The vital data about the electrical activities of the brain are carried by the electroencephalography signals. The recordings of the electrical activity of brain neurons in a rhythmic and spontaneous manner from the scalp surface are measured by EEG. One of the most important aspects in the field of neuroscience and neural engineering is EEG signal analysis, as it aids significantly in dealing with the commercial applications as well. To uncover the highly useful information for neural classification activities, EEG studies (...) incorporated with machine learning provide good results. In this study, a Fusion Hybrid Model with Singular Value Decomposition Based Estimation of Robust Parameters is proposed for efficient feature extraction of the biosignals and to understand the essential information it has for analyzing the brain functionality. The essential features in terms of parameter components are extracted using the developed hybrid model, and a specialized hybrid swarm technique called Hybrid Differential Particle Artificial Bee algorithm is proposed for feature selection. To make the EEG more practical and to be used in a plethora of applications, the robust classification of these signals is necessary thereby relying less on the trained professionals. Therefore, the classification is done initially using the proposed Zero Inflated Poisson Mixture Regression Model and then it is also classified with a deep learning methodology, and the results are compared with other standard machine learning techniques. This proposed flow of methodology is validated on a few standard Biosignal datasets, and finally, a good classification accuracy of 98.79% is obtained for epileptic dataset and 98.35% is obtained for schizophrenia dataset. (shrink)

This article presents a novel control approach, hybrid neuro-fuzzy, for the load frequency control of a four-area interconnected power system. The advantage of this controller is that it can handle nonlinearities, and at the same time, it is faster than other existing controllers. The effectiveness of the proposed controller in increasing the damping of local and inter-area modes of oscillation is demonstrated in a four-area interconnected power system. Areas 1 and 2 consist of a thermal reheat power plant, whereas Areas (...) 3 and 4 consist of a hydropower plant. Performance evaluation is carried out by using fuzzy, artificial neural network, adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system, and conventional proportional and integral control approaches. Four different models with different controllers are developed and simulated, and performance evaluations are carried out with said controllers. The result shows that the intelligent HNF controller has improved dynamic response and is at the same time faster than ANN, fuzzy, and conventional PI controllers. (shrink)

In sports education, psychological strength is considered as an integral component in the performance of any athlete. One of the effective ways to improve many psychological attributes involves training. The sample consisted of 450 athletes divided into an experimental group (EG) (n = 225) that received eight-week imagination training and a control group (CG) (n = 225) that continued with conventional training. Data was examined using the latest version of SPSS 17.0, using descriptive statistics, paired t-tests, and Analysis of covariance (...) (ANCOVA) to control for pre-existing differences. Psychological strength, mental resilience, focus and concentration, confidence, and stress management are important in athletic performance. It is proposed as a method of enhancing these psychological attributes in sports education. There were differences in significance in the EG in psychological strength, focus and concentration, confidence, and stress management compared with the CG. Paired t-tests in these variables reflect p< 0.05. ANCOVA supported the efficiency of imagination training. Imagination training significantly develops psychological strength and other related attributes in athletes. In all the variables studied, the EG performed better compared to the CG, which provided evidence that imagination training is indeed a helpful tool in enhancing psychological strength and performance in sports education. (shrink)

Technological evaluations have significantly enhanced college students’ fine arts competence development by providing advanced tools and platforms that foster creativity, improve technical skills, and enable innovative artistic expression. In this study 500 college students were mentioned as participators. The variables Technological Tools, Technical Proficiency, Advanced Technologies, Creativity and Innovation, Online Platforms, Skill Development, and Collaborative Competencies are built to evaluate various aspects of technological and creative capabilities in educational and professional settings. Fine arts competitions like the (Artificial Intelligence) AI art (...) contest, digital choreography competition, and speech AI innovation challenge are held for the students to improve their skill development. The questionnaires are taken to measure the student's technological skills development based on before and after competitions. The SPSS software version 28 is used to statistically analyze the data with multiple regression analysis and pearson correlation analysis. The results showed that the integration of technological tools and platforms significantly improved college student's technical proficiency, creativity, and collaborative skills in fine arts. Students exhibited notable enhancements in skill development and engagement with advanced technologies post-competition. Technology significantly enhances fine arts education by improving students' artistic skills and collaboration. Embracing digital tools offers valuable opportunities to enrich curricula and foster innovation. (shrink)

Lab VIEW is frameworks designing programming for applications that require test, estimation, and control with fast access to equipment and information experiences. Lab VIEW By National Instruments is very good graphical programming tool for Engineers. Lab VIEW can be interface may peripheral devices for getting data from surrounding, different type of sensors and other hardware. In this Paper we are showing interfacing of PLC to Lab VIEW software for our application.

Objectives During the COVID-19 pandemic, healthcare resources including staff were diverted from paediatric services to support COVID-positive adult patients. Hospital visiting restrictions and reductions in face-to-face paediatric care were also enforced. We investigated the impact of service changes during the first wave of the pandemic on children and young people (CYP), to inform recommendations for maintaining their care during future pandemics. Design A multi-centre service evaluation was performed through a survey of consultant paediatricians working within the North Thames Paediatric Network, (...) a group of paediatric services in London. We investigated six areas: redeployment, visiting restrictions, patient safety, vulnerable children, virtual care and ethical issues. Results Survey responses were received from 47 paediatricians across six National Health Service Trusts. Children's right to health was largely believed to be compromised by the prioritisation of adults during the pandemic (81%; n = 33). Sub-optimal paediatric care due to redeployment (61%; n = 28) and the impact of visiting restrictions on CYP's mental health (79%; n = 37) were reported. Decreased hospital attendances of CYP were associated with parental fear of COVID-19 infection-risks (96%; n = 45) and government ‘stay at home’ advice (89%; n = 42). Reductions in face-to-face care were noted to have disadvantaged those with complex needs, disabilities and safeguarding concerns. Conclusion Consultant paediatricians perceived that paediatric care was compromised during the first wave of the pandemic, resulting in harm to children. This harm must be minimised in subsequent pandemics. Recommendations for future practice which were developed from our findings are provided, including maintaining face-to-face care for vulnerable children. (shrink)

Imagination as the key to the creative process is one of the key components of design education that affects students' problem-solving skills and innovation. The purpose of this research is to determine the impact of creative imagination on the academic performance of students enrolled in design courses. It intends to obtain a measure of the way creative imagination affects or influences students’ performance as well as their achievements. However, there is a lack of understanding regarding the correlation between creativity and (...) performance among university students. The study collected data on creative imagination and academic performance through a survey of 350 participants drawn from five universities. Self-administered questionnaires were distributed to 350 participants, of which 320 were 176 males and 144 females. The research included quantitative techniques such as linear regression, correlation analysis, and structural equation modeling-partial least squares (SEM-PLS). Further, the result of the analysis showed that imagination level has the most significant impact on academic outcomes in design programs with a strong positive effect (β=0.35, p-value = 0.04). Higher creative imagination scores had a positive correlation with grades and students' involvement. This underscores the importance of forecasting to enhance students’ performance and engagement in design programs. The strategies used in education should be utilized to supplement creativity to raise the performance and satisfaction of students. (shrink)

This chapter discusses contemporary scientific research on the role of reason and emotion in moral judgment. The literature suggests that moral judgment is influenced by both reasoning and emotion separately, but there is also emerging evidence of the interaction between the two. While there are clear implications for the rationalism-sentimentalism debate, we conclude that important questions remain open about how central emotion is to moral judgment. We also suggest ways in which moral philosophy is not only guided by empirical research (...) but continues to guide it. (shrink)

In this paper, we employ bibliometric analysis to empirically analyse the research on social entrepreneurship published between 1996 and 2017. By employing methods of citation analysis, document co-citation analysis, and social network analysis, we analyse 1296 papers containing 74,237 cited references and uncover the structure, or intellectual base, of research on social entrepreneurship. We identify nine distinct clusters of social entrepreneurship research that depict the intellectual structure of the field. The results provide an overall perspective of the social entrepreneurship field, (...) identifying its influential works and analysing scholarly communication between these works. The results further aid in clarifying the overall centrality features of the social entrepreneurship research network. We also examine the integration of ethics into social entrepreneurship literature. We conclude with a discussion on the structure and evolution of the social entrepreneurship field. (shrink)

Consumers are increasingly facing product evaluation and choice situations that include information about product sustainability, i.e., information about a product’s relative environmental and social impact. In many cases, consumers have to make decisions that involve a trade-off between product sustainability and other valued product attributes. Similarly, product and marketing managers need to make decisions that reflect how consumers will respond to different trade-off scenarios. In the current research, we study consumer responses across two different possible trade-off scenarios: one in which (...) consumers face a trade-off between product sustainability and hedonic value, and another in which they must trade-off between product sustainability and utilitarian value. Our results suggest that, overall, consumers are more likely to trade-off hedonic value for sustainability than to trade-off utilitarian value for sustainability. In Studies 1A and 1B, we presented participants with a product choice task and also measured their anticipatory emotions as they contemplated their options. The results suggest that given a trade-off, consumers are more likely to choose a sustainable product when they have to trade-off hedonic value than when they have to trade-off utilitarian value. Further, these studies provide some insight into the emotions underlying this effect. In Study 2, we use a different consumer response measure, relative purchase likelihood, and investigate the effect of trade-off type across categories that vary in the degree to which hedonic and utilitarian attributes are perceived to be important. Our results suggest that the effect of trade-off type still holds, yet is moderated by product type such that consumers’ greater willingness to trade-off hedonic value for sustainability is attenuated as the relative importance of hedonic attributes increases. In addition to building on our theoretical understanding of decision making given trade-offs with moral attributes, this research is also intended to support managers as they define and choose among various strategic, product development, and marketing promotion options. (shrink)

Given the rapid growth and emerging trend of e-commerce have changed consumer preferences to buy online, this study analyzes the current Indian legal framework that protects online consumers’ interests. A thorough analysis of the two newly enacted laws, i.e., the Consumer Protection Act, 2019 and Consumer Protection Rules, 2020 and literature review support analysis of 290 online consumers answering the research questions and achieving research objectives. The significant findings are that a secure and reliable system is essential for e-business firms (...) to work successfully; cash on delivery is the priority option for online shopping; website information and effective customer care services build a customer's trust. The new regulations are arguably strong enough to protect and safeguard online consumers' rights and boost India’s e-commerce growth. Besides factors such as security, privacy, warranty, customer service, and website information, laws governing consumer rights protection in e-commerce influence customers’ trust. Growing e-commerce looks promising with a robust legal framework and consumer protection measures. The findings contribute to the body of knowledge on e-commerce and consumer rights protection by elucidating the key factors that affect customer trust and loyalty and offering an informative perspective on e-consumer protection in the Indian context with broader implications. (shrink)

Basic income and basic capital are two common ideas for redesigning distribution. Basic income provides people with a regular income from government. Basic capital provides people with a lump-sum grant. An important part of scholarly debate concentrates on the merits of basic income versus basic capital. This paper claims that these debates are too narrow. First, current debates overlook the way that a chief inspiration for both ideas, Thomas Paine, wanted basic capital and basic income to be complements not substitutes. (...) Second, it is more instructive to compare basic capital or basic income with a wider set of alternatives than with each other. Widening the debates would benefit the discussion of a basic capital or basic income. (shrink)

For close to forty years now T.M. Scanlon has been one of the most important contributors to moral and political philosophy in the Anglo-American world. Through both his writing and his teaching, he has played a central role in shaping the questions with which research in moral and political philosophy now grapples. Reasons and Recognition brings together fourteen new papers on an array of topics from the many areas to which Scanlon has made path-breaking contributions, each of which develops a (...) distinctive and independent position while critically engaging with central themes from Scanlon's own work in the area. Contributors include well-known senior figures in moral and political philosophy as well as important younger scholars whose work is just beginning to gain wider recognition. Taken together, these papers make evident the scope and lasting interest of Scanlon's contributions to moral and political philosophy while contributing to a deeper understanding of the issues addressed in his work. (shrink)

Whistleblowing is the public disclosure of information with the purpose of revealing wrongdoings and abuses of power that harm the public interest. This book presents a comprehensive theory of whistleblowing: it defines the concept, reconstructs its origins, discusses it within the current ethical debate, and elaborates a justification of unauthorized disclosures. Its normative proposal is based on three criteria of permissibility: the communicative constraints, the intent, and the public interest conditions. The book distinguishes between two forms of whistleblowing, civic and (...) political, showing how they apply in the contexts of corruption and government secrecy. The book articulates a conception of public interest as a claim concerning the presumptive interest of the public. It argues that public interest is defined in opposition to corporate powers and its core content identified by the rights that are all-purposive for the distribution of social benefits. A crucial part of the proposal is dedicated to the impact of security policies and government secrecy on civil liberties. It argues that unrestrained secrecy limits the epistemic entitlement of citizens to know under which conditions their rights are limited by security policies and corporate interests. When citizens are denied the right to assess when these policies are prejudicial to their freedoms, whistleblowing represents a legitimate form of political agency that safeguards the fundamental rights of citizens against the threat of unrestrained secrecy by government power. Finally, the book contributes to shifting the attention of democratic theory from the procedures of consent formation to the mechanisms that guarantee the expression of dissent. It argues that whistleblowing is a distinctive form of civil dissent that contributes to the demands of institutional transparency in constitutional democracies and explores the idea that the way institutions are responsive to dissent determines the robustness of democracy, and ultimately, its legitimacy. What place dissenters have within a society, whether they enjoy personal safety, legal protection, and safe channels for their disclosure, are hallmarks of a good democracy, and of its sense of justice. (shrink)

The primary question this article deals with is one of ontology. In a dystopian world populated with genetically engineered windups and hybrids, what constitutes ‘the human’? This article looks at how the posthuman body in a dystopian novel like The Windup Girl, set in a world where geographical, political, social, economic and religious norms and boundaries are erased and reconfigured, can in no way simply remain a mere body, but transmutes into a highly complex political and social site from whence (...) multiple relations of power originate, travel and culminate in. The titular character in the novel, Emiko, is a genetically engineered windup created in a laboratory, with obedience and the need to please etched right into her DNA. This makes her a prized possession for a brothel owner in Bangkok, once her Japanese master abandons her. She is both desirable and revolting to her customers at the same time – her perfect body is too perfect, her genetic urge to please at any cost draws them in, but her involuntary shaking and robot-like jerking disgusts them. The windup can thus be seen as both the Lacanian object cause of desire and Kristeva’s abject body. (shrink)

The social sciences are at a remarkable confluence of events. Advances in computing have made it feasible to analyze data at the scale of the population of the world. How can we combine the depth of inquiry in the social sciences with the scale and robustness of statistics and computer science? Can we decompose complex questions in the social sciences into simpler, more robustly testable hypotheses? We discuss these questions and the role of machine learning in the social sciences.

The integration of biomedical terminologies is indispensable to the process of information integration. When terminologies are linked merely through the alignment of their leaf terms, however, differences in context and ontological structure are ignored. Making use of the SNAP and SPAN ontologies, we show how three reference domain ontologies can be integrated at a higher level, through what we shall call the OBR framework (for: Ontology of Biomedical Reality). OBR is designed to facilitate inference across the boundaries of domain ontologies (...) in anatomy, physiology and pathology. (shrink)

Covid-19 has sparked calls for a universal basic income as a way of coping with a demand shock caused by the pandemic. Temporary income payments have been part of the emergency response to the pandemic. This paper questions the effectiveness of temporary payments as a way to raise demand. Some observers claim that vouchers are better targeted at sectors hit hard by Covid-19 as people may have a tendency to save than spend from temporary payments. There may be a stronger (...) case for permanent rather than temporary payments if the aim is to boost demand in the economy. (shrink)

Monitoring of clinical trials is important to ensure adherence to protocol, to safeguard the rights of research participants and to achieve compliance with principles of good clinical practice. Recent regulatory changes in India require Ethics Committees to keep an oversight of ongoing clinical trials including on-site monitoring. In this article, we share the experience of on-site monitoring of clinical trials by the Ethics Committee of a tertiary care, academic and research centre in India. We found a large number of shortcomings (...) in the areas of informed consent, adverse events, insurance and reimbursement, which would not have been detected by off-site document review. Interestingly, many shortcomings were also not detected by on-site monitoring arranged by clinical trial sponsors. We therefore conclude that on-site monitoring of ongoing clinical trials is a highly important activity for Indian Ethics Committees. (shrink)

In this study, we employed a combination of bibliometric analysis and a structured review approach to examine the social entrepreneurship (SE) research. Our bibliometric analysis involved 2517 articles containing 155,846 references and we analyzed the data in three time periods: 1990–2009, 2010–2014, and 2015–2020 to detect longitudinal trends. This analysis helped us to identify the intellectual foundation of each period and the evolution of the intellectual structure of SE research. We specifically identified 13, 9, and 11 clusters that constituted the (...) philosophical foundations of SE research for the periods 1990–2009, 2010–2014, and 2015–2020 respectively. A longitudinal comparison of three periods helped us to trace the evolution of the intellectual structure of SE research. Further, the structured review, involving 106 recent influential articles, enabled us to identify 10 recent dominant themes of SE research. Building on our bibliometric and structured review approach, we developed an organizing framework for guiding future SE research across six dimensions: ethics, individual, community, collaborative, organizational, and contextual. (shrink)

Facing the possibility of a surge of COVID-19-infected patients requiring ventilatory support in Intensive Care Units, the Singapore Hospice Council and the Chapter of Palliative Medicine Physicians forward its position on the guiding principles that ought to drive the allocation of ICU beds and its role in care of these patients and their families.

As the introduction and lead article for a special issue of Theory, Culture & Society, ‘Neutral Life/Late Barthes’, this article offers an overview of the ‘new’ Barthes that emerges from the late writings and recent ‘Barthes Studies’. The account centres upon the posthumous publication of Barthes’ three key lecture courses delivered at the Collège de France, at the end of the 1970s, which reflect his preoccupation with the everyday, yet reveal a new degree of sophistication, both formal and conceptual. Presented (...) in their original note form, the lectures present perhaps the clearest affirmative project of Barthes’ entire career. The Neutral in particular is pivotal in understanding an ethics of the late works. While Barthes is perhaps most cited for his rumination on the temporality of the photograph, the lecture courses give rise to an ethics of space and distance, rather than of time and telos. Crucially, for Barthes, the Neutral is not neutrality; it is not divestment, but ‘an ardent, burning activity’. In establishing Barthes’ ethics of a Neutral Life, the articles closes – with reference to Derrida’s mourning of Barthes – with a reminder to read Barthes again, or rather a reminder of our current postponed reading of him. (shrink)

Formalisms based on one or other flavor of Description Logic (DL) are sometimes put forward as helping to ensure that terminologies and controlled vocabularies comply with sound ontological principles. The objective of this paper is to study the degree to which one DL-based biomedical terminology (SNOMED CT) does indeed comply with such principles. We defined seven ontological principles (for example: each class must have at least one parent, each class must differ from its parent) and examined the properties of SNOMED (...) CT classes with respect to these principles. Our major results are: 31% of these classes have a single child; 27% have multiple parents; 51% do not exhibit any differentiae between the description of the parent and that of the child. The applications of this study to quality assurance for ontologies are discussed and suggestions are made for dealing with the phenomenon of multiple inheritance. The advantages and limitations of our approach are also discussed. (shrink)

A challenge to Kant’s less known duty of self-knowledge comes from his own firm view that it is impossible to know oneself. This paper resolves this problem by considering the duty of self-knowledge as involving the pursuit of knowledge of oneself as one appears in the empirical world. First, I argue that, although Kant places severe restrictions on the possibility of knowing oneself as one is, he admits the possibility of knowing oneself as one appears using methods from empirical anthropology. (...) Second, I show that empirical knowledge of oneself is fairly reliable and is, in fact, considered as morally significant from Kant’s moral anthropological perspective. Taking these points together, I conclude that Kant’s duty of self-knowledge exclusively entails the pursuit of empirical self-knowledge. (shrink)

The use of single-use items is now ubiquitous in medical practice. Because of the high costs of these items, the practice of reusing them after sterilisation is also widespread especially in resource-poor economies. However, the ethics of reusing disposable items remain unclear. There are several analogous conditions, which could shed light on the ethics of reuse of disposables. These include the use of restored kidney transplantation and the use of generic drugs etc. The ethical issues include the question of patient (...) safety and the possibility of infection. It is also important to understand the role of informed consent before reuse of disposables. The widespread practice of reuse may bring down high healthcare costs and also reduce the huge amount of hospital waste that is generated. The reuse of disposables can be justified on various grounds including the safety and the cost effectiveness of this practice. (shrink)

Meaning is a key foundation of human life. We yearn to make our life meaningful and have a proper understanding of the meaning of words and worlds, which help us in blossoming of life rather than being trapped in labyrinths of confusion and annihilated in varieties of killing and destruction. But this fundamental yearning for meaning has always been under stress in different periods and epochs of human history. In our contemporary world, we are also going through stress, vis-à-vis the (...) work of meanings in our lives, which is part of a global crisis of meaning. Our global crisis of meaning has multiple genealogies. Our contemporary crisis of meaning has its roots in both the way we relate to language and our worlds, which is discussed in this article. It also discusses how we can cultivate new movements and circles of meaning generation. This is linked to vision and practices of upholding our world and regenerating our earth. I then link processes of meaning generation to processes of coming together of people as well as soul, what is called Lokasamgraha in Indic tradition. I discuss how the global crisis of meaning calls for new cosmopolitan movements as well as building a planetary Lokasamgraha. (shrink)

Air temperature prediction can play a significant role in studies related to climate change, radiation and heat flux estimation, and weather forecasting. This study applied and compared the outcomes of three advanced fuzzy inference models, i.e., dynamic evolving neural-fuzzy inference system, hybrid neural-fuzzy inference system, and adaptive neurofuzzy inference system for AT prediction. Modelling was done for three stations in North Dakota, USA, i.e., Robinson, Ada, and Hillsboro. The results reveal that FIS type models are well suited when handling highly (...) variable data, such as AT, which shows a high positive correlation with average daily dew point, total solar radiation, and negative correlation with average wind speed. At the Robinson station, DENFIS performed the best with a coefficient of determination of 0.96 and a modified index of agreement of 0.92, followed by ANFIS with R2 of 0.94 and md of 0.89, and HyFIS with R2 of 0.90 and md of 0.84. A similar result was observed for the other two stations, i.e., Ada and Hillsboro stations where DENFIS performed the best with R2: 0.953/0.960, md: 0.903/0.912, then ANFIS with R2: 0.943/0.942, md: 0.888/0.890, and HyFIS with R2: 0.908/0.905, md: 0.845/0.821, respectively. It can be concluded that all three models are capable of predicting AT with high efficiency by only using DP, TSR, and WS as input variables. This makes the application of these models more reliable for a meteorological variable with the need for the least number of input variables. The study can be valuable for the areas where the climatological and seasonal variations are studied and will allow providing excellent prediction results with the least error margin and without a huge expenditure. (shrink)

The study explored the role of moral identity in the civic engagement of youth through ethical ideology. A total of 217 individuals comprising of 104 girls and 113 boys completed three scales, namely, moral identity scale, ethics position questionnaire and civic engagement scale.The results showed that moral identity internalization significantly predicted civic engagement attitude and moral identity symbolization significantly predicted civic engagement behaviour. Furthermore, idealism partially mediated the relationship between moral identity and civic engagement.

Exploring new frontiers of sociology does not mean extending existing theories and methods but rather interrogating some of its uncritically accepted modernist assumptions, such as the equating of society and nation-state, the dualism of individual and society and that of ontology and epistemology. Beyond Sociology explores pathways in which we go beyond sociology in terms of exploring the contours of a transformational sociology; this seeks to transform the assumptions of conventional sociological theorizing and practice as well as modes of sociological (...) imagination. Despite all the waters that have flowed around the world for the last 150 years, contemporary sociology, even so-called global sociology, suffers from what Ulrich Beck called the NATO-like firepower of Western sociology. In this context, sociology has to open itself to transcivilizational dialogues and planetary conversations about the very themes of thinking about self, culture and society. So far, globalization of sociology has meant globalization of themes and methods of modernist sociology, which makes an easy equation between sociology and modernity. For sociologists such as Anthony Giddens, Ulrich Beck and André Béteille, sociology is a modern discipline and is post-traditional. But if sociology blindly follows the post-traditional teleology of modernity, how can it study varieties of forms of life—traditional, modern, postmodern and transmodern? These varieties of forms of life exist not only in the so-called traditional societies such as India or Lapland but in all contemporary societies—whether India, Indonesia, Sweden, France, Britain, Germany, Singapore, China or the USA. Beyond Sociology thus initially challenges us to go beyond an a priori teleological privileging of the post-traditional telos of modernist sociology. It invites us to make a foundational interrogation of modernist sociology as a prelude to making sociology part of a planetary conversation about the very themes such as society and individual that it seeks to understand. (shrink)

The introduction of the notion of family resemblance represented a major shift in Wittgenstein’s thoughts on the meaning of words, moving away from a belief that words were well defined, to a view that words denoted less well defined categories of meaning. This paper presents the use of the notion of family resemblance in the area of machine learning as an example of the benefits that can accrue from adopting the kind of paradigm shift taken by Wittgenstein. The paper presents (...) a model capable of learning exemplars using the principle of family resemblance and adopting Bayesian networks for a representation of exemplars. An empirical evaluation is presented on three data sets and shows promising results that suggest that previous assumptions about the way we categories need reopening. (shrink)

“At-own-risk discharges” or “self-discharges” evidences an irretrievable breakdown in the patient–clinician relationship when patients leave care facilities before completion of medical treatment and against medical advice. Dissolution of the therapeutic relationship terminates the physician’s duty of care and professional liability with respect to care of the patient. Acquiescence of an at-own-risk discharge by the clinician is seen as respecting patient autonomy. The validity of such requests pivot on the assumptions that the patient is fully informed and competent to invoke an (...) at-own-risk discharge and that care up to the point of the at-own-risk discharge meets prevailing clinical standards. Palliative care’s use of a multidisciplinary team approach challenges both these assumptions. First by establishing multiple independent therapeutic relations between professionals in the multidisciplinary team and the patient who persists despite an at-own-risk discharge. These enduring therapeutic relationships negate the suggestion that no duty of care is owed the patient. Second, the continued employ of collusion, familial determinations, and the circumnavigation of direct patient involvement in family-centric societies compromises the patient’s decision-making capacity and raises questions as to the patient’s decision-making capacity and their ability to assume responsibility for the repercussions of invoking an at-own-risk discharge. With the validity of at-own-risk discharge request in question and the welfare and patient interest at stake, an alternative approach to assessing at-own-risk discharge requests are called for. The welfare model circumnavigates these concerns and preserves the patient’s welfare through the employ of a multidisciplinary team guided holistic appraisal of the patient’s specific situation that is informed by clinical and institutional standards and evidenced-based practice. The welfare model provides a robust decision-making framework for assessing the validity of at-own-risk discharge requests on a case-by-case basis. (shrink)

We propose a rational method for addressing an important question—who deserves to be an author of a scientific article? We review various contentious issues associated with this question and recommend that the scientific community should view authorship in terms of contributions and responsibilities, rather than credits. We propose a new paradigm that conceptually divides a scientific article into four basic elements: ideas, work, writing, and stewardship. We employ these four fundamental elements to modify the well-known International Committee of Medical Journal (...) Editors (ICMJE) authorship guidelines. The modified ICMJE guidelines are then used as the basis to develop an approach to quantify individual contributions and responsibilities in multi-author articles. The outcome of the approach is an authorship matrix, which can be used to answer several nagging questions related to authorship. (shrink)

Introduction. Healthcare workers (HCWs) should theoretically have the necessary education and environment to adopt a healthy lifestyle, and they supposedly also should have a higher participation rate in WHP programmes. HCWs are, for several reasons, considered to be a key group in health promotion, especially due to the fact that the healthcare system reaches a substantial number of people in need of lifestyle changes such as increased physical activity (PA) [5]. Furthermore, healthcare professionals are considered to be the most credible (...) source of health information [6]. HCWs' lifestyles can play an important role in increasing awareness among patients regarding lifestyle changes, because HCWs' own lifestyle habits and interests in lifestyle behaviour have been shown to positively influence their counselling practices and attitudes [6–7]. The international movement 'Health Promoting Hospitals and Health Services', which was initiated by the World Health Organization (WHO), highlights the importance of also focusing on the health and lifestyle of the employees. Methods. We conducted survey based on a standardized and adapted questionnaire that included socio-demographic data and points related to healthy lifestyle. We adhered to the latest recommendations on designing and reporting survey studies. Before conducting the study, the questionnaire was pretested among 5 experts and revised twice. The survey was conducted in Kazakh / Russian for respondents who speak two languages fluently at the choice of participants. The filling of the questionnaire took on average 45 minutes. We reported absolute numbers and percentages. Chi-square tests were used to compare responses between groups. Results were considered significant at a P value of < 0.05. Statistical analyses were performed using the application SAS OnDemand for academia (version 3.81, Carry, North Carolina, USA). Results. Our data revealed that nurses were more likely to adhere to healthy eating principles and to have a regular diet at home. GPs were more likely to consume fast food and add salt when food is not salted enough. Nurses were more likely to eat greens regularly. GPs had a stronger belief in the impact of diet on health. More nurses rated their diet as healthy. Media promotion significantly influenced GPs for changing diet towards healthier options. Eating patterns vary according to the risk of stress. Research shows that chronic stress influences the amount and types of consumed food, contributing to both overeating and malnutrition, and that stress hormones can lead to the development of obesity. GPs are more likely to have used tobacco products compared to nurses. GPs are more likely to smoke more than 10 cigarettes per day. GPs have a slightly higher belief in the necessity of a healthy lifestyle compared to nurses. GPs and nurses have different testing frequencies for Hepatitis B and C, with nurses testing more frequently. GPs are more likely to have sexual activity after drinking alcohol. Conclusion. It is known that a healthy lifestyle of doctors affects the attitude of patients and their motivation to change their lifestyle. Thus, the lifestyle patterns of health workers, as well as the understanding of the motivation of these patterns, are more likely to affect public health. (shrink)