Over 40 years of research have shown that traumatic brain injury affects brain volume. However, technical and practical limitations made it difficult to detect brain volume abnormalities in patients suffering from chronic effects of mild or moderate traumatic brain injury. This situation improved in 2006 with the FDA clearance of NeuroQuant®, a commercially available, computer-automated software program for measuring MRI brain volume in human subjects. More recent strides were made with the introduction of NeuroGage®, commercially available software that is based (...) on NeuroQuant® and extends its utility in several ways. Studies using these and similar methods have found that most patients with chronic mild or moderate traumatic brain injury have brain volume abnormalities, and several of these studies found—surprisingly—more abnormal enlargement than atrophy. More generally, 102 peer-reviewed studies have supported the reliability and validity of NeuroQuant® and NeuroGage®. Furthermore, this updated version of a previous review addresses whether NeuroQuant® and NeuroGage® meet the Daubert standard for admissibility in court. It concludes that NeuroQuant® and NeuroGage® meet the Daubert standard based on their reliability, validity, and objectivity. Due to the improvements in technology over the years, these brain volumetric techniques are practical and readily available for clinical or forensic use, and thus they are important tools for detecting signs of brain injury. (shrink)

In this paper, I defend a version of the medical model of disability, which defines disability as an enduring biological dysfunction that causes its bearer a significant degree of impairment. We should accept the medical model, I argue, because it succeeds in capturing our judgments about what conditions do and do not qualify as disabilities, because it offers a compelling explanation for what makes a condition count as a disability, and because it justifies why the federal government should spend hundreds (...) of billions of dollars, annually, on aid and accommodations for disabled people. After responding to a pair of objections Elizabeth Barnes has raised against the medical model, I contrast it with Guy Kahane and Julian Savulescu's welfarist account of disability, and with Barnes's own mere-difference view. Both of these accounts face serious challenges, although elements of Barnes's view can—and, in my opinion, should—be adopted by proponents of the medical model. (shrink)

Brian Hedden has proposed that any successful account of options for the subjective “ought” must satisfy two constraints: first, it must ensure that we are able to carry out each of the options available to us, and second, it should guarantee that the set of options available to us supervenes on our mental states. In this paper I show that, due to the ever-present possibility of Frankfurt-style cases, these two constraints jointly entail that no agent has any options at any (...) time. This consequence, however, is clearly unacceptable, so one of Hedden’s constraints must go. Because the ability constraint is indispensable, I argue, we have no choice but to reject the supervenience constraint. Hedden’s underlying motivation for imposing the supervenience constraint is the conviction that our options should be transparent to us, but transparency also proves to be incompatible with the ability constraint, so it must be rejected as well. I conclude by sketching an unabashedly externalist account of options, which conceives of options as exhaustive combinations of atomic movements. (shrink)

Evolutionary debunking arguments purport to show that, if moral realism is true, all of our moral beliefs are unjustified. In this paper, I respond to two of the most enduring objections that have been raised against these arguments. The first objection claims that evolutionary debunking arguments are self-undermining, because they cannot be formulated without invoking epistemic principles, and epistemic principles are just as vulnerable to debunking as our moral beliefs. I argue that this objection suffers from several defects, the most (...) serious of which is that it has the unpalatable consequence that we should never revise our moral beliefs in response to evidence that our capacity for normative cognition is globally impaired. The second objection, which comes to us from Katia Vavova, claims that evolutionary debunking arguments are doomed to fail, because they attempt to show that our moral beliefs are unreliable without making any assumptions about the nature of morality, and this is impossible. I argue, to the contrary, that the etiological higher-order evidence cited by debunking arguments can give us good reason to think that our moral beliefs are unreliable, even if we make no assumptions about what morality is like. (shrink)

Fifteen years ago, Sharon Street and Richard Joyce advanced evolutionary debunking arguments against moral realism, which purported to show that the evolutionary history of our moral beliefs makes moral realism untenable. These arguments have since given rise to a flurry of objections; the epistemic principles Street and Joyce relied upon, in particular, have come in for a number of serious challenges. My goal in this paper is to develop a new account of evolutionary debunking which avoids the pitfalls Street and (...) Joyce encountered and responds to the most pressing objections they faced. I begin by presenting a striking thought experiment to serve as an analogy for the evolution of morality; I then show why calibrationist views of higher-order evidence are crucial to the evolutionary debunking project; I outline a new rationale for why finding out that morality was selected to promote cooperation suggests that our moral judgments are unreliable; and I explain why evolutionary debunking arguments do not depend on our having a dedicated faculty for moral cognition. All things considered, I argue, evolutionary debunking arguments against moral realism are on relatively secure footing – provided, at least, that we accept a calibrationist account of higher-order evidence. (shrink)

Suppose that Sherlock Holmes has just closed another case, and is convinced that Moriarty is the perpetrator. At that very moment, Inspector Lestrade arrives to inform Holmes that a Scotland Yard analysis of his past investigations shows that he only identifies the correct suspect in 50% of cases. How should Holmes respond to this new information? This is a question about higher-order evidence. Higher-order evidence can be understood as evidence about the rationality of your beliefs, or about your reliability in (...) judging matters in a certain domain. Some views on higher-order evidence, like calibrationism, say that Holmes should drastically reduce his confidence that Moriarty is the perpetrator, in light of what he learns about his track record. Other perspectives will recommend that Holmes stick to his guns instead. This dissertation explores the nature and epistemic significance of higher-order evidence, and considers whether higher-order evidence we acquire from empirical research into human evolution might serve to undermine the justification for our moral beliefs, as evolutionary debunking arguments, like those advanced by Sharon Street and Richard Joyce, have alleged. Ultimately, I argue that the calibrationist response to higher-order evidence is the right one, and that our emerging understanding of how morality evolved does indeed pose a serious challenge to the epistemic status of our moral beliefs. (shrink)

Subject of constant reflections in other works and published studies, the theme of memory and its relations between past and present always provokes renewed perspectives regarding the readings of the ancient texts in our academic discussions. Analyzing the present time of a community behind an ancient document is likewise always challenging. However, in the present document (Mark’s Gospel), when analyzed in the light of heuristic concepts - such as memory, for example - there are very effective indications in proposing new (...) perceptions about the constant interaction between past memories and memory constructions in present times (of the ancient document that has been analysed). New horizons open up in the field of study of the texts that make up the New Testament when dialogues with psychology and research on memory. In this sense, this work applies the postulate of D.L. Schacter on the adaptations that are made in the memories of the past so that they meet the needs of the present to the gospel of Mark. It follows that the author of the said gospel rewrote the traditions received so that they answered questions that were made to them in the present. (shrink)

Este trabalho pretende discutir que os teólogos alemães, comprometidos com a ideologia nazista, inclusive através do juramento de lealdade que fizeram ao Führer, não optaram pelo “silêncio virtual” nem demonstraram “um interesse limitado” pelo Jesus histórico. Muito pelo contrário, eles não apenas potencializaram o “retrato” de Jesus como sendo um ariano, como também o popularizaram, por meio de seus escritos, de suas homilias e de suas experiências cotidianas. Deve-se ter atenção aqui: a consolidação desse novo retrato é anterior ao advento (...) de Hitler, como se pode ler em um vasto conjunto de obras, tais como, por exemplo, as de Ernst Renan, Theodor Keim e Houston Stewart Chamberlain. No entanto, é com a ascenção de Hitler ao poder que a leitura do Jesus ariano ganhou uma dimensão até então não imaginada, já que ela culmina na efetiva colaboração de um expressivo número de teólogos cristãos com a política assassina do Estado nazista, culminando no holocausto judaico. (shrink)

This article argues that the algorithms known as neural nets underlie a new form of artificial intelligence that we call indexical AI. Contrasting with the once dominant symbolic AI, large-scale learning systems have become a semiotic infrastructure underlying global capitalism. Their achievements are based on a digital version of the sign-function index, which points rather than describes. As these algorithms spread to parse the increasingly heavy data volumes on platforms, it becomes harder to remain skeptical of their results. We call (...) social faith in these systems the naive iconic interpretation of AI and position their indexical function between heuristic symbol use and real intelligence, opening the black box to reveal semiotic function. (shrink)

Over 50% of the world population will develop a psychiatric disorder in their lifetime.1 In the realm of psychiatric treatment, two primary modalities have been established: pharmacotherapy and psychotherapy. Yet, pharmacological interventions often take precedence as the initial treatment choice despite their comparable outcomes, severe side effects and disputed evidence of their efficacy. This preference for medication foregrounds a vital re-examination of what it means to be invasive in medical treatments, namely in psychiatric care. De Marco et al challenge the (...) standard account of invasiveness, presenting considerations that transcend the traditional criteria of physical intrusion.2 Through case studies centred on treatments for schizophrenia and depression, we aim to (1) reinforce De Marco et al ’s challenge to the standard account of invasiveness and (2) extend the dialogue to the moral imperative of redefining mental invasiveness. Our aims are to broaden the definition of mental invasiveness, aligning with De Marco et al ’s emphasis on context sensitivity, and to include the severity of side effects as a critical factor in this assessment. Redefining what is considered invasive in psychiatric treatment has profound implications for patient care and medical decision-making. Labelling treatments, namely medications, as invasive encourages both patients and healthcare providers to approach these options with a heightened level of scrutiny and care. This is …. (shrink)

If chemistry is to be taught successfully, teachers must have a good subject matter knowledge (SK) of the ideas with which they are dealing, the nature of this falling within the orbit of philosophy of chemistry. They must also have a good pedagogic content knowledge (PCK), the ability to communicate SK to students, the nature of this falling within the philosophy and psychology of chemical education. Taking the case of models and modelling, important themes in the philosophy of chemistry, an (...) interview-based study was conducted into the SK and PCK of a sample of teachers in Brazil. This paper focuses on the results of the university chemistry teacher sub-sample in that enquiry, analyses their SK and PCK, and speculates on the implications of this for the education of school teachers. Finally, it suggests approaches to the professional development of university chemistry teachers that place an emphasis on the philosophy of chemistry. (shrink)

The presence of stigmatizing language in the electronic health record (EHR) has been used to measure implicit biases that underlie health inequities. The purpose of this study was to identify the presence of stigmatizing language in the clinical notes of pregnant people during the birth admission. We conducted a qualitative analysis on N = 1117 birth admission EHR notes from two urban hospitals in 2017. We identified stigmatizing language categories, such as Disapproval (39.3%), Questioning patient credibility (37.7%), Difficult patient (21.3%), (...) Stereotyping (1.6%), and Unilateral decisions (1.6%) in 61 notes (5.4%). We also defined a new stigmatizing language category indicating Power/privilege. This was present in 37 notes (3.3%) and signaled approval of social status, upholding a hierarchy of bias. The stigmatizing language was most frequently identified in birth admission triage notes (16%) and least frequently in social work initial assessments (13.7%). We found that clinicians from various disciplines recorded stigmatizing language in the medical records of birthing people. This language was used to question birthing people's credibility and convey disapproval of decision‐making abilities for themselves or their newborns. We reported a Power/privilege language bias in the inconsistent documentation of traits considered favorable for patient outcomes (e.g., employment status). Future work on stigmatizing language may inform tailored interventions to improve perinatal outcomes for all birthing people and their families. (shrink)

Seeing is a matter of perspective. A perspective is the vantage point by which we view the reality or the world around us. That is why it is called a worldview or paradigm. In other words, what we see is a by product of how we look at the reality around us based on our idea and image of ourselves. Thus, a philosopher once said that if a bird is given the necessary intelligence and the faculty to express its idea (...) of God it will speak of a God that majestically sings and flies with His mighty wings. (shrink)

A key question in the philosophy of logic is how we have epistemic justification for claims about logical entailment (assuming we have such justification at all). Justification holism asserts that claims of logical entailment can only be justified in the context of an entire logical theory, e.g., classical, intuitionistic, paraconsistent, paracomplete etc. According to holism, claims of logical entailment cannot be atomistically justified as isolated statements, independently of theory choice. At present there is a developing interest in—and endorsement of—justification holism (...) due to the revival of an abductivist approach to the epistemology of logic. This paper presents an argument against holism by establishing a foundational entailment-sentence of deduction which is justified independently of theory choice and outside the context of a whole logical theory. (shrink)

Nurses working or living near a community disaster have the opportunity to study health‐related consequences to disaster or disaster recovery. In such a situation, the researchers need to deal with the conceptual and methodological issues unique to postdisaster research and know what resources are available to guide them, even if they have no specialized training or previous experience in disaster research. The purpose of this article is to review issues and challenges associated with conducting postdisaster research and encourage nurses to (...) seek resources and seize opportunities to conduct research should the situation arise. Current disaster studies and the authors' personal experiences conducting maternal‐child research in post‐Katrina New Orleans (2005–2013) provide real‐life examples of how health professionals and nurses faced the challenges of doing postdisaster research. After catastrophic events, nurses need to step forward to conduct disaster research that informs and improves future disaster planning and healthcare responses. (shrink)

The many constraints of outer space experience challenge the human ability to coexist. Paradoxically, astronauts assert that on the international space station there are no conflicts or, at least, that they are able to manage their differences, behavioral as well as cognitive, in full respect of human rights and the imperatives of cooperative living. The question is: Why? Why in those difficult, a-terrestrial, and therefore almost unnatural conditions do human beings seem to be able to peacefully and collaboratively live together? (...) What is there beyond terrestrial boundary conditions that allows for such a result? And what can we learn from the astronauts’ experience about the effectiveness of human rights on Earth? My proposal is that the a-terrestrial dimension deeply alters the mind/body indexical framework and, in this way, disentangles the human inclination to semiosis from the cognitive and behavioral habits of categorization and territorialization inherent in the experience on Earth. If analyzed through the spectrum of an interdisciplinary approach involving anthropology, semiology, law, and human geography, I think that outer space enterprises can offer many insights into the cognitive and ethical/political hindrances to the effectiveness of human rights and their intercultural uses. Meanwhile the compulsive greed for a possessive territorialization of outer space and celestial bodies is growing by leaps and bounds. It haunts and imbues both astropolitics and space law. The astronauts’ semio-anthropological experience of human rights and cooperative coexistence seems to have been left in orbit. The future requires awareness and action by anthropologists, semioticians, cognitive scientists, geographers and lawyers, working all together in an interdisciplinary effort to move beyond approaching the experiential with a territorial mindset. The hope is that the “dark dream” of human exploitation/colonization of outer space will not turn from a political and legal speculation into a future reality. (shrink)

Here is the usual way philosophers think about science and induction. Scientists do many things— aspire, probe, theorize, conclude, retract, and refine— but successful research culminates in a published research report that presents an argument for some empirical conclusion. In mathematics and logic there are sound deductive arguments that fully justify their conclusions, but such proofs are unavailable in the empirical domain because empirical hypotheses outrun the evidence adduced for them. Inductive skeptics insist that such conclusions cannot be justified. But (...) “justification” is a vague term— if empirical conclusions cannot be established fully, as mathematical conclusions are, perhaps they are justified in the sense that they are partially supported or confirmed by the available evidence. To respond to the skeptic, one merely has to explicate the concept of confirmation or partial justification in a systematic manner that agrees, more or less, with common usage and to observe that our scientific conclusions are confirmed in the explicated sense. This process of explication is widely thought to culminate in some version of Bayesian confirmation theory. (shrink)

In this article I want to investigate the concept of reliability employed in process reliabilist theories of justification and knowledge. What is essential to process reliabilist theories of justification is that there is a sense of the word ”justifi- cation” (a strong or an objective concept of justification) such that a belief is justified only if it is produced by a reliable process. Different versions of reliabilism may add different sufficient conditions to this to get a complete definition of justification (...) or knowledge, and disagree about whether there are other interesting concepts of justification, but all agree that reliability (global or local) is necessary for both justification (in some sense) and knowlede. This of course, raises the question of what reliability is. Reliabilist theories of justification cannot be said to have a very secure foundation if they do not address this question. However, reliabilists have not done very much to answer it as has of course been often pointed out by their opponents. The most famous reliabilist, Alvin Goldman, has in one place [6, page 63] suggested that the concept of reliability he uses should be understood so that reliability is a propensity; however, he does not formulate this idea very exactly nor develop it very far. However, I think that his suggestion is correct, and important; in this article I will try to clarify it by linking it to formal analyses of propensities that are found in the literature (as well as the whole discussion about interpretations of probability) and explore its consequences. (shrink)

Accession Number: ATLA0001788486; Hosting Book Page Citation: p 168-178.; Language(s): English; Issued by ATLA: 20130825; Publication Type: Essay.

In this journal, Hamid Vahid argues against three families of explanation of Mooreparadoxicality. The first is the Wittgensteinian approach; I assert that p just in case I assert that I believe that p. So making a Moore-paradoxical assertion involves contradictory assertions. The second is the epistemic approach, one committed to: if I am justified in believing that p then I am justified in believing that I believe that p. So it is impossible to have a justified omissive Mooreparadoxical belief. The (...) third is the conscious belief approach, being committed to: if I consciously believe that p then I believe that I believe that p. So if I have a conscious omissive Moore-paradoxical belief, then I have contradictory second-order beliefs. In their place, Vahid argues for the defective- interpretation approach, broadly that charity requires us to discount the utterer of a Mooreparadoxical sentence as a speaker. I agree that the Wittgensteinian approach is unsatisfactory. But so is the defective-interpretation approach. However, there is a satisfactory version of each of the epistemic and conscious-belief approaches. (shrink)

This article seeks to explore the European debate on commercial nobility at the beginning of the Seven Years War in the light of the intense reform debates over French absolutism in the 1730s and 1740s and Montesquieu's rigid refutation of noble trade in The Spirit of the Laws. In early 1756, Montesquieu's position against noble trade had come under severe attack by Gabriel François Coyer's Noblesse Commerçante. Claiming that the royal absolutist system had transformed the nobles into an idle class (...) without any political, economic, or military function that stood in sharp contrast to the dynamism of modern commercial society, Coyer perceived noble enterprises in maritime, wholesale, and even retail trade as a necessary means to help France compete with commercially more advanced states such as England and Holland. Coyer's pamphlet roused heated controversies in Paris and beyond and soon engaged the leading minds of the time in debates over the actual and desired role of the hereditary aristocracy in monarchies. Coyer's strongest opponents, like the Chevalier d’Arc, vehemently defended Montesquieu's contention that the upkeep of the non-commercial status of the nobility was a political necessity. Yet they, too, conceded that the nobility had to undergo severe reforms not to hamper France's military standing and future economic success. The article finally turns to Johann Heinrich Gottlob von Justi, the most interesting commentator on the debate in Germany, who, by October 1756, had translated Coyer's and d’Arc's texts into German and written an own treatise on the same issue. Justi's pamphlet reveals that his political theory was deeply shaped by the debate and thus disproves the long-held assumption in the literature that German cameralism, with Justi as its main representative, was an allegedly isolated current of thought that neither received significant external influences, nor exerted any considerable impact beyond the boundaries of the Germanic world. (shrink)

In this essay, I explore Justus Buchler’s ordinal naturalism with the goal of establishing how his phenomenological approach extends the range of human inquiry to include the many and varied traits of natural phenomena that are not “simply” the result of sensate experience or material functions. To achieve this goal I critically assess Buchler’s notion of “ontological parity”–the idea that abstract phenomena such as values, relations, ideals, and other mental contents are just as relevant as sense-data when one attempts to (...) provide an adequate description of the world in naturalistic terms. I argue that certain phenomena, subsisting within what Buchler calls the “proceptive domain,” are legitimate objects of knowledge as they are par t of a larger domain of phenomenological analysis: nature more broadly and justly understood. It is my view that in the attempt to describe the natural world Buchler’s ordinal naturalism succeeds where other forms of naturalism fail because his form of naturalism offers a more capacious view of nature that attempts to describe whatever is in any way, not just focus on what is readily apparent to speci?c forms of observation that may privilege one domain of analysis over another. I draw the conclusion that because Buchler’s ordinal naturalism contains within it a working principle of ontological parity, his approach to nature ful?lls the criteria of the phenomenological method, and so I title his ordinal naturalism an ordinal phenomenology (Corrington 1992, 1-6, 9-14). Ultimately it is my aim to bring Buchler’s thought into closer connection with continental phenomenology, as well as to illustrate a more just and open understanding of nature through an analysis of his unique variety of philosophical naturalism. (shrink)

Barcelona, juny de 2017: el primer dimarts del mes comença amb una vaga de 24 hores de taxistes de la ciutat en contra d’Uber i Cabify. Dissabte següent, columnes de tots els barris es concentren a la Plaça Universitat contra l’augment del lloguer induït, majoritàriament, pel turisme massiu, amb AirB&B –com no–, en el punt de mira. Barcelona 0 – Economia col·laborativa 1. Era això, companys, el què n’esperàvem de l’economia del segle XXI?

In “On Certainty” Wittgenstein regards doubting as meaningful and reasonable only in a context providing language game where some background is taken for granted. Doubt, just as knowledge, should be backed up by an argument, only this time, one presenting reasons for uncertainty. Common sense propositions constitute part of the background for the arguments of doubting and because of their function and place within the system of language, they are regarded as indubitable. I discuss critically the idea of linguistically determined (...) indubitability and advocate the possibility of a different kind of doubt, one that does not require its own justification and is still a reasonable epistemic attitude. Such doubt characterizes the states of affairs where the certainty of a proposition is not yet rationally established. I argue that, language does not limit us in doubting and in doubting reasonably. (shrink)

From 1957 to 1973, Barcelona Zoo was transformed from a small-scale, antiquated establishment harboring very few animals, a place that was still in a poor condition following the Spanish Civil War, into a new, larger, modern, and internationally recognized institution that included up-to-date animal enclosures and that boasted one of the first dolphinariums in Europe, as well as a famous white gorilla as its icon. From its very beginning, this renovation involved an intense popularization campaign. In this paper, by (...) describing the public discourse generated throughout this transformation and by analyzing the roles played by Antoni Jonch, the director of the zoo at that time; Josep Maria de Porcioles, the then-mayor of Barcelona; and General Francisco Franco, the Spanish dictator who was head of state during this period, I will highlight how the context of the dictatorship not only authorized the new Barcelona Zoo but is, in fact, crucial to its understanding. The narratives that surrounded the renovation of the zoo focused on its civic and educational purpose, with a firm emphasis on modernity. The zoo was a modern space for learning about animals in order to become better people. These narratives were not only suitable to the policies, ideas, and aims of Porcioles’ City Council and Franco’s dictatorial regime; in fact, they completely matched them. Both local and national governments benefited from the restructuring of Barcelona Zoo and from its public discourse as a tool for social control and an instrument for their own propaganda, legitimation, and perpetuation. (shrink)

Scholars of Jewish history have paid consistent and devoted attention to the Barcelona Disputation of 1263. Records of this event preserve contemporary Jewish and Christian responses to the proceedings, which pitted Nahmanides, the most important exegete and teacher of the region, against a convert from Judaism to Christianity, took place in the royal court before an illustrious audience. This essay traces trends in scholarly treatments of the Barcelona Disputation from the early days of the Wissenschaft des Judentums to (...) the present. By examining challenges of veracity posed by the documentary sources as well as foundational assumptions about what the medieval authors intended to achieve with their accounts, this article provides broad overview of the historiography that has developed around the Barcelona Disputation. (shrink)

Alrededor del año mil en Barcelona circulaban, aparte de la moneda local, dírhames de al-Andalus que fueron llamados caceminos en los documentos. Este nombre imitaba la denominación árabe darāhim qāsimiyya que recordaba el famoso director de la Moneda de Córdoba, Qāsim ibn Ḫālid. Además de esto, tres documentos locales atestiguan el uso de monedas de plata llamadas exarachellos. A base de consideraciones filológicas, esta palabra puede ser descifrada como un apodo del dírham formado a raíz de la palabra árabe (...) para brillo (al-šaraq) complementada por la desinencia románica del diminutivo -ello. En alusión a su brillo argénteo, los dírhames en al-Andalus podrían haber sido llamados *al-šaraq-ellos (‘piezas brillantes’), un apodo trasmitido posteriormente a Barcelona a través de contactos bilaterales estrechos. (shrink)

This clearly designed and illustrated book is dedicated to a complete overview of Richard Meier's Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art, completed in 1995. Located in the area of the Casa de la Caritat, a former monastic enclave, this extraordinary building maintains a unique dialogue between the city's old urban fabric and the contemporary art housed within the museum. Barcelona's first institution devoted entirely to twentieth-century art, this museum synthesizes the striking contemporaneity of its bold architecture and the rich (...) medieval history of its context. Meier's masterful use of materials -- pristine white aluminum panels, glass, stucco, and granite -- and characteristic modern style emphasize a play of solid and void, light and shadow, through the museum's fluid, geometric forms. An external ramp leads from the sweeping plaza to a triple-height atrium space. An internal, glass-enclosed ramp unfolds vertically along the front facade of the building, offering breathtaking vistas of a sixteenth-century church and the romantic city beyond and leading to three floors of open exhibition areas. This unique publication documents the dramatic design with preliminary sketches, models, drawings, and lavish color photographs. (shrink)

Despite the increase in global research on health inequalities, more needs to be done to strengthen efforts to inform local interventions. In this article, we ask what determines the local capacity to engage in research on health inequalities. A bibliometric analysis identified Spain as the 10th highest global contributor to this research field (1966–2015), yet a significant proportion of this production was affiliated to just a few institutions in Barcelona. How and why has the city produced so much health (...) inequalities research over four decades? A realist explanatory case study was conducted to test and refine six causal mechanisms, and identify the contextual conditions that might have activated them to generate this outcome. Data was triangulated from 10 semi-structured interviews, and scientific and grey literature. Our findings confirmed that several of our proposed mechanisms - functioning under certain conditions over time - explain the large volume of health inequalities research in Barcelona. Based on these findings, key lessons from the city's experience are suggested. Further research is needed on this topic. (shrink)