This conceptual review seeks to reframe the view of academic integrity as something to be enforced to an academic skill that needs to be developed. The authors highlight how practices within academia create an environment where feelings of inadequacy thrive, leading to behaviours of unintentional academic misconduct. Importantly, this review includes practical suggestions to help educators and higher education institutions support doctoral students’ academic integrity skills. In particular, the authors highlight the importance of explicit academic integrity instruction, support for the (...) development of academic literacy skills, and changes in supervisory practices that encourage student and supervisor reflexivity. Therefore, this review argues that, through the use of these practical strategies, academia can become a space where a culture of academic integrity can flourish. (shrink)

We argue that providing cumulative risk as an estimate of the uncertainty in dynamically changing risky environments can help decision-makers meet mission-critical goals. Specifically, we constructed a simplified aviation-like weather decision-making task incorporating Next-Generation Radar images of convective weather. NEXRAD radar images provide information about geographically referenced precipitation. NEXRAD radar images are used by both pilots and laypeople to support decision-making about the level of risk posed by future weather-hazard movements. Using NEXRAD, people and professionals have to infer the uncertainty (...) in the meteorological information to understand current hazards and extrapolate future conditions. Recent advancements in meteorology modeling afford the possibility of providing uncertainty information concerning hazardous weather for the current flight. Although there are systematic biases that plague people’s use of uncertainty information, there is evidence that presenting forecast uncertainty can improve weather-related decision-making. The current study augments NEXRAD by providing flight-path risk, referred to as the Risk Situational Awareness Tool. RSAT provides the probability that a route will come within 20 NMI radius of hazardous weather within the next 45 min of flight. The study evaluates four NEXRAD displays integrated with RSAT, providing varying levels of support. The “no” support condition has no RSAT. The “baseline” support condition employs an RSAT whose accuracy is consistent with current capability in meteorological modeling. The “moderate” support condition applies an RSAT whose accuracy is likely at the top of what is achievable in meteorology in the near future. The “high” support condition provides a level of support that is likely unachievable in an aviation weather decision-making context without considerable technological innovation. The results indicate that the operators relied on the RSAT and improved their performance as a consequence. We discuss the implications of the findings for the safe introduction of probabilistic tools in future general aviation cockpits and other dynamic decision-making contexts. Moreover, we discuss how the results contribute to research in the fields of dynamic risk and uncertainty, risk situation awareness, cumulative risk, and risk communication. (shrink)

Funerals are a reflective practice to bid farewell to the departed soul. Different religions, cultural traditions, rituals, and social beliefs guide how funeral practices take place. Family and friends gather together to support each other in times of grief. However, during the coronavirus pandemic, the way funerals are taking place is affected by the country's rules and region to avoid the spread of infection. The present study explores the media portrayal of public sentiments over funerals. In particular, the present study (...) tried to identify linguistic dimensions associated with lexical components of social processes, affective processes, fear, and disgust. An exhaustive search of newspaper coverage of funeral and related articles was made for a specific corona period. After an initial screening for the details and language used, a total of 46 newspaper articles on funerals were finalized for the analysis. Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) software was used to determine the association between linguistic dimensions of function words and words related to social and affective processes, as presented in the newspaper articles. Sentiment Analysis and Cognition Engine (SEANCE) was applied for the analysis of sentiment, social cognition, and social order. Bayesian correlation analysis and regression revealed positive and significant associations between function words and affective processes, between pronouns and social processes, and between negative adjectives and psychological processes of fear and disgust. Also, significant negative associations were found between polarity nouns and psychological processes of fear and disgust and between polarity verbs and psychological processes of fear and disgust. Bayes factor 10 provides strong evidence in favor of the study hypotheses. The media is influenced by the prevailing sentiments in society and reflects their perception of the current social order and beliefs. The findings provide a glimpse into the prevailing sentiment of society through the lens of media coverage. These understandings are expected to enhance our observations of how people express their feelings over the loss of their loved ones and help mental health professionals develop their therapeutic protocols to treat the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)-affected population. (shrink)

In this paper we describe the nature and problems of business and define one aspect of the business environment. We then propose a framework based on augmented soft systems methodology and object technology that captures both the soft and hard aspects of a business environment within the context of organisational culture. We also briefly discuss cognitive informatics and its relevance to understanding problems and solutions. Pólya's work, which is based around solving mathematical problems, is considered within the context of information (...) systems development. We propose a generic reusable business object model based on general systems theory. We also show how these approaches can be integrated to provide a strategy for understanding business problems and developing integrated solutions. (shrink)

This essay explores the notion of female embodiment and its relation to the phenomenon of religion. It explains religious beliefs, acts, and events in terms of the worship of the female body. By elucidating this standpoint, this essay hopes to reclaim the centrality of the female body and its importance in the study of philosophy of religion.

This article describes a representation-based framework of distributed cognition. This framework considers distributed cognition as a cognitive system whose structures and processes are distributed between internal and external representations, across a group of individuals, and across space and time. The major issue for distributed research, under this framework, are the distribution, transformation, and propagation of information across the components of the distributed cognitive system and how they affect the performance of the system as a whole. To demonstrate the value of (...) this representation-based approach, the framework was used to describe and explain an important, challenging, and controversial issue — the concept of affordance. (shrink)

A deficit in the number of organs available for transplantation persists even with an increase in donation rates. One possible choice of donor for organs that appears under-referred and/or unaccepted is patients with primary brain tumours. In spite of advances in the treatment of high-grade primary central nervous system (CNS) tumours, the prognosis remains dire. A working group on organs from donors with primary CNS tumours showed that the risk of transmission is small and outweighs the benefits of waiting for (...) a normal donor, in survival and organ life-years, with caveats. This paper explores the possibility that, if information on organ donation were made available to patients and their families with knowledge of their inevitable fate, perhaps some will choose to donate. It would be explained that to achieve this, elective ventilation would be performed in their final moments. This would obviate the consent question because of an advance statement. It is accepted that these are sensitive matters and there will be logistic issues. This will need discussion with the public and other professionals, but it could increase the number of donors and can be extrapolated to encompass other primary CNS tumours. (shrink)

The natural replacement of damaged cells by stem cells occurs actively and often in adult tissues, especially rapidly dividing cells such as blood cells. An exciting case in Boston, however, posits a kind of natural stem cell therapy provided to a mother by her fetus—long after the fetus is born. Because there is a profound lack of medical intervention, this therapy seems natural enough and is unlikely to be morally suspect. Nevertheless, we feel morally uncertain when we consider giving this (...) type of therapy to patients who would not naturally receive it. Much has been written about the ethics of stem cell research and therapy; this paper will focus on how recent advances in biotechnology and biological understandings of development narrow the debate. Here, the author briefly reviews current stem cell research practices, revisits the natural stem cell therapy case for moral evaluation, and ultimately demonstrates the importance of permissible stem cell research and therapy, even absent an agreement about the definition of when embryonic life begins.Although one promising technology, blighted ovum utilisation, uses fertilised but developmentally bankrupt eggs, it is argued that utilisation of unfertilised eggs to derive totipotent stem cells obviates the moral debate over when life begins. There are two existing technologies that fulfil this criterion: somatic cell nuclear transfer and parthenogenic stem cell derivation. Although these technologies are far from therapeutic, concerns over the morality of embryonic stem cell derivation should not hinder their advancement. (shrink)

The popularity of ‘food sovereignty’ to cover a range of positions, interventions, and struggles within the food system is testament, above all, to the term’s adaptability. Food sovereignty is centrally, though not exclusively, about groups of people making their own decisions about the food system—it is a way of talking about a theoretically-informed food systems practice. Since people are different, we should expect decisions about food sovereignty to be different in different contexts, albeit consonant with a core set of principles (...) (including women’s rights, a shared opposition to genetically modified crops, and a demand for agriculture to be removed from current international trade agreements). In this paper we look at the analytical points of friction in applying ideas of food sovereignty within the context of Indigenous struggles in North America. This, we argue, helps to clarify one of the central themes in food sovereignty: that it is a continuation of anti-colonial struggles, even in post-colonial contexts. Such an examination has dividends both for scholars of food sovereignty and for those of Indigenous politics: by helping to problematize notions of food sovereignty and postcoloniality, but also by posing pointed questions around gender for Indigenous struggles. (shrink)

This study examines the endogenous relation between corporate social responsibility and tax avoidance by focusing on a common strategy of corporate tax avoidance, i.e., establishing entities in offshore tax havens. Using hand-collected data on a sample of U.S. firms, we find that firms’ CSR ratings increase substantially in the two years after they first open tax haven affiliates. We provide evidence by using the controlled foreign corporations look-through rule enacted by Congress in 2006 that facilitates offshore profit shifting. We find (...) that firms that are affected by the CFC legislation increase their CSR practices in response. Overall, our results are consistent with the risk management theory, which argues that firms hedge against the potential negative consequences of aggressive tax avoidance practices through an increase in positive CSR activities. (shrink)

Concept formation is complex cognitive phenomenon which has been only partially modelIed in Cognitive Psychology and AI. Following a detailed and critical evaluation of such models we conclude that their main shortcoming of not being able to explain the nature of the semantics of concepts is because they fail to take into account the role of learning in concept formation. As a radical alternative it is proposed that a more (semantically) complete model would necessarily have to give an account of (...) how concepts are formed as a result of agent-environment interaction, that is mediated by an agents action in its environment and feedback from it. Such a shift in focus renders the investigation of the nature of concept formation as a complex and dynamic adaptive system. In accordance with this shift in perspective we propose and describe a novel methodological approach and a computational model that would support simple concept formation in an autonomous agent, which enables us to investigate concept formation in a more comprehensive manner. Overall we provide a compelling justification of the efficacy of such an ecological approach to the study of concept formation. (shrink)

This article describes a representation-based framework of distributed cognition. This framework considers distributed cognition as a cognitive system whose structures and processes are distributed between internal and external representations, across a group of individuals, and across space and time. The major issue for distributed research, under this framework, are the distribution, transformation, and propagation of information across the components of the distributed cognitive system and how they affect the performance of the system as a whole. To demonstrate the value of (...) this representation-based approach, the framework was used to describe and explain an important, challenging, and controversial issue — the concept of affordance. (shrink)

This paper examines the role of mutual funds in corporate social responsibility. Using a fund-level, holdings-based CSR score, we find that CSR-friendly mutual funds improve firms’ CSR standings. This effect is more pronounced for firms with higher mutual fund ownership and stronger corporate governance. We further show that while CSR-friendly mutual funds have influence on almost all CSR categories, they focus on increasing CSR strengths rather than reducing CSR concerns. We also discover that CSR-friendly funds are more likely to vote (...) in favor of CSR proposals, and that firms owned by CSR-friendly funds are more likely to link their CEO compensation to CSR outcomes. These results suggest that actively managed mutual funds, which were previously thought to be indifferent to social and ethical issues, play a significant role in corporate social outcomes of the firms they invest in. (shrink)

The Lord of the Fourteen worlds is manifest here. Questioner: For whom is the title 'Dada Bhagwan' used? Dadashri: For 'Dada Bhagwan.' Not for me. I am a 'Gnani Purush A. M. Patel.' 'Dada Bhagwan' is the Lord of the fourteen worlds. He dwells within you also, but He has not awakened yet, he remains unmanifested. Here within me, He is fully awakened and manifest. He is capable of awakening the Lord within you.

This case raises issues regarding the anesthesia and surgical components of preoperative informed consent and the differing views of anesthesiologists and surgeons with regards to informed consent, in the context of conversion to open surgery from a minimally invasive approach.

Prior research suggests that the media plays an important information intermediary role in capital markets. We investigate the role of the media in influencing firms’ engagement in corporate social responsibility activities. Using a large sample of 4396 unique firms from 42 countries over the period 2003–2012, we find strong evidence that firms engage in more CSR activities if located in countries where the media has more freedom. This relation is robust to using various proxies for media freedom, an alternative source (...) of CSR data, and to applying the instrumental variables approach to address endogeneity. In additional analyses, we find that the positive relation between media freedom and CSR engagement is stronger for better governed firms and for larger firms. Since the media have the ability to impact reputational capital, we conclude that media freedom affects firms’ incentives to engage in costly CSR activities. (shrink)

As a neo-liberal economy, India has become one of the new health tourism destinations, with commercial gestational surrogacy as an expanding market. Yet the Indian Assisted Reproductive Technology Bill has been pending for five years, and the guidelines issued by the Indian Council of Medical Research are somewhat vague and contradictory, resulting in self-regulated practices of fertility clinics. This paper broadly looks at clinical ethics in reproduction in the practice of surrogacy and decision-making in various procedures. Through empirical research in (...) New Delhi, the capital of India, from December 2011 to November 2012, issues of decision-making on embryo transfer, fetal reduction, and mode of delivery were identified. Interviews were carried out with doctors in eighteen ART clinics, agents from four agencies, and fourteen surrogates. In aiming to fulfil the commissioning parents’ demands, doctors were willing to go to the greatest extent possible in their medical practice. Autonomy and decision-making regarding choice of the number of embryos to transfer and the mode of delivery lay neither with commissioning parents nor surrogate mothers but mostly with doctors. In order to ensure higher success rates, surrogates faced the risk of multiple pregnancy and fetal reduction with little information regarding the risks involved. In the globalized market of commercial surrogacy in India, and with clinics compromising on ethics, there is an urgent need for formulation of regulative law for the clinical practice and maintenance of principles of reproductive ethics in order to ensure that the interests of surrogate mothers are safeguarded. (shrink)

Ubuntu has been defined as a moral quality of human beings, as a philosophy or an ethic, as African humanism, and as a worldview. This paper explores these definitions as conceptual tools for understanding the cultural, educational, and philosophical landscape of post-apartheid South Africa. Key to this understanding is the Althusserian concept of state apparatus. Louis Althusser divides the state apparatus into two forces: the repressive state apparatus (RSA); and the ideological state apparatus (ISA). RSAs curtail the working classes, predominately (...) through direct violence or the threat of violence, whereas ISAs function primarily by ideology, including forms of organised religion, the education system, family units, legal systems, trade unions, political parties, and media. This paper discusses the link between increasing inequality in post-apartheid South Africa and education, with specific reference to Althusser’s ISAs and the abuse of Ubuntu as a subterfuge for socio-economic inequality. (shrink)

Adaptive immunity provides the unique ability to respond to a nearly infinite range of antigenic determinants. Given the inherent plasticity of the adaptive immune system, a series of tolerance mechanisms exist to reduce reactivity toward self. While this reduces the probability of autoimmunity, it also creates an important gap in adaptive immunity: the ability to recognize microbes that look like self. As a variety of microbes decorate themselves in self‐like carbohydrate antigens and tolerance reduces the ability of adaptive immunity to (...) react with self‐like structures, protection against molecular mimicry likely resides within the innate arm of immunity. In this review, we will explore the potential consequences of microbial molecular mimicry, including factors within innate immunity that appear to specifically target microbes expressing self‐like antigens, and therefore provide protection against molecular mimicry. (shrink)

The discourse of multiculturalism provides a useful means of understanding the complexities, tensions, and dilemmas that Asian and other minority women in the U.K. grapple with in their quest for human rights. However, the adoption of multiculturalist approaches has also silenced women’s voices, obscuring, for example, the role of the family in gendered violence and abuse. Focusing on the work of Southall Black Sisters, and locating this work within current debates on the intersection of government policy, cultural diversity, and feminist (...) activism, this article examines, and critiques, the Labour government’s current “multi-faith” agenda for its impact on Black and minority ethnic women in the U.K. (shrink)

Theorists have found it difficult to reconcile the unity of inner speech as a mental state kind with the diversity of its manifestations. I argue that existing views concerning the content of inner speech fail to accommodate both of these features because they mistakenly assume that its content is to be found in the ‘speech processing hierarchy’, which includes semantic, syntactic, phonemic, phonetic, and articulatory levels. Upon rejecting this assumption, I offer a position on which the content of inner speech (...) is determined by voice processing, of which speech processing is but one component. The resulting view does justice to the idea that inner speech is a motley assortment of episodes that nevertheless form a kind. (shrink)

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to report on empirical work conducted to open up algorithmic interpretability and transparency. In recent years, significant concerns have arisen regarding the increasing pervasiveness of algorithms and the impact of automated decision-making in our lives. Particularly problematic is the lack of transparency surrounding the development of these algorithmic systems and their use. It is often suggested that to make algorithms more fair, they should be made more transparent, but exactly how this can be (...) achieved remains unclear. Design/methodology/approach An empirical study was conducted to begin unpacking issues around algorithmic interpretability and transparency. The study involved discussion-based experiments centred around a limited resource allocation scenario which required participants to select their most and least preferred algorithms in a particular context. In addition to collecting quantitative data about preferences, qualitative data captured participants’ expressed reasoning behind their selections. Findings Even when provided with the same information about the scenario, participants made different algorithm preference selections and rationalised their selections differently. The study results revealed diversity in participant responses but consistency in the emphasis they placed on normative concerns and the importance of context when accounting for their selections. The issues raised by participants as important to their selections resonate closely with values that have come to the fore in current debates over algorithm prevalence. Originality/value This work developed a novel empirical approach that demonstrates the value in pursuing algorithmic interpretability and transparency while also highlighting the complexities surrounding their accomplishment. (shrink)

The effects of climate change are far reaching and widespread. As the issue continues to batter the world, the call for mitigation initiatives is becoming louder. In responding to this call we take a multidisciplinary approach to examining board diversity as an innovative solution in tackling climate change. Utilizing data from 69 fossil fuel organizations, our findings suggest that increasing female representation and foreign culture representation on the board can effectively reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the main contributor to climate change. (...) In part, this is achieved through responsible leadership and innovation. Our contributions reach beyond traditional board diversity literature, where the benefits of diversity are confined primarily to a discussion of corporate social responsibilities. Instead, we depict the benefits of board diversity as a direct lever in mitigating climate change. We propose that this is through the diversified board's enhanced ability to identify stakeholder needs and, subsequently, conceive of more effective and responsibly innovative solutions. (shrink)

Answering important public health questions often requires collection of sensitive information about individuals. For example, our understanding of how HIV is transmitted and how to prevent it only came about with people's willingness to share information about their sexual and drug-using behaviors. Given the scientific need for sensitive, personal information, researchers have a corresponding ethical and legal obligation to maintain the confidentiality of data they collect and typically promise in consent forms to restrict access to it and not to publish (...) identifying data.The interests of others, however, can threaten researchers' promises of confidentiality when legal demands are made to access research data. In some cases, the subject of the litigation is tightly connected to the research questions, and litigants' interest in the data is not surprising. Researchers conducting studies on tobacco or occupational or other chemical exposures, for example, are relatively frequent targets of subpoenas. (shrink)

Boundary extension is a memory phenomenon in which an individual reports seeing more of a scene than they actually did. We provide the first examination of boundary extension in individuals diagnosed with depression, hypothesising that an overemphasis on pre-existing schema may enhance boundary extension effects on emotional photographs. The relationship between boundary extension and overgeneralisation in autobiographical memory was also explored. Individuals with (n = 42) and without (n = 41) Major Depressive Disorder completed a camera paradigm task utilising positive, (...) negative, and neutral stimuli. Across all participants, positive (d = 0.37) and negative (d = 0.66) stimuli were extended more than neutral stimuli. This effect did not differ between depressed and never-depressed participants. Across all participants, images containing objects were extended more than images containing faces. An association was also evident between extension effects in memory for perceptual space and extensions of autobiographical memory across time. (shrink)

We extend the literature by providing evidence that a cultural variable, intrinsic Islamic religiosity is important in understanding auditors’ judgement in the Islamic context of Pakistan. The intrinsic Islamic religiosity theoretical construct examined is Islamic Worldview which represents deeply held enduring and stable values which are likely to be dominant in influencing professionals’ judgements. Moreover, theoretical underpinning and empirical evidence in social psychology and organisational behaviour have established the critical role of intrinsic religiosity in influencing behaviour. Our first objective is (...) to examine whether IW impacts auditors’ judgements in the context of their acceptance of uncorroborated low-reliability client-provided evidence. Understanding the potential impact of cultural factors on auditors’ acceptance of client-provided information is an essential factor in improving audit quality. Our findings support the hypothesis that auditors with high IW scores are more likely to accept uncorroborated low-reliability client-provided evidence. Our second objective is to examine the relationship between IW and auditors’ preference for exercising more or less judgements. Examining this topic is important because auditing is a judgement-based process: auditors’ judgements determine audit quality and, by extension, the quality of associated financial reports. Our findings provide overall support for the hypothesis that auditors with high IW scores have a preference for exercising more judgement. Our findings have implications for global and national standard setters, regulators, practitioners, and researchers. The results are also relevant to global audit firms and their affiliates, particularly networks operating in Islamic countries, in ensuring global consistency of audits. (shrink)