BackgroundBiobanking biospecimens and consent are common practice in paediatric research. We need to explore children and young people’s (CYP) knowledge and perspectives around the use of and consent to biobanking. This will ensure meaningful informed consent can be obtained and improve current consent procedures.MethodsWe designed a survey, in co-production with CYP, collecting demographic data, views on biobanking, and consent using three scenarios: 1) prospective consent, 2) deferred consent, and 3) reconsent and assent at age of capacity. The survey was disseminated (...) via the Young Person’s Advisory Group North England (YPAGne) and participating CYP’s secondary schools. Data were analysed using a qualitative thematic approach by three independent reviewers (including CYP) to identify common themes. Data triangulation occurred independently by a fourth reviewer.ResultsOne hundred two CYP completed the survey. Most were between 16–18 years (63.7%, N = 65) and female (66.7%, N = 68). 72.3% had no prior knowledge of biobanking (N = 73).Acceptability of prospective consent for biobanking was high (91.2%, N = 93) with common themes: ‘altruism’, ‘potential benefits outweigh individual risk’, 'frugality', and ‘(in)convenience’.Deferred consent was also deemed acceptable in the large majority (84.3%, N = 86), with common themes: ‘altruism’, ‘body integrity’ and ‘sample frugality’. 76.5% preferred to reconsent when cognitively mature enough to give assent (N = 78), even if parental consent was previously in place. 79.2% wanted to be informed if their biobanked biospecimen is reused (N = 80).ConclusionProspective and deferred consent acceptability for biobanking is high among CYP in the UK. Altruism, frugality, body integrity, and privacy are the most important themes. Clear communication and justification are paramount to obtain consent. Any CYP with capacity should be part of the consenting procedure, if possible. (shrink)

The theory of nonlinear complex systems has become a successful and widely used problem-solving approach in the natural sciences - from laser physics, quantum chaos and meteorology to molecular modeling in chemistry and computer simulations of cell growth in biology. In recent times it has been recognized that many of the social, ecological and political problems of mankind are also of a global, complex and nonlinear nature. And one of the most exciting topics of present scientific and public interest is (...) the idea that even the human mind is governed largely by the nonlinear dynamics of complex systems. In this wide-ranging but concise treatment Prof. Mainzer discusses, in nontechnical language, the common framework behind these endeavours. Special emphasis is given to the evolution of new structures in natural and cultural systems and it is seen clearly how the new integrative approach of complexity theory can give new insights that were not available using traditional reductionistic methods. (shrink)

The location of verbally reported feelings in a three-dimensional affective space is determined by the results of appraisal processes that elicit the respective states. One group of participants rated their evaluation of 59 pictures from the International Affective Picture System (IAPS) on a profile of nine appraisal criteria. Another group rated their affective reactions to the same pictures on the classic dimensions of affective meaning (valence, arousal, potency). The ratings on the affect dimensions correlate differentially with specific appraisal ratings. These (...) results can be interpreted as showing that the reactions to the IAPS pictures are predictably produced through appraisal of picture content. The relevance of the findings for emotion induction paradigms and for emotion theory in general is discussed. (shrink)

Attention is automatically allocated to stimuli that are opposite in valence to the current motivational focus (Rothermund, 2003; Rothermund, Voss, & Wentura, 2008). We tested whether this incongruency effect is due to affective–motivational counter-regulation or to an increased salience of stimuli that mismatch with cognitively activated information. Affective processing biases were assessed with a search task in which participants had to detect the spatial position at which a positive or negative stimulus was presented. In the motivational condition, positive or negative (...) affective–motivational states were induced by performance feedback after each trial. In the cognitive activation condition, participants memorised the word “good” or “bad” during the search task. The affective incongruency effect was replicated in the motivational condition, whereas an affective congruency effect obtained in the cognitive activation condition. These findings support an explanation of affective incongruency effects in terms of automatic counter-regulation that is motivational in nature. (shrink)

We highlight the need to focus on the underlying determinants and production mechanisms to fully understand the nature of facial expression of emotion and to settle the theoretical debate about the meaning of motor expression. Although emotion theorists have generally remained rather vague about the details of the process, this has been a central concern of componential appraisal theories. We describe the fundamental assumptions and predictions of this approach regarding the patterning of facial expressions for different emotions. We also review (...) recent evidence for the assumption that specific facial muscle movements may be reliable symptoms of certain appraisal outcomes and that facial expressions unfold over time on the basis of a sequence of appraisal check results. (shrink)

Keine ausführliche Beschreibung für "Heraklit, Parmenides und der Anfang von Philosophie und Wissenschaft" verfügbar.

Keine ausführliche Beschreibung für "Sartres Sozialphilosophie" verfügbar.

The following considerations have their origin in the recent debate on inter-cultural understanding. In one respect one might characterize the opposing positions in this debate as anthropological universalism and anthropological relativism. Each party, however, imputes to the other a hidden Eurocentrism. The intention of my paper is to show that a third way between these opposing positions is possible, a way that becomes evident when one reflects explicitly on the bearing of European culture on this debate.

Images are objects of work in the laboratory. On its face, this work is achieved through talk Yet the talk attached to these images makes reference to other images, which are drawn from varcous environments. In this article, four such environments are identified: the domain of laboratory practice; the context of invisible physical reactions; the future image as it will appear in publication; and the domain of case precedents and reference scenarios from the field. The work of image analysis brings (...) the outside of the image into it and takes the inside out. Thus it can be seen that images are not just taken, they are designed and made. (shrink)

For years, attempts at ensuring the social sustainability of digital solutions have focused on ensuring that they are perceived as helpful and easy to use. A smooth and seamless work experience has been the goal to strive for. Based on document analysis and interviews with 15 stakeholders, we trace the setting up of a data infrastructure in Danish General Practice that had achieved just this goal – only to end in a scandal and subsequent loss of public support. The ease (...) of data access made it possible for data to be extracted, exchanged and used by new actors and for new purposes – without those producing the data fully realizing the expansion of the infrastructure. We suggest that the case has wider relevance for a still more data-intensive healthcare sector and a growing data economy: when those who produce the data are not made aware of new uses of data, it makes it more difficult to resolve potential conflicts along the way. In the Danish case, conflicting views on legitimate data use led to the collapse of the infrastructure. Therefore, while seamlessness may be a solution to the old problem of a poor fit between user and technology, this celebrated virtue may also involve new problems relating to social instability. As digital solutions tend to be integrated still more seamlessly in still more of our activities, we need to develop political mechanisms to define and protect the rights and obligations of both data suppliers and users in order to ensure the long-term sustainability of digital infrastructures. (shrink)

Research on facial emotion expression has mostly focused on emotion recognition, assuming that a small number of discrete emotions is elicited and expressed via prototypical facial muscle configurations as captured in still photographs. These are expected to be recognized by observers, presumably via template matching. In contrast, appraisal theories of emotion propose a more dynamic approach, suggesting that specific elements of facial expressions are directly produced by the result of certain appraisals and predicting the facial patterns to be expected for (...) certain appraisal configurations. This approach has recently been extended to emotion perception, claiming that observers first infer individual appraisals and only then make categorical emotion judgments based on the estimated appraisal patterns, using semantic inference rules. Here we report two related studies to empirically investigate the facial action unit configurations that are used by actors to convey specific emotions in short affect bursts and to examine to what extent observers can infer a person’s emotions from the predicted facial expression configurations. The results show that 1) professional actors use many of the predicted facial action unit patterns to enact systematically specified appraisal outcomes in a realistic scenario setting, and 2) naïve observers infer the respective emotions based on highly similar facial movement configurations with a degree of accuracy comparable to earlier research findings. Based on estimates of underlying appraisal criteria for the different emotions we conclude that the patterns of facial action units identified in this research correspond largely to prior predictions and encourage further research on appraisal-driven expression and inference. (shrink)

We disagree with Juslin & Vll's (J&V's) thesis that music-evoked emotions are indistinguishable from other emotions in both their nature and underlying mechanisms and that music just induces some emotions more frequently than others. Empirical evidence suggests that frequency differences reflect the specific nature of music-evoked emotions: aesthetic and reactive rather than utilitarian and proactive. Additional mechanisms and determinants are suggested as predictors of emotions triggered by music.

THIS PAPER is not a piece of "research"; it simply offers a series of reflections on the transcendental method. It is occasioned by the realization that, while this method is interesting and important in the opinion of some, it can count on little familiarity in the United States. And where philosophers and students of philosophy make the effort, they have great difficulty appreciating transcendental philosophy or understanding its proposals. This difficulty is, as I say, largely circumstantial and due to a (...) lack of familiarity with the relevant works, but, viewed less superficially, it is motivated by a positive affiliation to another philosophical tradition. In fact, the positions of this other tradition are, if largely in a modern guise, the very ones against which transcendental philosophy reacted. This historical relationship has also systematic relevance. In many ways, pre-transcendental positions seem to have priority: we need only think of formal logic, certain basic stances in empiricist epistemology, common sense. Accordingly, the subjective difficulty of philosophers and students of such persuasions can be treated "objectively," as the difficulty of ever establishing arguments for the transcendental turn or for what Kant calls the "Copernican revolution." Transcendental philosophy must provide arguments, so it seems, on the pre-transcendental level to establish the transcendental position. Further, supposing this problem can be overcome, there is the genuine difficulty of understanding what the transcendental theory actually says and in what way it does its job. And lastly, supposing we find that it lives up to its program, there may still be difficulty with certain implications such that philosophers and students take refuge in non-transcendental positions rather than calling for improvements of transcendental philosophy. In this paper we cannot, of course, fully discuss to what extent the transcendental position can take care of its critics. The paper is mainly concerned with the difficulty of access or introductory argument to transcendental philosophy. (shrink)

This paper discusses Aristotle's notion of the practical syllogism. It is argued that the notion of ‘practical’ reasoning in the sense of reasoning which implies motion in one sense or the other is alien to Aristotle's philosophy of nature. All (at least in type) the relevant passages will be discussed. The outcome is that there are three different contexts in which it would be justified to speak of practical syllogisms: (i) human deliberation, (ii) the illustration of the triggering cause of (...) animal motion, and (iii) the teleological ex post explanationof human action. (i) is genuine, but non-deductive reasoning which does not immediately result in action/motion, whereas (ii) is not genuine reasoning, but an analogy with deductive reasoning. Finally, the relation between (i) and (ii) in Aristotle's theory of animal motion will be discussed. (shrink)

We introduce a new Turing machine based concept of time complexity for functions on computable metric spaces. It generalizes the ordinary complexity of word functions and the complexity of real functions studied by Ko [19] et al. Although this definition of TIME as the maximum of a generally infinite family of numbers looks straightforward, at first glance, examples for which this maximum exists seem to be very rare. It is the main purpose of this paper to prove that, nevertheless, the (...) definition has a large number of important applications. Using the framework of TTE [40], we introduce computable metric spaces and computability on the compact subsets. We prove that every computable metric space has a c-proper c-admissible representation. We prove that Turing machine time complexity of a function computable relative to c-admissible c-proper representations has a computable bound on every computable compact subset. We prove that computably compact computable metric spaces have concise c-proper c-admissible representations and show by examples that many canonical representations are of this kind. Finally, we compare our definition with a similar one by Labhalla et al. [22]. Several examples illustrate the concepts. By these results natural and realistic definitions of computational complexity are now available for a variety of numerical problems such as image processing, integration, continuous Fourier transform or wave propagation. (shrink)

Social scientists often lament the fact that philosophically trained ethicists pay limited attention to the insights they generate. This paper presents an overview of tendencies in sociological and anthropological studies of morality, ethics and bioethics, and suggests that a lack in philosophical interest might be related to a tendency among social scientists to employ either a deficit model (social science perspectives accommodate the sense of context that philosophical ethics lacks), a replacement model (social scientists have finally found the “right way” (...) of doing ethics), or a dismissal model (ethics should be abandoned all together as a misconstrued veil of power). Increased awareness of differences in styles of reasoning and objects of research interest might help to overcome the hostility, and an anthropological project is presented as an invitation to a dialogue informed by awareness of such differences. (shrink)

Mimicry of appearance or of facial, vocal, or gestural expressions emerges frequently among members of different species. When such mimicry directly relates to affective aspects of an interaction, researchers talk about “emotional mimicry”. Emotional mimicry has been amply documented but its functionality is still debated. Why and when do people mimic the expressions of others, who benefits, the mimicker or the mimicked, and how do they benefit? Which processes underlie emotional mimicry? Is it completely automatic and unconscious or can it (...) be deliberate and conscious? The current Theory Section addresses these questions from different theoretical perspectives. The invited article by Hess and Fischer focused on the role of mimicry in social regulation and social bonding. The invited comment by Krets and Akyüz highlights information gathering and prediction in social interaction. The invited comment by Bernhold and Giles emphasizes vocal communication and its role in interpersonal accommodation. In this editorial, I propose the different theoretical perspectives may be integrated by assuming a multilevel appraisal and response generation mechanism. I also suggest that emotional mimicry research may be broadened by including social learning, vocal imitation, interspecies comparisons, and affective computing approaches. (shrink)

Erstmals wird in dieser Studie die These einer präreflexiven Grundstruktur des Bewusstseins konsequent auf Kierkegaards Selbstanalyse angewandt. Damit reiht der Autor Kierkegaard in die Tradition der Idealismus-Kritik der Deutschen Romantik ein und reflektiert die existenziellen und theologischen Konsequenzen. Abgerundet wird diese Skizze durch die Überführung ihrer Ergebnisse in eine vergegenwärtigende Diskussion, die unter Berufung auf Friedrich Schleiermacher und Ludwig Wittgenstein auslotet, inwiefern sich die existenziell wirksame Erfahrung, die ein Mensch am Grund seines eigenen Bewusstseins macht, als „Gott“ identifizieren läss.

The ArgumentGravitational redshift of spectral lines as one of the three early-known experimental implications of Einstein's general theory of relativity and gravitation was intensively searched for by researchers all over the world, but around 1920 most of the contemporary evidence in the sun's Fraunhofer-spectrum conflicted with the predictions of relativity theory.In 1923 the American astrophysicist Charles Edward St. John announced that his own solar spectroscopic data would force him to retreat from his former skepticism concerning the existence of gravitational redshift. (...) This statement was at the time widely interpreted by scientists and journalists alike as the open confession of a rapid conversion of one of the few remaining serious scientific opponents of Einstein's theory.This paper demonstrates that this illusion of a sudden “Gestalt switch” in St. John's evaluation of data can be dissolved by a careful step-by-step account of St. John's research practice between 1917 and 1923. After a fine-grained diachronic report of the development of St. John's interpretation of his and others' data, the second part of the paper consists in a systematic analysis of the heuristics and arguments used by St. John pro and contra gravitational redshift. (shrink)