Access to legal information is fundamental to access to justice. Yet accessibility refers not only to making legal documents available to the public, but also rendering legal information comprehensible to them. A vexing problem in bringing legal information to the public is how to turn formal legal documents such as legislation and judgments, which are often highly technical, to easily navigable and comprehensible knowledge to those without legal education. In this study, we formulate a three-step approach for bringing legal knowledge (...) to laypersons, tackling the issues of navigability and comprehensibility. First, we translate selected sections of the law into snippets (called CLIC-pages), each being a small piece of article that focuses on explaining certain technical legal concept in layperson’s terms. Second, we construct a _Legal Question Bank_, which is a collection of legal questions whose answers can be found in the CLIC-pages. Third, we design an interactive _CLIC Recommender_. Given a user’s verbal description of a legal situation that requires a legal solution, CRec interprets the user’s input and shortlists questions from the question bank that are most likely relevant to the given legal situation and recommends their corresponding CLIC pages where relevant legal knowledge can be found. In this paper we focus on the technical aspects of creating an LQB. We show how large-scale pre-trained language models, such as GPT-3, can be used to generate legal questions. We compare machine-generated questions against human-composed questions and find that MGQs are more scalable, cost-effective, and more diversified, while HCQs are more precise. We also show a prototype of CRec and illustrate through an example how our 3-step approach effectively brings relevant legal knowledge to the public. (shrink)

The economic globalization process has integrated different competitive markets and pushes firms in different countries to improve their managerial and operational efficiencies. Given the recent empirical evidence for the benefits to firms and stakeholders of good corporate governance (CG) practice, it is expected that good CG practice would be a common strategy for firms in different countries to meet the increasingly intense competition; however, this is not the case. This study examines the differences in CG practices in firms across different (...) countries using the concept of ethical sensitivity. Through the regression analysis of 271 firms in 12 countries and regions, it is found that Hofstede’s cultural dimensions can explain the differences in CG practices. Furthermore, the results demonstrate the influence of culture on ethical sensitivity, which eventually determines the CG practices in different regions. (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)

© 2015, Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.Genetic studies have identified single nucleotide polymorphisms associated with the risk of prostate cancer. It remains unclear whether such genetic variants are associated with disease aggressiveness. The NCI-SPORE Genetics Working Group retrospectively collected clinicopathologic information and genotype data for 36 SNPs which at the time had been validated to be associated with PC risk from 25,674 cases with PC. Cases were grouped according to race, Gleason score and aggressiveness. Statistical analyses were used to compare the frequency (...) of the SNPs between different disease cohorts. After adjusting for multiple testing, only PC-risk SNP rs2735839 was significantly and inversely associated with aggressive and high-grade disease in European men. Similar associations with aggressive and high-grade disease were documented in African-American subjects. The G allele of rs2735839 was associated with disease aggressiveness even at low PSA levels in both European and African-American men. Our results provide further support that a PC-risk SNP rs2735839 near the KLK3 gene on chromosome 19q13 may be associated with aggressive and high-grade PC. Future prospectively designed, case-case GWAS are needed to identify additional SNPs associated with PC aggressiveness. (shrink)

The aporias of time that Paul Ricœur identifies in the conclusion to his three-volume Time and Narrative offer a fecund starting-point from which to consider how the poetics of narrativity figures in a philosophy of the will. By setting the poetics of narrativity against the aporetics of temporality, Ricoeur highlights the narrative art’s operative power in drawing together incidents and events in answer to time’s dispersion across the present, the past, and the future. In turn, the confession of the limits (...) of narrative opens the way to a broader consideration of the idea of the unity of history in the absence of a meta-historical plot. This idea calls for a reflection on the ethical and political imperative of making freedom a reality for all. By taking the theory of freedom’s actualization as a touchstone, I argue that the vision of a reconciled humanity that for Ricœur is the intended object of the poetics of the will acquires the force of a directive idea. The capacity to refashion the real from within thus proves to be decisive for drawing out the connection between the aporetics of temporality, the poetics of narrativity, and Ricœur’s philosophical anthropology. (shrink)

A number of scholars have discussed the difficulty of preserving accurately—or at all—information about the past1 in the Greek Dark Ages when the literacy of Minoan/Mycenean Greece had been lost. Such preservation necessarily depended on the memories of the members of the society, especially those of the professional ‘rememberers’, the bards of the oral tradition: in such a society, if knowledge of an event is to be available to future generations, it must not be forgotten.

The National Anti-Vivisection Hospital opened to patients in 1903, the only district hospital in London not financed by state-controlled funds, which refused it support because of its principles. For three decades the hospital treated the local poor and conscientious objectors to vivisection, who were assured that staff pledged not to experiment on animals or patients. After an overambitious building program, the hospital ran into financial difficulties, and the King’s Fund refused to help unless all references to antivivisection were removed from (...) its statutes. Thus it reopened as Battersea General in 1935, continuing to serve the borough until 1972. (shrink)

The coming of bioethics to Singapore / W. Calvin Ho and Sylvia S.N. Lim -- The impact of the bioethics advisory committee on the research community in Singapore / Charmaine K.M. Chan and Edison T. Liu -- Engaging the public : the role of the media / Chang Ai-Lien and Judith Tan -- Confucian trust and the biomedical regulatory framework in Singapore / Anh Tuan Nuyen -- The clinician-researcher : a servant of two masters? / Alastair V. Campbell, Jacqueline (...) Chin, and Teck Chuan Voo -- The US model for oversight of human stem cell research / Lindsay Parham and Bernard Lo -- Genetics and stem cell research : models of international policy-making / Bartha Maria Knoppers, Emily Kirby and Rosario Isasi -- Public engagement and bioethics commissions / Thomas H. Murray and Ross S. White -- Norm-making on human-animal chimeras and hybrids in Singapore, the United Kingdom and the international domain / W. Calvin Ho and Martin Bobrow -- How will future bioethical issues engage Singapore? / John Elliott. (shrink)

MEDIEVAL LOGICS LAMBERT MARIE DE RIJK (ed.), Die mittelalterlichen Traktate De mod0 opponendiet respondendi, Einleitung und Ausgabe der einschlagigen Texte. (Beitrage zur Geschichte der Philosophie und Theologie des Mittelalters, Neue Folge Band 17.) Miinster: Aschendorff, 1980. 379 pp. No price stated. THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY MARTA FATTORI, Lessico del Novum Organum di Francesco Bacone. Rome: Edizioni dell'Ateneo 1980. Two volumes, il + 543, 520 pp. Lire 65.000. VIVIAN SALMON, The study of language in 17th century England. (Amsterdam Studies in the Theory (...) and History of Linguistic Science, Series 111: Studies in theHistory of Linguistics, Volume 17.) Amsterdam: John Benjamins B.V., 1979.x + 218 pp. Dfl. 65. Theoria cum Praxi. Zum Verhaltnis von Theorie und Praxis im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert. (Akten des 111. Internationalen Leibnizkongress, Hannover, 12. bis 17.November 1977, Band 111: Logik, Erkenntnistheorie, Wissenschaftstheorie, Metaphysik, Theologie.) Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1980. vii + 269 pp. DM 48. CLASSICAL AND NON-CLASSICAL LOGICS MICHAEL CLARK, The place of syllogistic in logical theory. Nottingham: University of Nottingham Press, 1980. ix + 151 pp. £3.00. A.F. PARKER-RHODES, The theory of indistinguishables. Dordrecht, Boston and London: D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1981. xvii + 216 pp. Dfl.90.00/$39.50. NICHOLAS RESCHER and ROBERT BRANDOM, The logic of inconsistency. Oxford:Basil Blackwell, 1980. x + 174 pp. f 11.50. MISCELLANEOUS J. ZELENY, The logic of Marx. Translated from the German by T. Carver. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1980. xcii + 247 pp. £12.50. FELIX KAUFMANN, The infinite in mathematics. Edited by Brian McGuinness. Introduction by E. Nagel. Translation from the German by Paul Foulkes. Dordrecht: Reidel, 1978. xvii + 235 pp. Dfl 85/$39.50 (cloth); Dfl 45/$19.95 (paper). PAMELA MCCORDUCK, Machines who think. San Francisco: W.H. Freeman and Company, 1979. xiv + 275 pp. $14.95. J. MITTELSTRASS (ed.), Enzyklopadie Philosophie und Wissenschaftstheorie Bd. 1 : A-G. Mannheim, Wien, Ziirich: Bibliographisches Institut, 1980. 835 pp. DM 128. (shrink)

Periodic tables (PTs) are the ‘ultimate paper tools’ of general and inorganic chemistry. There are three fields of open questions concerning the relation between PTs and physics: (i) the relation between the chemical facts and the concept of a periodic system (PS) of chemical elements (CEs) as represented by PTs; (ii) the internal structure of the PS; (iii)␣The relation between the PS and atomistic quantum chemistry. The main open questions refer to (i). The fuzziness of the concepts of chemical properties (...) and of chemical similarities of the CE and their compounds guarantees the autonomy of chemistry. We distinguish between CEs, Elemental Stuffs and Elemental Atoms. We comment on the basic properties of the basic elements. Concerning (ii), two sharp physical numbers (nuclear charge and number of valence electrons) and two coarse fuzzy ranges (ranges of energies and of spatial extensions of the atomic orbitals, AOs) characterize the atoms of the CEs and determine the two-dimensional structure of the PS. Concerning (iii), some relevant ‘facts’ about and from quantum chemistry are reviewed and compared with common ‘textbook facts’. What counts in chemistry is the whole set of nondiffuse orbitals in low-energy average configurations of chemically bonded atoms. Decisive for the periodicity are the energy gaps between the core and valence shells. Diffuse Rydberg orbitals and minute spin–orbit splittings are important in spectroscopy and for philosophers, but less so in chemical science and for the PS. (shrink)