Research on women's political representation in postsocialist Europe has highlighted the role of cultural and political factors in obstructing women's access to legislative power, such as the prevalence of traditional gender stereotypes, electoral systems, and the absence of a feminist movement. Yet, the role of women political elites in enhancing or hindering women's access to political power in the region has so far remained uncharted. This article seeks to fill some of the existing gaps in this literature by examining the (...) views of women politicians with regard to women's political underrepresentation and their assessments of strategies for redressing this imbalance. Findings from the analysis reveal that although women politicians recognize gender inequalities in representation as a problem requiring intervention, how the problem is perceived, and the preferred measures to deal with it, is largely shaped by the social and cultural context in which these actors are embedded. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis paper begins with the assumption that it is morally problematic when people in need are offered money in exchange for research participation if the amount offered is unfair. Such offers are called ‘coercive’, and the degree of coerciveness is determined by the offer's potential to cause exploitation and its irresistibility. Depending on what view we take on the possibility to compensate for the sacrifices made by research participants, a wish to avoid ‘coercive offers’ leads to policy recommendations concerning payment (...) for participation. For sacrifices considered compensable, we ought to offer either no payment or payment at a level deemed fair, while for sacrifices deemed incompensable, we always ought to offer no payment because as compensation appears and increases, so too does coercion. This article provides a model for thinking of the way in which degrees of exploitativeness, irresistibility, and coerciveness interact with the size of the reward for compensable and incompensable cases. T... (shrink)

This article argues for a clearer framework of internet-based “memes”. The science of memes, dubbed ‘memetics’, presumes that memes remain “copying units” following the popularisation of the concept in Richard Dawkins’ celebrated work, The Selfish Gene (1976). Yet Peircean semiotics and biosemiotics can challenge this doctrine of information transmission. While supporting a precise and discursive framework for internet memes, semiotic readings reconfigure contemporary formulations to the – now-established – conception of memes. Internet memes can and should be conceived, then, as (...) habit-inducing sign systems incorporating processes involving asymmetrical variation. So, drawing on biosemiotics, Tartu-Moscow semiotics, and Peircean semiotic principles, and through a close reading of the celebrated 2011 Internet meme Rebecca Black’s Friday, this article proposes a working outline for the definition of internet memes and its applicability for the semiotic analysis of texts in new media communication. (shrink)

Dieser Artikel ist eine analytische Besprechung eines kürzlich erschienenen Bandes von Evandro Agazzi, nämlich Das Wissen des Unsichtbaren. Es zeigt auf, wie Agazzi vom Glauben ausgeht, um die zentrale Bedeutung der Vernunft zu entwickeln. Eines der zentralen Themen ist die Erkenntnistheorie der Religion. Den Abschluss bildet eine kurze Erwähnung des Begriffs der Hoffnung.

Cell biologists, including those seeking molecular mechanistic explanations of cellular phenomena, frequently rely on experimental strategies focused on identifying the cellular context relevant to their investigations. We suggest that such practices can be understood as a guided decomposition strategy, where molecular explanations of phenomena are defined in relation to natural contextual (cell) boundaries. This “top-down” strategy contrasts with “bottom-up” reductionist approaches where well-defined molecular structures and activities are orphaned by their displacement from actual biological functions. We focus on the central (...) role of microscopic imaging in cell biology to uncover possible constraints on the system. We show how identified constraints are used heuristically to limit possible mechanistic explanations to those that are biologically meaningful. Historical examples of this process described here include discovery of the mechanism of oxidative phosphorylation in mitochondria, molecular explanation of the first steps in protein secretion, and identification of molecular motors. We suggest that these instances are examples of a form of downward causation or, more specifically, constraining relations, where higher-level structures and variables delimit and enable lower-level system states. The guided decomposition strategy in our historical cases illustrates the irreducibility of experimentally identified constraints in explaining biological activities of cells. Rather than viewing decomposition and recomposition as separate epistemic activities, we contend that they need to be iteratively integrated to account for the ontological complexity of multi-level systems. (shrink)

Präzision ist ein Schlüsselbegriff in Technik, Kunst und Wissenschaft, der in enger Verbindung mit Verfahren der Messung und Feinmechanik steht, aber auch die Schärfe sprachlicher Begriffsbildung oder die Synchronisation tänzerischer Bewegungen beschreiben kann. Die Wissenschaftsgeschichte zeigt, dass der Bedarf nach grösstmöglicher Präzision auch die Widersprüche von Messung und Modell, Versuch und Vorhersage in sich aufgenommen hat - abweichende Messergebnisse wurden so zum eigentlichen Beleg für die Genauigkeit einer Methode und den Bedarf ihrer weiteren Raffinierung. Der interdisziplinäre Blick auf verschiedene Felder (...) zeigt, wie der damit verbundene Anspruch in ihnen produktiv gemacht und reflektiert worden ist. Fallstudien zu Beispielen aus mehreren Jahrhunderten gehen dieser Frage nach, ergänzt um Auszüge aus grundlegenden historisch-theoretischen Beiträgen. (shrink)

Charles Darwin's curiosity had a remarkable childlike enthusiasm driven by an almost compulsive appetite for a constant process of discovery, which he never satiated despite his many voyages. He would puzzle about the smallest things, from the wonders of barnacles to the different shapes, colours and textures of the beetles which he obsessively collected, from flowers and stems to birds, music and language, and would dedicate years to understanding the potential significance of everything he saw. Darwin's findings and theories relied (...) heavily on that same curiosity, on seeking and answering questions, however long these would take to clarify. His son Francis Darwin often recalls how "he would ask himself 'now what do you want to say' and his answer written down would often disentangle the confusion". In fact, "disentangling confusions" seems to have been the driving force behind Darwin's scientific pursuits, as he was struck with bewilderment when contemplating the luxuriousness of life. It was also the impetus for this book. The true implications of Darwin's legacy remain as controversial to the critics of our time as they were to his contemporaries. Darwin's impact within and beyond the biological sciences is both daunting and exhilarating, and attests to the need for an interdisciplinary approach by remaining a challenge to many scholars in the most diverse fields. The recent revival of his theories has opened a Pandora's box of different theoretical studies that are particularly receptive to exploring new and exciting angles of research. (shrink)

Clark and Fischer's three levels of depiction of social robots can be conceptualized as cognitive schemas. When interacting with social robots, humans shift between schemas similarly to how they shift between identity category schemas when interacting with other humans. Perception of mind, context cues, and individual differences underlie perceptions of which level of depiction is most situationally relevant.

Advances in genetic research have created the need to inform consumers. Yet, the communication of hereditary risk and of the options for how to deal with it is a difficult task. Due to the abstract nature of genetics, people tend to overestimate or underestimate their risk. This paper addresses the issue of how to communicate risk information on hereditary breast and ovarian cancer through an online application. The core of the paper illustrates the design of OPERA, a risk assessment instrument (...) that applies the UK National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence's guidelines on the basis of (i) the number of relatives on the same side of the family with the same cancer or cancers that are known to run together; (ii) the ages of these relatives at diagnosis and (iii) the closeness of the family relationship with the person who is doing the assessment. By relying on the argumentation theory, we explain how the communication strategy that OPERA implements is essentially based on Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca's deductive argumentation by association. By using as premises “facts” (propositions about reality that can be assumed without further justification) and “truths” (propositions that make connections about facts), OPERA delivers its claims with an ex auctoritate causal link aimed at transferring the audience's acceptance of the cause to the effect. Overall, the design of OPERA rests on its capacity to induce users' active processing of risk information through an appeal to their reasoning faculty. In the conclusion, we present some results from a pilot evaluation of users' acceptance of OPERA. (shrink)

Mathematical modelling has played an increasingly prominent role in public health responses, for example by offering estimates of how infectious disease incidence over time may be affected by the adoption of certain policies and interventions. In this paper, we call for greater research and reflection into the ethics of mathematical modeling in public health. First, we present some promising ways of framing the ethics of mathematical modeling that have been offered in the very few publications specifically devoted to this subject. (...) Second, to draw out some issues that have not yet been sufficiently considered, we bring in the case of mathematical modeling in voluntary medical male circumcision (VMMC) initiatives for HIV prevention in Africa. We argue that greater attention should be paid to ethical considerations in mathematical modeling, particularly as its use is becoming more widespread and its potential impacts are becoming greater in the ‘big data’ era, as witnessed during the COVID-19 pandemic. (shrink)

The brain networks underlying human multiple-cue judgment, the judgment of a continuous criterion based on multiple cues, have been examined in a few recent studies, and the ventral precuneus has been found to be a key region. Specifically, activation differences in ventral precuneus (as measured with functional magnetic resonance imaging, fMRI) has been linked to an exemplar-based judgment process, where judgments are based on memory for previous similar cases. What aspects of exemplar-based judgment ventral precuneus supports is however poorly understood. (...) Ventral precuneus is a brain region important for various episodic memory processes, where increased engagement of this region together with the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) and the medial temporal lobes (MTL) during learning have been linked to retrieval success. Several alternatives are plausible, for example that reduced brain activity in ventral precuneus during learning to make exemplar-based judgments could reflect reduced needs for visuo-spatial attention as a function of learning to master the task. The present study used fMRI during a multiple-cue judgment task to gain novel neurocognitive evidence informative for the link between learning-related activity changes in ventral precuneus and exemplar-based judgment. Participants (N = 27) spontaneously learned to make judgments during fMRI, in a multiple-cue judgment task specifically designed to induce exemplar-based processing. Contrasting brain activity during late learning to early learning indeed revealed higher activity in ventral precuneus, the bilateral MTL and the vmPFC. Activity in the ventral precuneus and the vmPFC was found to parametrically increase between each judgment event, and activity levels in the ventral precuneus predicted performance after learning. These results are interpreted such that the ventral precuneus supports the aspects of exemplar-based processes that are related to episodic memory, tentatively by building and retrieving memory representations for judgment. (shrink)

Background In the coronavirus disease 2019 era, doctors have tried to decrease hospital visits and admissions. To this end, telemedicine was implemented in a non-systematic manner according. The objective of this study was to assess the current knowledge and attitudes of physicians in Alexandria, Egypt, and Punjab, India, toward telemedicine and its ethical and medico-legal issues. Method A cross-sectional study was implemented using an anonymous self-administered questionnaire carried out over two months (July and August 2020). A four-point Likert scale was (...) used to collect data about background knowledge, training in telemedicine and ethical and medico-legal issues in telemedicine practice. Results The questionnaire was completed by 175 Egyptian and 51 Indian physicians from different specialties. A significantly higher percentage of Indian physicians practiced telemedicine than Egyptian physicians during the coronavirus disease 2019 era. Although most physicians had no specific training or licensing to practice telemedicine, most of them practiced telemedicine through their social media accounts. Ethical violations involving waiving patient consent were detected. Significant ethical violations to doctors, for example, blackmail, defamation, hate speech, accusations in a court and violations of privacy, were observed. Indian physicians (39.2%) and Egyptian physicians (24%) thought the penalties should be lower in telemedicine than in traditional practice. Finally, most participants would like to continue using telemedicine after the coronavirus disease 2019 era but with improvements. Conclusions Coronavirus disease 2019 changed the acceptance of telemedicine by physicians. Many ethical and legal issues need to be addressed and clarified using formal training before implementation and standardization of telemedicine services. (shrink)

Revisitant le voyage peu connu de Ernesto Che Guevara au Congo en 1965 à partir de son Journal du Congo, l’article propose une lecture décoloniale de la coopération entre Cuba et le Congo. Considérée comme un « échec » militaire, cette mission de soutien témoigne tout à la fois d’une alliance des pays du tiers-monde et d’une volonté anticoloniale et anti-impériale d’imaginer des possibles politiques alternatifs. Elle montre aussi les difficultés de faire front commun et d’implanter au Congo l’idéal marxiste (...) cubain de « l’homme nouveau ». Malgré cette situation ambivalente, analysée à partir du journal du Che et de photographies, cette expérience militaire a été un premier jalon tiers-mondiste d’affirmation de « modernités multiples », qui ne sont pas assujetties aux seules modernités occidentales, comme en témoigne une description de l’exposition artistique du Sud Global de La Havane en 1989, conçue par l’auteure comme en étroite filiation avec le rêve du Che. (shrink)

TheCulexis now widely recognized as a piece of post-Ovidian, possibly Tiberian, pseudo-juvenilia written by an author impersonating the young Virgil, although it was attached to Virgil's name already in the first centuryc.e., being identified as Virgilian by Statius, Suetonius and Martial. Dedicated to the young Octavian (Octauiin line 1), the poem seems to fill a biographical gap in Virgil's career before his composition of theEclogues. It is introduced as aludus, which Irene Peirano suggests may openly refer to ‘the act of (...) impersonating Virgil’, and, like many of the poems in theAppendix Vergiliana, it seems to have a parodic intent. TheCulexhas been interpreted as a parody of neoteric style and the epyllion, as mock-epic, as Virgil parody (John Henderson called it a ‘spoofAeneidin bucolic drag’), as pointed Augustan satire, as mock Ovidian ‘Weltgedicht’ and as just very bad poetry (Housman's ‘stutterer’). Glenn Most has observed that the poem's three ‘acts’ structurally recapitulate Virgil's three major works in chronological succession. Little attention, however, has been paid to theCulex's final lines, which contain a catalogue of flowers thepastorplaces on the gnat's tomb. Recent scholarship has reintroduced an older interpretation of the gnat's tomb as a political allegory of Augustus’ Mausoleum; in this paper I suggest instead that the tomb and its flowers serve a closural and metapoetic function at the end of the poem. (shrink)

Cristofano Bertelli’s companion broadsheets, printed in Modena in the 1560s, represent a failed attempt to introduce a new iconographic theme to the Italian print market. Contrary to the vibrant success of transalpine prints representing the Steps of Life with animal analogies, Bertelli’s initiative did not stimulate Italian visual culture to produce the multiple copies, imitations and derivations long enjoyed by this motif in areas north of the Alps. The only other, comparable images to appear in the peninsula in the course (...) of the sixteenth century would seem to be Titian’s allegorical triple portrait, and a pair of large, anonymous woodcuts from the later Cinquecento, possibly made in Venice. The recalcitrance of Counter-Reformation Italy towards this imported topos is difficult to account for, especially when a retail vogue for a similar genre—the multi-vignette moralising broadsheet— was trending in local print markets. There is no direct explanation for the apparent indifference met by Bertelli’s attempt at iconographic innovation. Nonetheless, a cluster of factors relative to print culture and animal lore North and South of the Alps provides indirect but ample evidence to account for the ‘flop’ of Bertelli’s broadsheets. Among these, the Christian visual tradition features prominently, contributing to viewer diffidence towards serial analogies between humans and animals. The market for illustrated books on animals is also considered, as it testifies to a transalpine divide with regard to moralised natural history and, in Italy, an inhospitable cultural climate for the Steps of Life motif. (shrink)

Los summaria alexandrinorum (conocidos como ǧawāmiʿ al-iskandarāniyyīn en árabe) son resúmenes de obras galénicas que solo sobreviven en versiones hebreas o árabes. Tradicionalmente, estas traducciones se han atribuido a Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq (s. IX) y se han vinculado a la enseñanza de la medicina en la Alejandría de los siglos VI y VII. En este artículo presentamos la edición de uno de estos ǧawāmiʿ al-iskandarāniyyīn, en concreto el compendio árabe del De simplicium medicamentorum facultatibus de Galeno que se conserva en (...) el manuscrito Huntington 600/2 de la Bodleian Library de Oxford. Con la publicación de este texto inédito pretendemos contribuir a comprender mejor la naturaleza y el origen de este tipo de textos, así como a facilitar su consulta y estudio por parte de otros especialistas. Añadimos una breve introducción sobre los summaria alexandrinorum y su importancia en la enseñanza y la transmisión de la medicina en la Edad Media, seguida de una serie de apuntes acerca del De simpl. med. fac. A continuación, se describe el manuscrito fuente tanto en forma como en contenido y se fijan los criterios de edición. Asimismo, se han extraído del texto los usos y las características más comunes de la farmacopea galénica. Con el fin de ofrecer una edición rigurosa, se ha cotejado el texto con la traducción completa del De simpl. med. fac. al árabe, así como con otros tratados de simples andalusíes. (shrink)

There is an emerging consensus that retrieval practice is a powerful way to enhance long-term retention and to reduce achievement gaps in school settings. Less is known whether retrieval practice benefits performance in individuals with low intrinsic motivation to spend time and effort on a given task, as measured by self-reported need for cognition. Here, we examined retrieval practice in relation to individual differences in NFC by combining behavioral and functional magnetic resonance imaging data. Using a within-subject design, upper-secondary school (...) students learned a language-based material, with half of the items by means of retrieval practice with feedback and half by study only. One week later, the students were tested on the word-pairs either in the classroom, or in a fMRI scanner. In both settings, a retrieval practice effect was observed across different levels of NFC. Relatedly, comparable fMRI effects were seen in both NFC subgroups. Taken together, our findings provide behavioral and brain-imaging evidence that retrieval practice is effective also for individuals with lower levels of NFC, which is of direct relevance for educational practice. (shrink)

Persuaded by the observed positive link between the flow of appropriately skilled and trained female talent and female presence at the upper echelons of management, this study has examined current trends on women’s uptake of graduate and executive education programs in the world’s top 100 business schools and explored the extent to which these business schools promote female studentship and career advancement. It contributes by providing pioneering research insight, albeit at an exploratory level, into the emerging best practice on this (...) important aspect of business school behavior, an area which is bound to become increasingly appreciated as more global economic actors wise up to the significant diseconomies inherent in the under-utilization of female talent, particularly in the developing world. Among the study’s main findings are that female graduate students averaged 30% in the sample business schools, a figure not achieved by a majority of the elite schools, including some of the highest ranked. Only 10% of these business schools have a specialist center for developing women business leaders, and only a third offered women-focused programs or executive education courses, including flextime options. A higher, and increasing, percentage of business schools, however, reported offering fellowships, scholarships or bursaries to prospective female students, and having affiliations with pro-women external organizations and networks that typically facilitate career-promoting on-campus events and activities. The implications of the foregoing are discussed, replete with a call on key stakeholder groups to more actively embrace the challenge of improving the supply of appropriately trained female talent, or top management prospects. Future research ideas are also suggested. (shrink)

Background: Despite the reported harms and ethical concerns about physical restraint use in the critical care settings, nurses’ intention to apply them is unequal across countries. According to the theory of planned behaviour, eliciting nurses’ beliefs regarding the use of physical restraints would provide additional social information about nurses’ intention to perform this practice. Aim: To explore the salient behavioural, normative and control beliefs underlying the intention of critical care nurses to use physical restraints from the theory of planned behaviour. (...) Research design: A belief elicitation study was conducted. Participants and research context: Twenty-six critical care nurses were purposively sampled across gender, work-shift patterns and professional experience in five intensive care units of three hospitals in Spain. Data were obtained from a nine-item open-ended questionnaire and a focus group. Deductive content analysis was performed. Ethical considerations: Ethical approval was obtained from the hospital ethics committee. Participants were assured their participation was voluntary. Findings: Nurses framed the use of restraints as a way of prioritising patients’ physical safety. They referred to contextual factors as the main reasons to justify their application. Nurses perceived that their decision is approved by other colleagues and the patients’ relatives. Some nurses started advocating against their use, but felt powerless to change this unsafe practice within an unfavourable climate. Control beliefs were linked to patients’ medical condition, availability of alternative solutions, analgo-sedation policies and work organisation. Discussion: Safety arguments based on the surrounding work environment were discussed. Conclusion: Nurses’ behavioural and control beliefs were related. Nurses should be trained in alternatives to physical restraint use. The impact of analgo-sedation protocols, relatives’ involvement, leadership support and intensive care unit restraint policies on physical restraint practices need to be revised. Further research is required to explore why nurses do not act with moral courage to change this harmful practice. (shrink)

The idea of merit is at the core of intense contemporary debate related to social justice in general and meritocracy in particular. In this paper, I aim to differentiate the notion of merit from two other notions with which it is often mistakenly identified, namely the concepts of talent and achievement. Here, I define “merit” as the value of an action that 1) is imputable to a subject‘s free conduct, 2) implies some sort of effort, and 3) is oriented towards (...) a good. Merit so understood is a valuable phenomenon considered from various perspectives, and therefore the subject who has it deserves to be properly recognized. But, more importantly, this merit is valuable in a sense that is different from the value attached to talent and achievement. We should therefore try to recognize the three of them according to their specificity. I conclude by signaling some problems and limitations associated with the idea of merit that, on the one hand, contribute to the aforementioned confusion and, on the other hand, show that the principle of merit must not be absolutized to the detriment of other forms of value (including talent and achievement). (shrink)

The most popular uniting theme in feminist peace literature grounds women's peace work in mothering. I argue if maternal arguments do not address the variety of relationships different races and classes of mothers have to institutional violence and/or the military, then the resulting peace politics can only draw incomplete conclusions about the relationships between maternal work/thinking and peace. To illustrate this I compare two models of mothering: Sara Ruddick's decription of "maternal practice" and Patricia Hill Collins's account of racial-ethnic (...) women's "motherwork.". (shrink)

In this article, we explore how deep brain stimulation (DBS) devices designed to “close the loop”—to automatically adjust stimulation levels based on computational algorithms—may risk taking the individual agent “out of the loop” of control in areas where (at least apparent) conscious control is a hallmark of our agency. This is of particular concern in the area of psychiatric disorders, where closed-loop DBS is attracting increasing attention as a therapy. Using a relational model of identity and agency, we consider whether (...) DBS designed for psychiatric regulation may require special attention to agency. To do this, we draw on philosophical work on relational identity and agency, connecting it with reports from people using first-generation DBS devices for depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder. We suggest a way to extend a notion of relational agency to encompass neural devices. (shrink)

Envy is almost universally condemned. But is its reputation warranted? Sara Protasi argues envy is multifaceted and sometimes even virtuous.