Objectives: To examine the perspectives of journal editors and authors on overlapping and redundant publications in clinical research.Design: Pretested cross-sectional survey, containing both forced choice and open ended questions, administered by mail to the senior editors and one randomly selected author from all journals in the Abridged Index Medicus that published clinical research.Main measurements: The views of editors and authors about the extent of redundant publications, why they occur, how to prevent and respond to cases, and when the publication of (...) overlapping manuscripts is justified.Results: Seventy two per cent of editors and 65% of authors completed the survey. There was consensus between both groups that redundant publications occur because authors feel the pressure to publish and journals do not do enough to publicise, criticise, and punish cases, and that the publication of most types of overlapping articles is unacceptable. Sixty seven per cent of authors but only 31% of editors felt, however, that it was justified to publish an overlapping article in a non-peer reviewed symposium supplement, and 68% of editors but 39% of authors supported imposing restrictions on guilty authors’ future submissions. In written comments, 15% to 30% of both groups emphasised that it was justified to publish overlapping articles when there were different or non-English-speaking audiences, new data, strengthened methods, or disputed findings.Conclusions: Editors, authors, and other academic leaders should together develop explicit guidelines that clarify points of contention and ambiguity regarding overlapping manuscripts. (shrink)

We consider structural completeness in modal logics. The main result is the necessary and sufficient condition for modal logics over K4 to be hereditarily structurally complete: a modal logic λ is hereditarily structurally complete $\operatorname{iff} \lambda$ is not included in any logic from the list of twenty special tabular logics. Hence there are exactly twenty maximal structurally incomplete modal logics above K4 and they are all tabular.

While specifications and verifications of concurrent systems employ Linear Temporal Logic , it is increasingly likely that logical consequence in image will be used in the description of computations and parallel reasoning. Our paper considers logical consequence in the standard image with temporal operations image and image . The prime result is an algorithm recognizing consecutions admissible in image, so we prove that image is decidable w.r.t. admissible inference rules. As a consequence we obtain algorithms verifying the validity of consecutions (...) in image and solving the satisfiability problem. We start by a simple reduction of logical consecutions of image to equivalent ones in the reduced normal form . Then we apply a semantic technique based on image-Kripke structures with formula definable subsets. This yields necessary and sufficient conditions for a consecution to be not admissible in image. These conditions lead to an algorithm which recognizes consecutions admissible in image by verifying the validity of consecutions in special finite Kripke structures of size square polynomial in reduced normal forms of the consecutions. As a consequence, this also solves the satisfiability problem for image. (shrink)

A collection of essays discussing the philosophical perspectives of thinking and education, this book considers such subjects as the development of education, the role of micro-computers in science education and theories of education.

Context: Under the title “Ask von Glasersfeld,” for 13 years the Oikos web site offered the opportunity to questioners to pose any type of query directly to Ernst von Glasersfeld. Purpose: Based on the collected questions and answers gathered on the web site, this series of four articles re-presents and highlights key aspects of von Glasersfeld’s life’s work constructing his model of radical constructivism. Method: The question-answer pairs are grouped into eight categories. Because the selected contents are so extensive, these (...) eight categories are presented in a series of four articles, of which this is the second and which deals with with von Glasersfeld’s views on human experience. The material is divided into two main themes: the first deals with his views on “experiential reality” and the second deals with the issue of “learning.” Results: One of von Glasersfeld’s main objectives was to define clearly that which we can rationally claim to know. As part of this task, in the first section of this article he deals with the question of how we go about constructing our personal experiential reality. The second part deals with his views on how to apply practically the tenets of radical constructivism in a variety of fields. He is especially interested in redefining what “learning” means and in creating novel approaches to teaching and training students. Implications: This re-presentation of von Glasersfeld’s ideas offers an easily accessible resource for people of all levels of understanding who are seeking to deepen their appreciation of his work. One can come to appreciate not only the lucidity of his writings but also glean “insights” into the person himself, who can be glimpsed between the lines of these various interactions. (shrink)

Это сборник эссе о наиболее значимых явлениях в современной культуре. Для широкого круга читателей.

As we know, the activity approach to understanding man and his world became widespread in Russian philosophy in the 1960s-70s. At the time, it was, I should emphasize, one of the most significant manifestations of progressive trends in Soviet philosophical thought, which strived to overcome the stagnation and dogmatism of official Marxism. However, as it happens whenever the authority of an intellectual current is established, the activity approach and the category of activity were used frequently in a superficial way, simply (...) because they were fashionable at the time. This gave me occasion to announce, in a collection of articles on the problems of the a tivity approach published in 1976, that a sort of magical word "activity," unsupported by responsible conceptual analysis, was widely used.1 There is no doubt, however, that the development of the activity approach by serious theoreticians was backed up by sufficiently deep conceptual analysis, which advanced our philosophical culture of the time. (shrink)

The urgency of the study of the interaction of man, culture and education in the information society is gaining momentum, as the information society needs to deepen this interaction. This problem arises because people are beginning to rethink the problem of the context of the interaction of culture and education, which affect the person as a creature. The purpose of the study is to conceptualize the interaction of man, culture and education in an information society that requires conditions under which (...) effective interaction is effected that influences the deployment of essential forces in these areas. Formation of the aims of the article: studying the problems of human interaction, culture and education in the conditions of the information society; Identification of the concept of "educational and informational culture" as the coexistence of educational and information culture; an analysis of the interaction of man, culture and education as a value-mutually determined phenomena of human existence, which saturate, enrich and complement each other. An analysis of recent researches and publications from which the solution to this problem was initiated: the use of articles by the authors of V.Andruschenko, T.Andruschenko, O.Bazaluk, A. Boyko, V.Vashkevich, V.Voronkova, L.Gorbunova, O.Kivlyuk, S. Klepko, A. Kravchenko, S. Kutsepal, O. Punchchenko, I. Radionova, N. Skotnoy. Among the Belarusian scientists, we distinguish works by P. Vodopianov, A. Zelenkov, A. Lazarevich, V. Starginsky, V. Tsepkalo. Among the foreign ones are works by Carol Dvec, Richard Florida, Mary Furst and Jurgen Trinks, Eric Brignolfsson and Andrew Macafi, and others. Research methodology is a method of cultural creativity, which contributes to the construction of a model of cultural and innovative education and polity as the main drivers of sustainable development. Scientific novelty - identification of problems of interaction of man, culture and education in the conditions of the information society, contributing to the formation of a new cultural and educational policy as a policy of sustainable development. The results of the research: the interaction of man, culture and education - it is a valuable inter-deterministic phenomena of human existence, which saturate, enrich and complement each other. Therefore, the emergence of the concept of educational culture, and sometimes there is a scientific and educational culture, or educational and information culture, is not accidental in the information age. It is also complemented by the concept of "cultural and educational policy". Conclusion - we formed the concept of interaction of man, culture and education in the information society, based on a new cultural and educational policy that contributes to the formation of a policy of sustainable development. (shrink)

In this paper we present an informal review of our recent work whose goal is to develop a mathematical theory of the physical phenomenon of emission and absorption of radiation by systems of nonrelativistic matter such as atoms and molecules.

Purpose: To develop a realistic view that integrates the idea that knowledge is a constructive process. Problem: In the controversy between realism and constructivism, both sides have often misunderstood each other. Many realists still consider constructivism as a kind of idealism. And constructivists often assume that realists believe they have direct access to things as they really are. It seems necessary to clarify the statements of either side, to rule out some misunderstandings, and then to discuss anew the central epistemological (...) problems. Solution: A version of realism is proposed that takes into account constructivist ideas and objections. Realism as presented here is not opposed to the idea that cognition is a constructive process. According to this view, reality is something we presuppose in any attempt to attain knowledge though we can never be certain how things really are. Having knowledge amounts to the preliminary judgment that some hypotheses seem to correspond to reality better than others. In addition, it is demonstrated that a constructivist position that reduces the claim to knowledge even further does not solve the problems better but creates new ones. Finally, Mitterer's non-dualizing view of descriptions is discussed. It is argued that description necessarily presupposes something different from language. (shrink)