The purpose of this essay is to critically review the design of methods for ethically robust forms of technology appraisal in the regulation of research and innovation in synthetic biology. It will focus, in particular, on the extent to which cost‐benefit analysis offers a basis for informing decisions about which technological pathways to pursue and which to discourage. A further goal is to consider what (if anything) the precautionary principle might offer in enabling better decisions. And this, in turn, raises (...) questions about why mention of precaution can excite accusations of unscientific bias or irrational, “anti‐innovation” extremism. What does the polarized debate tell us about the politics around synthetic biology? In seeking more rigorous, timely, and practical ways to govern these remarkable new technologies, what might we be missing?The sophistication, diversity, and scope of synthetic biology may seem to make it a rather idiosyncratic area for exploring these general issues. It may seem to be a special case, with the bewildering pace of change amplifying the difficulties. But at root, some of the trickiest issues are just specific instances of familiar and long‐standing conundrums in the governance of science and technology. The basic challenge is how to weigh up, for a wide range of potential options, the various pros and cons, as viewed from divergent perspectives, and find a way to justify the best course of action on behalf of society as a whole. This is the central problem addressed by a number of techniques in CBA. On the face of it, synthetic biology seems to present just one more application of these well‐established and self‐confident prescriptive methods.But there do emerge several obstinate, even prohibitive, difficulties for CBA. Although they are well acknowledged by the scholarly literature on and around this topic, they are often sidelined in practice. Yet all are central to the case for applying the concept of precaution to a field like synthetic biology. This essay will briefly explore multicriteria mapping, an appraisal method for exploring contrasting perspectives on emerging technologies, as one practical way to address them. The essay focuses on MCM, not because it presents any sort of panacea for appraisal, but because it is illustrative of the concrete implications of precaution. Setting out even just one among potentially many practical alternative methods at least refutes the last‐ditch argument that CBA is the only operational choice. (shrink)

The future of salmon aquaculture depends on the adoption of alternative feed resources in order to reduce the need for fish meal and fish oil. This may include resources such as species from lower trophic levels, by-products and by-catch from fisheries and aquaculture, animal by-products, plants, genetically modified (GM) plants, nutritionally enhanced GM plants and products from microorganisms and GM microorganisms. Here, we report on a deliberative assessment of these alternative feed resources, involving 18 participants from different interest groups within (...) Norwegian salmon aquaculture. The participants defined a broad range of appraisal criteria concerning health and welfare issues, economical issues, environmental issues, and knowledge and social issues. A number of uncertainties, in the form of incomplete knowledge, diverging opinions, and context specific factors were identified when the participants evaluated the alternatives. Our findings support the need for more research on the suitability of alternative feed resources for farmed salmon. Additionally, the study underlines the importance of facilitating deliberative assessments in order to map the plurality of perspectives and explore qualitative aspects of uncertainty. Such initiatives improve the information base upon which decisions on future feed resources for farmed salmon are made. (shrink)

Walter Map was a twelfth-century courtier and royal servant. He was a prolific writer, but De Nugis Curialium is the only surviving work confidently attributed to him. The book is a collection of short stories and anecdotes about the court, religion and history. Map's references demonstrate that he read widely, not only biblical and theological works, but also classical authors such as Horace, Virgil, Ovid and Juvenal. The only surviving manuscript of the work is a fourteenth-century copy once belonging to (...) the monk John Wells of Ramsey Abbey. The Cambridge bibliographer M. R. James would have been attracted to the breadth of Map's referencing, and the author's light-hearted writing style which was intended to entertain. James' 1914 Oxford publication corrected the earlier work of Thomas Wright who published an edition for the Camden Society in 1850. (shrink)

Different researchers from psychology and neuroscience state that navigation involves the manipulation of cognitive maps and graphs. In this paper, I will argue that navigating – specifically, journey planning – can be conceived as a process of practical reasoning. First, I will argue that journey planning constitutes a case of means-end reasoning involving inferences with cartographic representations. Then, I will argue that the output of journey planning functions as an instrumental belief in means-end reasoning. More specifically, journey planning can deliver (...) an instrumental rule that plays a normative role in spatial cognition. This approach motivates a pluralist conception of practical reasoning, stating that inferences might run through different representational formats and processes. (shrink)

After achieving sustained graft functioning in animal studies, the next step in the progression of xenotransplantation towards clinical application is the initiation of the first clinical trials. This raises the question according to which criteria patients shall be selected for these trials. While the discussion regarding medical criteria has already commenced, ethical considerations must also be taken into account. This is essential, first, to establish a procedure that is ethically reasonable and justified. Second, it is a prerequisite for a publicly (...) acceptable and comprehensible implementation. This paper outlines a multicriteria approach for the selection of patients in first-in-human clinical trials of cardiac xenotransplantation with four ethical criteria: medical need, capacity to benefit, patient choice and compliance (as an exclusion criterion). Consequently, these criteria identify a primary target group of patients who exhibit a high medical need for cardiac xenotransplantation, face a high risk of morbidity and mortality without an organ replcaement therapy, have a substantial chance of benefiting from xenotransplantation, thereby also enhancing the scientific value of the trial, and qualify for an allotransplant to have a real choice between participating in a first-in-human xenotransplantation trial and waiting for a human organ. A secondary group would include patients for whom only the first two criteria are met, that is, who have a high medical need and a good capacity to benefit from xenotransplantation but who have a restricted choice because they do not qualify for an allotransplant. (shrink)

This paper introduces a refined single-valued neutrosophic set (RSVNS) and presents a similarity measure of RSVNSs. Then a multicriteria decision-making method with RSVNS information is developed based on the similarity measure of RSVNSs. By the similarity measure between each alternative and the ideal solution (ideal alternative), all the alternatives can be ranked and the best one can be selected as well. Finally, an actual example on the selecting problems of construction projects demonstrates the application and effectiveness of the proposed (...) method. (shrink)

Incorporation of the behavioral issues of the decision maker (DM) is among the aspects that each Multicriteria Decision Making (MCDM) method implicitly or explicitly takes into account. As postulated by regret theory, the feelings of regret and rejoice are among the behavioral issues associated with the entire decision making process. Within the context of MCDM, the DM may feel regret, when the chosen alternative is compared with another one having at least one better criterion value. PROMETHEE II is a (...) widely known MCDM method that makes no explicit incorporation of regret attitude of the DM. In this paper, we elaborate on the applicability of regret theory to MCDM context. In particular, we investigate the findings of regret theory and explore the parallel between regret theory and PROMETHEE II method. Relying on the concepts of regret theory, we demonstrate how a decision that is made using a PROMETHEE II based outranking method conforms to the regret attitude of the DM. (shrink)

Mapping Mainstream Economics: Genealogical Foundations of Alternativity seeks to establish a definition of the mainstream, and by extension the alternatives to it, by adopting a genealogical approach: tracing the methodological development of the economic mainstream through its ancestry, which allows for a definition of the mainstream which is separate from politically charged categories or gridlocked academic arguments between received schools of thought. The book follows the evolution of the economic mainstream through four major transformations of the discipline: from political (...) to analytical economics, debates around a logical empiricist economics, the consolidation of neoclassical economics and the recent expansion of the mainstream. For each of these steps, the key point of departure is explored, illustrated through the work of leading authors at the time. Thus, the book draws on recent research from the history of economic thought and debates the crucial role of historic concepts of economics for alternativity in the field. Finally, to put the approach into practice, the book examines the relation between today's mainstream and two of its relatives: ecological economics and degrowth. Finally, the book reflects on recent exciting developments in the discourse on alternativity and sheds light on some distant relatives of today's mainstream. This book marks a significant contribution to the literature on the debates around the state and nature of mainstream, alternative and heterodox economics. (shrink)

This chapter develops a semantic theory for maps and situates it within the broader geography of meaning and semiotic significance. The discussion focuses on three central aspects of map semantics: the use of space, line marking, and linguistic tags. It is argued that the treatment of space in maps must be based on geometrical projection from a viewpoint rather than the traditional analysis in terms of spatial isomorphism. The chapter then shows how to integrate the projection-based semantics of maps and (...) the symbolic semantics of markers and tags, within the framework of possible-world semantics. The resulting account addresses issues of accuracy, viewpoint, orientation, and exhaustivity. (shrink)

It is often claimed that pre-attentive vision has an ‘iconic’ format. This is seen to explain pre-attentive vision's characteristically high processing capacity and to make sense of an overlap in the mechanisms of early vision and mental imagery. But what does the iconicity of pre-attentive vision amount to? This paper considers two prominent ways of characterising pre-attentive visual icons and argues that neither is adequate: one approach renders the claim ‘pre-attentive vision is iconic’ empirically false while the other obscures its (...) ability to do the explanatory work, which motivates positing pre-attentive visual icons in the first place. With this noted, I introduce the notion of an ‘Analogue Map’ and argue that it provides a superior characterisation of pre-attentive vision's iconicity. I then argue that this forces a reassessment of debates which have traditionally presupposed the iconicity of pre-attentive vision, emphasising ramifications for the viability of a format-based perception-thought border. (shrink)

While extremes tend to capture attention, the ordinary is often most of the story. So it may be with the structure-mapping process. The structure-mapping process can account for such pinnacles of thinking as analogy and metaphor, which can lead to overlooking the mundane, incremental use of structure mapping. Consequently, the current discussion shifts focus to the value of close comparisons between literally similar items for the development of knowledge. The intent is to foster greater integration between process (...) and content as well as between individuals and collectives. The payoff is identifying some undue simplifications and some promising new directions. (shrink)

ArgumentThis article takes up what and how maps might have taught a Crown Prince in the century before maps became a part of classrooms and Mercator’s system of projection engendered those collective perceptions of space and person that have become a part of a modern shared spatial imagination. The focus of this article is a single codex, utterly unique, which scholars have posited was compiled in 1570 to accompany the Crown Prince of Jülich-Cleves-Berg on his Italian trip. This article argues (...) that this codex was designed to teach him practices of spatial imagination, a concept this article introduces. (shrink)

This book is a comparative study of the production and role of maps, charts, and atlases in early modern England and France with a particular focus on Paris and London.

It's often hypothesized that the structure of mental representation is map-like rather than language-like. The possibility arises as a counterexample to the argument from the best explanation of productivity and systematicity to the language of thought hypothesis—the hypothesis that mental structure is compositional and recursive. In this paper, I argue that the analogy with maps does not undermine the argument, because maps and language have the same kind of compositional and recursive structure.

We derive the exact inefficiency upper bounds of the multiclass C-Logit stochastic user equilibrium in a transportation network. All travelers are classified on the basis of different values of time into M classes. The multiclass CL-SUE model gives a more realistic path choice probability in comparison with the logit-based stochastic user equilibrium model by considering the overlapping effects between paths. To find efficiency loss upper bounds of the multiclass CL-SUE, two equivalent variational inequalities for the multiclass CL-SUE model, i.e., time-based (...) variational inequality and monetary-based VI, are formulated. We give four different methods to define the inefficiency of the multiclass CL-SUE, i.e., to compare multiclass CL-SUE with multiclass system optimum, or to compare multiclass CL-SUE with multiclass C-Logit stochastic system optimum, under the time-based criterion and the monetary-based criterion, respectively. We further investigate the effects of various parameters which include the degree of path overlapping, the network complexity, degree of traffic congestion, the VOT of user classes, the network familiarity, and the total demand on the inefficiency bounds. (shrink)

In recent years, academics and educators have begun to use software mapping tools for a number of education-related purposes. Typically, the tools are used to help impart critical and analytical skills to students, to enable students to see relationships between concepts, and also as a method of assessment. The common feature of all these tools is the use of diagrammatic relationships of various kinds in preference to written or verbal descriptions. Pictures and structured diagrams are thought to be more (...) comprehensible than just words, and a clearer way to illustrate understanding of complex topics. Variants of these tools are available under different names: “concept mapping”, “mind mapping” and “argument mapping”. Sometimes these terms are used synonymously. However, as this paper will demonstrate, there are clear differences in each of these mapping tools. This paper offers an outline of the various types of tool available and their advantages and disadvantages. It argues that the choice of mapping tool largely depends on the purpose or aim for which the tool is used and that the tools may well be converging to offer educators as yet unrealised and potentially complementary functions. (shrink)

In order to understand our thinking, we use all kinds of metaphors. Without them we would be blind to the process of thinking. One of the metaphors is the idea of a "map": the mind is conceived of as something spacial in which our thoughts are located and where connections of all different kinds are established. The process of thinking is conceived of as the travelling along these connections from one thought to another.

A theory of analogical mapping between source and target analogs based upon interacting structural, semantic, and pragmatic constraints is proposed here. The structural constraint of isomorphism encourages mappings that maximize the consistency of relational corresondences between the elements of the two analogs. The constraint of semantic similarity supports mapping hypotheses to the degree that mapped predicates have similar meanings. The constraint of pragmatic centrality favors mappings involving elements the analogist believes to be important in order to achieve the (...) purpose for which the analogy is being used. The theory is implemented in a computer program called ACME (Analogical Constraint Mapping Engine), which represents constraints by means of a network of supporting and competing hypotheses regarding what elements to map. A cooperative algorithm for parallel constraint satisfaction identities mapping hypotheses that collectively represent the overall mapping that best fits the interacting constraints. ACME has been applied to a wide range of examples that include problem analogies, analogical arguments, explanatory analogies, story analogies, formal analogies, and metaphors. ACME is sensitive to semantic and pragmatic information if it is available, and yet able to compute mappings between formally isomorphic analogs without any similar or identical elements. The theory is able to account for empirical findings regarding the impact of consistency and similarity on human processing of analogies. (shrink)

ABSENCE is the claim that, if a symbol appears on a map, then absence of the symbol from some map coordinate signifies absence of the corresponding property from the corresponding location. This claim is highly intuitive and widely endorsed. And if it is true, then cartographic representation is strikingly different from linguistic representation. I argue, however, that ABSENCE is false of various maps and that we have no reason to believe it is true of any maps. The intuition to the (...) contrary results from mistaking what a map simply conveys for what it literally represents. (shrink)

Map making and, ultimately, _map thinking_ is ubiquitous across literature, cosmology, mathematics, psychology, and genetics. We partition, summarize, organize, and clarify our world via spatialized representations. Our maps and, more generally, our representations seduce and persuade; they build and destroy. They are the ultimate record of empires and of our evolving comprehension of our world. This book is about the promises and perils of map thinking. Maps are purpose-driven abstractions, discarding detail to highlight only particular features of a territory. By (...) preserving certain features at the expense of others, they can be used to reinforce a privileged position. -/- _When Maps Become the World_ shows us how the scientific theories, models, and concepts we use to intervene in the world function as maps, and explores the consequences of this, both good and bad. We increasingly understand the world around us in terms of models, to the extent that we often take the models for reality. Winther explains how in time, our historical representations in science, in cartography, and in our stories about ourselves replace individual memories and become dominant social narratives—they become reality, and they can remake the world. -/- Available on The University of Chicago Press website, etc. (shrink)

A theory of analogy must describe how the meaning of an analogy is derived from the meanings of its parts. In the structure‐mapping theory, the interpretation rules are characterized as implicit rules for mapping knowledge about a base domain into a target domain. Two important features of the theory are (a) the rules depend only on syntactic properties of the knowledge representation, and not on the specific content of the domains; and (b) the theoretical framework allows analogies to (...) be distinguished cleanly from literal similarity statements, applications of abstractions, and other kinds of comparisons.Two mapping principles are described: (a) Relations between objects, rather than attributes of objects, are mapped from base to target; and (b) The particular relations mapped are determined by systematicity, as defined by the existence of higher‐order relations. (shrink)

In this paper, I propose a study of the invention and development of the technique of genetic mapping in the 1920's. I show that what is usually taken as one and the same theory (Classical Genetics) is in fact the result of the articulation of various levels of explanations corresponding to two different disciplines, with different methods and representational practices -- namely Mendelian theory and cytology. The merging of these two disciplinary frameworks is embodied in the very rules underlying (...) the construction and interpretation of genetic maps. Moreover, the debates between the geneticists around how to display data within these maps reveal that they have different understanding of the articulation of these disciplines (and different theoretical commitments). (shrink)

Health research initiatives worldwide are growing in scope and complexity, particularly as they move into the developing world. Expanding health research activity in low- and middle-income countries has resulted in a commensurate rise in the need for sound ethical review structures and functions in the form of Research Ethics Committees (RECs). Yet these seem to be lagging behind as a result of the enormous challenges facing these countries, including poor resource availability and lack of capacity. There is thus an urgent (...) need for ongoing capacity and resource development in these regions in general, and in Africa in particular. Similarly, there is a need for research and initiatives that can identify existing capacity and funding and indicate the areas where this needs to be developed.This discussion paper argues that the Mapping African Research Ethics Capacity (MARC) project is a timely initiative aimed at identifying existing capacity. MARC provides a platform and tool on the Council on Health Research for Development's (COHRED) Health Research website (HRWeb), which can be used by RECs and key stakeholders in health research in Africa to identify capacity, constraints and development needs. MARC intends to provide the first comprehensive interactive database of RECs in Africa, which will allow for the identification of key relationships and analyses of capacity. The potential of MARC lies in the mapping of current ethical review activity onto capacity needs. This paper serves as a starting point by providing a descriptive illustration of the current state of RECs in Africa. (shrink)

Provided we agree about the thing, it is needless to dispute about the terms. —David Hume, A treatise of human nature, Book 1, section VIIMap-like representations are frequently invoked as an alternative type of representational vehicle to a language of thought. This view presupposes that map-systems and languages form legitimate natural kinds of cognitive representational systems. I argue that they do not, because the collections of features that might be taken as characteristic of maps or languages do not themselves provide (...) scientifically useful information above and beyond what the individual features provide. To bring this out, I sketch several allegedly distinctive features of maps, and show how they can easily be grafted onto a simple logical language, resulting in a hybrid “manguage.” The ease with which these linguistic and map-like properties can be integrated into a single representational system raises the question of what work broader categories like language and map are doing. I maintain that, as an empirical matter of fact, they serve no particular purpose in cognitive science, and thus do not characterize distinct kinds of cognitive architectures. (shrink)

While the problem of the applicability of mathematics in science has been the object of much philosophical discussion, the converse issue of accounting for the successful application of science in mathematics is still in its exploratory stages. In this paper I focus on the latter issue and I discuss it in connection with the mapping view of applied mathematics, which is currently the most influential approach adopted by philosophers to account for the applicability of mathematics in the empirical sciences. (...) More specifically, I address the question of whether the mapping view works for cases of converse applications (i.e., successful applications of the empirical sciences in mathematics). By focusing on some case studies, I argue that the answer to this question is negative and the mapping account of applied mathematics, as it is usually presented in the literature on the applicability of mathematics, does not have the resources to handle the converse applicability issue. To make my point, I will proceed in the following way: first, I will maintain that we can distinguish two types of converse applications, which I name _in-argument_ and _in-result_ converse applications; next, I will assess the mapping account on these types of converse applications and I will point to the reasons why such view cannot accommodate converse applications within its framework. (shrink)

A number of philosophers and logicians have argued for the conclusion that maps are logically tractable modes of representation by analyzing them in propositional terms. But in doing so, they have often left what they mean by "propositional" undefined or unjustified. I argue that propositions are characterized by a structure that is digital, universal, asymmetrical, and recursive. There is little positive evidence that maps exhibit these features. Instead, we can better explain their functional structure by taking seriously the observation that (...) maps arrange their constituent elements in a non-hierarchical, holistic structure. This is compatible with the more basic claim advanced by defenders of a propositional analysis: that (many) maps do have formal semantics and logic. (shrink)

This paper presents the first bibliometric mapping analysis of the field of computer and information ethics (C&IE). It provides a map of the relations between 400 key terms in the field. This term map can be used to get an overview of concepts and topics in the field and to identify relations between information and communication technology concepts on the one hand and ethical concepts on the other hand. To produce the term map, a data set of over thousand (...) articles published in leading journals and conference proceedings in the C&IE field was constructed. With the help of various computer algorithms, key terms were identified in the titles and abstracts of the articles and co-occurrence frequencies of these key terms were calculated. Based on the co-occurrence frequencies, the term map was constructed. This was done using a computer program called VOSviewer. The term map provides a visual representation of the C&IE field and, more specifically, of the organization of the field around three main concepts, namely privacy, ethics, and the Internet. (shrink)

Fodor advocates a view of cognitive processes as computations defined over the language of thought (or Mentalese). Even among those who endorse Mentalese, considerable controversy surrounds its representational format. What semantically relevant structure should scientific psychology attribute to Mentalese symbols? Researchers commonly emphasize logical structure, akin to that displayed by predicate calculus sentences. To counteract this tendency, I discuss computational models of navigation drawn from probabilistic robotics. These models involve computations defined over cognitive maps, which have geometric rather than logical (...) structure. They thereby demonstrate the possibility of rational cognitive processes in an exclusively non-logical representational medium. Furthermore, they offer much promise for the empirical study of animal navigation. (shrink)

The theme of Chapter 4 is developed and illustrated by considering the example of maps. Maps are partly objective in that there are criteria of accurate representation; they are also partly dependent on our concerns in the choice of features of the terrain that are to be included.

The troubles of our time have many causes, economic, political, cultural. All are intimately connected. Of the cultural causes, one of the most important has been disillusionment about human nature. The old view which exalted man to something a little lower than the angels has given way in many quarters to the conviction that in essentials he is no higher than the beasts, and that anyhow the very notion that anything can be ethically higher than anything else is illusory. I (...) believe that in each of these attitudes to human nature there is a distorted half-truth, in both a blindness to the half-truth of the other. In this essay I shall try to map out the main contours of human nature, so as to emphasize that, although man is at bottom identical with the beasts, he is also in a limited but all-important manner unique. I shall also argue that one consequence of his uniqueness is moral experience, and that in human nature properly understood, a moral goal is very clearly revealed. (shrink)

Across languages, children map words to meaning with great efficiency, despite a seemingly unconstrained space of potential mappings. The literature on how children do this is primarily limited to spoken language. This leaves a gap in our understanding of sign language acquisition, because several of the hypothesized mechanisms that children use are visual (e.g., visual attention to the referent), and sign languages are perceived in the visual modality. Here, we used the Human Simulation Paradigm in American Sign Language (ASL) to (...) determine potential cues to word learning. Sign‐naïve adult participants viewed video clips of parent–child interactions in ASL, and at a designated point, had to guess what ASL sign the parent produced. Across two studies, we demonstrate that referential clarity in ASL interactions is characterized by access to information about word class and referent presence (for verbs), similarly to spoken language. Unlike spoken language, iconicity is a cue to word meaning in ASL, although this is not always a fruitful cue. We also present evidence that verbs are highlighted well in the input, relative to spoken English. The results shed light on both similarities and differences in the information that learners may have access to in acquiring signed versus spoken languages. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Maps for the Classical World: Where Do We Go from Here?Richard TalbertThe apa’s classical atlas project was conceived as the means to an end, and rightly so. Good maps were taken to be vital tools for understanding ancient history and culture at any level, and the ones available in the early 1980s were altogether woefully inadequate. The project was designed to fill this void by preparing a comprehensive atlas (...) for publication in the not-too-distant future.To make a definitive claim at this moment that the target of publication by the end of 1999 will be met must still rank as hubris. Without doubt, however, the odds have increasingly shifted over the past few years in favor of timely completion. As everyone knows, the problems of designing, funding, and developing any ambitious collaborative project are immense, and the atlas has been handed its full share of such difficulties and more. Yet gradually the difficulties seem to have been surmounted, and the project—at present, anyway—remains resolutely on schedule, as much to the surprise of its Director as to everyone else.As the odds have shifted, so, too, has my own perception of the project as an end. To be sure, the maps appearing in the atlas volume will offer the intended comprehensive vision of the physical and cultural landscape of classical antiquity that has been so seriously lacking since Carl Müller provided the last one for William Smith’s Atlas of Ancient Geography in the 1870s. Further gains are assured, too. In particular, to accommodate different needs, it should certainly prove practical to issue the maps in a variety of alternative formats—in sets of loose sheets, for example (with or without cultural data marked on the ancient physical landscape), as wall-maps, slides, digitized images, even a reduced-size textbook atlas. One way or another, these maps have the potential to exert a formative influence on our perception of the classical landscape for many decades to come.Even at the current stage, well before publication, the Atlas Project [End Page 323] has already stimulated fresh attention to cartography: this has grown without any special effort on the project’s part. Most notably, colleagues have become aware that there is now for the first time somewhere to which they can turn as they seek out suitable cartographic materials and design for their research or publications or field survey.Classical studies worldwide would benefit immensely if that “somewhere” were to be made a permanent “center,” established around the same time as the publication of the Atlas of the Greek and Roman World. In the creation of the atlas, both materials and expertise have been accumulated, which it would be irresponsible simply to abandon. The materials cover a wide range—from elements for all the aeronautical charts forming the physical bases for the atlas maps, to copies of older rare maps devoted to classical antiquity.Such maps (and whatever text accompanies them) are by no means necessarily all about to be rendered obsolete by the atlas. The French “archaeological atlases” of Algeria and Tunisia, for example, were compiled by the Brigades Topographiques in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries at scales as generous as 1 : 50,000, whereas the atlas limits itself to 1 : 500,000 in this region (and the area covered by one map at 1 : 500,000 corresponds to literally dozens at 1 : 50,000). Thus for any study with a close focus on Algeria or Tunisia, these French series remain indispensable, although the Tunisian one, with its two editions, is exceptionally rare and hard to obtain. Typically, the few libraries that hold this material have bound the original loose sheet maps into books (rendering it impossible to use the sheets individually), and for obvious reasons, they are not willing lenders. The Atlas Project, I imagine, has been the first to photograph the printed map sheets onto transparent plastic positives. These are sturdy, dimensionally stable, and immune from the fading and deterioration of paper; in addition, when they are laid on top of other maps, everything underneath remains visible.Examples of further cartographic materials for the classical world which will continue to... (shrink)

In the face of enduring environmental decline, ecologists are continuously exploring new ways to improve the relevance of their research and address nature conservation issues. Hoping for more relevant solutions than former species-centered conservation, some ecologists have mapped ecosystems and the services they deliver to human societies. Maps offer crucial, but understudied, relevance-making tools. By proposing a relational conceptualisation of relevance, I demonstrate that maps can make issues simultaneously relevant and irrelevant for conservation. In two mapping projects conducted at (...) the European Union level by the Working Group Mapping and Assessment of Ecosystems and their Services and at the French regional scale by the Laboratoire d’Écologie Alpine, I investigate how the (ir)relevance of ecosystem services maps is enacted through different modes. I successively show that: ecologists employed maps to re-orient their research toward social issues, but were constrained by the available quantified data (mode A); they used maps to implement a biopolitical approach and decide which ecosystems to protect, yet grappled with the imprecision of maps (mode B); and they engaged stakeholders in map development, but had to make excessive adjustments to align with their demands (mode C). I conclude by arguing that ecosystem services maps exemplify an automation of relevance, where relevance is more conditioned by technical feasibility than by the conceptualisation of solutions to conservation issues. Ultimately, the article contributes to the relevance scholarship by advancing the concept of irrelevance, operationalising the study of modes of relevance, and demonstrating that relevance is an inherently relational process. (shrink)

Background The worldwide increase in older persons demands technological solutions to combat the shortage of caregiving and to enable aging in place. Smart home health technologies (SHHTs) are promoted and implemented as a possible solution from an economic and practical perspective. However, ethical considerations are equally important and need to be investigated. Methods We conducted a systematic review according to the PRISMA guidelines to investigate if and how ethical questions are discussed in the field of SHHTs in caregiving for older (...) persons. Results 156 peer-reviewed articles published in English, German and French were retrieved and analyzed across 10 electronic databases. Using narrative analysis, 7 ethical categories were mapped: privacy, autonomy, responsibility, human vs. artificial interactions, trust, ageism and stigma, and other concerns. Conclusion The findings of our systematic review show the (lack of) ethical consideration when it comes to the development and implementation of SHHTs for older persons. Our analysis is useful to promote careful ethical consideration when carrying out technology development, research and deployment to care for older persons. Registration We registered our systematic review in the PROSPERO network under CRD42021248543. (shrink)

Health research initiatives worldwide are growing in scope and complexity, particularly as they move into the developing world. Expanding health research activity in low- and middle-income countries has resulted in a commensurate rise in the need for sound ethical review structures and functions in the form of Research Ethics Committees. The urgent need for continued capacity development in Africa has necessitated research initiatives to identify existing capacity. This discussion paper describes the mapping of RECs in Africa through MARC project, (...) second phase and discusses the findings. MARC provides a platform and tool on COHRED's Health Research HRWeb, which can be used by RECs and key stakeholders in health research in Africa to identify capacity, constraints and development needs. (shrink)

Computer-based argument mapping greatly enhances student critical thinking, more than tripling absolute gains made by other methods. I describe the method and my experience as an outsider. Argument mapping often showed precisely how students were erring (for example: confusing helping premises for separate reasons), making it much easier for them to fix their errors.

Color coding is used to guide attention in computer displays for such critical tasks as baggage screening or air traffic control. It has been shown that a display object attracts more attention if its color is more similar to the color for which one is searching. However, what does similar precisely mean? Can we predict the amount of attention that a display color will receive during a search for a given target color? To tackle this question, two color‐search experiments measuring (...) the selectivity of saccadic eye movements and mapping out its underlying color space were conducted. A variety of mathematical models, predicting saccadic selectivity for given target and display colors, were devised and evaluated. The results suggest that applying a Gaussian function to a weighted Euclidean distance in a slightly modified HSI color space is the best predictor of saccadic selectivity in the chosen paradigm. Hue and intensity information by itself provides a basis for useful predictors, spanning a possibly spherical color space of saccadic selectivity. Although the current models cannot predict saccadic selectivity values for a wide variety of visual search tasks, they reveal some characteristics of color search that are of both theoretical and applied interest, such as for the design of human–computer interfaces. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Mapping Beyond Measure: Art, Cartography, and the Space of Global Modernity by Simon FerdinandDavid TooheyMapping Beyond Measure: Art, Cartography, and the Space of Global Modernity BY SIMON FERDINAND Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2019Mapping Beyond Measure is a geographical and theoretical critique of map art and the tradition of modern mapmaking. The book focuses in depth on a few related examples of map art and departs from (...) critical theory and post-Marxist readings of space. Simon Ferdinand emphasizes fine art and art-film as appropriate counterweights to the authoritarian calculation in modern cartography and, unexpectedly, map art’s critique of mapmaking.Mapping Beyond Measure follows the well-trodden path of critiquing a medium, mapping, and map art as irredeemably authoritarian.1 Situated in this approach, Ferdinand argues that map art reproduces modernist cartography’s assumptions even while critiquing mapping. Aiming to subvert this shortcoming, Ferdinand explores Peter Greenway’s semi-abstract map art films that do not prioritize science over artists. Greenway’s films, especially A Walk Through H, are shown as being as close to an idea of mapping beyond calculation as possible. Indeed, for Ferdinand, Greenway’s map art films are an improvement on “postmodern” theorists.Mapping Beyond Measure explores a small, though logically (and practically) related group of map artists. The first three chapters explore differing approaches to map art, from Soviet painting that unintentionally [End Page 126] heralds globalization and map art’s latent desires to dominate the world, to more contemporary map art about looming societal collapse through the death of nature and mass casualties from aerial bombardment of cities. The following two chapters focus on how mapping creates nation-states. These chapters elucidate the tragic inability of map artists to escape globalization and calculation, the latter exasperated by G.I.S. techniques. These map artists serve as an ensemble that spotlights what, to Ferdinand, are inevitable difficulties that ethical practitioners of map art face in escaping the pitfalls of calculation in mainstream mapping.In chapter 6 Ferdinand explains how Greenway’s film A Walk Through H gets as close as possible to challenging map art through semi-abstract, two-dimensional additions to maps and using movie cameras to create an illusion of movement. Thus, the hierarchy of scientists over artists is partially dismantled. Indeed, Ferdinand lauds Greenway for creating alternatives to established political theorists. Interestingly, Ferdinand replaces ontology with the concept of “chorein” suggesting a more fluid conception of mapping that is not available in theories of space or cartographic practices of calculation. Nonetheless, compared to one of the articles referenced, Ferdinand downplays the destructive nature of chorein as a militaristic, colonial use of maritime space to emphasize its creative potential.2Ferdinand’s examples are primarily Eurocentric, even, surprisingly, in the exception: his focus on Japanese map artist Satomi Matoba. Here Ferdinand departs from Eurocentric examples only to focus on Japan—the most privileged nation-state in Asia. Even in this focus on Japan, which also includes Hawai‘i, Ferdinand does not depart from a frame familiar to Europe: World War II. Indeed, the discussion of Pearl Harbor (a U.S. military base) focuses on U.S. foreign policy, not on Hawai‘i. This thematic choice is relevant to other map artists in Ferdinand’s book. Ferdinand’s critique of calculability is based mainly on the consequences of Nazism, as theorized by Stuart Elden. However, Ferdinand’s theoretical interventions on uneven development in maps and map art would have been more substantial with the addition of detailed, localized, narrative accounts of violence suffered by non-white populations in Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and various European cities. Instead, we get an anonymous logic of maps that uses the idea of the past and potential [End Page 127] future destruction of cities to assume that everyone suffered to the same extent in World War II.While I am reluctant to criticize a book for not offering a solution to what it critiques, to a certain extent, the solution offered by Ferdinand contradicts his normative critique of calculability. In exploring Alison Hildreth’s map art, Ferdinand praises nuanced, temporally layered artistic explorations of ecological destruction and extinction. Likewise, A Walk Through H, is... (shrink)

Employing mapping research, this study mapped the populations of environment-focused social media, audiovisual media and art, in Sweden, over a one-year period. The study explored what is being communicated about the environment in Sweden in these fields, by whom, and how it circulates in diverse communicative spaces. The research identified 502 units across the three fields and a multitude of voices addressing environmental issues through these fields. These channels and voices give visibility to diverse topics and perspectives about the (...) environment and human-nature relations. Simultaneously, there is considerable homogeneity, as a majority of the identified social media, audiovisual media and art units clearly align with ecocentric positions that contest the hegemony of anthropocentrism. These ecocentric voices strongly oppose the dominance of human-centered apprehensions of nature that legitimate nature’s exploitation and the drainage of natural resources for economic profit. Instead, they argue for structural changes promoting environmental protection and the rebalancing of human-nature relations. (shrink)

THIS ESSAY MAPS SOCIAL HISTORICAL AND SOCIAL SCIENTIFIC INTERPREtations of Whiteness to develop an understanding of the complexity and rootedness of Whiteness as a social construction. Mapping Whiteness helps clarify historical pitfalls in the interpretation of racial formation, including the problems of essentialism, dualism, and assimilationism. A social historical perspective retrieves the multiethnic and multiclass reality of the "motley crowd" —sailors, slaves, and commoners whose religious and radical praxis subverted the dominant political and economic forces of the revolutionary Atlantic. (...) The subversive praxis of the motley crowd suggests an alternative moral imagination, moored by Black Catholic political theology, that affirms the historical complexity of racial formation, critiques and subverts White privilege, and celebrates the need to extend multiple struggles for social, political, and economic liberation. (shrink)

The theory of mind debate has reached a “hybrid consensus” concerning the status of theory-theory and simulation-theory. Extant hybrid models either specify co-dependency and implementation relations, or distribute mentalizing tasks according to folk-psychological categories. By relying on a non-developmental framework these models fail to capture the central connection between simulation and theory. I propose a “dynamic” hybrid that is informed by recent work on the nature of similarity cognition. I claim that Gentner’s model of structure-mapping allows us to understand (...) simulation as a process in which psychological representations are aligned, causing the spontaneous abstraction of theoretical generalizations about the psychological domain. (shrink)

Maps and mapping raise questions about models and modeling and in science. This chapter archives map discourse in the founding generation of philosophers of science (e.g., Rudolf Carnap, Nelson Goodman, Thomas Kuhn, and Stephen Toulmin) and in the subsequent generation (e.g., Philip Kitcher, Helen Longino, and Bas van Fraassen). In focusing on these two original framing generations of philosophy of science, I intend to remove us from the heat of contemporary discussions of abstraction, representation, and practice of science and (...) thereby see in a more distant and neutral light the many productive ways in which maps can stand in analytically for scientific theories and models. The chapter concludes by complementing the map analogy – i.e., a scientific theory is a map of the world – with a model analogy, viz., a scientific model is a vehicle for understanding. (shrink)

Mental mapping is a method of interpreting with conceptual metaphors. This method is applied to the admiration song in Song of Songs 7:2–7. The song is interpreted in the context of a dance. For the purpose of interpretation, ancient Egyptian dance paintings and love poems are taken into account. The interpretation presents a methodological study that unmasks arbitrary exegesis and implausible interpretations. It discovers its subtle conceptual metaphors and shows a strategy for a comprehensible exegesis. As a side effect, (...) the male chauvinism present in this song is deconstructed. (shrink)

Neural devices have the capacity to enable users to regain abilities lost due to disease or injury – for instance, a deep brain stimulator (DBS) that allows a person with Parkinson’s disease to regain the ability to fluently perform movements or a Brain Computer Interface (BCI) that enables a person with spinal cord injury to control a robotic arm. While users recognize and appreciate the technologies’ capacity to maintain or restore their capabilities, the neuroethics literature is replete with examples of (...) concerns expressed about agentive capacities: A perceived lack of control over the movement of a robotic arm might result in an altered sense of feeling responsible for that movement. Clinicians or researchers being able to record and access detailed information of a person’s brain might raise privacy concerns. A disconnect between previous, current, and future understandings of the self might result in a sense of alienation. The ability to receive and interpret sensory feedback might change whether someone trusts the implanted device or themselves. Inquiries into the nature of these concerns and how to mitigate them has produced scholarship that often emphasizes one issue – responsibility, privacy, authenticity, or trust – selectively. However, we believe that examining these ethical dimensions separately fails to capture a key aspect of the experience of living with a neural device. In exploring their interrelations, we argue that their mutual significance for neuroethical research can be adequately captured if they are described under a unified heading of agency. On these grounds, we propose an “Agency Map” which brings together the diverse neuroethical dimensions and their interrelations into a comprehensive framework. With this, we offer a theoretically-grounded approach to understanding how these various dimensions are interwoven in an individual’s experience of agency. (shrink)

This paper introduces coupled clustering—a novel computational framework for detecting corresponding themes in unstructured data. Gaining its inspiration from the structure mapping theory, our framework utilizes unsupervised statistical learning tools for automatic construction of aligned representations reflecting the context of the particular mapping being made. The coupled clustering algorithm is demonstrated and evaluated through detecting conceptual correspondences in textual corpora. In its current phase, the method is primarily oriented towards context-dependent feature-based similarity. However, it is preliminary demonstrated how (...) it could be utilized for identification of relational commonalities, as well. (shrink)

The completion of the chimpanzee genome will greatly help us determine which genetic changes are unique to humanity. Chimpanzees are our closest living relative, and a recent study has made considerable progress towards decoding the genome of our sister taxon.1 Over 75,000 common chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) bacterial artificial chromosome end sequences were aligned and mapped to the human genome. This study shows the remarkable genetic similarity (98.77%) between humans and chimpanzees, while highlighting intriguing areas of potential difference. If we wish (...) to understand the genetic basis of humankind, the completion of the chimpanzee genome deserves high priority. BioEssays 24:490–493, 2002. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)