial figure is conceived as the noological equivalent to officials at service of kings, responsible for activities that could be classified as both ethically good and bad, such theological conception correspond to the pre-Persian state of Jewish-Israeli culture. They are not two characters: the “spirit of Yahweh” / “spirit of God” on one side , and the “evil spirit (of Yahweh or God)” on the other, but different descriptions of the same figure in accordance to the action interpreted as carried out by him in the provision of services to the god-king . Keywords: 1 Sm 16,14-23. Spirit of Yahweh. Spirit of God. Evil spirit of Yahweh. Evil spirit of God. Evil spirit. (shrink)

Ṣadr al-Dīn Shīrāzī, Muḥammad ibn Ibrāhīm, -1641 -- Criticism and interpretation. ; Islamic philosophy -- Iran.