Propositions are the result of hypostatization in accordance with the principle of the identification of indiscernibles wherever differences among inscribed or uttered statemental units are systematically ignored. Criteria for identity of propositions are, thus, to be found in each context of discourse about statemental units where qualitatively different units are treated as interchangeable. Ayer's notion of proposition as opposed to statement, Goodman's notion of replication, and the notion of constructional definition or reduction are discussed in the light of this thesis. (...) The so-called "problem of identifying propositions" is shown to be a bogus problem because the propositions simpliciter to be identified are incoherently conceived, though in the course of discussion the prospect appears that many different and limitedly applicable sets of criteria for identification of propositions relative to different discourses can be given. (shrink)

Background: The offer of aggregate study results to research participants following study completion is increasingly accepted as a means of demonstrating greater respect for participants. The attitudes of research ethics board chairs towards this practice, although integral to policy development, are unknown.Objectives: To determine the attitudes of REB chairs and the practices of REBs with respect to disclosure of results to research participants.Design: A postal questionnaire was distributed to the chairs of English-language university-based REBs in Canada. In total, 88 REB (...) chairs were eligible. The questionnaire examined respondents’ attitudes towards offering participants completed study results, methods for delivering this information, and barriers to disclosing results.Findings: The response rate was 89.8%. Chairs were highly supportive of offering results to research participants. Only 19.5% of chairs responded that a policy or guideline that governed the return of research results to participants existed at their institution. Most chairs supported the idea of their REB instituting a set of guidelines recommending that researchers offer results to participants in a lay format. Chairs identified the major impediments to the implementation of programmes offering to return results to participants as being financial cost and retaining contact with research participants .Conclusions: University-based REB chairs overwhelmingly support the offer of research results to participants. This is incongruent with the frequent lack of existing REB guidelines recommending this practice. REBs should support guidelines that diminish identified barriers and promote consistency in offering to return results. (shrink)

Genetic counselling is an important aspect of prenatal care in many developed countries. This tendency has also begun to emerge in Br.

Rita Bottino,1 Santosh Nagaraju,2 Vikas Satyananda,2 Hidetaka Hara,2 Martin Wijkstrom,2 Massimo Trucco,1 David KC Cooper2 1Institute of Cellular Therapeutics, Allegheny Health Network, 2Thomas E Starzl Transplantation Institute, Department of Surgery, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA: Diabetes mellitus is increasing worldwide. Type 1 diabetes can be treated successfully by islet allotransplantation, the results of which are steadily improving. However, the number of islets that can be obtained from deceased human donors will never be sufficient to cure more than a very (...) small percentage of patients who might benefit from transplantation. Although there are some differences in glucose metabolism between pigs and humans, the use of pigs could provide an unlimited supply of islets, and the insulin produced would undoubtedly control glucose levels. Transplantation of islets into the portal vein results in islets residing in the liver; however, an early inflammatory response and rejection remain problematic, even when the recipient is receiving immunosuppressive therapy. In the long term, immunosuppressive drugs may exhibit toxicities to patients and specifically harm the islet cells. In contrast, encapsulation techniques provide islets with a physical barrier that prevents antibodies binding to the islet graft while still allowing insulin to be released into the recipient's circulation; in theory, patients receiving encapsulated grafts might not require exogenous immunosuppressive therapy. Nonhuman primates with encapsulated pig islet transplants have remained insulin-independent for several weeks, but long-term efficacy remains uncertain. Furthermore, techniques are now available to knock out genes from the pig and/or insert human genes, thus rendering the antigenic structure of pigs closer to that of humans, and providing protection from the human immune response. Islet transplantation from genetically engineered pigs has been followed by insulin independence in a small number of nonhuman primates for greater than 1 year. Neonatal islets have some advantages over adult islets in that they are easier to isolate and culture, and have the ability to proliferate during the first few months after transplantation. In 2009, the International Xenotransplantation Association set up a group to encourage and advise on clinical trials of pig islet xenotransplantation; this group's guidelines are discussed. Clinical trials of encapsulated pig islets are already under way. Keywords: diabetes, islets, pancreatic, pig, xenotransplantation. (shrink)

This article provides ethical guidance on using race in health research as a variable or in defining the study population. To this end, a plain, non-exhaustive checklist is provided for researchers and research ethics committees, preceded by a brief introduction on the need for justification when using race as a variable or in defining a study population, the problem of exoticism, that distinctions pertain between race, ethnicity and ancestry, the problematic naming of races, and that race does not serve well (...) as a presumed biological construct in genetic research. (shrink)

This study examines BDI logics in the context of Gabbay's fibring semantics. We show that dovetailing can be adopted as a semantic methodology to combine BDI logics. We develop a set of interaction axioms that can capture static as well as dynamic aspects of the mental states in BDI systems, using Catach's incestual schema G^[a, b, c, d]. Further we exemplify the constraints required on fibring function to capture the semantics of interactions among modalities. The advantages of having a fibred (...) approach is discussed in the final section. (shrink)

The importance of communities in strengthening the ethics of international collaborative research is increasingly highlighted, but there has been much debate about the meaning of the term ‘community’ and its specific normative contribution. We argue that ‘community’ is a contingent concept that plays an important normative role in research through the existence of morally significant interplay between notions of community and individuality. We draw on experience of community engagement in rural Kenya to illustrate two aspects of this interplay: (i) that (...) taking individual informed consent seriously involves understanding and addressing the influence of communities in which individuals’ lives are embedded; (ii) that individual participation can generate risks and benefits for communities as part of the wider implications of research. We further argue that the contingent nature of a community means that defining boundaries is generally a normative process itself, with ethical implications. Community engagement supports the enactment of normative roles; building mutual understanding and trust between researchers and community members have been important goals in Kilifi, requiring a broad range of approaches. Ethical dilemmas are continuously generated as part of these engagement activities, including the risks of perverse outcomes related to existing social relations in communities and conditions of ‘half knowing’ intrinsic to processes of developing new understandings. (shrink)

The US neutrino community gathered at the Workshop on the Intermediate Neutrino Program at Brookhaven National Laboratory February 4-6, 2015 to explore opportunities in neutrino physics over the next five to ten years. Scientists from particle, astroparticle and nuclear physics participated in the workshop. The workshop examined promising opportunities for neutrino physics in the intermediate term, including possible new small to mid-scale experiments, US contributions to large experiments, upgrades to existing experiments, R&D plans and theory. The workshop was organized into (...) two sets of parallel working group sessions, divided by physics topics and technology. Physics working groups covered topics on Sterile Neutrinos, Neutrino Mixing, Neutrino Interactions, Neutrino Properties and Astrophysical Neutrinos. Technology sessions were organized into Theory, Short-Baseline Accelerator Neutrinos, Reactor Neutrinos, Detector R&D and Source, Cyclotron and Meson Decay at Rest sessions.This report summarizes discussion and conclusions from the workshop. (shrink)

La traduction de l'epistrophe grecque en conversio latine a pu laisser entendre une continuite entre le retour des philosophies grecques neoplatoniciennes et l'evenement religieux proprement chretien de la conversion. Le paradigme en serait le passage de Plotin a Augustin. Mais peut-on oublier que les grecques classiques n'ont pas d'ethique du repentir et que, sans ce rapport au temps de la faute, la constitution de soi n'a ni le meme sens ni le meme lieu? C'est le travail du Centre A.J. Festugiere (...) de Paris X-Nanterre sur les entrecroisements et reprises entre philosophie et religion qui est a l'origine des etudes rassemblees en cet ouvrage. Que nous voyions apparaitre aujourd'hui une nouvelle forme de repentir publique convie a mieux distinguer deux modeles de constitution de soi qui se reconnaissent en ce que l'accent porte tantot sur l'etre et tantot sur le temps. (shrink)

This article presents a novel full-reference image quality assessment algorithm by depicting the sub-band characteristics in the wavelet domain. The proposed image quality assessment method is based on energy estimation in the wavelet-transformed image. Image QA is achieved by applying a multilevel wavelet decomposition on both the original and the enhanced image. Next, the wavelet energy and vector are computed to obtain the percentage of the energy that corresponds to the approximation and the details, respectively. Further, the approximate and detailed (...) energy levels of both the original and the enhanced images are compared to formulate an image quality assessment. Numerous experiments are conducted on a dozen of image enhancement algorithms. The results presented show that the image with poor contrast in the foreground than the background has continuous regular coefficient values. The probability density function for such an image has a relatively lower WE and skewness compared with the background. The proposed scheme not only evaluates the global information of an image but also estimates the fine, detailed changes in an enhanced image. Thus, the proposed metric serves as an objective and effective FR criterion for color image QA. The experimental results presented confirm that the proposed WE metric is an efficient and useful metric for evaluating the quality of the color image enhancement. (shrink)

Thomas Szasz wrote over thirty books and several hundred articles, replete with mordant criticism of psychiatry. His works made him arguably one of the world's most recognized psychiatrists, albeit one of the most controversial. This book critically examines the legacy of a man who challenged the very concept of mental illness.

Professional caregivers who work with the trauma and suffering of others, such as doctors, nurses and psychologists, may face significant challenges along with the risk of adverse, long-term mental and physical health problems. Caregivers with responsibility for dependants outside their professional work reported more stress. This finding is of particular relevance in respect of caregivers in under-developed countries such as Zimbabwe, where many households have taken in additional children who have been orphaned, whose parents are ill, or whose parents have (...) temporarily gone elsewhere in search of work. For the purposes of the study, a qualitative phenomenological research design was selected as appropriate to the focus on human experience. An interpretative approach was adopted to explore and explicate the lived experiences of the participants and the meaning they attached to them. The major sources of stress for professional caregivers emerged as being resource constraints, interpersonal issues, and personal issues. Factors found to promote coping include the caregiver’s meaning making perspective, making a difference, and constructing a sense of personal control. (shrink)

A general practice research project on ethics is underway at the University of New South Wales, funded by GPEP. Ethical issues, as defined and explored by general practitioners and consumers, are being examined across four areas of Sydney.So far, telephone interviews have been conducted with a random sample of general practitioners. Face-to-face interviews have been conducted with 107 consumers, randomly sampled using ABS collection district information. Focus groups have been formed to discuss acceptable solutions to GP and consumer identified ethical (...) issues. This report will report on some preliminary findings to date and will explore professional and consumer roles in the formation of ethical solutions. (shrink)

Given its non-invasive nature, there is increasing interest in the use of transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation across basic, translational and clinical research. Contemporaneously, tVNS can be achieved by stimulating either the auricular branch or the cervical bundle of the vagus nerve, referred to as transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation and transcutaneous cervical VNS, respectively. In order to advance the field in a systematic manner, studies using these technologies need to adequately report sufficient methodological detail to enable comparison of results between (...) studies, replication of studies, as well as enhancing study participant safety. We systematically reviewed the existing tVNS literature to evaluate current reporting practices. Based on this review, and consensus among participating authors, we propose a set of minimal reporting items to guide future tVNS studies. The suggested items address specific technical aspects of the device and stimulation parameters. We also cover general recommendations including inclusion and exclusion criteria for participants, outcome parameters and the detailed reporting of side effects. Furthermore, we review strategies used to identify the optimal stimulation parameters for a given research setting and summarize ongoing developments in animal research with potential implications for the application of tVNS in humans. Finally, we discuss the potential of tVNS in future research as well as the associated challenges across several disciplines in research and clinical practice. (shrink)