Autonomous vehicles (AV) offer promising benefits to society in terms of safety, environmental impact and increased mobility. However, acute challenges persist with any novel technology, inlcuding the perceived risks and trust underlying public acceptance. While research examining the current state of AV public perceptions and future challenges related to both societal and individual barriers to trust and risk perceptions is emerging, it is highly fragmented across disciplines. To address this research gap, by using the Web of Science database, our study (...) undertakes a bibliometric and performance analysis to identify the conceptual and intellectual structures of trust and risk narratives within the AV research field by investigating engineering, social sciences, marketing, and business and infrastructure domains to offer an interdisciplinary approach. Our analysis provides an overview of the key research area across the search categories of ‘trust’ and ‘risk’. Our results show three main clusters with regard to trust and risk, namely, behavioural aspects of AV interaction; uptake and acceptance; and modelling human–automation interaction. The synthesis of the literature allows a better understanding of the public perception of AV and its historical conception and development. It further offers a robust model of public perception in AV, outlining the key themes found in the literature and, in turn, offers critical directions for future research. (shrink)

Much research on judgment and decision making has focussed on the adequacy of classical rationality as a description of human reasoning. But more recently it has been argued that classical rationality should also be rejected even as normative standards for human reasoning. For example, Gigerenzer and Goldstein and Gigerenzer and Todd argue that reasoning involves “fast and frugal” algorithms which are not justified by rational norms, but which succeed in the environment. They provide three lines of argument for this view, (...) based on: the importance of the environment; the existence of cognitive limitations; and the fact that an algorithm with no apparent rational basis, Take-the-Best, succeeds in an judgment task. We reconsider –, arguing that standard patterns of explanation in psychology and the social and biological sciences, use rational norms to explain why simple cognitive algorithms can succeed. We also present new computer simulations that compare Take-the-Best with other cognitive models. Although Take-the-Best still performs well, it does not perform noticeably better than the other models. We conclude that these results provide no strong reason to prefer Take-the-Best over alternative cognitive models. (shrink)

Historical sciences like evolutionary biology reconstruct past events by using the traces that the past has bequeathed to the present. Markov chain theory entails that the passage of time reduces the amount of information that the present provides about the past. Here we use a Moran process framework to show that some evolutionary processes destroy information faster than others. Our results connect with Darwin’s principle that adaptive similarities provide scant evidence of common ancestry whereas neutral and deleterious similarities do better. (...) We also describe how the branching in phylogenetic trees affects the information that the present supplies about the past. (shrink)

Are countries especially entitled, if not obliged, to prioritize the interests or well-being of their own citizens during a global crisis, such as a global pandemic? We call this partiality for compatriots in times of crisis “crisis nationalism”. Vaccine nationalism is one vivid example of crisis nationalism during the COVID-19 pandemic; so is the case of the US government’s purchasing a 3-month supply of the global stock of the antiviral Remdesivir for domestic use. Is crisis nationalism justifiable at all, and, (...) if it is, what are its limits? We examine some plausible arguments for national partiality, and conclude that these arguments support crisis nationalism only within strict limits. The different arguments for partiality, as we will note, arrive at these limits for different reasons. But more generally, so we argue, any defensible crisis nationalism must not entail the violation of human rights or the worsening of people’s deprivation. Moreover, we propose that good faith crisis nationalism ought to be sensitive to the potential moral costs of national partiality during a global crisis and must take extra care to control or offset these costs. Thus, crisis nationalism in the form of vaccine nationalism or the hoarding of global supplies of therapeutics during a global pandemic exceeds the bounds of acceptable partiality. (shrink)

Rational analysis (Anderson 1990, 1991a) is an empiricalprogram of attempting to explain why the cognitive system isadaptive, with respect to its goals and the structure of itsenvironment. We argue that rational analysis has two importantimplications for philosophical debate concerning rationality. First,rational analysis provides a model for the relationship betweenformal principles of rationality (such as probability or decisiontheory) and everyday rationality, in the sense of successfulthought and action in daily life. Second, applying the program ofrational analysis to research on human reasoning (...) leads to a radicalreinterpretation of empirical results which are typically viewed asdemonstrating human irrationality. (shrink)

In an increasingly technology-textured environment, smart, intelligent and responsive technology has moved onto the body of many individuals. Mobile phones, smart watches and wearable activity trackers are just some of the technologies that are guiding, nudging, monitoring and reminding individuals in their day-to-day lives. These devices are designed to enhance and support their human users, however, there is a lack of attention to the unintended consequences, the technology non-neutrality and the darker sides of becoming human-tech hybrids. Using the extended mind (...) theory and agential intra-action, we aim at exploring how human-technology hybrids gain collective skills and how these are put to use; how agency is expressed and how this affects the interactions; and what the darker sides are of being a human-technology hybrid. Using a qualitative method, we analyze the experiences of using a wearable activity tracker, with a specific focus on how the tracker and the individual solve tasks, share competences, develop new skills and negotiate for agency and autonomy. We contribute with new insight on human-tech hybridity and present a concept referred to as the agency pendulum, reflecting the dynamism of agency. Finally, we demonstrate how the extended mind theory and agential intra-action as a combined theoretical lens can be used to explore human-tech hybridity. (shrink)

ZusammenfassungEntscheidungen der Therapiebegrenzung und in der Betreuung am Lebensende sind häufig komplex und von ethischen Problemen begleitet. Im Mittelpunkt der Untersuchung steht die entscheidende Frage, wie hilfreich existierende „Ethik-Richtlinien“, die eine ethische Orientierung bei solchen Entscheidungen geben sollen, in der klinischen Praxis tatsächlich sind. Die Frage, welchen Nutzen „Ethik-Richtlinien“ bei der Entscheidungsfindung haben oder haben können, wird hier exemplarisch an einem klinischen Fallbeispiel aus einer Ethik-Kooperationsstudie in der Intensivmedizin analysiert. Vergleichend werden hierzu „Ethik-Richtlinien“ aus Deutschland, der Schweiz und aus Großbritannien (...) herangezogen, die Gegenstand eines internationalen Projekts zur Analyse von Richtlinien waren. Die Möglichkeiten und Grenzen einer ethischen Orientierung an „Ethik-Richtlinien“ bei Entscheidungsproblemen der Therapiebegrenzung und in der Betreuung am Lebensende werden anhand der Fallstudie diskutiert und illustriert. Abschließend werden Schlussfolgerungen für die Entwicklung ethischer Richtlinien für die klinische Praxis formuliert. (shrink)

Entscheidungen der Therapiebegrenzung und in der Betreuung am Lebensende sind häufig komplex und von ethischen Problemen begleitet. Im Mittelpunkt der Untersuchung steht die entscheidende Frage, wie hilfreich existierende „Ethik-Richtlinien“, die eine ethische Orientierung bei solchen Entscheidungen geben sollen, in der klinischen Praxis tatsächlich sind. Die Frage, welchen Nutzen „Ethik-Richtlinien“ bei der Entscheidungsfindung haben oder haben können, wird hier exemplarisch an einem klinischen Fallbeispiel aus einer Ethik-Kooperationsstudie in der Intensivmedizin analysiert. Vergleichend werden hierzu „Ethik-Richtlinien“ aus Deutschland, der Schweiz und aus Großbritannien (...) herangezogen, die Gegenstand eines internationalen Projekts zur Analyse von Richtlinien waren. Die Möglichkeiten und Grenzen einer ethischen Orientierung an „Ethik-Richtlinien“ bei Entscheidungsproblemen der Therapiebegrenzung und in der Betreuung am Lebensende werden anhand der Fallstudie diskutiert und illustriert. Abschließend werden Schlussfolgerungen für die Entwicklung ethischer Richtlinien für die klinische Praxis formuliert. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Darwin claims in the Origin that similarity is evidence for common ancestry, but that adaptive similarities are ‘almost valueless’ as evidence. This second claim seems reasonable for some adaptive similarities but not for others. Here we clarify and evaluate these and related matters by using the law of likelihood as an analytic tool and by considering mathematical models of three evolutionary processes: directional selection, stabilizing selection, and drift. Our results apply both to Darwin’s theory of evolution and to modern (...) evolutionary biology. _1_ Introduction _2_ The Likelihood Framework _3_ A Sufficient Condition for a Similarity to Favour Common Ancestry over Separate Ancestry _4_ The 1/p Criterion and Its Limitations _5_ Directional Selection versus Drift _6_ Stabilizing Selection versus Drift _7_ Going beyond Two Taxa _8_ Conclusions Appendix. (shrink)

The influence of neuroscience looms large today. In this introductory essay, we provide some context for the volume by acknowledging the expansion of applied neuroscience to everyday life and the proliferation of neuroscientific disciplines. We also observe that some individuals have sounded cautionary notes in light of perceived overreach of some claims for neuroscience. Then we briefly summarize the articles that comprise this volume. This diverse collection of papers represents the beginning of a conversation focused on the intersection of sport, (...) ethics and neurophilosophy. As such, the essays also represent a new mode of interaction between philosophy and science with sport in the center of the discussion. (shrink)

This book brings together leading international learning and attention researchers to provide both a comprehensive and wide-ranging overview of the current state of knowledge of this area as well as new perspectives and directions for the future. There are coherent themes that run throughout the book, but there are also, inevitably, fundamental disagreements between contributors on the role of attention in learning. Together, the views expressed in this book paint a picture of a vibrant and exciting area of psychological research, (...) and will be essential reading for researchers of learning and attention. (shrink)

In 1978, Yu. F. Borisov presented an axiom system using a few basic assumptions and four explicit axioms, the fourth being a formulation of the relativity principle; and he demonstrated that this axiom system had (up to choice of units) only two models: a relativistic one in which worldview transformations are Poincaré transformations and a classical one in which they are Galilean. In this paper, we reformulate Borisov’s original four axioms within an intuitively simple, but strictly formal, first-order logic framework, (...) and convert his basic background assumptions into explicit axioms. Instead of assuming that the structure of physical quantities is the field of real numbers, we assume only that they form an ordered field. This allows us to investigate how Borisov’s theorem depends on the structure of quantities. We demonstrate (as our main contribution) how to construct Euclidean, Galilean, and Poincaré models of Borisov’s axiom system over every non-Archimedean field. We also demonstrate the existence of an infinite descending chain of models and transformation groups in each of these three cases, something that is not possible over Archimedean fields. As an application, we note that there is a model of Borisov’s axioms that satisfies the relativity principle, and in which the worldview transformations are Euclidean isometries. Over the field of reals it is easy to eliminate this model using natural axioms concerning time’s arrow and the absence of instantaneous motion. In the case of non-Archimedean fields, however, the Euclidean isometries appear intrinsically as worldview transformations in models of Borisov’s axioms and neither the assumption of time’s arrow, nor the rejection of instantaneous motion, can eliminate them. (shrink)

We begin by considering two principles, each having the form causal completeness ergo screening-off. The first concerns a common cause of two or more effects; the second describes an intermediate link in a causal chain. They are logically independent of each other, each is independent of Reichenbach's principle of the common cause, and each is a consequence of the causal Markov condition. Simple examples show that causal incompleteness means that screening-off may fail to obtain. We derive a stronger result: in (...) a rather general setting, if the composite cause C1 & C2 & … & Cn screens-off one event from another, then each of the n component causes C1, C2, …, Cn must fail to screen-off. The idea that a cause may be ordinally invariant in its impact on different effects is defined; it plays an important role in establishing this no-go theorem. Along the way, we describe how composite and component causes can all screen-off when ordinal invariance fails. We argue that this theorem is relevant to assessing the plausibility of the two screening-off principles. The discovery of incomplete causes that screen-off is not evidence that causal completeness must engender screening-off. Formal and epistemic analogies between screening-off and determinism are discussed. (shrink)

Darwin claims in the Origin that similarity is evidence for common ancestry, but that adaptive similarities are ‘almost valueless’ as evidence. This second claim seems reasonable for some adaptive similarities but not for others. Here we clarify and evaluate these and related matters by using the law of likelihood as an analytic tool and by considering mathematical models of three evolutionary processes: directional selection, stabilizing selection, and drift. Our results apply both to Darwin’s theory of evolution and to modern evolutionary (...) biology. 1 Introduction2 The Likelihood Framework3 A Sufficient Condition for a Similarity to Favour Common Ancestry over Separate Ancestry4 The 1/p Criterion and Its Limitations5 Directional Selection versus Drift6 Stabilizing Selection versus Drift7 Going beyond Two Taxa8 ConclusionsAppendix. (shrink)

Computer and video games have become nearly ubiquitous among individuals in industrialized nations, and they have received increasing attention from researchers across many areas of scientific study. However, relatively little attention has been given to Massively-Multiplayer Online Games . The unique social context of MMOGs raises ethical questions about how communication occurs and how conflict is managed in the game world. In order to explore these questions, we compare the social context in Blizzard’s World of Warcraft and Disney’s Toontown, focusing (...) on griefing opportunities in each game. We consider ethical questions from the perspectives of players, game companies, and policymakers. (shrink)

This article introduces the Philosophy in the Wild collection. Philosophy in the Wild asks how ways of doing philosophy impact the kinds of philosophy being done and the kinds of philosophical engagement that are possible. We think that taking philosophy outside of its usual fluorescent, wired context would open up new ways of theorizing our relation to the world, as well as create new ways of engaging with philosophy. Thus Philosophy in the Wild hosts outdoor and technology-free conferences and workshops. (...) Our goal is to foster a more engaged and contemplative mode of doing philosophy. (shrink)

With the increasing amount of software devoted to industrial automation and process control, it is becoming more important than ever for systems to be able to explain their behavior. In some domain...

_Adv_e_nturous Learning _interrogates the word ‘adventure’ and explores how elements of authenticity, agency, uncertainty and mastery can be incorporated into educational practices. It outlines key elements for a pedagogy of adventurous learning and provides guidelines grounded in accessible theory. Teachers of all kinds can adapt these guidelines for indoor and outdoor teaching in their own culturally specific, place-responsive contexts, without any requirement to learn a new program or buy an educational gimmick. As forces of standardization and regulation continue to pervade (...) educational systems across the globe, both teaching and learning have been starved of creativity, choice and ‘real world’ relevance. Many teachers are keen to improve their practice yet feel constrained by the institutional structures within which they work. By carefully examining adventure and its role in education, teachers can become better able to design and deliver engaging programmes that are underpinned by sound pedagogical principles, and which have deep and enduring meaning for their students. (shrink)

A solitaire version of the classic paper and pencil game! A grid shows an "ocean," in which a flotilla of vessels--that you have to find--is concealed. Most of the puzzles have helpful hints revealing the contents of a few squares, and indicate how many squares in the corresponding rows and columns that contain ships. Sample puzzles show strategies for eliminating possibilities and clueing into likely arrangements. Puzzles are ranked according to difficulty.

This chapter contains sections titled: Child's Play Adolescent Infatuation Flourishing Adulthood Midlife Crisis Pit Stop Unreflective Maturity Maturity Cycles to Sofia (No, Not the Bulgarian Capital) Old Age Re‐Cycling Notes.

Clamp loaders are pentameric AAA+ assemblies that use ATP to open and close circular DNA sliding clamps around DNA. Clamp loaders show homology in all organisms, from bacteria to human. The eukaryotic PCNA clamp is loaded onto 3′ primed DNA by the replication factor C (RFC) hetero‐pentameric clamp loader. Eukaryotes also have three alternative RFC‐like clamp loaders (RLCs) in which the Rfc1 subunit is substituted by another protein. One of these is the yeast Rad24‐RFC (Rad17‐RFC in human) that loads a (...) 9‐1‐1 heterotrimer clamp onto a recessed 5′ end of DNA. Recent structural studies of Rad24‐RFC have discovered an unexpected 5′ DNA binding site on the outside of the clamp loader and reveal how a 5′ end can be utilized for loading the 9‐1‐1 clamp onto DNA. In light of these results, new studies reveal that RFC also contains a 5′ DNA binding site, which functions in gap repair. These studies also reveal many new features of clamp loaders. As reviewed herein, these recent studies together have transformed our view of the clamp loader mechanism. (shrink)

Statistics is the science of collection, summarizing, presentation and interpretation of data. Moreover, it yields methods used in the verification of research hypotheses. The presence of a statistician in a research group remarkably improves both the quality of design and research and the optimization of financial resources. Moreover, the involvement of a statistician in a research team helps the physician to effectively utilize the time and energy spent on diagnosing, which is an important aspect in view of limited healthcare resources. (...) Precise, properly designed and implemented Computerized Clinical Decision Support Systems certainly lead to the improvement of healthcare and the quality of medical services, which increases patient satisfaction and reduces financial burdens on healthcare systems. (shrink)

In this paper, we critically interrogate the benefits of an interdisciplinary and theoretically diverse dialogue between ‘local food’ and ‘alternative food networks’ and outline how this dialogue might be enriched by a closer engagement with discourses of food sovereignty and the politics of scale. In arguing for a shift towards a greater emphasis on food sovereignty, we contend that contemporary discourses of food security are inadequate for the ongoing task of ensuring a just and sustainable economy of food. Further, rather (...) than treating the local and the global as ontologically given categories around which to contest the politics of food, it is our contention that recognising the socio-spatial aspects of the politics of scale has the potential to reinvigorate discourses of food security, food sovereignty and AFNs. Understanding scale as both fixed to a degree as well as contingent and dynamic has implications for an understanding of the role of food systems, for how the rescaled state privileges certain food systems and the possibilities for resistance through ‘jumping scale’ and food utopias. All of these aspects are significant if we are to fully comprehend and contest the challenges of envisioning and enacting real utopias of food sovereignty. (shrink)

Two obvious trends in corporate governance include broadening board accountability beyond shareholders’ interests and paying outside directors with equity compensation (stock and stock options). By integrating common agency and instrumental stakeholder theories, we examine the effect of stock compensation on secondary stakeholders and a firm’s participation in social issues, two areas where interests are less aligned with shareholder value. Consistent with our predictions, we found that while stock compensation may be an effective way to align directors’ goals to those of (...) shareholders, it has adverse effects on important non-shareholder constituencies in the company’s operating environment. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic crisis has had profound effects on global health, healthcare, and public health policy. It has also impacted education. Within undergraduate healthcare education of doctors, nurses, and allied professions, rapid shifts to distance learning and pedagogic content creation within new realities, demands of healthcare practice settings, shortened curricula, and/or earlier graduation have also challenged ethics teaching in terms of curriculum allotments or content specification. We propose expanding the notion of resilience to the field of ethics education under the (...) conditions of remote learning. Educational resilience starts in the virtual classroom of ethics teaching, initially constituted as an “unpurposed space” of exchange about the pandemic’s challenging impact on students and educators. This continuously transforms into “purposed space” of reflection, discovering ethics as a repertory of orientative knowledge for addressing the pandemic’s challenges on personal, professional, societal, and global levels and for discovering (and then addressing) that the health of individuals and populations also has moral determinants. As such, an educational resilience framework with inherent adaptability rises to the challenge of supporting the moral agency of students acting both as professionals and as global citizens. Educational resilience is key in supporting and sustaining professional identify formation and facilitating the development of students’ moral resilience and leadership amid moral complexity and potential moral transgression—not only but especially in times of pandemic. (shrink)

The problem of deviant causation has been a serious obstacle for causal theories of action. We suggest that attending to the problem of deviant causation reveals two related problems for causal theories. First, it threatens the reductive ambitions of causal theories of intentional action. Second, it suggests that such a theory fails to account for how the agent herself is guided by her reasons. Focusing on the second of these, we argue that the problem of guidance turns out to be (...) related to a number of other issues in the literature on action explanation, and that it is much more general: it threatens not only causal theories but any theory of action. Finally, we suggest that a certain version of the view that acting has a constitutive or formal aim can overcome this problem. (shrink)

This paper addresses the possibility of measuring perceived usability in an absolute way. It studies the impact of the nature of the tasks performed in perceived software usability evaluation, using for this purpose the subjective evaluation of an application’s performance via the Software Usability Measurement Inventory (SUMI). The paper reports on the post-hoc analysis of data from a productivity study for testing the effect of changes in the graphical user interface (GUI) of a market leading drafting application. Even though one (...) would expect similar evaluations of an application’s usability for same releases, the analysis reveals that the output of this subjective appreciation is context sensitive and therefore mediated by the research design. Our study unmasked a significant interaction between the nature of the tasks used for the usability evaluation and how users evaluate the performance of this application. This interaction challenges the concept of absolute benchmarking in subjective usability evaluation, as some software evaluation methods aspire to provide, since subjective measurement of software quality will be affected most likely by the nature of the testing materials used for the evaluation. (shrink)

International development policies inevitably encounter a conflict in their implementation, representing the gap between universal goals and grass-roots practice. The aim of this study was to explore and understand the significance of this gap, and to apply knowledge management principles as a lens to suggest bridging solutions. The research focuses on non-governmental organisations, which are a sub-section of the civil society. The study was unique as it took a Southern perspective—the views and experiences of policy-makers, practitioners and beneficiaries in Kenya (...) form the basis of the empirical research. Consequently, the research and its findings provide some answers as to how systems of knowledge can be aligned with the core values of organisational and societal culture in order to positively influence international stability. (shrink)