Current neuroimaging techniques with high spatial resolution constrain participant motion so that many natural tasks cannot be carried out. The aim of this paper is to show how a time-locked correlation-analysis of cerebral blood flow velocity (CBFV) lateralization data, obtained with functional TransCranial Doppler (fTCD) ultrasound, can be used to infer cerebral activation patterns across tasks. In a first experiment we demonstrate that the proposed analysis method results in data that are comparable with the standard Lateralization Index (LI) for within-task (...) comparisons of CBFV patterns, recorded during cued word generation (CWG) at two difficulty levels. In the main experiment we demonstrate that the proposed analysis method shows correlated blood-flow patterns for two different cognitive tasks that are known to draw on common brain areas, CWG, and Music Synthesis. We show that CBFV patterns for Music and CWG are correlated only for participants with prior musical training. CBFV patterns for tasks that draw on distinct brain areas, the Tower of London and CWG, are not correlated. The proposed methodology extends conventional fTCD analysis by including temporal information in the analysis of cerebral blood-flow patterns to provide a robust, non-invasive method to infer whether common brain areas are used in different cognitive tasks. It complements conventional high resolution imaging techniques. (shrink)

Background: Moral distress has been described as a major problem for the nursing profession, and in recent years, a considerable amount of research has been undertaken to examine its causes and effects. However, few research projects have been performed that examined the moral distress of an entire nation’s nurses, as this particular study does. Aim/objective: The purpose of this study was to determine the frequency and intensity of moral distress experienced by registered nurses in New Zealand. Research design: The research (...) involved the use of a mainly quantitative approach supported by a slightly modified version of a survey based on the Moral Distress Scale–Revised. Participants and research context: In total, 1500 questionnaires were sent out at random to nurses working in general areas around New Zealand and 412 were returned, giving an adequate response rate of 27%. Ethical considerations: The project was evaluated and judged to be low risk and recorded as such on 22 February 2011 via the auspices of the Massey University Human Ethics Committee. Findings: Results indicate that the most frequent situations to cause nursing distress were (a) having to provide less than optimal care due to management decisions, (b) seeing patient care suffer due to lack of provider continuity and (c) working with others who are less than competent. The most distressing experiences resulted from (a) working with others who are unsafe or incompetent, (b) witnessing diminished care due to poor communication and (c) watching patients suffer due to a lack of provider continuity. Of the respondents, 48% reported having considered leaving their position due to the moral distress. Conclusion: The results imply that moral distress in nursing remains a highly significant and pertinent issue that requires greater consideration by health service managers, policymakers and nurse educators. (shrink)

ObjectivesIn 2015, the Province of Quebec, Canada passed a law that allowed voluntary active euthanasia. Palliative care stakeholders in Canada have been largely opposed to euthanasia, yet there is little research about their views. The research question guiding this study was the following: How do palliative care physicians in Quebec position themselves regarding the practice of VAE in the context of the new provincial legislation?MethodsWe used interpretive description, an inductive methodology to answer research questions about clinical practice. A total of (...) 18 palliative care physicians participated in semistructured interviews at two university-affiliated hospitals in Quebec.ResultsParticipants positioned themselves in opposition to euthanasia. Their justifications were framed within their professional commitment to not hasten death, which sat in tension with the value of patients’ autonomy to choose how to die. Participants described VAE as unacceptable if it impeded opportunities to evaluate and alleviate suffering. Further, they contested government rhetoric that positioned VAE as a way to improve end-of-life care. Participants felt that VAE would diminish the potential of palliative care to relieve suffering. Dilemmas were apparent in their narratives, about reconciling respect for patient autonomy with broader palliative care values, and the value of accompanying and not abandoning patients who make requests for VAE while being committed to neither prolonging nor hastening death.ConclusionsThis study provides insight into nuanced positions of experienced palliative care physicians in Quebec and confirms expected tensions between an important stakeholder and the practice of VAE as guided by the new legislation. (shrink)

Some argue that managers over-invest in corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities to build their personal reputations as good global citizens. Others claim that CEOs strategically choose CSR activities to reduce the probability of CEO turnover in a future period through indirect support from activists. Still others assert that firms use CSR activities to signal their product quality. We find that firms use governance mechanisms, along with CSR engagement, to reduce conflicts of interest between managers and non-investing stakeholders. Employing a large (...) and extensive sample of firms within Russell 2000, S& 500 and Domini 400 indices during the 1993-2004 period, we find that consistent with the conflict-resolution hypothesis, the CSR choice is positively associated with governance characteristics, including board independence, institutional ownership, and analyst following. In addition, after correcting for endogeneity of CSR engagement, our results show that CSR engagement positively influences operating performance and firm value, supporting the conflict-resolution hypothesis as opposed to the over-investment and strategic-choice arguments. We find only a weak support of the product-signaling hypothesis as a major motive of CSR engagement. (shrink)

The World Bank recently noted: “Social license to operate has traditionally referred to the conduct of firms with regard to the impact on local communities and the environment, but the definition has expanded in recent years to include issues related to worker and human rights”. In this paper, we examine a factor that can influence the kind of work conditions that can facilitate or obstruct a firm’s attempts to achieve the social license to operate. Specifically, we examine the empirical association (...) between a company’s employee practices and the religiosity of its local community by investigating their fixed and endogenous effects. Using a large and extensive U.S. sample, we find a positive association between the “employee friendly” practices of a firm and the religiosity of the local community after controlling for several firm characteristics. In addition, after mitigating endogeneity with the dynamic panel system generalized method of moment and after employing several other econometric tests, we still find a robust positive association between the religiosity of the local community and employee-friendly practices. Since recent research has shown that the firm’s treatment of its stakeholders is a key to achieving an SLO, and since employees constitute a highly significant stakeholder group, we interpret our results as supporting the view that religion is an important influence on the kinds of employee practices that can increase the likelihood that a firm will acquire the SLO. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 20 (2000) 217-229 [Access article in PDF] Christian Insight Meditation: A Test Case on Interreligious Spirituality Springs SteeleUniversity of Scranton, PennsylvaniaIn Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger's 1989 "Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on Some Aspects of Christian Meditation," there is this significant caveat to Catholics: With the present diffusion of eastern methods of meditation in the Christian world and in ecclesial communities, we find ourselves faced (...) with a pointed renewal of an attempt, which is not free from dangers and errors, to fuse Christian meditation with that which is non-Christian (author's emphasis). Proposals in this direction are numerous and radical to a greater or lesser extent. Some use eastern methods solely as a psychophysical preparation for a truly Christian contemplation; others go further and, using different techniques, try to generate spiritual experiences similar to those described in the writings of certain Christian mystics. Still others do not hesitate to place that absolute without image or concepts, which is proper to Buddhist theory, on the same level as the majesty of God revealed in Christ, which towers above finite reality.... These and similar proposals to harmonize Christian meditation with eastern techniques need to have their contents and methods ever subjected to a thorough-going examination so as to avoid the danger of falling into syncretism. 1Two years before Cardinal Ratzinger's letter, Mary Jo Meadow and Kevin Culligan co-authored an analysis of what they saw as remarkable similarities between the spirituality of the Catholic Carmelite John of the Cross and the Theravadan Buddhist vipassana (or "insight") tradition. 2 They went on, with the help of Daniel Chowning, to develop a spiritual practice that seeks to assimilate traditional Buddhist vipassana meditation into the spirituality of John of the Cross. The impetus was to supplement John's rather general instructions on method with the very detailed methodological program of Theravadan insight practice. 3They have designated this approach "Christian Insight Meditation" and maintain that the Buddhist vipassana practice which is its basis can be assimilated to the spirituality of John because, "... although it originates in Theravadan Buddhism, insight meditation itself does not demand belief in the tenets of Buddhist religion." 4 In fact: [End Page 217] We need not agree with any belief items or be willing to call on any supernatural beings to do the practice. This makes the practice available to everyone without any conflict with whatever religious loyalties they have. This practice is simply a way to apply fine-grained, continuous awareness to all of our experiences of mind and body. Although it is this simple, it leads us to the highest stages of spiritual unfoldment as the major spiritual traditions, including John of the Cross, see them. 5The claim is that vipassana meditation is a neutral (i.e., non-tradition-dependent) practice--simply training in the mindful, equanimous observation of breath, body sensations, mental contents, and movements of the will--which, while not requiring acceptance of the theological or metaphysical tenets of any "major spiritual tradition," leads to the presumed identical ultimate goal of each.This claim is simply asserted by the authors, without positive argument or support. While understandable in a non-academic text such as theirs, there are underlying issues connected with the claim that should be addressed. The first is tradition neutrality. The actual method the authors propose did in fact originate and was developed in the Theravadan Buddhist tradition. It presumes the practice of specific moral principles, the development of concentrative ability in a systematic fashion, and training of attention to highly specific perceptual experiences, all of which culminate in an ultimate state or experience designated nibbana in Pali, and Nirvana in Sanskrit. The authors initially present this spiritual practice in the original conceptual framework of Theravadan Buddhism and then "translate" it into the language of Christianity and John of the Cross. Thus instruction in Christian Insight Meditation is functionally training in Theravadan Buddhist vipassana meditation. As such, the practice is organically rooted in the perceptual or cognitive set 6 of Theravadan vipassana practice. In that sense... (shrink)

In 'Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature' Richard Rorty presented his provocation and influential vision of the post-philosophical culture, calling upon professional philosophers to accept that epistemology is dead, that the analytic method is a myth, and that philosophy and science are merely forms of literature.

BackgroundThere has been media coverage surrounding the dangers of heavy drinking and benefits of moderation, with TV and radio presenter, Adrian Chiles, documenting his experience of moderating alcohol consumption in an online article for the Guardian. By analysing the comments in response to Chiles’ article, this study aimed to explore posters’ attitudes or beliefs toward moderating alcohol and posters’ experiences of moderating or abstaining from alcohol.MethodA secondary qualitative analysis of online comments in response to an article about moderating alcohol consumption. (...) Main outcome measures: Comments in response to a United Kingdom online news article about moderating alcohol consumption were extracted and inductive thematic analysis was used.ResultsFor aim one, two themes were developed; “general attitudes toward drinking” and “general attitudes toward reducing consumption”. These themes reflect negative perceptions of alcohol and issues around changing attitudes. For aim two, three themes were developed: “moderation vs. abstention”, “reflection on past drinking behaviours”, and “current drinking behaviours”. These themes represent posters’ experiences and implications changing their drinking habits.ConclusionOur analysis provides a novel insight into perceptions and experiences of moderating or abstaining from alcohol. Alcohol is embedded within United Kingdom culture, creating difficulties for those who choose to moderate or abstain from alcohol. Our analysis highlights the need for public health to focus on shifting the current drinking culture, through clearer drinking guidelines and a wider availability of alcohol-free alternatives. (shrink)

Problem solving can be readily described as one of the key activities regularly performed by professionals in any workplace setting. Despite its importance, however, there is relatively little linguistic research which looks at the complex ways in which problems are constructed in discourse. This article sees the enactment of a ‘problem’ as a discursive phenomenon with fluid boundaries. It draws on business meeting data recorded in multinational companies in Europe and focuses on excerpts identified by the participants as having a (...) PbS function. The data show that problem solving processes and practice are anchored to the structure of the organizations, the local history and employees’ shared perceptions of professional practices and hierarchies in their workplace. The analysis also shows two focal points in the PbS talk of the participants in this study, namely identification of a problem and its ownership. These, however, are not predetermined starting points but rather locally constructed in relation to the status, expertise and shared/past history of the interactants. (shrink)

Le colloque organisé par Jérôme Bazin et Marie Frétigny à l’université de Picardie d’Amiens, avait-il besoin de se placer sous la bannière du « gender » pour analyser la question du réalisme dans la peinture du XXe siècle? Si l’hypothèse qui sous-tend cette journée – le réalisme est-il vecteur d’une autre image des femmes? – a pu être opérationnel pour le XIXe siècle, elle devient contre-productive pour le XXe. On ne sera pas surpris d’apprendre que le réalisme a renforcé les (...) stéréotypes de... (shrink)

Eric Voegelin (1901-1985) zahlt zu den prominentesten Vertretern einer neoklassischen politischen Philosophie im 20. Jahrhundert. Wesentliche Grundlagen seiner politischen Theorie entwickelt Voegelin in der Auseinandersetzung mit der staatstheoretischen Debatte der 1920er- und 1930er-Jahre und im Versuch der Grundlegung einer "Staatslehre als Geisteswissenschaft". Im weiteren Verlauf seiner theoretischen Arbeit erscheint ihm der Begriff des Staates als politiktheoretische Fundamentalkategorie aber zunehmend fragwurdig. Im Sinne der Leitfrage der Reihe Staatsverstandnisse, was sich den Ideen von Staatsdenkern fur ein zeitgemasses Verstandnis des Staates entnehmen lasst, (...) erweist sich Voegelins Beitrag als das zunachst staatstheoretisch inspirierte Projekt einer Dekonstruktion des Staatsbegriffs und der Entfaltung ihrer theoretischen Konsequenzen - von der Herausarbeitung der im Staatsbegriff enthaltenen, aber verschleierten Verhaltnisbestimmung zwischen Politik und Religion bis hin zum Entwurf einer politischen Theorie als "Ordnungswissenschaft". Mit Beitragen von: Barry Cooper, Daiane Eccel, Jurgen Gebhardt, Bruno Godefroy, Michael Henkel, Manfred Henningsen, Oliver Lembcke, Matthias Riedl, Tilo Schabert, Christian Schwaabe, Hans-Jorg Sigwart, Klaus Vondung. (shrink)

Dr Bawa-Garba, a senior paediatric trainee who had been involved in the care of a child who died shortly after admission to hospital, was convicted of gross negligence manslaughter and subsequently erased from the medical register. We argue that criminalisation of doctors in this way is fraught with ethical tensions at levels of individual blameworthiness, systemic failures, professionalism, patient safety and at the interface of the regulator and doctor. The current response to alleged manslaughter during clinical care is not fit (...) for purpose because of its narrow focus on criminalisation and punishment of individual doctors. The justice system fails to take into account systemic issues in a sufficiently proper and informed way particularly in respect of human factors involved in decision-making. It is easier to convict individual doctors for gross negligence manslaughter than it is to effect legal accountability upon organisations. If educational reflections are used to apportion blame, then this could impact detrimentally on honesty and the duty of candour, with negative implications for patient safety. Regulatory processes should not be deployed without consideration of context. There is an urgent need for a fresh and open evaluation of professional and societal expectations from the regulator that should include positive action as well as those that are proportionately punitive. Justice and patient safety would be served better by more sophisticated contextualisation through an approach that balances accountability in healthcare with failures that can occur within complex systems, and by working to a radical shift towards a just culture. (shrink)

Reconstructions of Romantic-era life science in general, and epigenesis in particular, frequently take the Kantian logic of autotelic “self-organization” as their primary reference point. I argue in this essay that the Kantian conceptual rubric hinders our historical and theoretical understanding of epigenesis, Romantic and otherwise. Neither a neutral gloss on epigenesis, nor separable from the epistemological deflation of biological knowledge that has received intensive scrutiny in the history and philosophy of science, Kant’s heuristics of autonomous “self-organization” in the third Critique (...) amount to the strategic capture of epigenesis from nature, for thought, in thought’s critical transcendence of nature. This essay looks to Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and his English contemporary Erasmus Darwin to begin to reconstruct the rigorously materialist, naturalist, and empiricist theories of epigenesis marginalized by Kantian argumentation. As theorists of environmental and social collaboration in the ontogeny of viable forms, Lamarck and Darwin illuminate features of our own epigenetic turn obscured by the rhetoric of “self-organization,” allowing us to glimpse an alternative Romantic genealogy of the biological present. (shrink)

The capabilities approach of Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum has become an influential viewpoint for addressing issues of social justice and human de- velopment. It has not yet, however, given adequate theoretical consideration to the requirements of environmental sustainability. Sen has focussed on the instrumental importance of human development for achieving sustainability, but has failed to consider the limits of this account, especially with respect to consumption-reduction. Nussbaum has criticised constraining material consumption for its paternalistic prescription of one particular conception (...) of the good life, without considering it as an imperative of justice. We discuss two possible extensions of the capabilities approach. First, the concept of ca- pability ceilings contains several attractive elements, but it also suffers from some shortcomings. Therefore, second, we advocate constraining people’s combinations of functionings in accordance with a personal budget which con- sists of a fair share of environmental resources. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:We examine whether religion influences company decisions related to corporate community involvement. Employing a large US sample, we show that the CCI initiatives of a company are positively associated with the level of Christian religiosity present in the region within which that company’s headquarters is located. This association persists even after we control for a wide range of firm characteristics and after we subject our results to several econometric tests. These results support our religious morality hypothesis which holds that companies (...) headquartered in regions with higher levels of Christian religiosity will engage in more CCI initiatives. We also find that while Catholic and mainline Protestant religiosity have a positive influence on firms’ CCI initiatives, evangelical Protestant religiosity does not. This supports our differentiated responses hypothesis which holds that institutional differences among religious groups will produce different effects on companies’ CCI. This hypothesis is based on institutional theory. (shrink)

This volume outlines a model of language that can be characterized as functionalist, usage-based, dynamic, and complex-adaptive. The core idea is that linguistic structure is not stable and uniform, but continually refreshed by the interaction between three components: usage, the communicative activities of speakers; conventionalization, the social processes triggered by these activities and feeding back into them; and entrenchment, the individual cognitive processes that are also linked to these activities in a feedback loop. Hans-Joerg Schmid explains how this multiple feedback (...) system works by extending his Entrenchment-and-Conventionalization Model, showing how the linguistic system is created, sustained, and continually adapted by the ongoing interaction between usage, conventionalization, and entrenchment. Fulfilling the promise of usage-based accounts, the model explains how exactly usage is transformed into collective and individual grammar and how these two grammars in turn feed back into usage.0The book is exceptionally broad in scope, with insights from a wide range of linguistic subdisciplines. It provides a coherent account of the role of multiple factors that influence language structure, variation, and change, including frequency, economy, identity, multilingualism, and language contact. (shrink)

Continuing rapid developments in the life sciences offer the promise of providing tools to meet global challenges in health, agriculture, the environment, and economic development; some of the benefits are already being realized. However, such advances also bring with them new social, ethical, legal, and security challenges. Governance questions form an increasingly important part of the discussions about these advances--whether the particular issue under debate is the development of ethical principles for human genome editing, how to establish regulatory systems for (...) the safe conduct of field trials of gene drive-modified organisms, or many others. However there are continuing concerns that the knowledge, tools, and techniques resulting from life sciences research could also enable the development of bioweapons or facilitate bioterrorism. Between June 10 and 13, 2018, more than 70 participants from 30 different countries and 5 international organizations took part in an international workshop, The Governance of Dual Use Research in the Life Sciences: Advancing Global Consensus on Research Oversight, in Zagreb, Croatia. Hosted by the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts, the workshop was a collaboration among the InterAcademy Partnership, the Croatian Academy, the Croatian Society for Biosafety and Biosecurity, and the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. This publication summarizes the presentations and discussions from the workshop."--Publisher's description. (shrink)

1. Haeje, Ch'ongmok, T'ongnye 1, Ch'ongsaegin -- 2. T'ongnye 2, Kwallye, Hollye -- 3. Sangnye 1-3 -- 4. Sangnye 4-6 -- 5. Sangnye 7-8 -- 6. Cherye 1-2, Pyŏllye mongnok.

French existentialism is commonly regarded as the main impetus for the universal significance that Kafka gained in postwar France. A leading critic, Marthe Robert, has contended that this entailed an outright rejection of interest in the biographical, linguistic and historical dimension of Kafka's writing in order to interpret it as a general expression of the human condition. This article will consider this claim in the light of Sartre's original conceptualization of a dialectic of the universal and the particular in the (...) intercultural mediation of the work of art. The notion of a 'true universality' proposed by Sartre as a defence of Kafka during the 1962 Moscow Peace Conference will allow for a reassessment of Robert's criticism in a paradoxical reversal of terms: it is precisely the inevitable loss of context and the appropriation within one's own particular situation which allow the literary work to elucidate a foreign historical context and thereby gain a wider significance. Rather than a universal meaning of the work, Sartre's concept points to literature's potential to continually release specific meanings in new contexts. (shrink)