This book places thermodynamics on a system-theoretic foundation so as to harmonize it with classical mechanics. Using the highest standards of exposition and rigor, the authors develop a novel formulation of thermodynamics that can be viewed as a moderate-sized system theory as compared to statistical thermodynamics. This middle-ground theory involves deterministic large-scale dynamical system models that bridge the gap between classical and statistical thermodynamics. The authors' theory is motivated by the fact that a discipline as cardinal as thermodynamics--entrusted with some (...) of the most perplexing secrets of our universe--demands far more than physical mathematics as its underpinning. Even though many great physicists, such as Archimedes, Newton, and Lagrange, have humbled us with their mathematically seamless eurekas over the centuries, this book suggests that a great many physicists and engineers who have developed the theory of thermodynamics seem to have forgotten that mathematics, when used rigorously, is the irrefutable pathway to truth. This book uses system theoretic ideas to bring coherence, clarity, and precision to an extremely important and poorly understood classical area of science. (shrink)

This book develops a general analysis and synthesis framework for impulsive and hybrid dynamical systems.

It has consistently been shown that agents judge the intervals between their actions and outcomes as compressed in time, an effect named intentional binding. In the present work, we investigated whether this effect is result of prior bias volunteers have about the timing of the consequences of their actions, or if it is due to learning that occurs during the experimental session. Volunteers made temporal estimates of the interval between their action and target onset , or between two events . (...) Our results show that temporal estimates become shorter throughout each experimental block in both conditions. Moreover, we found that observers judged intervals between action and outcomes as shorter even in very early trials of each block. To quantify the decrease of temporal judgments in experimental blocks, exponential functions were fitted to participants’ temporal judgments. The fitted parameters suggest that observers had different prior biases as to intervals between events in which action was involved. These findings suggest that prior bias might play a more important role in this effect than calibration-type learning processes. (shrink)

We are living in an unprecedented era of biomedical revolution. Medicine is remaking humans, and controversy surrounds such topics as abortion, artificial organs, brain circuitry, eugenics, euthanasia, and gene therapy. At the same time, medical advances are posing complex ethical problems for both patients and professionals. The most comprehensive and up-to-date collection of its kind, Case Studies in Biomedical Ethics: Decision-Making, Principles, and Cases explores fundamental ethical questions arising from real situations faced by health professionals, patients, and others. Featuring a (...) wide range of more than 100 case studies drawn from current events, court cases, and physicians' experiences, the book is divided into three parts. Part I presents a basic framework for ethical decision-making in healthcare, covering such issues as separating evaluative questions from questions of fact; distinguishing between ethical and nonethical evaluations; and identifying the source of ethical judgments. Expanding upon this framework, Part II explains the ethical principles: beneficence and nonmaleficence, justice, respect for autonomy, veracity, fidelity, and avoidance of killing. Parts I and II provide students with the background to analyze the ethical dilemmas presented in Part III, which features cases on a broad spectrum of issues including abortion, genetics, mental health, confidentiality, health insurance, experimentation on humans, the right to refuse treatment, and death and dying. Each case is accompanied by the authors' commentary, which guides students in considering the issues. Ideal for undergraduate and graduate courses in biomedical ethics, bioethics, and medical ethics, Case Studies in Biomedical Ethics incorporates opening text boxes in each chapter that cross-reference relevant cases in other chapters. It also includes an appendix of important ethical codes and a glossary of key terms. (shrink)

This study aims at measuring the level of unacceptability of certain unethical behaviours for educators in accounting/finance as well as marketing/management in their various roles. The research was conducted utilising a quantitative approach based on the Integrated Social Contracts Theory in order to compare norms of ethically acceptable/unacceptable behaviours of A/F and M/M educators in the context of Kuwait. The population for this study consisted of educators from A/F and M/M from different Business Schools in Kuwait. The results of the (...) study indicate there is general agreement on unacceptable behaviours in academia between the two groups; however, in general, A/F faculty tend to rate nearly all unethical behaviors as slightly more unacceptable than do M/M faculty. While this may possibly indicate that A/F faculty are slightly more ethical, more likely it reflects different ways of perceiving the world among quantitatively vs. qualitatively-oriented faculty. We also compare the results to a prior similar survey conducted by Siegel and Jackson. It seems that the perceived ethics of behaviours differs somewhat among educators in different parts of the world. This study is expected to assist the development of an ethical code in Kuwaiti academe. This in turn will help students to learn about codes of ethics which will govern their future conduct as professionals. (shrink)

Social fears emerging in adolescence can have negative effects on emotional well-being. Yet the mechanisms by which these risks occur are unknown. One possibility is that associative learning results in fears to previously neutral social stimuli. Such conditioned responses may alter subsequent processing of social stimuli. We used a novel conditioning task to examine how associative processes influence social fear and attention orienting in adolescents. Neutral photographs were paired with socially rewarding or aversive stimuli during conditioning; a dot-probe task then (...) assessed biases in attention orienting. The social conditioning task modified subjective ratings of the neutral stimuli. Moreover, for the neutral stimulus that was paired with the aversive stimulus, the strength of conditioning showed a relationship with subsequent attentional vigilance. The findings elucidate mechanisms by which negative peer experiences during adolescence may affect emotional processing. (shrink)

There is a paucity of experimental data addressing how peers influence adolescent risk-taking. Here, we examined peer effects on risky decision-making in adults and adolescents using a virtual social context that enabled experimental control over the peer “interactions”. 40 adolescents (age 11-18) and 28 adults (age 20-38) completed a risk-taking (Wheel of Fortune) task under 4 conditions: in private; while being observed by (fictitious) peers; and after receiving ‘risky’ or ‘safe’ advice from the peers. For high-risk gambles (but not medium-risk (...) or even gambles), adolescents made more risky decisions under peer observation than adults. Adolescents, but not adults, tended to resist ‘safe’ advice for high-risk gambles. Although both groups tended to follow ‘risky’ advice for high-risk gambles, adults did so more than adolescents. These findings highlight the importance of distinguishing between the effects of peer observation and peer advice on risky decision-making. (shrink)

The preservation of our planet’s decreasing biodiversity is a global challenge. Human attitudes and preferences toward animals have profound impacts on conservation policies and decisions. To date, the vast majority of studies about human attitudes and concern toward animals have focused largely on western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic populations. In order to mitigate biodiversity loss globally, an understanding of how humans make decisions about animals from multicultural perspectives is needed. The present study examines familiarity, liking and endorsement of government (...) protection amongst six broad cultural groups living in Qatar for five threatened animal species indigenous to the Arabian Gulf. Our findings highlight similarities and differences across cultures toward animals. Overall, familiarity did not predict endorsement for government protection after liking was accounted for. Liking, however, emerged as an important predictor of endorsement for government protection across cultures, although the degree of animal liking varied culturally. WEIRD and South East Asian participants showed similar and more positive attitudes toward animals compared to the other groups. Participants from the Arabian Gulf, Sub-Saharan Africa, Middle East and North Africa, and South Asia responded similarly toward the animals. Interestingly, the Arabian Gulf group demonstrated significantly less liking and protection endorsement for animals, including those animals which play an important role in their culture. This research highlights intriguing avenues for future research and points to liking as a possible universal human attitude toward animals that influences decision making about conservation across all cultures while suggesting applications for improving education. (shrink)

Robert Veatch was a notable and prolific author in a variety of areas in philosophy, health care practice, and policy. However, it is evident by the sheer number of case study in ethics books, eighteen editions of case collections in all, that this approach to teaching ethics in the health sciences was especially important to him. A few of these case study collections he wrote alone, but the majority were written with co-authors from nursing, dentistry, pharmacy, allied health, and medicine, (...) drawing on their respective areas of disciplinary expertise and experience as educators. The aim of this article is to focus on the pedagogy and framework Veatch developed to expose students to the rudiments of philosophical ethics so they could understand the conflicts between values, principles, and ethical theories. Authentic clinical cases, he believed, were a useful way to engage students. Putting the two ideas together, Veatch argued the best method of structuring cases is “bootlegging theory in a topical structure” (Veatch, Robert M., Case analysis in ethics instruction. In: Amy Haddad (ed) Teaching and learning strategies in pharmacy ethics, Creighton University, Omaha, 85–97, 1992). Veatch’s rationale for this carefully planned systematic arrangement between case topics and philosophical ethics content are presented. The influence and input of co-authors from different disciplines are explored regarding case development and commentary content. Finally, the impact of these interdisciplinary case study textbooks on ethics instruction in the health sciences is evaluated. (shrink)

It's surprising that contemporary moral philosophers have not thought more about food. The rapidly expanding industrialized landscape of modern western agribusiness raises moral concerns about large-scale livestock production, the increased usage of genetically modified crops, and the effects these now common practices may have on long-term environmental and human health. Here Pence argues that biotechnology is more helpful than harmful, on the ground that it will abate world hunger. Positioning himself as an "impartialbioethicist" he sets about the task of sorting (...) through the extremism he thinks drives all environ- mental movements' opposition to genetically modified (GM) crops. His argu- ment is simple: the claim that GM foods are unsafe is the product of alarmism, not sound reason. Discarding what environmentalists have called the Precau- tionary Principle, he argues that GM foods are safe because they have not been proven unsafe. And GM foods have been tested more than many food products now on the market. (shrink)

The general and sports psychology research is limited regarding the difference between the effects of verbal encouragement or compliment methods during high-intensity functional exercise testing. The purpose of this study was to explore the effects of VE and compliments on the performance of the repeated change-of-direction sprint test. A total of 36 male students in secondary school participated voluntarily in the study. They were divided equally into three homogeneous groups [VE group, compliment group, and control group) and performed a standardized (...) one repetition RCOD. The RCOD test consisted of a 100°change in the direction at every 4 m. Outcomes included performance indices, rating of perceived exertion, and feeling scale scores. VE and the compliment increased the performance indices and RPE compared with the control group. In conclusion, VE during the exercise testing would be more beneficial for optimal performance and RPE compared with the compliment and control groups. However, the moods, during RCOD, reproduce more positively during compliment conditions than the VE and control groups. (shrink)

The Birkhoff-Maltsev problem asks for a characterization of those lattices each of which is isomorphic to the lattice L(K) of all subquasivarieties for some quasivariety K of algebraic systems. The current status of this problem, which is still open, is discussed. Various unsolved questions that are related to the Birkhoff-Maltsev problem are also considered, including ones that stem from the theory of propositional logics.

We motivate and introduce a new method of abduction, Matrix Abduction, and apply it to modelling the use of non-deductive inferences in the Talmud such as Analogy and the rule of Argumentum A Fortiori. Given a matrix $${\mathbb {A}}$$ with entries in {0, 1}, we allow for one or more blank squares in the matrix, say a i,j =?. The method allows us to decide whether to declare a i,j = 0 or a i,j = 1 or a i,j =? (...) undecided. This algorithmic method is then applied to modelling several legal and practical reasoning situations including the Talmudic rule of Kal-Vachomer. We add an Appendix showing that this new rule of Matrix Abduction, arising from the Talmud, can also be applied to the analysis of paradoxes in voting and judgement aggregation. In fact we have here a general method for executing non-deductive inferences. (shrink)

This article proposes a neurobiologically motivated theory of meaning as internal representation that holds on to the principle of compositionality, but negates the principle of semantic constituency. The approach builds on neurobiological findings regarding topologically structured cortical feature maps and the mechanism of object-related binding by neuronal synchronization. It incorporates the Gestalt principles of psychology and is implemented by recurrent neural networks. The semantics to be developed is structurally analogous to some variant of model-theoretical semantics. The semantics to be developed (...) is a neuro-emulative model-theoretical semantics of a first-order language. The model-theoretical semantics is merely denotational and does not imply anything about the structures of the mind or the underlying neural mechanisms that enable producing and comprehend meaningful expressions. The relation between a mental representation and its content is some form of causal-informational covariation. (shrink)

An emerging ethical philosophy in marketing is developing. This philosophy is based on quality-of-life studies which are becoming an important topic of research in behavioral and social sciences (basic and applied research). This paper addresses the QOL orientation in marketing from a decision-making perspective. Specifically, this paper shows how marketers can engage in strategic marketing planning guided by the QOL concept.

Este trabajo tiene por objeto el estudio de la agravante de discriminación por razón de género recogida en el art. 22.4ª del C.P, por la Ley Orgánica 1/2015, de 30 de marzo. Nos vamos a centrar en el estudio del fundamento y elementos de la circunstancia agravante. Se prosigue, con el análisis de su compatibilidad con otras agravantes genéricas y su régimen de comunicabilidad a los partícipes del delito. Sin olvidar, el examen de las sentencias dictadas por el Tribunal Supremo.

In an individualistic society and in the increasingly competitive business environment people do not seem inclined to forgive others their trespasses. One is more likely to choose to ignore the virtue of forgiveness as a way of handling personnel situations involving intense conflict or mild disagreements, favoring instead the negative feelings of resentment, anger, revenge or retaliation. Business people seem less concerned with growth in virtue and character; interestingly they allow their character and ultimately their work relationships to deteriorate because (...) they hold onto feelings of anger and resentment. Is there a place for forgiveness in our interpersonal relationships in general and in corporate life in particular? I believe there is. A study of the virtue of forgiveness shows that it is a misunderstood virtue, but one that deserves attention. In this article I will examine the virtue of forgiveness, defining what forgiveness is and is not, and will illustrate how it might be situated as an essential human resource management strategy. (shrink)

The Search for the Legacy of the USPHS Syphilis Study at Tuskegee is a collection of essays from experts in a variety of fields seeking to redefine the legacy of the infamous Tuskegee Syphilis Study. The essayists place the legacy of the study within the evolution of racial and ethnic relations in the United States. Contributors include two leading historians on the study, two former United States Surgeons General, and other prominent scholars from a wide range of fields.

Television medical dramas sometimes depict medical professionalism and bioethical issues, but their nature and extent are unclear. The authors systematically analysed the bioethical and professionalism content of one season each of Grey's Anatomy and House M.D., two of the most popular current television medical dramas. The results indicate that these programmes are rife with powerful portrayals of bioethical issues and egregious deviations from the norms of professionalism and contain exemplary depictions of professionalism to a much lesser degree.

Este trabajo se inscribe en una revisión in progress del Derecho antidiscriminatorio moderno que las autoras vienen efectuando desde hace más de tres lustros. En la primera parte del mismo se examinan los textos de una f ilósofa política y de dos juristas esta- dounidenses (I. M. Young, C. A. MacKinnon y K. Crensahw) que inspiran la propuesta de un concepto de discriminación y de una visión de la interseccionalidad basados en el reconocimiento de los sistemas de opresión. La segunda (...) parte se centra en el análisis del concepto de discriminación múltiple o interseccional propuesto por la doctrina jurídica española a partir de la jurisprudencia referida al caso de una mujer (“La Nena”) casada por el rito gitano que ve denegada su pensión de viudedad. A partir de lo anterior, el trabajo concluye con una serie de propuestas entre las que destacan las referidas a la necesidad de evitar que el discurso sobre la interseccionalidad disuelva la identidad política de los grupos en la individualidad, refuerce el sistema sexo-género y consolide un Derecho antidiscriminatorio de corte excesivamente jurisprudencial. (shrink)

The failure to maintain a canonical Christian understanding of the family as a microcosm of the church oriented toward deification instead of a microcosm of society aimed at social ends has opened Christians up to an uncritical adoption of non-Christian approaches in medical decision making. This article begins by identifying the Christian family crisis not as a liberal versus conservative debate centered on the form and function of the family, but more fundamentally as an ecclesial versus sociological understanding of the (...) Christian family. The article presents a historical sketch of the circumstances that have led to this contemporary crisis in the Western Christian family, followed by an analysis that provides a canonical account of the Christian family as exemplified in the thought of Gregory the Theologian. This article concludes by looking at the specific issue of labor and delivery in the United States, and the implications for a canonical Christian understanding of labor and delivery in light of contemporary medical practices. (shrink)

Under the assumption that all "rules" are recursive (ECT) the statement $\operatorname{Cont}(N^N,N)$ that all functions from N N to N are continuous becomes equivalent to a statement KLS in the language of arithmetic about "effective operations". Our main result is that KLS is underivable in intuitionistic Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory + ECT. Similar results apply for functions from R to R and from 2 N to N. Such results were known for weaker theories, e.g. HA and HAS. We extend not only (...) the theorem but the method, fp-realizability, to intuitionistic ZF. (shrink)

Implicit God-like and ghost-in-the-machine metaphors underlie much current thinking about genomes. Although many criticisms of such views exist, none have succeeded in substituting a different, widely accepted view. Viewing the genome with its protein packaging as a brain gets rid of Gods and ghosts while plausibly integrating machine and information-based views. While the ‘wetware’ of brains and genomes are very different, many fundamental principles of how they function are similar. Eukaryotic cells are compound entities in which case the nuclear genome (...) might best be thought of more as a government than simply as a brain. (shrink)