A review of medical ethics literature relating to the importance of the participation of patients in decision-making introduces the role of rights-based mediation as a voluntary process now being developed innovatively in America. This is discussed in relation to the theory of communicative ethics and moral personhood. References are then made to the work of medical ethics committees and the role of mediation within these. Finally it is suggested that mediation is part of an eirenic ethic already being used informally (...) in good patient care, and that there is a case for developing it further. (shrink)

In this study, complex dynamics of Briggs–Rauscher reaction system is investigated analytically and numerically. First, the Briggs–Rauscher reaction system is reduced into a new nonlinear parametric oscillator. The Melnikov method is used to derive the condition of the appearance of horseshoe chaos in the cases ω = Ω and ω ≠ Ω. The performed numerical simulations confirm the obtained analytical predictions. Second, the prediction of coexisting attractors is investigated by solving numerically the new nonlinear parametric ordinary differential equation via the (...) fourth-order Runge–Kutta algorithm. As results, it is found that the new nonlinear chemical system displays various coexisting behaviors of symmetric and asymmetric attractors. In addition, the system presents a rich variety of bifurcations phenomena such as symmetry breaking, symmetry restoring, period doubling, reverse period doubling, period-m bubbles, reverse period-m bubbles, intermittency, and antimonotonicity. On the contrary, emerging chaotic band attractors and period-1, period-3, period-9, and period-m bubbles routes to chaos occur in this system. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2018 Heft: 225 Seiten: 457-487.

The work has aimed throughout at a comparative treatment of the problems.

This book presents Yi Hwang —better known by his pen name, Toegye—Korea’s most eminent Confucian philosopher. It is a pioneering study of Toegye’s moral and religious thought that discusses his holistic ideas and experiences as a scholar, thinker, and spiritual practitioner. This study includes Toegye’s major biographies and letters as well as his famous Jaseongnok and Seonghak sipdo. Edward Chung explains key concepts, original quotations, annotated notes, and thought-provoking comments to bring this monumental thinker and his work to life. Chung (...) also considers comparative and interreligious perspectives and their contemporary relevance. By offering groundbreaking insights into Neo-Confucianism, this book sheds fresh light on the breadth and depth of Toegye’s ethics and spirituality, and is an important source for scholars and students in Korean and Confucian studies and comparative philosophy and religion. (shrink)

This article explores the conceptual and practical gap existing between the developed and developing countries in relation to corporate social responsibility (CSR), or the North-South ' CSR Divide', through the analysis of possible impact on the competitiveness of developing countries' and economies' SMEs and MNEs in globalization. To do so, this article first reviewed the traditional wisdom on the concept of strategic CSR developed in the North and the role that CSR engagement can play in corporate competitiveness, and compare with (...) the impact on the competitive advantage of the South through the supply chains. It points out that among the many factors that could explain the ' CSR Divide', the negative impact of CSR on comparative advantage is the final resort where developing countries are reluctant and defensive toward western-style CSR. It did point out that developing countries are changing their approaches to make CSR work in favor of their competitive position in global trade, such as China who has started to adopt proactive approach by becoming CSR standards-setter. This article concludes with two policy proposals that aim to bridge the CSR gap, the first is to improve CSR standard-setting participation from both sides, and the second to search for solutions in the international investment legal framework which will define corporate obligations in relating to CSR in a more explicit way. (shrink)

In elite sport, the advantages demonstrated by expert performers over novices are sometimes due in part to their superior physical fitness or to their greater technical precision in executing specialist motor skills. However at the very highest levels, all competitors typically share extraordinary physical capacities and have supremely well-honed techniques. Among the extra factors which can differentiate between the best performers, psychological skills are paramount. These range from the capacities to cope under pressure and to bounce back from setbacks, to (...) the knowledge of themselves, opponents, and the domain, which experts access and apply in performance. In the companion chapter on breadth and depth of knowledge in expert sport (see Chapter 11), we discussed the forms or kinds of knowledge deployed by elite athletes, and described some lines of research which seek to tap and study such expert knowledge (McPherson & MacMahon, 2008; McRobert, Ward, Eccles & Williams, 2011). In this chapter we focus more directly on questions about methods for measuring or more accurately assessing expert knowledge, in particular addressing a wider range of methods to help us understand what experts know. Suggesting that sport researchers can productively adopt and adapt existing qualitative methodologies for integration with more standard quantitative methods, we introduce and survey a number of areas of qualitative research in psychology. (shrink)

The Médecins Sans Frontières ethics review board has been solicited in an unprecedented way to provide advice and review research protocols in an ‘emergency’ mode during the recent Ebola epidemic. Twenty-seven Ebola-related study protocols were reviewed between March 2014 and August 2015, ranging from epidemiological research, to behavioural research, infectivity studies and clinical trials with investigational products at early development stages. This article examines the MSF ERB’s experience addressing issues related to both the process of review and substantive ethical issues (...) in this context. These topics include lack of policies regarding blood sample collection and use, and engaging communities regarding their storage and future use; exclusion of pregnant women from clinical and vaccine trials; and the difficulty of implementing timely and high-quality qualitative/anthropological research to consider potential upfront harms. Having noticed different standards across ethics committees, we propose that when multiple ethics reviews of clinical and vaccine trials are carried out during a public health emergency they should be accompanied by transparent communication between the ECs involved. The MSF ERB experience should trigger a broader discussion on the ‘optimal’ ethics review in an emergency outbreak and what enduring structural changes are needed to improve the ethics review process. (shrink)

Homonyms, i.e. ambiguous words like ‘score’, have different meanings in different contexts. Previous research indicates that all potential meanings of a homonym are first accessed in parallel before one of the meanings is selected in a competitive race. If these processes are automatic, these processes of selection should even be observed when homonyms are shown subliminally. This study measured the time course of subliminal and supraliminal priming by homonyms with a frequent and a rare meaning in a neutral context, using (...) a lexical decision task. In the subliminal condition, priming across prime-target asynchronies ranging from 100 ms to 1.5 s indicated that the dominant meaning of homonyms was facilitated and the subordinate meaning was inhibited. This indicates that selection of meaning was much faster with subliminal presentation than with supraliminal presentation. Awareness of a prime might decelerate an otherwise rapid selection process. (shrink)

XLRI, in association with a few Tata Group companies, established the XLRI-JRD Tata Foundation in Business Ethics in 1991 to mark their long-standing commitment and contribution to business ethics in India. The foundation seeks to address this by publicly affirming the urgent need for ethics in business and the need to bring about a conducive culture in which it can thrive.

Médecins Sans Frontières is one of the world’s leading humanitarian medical organizations. The increased emphasis in MSF on research led to the creation of an ethics review board in 2001. The ERB has encouraged innovation in the review of proposals and the interaction between the ERB and the organization. This has led to some of the advances in ethics governance described in this paper.

The right to conceive and bear children has been protected both in law and in policy. Human society has from its earliest time valued children and defended procreation as a basic right.Modern health technology offers the possibility of conception to the estimated 2.5 million infertile couples who may wish to have children. For these persons, infertility treatment offers the hope of having children, an activity deemed basic and essential in human society.In general, the state has been reluctant to directly interfere (...) in the reproductive decisions of individuals. However, the state may act to increase or reduce access to reproductive services in a variety of ways. For example, recent legislation regulating fertility clinics affects the distribution of assisted reproductive technology in the United States. The purpose of this paper is to describe this legislation, project its probable effects on the distribution of ART services, and analyze these effects based on distributive theories of justice. (shrink)

Expert skill in music performance involves an apparent paradox. On stage, expert musicians are required accurately to retrieve information that has been encoded over hours of practice. Yet they must also remain open to the demands of the ever-changing situational contingencies with which they are faced during performance. To further explore this apparent paradox and the way in which it is negotiated by expert musicians, this article profiles theories presented by Roger Chaffin, Hubert Dreyfus and Tony and Helga Noice. For (...) Chaffin, expert skill in music performance relies solely upon overarching mental representations, while, for Dreyfus, such representations are needed only by novices, while experts rely on a more embodied form of coping. Between Chaffin and Dreyfus sit the Noices, who argue that both overarching cognitive structures and embodied processes underlie expert skill. We then present the Applying Intelligence to the Reflexes (AIR) approach?a differently nuanced model of expert skill aligned with the integrative spirit of the Noices? research. The AIR approach suggests that musicians negotiate the apparent paradox of expert skill via a mindedness that allows flexibility of attention during music performance. We offer data from recent doctoral research conducted by the first author of this article to demonstrate at a practical level the usefulness of the AIR approach when attempting to understand the complexities of expert skill in music performance. (shrink)

The evolution of microstructure upon partial crystallization and its influence on the mechanical properties such as hardness, elastic modulus and viscosity in a La 55 Al 25 Cu 10 Ni 5 Co 5 bulk metallic glass alloy are studied. Specimens with various volume fractions of crystalline phases were obtained by annealing the as-cast amorphous alloy above its glass transition temperature and were characterized by transmission electron microscopy. Microscopic examination of the heat-treated samples shows short-range-ordered domains prior to nanocrystallization within the (...) amorphous matrix, followed by the growth and impingement of the crystallites. Whereas the hardness of the annealed samples increases linearly with increasing crystallinity, the elastic modulus and the viscosity both increase abruptly when the crystalline volume fraction is about 40 vol.%, with a only minor variation on either side of this range. The sudden rises in the modulus and viscosity are similar to those in the literature data on the fracture strength of partially crystallized bulk amorphous alloys that shows a steep drop in strength at 30-50 vol.% crystallinity. On the basis of the microscopic observations, it is suggested that the interaction and formation of rigid networks of crystalline phases upon the attainment of a critical second-phase volume fraction may be the possible reason for the sudden change in mechanical properties. Percolation theory is utilized in further substantiating this hypothesis. (shrink)

We present the logic K/2 which is a logic with classical implication and only the left part of classical negation.We show that it is possible to define a classical negation into K/2 and that the classical proposition logic K can be translated into this apparently weaker logic.We use concepts from model-theory in order to characterized rigorously this translation and to understand this paradox. Finally we point out that K/2 appears, following Haack's distinction, both as a deviation and an extension of (...) K. (shrink)

Expert skill in music performance involves an apparent paradox. On stage, expert musicians are required accurately to retrieve information that has been encoded over hours of practice. Yet they must also remain open to the demands of the ever-changing situational contingencies with which they are faced during performance. To further explore this apparent paradox and the way in which it is negotiated by expert musicians, this article profiles theories presented by Roger Chaffin, Hubert Dreyfus and Tony and Helga Noice. For (...) Chaffin, expert skill in music performance relies solely upon overarching mental representations, while, for Dreyfus, such representations are needed only by novices, while experts rely on a more embodied form of coping. Between Chaffin and Dreyfus sit the Noices, who argue that both overarching cognitive structures and embodied processes underlie expert skill. We then present the Applying Intelligence to the Reflexes approach—a differently nuanced model of expert skill aligned with the integrative spirit of the Noices’ research. The AIR approach suggests that musicians negotiate the apparent paradox of expert skill via a mindedness that allows flexibility of attention during music performance. We offer data from recent doctoral research conducted by the first author of this article to demonstrate at a practical level the usefulness of the AIR approach when attempting to understand the complexities of expert skill in music performance. (shrink)

The aim of this study was to investigate unconscious priming by the use of a spatial mirror-masking paradigm. Words and nonwords with no under-length letters are mirrored at their horizontal axis. The results are figures of geometric-like forms that contain letters in their upper part. In the three experiments reported in this study, a priming procedure used such mirrored words and nonwords as primes. Participants were ignorant of the nature of the construction of the stimuli. Perceptual reports of the participants (...) revealed that they did not realize that words were hidden in the primes. Nevertheless, they showed priming in all three experiments. Priming effects were replicated with prime–target SOAs of between 1 and 3 s. Functional dissociations were found between ignorant and informed participants. Informed groups showed perceptual and semantic priming, while ignorant groups showed only perceptual priming. (shrink)

Amyloid-beta peptide plaque in the brain is the primary diagnostic criterion of Alzheimer's disease . The physiological role of Abeta are poorly understood. We have previously determined an Abeta interacting domain in the promoters of AD-associated genes . This AbetaID interacts in a DNA sequence-specific manner with Abeta. We now demonstrate novel Abeta activity as a possible transcription factor. Herein, we detected Abeta-chromatin interaction in cell culture by ChIP assay. We observed that human neuroblastoma cells treated with FITC conjugated Abeta1-40 (...) localized Abeta to the nucleus in the presence of H2O2-mediated oxidative stress. Furthermore, primary rat fetal cerebrocortical cultures were transfected with APP and BACE1 promoter-luciferase fusions, and rat PC12 cultures were transfected with polymorphic APP promoter-CAT fusion clones. Transfected cells were treated with different Abeta peptides and/or H2O2. Abeta treatment of cell cultures produced a DNA sequence-specific response in cells transfected with polymorphic APP clones. Our results suggest the Abeta peptide may regulate its own production through feedback on its precursor protein and BACE1, leading to amyloidogenesis in AD. (shrink)