In the genomics era, bioinformatic analysis, especially in non‐model species, facilitates the identification and naming of numerous new proteins, the function of which is then inferred through homology searches. Here, we question certain aspects of these approaches. What are the criteria that permit such a determination? What are their limits? Naming is classifying. We review the different criteria that are used to name a protein and discuss their constraints. We observe that the name given to a protein often introduces a (...) bias for further functional analyses, a bias that is not often taken into account when analysing results. Last but not least, the heterogeneity of criteria used for naming proteins leads to self‐inconsistent or contradictory protein classification that is potentially misleading. Finally, we recommend a wider use of phylogenetic criteria in protein naming. BioEssays 30:349–357, 2008. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Forensic DNA phenotyping (FDP) is an emerging technology that seeks to make probabilistic inferences regarding a person’s observable characteristics (“phenotype”) from DNA. The aim is to aid criminal investigations by helping to identify unknown suspected perpetrators, or to help with non-criminal missing persons cases. Here we provide results from the analysis of 36 interviews with those who have a professional stake in FDP, including forensic scientists, police officers, lawyers, government agencies and social scientists. Located in eight EU countries, these individuals (...) were asked for their views on the benefits and problems associated with the prospective use of FDP. While all interviewees distinguished between those phenotypic tests perceived to either raise ethical, social or political concerns from those tests viewed as less ethically and socially problematic, there was wide variation regarding the criteria they used to make this distinction. We discuss the implications of this in terms of responsible technology development. (shrink)

This interdisciplinary study situates the recent interest in ethics within radical post-modern shifts about knowledge and value.

In this paper we explore shifts in how the law and ethics allow European law enforcement officers to use forensic genetic technologies. We do so by reviewing three technologies, ‘traditional’ (STR-based) forensic DNA profiling, forensic DNA phenotyping and the searching of genetic genealogy databases. In particular, we discuss changes in how ethical boundaries have been placed around what is seen as an appropriate use of genetic technologies in European criminal justice systems. While the ‘type’ of DNA that law enforcement officers (...) are permitted to analyse offers a useful ethical reference point, for newer forensic genomic technologies, ethical scrutiny, we argue, would also look at the specific purpose or use of the technology. (shrink)

The literature on deep brain stimulation (DBS) and adaptive DBS (aDBS) raises concerns that these technologies may affect personality, mood, and behavior. We conducted semi-structured interviews with researchers (n = 23) involved in developing next-generation DBS systems, exploring their perspectives on ethics and policy topics including whether DBS/aDBS can cause such changes. The majority of researchers reported being aware of personality, mood, or behavioral (PMB) changes in recipients of DBS/aDBS. Researchers offered varying estimates of the frequency of PMB changes. A (...) smaller majority reported changes in personality specifically. Some expressed reservations about the scientific status of the term ‘personality,’ while others used it freely. Most researchers discussed negative PMB changes, but a majority said that DBS/aDBS can also result in positive changes. Several researchers viewed positive PMB changes as part of the therapeutic goal in psychiatric applications of DBS/aDBS. Finally, several discussed potential causes of PMB changes other than the device itself. (shrink)

The planetary boundaries concept has profoundly changed the vocabulary and representation of global environmental issues. The article starts by highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of planetary boundaries from a social science perspective. It is argued that the growth imperative of capitalist economies, as well as other particular characteristics detailed below, are the main drivers of the ecological crisis and exacerbated trends already underway. Further, the planetary boundaries framework can support interpretations that do not solely emphasize technocratic operational approaches and costs, (...) but also assume that these alone can be the solution. (shrink)

The notion of societal boundaries aims to enhance the debate on planetary boundaries. The focus is on capitalist societies as a heuristic for discussing the expansionary dynamics, power relations, and lock-ins of modern societies that impel highly unsustainable societal relations with nature. While formulating societal boundaries implies a controversial process – based on normative judgments, ethical concerns, and socio-political struggles – it has the potential to offer guidelines for a just, social-ecological transformation.

The expansion of research on deep brain stimulation (DBS) and adaptive DBS (aDBS) raises important neuroethics and policy questions related to data sharing. However, there has been little empirical research on the perspectives of experts developing these technologies. We conducted semi-structured, open-ended interviews with aDBS researchers regarding their data sharing practices and their perspectives on ethical and policy issues related to sharing. Researchers expressed support for and a commitment to sharing, with most saying that they were either sharing their data (...) or would share in the future and that doing so was important for advancing the field. However, those who are sharing reported a variety of sharing partners, suggesting heterogeneity in sharing practices and lack of the broad sharing that would reflect principles of open science. Researchers described several concerns and barriers related to sharing, including privacy and confidentiality, the usability of shared data by others, ownership and control of data (including potential commercialization), and limited resources for sharing. They also suggested potential solutions to these challenges, including additional safeguards to address privacy issues, standardization and transparency in analysis to address issues of data usability, professional norms and heightened cooperation to address issues of ownership and control, and streamlining of data transmission to address resource limitations. Researchers also offered a range of views on the sensitivity of neural activity data (NAD) and data related to mental health in the context of sharing. These findings are an important input to deliberations by researchers, policymakers, neuroethicists, and other stakeholders as they navigate ethics and policy questions related to aDBS research. (shrink)

The current paper synthesizes theory and data from the field of life history (LH) evolution to advance a new developmental theory of variation in human LH strategies. The theory posits that clusters of correlated LH traits (e.g., timing of puberty, age at sexual debut and first birth, parental investment strategies) lie on a slow-to-fast continuum; that harshness (externally caused levels of morbidity-mortality) and unpredictability (spatial-temporal variation in harshness) are the most fundamental environmental influences on the evolution and development of LH (...) strategies; and that these influences depend on population densities and related levels of intraspecific competition and resource scarcity, on age schedules of mortality, on the sensitivity of morbidity-mortality to the organism’s resource-allocation decisions, and on the extent to which environmental fluctuations affect individuals versus populations over short versus long timescales. These interrelated factors operate at evolutionary and developmental levels and should be distinguished because they exert distinctive effects on LH traits and are hierarchically operative in terms of primacy of influence. Although converging lines of evidence support core assumptions of the theory, many questions remain unanswered. This review demonstrates the value of applying a multilevel evolutionary-developmental approach to the analysis of a central feature of human phenotypic variation: LH strategy. (shrink)

Mobile applications are increasingly regarded as important tools for an integrated strategy of infection containment in post-lockdown societies around the globe. This paper discusses a number of questions that should be addressed when assessing the ethical challenges of mobile applications for digital contact-tracing of COVID-19: Which safeguards should be designed in the technology? Who should access data? What is a legitimate role for “Big Tech” companies in the development and implementation of these systems? How should cultural and behavioural issues be (...) accounted for in the design of these apps? Should use of these apps be compulsory? What does transparency and ethical oversight mean in this context? We demonstrate that responses to these questions are complex and contingent and argue that if digital contract-tracing is used, then it should be clear that this is on a trial basis and its use should be subject to independent monitoring and evaluation. (shrink)

Psychiatry is rapidly adopting digital phenotyping and artificial intelligence/machine learning tools to study mental illness based on tracking participants’ locations, online activity, phone and text message usage, heart rate, sleep, physical activity, and more. Existing ethical frameworks for return of individual research results (IRRs) are inadequate to guide researchers for when, if, and how to return this unprecedented number of potentially sensitive results about each participant’s real-world behavior. To address this gap, we convened an interdisciplinary expert working group, supported by (...) a National Institute of Mental Health grant. Building on established guidelines and the emerging norm of returning results in participant-centered research, we present a novel framework specific to the ethical, legal, and social implications of returning IRRs in digital phenotyping research. Our framework offers researchers, clinicians, and Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) urgently needed guidance, and the principles developed here in the context of psychiatry will be readily adaptable to other therapeutic areas. (shrink)

Natural environments have a restorative effect from mental/attentional fatigue, prevent stress, and help to revitalize psychological and physical resources. These benefits are crucial for promoting active aging, which is particularly relevant given the phenomenon of population aging in recent decades. To be considered restorative, green spaces have to meet specific requirements in ecological and psychological terms that can be assessed through Post-Occupancy Evaluation, a multimethod approach commonly used by environmental psychologists and landscape architects after construction to evaluate the design outcomes (...) from the users’ perspective. Generally, POEs consist of surveys and/or interviews accompanied by more or less structured observations of onsite users’ behavior. Despite this, various practical constraints can prevent physical access to the renovated area. Exploiting digital tools for such an assessment can be a crucial support in such circumstances. The current study presents the visual POE of a restorative garden for older adults in Milan, Italy. We developed a web application, that includes the exp-EIA© patented method, which allows participants to virtually explore a visual simulation of the environment and provide their feedback. We identified 3 representative viewpoints in the redeveloped garden differing from each other for the functions and the design principles that inspired the transformation. For each point of view, we created 360° Virtual Reality photographs, that can be navigated by looking around, i.e., panning, from the standing point of each view. In connection to each virtual scene, a survey was conducted. The focus was the psychological experience related to each viewpoint, assessed with two psychometric scales investigating the constructs of emotions and restoration ; such information is integrated with behavioral aspects, including the main activities prefigured by participants and their visual exploration of the VR photography. The results of the virtual exploration show that the garden is perceived as restorative, with a more intense effect in a spot purposely designed. The emotions experienced in the garden are positive and a mild level of arousal is observed. The behavioral dimension is characterized by predominantly contemplative activities and contact with nature. A cartographic representation of the psychological and behavioral data is developed, to support the maintenance of the garden. (shrink)

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, the concept of solidarity has been invoked frequently. Much interest has centred around how citizens and communities support one another during times of uncertainty. Yet, empirical research which accounts and understands citizen’s views on pandemic solidarity, or their actual practices has remained limited. Drawing upon the analysis of data from 35 qualitative interviews, this article investigates how residents in England and Scotland enacted, understood, or criticised (the lack of) solidarity during the first national lockdown in the (...) United Kingdom in April 2020—at a time when media celebrated solidarity as being at an all-time high. It finds that although solidarity was practiced by some people, the perceived lack of solidarity was just as pronounced. We conclude that despite frequent mobilisations of solidarity by policy makers and other public actors, actual practices of solidarity are poorly understood—despite the importance of solidarity for public health and policy. (shrink)

The capacity of next-generation closed-loop or adaptive deep brain stimulation devices to read and write shows great potential to effectively manage movement, seizure, and psychiatric disorders, and also raises the possibility of using aDBS to electively modulate mood, cognition, and prosociality. What separates aDBS from most neurotechnologies currently used for enhancement is that aDBS remains an invasive, surgically-implanted technology with a risk-benefit ratio significantly different when applied to diseased versus non-diseased individuals. Despite a large discourse about the ethics of enhancement, (...) no empirical studies yet examine perspectives on enhancement from within the aDBS research community. We interviewed 23 aDBS researchers about their attitudes toward expanding aDBS use for enhancement. A thematic content analysis revealed that researchers share ethical concerns related to safety and security; enhancement as unnecessary, unnatural or aberrant; and fairness, equality, and distributive justice. Most researchers felt that enhancement applications for DBS will eventually be technically feasible and that attempts to develop such applications for DBS are already happening. However, researchers unanimously felt that DBS ideally should not be considered for enhancement until researchers better understand brain target localization and functioning. While many researchers acknowledged controversies highlighted by scholars and ethicists, such as potential impacts on personhood, authenticity, autonomy and privacy, their ethical concerns reflect considerations of both gravity and perceived near-term likelihood. (shrink)

Potentiality: From Dispositions to Modality, by VetterBarbara. Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2015. Pp. ix + 335.

The use of facial recognition systems in concerts provides a perfect pretext to semiotically discuss the role of the face in contemporary culture, identifying different strategies and axiologies (systems of values). In his visionary essay Bruits (“noises”) from 1977, the French thinker Jacques Attali establishes a close connection between music and power and locates it in the site of the collective unfolding of music: the concert hall. Following this hint, the article reconstructs the current debate on facial recognition systems in (...) the music business, with a particular focus on concerts and festivals. The different positions (of musicians, authorities, and professionals) are outlined (some are openly in favor, others openly against), key moments are identified (Beyoncé’s concert in Cardiff, 2017; Jacky Cheung’s in Nanchang, 2018; Taylor Swift’s at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, 2018; the “banfacialrecognition.com” campaign launched in 2019; the case of Barbara Hart at Brandi Carlile’s show at the Madison Square Garden, 2022) and, finally, the issue is framed within the broader debate about the face as an indexical marker of presence, identity, and humanity (the contrast between Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben and American sociologist and design theorist Benjamin Bratton is addressed). (shrink)

El sorteo, practicado por primera vez en Atenas a principios del siglo V a. e. c., ha sido considerado durante mucho tiempo, por parte de la teoría política, como un importante mecanismo democratizador. Sin embargo, este recurso entró en desuso durante el desarrollo de la democracia moderna representativa a favor de las elecciones por votación, un fenómeno que algunos autores han calificado como “fundamentalismo electoral”. El objetivo de este artículo es presentar, comparar y evaluar dos propuestas utópicas de democracia por (...) sorteo ofrecidas por John Burnheim y Barbara Goodwin. La tarea que se plantea es analizar su validez y limitaciones, así como considerar su potencial de cara a mejorar las actuales democracias representativas. (shrink)

Swindal seeks to incorporate temporality into the formal-pragmatic analysis of discourse by developing what he calls ‘event-determining’ reflection. After outlining his motivations for introducing this new form of reflection, I offer a critique, first, of his appeal to meta-discourse about when to engage in discourse and, second, of the function of truth in his account. Finally, I suggest that Swindal’s theory of reflective acceptability fruitfully complements Robert Brandom’s normative pragmatics.

Tony Judt, Povara responsabilitãtii. Blum, Camus, Aron si secolul XX francez Traducere de Lucian Leuotean, Ed. Polirom, Iasi, 2000.

This book is an introduction to the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer, written in a lively, personal style.

Whereas women are sure of their biological maternity, men can never be fully certain of paternity and instead need to rely on indirect cues to assess whether they are likely to be father of their putative children. According to the psychological literature, men commonly use the information on the resemblance of offspring to self as an indicator of genetic relatedness. It seems, however, that in the absence of such a resemblance, similarity between a mother and a child might be important, (...) because a man has additional reason to doubt his own biological paternity when the child is dissimilar to his partner. This assumption has been verified in two empirical studies. (shrink)

Journal of Mathematical Logic, Volume 22, Issue 02, August 2022. The Ultrapower Axiom is a combinatorial principle concerning the structure of large cardinals that is true in all known canonical inner models of set theory. A longstanding test question for inner model theory is the equiconsistency of strongly compact and supercompact cardinals. In this paper, it is shown that under the Ultrapower Axiom, the least strongly compact cardinal is supercompact. A number of stronger results are established, setting the stage for (...) a complete analysis of strong compactness and supercompactness under UA that will be carried out in the sequel to this paper. (shrink)

La diversificación moderna de los saberes sobre el ser humano ha llevado a una visión diversificada de la antropología tomista. Se impone una vuelta revitalizadora a esta antropología que muestre la unidad estructural que para Santo Tomás tienen el alma y el hombre. El trabajo se centrará en las tres tesis que articulan la teoría tomista del espíritu y, en concreto, la exposición que nuestro autor hace en la Summa contra gentiles, obra capital en la producción del Angélico que, sin (...) embargo, ha sido bastante marginada. (shrink)

Within contemporary Protestantism a center is emerging that is both evangelical and ecumenical. Its theology is controlled by neither cultural orthodoxies nor ideological wars; its loyalty is to Christ alone, the one center of the church.

The ArgumentThis article compares the corresponding effects in science and art of a change in the intuition of time at the beginning of this century. McTaggart's distinction between linear time and tense time is applied to the question of whether linear perspective requires a notion of time as succession. It is argued that the problem of self-representation is a basic problem for this kind of uniform space-time because of the contradiction between this model's need for a privileged point of view (...) and its simultaneous denial of such a possibility. (shrink)

This paper presents a variable neighborhood descent algorithm for the service restoration problem (SRP) in electrical distribution systems. The restoration problem appears when a permanent fault occurs in the system. The fault must be localized and isolated from the rest of the system. As a consequence of the isolation, the downstream area is de-energized and requires restoration. The variable neighborhood descent algorithm features its ability to solve the SRP for radial distribution systems and introduces a strategy that helps to deal (...) with the system’s radiality. Tests are performed using a 53-node test system. The results show that the proposed algorithm can efficiently solve the SRP in a distribution system, and as a deterministic algorithm, the results can be used to help nondeterministic algorithms. (shrink)

Psychological research and practice in New Zealand has a long history of a positivist inspired epistemology and a pragmatic evidence-based approach to therapeutic treatment. There is a growing realization that a more meaningful interface between research and practice is required to accommodate indigenous Maori knowledge of wellbeing and living. The dominant Western psychological view in New Zealand of world, time, illness and wellbeing results in practices that do not make sense in cultural terms. The medicalisation and classification of psychological disorders (...) cannot account for the degree to which cultural and spiritual factors are associated with problems of living. Heidegger’s analysis of Being and his phenomenological method of understanding these matters ontologically reflect a persuasion not dissimilar to the worldview of the Maori and their notion of wellbeing. It offers some direction to the question of how to better integrate psychological research and practice in New Zealand. Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology , September 2008, Volume 8, Edition 2. (shrink)

Suicidality, a significant problem in New Zealand for the past decade or so, has invited a substantial body of research into causes and prevention. However, given the effort, the prevention results do not appear to be sufficiently convincing when coroners’ views are considered. This paper focuses on two mainstream therapeutic approaches towards persons with borderline personality disorder, in which suicidal behaviour is a prominent feature demanding understanding and active attention. It is argued that dialectical behaviour therapy and psychoanalytically informed therapies (...) are lacking on two accounts. Firstly, the philosophical and methodological underpinnings of both approaches perpetuate what Heidegger refers to as the compound misunderstanding of ourselves as human beings. Secondly, what this translates into is a practice which forgets the human order and misunderstands the experience of the singular human present in despair. As an alternative approach towards dealing with suicide in practice, the author presents concepts central to Heidegger’s phenomenology of human existence and discusses how these may inform and enhance the treatment of suicidal patients. Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology , Volume 7, Edition 2 September 2007. (shrink)

To Serve With Honor should be required reading for all members of the officer corps of the United States military. Beyond that, it should be made required reading for all United States military academies, ROTC and officer candidate programs. This treatise on military ethics goes a long way in bridging the gap between the military and society's understanding of the military's ethical dilemma. It is a must for the student of military affairs. International Social Science Review To Serve With Honor (...) is the first book by an American to focus on the validity of current standards of military ethics in more than a century. This thoughtful study begins with the premise that the military profession is qualitatively different from any other profession. Author Richard Gabriel uses this assumption to address such vital questions as What are the limits of military obedience? and When does a soldier have an obligation to resist the orders of his superiors? (shrink)