“What are we to do next?” is a question that spontaneously emerges in our daily lives, for example, in planning a family vacation, and the question is permeated by a mood of adventure. Ethics as functional collaboration envisions an adventure-anticipating team of individuals who are reaching for better vacations for one and all. Collectively the team is to reach both for a serious understanding of the concrete and particular, be it the local high school or local economy, and (...) for a timely and humane reply to the question “What next?” Their reaching is to make more efficient and beautiful the way they divide up a large number of questions of the type “What is the current situation?” “How did we get here?” “What do we want?” and “What are we to do next?” Whatever small steps we actors in the drama of higher or lower education might take to realize such collaboration are fundamentally good steps, that is, what we are to do next. (shrink)

In all disciplines there is the question of how to promote progress and offset decline. But, what are progress and decline ? For this short article, the main discussion centers on biology. A solution called functional specialization begins to emerge as relevant to all of the sciences, technologies and arts. This introductory article ends with some heuristics on various follow-up issues.

This empirical study examines how practitioners from the organizational functions of human resources, occupational safety and occupational health services within a Finnish industrial organization view the challenges that production supervisors face in their daily work. The article presents a formative intervention, which focuses on supervisors’ changing work and how these organizational support functions could collaboratively serve supervisors better, especially in their task of promoting well-being at work. The article approaches this collective learning effort from the framework of the Cultural Historical (...) Activity Theory , by examining how crossfunctional collaboration evolves and the transitions through which it develops in an intervention process. The development of collaboration is analysed through a process of collective concept and tool formation by following a cross-meeting trajectory of specific annual clock episodes. An annual clock, a co-ordinating tool used in organizations to assist the yearly planning and management of specific operations, emerged in the intervention as the practitioners’ attempt to synchronize overlapping and inconsistent well-being related practices assigned to supervisors. The article presents a framework that can be applied in this kind of combined empirical analysis of tool development and the evolving collaboration. The analysis shows how the idea of the annual clock grew through multifaceted conceptualizations, in which it first had the status of a conceptual object, then a collaborative tool, and eventually a script for becoming a novel cross-functional practice. Simultaneously, the mode of interaction expanded from a function-based co-ordination to task-oriented co-operation, and finally to communication. (shrink)

For two centuries, collaborative research has become increasingly widespread. Various explanations of this trend have been proposed. Here, we offer a novel functional explanation of it. It differs from ac- counts like that of Wray by the precise socio-epistemic mech- anism that grounds the beneficialness of collaboration. Boyer-Kassem and Imbert show how minor differences in the step-efficiency of collaborative groups can make them much more successful in particular configurations. We investigate this model further, derive robust social patterns concerning (...) the general successfulness of collaborative groups, and argue that these patterns can be used to defend a general functional account. (shrink)

I examine the epistemic import of collaborative research in science. I develop and defend a functional explanation for its growing importance. Collaborative research is becoming more popular in the natural sciences, and to a lesser degree in the social sciences, because contemporary research in these fields frequently requires access to abundant resources, for which there is great competition. Scientists involved in collaborative research have been very successful in accessing these resources, which has in turn enabled them to realize the (...) epistemic goals of science more effectively than other scientists, thus creating a research environment in which collaboration is now the norm. (shrink)

Computer-based design environments for skilled domain workers have recently graduated from research prototypes to commercial products, supporting the learning of individual designers. Such systems do not, however, adequately support the collaborative nature of work or the evolution of knowledge within communities of practice. If innovation is to be supported within collaborative efforts, thesedomain-oriented design environments (DODEs) must be extended to becomecollaborative information environments (CIEs), capable of providing effective community memories for managing information and learning within constantly evolving collaborative contexts. In (...) particular, CIEs must provide functionality that facilitates the construction of new knowledge and the shared understanding necessary to use this knowledge effectively within communities of practice. (shrink)

Both Notch and NFκB signaling pathways are well‐known for regulating proliferation, differentiation and apoptosis. Recent studies have presented several lines of evidence supporting an integration of the Notch and NFκB signaling pathways in differentiation/maturation of a diverse range of cell types. It is notable that Notch and NFκB signaling pathways share many common features: (i) both are activated by common stimuli such as TNF‐α and hypoxia, (ii) activated Notch (NICD) and NFκB mediate transcription by regulating corepressors such as SMRT/N‐COR, and (...) (iii) both regulate similar target genes such as Hes‐1 and IκBα. This review expands on how the collaboration between these pathways may play an important role in the CNS. We will speculate on the mechanisms by which Notch and NFκB signaling may collaborate to regulate stem cell renewal and differentiation during brain development and function. BioEssays 29:1039–1047, 2007. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

We present an analysis of work completion couched in terms of an effective completion decision identified by its characteristic contents and functions. In our proposal, the artist's completion decision can take a number of distinct forms, including a procedural variety referred to as an ‘extended completion decision’. In the second part of this essay, we address ourselves to the question of whether collaborative art-making projects stand as counterexamples to the proposed analysis of work completion.

Experimental memory research has traditionally focused on the individual, and viewed social influence as a source of error or inhibition. However, in everyday life, remembering is often a social activity, and theories from philosophy and psychology predict benefits of shared remembering. In a series of studies, both experimental and more qualitative, we attempted to bridge this gap by examining the effects of collaboration on memory in a variety of situations and in a variety of groups. We discuss our results (...) in terms of a functional view of collaborative remembering, and consider when and in what ways remembering with others might help or hinder memory. (shrink)

Theater production is a collaborative creative activity. Social creativity recognizes the relationships between creative groups and the contexts in which creativity emerges. It also suggests that the interactive processes between the collaborators and their work form a center, which in turn becomes a kind of creative entity itself. An evolving systems case study of production practices at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival illuminates this process and illustrates the differences between seeing an aggregate creative activity and the more holistic view, in which (...) the artwork functions like another person, a creature in dialogue with the personality of the creative system. (shrink)

This paper examines the role of evidential considerations in relation to pragmatic concerns in statements of group belief, focusing on scientific collaborations that are constituted in part by the aim of evaluating the evidence for scientific claims (evidential collaborations). Drawing upon a case study in high energy particle physics, I seek to show how pragmatic factors that enter into the decision to issue a group statement contribute positively to the epistemic functioning of such groups, contrary to the implications of much (...) of the existing discussion of group belief. I conclude by suggesting that applying social epistemological considerations to scientific collaborations could be practically beneficial, but only if an appropriately broad range of epistemic values is considered. (shrink)

In this study, we focus on the problem of information expiration when using the traditional collaborative filtering algorithm and propose a new collaborative filtering algorithm by integrating the time factor. This algorithm considers information influence attenuation over time, introduces an information retention period based on the information half-value period, and proposes a time-weighted function, which is applied to the nearest neighbor selection and score prediction to assign different time weights to the scores. In addition, to further improve the quality of (...) the nearest neighbor selection and alleviate the problem of data sparsity, a method of calculating users’ sentiment tendency by analysis of user review features is proposed to mine users’ attitudes about the reviewed items, which expands the score matrix. The time factor and sentiment tendency are then integrated into the K-means clustering algorithm to select the nearest neighbor. A hybrid collaborative filtering model based on the improved K-means clustering algorithm is then proposed, by combining item-based and user-based collaborative filtering. Finally, the experimental results show that the proposed algorithm can address the time effect and sentiment analysis in recommendations and improve the predictive performance of the model. (shrink)

In 2014, the worldwide context is that the population is increasingly both expanding and aging in industrial countries. In contrast, the personal health levels of individuals could decrease. Although retirement homes and health-care centers assume most of the demand, they will most probably overflow in the next few years. One of the current solutions is e-Health, which involves biomedical monitoring but also home automation functions to compensate for disabilities that tend to increase with age. In this context, several domains have (...) to be merged while respecting the entire ecosystem: the users, their needs and environment, but also all the various actors/experts involved in this process. The issue, however, is that enormous effort is required to combine the multiple expert domains because these can be antinomic. Hence, this paper proposes a collaborative workflow that brings together these different actors and generates the control/command application. Applying model-driven engineering, this workflow makes a clear distinction between people’s health requirements, the home automation functions, and the user interface points of view. Thus, it allows experts in each field to adapt their system in terms of the user’s needs, disability, and health state. (shrink)

Scientific explanation is a perennial topic in philosophy of science, but the literature has fragmented into specialized discussions in different scientific disciplines. An increasing attention to scientific practice by philosophers is (in part) responsible for this fragmentation and has put pressure on criteria of adequacy for philosophical accounts of explanation, usually demanding some form of pluralism. This commentary examines the arguments offered by Fagan and Woody with respect to explanation and understanding in scientific practice. I begin by scrutinizing Fagan's concept (...) of collaborative explanation, highlighting its distinctive advantages and expressing concern about several of its assumptions. Then I analyze Woody's attempt to reorient discussions of scientific explanation around functional considerations, elaborating on the wider implications of this methodological recommendation. I conclude with reflections on synergies and tensions that emerge when the two papers are juxtaposed and how these draw attention to critical issues that confront ongoing philosophical analyses of scientific explanation. (shrink)

In his biography of Emil Artin, Richard Brauer describes the years from 1931–1941 as a time when “Artin spoke through his students and through the members of his mathematical circle” rather than through written publications. This paper explores these seemingly quiet years when Artin immigrated to America and disseminated ideas about algebraic number theory during this time in his collaboration with George Whaples, a young American mathematician who had just completed his Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin. The main (...) result of their work is the use of the product formula for valuations to come up with an axiomatic characterization of both algebraic number fields and algebraic function fields with a finite field of constants. These two families of fields are exactly the fields for which class field theory is known to hold. We situate their mathematical work in the broader context of algebraic number theory and their lives within the broader historical context. (shrink)

The purpose of this research was to explore the concept of collaboration within a specific healthcare context and to include the perspectives of healthcare users, a position largely lacking in previous studies. In applying a critical theoretical approach, the focus was on, as an exemplar, mothers with newborn babies who had spent more than 48 hr in a special care nursery. Semistructured interviews were undertaken with child health nurses, midwives and mothers. The three key theoretical findings on collaboration (...) generated in the study point to layers of meanings around identity, knowledge and institutions of care. Findings from the interview data analysis were further examined through the lens of key policy documents. The research outcomes indicate that the concept of collaboration serves an important function in healthcare in obscuring the complexities and ambiguities that characterise the care continuum. The study concludes the need for a more critical approach to the assumptions that underlie the language of collaboration and the implications for practice in healthcare. (shrink)

Medicalized Death and the Right to Die Movement Prior to the 20th Century, most Americans died at home, surrounded by family, friends, and neighbors. Religion, not medicine, governed the death bed for there was little physicians could do for the dying. Eventually, however, advances in medicine and technology would lead to dramatic changes in the timing and location of death: patients not only began living longer, they were also dying longer, and unlike their predecessors, were more likely to die alone, (...) in institutions, and among strangers. Modern medicine, in its zeal to conquer death, had become obsessed with its curative function and ability to extend the lives of the dying. To many in the medical community, death represented failure and was something to be avoided at all costs, and like many other social problems in the United States, had become medicalized. (shrink)

We propose an infrastructure for collaborative content management and version control for structured mathematical knowledge. This will enable multiple users to work jointly on mathematical theories with minimal interference. We describe the API and the functionality needed to realize a cvs-like version control and distribution model. This architecture extends the cvs architecture in two ways, motivated by the specific needs of distributed management of structured mathematical knowledge on the Internet. On the one hand the one-level client/server model of cvs is (...) generalized to a multi-level graph of client/server relations, and on the other hand the underlying change-detection tools take the math-specific structure of the data into account. (shrink)

L.S. Vygotsky’s “regulative” account of the development of human thinking hinges on the centralization of “directive” speech acts (commands or imperatives). With directives, one directs the activity of another, and in turn begins to “self-direct” (or self-regulate). It’s my claim that Vygotsky’s reliance on directives de facto keeps his account stuck at Tomasello's level of individual intentionality. Directive speech acts feature prominently in Tomasello’s developmental story as well. But Tomasello has the benefit of accounting for a functional differentiation in (...) directive communication—i.e., in collaborative activity, the command gives way to both the request and informational assertion. Lacking such differentiation, Vygotsky’s account runs the risk of playing to a rather strident conception of the socius, one more Machiavellian than Marxist. (shrink)

Collaborative learning has recently achieved very significant results. It still suffers, however, from several issues, including the type of information that needs to be exchanged, the criteria for stopping and how to choose the right collaborators. We aim in this paper to improve the quality of the collaboration and to resolve these issues via a novel approach inspired by Optimal Transport theory. More specifically, the objective function for the exchange of information is based on the Wasserstein distance, with a (...) bidirectional transport of information between collaborators. This formulation allows to learns a stopping criterion and provide a criterion to choose the best collaborators. Extensive experiments are conducted on multiple data-sets to evaluate the proposed approach. (shrink)

The mapping of therapeutic collaboration throughout counseling deepens our understanding of how the helping relationship fosters client change. To better understand the process of career construction counseling, we analyzed the therapeutic collaboration on six successful face-to-face cases. The participants were six Portuguese adults, five women and one man, real clients of a career counseling service, and four psychologists, three female and one male trained in the career intervention model. The participants completed demographic questions and measures of career certainty, (...) vocational identity, career indecision, and psychological functioning. The Therapeutic Collaboration Coding System was used to track collaboration throughout all interactive episodes. The clinical significance of the intervention was calculated by analyzing pre-post-test statistical differences for each case, with the Reliable Change Index and Z score. The findings evidenced a pattern of therapeutic collaboration evolution for good outcome cases. Based on this pattern, we propose a model of process-outcome evolution for the three phases of CCC. (shrink)

In this article, I address the question whether or not robots should be social actors and suggest that we do not have much choice but to construe collaborative robots as social actors. Social cues, including emotional displays, serve coordination functions in human interaction and therefore have to be used, even by robots, in order for long-term collaboration to succeed. While robots lack the experiential basis of emotional display, also in human interaction much emotional expression is part of conventional social (...) practice; if robots are to participate in such social practices, they need to produce such signals as well. I conclude that if we aim to share our social spaces with robots, they better be social actors, which may even include the display of emotions. This finding is of empirical as well as philosophical relevance because it shifts the ethical discussion away from the question, how social collaborative robots should be, to the question, what kinds of human-robot collaborations we want. (shrink)

In this article, I address the question whether or not robots should be social actors and suggest that we do not have much choice but to construe collaborative robots as social actors. Social cues, including emotional displays, serve coordination functions in human interaction and therefore have to be used, even by robots, in order for long-term collaboration to succeed. While robots lack the experiential basis of emotional display, also in human interaction much emotional expression is part of conventional social (...) practice; if robots are to participate in such social practices, they need to produce such signals as well. I conclude that if we aim to share our social spaces with robots, they better be social actors, which may even include the display of emotions. This finding is of empirical as well as philosophical relevance because it shifts the ethical discussion away from the question, how social collaborative robots should be, to the question, what kinds of human-robot collaborations we want. (shrink)

A long history of extractive industries and activities have shaped the societies of northern Mozambique, and the Cabo Delgado province in particular. For centuries, the growing international demand on local resources had a great impact on the northern micro-societies. The demand for cheap labour and natural resources, ranging from ivory and cotton, to timber, rubies, land, gas and more, involved thousands of local actors in its extraction, reproducing systems of local power. The persistence of poverty, inequality and conflicts, as well (...) as simmering and sometimes grand-scale violence, fits into a long-term trend of extractivism. Through a historical approach and field observations, we focus on the political economy of extracting natural resources. We point out the persisting basic patterns of extractivism that accompanied Mozambique's integration into global markets, and continued or even deepened, in the post-independence period. These activities are oriented towards foreign markets. They are instigated by foreign investment, but invariably carried out in collaboration with a chain of national gatekeepers. In a clientelist system, local elites resort to their proximity to the state to reproduce their power, often at the expense of state expropriation. Weak state institutions have the functional effect of reproducing the elites, also serving the interests of extractivist capital. It is, however, a system with many and profound contradictions, producing conflict and violence, which also recurrently put those interests at risk. (shrink)

Following societal and policy pressures for responsible innovation, innovators are more and more expected to consider the broader socio-ethical context of their work, and more importantly, to integrate such considerations into their daily practices. This may require the involvement of ‘outsiders’ in innovation trajectories, including e.g. societal and governmental actors. However, methods on how to functionally organize such integration in light of responsible innovation have only recently started to emerge. We present an approach to do just that, in which we (...) first develop value profiles of the involved actors, and second, design a workshop setting that allows innovators to develop design requirements in collaboration with representatives of parties that are not usually involved in such innovation design practices. Using a case study in automated vehicle development, we positively demonstrate the possibility and utility of our approach. We stress that in this study we wish to demonstrate the functionality of our developed method, and did not search for scientifically valid outcomes regarding this technical field. (shrink)

Following societal and policy pressures for responsible innovation, innovators are more and more expected to consider the broader socio-ethical context of their work, and more importantly, to integrate such considerations into their daily practices. This may require the involvement of ‘outsiders’ in innovation trajectories, including e.g. societal and governmental actors. However, methods on how to functionally organize such integration in light of responsible innovation have only recently started to emerge. We present an approach to do just that, in which we (...) first develop value profiles of the involved actors, and second, design a workshop setting that allows innovators to develop design requirements in collaboration with representatives of parties that are not usually involved in such innovation design practices. Using a case study in automated vehicle development, we positively demonstrate the possibility and utility of our approach. We stress that in this study we wish to demonstrate the functionality of our developed method, and did not search for scientifically valid outcomes regarding this technical field. (shrink)

This article locates Lonergan’s call for a new political economy within a larger project, the “education of liberty,” one aim of which is to have large numbers of producers and consumers voluntarily and intelligently adapting their economic decisions to the rhythms of the economy. Part I of the article describes several basic obstacles to such adaptations, including a type of economic realism that assumes “rational agency” in the marketplace is equivalent to the pursuit of perceived self-interest. How are any of (...) these obstacles to be overcome? The promise of functional specialization is to take what is best in the past and to apply it in future efforts to improve the human condition. Thus, Part II of the article summarizes this author’s understanding of the eight functional specialties, and Part III singles out an underdeveloped understanding of rational agency as the focus of an experiment in applying the functional specialties to one obstacle to the education of liberty. The experiment is no more than an invitation to others who may wish to exploit the promise of functional specialization. Leading questions under the eight headings identify parts of possible collaborative projects. [The second article by the same author in this issue of the journal provides an exercise in the fourth specialty of dialectic in response to this invitation.]. (shrink)

The goals and tasks of neuroethics formulated by Farahany and Ramos (2020) link epistemological and methodological issues with ethical and social values. The authors refer simultaneously to the social significance and scientific reliability of the BRAIN Initiative. They openly argue that neuroethics should not only examine neuroscientific research in terms of “a rigorous, reproducible, and representative neuroscience research process” as well as “explore the unique nature of the study of the human brain through accurate and representative models of its function (...) and dysfunction”, but also its responsibilities or social consequences. In our commentary, we would like to concentrate on problem selection, which is shortly noticed by Farahany and Ramos, and by BRAIN Initiative’s Neuroethics Report itself. The document raises an important issue related to problem selection, which is strengthening or perpetuating existing prejudices and biases by choosing a research subject: “scientists are prompted to consider how the questions they choose to study in the laboratory might amplify existing biases.” This leads to several further problems: what constitutes bias?; how biases may be embedded in the selection of research programs?; is it possible to conduct completely unbiased research?; who should be a gatekeeper in the case of research that may amplify biases? We try to notice possible answers to these questions in the context of the research on differences (e.g., cognitive, medical, behavioral) between human populations. (shrink)

This article utilises the concept of ‘race trouble’ as an overarching framework for examining an interview between Ms Vanessa Nakate and a South African news broadcaster. The interview describes an incident involving Ms Nakate’s attendance at a global climate change conference and her exclusion from a media report about a press briefing that she held along with four other youth activists at the conference. The analysis focuses on the collaborative and interactional production of Ms Nakate’s claim that her exclusion was (...) racially motivated and the discursive mechanisms by which race is mobilised as a common-sense explanation for the incident that occurred. My analysis demonstrates the sanctionability of producing an accusation of racism and identifies the rhetorical functions of stake and facticity in its production, and concludes with a discussion of the relevance of these findings in the context of studies on race and racism in interaction. (shrink)

Effective interprofessional collaboration depends upon establishing understanding that respects differences in values and beliefs, and thus differences in response to the multiplicity of patient/client/user needs. To facilitate the latter, this article suggests that health and social care students need a formal knowledge of the meaning of values and the varieties of systems within which values are expressed. Students need especially to understand the genesis of their own professional value system and to recognize the gap that inevitably develops between the (...) values of the professional and those of the society within which a professional may function. The conceptual framework that underpins the approach to teaching values to health and social care professionals advocated here is derived from key concepts identified from the literature relating to education for, and participation in, a democratic, multicultural, multifaith society. These are: tolerance, compromise and education for dialogue. Finally, it is suggested that professional educators must take seriously the tasks of educating for professional pluralism. (shrink)

As a committee of the National Academy of Engineering recognized, ethics education should foster the ability of students to analyze complex decision situations and ill-structured problems. Building on the NAE’s insights, we report about an innovative teaching approach that has two main features: first, it places the emphasis on deliberation and on self-directed, problem-based learning in small groups of students; and second, it focuses on understanding ill-structured problems. The first innovation is motivated by an abundance of scholarly research that supports (...) the value of deliberative learning practices. The second results from a critique of the traditional case-study approach in engineering ethics. A key problem with standard cases is that they are usually described in such a fashion that renders the ethical problem as being too obvious and simplistic. The practitioner, by contrast, may face problems that are ill-structured. In the collaborative learning environment described here, groups of students use interactive and web-based argument visualization software called “AGORA-net: Participate – Deliberate!”. The function of the software is to structure communication and problem solving in small groups. Students are confronted with the task of identifying possible stakeholder positions and reconstructing their legitimacy by constructing justifications for these positions in the form of graphically represented argument maps. The argument maps are then presented in class so that these stakeholder positions and their respective justifications become visible and can be brought into a reasoned dialogue. Argument mapping provides an opportunity for students to collaborate in teams and to develop critical thinking and argumentation skills. (shrink)

Effective interprofessional collaboration depends upon establishing understanding that respects differences in values and beliefs, and thus differences in response to the multiplicity of patient/client/user needs. To facilitate the latter, this article suggests that health and social care students need a formal knowledge of the meaning of values and the varieties of systems within which values are expressed. Students need especially to understand the genesis of their own professional value system and to recognize the gap that inevitably develops between the (...) values of the professional and those of the society within which a professional may function. The conceptual framework that underpins the approach to teaching values to health and social care professionals advocated here is derived from key concepts identified from the literature relating to education for, and participation in, a democratic, multicultural, multifaith society. These are: tolerance, compromise and education for dialogue. Finally, it is suggested that professional educators must take seriously the tasks of educating for professional pluralism. (shrink)

The global pandemic outbreak in 2020 was a disturbing experience for most people worldwide. The primary way of protecting human life was social distancing and lockdown, often forcing people to stay at home. The confinement made the fear and uncertainty grow bigger and bigger. Fortunately, the online connection was still as possible and essential as never before. The text is inspired by a series of remote meetings under the working title Viral Culture: Bio Art and Society, initiated by academic curator (...) Claire Nettleton to put together people working in art&science area. Recordings of the Zoom gatherings complemented by notes and chat transcriptions served as intriguing storage of topics and ideas. This article focuses on the three threads: being-with (other humans, the virus and other non-human actors), caring without touch and the pandemic interpreted as a vast bio art project. All the archived materials, including the present article, will potentially function as historical documents in the future, showing how a specific group of transdisciplinary culture producers dealt with the global crisis in its first phase. (shrink)

This paper concerns the development and use of ontologies for electronically supporting and structuring the highest-level function of government: the design, implementation and evaluation of public policies for the big and complex problems that modern societies face. This critical government function usually necessitates extensive interaction and collaboration among many heterogeneous government organizations (G2G collaboration) with different backgrounds, mentalities, values, interests and expectations, so it can greatly benefit from the use of ontologies. In this direction initially an ontology of (...) public policy making, implementation and evaluation is described, which has been developed as part of the project ICTE-PAN of the Information Society Technologies (IST) Programme of the European Commission, based on sound theoretical foundations mainly from the public policy analysis domain and contributions of experts from the public administrations of four European Union countries (Denmark, Germany, Greece and Italy). It is a ‘horizontal’ ontology that can be used for electronically supporting and structuring the whole lifecycle of a public policy in any vertical (thematic) area of government activity; it can also be combined with ‘vertical’ ontologies of the specific vertical (thematic) area of government activity we are dealing with. In this paper is also described the use of this ontology for electronically supporting and structuring the collaborative public policy making, implementation and evaluation through ‘structured electronic forums’, ‘extended workflows’, ‘public policy stages with specific sub-ontologies’, etc., and also for the semantic annotation, organization, indexing and integration of the contributions of the participants of these forums, which enable the development of advanced semantic web capabilities in this area. (shrink)

Society needs to find new ways to utilise its resources in the best possible way in order to enable satisfactory services for its citizens in the long term. This is particularly important in sparsely populated areas, and in cities and municipalities with a declining population. This study contributes to this field by analysing a project for collaboration between the rescue service and the home-care service that has been introduced in a number of Swedish municipalities. The collaboration is intended (...) to ensure welfare and safety for citizens, to guarantee a more efficient use of municipal resources, and to contribute to improved emergency management and civil protection. The rescue service and the home-care service are two clearly gender-coded occupations that also operate on gender-coded workplaces and places of work. An overarching aim has therefore been to study gendered obstacles and possibilities of the collaboration. In our analysis of the empirical data – interviews with persons involved in the collaboration – place emerged as an important aspect of the collaboration processes, and is therefore elaborated in this article to contribute with knowledge of how conceptions and gender-coding of places and occupations affect sustainable and well-functioning collaboration processes. The results show that collaboration processes between municipal services are complex and challenge ideals of the organisation, content and responsibility of work and who should perform certain work tasks. Notions of gender and gender differences are reproduced through the collaboration, which affect the efforts of municipalities to ensure welfare and safety for citizens. (shrink)

International research collaborations engage multiple countries, researchers, and universities. This enhances the magnitude of contextual challenges, including legal and ethical dimensions across various jurisdictions, that must be bridged in qualitative research regardless of discipline, also in the construction of informed consents. From a Scandinavian perspective, this discussion paper explores challenges pertaining to the construction of informed consents related to EU data protection legislation, to which research institutions are subject when processing data related to EU residents. Next, it discusses challenges related (...) to different traditions in terms of handling informed consent and research participants’ integrity, including the possibilities to waive anonymity in research. In international, multidisciplinary studies where researchers also operate in relatively ‘unknown territory’, it is especially important to be aware of and reflect on (inter)national possibilities and limitations related to laws, ethics, and culture/traditions in societies and within the academic fields. The variations in laws, ethical guidelines, and traditions in different countries demand that researchers are up to date with laws and ethical guidelines in the studied countries. Their practical implementation in the countries at stake in international, collaborative research endeavours are important, especially since such regulations and guidelines are far from static and change over time. The implementation of good ethical research practice requires democratic, reflexive, and responsive processes in all phases of research. Especially the preparation phase functions as a period to increase and ensure the knowledge and legal/ethical competences of the entire research team to meet the demands in the countries at stake. (shrink)

Our aim is to point out the role of scientific research in contemporary technological developments. Interactions between science and technology in the context of application-driven research projects of the 20th century are discussed. We define science and technology as two separate domains, and provide elementary models for their interaction by the means of applied and engineering sciences. These elementary models constitute linear and cascade models of science-technology interaction. We apply these elementary models for the purpose of further methodological analysis of (...) Soviet nuclear warfare project. The special role of organization and management in research and development activities is being emphasized. The new science-technology interaction model is devised in the course of nuclear project. This new interaction model is referred as non-linear or spiral. The model is seen as more collaborative and risk aware than linear and cascade interaction models present in twentieth century. The conclusion is the new model was of great impact to modern social forms in which research is carried out in the present. (shrink)

I propose that a feminist analysis of contemporary conversations on normalfunctioning and functional-diversity approaches to understanding disability can locate in some people’s resistances to disability an attitude compatible with respect for functional diversity. The history of feminist work in collaboration with transgender work offers an evocative model for an approach to disability that enables solidarity with those seeking functional alteration. This approach provides one way to understand how a critical analysis is compatible with respecting bodily (...) class='Hi'>functional desires, such that one may seek physical change while working for social change alongside those successfully functioning otherwise. (shrink)

Collaborative filtering technology is currently the most successful and widely used technology in the recommendation system. It has achieved rapid development in theoretical research and practice. It selects information and similarity relationships based on the user’s history and collects others that are the same as the user’s hobbies. User’s evaluation information is to generate recommendations. The main research is the inadequate combination of context information and the mining of new points of interest in the context-aware recommendation process. On the basis (...) of traditional recommendation technology, in view of the characteristics of the context information in music recommendation, a personalized and personalized music based on popularity prediction is proposed. Recommended algorithm is MRAPP. The algorithm first analyzes the user’s contextual information under music recommendation and classifies and models the contextual information. The traditional content-based recommendation technology CB calculates the recommendation results and then, for the problem that content-based recommendation technology cannot recommend new points of interest for users, introduces the concept of popularity. First, we use the memory and forget function to reduce the score and then consider user attributes and product attributes to calculate similarity; secondly, we use logistic regression to train feature weights; finally, appropriate weights are used to combine user-based and item-based collaborative filtering recommendation results. Based on the above improvements, the improved collaborative filtering recommendation algorithm in this paper has greatly improved the prediction accuracy. Through theoretical proof and simulation experiments, the effectiveness of the MRAPP algorithm is demonstrated. (shrink)

The functional independence measure is a clinical scale which is used to evaluate the amount of assistance disabled persons need to conduct their daily living activities. Drawing on 65 video-recorded rehabilitation team meetings and medical records collected from a Japanese hospital, this article utilizes ethnomethodology and conversation analysis to uncover how Japanese rehabilitation team members use the FIM to track changes in the functional status of patients and decide the length of stay in ongoing interactional sequences. Analysis shows (...) that a series of the FIM scores assembled and arranged in situ provide a sequential framework for members to understand the progress of rehabilitation and predict the plateau phase. Moreover, a particular expert is asked about patients’ capacity for further improvements and his or her opinions are treated as a basis for clinical decisions. In this way, diagnostic and clinical decision-making is produced through the ongoing collaborative work of various specialists. (shrink)

Developing countries face numerous barriers to conducting effective and efficient ethics reviews of international collaborative research. In addition to potentially overlooking important scientific and ethical considerations, inadequate or insufficiently trained ethics committees may insist on unwarranted changes to protocols that can impair a study's scientific or ethical validity. Moreover, poorly functioning review systems can impose substantial delays on the commencement of research, which needlessly undermine the development of new interventions for urgent medical needs. In response to these concerns, the Drugs (...) for Neglected Diseases Initiative, an independent nonprofit organization founded by a coalition of public sector and international organizations, developed a mechanism to facilitate more effective and efficient host country ethics review for a study of the use of fexinidazole for the treatment of late stage African Trypanosomiasis. The project involved the implementation of a novel ‘pre-review’ process of ethical oversight, conducted by an ad hoc committee of ethics committee representatives from African and European countries, in collaboration with internationally recognized scientific experts. This article examines the process and outcomes of this collaborative process. (shrink)

Several studies describe intersectoral collaboration in Western healthcare as hampered by lack of coordination of care and treatment and incoherent patient pathways. We performed an ethnographic study following elderly patients from admission to an emergency unit (EMU) to discharge and further treatment and care at other facilities in the healthcare system. The aim was to explore how health professionals work together across sectors in the Danish healthcare system and how they create patient pathways for elderly patients (+65) with multiple (...) chronic illnesses. Intersectoral collaboration was identified as distant relations between large numbers of health professionals, where communication was conveyed by electronic health record (EHR) formats which promoted information delivery that focused on patients’ immediate symptoms. Other significant ‘mediators’ of communication were the telephone that seemed to resemble face‐to‐face communication and the patient who delivered information from one professional to another. We suggest that the communication among professionals at various facilities interacts with the format and functionalities of the EHRs, which typically fall short in delivery of information across sectors, because the often complex needs of patients with multimorbidity do not fit in with the available functionalities of the EHR. (shrink)

Reports from integrative researchers who have followed calls for sociotechnical integration emphasize that the potential of interdisciplinary collaboration to inflect the social shaping of technoscience is often constrained by their liminal position. Integrative researchers tend to be positioned as either adversarial outsiders or co-opted insiders. In an attempt to navigate these dynamics, we show that attending to affective disturbances can open up possibilities for productive engagements across disciplinary divides. Drawing on the work of Helen Verran, we analyze “disconcertment” in (...) three sociotechnical integration research studies. We develop a heuristic that weaves together disconcertment, affective labor, and responsivity to analyze the role of the body in interdisciplinary collaborations. We draw out how bodies do affective labor when generating responsivity between collaborators in moments of disconcertment. Responsive bodies can function as sensors, sources, and processors of disconcerting experiences of difference. We further show how attending to disconcertment can stimulate methodological choices to recognize, amplify, or minimize the difference between collaborators. Although these choices are context-dependent, each one examined generates responsivity that supports collaborators to readjust the technical in terms of the social. This analysis contributes to science and technology studies scholarship on the role of affect in successes and failures of interdisciplinary collaboration. (shrink)

On March 23rd, 2020, elite soccer academies in the UK closed in compliance with the government enforced lockdown intended to contain the COVID-19 pandemic. This forced parents, players, and coaches to reconsider how they interacted with, and supported, one another. The aims of the present study were to explore the perceptions of players, parents, and coaches regarding how they interacted and collaborated with one another during the COVID-19 pandemic to support wellbeing and performance, and; to identify opportunities to enhance workings (...) of those within the athletic triangle resulting from adaptions made following enforced lockdown. Using an interpretive description methodology, semi-structured interviews were conducted with five coaches, six players, and six parents from an English elite academy soccer club. Interviews were analyzed using thematic analysis. Findings highlighted the importance of support and the different means of communication used between members of the athletic triangle to facilitate such support; the increased understanding of each member of the athletic triangle, leading to enhanced relationships, and; how members of the athletic triangle adapted practice to facilitate relationship development during the pandemic and beyond. The identification of these considerations has implications for coach and parent education initiatives to allow for optimal functioning of the athletic triangle as elite academy soccer clubs return from lockdown. These include the importance of continued communication between coach, athlete and parent; increasing understanding of each individual within the athletic triangle; and utilizing key interpersonal and technological skills learnt during the lockdown to further facilitate engagement within the athletic triangle. (shrink)

We analyze the use of Silbot – a “dementia-prevention robot” – in a regional health center in South Korea. From our on-site observation of the Silbot classes, we claim that the efficacy of the robot class relies heavily on the “strained collaboration” between the human instructor and the robot. “Strained collaboration” refers to the ways in which the instructor works with the robot, attempting to compensate for the robot’s functional limitation and social awkwardness. In bringing Silbot into (...) the classroom setting, the instructor employs characteristic verbal tones, bodily movements, and other pedagogical tactics. The instructor even talks over the robot, downplaying its interactional capacity. We conclude that any success of such robot programs requires a deeper understanding of the spatial and human context of robot use, including the role of human operators or mediators and also that this understanding should be reflected in the design, implementation, and evaluation of robot programs. (shrink)

In modern physics, various fundamental problems have become topics of debate. There was the 20th century climb to a Standard Model, still accurate at the highest energy levels obtainable so far. But, since the 1970's, a different approach to physics advocates for theories such as string theory, known for their mathematical elegance, even though they either cannot be verified in data or contradict presently known experimental results. In philosophy of physics, there is a gradually emerging consensus that philosophy of physics (...) and physics somehow contribute to a common enterprise. But, there is little sign of progress toward consensus about the nature of that unity. All the while, it is generally recognized that physics is interdisciplinary. There are, of course, differences in focus. But, implicitly at least, there are no "sharp dividing lines" between physics and philosophy of physics; pure and applied physics; physical chemistry; biophysics; medical physics; history and philosophy of physics; physics and society; physics education; and so on. What, then, is progress in physics? The question here is not about ideal structures, but asks about what is going on in physics. Beginnings in discerning the presence of eight main tasks help reveal the (pre-) emergence of a normative omni-disciplinary basis for collaboration that, once adverted to, promises to be constitutive of a new and increasingly effective control of meaning. Originally discovered by Bernard Lonergan in 1965, progress in the new collaboration will not seek to eliminate specialized expertise. It will, though, divide tasks within an eightfold functional division of labor. This book invites attention to data for each of the eight main tasks evident and self-evident in existing scholarship in the community. (shrink)

This study challenges the conventional boundaries of philosophy by asserting that organizations can function as legitimate subjects within philosophical discourse. Western philosophy, epitomized by Descartes, has long assumed that individual human beings are the fundamental units of thought and moral agency. However, in a significant oversight, this belief overlooks the idea that organizations can think independently, leading to both virtuous and malevolent results. Epistemology lacks a clear prioritization of morally sound knowledge over potentially harmful knowledge. The advent of artificial intelligence (...) (AI) has also transformed the landscape of cognition from a primarily individual human endeavor into a joint undertaking where humans collaborate with AI entities in collective thinking and decision-making. Nevertheless, AI lacks the innate ability to discern between ethical and unethical actions. This symbiosis creates organizations as fundamental philosophical subjects, marking a significant shift in philosophical emphasis where the organization takes the center stage. Accordingly, within this emerging field, we advance four propositions as the core subjects of organization philosophy: organizations can think, organizations can create knowledge, AI can be part of an organization, and humans in the organization control moral discipline. These propositions guide the ethical coexistence of AI and human agents in organizations, emphasizing the importance of ethical deliberation in knowledge use. Moreover, the malicious use of profound knowledge hinders human progress, as illustrated in this study by an ethical examination of military institutions within organization philosophy. (shrink)

The aim of our study is to show the ways in which family members coordinate their minds, bodies and language in a functional and goal-oriented manner when they are jointly remembering shared events that they had experienced together as a group. So far, little attention has been paid to the influence that the interplay of multiple behavioral channels have in collaborative remembering in small groups. Our goal is to specifically examine the central role that direct questions have when they (...) act as embodied reminders through the interanimation of multiple behavioral channels in family interactions. The video data for analysis comes from an ongoing project on how collaborative remembering takes places among small groups of Argentinean Spanish speakers as each group recalls a vacation taken together several years ago. (shrink)

In this paper we present a set of good practices in the design of a security-centric architecture for a Communication Channel that can be used to secure a Loosely-Coupled distributed platform, over unreliable communication mediums. The proposed practices are derived from designing a complete architecture that is modular and designed to support principles of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) and the common functional requirements of a wide range of applications, including cybersecurity, smart power grids and industrial Internet of Things (IoT). (...) The architecture was developed and implemented as part of the BIECO project, and is based around open standards such as Open Platform Communications United Architecture (OPC-UA). The key feature of the architecture is that it enables secure asynchronous near-real-time communication between a large number of nodes in a multimodal setup, without the need of any Service to know its place within the tool-chain. Based on our experience with building this system and based on the good results obtained, we are presenting a list of lessons learnt, recommendations for better communication channel modules within loosely coupled distributed systems. (shrink)