ObjectiveThere is little literature on the validity of kurtosis-adjusted noise energy metrics in human studies. Therefore, this study aimed to validate the application of cumulative noise exposure adjusted by kurtosis in evaluating occupational hearing loss associated with non-Gaussian noise among manufacturing workers.MethodsA cross-sectional survey was conducted on 1,558 manufacturing workers exposed to noise from five industries to collect noise exposure and hearing loss data. Both CNE and kurtosis-adjusted CNE were collapsed into 2-dB∙year bins, and the mean noise-induced (...) permanent threshold shifts at 3, 4, and 6 kHz in each bin were calculated. The contributions of CNE and CNE′ to noise-induced hearing loss were compared using the multiple linear regression. The degree of overlap of two linear regression equations was used to evaluate the validity of the CNE′ using a stratified analysis based on age and sex.ResultsMultiple linear regression models showed that after kurtosis adjustment, the standardized regression coefficient of CNE increased from 0.230 to 0.255, and R2 increased from 0.147 to 0.153. The linear relationship between NIPTS346 and CNE′ or CNE showed that the regression line of non-Gaussian noise was closer to that of Gaussian noise when using CNE′ than using CNE. The mean difference in NIPTS346 between the equations of non-Gaussian noise and Gaussian noise was significantly reduced from 4.32 to 1.63 dB HL after kurtosis adjustment. Through a stratified analysis, these significant decreases were observed in male and female workers, and workers aged ≥30 years old.ConclusionAs a noise exposure metric combining noise energy and temporal characteristics, the kurtosis-adjusted-CNE metric was more effective than CNE alone in assessing occupational hearing loss among manufacturing workers in non-Gaussian noise environment. However, more studies are needed to verify the validity of the kurtosis-adjusted-CNE metric. (shrink)

We previously showed that the illusory sense of ownership and agency over a moving body in immersive virtual reality can trigger subjective and physiological reactions on the real subject’s body and, therefore, an acute improvement of cognitive functions after a single session of high-intensity intermittent exercise performed exclusively by one’s own virtual body, similar to what happens when we actually do physical activity. As well as confirming previous results, here, we aimed at finding in the elderly an increased improvement after (...) a longer virtual training with similar characteristics. Forty-two healthy older subjects completed a parallel-group randomized controlled trial including an adapted version of the virtual training previously used: while sitting, participants observed the virtual body in a first-person perspective or a third-person perspective performing 20 min of virtual high-intensity intermittent exercise. This was repeated twice a week for 6 weeks. During the vHIE, we measured the heart rate and administered questionnaires to evaluate illusory body ownership and agency. Before the beginning of the intervention, immediately after the first session of vHIE, and at the end of the entire intervention, we evaluated the cognitive performance at the Stroop task with online recording of the hemodynamic activity over the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. While we confirm previous results regarding the virtual illusion and its physiological effects, we did not find significant cognitive or neural improvement immediately after the first vHIE session. As a novelty, in the 1PP group only, we detected a significant decrease in the response time of the Stroop task in the post-intervention assessment compared to its baseline; coherently, we found an increased activation on left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex after the entire intervention. While the current results strengthen the impact of the virtual full-body illusion and its physiological consequences on the elderly as well, they might have stronger and more established body representations. Perhaps, a longer and increased exposure to those illusions is necessary to initiate the cascade of events that culminates to an improved cognitive performance. (shrink)

Family income is associated with gray matter morphometry in children, but little is known about the relationship between family income and white matter structure. In this paper, using Tract-Based Spatial Statistics (TBSS), a whole brain, voxel-wise approach, we examined the relationship between family income (assessed by income-to-needs ratio) and white matter organization in middle childhood (N = 27, M = 8.66 years). Results from a nonparametric, voxel-wise, multiple regression (threshold-free cluster enhancement, p < 0.05, FWE corrected) indicated that lower family (...) income was associated with lower white matter organization (assessed by fractional anisotropy) for several clusters in white matter tracts involved in cognitive and emotional functions including fronto-limbic circuitry (uncinate fasciculus and cingulum bundle), association fibers (inferior longitudinal fasciculus, superior longitudinal fasciculus), and corticospinal tracts. Further, we examined the possibility that cumulative risk exposure might function as one of the potential pathways by which family income influences neural outcomes. Using multiple regressions, we found lower fractional anisotropy in portions of these tracts, including those found in the left cingulum bundle and left superior longitudinal fasciculus, was significantly related to greater exposure to cumulative risk (β = -0.47, p < 0.05 and β = -0.45, p < 0.05). (shrink)

The ability to read emotions in faces helps humans efficiently assess social situations. We tested how this ability is affected by aspects of familiarization with face masks and personality, with a focus on emotional intelligence. To address aspects of the current pandemic situation, we used photos of not only faces per se but also of faces that were partially covered with face masks. The sample, the size of which was determined by an a priori power test, was recruited in Germany (...) and consisted of healthy individuals of different ages [M = 24.8 years]. Participants assessed the emotional expressions displayed by six different faces determined by a 2 × 3 design. Each person was presented with six different emotional displays with or without a face mask. Accuracy and confidence were lower with masks—in particular for the emotion disgust but also for happiness, anger, and sadness. When comparing the present data collected in July 2021 with data from a different sample collected in May 2020, when people first started to familiarize themselves with face masks in Western countries during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, we did not detect an improvement in performance. There were no effects of participants’ emotional intelligence, sex, or age regarding their accuracy in assessing emotional states in faces for unmasked or masked faces. (shrink)

Controlled human infection model (CHIM) studies involve the intentional exposure of healthy research volunteers to infectious agents. These studies contribute to knowledge about the cause or development of disease and to the advancement of vaccine research. But they also raise ethical questions about the kinds of risks that should be permissible and whether limits should be imposed on research risks in CHIM studies. Two possible risk thresholds have been considered for CHIM studies. The first suggests constraining ethically permissible (...) risks according to a minimal risk threshold and the second endorses a higher risk threshold that excludes irreversible or fatal infections. I argue that neither of these thresholds is persuasive and situate questions about risk thresholds in CHIM studies within a broader debate about permissible risks in research. I argue that risks in CHIM studies should be constrained according to limits on research risks that do not offer corresponding benefits in all studies rather than developing a unique risk threshold for CHIM studies. I then propose five recommendations for the ethical assessment of risk in CHIM studies. (shrink)

The current study assessed potential relationships among childhood wayfinding experience, navigational style, and adult wayfinding anxiety in the Faroe Islands. The Faroe Islands are of interest because they have an unusual geography that may promote the use of an orientational style of navigation (e.g., use of cardinal directions). Faroese adults completed questionnaires assessing (1) their permitted childhood range sizes, (2) the types of navigational strategies they use, and (3) the amount of anxiety they experience when navigating in adulthood. Males had (...) more childhood wayfinding experience, used the orientation strategy at a higher rate, and showed lower levels of wayfinding anxiety. When compared with other cultures, both Faroese women and men appear to embrace orientation strategies at an unusually high rate. Childhood experience was not conclusively linked to later wayfinding anxiety. However, the current findings raise the possibility that children who have particularly small ranges in childhood may be especially anxious when navigating in adulthood. (shrink)

Given the current concern in the Soviet Union and East Europe to emancipate public education from its Stalinist past, it is understandable that educators have called for the “humanizing” of education. Yet “humanization” is a none too clear idea and must be approached, I propose, through its opposite: dehumanization. Dehumanization, itself, can be understood as the denial of the dignity of the individual — a cardinal principle of the philosophies that comprise classical and contemporary liberal theory. This principle of the (...) dignity of the individual in turn implies duties for the liberal democratic state to treat all citizens (and for all citizens to treat each other) with equal respect as ends in themselves and equally as choosers of ends, as being, at least in principle, capable of choosing and acting on the ultimate ends in their own lives and as potential “sayers of great words and doers of great deeds” in the common public enterprise. Now in claiming that the principle of the dignity of the individual is central to an understanding of a just and humane society, we do not thereby commit ourselves to those doctrines long associated with liberalism, viz., ontological and moral individualism. The form of political, or united-reformed, liberalism argued for in this paper is clearly compatible with strong forms of community, even authoritarian types of community insofar as they do not transgress the principle of the dignity of the individual as regards informed choice. As decidedly non-perfectionist and agnostic about ultimate goods (tempered by the ban on all public forms of dehumanizing behavior and treatment), this form of political liberalism is neither individualistic nor communitarian, neither capitalist nor socialist (though the state is not indifferent to their fortunes). This rendering of the liberal democratic state sets the requirements for a deep and thorough political education that goes well beyond any familiar example today. In seeking to develop, to “humanize” individuals for a world of thought and action in the common public enterprise, political education — the premier form of education — in a liberal democratic state seeks to develop individuals who are theoretically informed and practically wise — thus the emphasis on the development of rationality in all of its forms. Moreover, despite the formal agnosticism of the state concerning ultimate human ends, a political education requires deep student exposure to and critical assessment of religion, possible ways of life, and those views of the human good that humans throughout history have found worthy of pursuit. And this even if it means that students will come to reject the principle of the dignity of the individual. (shrink)

Government agencies and private risk assessors use (quasi) scientific risk assessment procedures to try to estimate or predict risk to human health or the environment that might result from exposure to toxic substances in order to take steps to prevent such risks from arising or to eliminate the risks if they already exist. In this paper I discuss several ways in which the "science" of carcinogen risk assessment differs from ordinary scientific enterprises. I also consider several (...) ways in which normative policy considerations infect this regulatory science. Scientists, philosophers of science, moral philosophers and policy makers should address these issues forthrightly in order to serve better the aims of science and regulation. (shrink)

Humans can attribute beliefs to others. However, it is unknown to what extent this ability results from an innate biological endowment or from experience accrued through child development, particularly exposure to language describing others' mental states. We test the viability of the language exposure hypothesis by assessing whether models exposed to large quantities of human language display sensitivity to the implied knowledge states of characters in written passages. In pre‐registered analyses, we present a linguistic version of the (...) False Belief Task to both human participants and a large language model, GPT‐3. Both are sensitive to others' beliefs, but while the language model significantly exceeds chance behavior, it does not perform as well as the humans nor does it explain the full extent of their behavior—despite being exposed to more language than a human would in a lifetime. This suggests that while statistical learning from language exposure may in part explain how humans develop the ability to reason about the mental states of others, other mechanisms are also responsible. (shrink)

Machine behavior that is based on learning algorithms can be significantly influenced by the exposure to data of different qualities. Up to now, those qualities are solely measured in technical terms, but not in ethical ones, despite the significant role of training and annotation data in supervised machine learning. This is the first study to fill this gap by describing new dimensions of data quality for supervised machine learning applications. Based on the rationale that different social and psychological backgrounds (...) of individuals correlate in practice with different modes of human–computer-interaction, the paper describes from an ethical perspective how varying qualities of behavioral data that individuals leave behind while using digital technologies have socially relevant ramification for the development of machine learning applications. The specific objective of this study is to describe how training data can be selected according to ethical assessments of the behavior it originates from, establishing an innovative filter regime to transition from the big data rationale n = all to a more selective way of processing data for training sets in machine learning. The overarching aim of this research is to promote methods for achieving beneficial machine learning applications that could be widely useful for industry as well as academia. (shrink)

Transgenic plants are now being used to develop pharmaceutical and industrial products in addition to their use in crop improvement. Using confinement requirements, these transgenic plants are grown and processed under conditions that prevent intermixing with commodity crops. Regulatory agencies in the United States have provided guidance of zero tolerance of these new industrial crops with commodity crops. While this is a worthy goal, it is theoretically unattainable. In spite of the best containment practices, there is a potential risk using (...) any system of production due to unforeseen incidences including natural disasters or exposure to workers. The precautionary principle has been used for numerous regulated articles in addressing the potential risks of new products and technology based on a risk assessment in similar situations. We present here a risk assessment model that could be used as a start to develop an accepted model for the industry. The model is based on current risk models used for other regulated articles, but adapted for these types of products. This could be used to determine action levels in the event of an unintended exposure or to ensure that detection or confinement methods are adequate to avoid risks. As an example, aprotinin, a therapeutic protein now being produced in maize, was evaluated for potential risk to humans using this model. (shrink)

From a leading figure in the field of psychotherapy, this new book is the first dedicated to the topic of the fear of contamination. The fear of contamination is the driving force behind compulsive washing, the most common manifestation of obsessive compulsive disorder. It is one of the most extraordinary of all human fears. People who have an abnormally elevated fear of contamination over-estimate the probability and the potential seriousness of becoming contaminated. They believe that they are more susceptible (...) than other people to contamination. People who labour under the illusion that they are particularly vulnerable to contamination are persistently anxious, excessively vigilant and highly avoidant. The fear is complex, powerful, probably universal, easily provoked, intense, and difficult to control. Usually it is caused by physical contact with a contaminant and spreads rapidly and widely. When a person feels contaminated it drives a strong urge to remove the contamination, usually by washing. The fear and subsequent urges over-ride other behaviour. A fear of contamination can also be established mentally and without physical contact. The fear can arise after exposure to violation, physical or non-physical, and from self-contamination. The book starts by defining the disorder, before considering the various manifestations of this fear, examining both mental contamination and contact contamination, and feelings of disgust. Most significantly, it develops a theory for how this problem can be treated, providing clinical guidelines - based around cognitive behavioural techniques. (shrink)

This book is open access under a CC BY-NC 2.5 license. This book offers a devastating look at deeply flawed development processes driven by international finance, African governments and the global consulting industry. It examines major river basin development underway in the semi-arid borderlands of Ethiopia, Kenya and South Sudan and its disastrous human rights consequences for a half-million indigenous people. The volume traces the historical origins of Gibe III megadam construction along the Omo River in Ethiopia-in turn, enabling (...) irrigation for commercial-scale agricultural development and causing radical reduction of downstream Omo and (Kenya's) Lake Turkana waters. Presenting case studies of indigenous Dasanech and northernmost Turkana livelihood systems and Gibe III linked impacts on them, the author predicts agropastoral and fishing economic collapse, region-wide hunger with exposure to disease epidemics, irreversible natural resource destruction and cross-border interethnic armed conflict spilling into South Sudan. The book identifies fundamental failings of government and development bank impact assessments, including their distortion or omission of mandated transboundary assessment, cumulative effects of the Gibe III dam and its linked Ethiopia-Kenya energy transmission 'highway' project, key hydrologic and human ecological characteristics, major earthquake threat in the dam region and widespread expropriation and political repression. Violations of internationally recognized human rights, especially by the Ethiopian government but also the Kenyan government, are extensive and on the increase-with collaboration by the development banks, in breach of their own internal operational procedures. A policy crossroads has now emerged. The author presents the alternative to the present looming catastrophe-consideration of development suspension in order to undertake genuinely independent transboundary assessment and a plan for continued development action within a human rights framework-forging a sustainable future for the indigenous peoples now directly threatened and for their respective eastern Africa states. Claudia Carr's book is a treasure of detailed information gathered over many years concerning river basin development of the Omo River in Ethiopia and its impact on the peoples of the lower Omo Basin and the Lake Turkana region in Kenya. It contains numerous maps, charts, and photographs not previously available to the public. The book is highly critical of the environmental and human rights implications of the Omo River hydropower projects on both the local ethnic communities in Ethiopia and on the downstream Turkana in Kenya. David Shinn Former Ambassador to Ethiopia and to Burkina Faso Adjust Professor of International Affairs, The George Washington University, Washington D.C. (shrink)

For human interaction, it is important to understand what emotional state others are in. Especially the observation of faces aids us in putting behaviours into context and gives insight into emotions and mental states of others. Detecting whether someone is nervous, a form of state anxiety, is such an example as it reveals a person’s familiarity and contentment with the circumstances. With recent developments in computer vision we developed behavioural nervousness models to show which time-varying facial cues reveal whether (...) someone is nervous in an interview setting. The facial changes, reflecting a state of anxiety, led to more visual exposure and less chemosensory (taste and olfaction) exposure. However, experienced observers had difficulty picking up these changes and failed to detect nervousness levels accurately therewith. This study highlights humans’ limited capacity in determining complex emotional states but at the same time provides an automated model that can assist us in achieving fair assessments of so far unexplored emotional states. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Chair’s Perspective on the Work of the Advisory Committee on Human Radiation ExperimentsRuth Faden (bio)On January 15, 1994, President Clinton created the Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments in response to his concern about the increasing number of reports describing alleged unethical conduct of the U.S. Government, and institutions funded by the government, in the use of, or exposure to, ionizing radiation in human beings (...) at the height of the Cold War. He directed the Committee: (1) to uncover the history of human radiation experiments and intentional environmental releases of radiation; (2) to identify the ethical and scientific standards for evaluating these events; and (3) to make recommendations to ensure that whatever wrongdoing may have occurred in the past will not be repeated.The Committee was composed of 14 members: a citizen representative and 13 experts in bioethics, radiation oncology and biology, epidemiology and statistics, public health, history of science and medicine, nuclear medicine, and law. We reported to a cabinet-level group (the Human Radiation Interagency Working Group) convened by the president, which includes the secretaries of defense, energy, health and human services, and veterans affairs; the attorney general; the administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration; the director of the Central Intelligence Agency; and the director of the Office of Management and Budget.On April 21, 1994, at the end of the first day of our first meeting, President Clinton invited us to the White House to personally communicate his commitment to the process we were about to undertake. He urged us to be fair, thorough, and unafraid to shine the light of truth on this hidden and poorly understood aspect of our nation’s past. Our most important task, he said, was to tell the full story to the American public. [End Page 215] At the same time, we were to examine the present, to determine how the conduct of human research today compares with that of the past, and to assess whether, in light of this inquiry, changes need to be made in the policies of the federal government. Eighteen months later, the Committee’s attempt to tell the story of the past and to report on our inquiry into the present was delivered to the president in a 900-page Final Report (ACHRE 1995) and several supplemental volumes.The Committee’s charge was enormous. We were asked to conduct a massive investigation into events that occurred as much as 50 years ago and that involved the highest reaches of the defense establishment and the medical community. This investigation necessitated an examination of the conduct and policies of six federal agencies and countless agents in the private sector, as well as the location and interpretation of hundreds of thousands of documents, many of which were buried in obscure locations or were still classified.In addition, the Committee was instructed to establish standards for judging, in moral terms, the events that it uncovered. This charge necessitated the confrontation of contentious debates in moral thought and theory about history, relativism, and the significance of context in moral judgment. But our purpose was not to engage in these debates in the abstract. Although the Committee was not expressly charged with considering issues relating to remedies, including financial compensation, we felt obliged to address the type of remedies that we believed the government, as an ethical matter, should provide to subjects of experiments where the circumstances warranted such a response. Thus our deliberations about relativism and moral judgment were tied to concrete recommendations for public policy and were conducted in a public context that included participants from numerous adversarial legal proceedings.In tandem with our reconstruction of the past, we undertook three projects to examine the current state of human radiation experiments. First, we studied how each federal agency that currently conducts or funds research involving human subjects regulates and oversees its research activity. Second, from among the very large number of federally-supported research projects involving human subjects, we randomly selected 125 projects for closer scrutiny. We reviewed all available relevant documentation for each project in order to assess how well it appeared to protect the rights and interests of the participating subjects. Third... (shrink)

This paper explores the ethical challenges involved in the ways public representation structures our experiences of atrocities and facilitates an adequate awareness of and response towards the suffering of others. It points out that such an analysis should not exhaust itself in answering what makes public representations of human suffering ethically suspicious and intolerable, but should rather extend this task by clarifying how the public forms sentiments about their social and political reality by elucidating under which conditions public representation (...) promotes broader political agendas. One of the central tenets of human rights advocacy is the widespread conviction that exposure to images and stories of human rights abuse has a mobilizing effect on western audience whose exposure to such knowledge can motivate them to intervene and prevent future atrocities. In order to assess the basic implications of such a conviction we must answer at least three principal clusters of questions. First, how do public representations of atrocities affect individuals and their capacities to conceive and respond to social injustices and the suffering of others? Under what circumstances may agents respond effectively to shocking content? Second, how do social powers operate within the field of perception in order to control how the viewing public is affected? And how do these effects inform and galvanize political support or opposition regarding concrete historical events? Finally, what can be said about the responsibilities of visual representation? Whose agency is it that images inform, and what reforms are necessary to make representations of suffering ethically effective means to encourage better acknowledgment of individual and collective responsibilities that would motivate the public to meet its moral and political obligations? This paper ultimately suggests that in order for politically implicated images to have an immediate critical effect on individuals and their agency, they need to cultivate alternative modes of perception.Article first published online: 21 DEC 2015. (shrink)

The Monographs produced by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) apply rigorous procedures for the scientific review and evaluation of carcinogenic hazards by independent experts. The Preamble to the IARC Monographs, which outlines these procedures, was updated in 2019, following recommendations of a 2018 expert Advisory Group. This article presents the key features of the updated Preamble, a major milestone that will enable IARC to take advantage of recent scientific and procedural advances made during the 12 years since (...) the last Preamble amendments. The updated Preamble formalizes important developments already being pioneered in the Monographs Programme. These developments were taken forward in a clarified and strengthened process for identifying, reviewing, evaluating and integrating evidence to identify causes of human cancer. The advancements adopted include strengthening of systematic review methodologies; greater emphasis on mechanistic evidence, based on key characteristics of carcinogens; greater consideration of quality and informativeness in the critical evaluation of epidemiological studies, including their exposure assessment methods; improved harmonization of evaluation criteria for the different evidence streams; and a single-step process of integrating evidence on cancer in humans, cancer in experimental animals and mechanisms for reaching overall evaluations. In all, the updated Preamble underpins a stronger and more transparent method for the identification of carcinogenic hazards, the essential first step in cancer prevention. (shrink)

The environment can elicit biological responses such as oxidative stress (OS) and inflammation as a consequence of chemical, physical, or psychological changes. As population studies are essential for establishing these environment-organism interactions, biomarkers of OS or inflammation are critical in formulating mechanistic hypotheses. By using examples of stress induced by various mechanisms, we focus on the biomarkers that have been used to assess OS and inflammation in these conditions. We discuss the difference between biomarkers that are the result of a (...) chemical reaction (such as lipid peroxides or oxidized proteins that are a result of the reaction of molecules with reactive oxygen species) and those that represent the biological response to stress, such as the transcription factor NRF2 or inflammation and inflammatory cytokines. The high-throughput and holistic approaches to biomarker discovery used extensively in large-scale molecular epidemiological exposome are also discussed in the context of human exposure to environmental stressors. We propose to consider the role of biomarkers as signs and to distinguish between signs that are just indicators of biological processes and proxies that one can interact with and modify the disease process. (shrink)

Exposure to environmental contextual changes, such as those occurring after an earthquake, requires individuals to learn novel routes around their environment, landmarks and spatial layout. In this study, we aimed to uncover whether contextual changes that occurred after the 2009 L’Aquila earthquake affected topographic memory in exposed survivors. We hypothesized that individuals exposed to environmental changes—individuals living in L’Aquila before, during and after the earthquake (hereafter called exposed participants, EPs)—improved their topographic memory skills compared with non-exposed participants (NEPs) who (...) moved to L’Aquila after the earthquake, as only EPs had to modify their previous cognitive map of L’Aquila. We also hypothesized that memory improvement was selective for the navigational space and did not generalize across other spatial and verbal domains. To test these hypotheses, we compared the topographic and spatial memory skills of 56 EPs without post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms to the skills of 47 NEPs using the Walking Corsi Test (WalCT; memory test in the navigational space) and the Corsi Block-Tapping Test (CBT; visuospatial memory test in the reaching space); EPs and NEPs were matched for gender, education and general navigational skills. A sub-group of participants also underwent the Rey-Auditory Verbal Learning Test (RAVLT; verbal memory test). The results showed that only EPs had better performances on topographic learning (TL) assessed using the WalCT rather than spatial learning assessed by the CBT. This outcome suggests the possibility that EPs specifically improved topographic memory. This effect may be due to continuous exposure to environmental changes that have required individuals to learn novel paths within the city and integrate novel information, such as “new towns,” into their pre-existing mental representation of the city. Implications and limitations of the study are discussed. (shrink)

In contexts of exposure to atypical stress or adversity, individual and collective resilience refers to the process of sustaining wellbeing by leveraging biological, psychological, social and environmental protective and promotive factors and processes. This multisystemic understanding of resilience is generating significant interest but has been difficult to operationalize in psychological research where studies tend to address only one or two systems at a time, often with a primary focus on individual coping strategies. We show how multiple systems implicated in (...) human resilience can be researched in the same study using a longitudinal, six-phase transformative sequential mixed methods study of 14- to 24-year-olds and their elders in two communities dependent on oil and gas industries. Data collection occurred over a 5-year period, and included: community engagement and the identification of youth health and well-being priorities; participatory youth-centric qualitative research using one-on-one semi-structured interviews and arts-based methods; survey of 500 youth at three time points to assess psychosocial health indicators and outcomes; collection of hair samples to assess stress biomarkers over time; youth-led ecological data collection and assessment of historical socio-economic development data; and community resource mapping with community elders. Analyzing data from these multiple systems will allow us to understand the interrelationship and impact of PPFPs within and across systems. To date, we have undertaken thematic and narrative qualitative analyses, and descriptive analyses of the preliminary ecological and survey data. As we proceed, we will combine these and grounded theory approaches with innovative techniques such as latent transition analysis and network analysis, as well as modeling of economic conditions and spatial analysis of human geographies to understand patterns of PPFPs and their inter-relationships. By analyzing the complexity of data collected across systems we are demonstrating the possibility of conducting multisystemic resilience research which expands the way psychological research accounts for positive development under stress in different contexts. This comprehensive examination of resilience may offer an example of how the study of resilience can inform socially and contextually relevant interventions and policies. (shrink)

Cognitive decline is common in Parkinson’s disease (PD), and precise cognitive assessment is important for diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment. To date, there are no studies in PD investigating cultural bias on neuropsychological tests. Clinical practice in multicultural societies such as Toronto Canada, where nearly half of the population is comprised of first generation immigrants, presents important challenges as most neuropsychological tools were developed in Anglosphere cultures (e.g., USA, UK) and normed in more homogeneous groups. We examine total scores and (...) rates of deficits on tests of visuoperceptual/visuospatial, attention, memory, and executive functions in Canadians with PD born in Anglosphere countries (n = 248) versus in Canadians with PD born in other regions (International group; n = 167). The International group shows lower scores and greater rates of deficits on all visuoperceptual and some executive function tasks, but not on attention or memory measures. These biases are not explained by demographic and clinical variables as groups were comparable. Age at immigration, years in Canada, and English proficiency also do not account for the observed biases. In contrast, group differences are strongly mediated by the Historical Index of Human Development of the participants’ country of birth, which reflects economic, health, and educational potential of a country at the time of birth. In sum, our findings demonstrate lasting biases on neuropsychological tests despite significant exposure to, and participation in, Canadian culture. These biases are most striking on visuoperceptual measures and non-verbal executive tasks which many clinicians still considered to be “culture-fair” despite the growing evidence from the field of cross-cultural neuropsychology to the contrary. Our findings also illustrate that socio-development context captures important aspects of culture that relate to cognition, and have important implications for clinical practice. (shrink)

This book strongly challenges the Western philosophical tradition's assertion that humans are superior to nonhuman animals. It provides a full and direct moral status of nonhuman animals. The book provides basis for a radical critique of the entire trajectory of animal studies over the past fifteen years. The key idea explored is of 'felt kinship' a sense of shared fate with and obligations to all sentient life. It will help to inspire some deep rethinking on the part of leading exponents (...) of animal studies. The book's strong outlook is expressed through an appeal for radical humility on the side of humans rather than a constant reference to the 'human-animal divide'. Historical figures examined in depth include Aristotle; Seneca, and Kant; contemporary figures examined include Christine Korsgaard and Martha Nussbaum. This book presents an account in which the tradition has proceeded based on impartial motivations at all, but instead has made a set of pointedly self-serving assumptions about the proper criteria for assessing moral worth. Readers of this book will gain exposure to a wide variety of thinkers in the Western philosophical tradition, historical as well as contemporary. This book is suitable for professionals working in nonhuman animal studies, students, advanced undergraduates, and practitioners working in the fields of philosophy, environmental studies, law, literature, anthropology, and related fields. (shrink)

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is a deeply enigmatic psychiatric condition associated with immense suffering worldwide. Efficacious therapies for OCD, like exposure and response prevention (ERP) are sometimes poorly tolerated by patients. As many as 25 percent of patients refuse to initiate ERP mainly because they are too anxious to follow exposure procedures. Accordingly, we proposed a simple and tolerable (immersive yet indirect) low-cost technique for treating OCD that we call “multisensory stimulation therapy.” This method involves contaminating a rubber hand (...) during the so-called “rubber hand illusion” (RHI) in which tactile sensations may be perceived as arising from a fake hand. Notably, Jalal and Ramachandran (2015), showed that such fake hand contamination during the RHI provokes powerful disgust reactions in healthy volunteers. In the current study, we explored the therapeutic potential of this novel approach. OCD patients (n = 29) watched as their hidden real hand was being stroked together with a visible fake hand; either synchronously (inducing the RHI) (i.e., the experimental condition; n = 16) or asynchronously (i.e., the control condition; n = 13). After 5 minutes of tactile stimulation, the rubber hand was contaminated with fake feces, simulating conventional exposure therapy. Intriguingly, results suggested sensory assimilation of contamination sensations into the body image via the RHI: patients undergoing synchronous stimulation did not report greater contamination sensations when the fake hand was initially contaminated relative to asynchronous stroking. But contrary to expectations, they did so after the rubber hand had been contaminated for 5 minutes; as assessed via disgust facial expressions (a secondary outcome) and in vivo exposure (upon discontinuing the illusion). Further to our surprise, synchronous and asynchronous stroking induced an equally vivid and fast emerging illusion, which helps explain why both conditions initially (5 minutes after initiating tactile stimulation) provoked contamination reactions of equal magnitude. This study is the first to suggest heightened malleability of body image in OCD. Importantly, it may pave the way for a tolerable technique for the treatment of OCD—highly suitable for poorly resourced and emergency settings, including low-income and developing countries with minimal access to high-tech solutions like virtual reality. (shrink)

Some tradition historical perspectives on Psalm 83 Psalm 83 forms a poetical unit and is the well constructed poem of an artist. It could be divided into two stanzas which contains a cry for help (2), lament (3-9) and several petitions (10-19). This work reflects different tradition historical allusions. The use of prophetic language is immanent, while the faces of the prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel are elusively present. Two episodes from the history of the Judges (Judges 4-5; 7-8) are (...) utilised to expose its independent function in this psalm. The occurence of a well known Canaanite tradition is further obvious, while the question into the psalm's apocalyptic relationships is negatively assessed. Single motives like the upliftment of the head (3) and the shepherd/flock image (13) fulfil a definite Junction within the psalm’s context. The poet clearly applied historical traditions, motives and images to express an independent function within its context. (shrink)

Given the current concern in the Soviet Union and East Europe to emancipate public education from its Stalinist past, it is understandable that educators have called for the “humanizing” of education. Yet “humanization” is a none too clear idea and must be approached, I propose, through its opposite: dehumanization. Dehumanization, itself, can be understood as the denial of the dignity of the individual — a cardinal principle of the philosophies that comprise classical and contemporary liberal theory. This principle of the (...) dignity of the individual in turn implies duties for the liberal democratic state to treat all citizens with equal respect as ends in themselves and equally as choosers of ends, as being, at least in principle, capable of choosing and acting on the ultimate ends in their own lives and as potential “sayers of great words and doers of great deeds” in the common public enterprise.Now in claiming that the principle of the dignity of the individual is central to an understanding of a just and humane society, we do not thereby commit ourselves to those doctrines long associated with liberalism, viz., ontological and moral individualism. The form of political, or united-reformed, liberalism argued for in this paper is clearly compatible with strong forms of community, even authoritarian types of community insofar as they do not transgress the principle of the dignity of the individual as regards informed choice. As decidedly non-perfectionist and agnostic about ultimate goods, this form of political liberalism is neither individualistic nor communitarian, neither capitalist nor socialist.This rendering of the liberal democratic state sets the requirements for a deep and thorough political education that goes well beyond any familiar example today. In seeking to develop, to “humanize” individuals for a world of thought and action in the common public enterprise, political education — the premier form of education — in a liberal democratic state seeks to develop individuals who are theoretically informed and practically wise — thus the emphasis on the development of rationality in all of its forms. Moreover, despite the formal agnosticism of the state concerning ultimate human ends, a political education requires deep student exposure to and critical assessment of religion, possible ways of life, and those views of the human good that humans throughout history have found worthy of pursuit. And this even if it means that students will come to reject the principle of the dignity of the individual. (shrink)

This biographical account situates the unfolding of the life of an educator in varied socio-economic contexts. It is not just a narrative of how an individual evolves but also analyses how a particular mindset develops by being dialectically entwined with the milieu in which one passes different stages of their life. At one level, it is a historical narrative since it deals with a particular period of human history critical to the growth of a specific individual. At another, it (...) provides ethnographic inputs to those who want to understand the peculiarities of the twentieth century. It offers first-hand accounts of the nature of transformative politics which evolved at the behest of Naxalites in India; it also has obvious twists and turns as the individual is exposed to a world beyond India. So, the narrative is individualistic, and it has elements of influences acquired through exposure to an alien socio-cultural milieu. Apart from its analytical importance, this memoir provides a very realistic assessment of India's education system through the lens of an educator and an academician. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Dei Filius in ContextPatrick Gorevan"On January 3, Vérot, bishop of Savannah, made his debut at the council with a common-sense but long-winded speech, laced with witting or unwitting touches of humor that pleased some but annoyed others. He asked why the council was wasting time in refuting the errors of some obscure German philosophers. It should instead focus on real issues."1This article is an attempt to help understand the (...) First Vatican Council's efforts which resulted in its Dogmatic Constitution on the Catholic Faith, Dei Filius, in the face of skepticism by Bishop Augustin Vérot (and others) about the need for the debate and subsequent constitution on faith and reason.The philosophers in question were not particularly obscure: Georg Hermes and Anton Günther were influential figures in the Catholic intellectual world of the mid nineteenth century, while Louis Bautain, and indeed Antonio Rosmini-Serbati, even apart from their influence in Catholic intellectual circles, were inspiring spiritual figures, founders of important and widespread religious orders which flourish to this day. Their "errors" were influential, and represented a broad flank of Christian thinking in the aftermath of the Enlightenment, in many cases demonstrating the truth of Karl Barth's remark that, in those years, "theology... retreated into the narrow regions of epistemology and ethics that Kant left for it."2 [End Page 803]Their "errors" also reflected the dialogue which Christians, haltingly and awkwardly sometimes, but unavoidably, were carrying on with the world of the Enlightenment. Hermann-Josef Pottmeyer concluded his assessment of Dei Filius by saying that the constitution was nothing less than the solemn recognition of the elements of truth in the Enlightenment.3 Pottmeyer is offering a benign assessment of the council's attitude, for the preface to Dei Filius rather speaks about problems to be solved, which had been caused or accentuated by the Enlightenment.4 Perhaps it would be nearer the truth to say that the Catholic semi-rationalists, ontologists, and even fideists were the ones trying to discern the truthful elements emerging from the Enlightenment.5This introductory paper will try to assess: what the semi-rationalists such as Hermes and Günther, the ontologists such as Rosmini-Serbati, and the semi-fideists such as Bautain were trying to achieve; what the maturing judgment of the Church, assisted particularly by the theologians of the "Roman School," was on their efforts; and how this prepared the ground for the Council and the constitution Dei Filius.The Role of Semi-RationalismIt is clear that semi-rationalism, the Catholic version of rationalism as it were, is one of the chief explicit targets of Dei Filius. While rationalism or a total reliance on reason for religious truth, ignoring or rejecting revelation in the process, is a bridge too far for Catholics, semi-rationalism in its [End Page 804] many forms can seem to offer a different kind of bridge, keeping Christian thought in touch with the deliverances of enlightened reason.Semi-rationalism is the view that, while the revelation of God is important and even necessary for knowledge of religious truths (either initially or for the uneducated),human reason can independently demonstrate all or almost all of the truths known through revelation. Accordingly, on this view there are no or very few divine mysteries that cannot be independently proven through reason. Semi-rationalism was especially popular among German Catholic philosophers and theologians at the start of the nineteenth century, as a way to defend Catholicism in post Enlightenment times.6Thinkers of this kind who take center stage in the mind of the fathers of the Council, and of the Church's doctrinal concern in the years leading up to Vatican I, are Hermes, based in the University of Münster, and Günther, a Bohemian who worked and taught (privately) in Vienna. To these we turn.Georg Hermes (1775–1831)Hermes was an influential priest and theologian, professor of dogmatic theology in Münster and eventually in Bonn, with a wide following among his colleagues and students. He was motivated by his exposure to Kantian thought to approach theology as an apologist. His thought is sometimes termed an apologetic... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reflecting Back, Looking Forward:Ethics and the Environment at 25Lori Gruen (bio)Twenty-five years ago, when Ethics and the Environment launched, I remember having engaging conversations with the late founding editor, Victoria Davion, about just how important feminist thinking was to ethical explorations of our vexed relationships with the more than human world. She promised to promote feminist philosophical scholarship in this journal and she kept that promise. Although I'm (...) quite skeptical of "metrics" I did a search on the term "feminism" in the three prominent journals that publish on ethics and the environment and was not surprised to find that this journal contains 147 results where there are 51 in Environmental Values and just 33 in Environmental Ethics, a journal that has been publishing longer than Ethics and the Environment.Before the journal launched, Vicky, Chris Cuomo, and I spoke regularly about the value that feminist philosophical insights brought to environmental ethics. While we disagreed on a variety of issues (should the climate be central? Should we center our relationships with other animals?) and names (should we think of ourselves as "ecofeminists" or "ecological feminists"?) and had lively debates with other ecofeminists, including Carol Adams, Greta Gaard, Marti Kheel, Deborah Slicer, Val Plumwood, and Karen Warren, among others, we all shared a commitment to feminist methodology as well as recognizing the crucial need to incorporate ecofeminism into environmental ethics and praxis.Part of the reason it is important to incorporate ecofeminist insights into environmentalism is that ecofeminism builds on work in feminist philosophy that uncovers various biases that distort our knowledge and our relationships. For example, feminist epistemologies help us to see how testimony from those outside the center are undervalued or ignored. This has become painfully clear in environmental justice struggles; communities of [End Page 3] color are disproportionately impacted by exposure to toxins and are then burdened with finding "experts" who can "objectively" assess their claims. Ecofeminists have helped identify the inequity of looking to so-called objective expertise when communities are suffering. This sort of epistemic injustice is getting worse in the face of extreme weather events, in at least two ways. Many people who are impacted by hurricanes, floods, and earthquakes, are often not well positioned to navigate institutions that may be able to help, if those institutions even exist. And as sea ice melts and oceans rise, indigenous people's multi-generational wisdom is often overlooked, while their communities are simultaneously imperiled.Another reason that feminist and ecofeminist analyses are crucial for environmental philosophy is that ecofeminists can correct certain problematic frameworks that often hinder our abilities to reshape our relationships with the more than human world. Ecofeminists have long been critical of the abstract individualism that has permeated environmental ethics, including animal ethics (Adams and Gruen, 2014). This focus on abstract individualism leads to faulty analyses of our place in the natural world, as many holistic environmental philosophers have argued. Ecofeminists have also provided important challenges to holism in environmental philosophy, as the categorical "wholes" tend to occlude important differences within and between them. (Kheel, 2007). Ecofeminists have sought to contextualize ecological sensibilities to illuminate how systems of power differentially structure our relationships with each other and our environments.Vicky's commitment to incorporating feminist and ecofeminist perspectives as a central part of this journal's vision has also provided newer scholars with a venue for further development of ecofeminist thinking, as can be seen in A.E. Kings' "Intersectionality and the Changing Face of Ecofeminism" (2017) and Chaone Mallory's "What's in a Name? In Defense of Ecofeminism (Not Ecological Feminisms, Feminist Ecology, or Gender and the Environment)" (2018) published in the special tribute issue to Vicky. New thinking is always important, but in the face of global climate collapse, it is more important than ever.This journal has also been one of the go-to venues for animal ethics. In the early days of environmental ethics, there was a complex debate about what role, if any, animal ethics should play in environmental ethics. Over 35 years ago, two of the early pioneers, J. Baird Callicott (1980) and the late Marti Kheel (1985), argued in the pages of... (shrink)

Abnormal body weight has been subject to varying assessments over time. The stigmatization of obesity for aesthetic reasons only began in the Western world in the second half of the 19th century, and in the 20th century its association with increased mortality was recognized. Body weight is associated with social and cultural meanings that affect human identity, and discussions about it generate considerable emotion. Words used to refer to body weight can influence people's self-perceptions, attitudes and behavior. Experimental studies (...) have shown that even brief exposure to body-related words can trigger automatic judgements and evaluations about body shape and weight. These negative and often implicit associations are symptomatic of a wider social stigma associated with weight. Recent evidence points to globalization and the presence of weight stigma in both developed and developing countries around the world. Numerous studies further indicate that weight shaming does not lead to weight reduction but rather to weight gain. Therefore, from a public health perspective, it is important to develop messages that are at least non-stigmatizing. The aim of this article is to present existing research on stigmatizing content in the media, as well as to analyze three selected social campaigns related to obesity. (shrink)

This essay is a historical–geographical account of how scientists and public health officials conceptualized and assessed northern radioactive exposures in the late 1950s and 1960s. The detection of radionuclides in caribou bodies in northern Canada both demonstrated the global reach of nuclear fallout and revealed the unevenness of toxic relations and radioactive exposures. Following the documentation of the lichen–caribou–human pathway of exposure, Canadian public health officials became increasingly concerned about the possibility of heightened radioactive exposures among Indigenous northerners. (...) Between 1963 and 1969, scientists and officials with Canada’s Radiation Protection Division coordinated an interdepartmental monitoring program through which they sought to determine whether the consumption of contaminated caribou meat had caused radioactive exposure levels in northern communities to exceed the officially recognized “safe limits.” In 1969, the northern monitoring program was suspended after officials determined that radionuclide body burdens had not exceeded the threshold for radioactive exposures. While the RPD emphasized its development of a technoscientific approach to measuring radioactive body burdens, the legitimacy of the monitoring program was linked directly to interdepartmental relations within Canada’s colonial northern administration. I situate the northern monitoring program within broader shifts in public health approaches to radiation protection and use Gabrielle Hecht’s concept of nuclearity to demonstrate how RPD officials employed the logic of the threshold in their assessment of radioactive exposures. (shrink)

Background:Although the term “mental pain” is often the subject of expert opinions regarding claims for damages, there is still no standardized questionnaire in the German-speaking area to operationalize this concept. Therefore, the aim of this work is the development and validation of a self-assessment measurement for psychological pain after traumatic events (FESSTE).Methods:A first version of the questionnaire was applied on a sample of the German speaking general population (N=425; 88% female). After performing an item analysis and exploratory factor analysis, (...) the questionnaire was shortened and tested on a second German speaking general population sample (N=619; 89% female). Finally, the newly developed questionnaire was related to the extent of traumatization (measured with a uniquely designed trauma checklist attached to the FESSTE) and already established instruments for the assessment of psychiatric symptom burden, which included the Brief Symptom Inventory-18 (BSI-18) and the Post-traumatic-Stress-Scale (PTSS-10).Results:The final version of the FESSTE consists of a total of 30 items and covers the subscales “Somatization,” “Depression,” “Intrusive Memories,” “Dissociation” and “Anxiety,” and a total scale “Mental Pain.” Based on the confirmatory factor analysis, it is assumed that the latent factor structure of the FESSTE can be best described as a bifactor-model. The final version shows a satisfactory model fit, high internal consistencies, and strong positive correlations with the BSI-18 and PTSS-10, as well as the extent of traumatic experiences.Discussion:The FESSTE enables an operationalization of mental pain comprising five subscales and one total scale. What is more, the trauma checklist attached to the FESSTE allows for the standardized assessment of potentially traumatic experiences and the corresponding extent of these experiences. The results indicate that the FESSTE is a reliable and valid self-assessment procedure for mental pain, which is suitable for use in research and in expert practice. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Believing in Yesterday while Living for TodayJudith P. HallettLee T. Pearcy's meditation on the past and prospects of classical education in the United States, The Grammar of Our Civility: Classical Education in America (Baylor University Press, Waco, Tex. 2005), embarks from an assessment by the German émigré-scholar Werner Jaeger in his Scripta Minora, published in Rome in 1961, a year before Jaeger died. Jaeger's exact words merit full (...) quotation: "Without the continuing prestige of the ancient idea of humanity in human culture, classical scholarship is just a waste of time. Whoever does not see this ought to come to America and let himself learn from the way classical studies have developed there." Arguing "that Jaeger was right," Pearcy contends that "Classics, the study of ancient Greece and Rome, has never developed, as other academic subjects and disciplines have, a distinctly American form in response to American social and cultural conditions." Instead, "classics in this country has imitated European models and patterned itself after forms of education and scholarship developed in a cultural context where, as Jaeger saw, the prestige of Humanism guaranteed the cultural value of classical study" (Foreword, x).The Grammar of Our Civility not only offers a thoughtful response to Jaeger's criticism of how classical studies have developed in this alien environment; it also considers how they might, at long last, become truly American. In faulting classics in this country for merely emulating inapposite European models, Pearcy investigates the genesis of these models in Renaissance Italy and nineteenth-century England and Germany, and traces the evolution of American classics in higher and secondary education from colonial to contemporary times. He maintains that the inability of classics "to negotiate successfully the transition at the end of the nineteenth century," moving from the curricular configurations that have been called the "Old College" to the modern American university, has left it uniquely marginalized among professionalized disciplines. Yet he also evocatively imagines, in the mode of another illustrious European settler on our shores, John Lennon: "the contours of a distinctive form of classical education grounded in American personal and social reality [End Page 589] as firmly as European classical studies were grounded in the society they served" (Foreword, ix–x).Pearcy insists that this "pragmatic" American form of classical education needs to resemble its European predecessor by remaining "a way of becoming human and humane." Nevertheless, he envisions that it will adopt patterns of education and scholarship that draw on the "progressive, democratic strain" in the practice of a few American classicists, "avoid[ing] the temptations of some postmodern theories that deny language and literature any possibility of interacting with the human world and make them instruments of power rather than the creators of the powerful." He visualizes a discipline that emerges from and reacts to what he terms the "American cultural self... indeterminate and various." At the same time, he stipulates that this new form of classics must respond to "Jaeger's provocative challenge... by refusing to depend on the 'ancient idea of humanity in human culture'" (118–19).Jaeger's "ancient idea," responsible for the form of classical education that prevailed from approximately the Renaissance to World War I, is the "grammar" of Pearcy's title. Pearcy deploys the term "grammar" in an inventive, subtle analogy between the mastery of an individual language and the study of the entire classical world. As he observes, much as those who acquire the fundamentals of a language through exposure to abstract accounts of its workings become capable of comprehending and actively transforming the culture that this language describes and sustains, so those who once absorbed the messages emanating from that old-time, Old World classical education came to possess the "tastes, values and attitudes of the governing class," and be deemed "civilized" (2–5).Pearcy ponders the form that this "civility" of yore—informed, humane interactions of the mind—might assume in American society today. He similarly considers how a new, culturally rooted and authentic kind of grammar—formal intellectual engagement with the ancient Greco-Roman world in the halls of learning—might foster that civility. Not surprisingly, he assumes that those acquiring this grammar "will begin... (shrink)

Background: Exposomics, the study of the exposome, is flourishing, but the field is not well defined. The term “exposome” refers to all environmental influences and associated biological responses throughout the lifespan. However, this definition is very similar to that of the term “environment”—the external elements and conditions that surround and affect the life and development of an organism. Consequently, the exposome seems to be nothing more than a synonym for the environment, and exposomics a synonym for environmental research. As a (...) result, some have rebranded their “standard” environmental health research with the neologistic exposome term, whereas others ignore or seek to abandon the seemingly redundant concept of the exposome. -/- Objectives: We argue that exposomics needs to sharpen its mission focus to counteract this apparent redundancy. Exposomics should be defined as a research program in environmental health aimed at enabling a comprehensive and discovery-driven approach to identifying environmental determinants of human health. Similar to the aim of the Human Genome Project, exposomics aims to analyze the complete complexity of exposures and their corresponding biological responses. Exposomics’ primary premise is that the existence of undiscovered, potentially interconnected, nongenetic (environmental) risk factors for health necessitates a comprehensive discovery-driven analysis approach. -/- Discussion: We argue that exposomics researchers should adopt our reconceptualization of exposomics and focus on the productiveness and integrity of their research program: its purpose and principles. We suggest that exposomics researchers should coordinate the writing of reviews that assess the program’s productiveness and integrity, as well as provide a platform for exposomics researchers to define their vision for the field. (shrink)

Multiple scholars and institutions have asked what distinguishes public health research from public health practice. Most often, they ask in order to have a clear definition of what one does in various public health settings to assess oversight and/or regulation of human subjects research. More importantly, however, whether something is considered public health research or public health practice has real ethical implications in terms of the general moral considerations at stake and the obligations of public health researchers/practitioners to the (...) populations they serve or study.Numerous examples in recent history of research ethics, including the Kennedy Krieger Lead Abatement Study and EPA’s Children’s Environmental Exposure Research Study, suggest that an exploration of the ethics of public health, or more generally population-based research, may be warranted. Although we acknowledge that there are important ethical issues to consider in the implementation of public health practice, we leave that discussion for other authors. (shrink)

Individual research protections provided by bioethical principles can be extended to group protections, particularly for place-based communities and cultural groups who may share a common harm or burden. In this article, an argument is made for the need to consider the group conditions of individual research subjects in the ethics of individual report-backs of human biomonitoring results. Human biomonitoring, the measuring of concentration of chemicals or their metabolites in blood, urine, breast milk, hair, and other biological samples, can (...) provide an assessment of an individual's exposure to a chemical and can integrate exposures from multiple pathways and sources. Biomonitoring studies have been increasing in the past decade for such purposes as measuring the levels of chemicals that are ingested by members of the general population and at what concentrations, to determine if exposure levels are higher in some groups vs. others, to track temporal trends to establish reference ranges for chemical exposures, and to investigate an association with health. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Martin Warner PHILOSOPHICAL POETRY: THE CASE OF FOUR QUARTETS I FOR plato the quarrel between philosophy and poetry was already an ancient one. Since his day strenuous efforts have been made to eliminate it by circumscribing each widiin carefully specified boundaries, on die principle that strong fences make good neighbors, and allowing die one to venture onto the territory of the other only as licensed. Thus until recently assessments (...) of the literary quality of a philosopher's writing have commonly been treated as extraneous to its value as philosophy, and philosophical probing of die thought of a poem as irrelevant to a literary critic's final assessment ofit. For some works, however, such compromises seem forced; Four Quartets is a case in point. Here we have a sustained effort to explore issues of a philosophical and theological nature in poetic terms — in a manner that challenges our understanding and lays claim to our assent. The poetry does not merely encapsulate a theoretical position, but enacts a process ofthought perceived as bearing on diese topics at least as significandy as do those processes commonly termed "philosophical," and diereby raises by implication more general issues concerning die status of those "philosophical" modes themselves. F. R. Leavis is well known both for his engagement with the poetry of T. S. Eliot, and for his insistence on a clear separation between literary criticism and philosophy; dius his raising of philosophical questions as an integral and decisive element in his final and most extensive analysis ofthe Quartets is particularly striking: That Four Quartets offers us thought, searching, basic and rigorous, we have our assurance in the first ten lines of"Burnt Norton".... As thought, it aspires to a general validity.... 222 Martin Warner223 The questions, how must reality be conceived, and what is the nature of the human situation, have been raised in a way diat compels one to determine and verify one's own ultimate beliefs.1 Of course, Leavis is clear that the manner in which die poem raises these questions is not that traditionally associated with philosophy: "The 'music' of Four Quartets challenges a criterion that is not logic, but something equivalent in the field of total meaning. We can only tell what it is by intelligent self-exposure to the poetry" (p. 159). Similarly his mode of"determining " and "verifying" his own beliefs in response is that proper to literary criticism. But the questions are plainly philosophical ones, and one does not need the authority of Leavis to see that the poem raises them. From a philosophical point ofview, the interesting questions are the status of the manner in which it does so and the nature of the "criterion that is not logic" which is said to have an internal relation to that "intelligent selfexposure to the poetry" which Leavis in his critical practice seeks to exemplify. Unfortunately, this late commentary on Eliot's poetry is among the weakest in the Leavis corpus, precisely lacking "intelligent self-exposure to the poetry";2 but this should not lead us to dismiss its more general claims. In earlier and far stronger criticism Leavis had already argued that "Burnt Norton" does "by strictly poetical means the business ofan epistemological and metaphysical inquiry" ("Eliot's Later Poetry," p. 65). Further, die most distinguished recent criticism of Eliot's poetry is probably that of A. D. Moody,3 and he too finds himself driven to place his own "ultimate beliefs" in relation to it. On the one hand, "There is likely to be at least some degree of essential conformity between the way we live now and die way in which the poem would order life; and to that extent the poem can be said to express, and to give a form to, the sensibUity ofits age" (p. 264). But on the other, "It is a neurotic vision, one arising from some disorder or disease of the personality — or of his culture.... It is not easy to attain a detached view of die neurosis which is like a dominant gene in our culture. It is a matter... of the alienation ofman from mat to which he properly, of his nature, belongs — his being cut off from... (shrink)

Healthy Volunteers (HVs) who participate in clinical trials are a vulnerable group that deserves specific protection. We assessed the number and types of studies that involve HVs around the world and outline the methodological barriers to their analysis. We found that tens of thousands of HVs are involved every year in clinical trials in a large variety of countries and that the overwhelming majority of studies are not “first-in-human” but pharmacokinetic studies. The two cornerstones for both ethical and safe (...) participation of HVs in clinical trials are properly obtained informed consent, and a minimization of exposure to risk, in particular by avoiding concealed participation in multiple trials. To minimize the risk of exploitation of HVs and their exposure to risk, we propose ways to ensure genuine informed consent, and advocate setting up national Healthy Volunteer volunteer registries as established in France and the U.K. (shrink)

Quantitative health risk assessment is a procedure for estimating the likelihood that exposure to environmental contaminants will produce certain adverse health effects, most commonly cancer. One instance of its use has been a California air toxics public “right-to-know” law. This article examines the ways in which credible health risk measurements were produced and challenged during the implementation of the California public policy. Fieldwork and documentary analysis finds that stakeholders negotiated within the formal constraints of the risk assessment (...) procedures but still expressed their competing visions for the implementation of the risk communication policy. The abstract results of the method were contextualized according to different time frames and allocations of uncertainty. Furthermore, the article demonstrates that the political process privileged consistency of measurement over accuracy, revealing political negotiations at a fundamentally technical level. The struggle and variation in interpretations can be explained best by the demand to organize the program around the discordant values of democratic accountability and technical efficiency. (shrink)

In this article I think through Black feminism and queer theory to critically analyze toxicology. I focus on toxicology's conception of endocrine-disrupting chemicals, a class of toxicants that can cause epigenetic changes leading to inheritable health issues. I suggest that Black feminist interventions are particularly necessary for the study of toxicants because multiply marginalized populations are disproportionately more exposed to EDCs. The structural preconditions that generate this uneven, racialized, and sexualized toxic body-burden threaten to turn cultural constructions of race and (...) sex into biological realities. My discursive analysis of key scientific texts on toxicology, EDCs, and epigenetics underscores how Eurocentric biases and eugenic logics permeate and co-constitute biochemical matter. I further argue that these texts’ un/articulated norms regarding the human, sexual behavior, and evolutionary fitness undermine the usefulness of toxicological assessments for environmental justice. I close by urging scientist scholar-activists to reconceive the study of toxicants. A Black feminist approach to toxicity, I suggest, would not only situate chemical exposures in their sociopolitical contexts, but also radically revision what it means to be human. (shrink)

Trafficking and persistence of fetal microchimeric cells (fMCs) and circulating extracellular vesicles (EVs) have been observed in animals and humans, but their consequences in the maternal body and their mechanistic contributions to maternal physiology and pathophysiology are not yet fully defined. Fetal cells and EVs may help remodel maternal organs after pregnancy‐associated changes, but the cell types and EV cargos reaching the mother in preterm pregnancies after exposure to various risk factors can be distinct from term pregnancies. As preterm (...) delivery‐associated maternal complications are rising, revisiting this topic and formulating scientific questions for future research to reduce the risk of maternal morbidities are timely. Epidemiological studies report maternal cardiovascular risk as one of the major complications after preterm delivery. This paper suggests a potential link between fMCs and circulating EVs and adverse maternal cardiovascular outcomes post‐pregnancies, the underlying mechanisms, consequences, and methods for and how this link might be assessed. (shrink)

Dance – as a ritual, therapy, and leisure activity – has been known for thousands of years. Today, dance is increasingly used as therapy for cognitive and neurological disorders such as dementia and Parkinson’s disease. Surprisingly, the effects of dance training on the healthy young brain are not well understood despite the necessity of such information for planning successful clinical interventions. Therefore, this study examined actively performing, expert-level trained college students as a model of long-term exposure to dance training. (...) To study the long-term effects of dance training on the human brain, we compared 20 young expert female Dancers with normal body mass index with 20 age- and education-matched Non-Dancers with respect to brain structure and function. We used diffusion tensor, morphometric, resting state and task-related functional MRI, a broad cognitive assessment, and objective measures of selected dance skill (Dance Central video game and a balance task). Dancers showed superior performance in the Dance Central video game and balance task, but showed no differences in cognitive abilities. We found little evidence for training-related differences in brain volume in Dancers. Dancers had lower anisotropy in the corticospinal tract. They also activated the action observation network (AON) to greater extent than Non-Dancers when viewing dance sequences. Dancers showed altered functional connectivity of the AON, and of the general motor learning network. These functional connectivity differences were related to dance skill and balance and training-induced structural characteristics. Our findings have the potential to inform future study designs aiming to monitor dance training-induced plasticity in clinical populations. (shrink)

The study investigates the effects of ESG washing on banks' reputational exposure. We define ESG washing as a disparity between a bank's environmental and social disclosure level and the practical implementation of the relative measures. The analysis involves an international sample of 120 banks operating across 35 countries from 2014 to 2020. The results evidence a different effect based on the pillar considered: the higher the inconsistency on environmental issues, the higher a bank's reputational exposure. Conversely, higher levels (...) of disclosure compared to performance on social issues appear to reduce reputational exposure. In addition, citizen movements and the country's legal system play a significant role in amplifying or mitigating a bank's reputational exposure. Our findings offer insight into the phenomenon of ESG washing in the banking industry, supporting the need for more verified information across countries and all economic sectors. (shrink)

Proximity and interpersonal contact are prominent components of social connection. Giving affective touch to others is fundamental for human bonding. This brief report presents preliminary results from a pilot study. It explores if exposure to bonding scenes impacts the activity of specific muscles related to physical interaction. Fingers flexion is a very important component when performing most actions of affectionate contact. We explored the visuo-motor affective interplay by priming participants with bonding scenes and assessing the electromyographic activity of (...) the fingers flexor muscle, in the absence of any overt movements. Photographs of dyads in social interaction and of the same dyads not interacting were employed. We examined the effects upon the electromyographical activity: during the passive exposure to pictures, and during picture offset and when expecting the signal to perform a fingers flexion task. Interacting dyads compared to matched non-interacting dyads increased electromyographic activity of the fingers flexor muscle in both contexts. Specific capture of visual bonding cues at the level of visual cortex had been described in the literature. Here we showed that the neural processing of visual bonding cues reaches the fingers flexor muscle. Besides, previous visualization of bonding cues enhanced background electromyographic activity during motor preparation to perform the fingers flexion task, which might reflect a sustained leakage of central motor activity downstream leading to increase in firing of the respective motor neurons. These data suggest, at the effector level, an implicit visuo-motor connection in which social interaction cues evoke intrinsic dispositions toward affectionate social behavior. (shrink)

On February 24, 2022, Russia invaded its neighboring nation, Ukraine, in what is widely regarded in the West as a grave breach of international law. Since that time, the Russian military has been i...