En este artículo exploramos desde la literatura, por medio de Suenan timbres de Luis Vidales, la dinámica de las nacientes urbes colombianas que inician un proceso acelerado de modernización, carente de un desarrollo adecuado del pensamiento moderno, a la par con los nuevos avances materiales, lo que imposibilita debatir la pertinencia y el proceso de este tipo de transformaciones. Circunstancia que lleva a Colombia a experimentar los idiotismos de la modernización sin modernidad, impidiéndoles a los hombres entender las necesidades y (...) conflictos que genera el progreso. Estas aldeas de principios del siglo XX se convierten rápidamente en proyectos de ciudades determinadas por la aparición de nuevos objetos, creando una atmósfera móvil y ruidosa por oposición a la pasividad de las aldeas, realidad que nos recrea Vidales desde una poética comprometida con los cambios sociales y políticos como poeta de la crítica en Colombia. In this paper, from the literature of Luis Vidales’s Suenan timbres, we explore the dynamics of Colombian rising cities that initiate an accelerated modernization process, deprived of an appropriate development of modern thinking, along with the new material advances, which makes it impossible to debate the relevance and the process followed by these types of transformations. This situation leads Colombia to experience the idiotism of modernization without modernity, impeding men to understand the needs and conflicts generated by progress. These villages from twentieth century beginnings quickly turn into city projects determined by the arrival of new objects, creating a mobile and noisy atmosphere, opposed to villages’ passivity. From poetics committed to social and political change, Vidales recreates reality as a poet of criticism in Colombia. (shrink)

Macroergonomic compatibility refers to the extent to which macroergonomic factors and elements interact positively with humans. It is one of the most complex constructs to measure in work systems and in ergonomics. The goal of this paper is to determine the levels of MC in a manufacturing system. As methods, we use the macroergonomic compatibility index and the Macroergonomic Compatibility Questionnaire. The MCQ was administered in its three versions to collect data about the macroergonomic practices implemented in the manufacturing company. (...) Regarding results, all the macroergonomic factors and most of the macroergonomic elements showed a low level of MC; that is, MCI < 0.7. Only macroergonomic elements Education, Knowledge, and Skills reached a medium level; namely, MCI = 0.709. The factor with the highest level of MC was the Person factor. Similarly, the whole manufacturing system showed a low level of MC. In conclusion, the studied manufacturing company requires urgent macroergonomic interventions. Also, we found that the MCI can effectively measure the level of MC of MFEs and can guide the implementation of macroergonomic practices and explain the MC construct. (shrink)

Burnout syndrome and obesity are two growing conditions that affect employees’ health and company productivity. Recently, several studies have pointed to a possible relationship between both phenomena. However, such a relationship has not been clearly defined. This research analyzes the relationship between BS dimensions and body mass index, the latter being treated as a moderator variable among obese senior and middle managers in the Mexican maquiladora industry through a structural equation model. A total of 361 senior and middle managers completed (...) both the Maslach Burnout Inventory-General Survey [with emotional exhaustion, cynicism, and professional efficacy as subscale dimensions] and a sociodemographic questionnaire. The results showed a statistically significant relationship between EE and PE, with BMI acting as a moderator variable. The results showed that when BMI increases as a moderator variable, the strength of the relationship between EE and PE also changes. For example, although PE had a negative value of 0.14 before the moderator effect, the value increased up to 0.32 when the BMI was factored into the relationship. Therefore, maquiladora industries are being advised to increase their investments on the identification and prevention of employees’ EE and obesity. Such interventions would promote a better quality of life and could prevent economic losses resulting from poor employee performance. (shrink)

In an unusual instance of lay participation in biomedical research, U.S. AIDS treatment activists have constituted themselves as credible participants in the process of knowledge construction, thereby bringing about changes in the epistemic practices of biomedical research. This article examines the mechanisms or tactics by which these lay activists have constructed their credibility in the eyes of AIDS researchers and government officials. It considers the inwlications of such interventions for the conduct of medical research; examines some of the (...) ironies, tensions, and limitations in the process; and argues for the importance of studying social movements that engage with expert knowledge. (shrink)

While foregrounding the historiography of HIV and AIDS in the South African context, this article analyses AIDS as simultaneously existing in three spheres: first, virtually – as the subject matter of electronically measurable research; second, academically – as a topic of research in the discipline of History; and third, actually – as a complex health concern and signifier that, via the field of Medical and Health Humanities, could allow for new collaborations between historians and others interested in understanding (...) AIDS. Throughout, the central focus is the discipline of History and the global trends that become evident when examining metrics about AIDS research, particularly those that show the hierarchies of knowledge ‘production’, the reinforcement of disciplinary boundaries, and the discrepancy between the amount of research ‘produced’ by scientific and humanities disciplines. Overall, the article suggests that ‘post-AIDS’ is not currently helpful to health historians working on South African and other majority world contexts. More specifically, the article reflects on what AIDS histories still need to be written, and I argue that Medical and Health Humanities could provide a space for historians to work within and across disciplinary boundaries given the ever evolving remit of AIDS histories, temporalities, and narratives. (shrink)

There is significant potential for machine learning (ML) models and systems to enhance prognostic, diagnostic, and therapeutic decision-making in the healthcare context. When used in clinical setti...

This paper reflects on the meanings of ‘post-AIDS’ in the Global North and South. I bring together contemporary arguments to suggest that the notion of ‘post-AIDS’ is, at best, misplaced, not least because its starting point remains a biotechnical one. Drawing on aspects of the sub-Saharan African experience, this essay suggests that, despite significant shifts in access to antiretroviral therapy, HIV continues to be fundamentally shaped by economic determinants and social and cultural practices. In this essay, I question (...) the certainty of the discourse of ‘positive progress’, which underpins the ‘post-AIDS’ narrative, and suggest that living with HIV and AIDS in our contemporary global context is a life lived with ongoing complexity, stigma and chronicity. I suggest that HIV in the Global North shares many characteristics with HIV in the Global South yet differs in significant ways, not least in the fact that a resource-rich context generates an environment where health and social care support is possible, and, mostly, usual. In both contexts, however, the experience of living with a highly stigmatized illness with no cure in both the Global South and North suggests that this is a point of shared experience. (shrink)

BackgroundCommunity engagement in research is valuable for instrumental and intrinsic reasons. Despite existing guidance on how to ensure meaningful CE, much of what it takes to achieve this goal differs across settings. Considering the emerging trend towards mandating CE in many research studies, this study aimed at documenting how CE is conceptualized and implemented, and then providing context-specific guidance on how researchers and research regulators in Uganda could think about and manage CE in research.MethodsWe conducted qualitative interviews and focus group (...) discussions involving forty-one respondents who were experienced in HIV/aids biomedical research involving CE. Thirty-eight of these were directly or indirectly associated with Uganda’s leading research institution in the field of HIV/aids. They included Principal Investigators, Community Liaisons Officers, Research Ethics Committee members and Community Advisory Board Members. Three respondents were from Uganda National Council for Science and Technology. Data were collected between August 2019 and August 2020, using audio-taped focus group discussions and key informant interviews, transcribed and analyzed manually to generate themes and subthemes.ResultsThree major themes emerged: goals or value of CE; the means of CE, and, the evaluation of CE. Goals or value of CE generated four subthemes representing the overarching goals of CE: Promote communities’ agency; Generate and sustain trust; Protect and promote communities’ rights and interests; and, Help studies optimize participation in the form of enrolment and retention of participants. What usually comes under the nomenclatures of methods, strategies, and approaches of CE, such as town-hall meetings, sports events, drama, and the like, should simply be understood as the means of CE, and it is not desirable to hold pre-conceived and fixed ideas about the best means to conduct CE in research since a lot depend on the context. Finally, the study found that despite CE’s critical importance, which suggests the need to track and evaluate it, CE is currently intermittently evaluated, and for inadequate motivations.ConclusionsExisting guidance on how to conduct robust CE in research is no substitute for creativity, flexibility, and reflexivity on the part of both researchers and research regulators. (shrink)

The human immunodeficiency virus since its genesis has continued to affect a large number of the population in the African region and has caused exponential deaths. At the same time, new infections have been reported in South Africa. However, religion as a vehicle of change through the institution of the church has been acting on the contrary, since it discourages the use of condoms and moralising the pelvic area in its characterisation against the commandment of God. Such a perspective has (...) largely been drawn from the Christian doctrine. We argue that in its condemnation and moralisation of the virus, the church, through its pastors, engaged in biblical discourse.Contribution: The article applies a qualitative phenomenological approach and system theory as theoretical lenses. Furthermore, the article locates the study within Christian communities located in Thulamela Municipality, Limpopo province. It proposes Christian practices that can be useful in combating the virus. (shrink)

Within the ethical debate on Machine Learning-driven decision support systems (ML_CDSS), notions such as “human in the loop” or “meaningful human control” are often cited as being necessary for ethical legitimacy. In addition, ethical principles usually serve as the major point of reference in ethical guidance documents, stating that conflicts between principles need to be weighed and balanced against each other. Starting from a neo-Kantian viewpoint inspired by Onora O'Neill, this article makes a concrete suggestion of how to interpret the (...) role of the “human in the loop” and to overcome the perspective of rivaling ethical principles in the evaluation of AI in health care. We argue that patients should be perceived as “fellow workers” and epistemic partners in the interpretation of ML_CDSS outputs. We further highlight that a meaningful process of integrating (rather than weighing and balancing) ethical principles is most appropriate in the evaluation of medical AI. (shrink)

Paying research participants in developing countries like Uganda raises ethical concerns over potential for undue inducement. This article, based on an exploratory study, reviewed 49 research protocols from a national HIV/AIDS research ethics committee database. Payments mainly adhered to the reimbursement and compensation payment models. Offers made were diverse but basic in order to limit undue inducement. Implications in terms of undue inducement and possible impact on participants and research are discussed. We end by recommending standardization across comparable studies (...) in the interests of promoting high-quality research, altruism, voluntariness, and restraining unfair reimbursement practices in research. (shrink)

We discuss the data on the epidemic--where it comes from and how it is presented. We note the limitations of the use of antenatal cli.

This study investigated eye-movement patterns during emotion perception for children with hearing aids and hearing children. Seventy-eight participants aged from 3 to 7 were asked to watch videos with a facial expression followed by an oral statement, and these two cues were either consistent or inconsistent in emotional valence. Results showed that while normal-hearing children paid more attention to the upper part of the face, children with hearing aids paid more attention to the lower face after the oral (...) statement was presented. When there was an inconsistency between the visual and auditory cues, children with hearing aids were likely to increase attention to the upper face. The results revealed the underlying mechanism of deficits in emotion perception for hearing-impaired children. (shrink)

Public debate on acceptable farm animal husbandry suffers from a confusion of tongues. To clarify positions of various stakeholder groups in their joint search for acceptable solutions, the concept of animal welfare was split up into three notions: no suffering, respect for intrinsic value, and non-appalling appearance of animals. This strategy was based on the hypothesis that multi-stakeholder solutions should be based on shared values rather than on compromises. The usefulness of such an artificial value distinction strategy was tested in (...) a small series of experiments. The results demonstrate that the chosen concept to distinguish between values is effective in a stakeholder context. Farmers’ views on doing good to animals appeared to be largely based on their value to prevent suffering and predominantly focused on the provision of regular care. Their priority for this value is clearly shared with other stakeholders, providing a basis for joint solutions. The concept of intrinsic value does not play a discernable role in farmers’ considerations. Based on the varying views on welfare, it can be inferred that there is a gradual rather than a principal difference between government legislation and farmers’ values, whereas public perception and acceptance of farm practices remains complicated. Distinction between value groups and focusing on a selected notion (such as no suffering) proved to be effective in bringing representatives of stakeholder groups together, but is unlikely to bridge the emotional gap between commercial farm practices and public ideals. (shrink)

This paper deploys Laclau and Mouffe's discourse theory to examine the dispute over intellectual property protection and global HIV/aids medicines access. Over the 1980s and 1990s, major pharmaceutical companies and minority world governments successfully crafted a strong patent protection regime, institutionalized in the World Trade Organization's intellectual property rules. In the early 2000s, a transnational civil society campaign challenged this regime, positioning patents at the centre of a highly publicized dispute. This dispute has been retrospectively identified as a turning (...) point in medicines access discourse, with the 2001–2003 period dubbed the ‘golden window’ for expanded global HIV/aids medicines access. However, this ‘window’ has also been critiqued as an unsustainable aberration to a continuing hegemonic regime that prioritizes patent protection, to the detriment of equitable global medicines access. This paper draws on both political economy analyses and discourse theoretical concepts to examine the processes of rupture and suture in HIV/aids medicines access discourse. (shrink)

Older adults with age-related hearing loss often use hearing aids to compensate. However, certain challenges in speech perception, especially in noise still exist, despite today’s HA technology. The current study presents an evaluation of a home-based auditory exercises program that can be used during the adaptation process for HA use. The home-based program was developed at a time when telemedicine became prominent in part due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The study included 53 older adults with age-related symmetrical sensorineural hearing (...) loss. They were divided into three groups depending on their experience using HAs. Group 1: Experienced users. Group 2: New users. Group 3: Non-users. These three groups underwent auditory exercises for 3 weeks. The auditory tasks included auditory detection, auditory discrimination, and auditory identification, as well as comprehension with basic and more complex stimuli, presented in quiet and in noisy listening conditions. All participants completed self-assessment questionnaires before and after the auditory exercises program and underwent a cognitive test at the end. Self-assessed improvements in hearing ability were observed across the HA users groups, with significant changes described by new users. Overall, speech perception in noise was poorer than in quiet. Speech perception accuracy was poorer in the non-users group compared to the users in all tasks. In sessions where stimuli were presented in quiet, similar performance was observed among new and experienced uses. New users performed significantly better than non-users in all speech in noise tasks; however, compared to the experienced users, performance differences depended on task difficulty. The findings indicate that HA users, even new users, had better perceptual performance than their peers who did not receive hearing aids. (shrink)

Given current constraints on universal treatment campaigns, recent advances in public health prevention initiatives have revitalized efforts to stem the tide of HIV transmission. Yet, despite a growing imperative for prevention—supported by the promise of behavioral, structural and biomedical approaches to lower the incidence of HIV—human rights frameworks remain limited in addressing collective prevention policy through global health governance. Assessing the evolution of rights-based approaches to global HIV/AIDS policy, this review finds that human rights have shifted from collective public (...) health to individual treatment access. While the advent of the HIV/AIDS pandemic gave meaning to rights in framing global health policy, the application of rights in treatment access litigation came at the expense of public health prevention efforts. Where the human rights framework remains limited to individual rights enforced against a state duty bearer, such rights have faced constrained application in framing population-level policy to realize the public good of HIV prevention. Concluding that human rights frameworks must be developed to reflect the complementarity of individual treatment and collective prevention, this article conceptualizes collective rights to public health, structuring collective combination prevention to alleviate limitations on individual rights frameworks and frame rights-based global HIV/AIDS policy to assure research expansion, prevention access and health system integration. (shrink)

The current spread of democracy has not enabled the poor to use rights to win equity, raising questions about whether the poor and weak can use liberal democratic freedoms to address inequality. An oft-cited model of success, however, is the Treatment Action Campaign ’s campaign to press the South African government into distributing anti-retroviral medication to people living with HIV/aids. This article finds that TAC’s strategy of using the rights and rules of constitutional democracy to win gains may offer (...) an exemplar for forms of collective action which can win substantive equality, but that the model remains of limited application. (shrink)

Background Universities in Cameroon are playing an active part in HIV/AIDS research and much of this research is carried out by students, usually for the purpose of a dissertation/thesis. Student theses/dissertations present research findings in a much more comprehensive manner and have been described as the stepping-stone of a budding scientist’s potential in becoming an independent researcher. It is therefore important to verify how students handle issues of research ethics. Method Theses/dissertations on HIV/AIDS that described research studies involving (...) the use of human research participants were screened to verify if research ethics approval and informed consent were obtained and documented. The contents of the consent forms were also qualitatively analyzed. Results Of 174 theses/dissertations on HIV, ethics approval was documented in 17 and informed consent in 77. Research ethics approval was first mentioned at all in 2002 and highly reported in the year 2007. Evidence of ethics approval was found for the first time in 2005 and informed consent first observed and evidenced in 1997. Ethics approval was mostly reported by students studying for an MD and was not reported in any Bachelors’ degree dissertation. Informed consent was also highly reported in MD theses followed by undergraduate theses. Voluntary participation and potential benefits of the study were some of the common aspects dealt with in most of the consent forms. The right to discontinue participation in the study and management of residual samples were scarcely ever mentioned. Conclusions Overall, and given the current state of the art of research ethics around the world, student-scientists in Cameroon would seem to be merely kidding with research ethics. It is thus essential that training in health research ethics be incorporated in the curriculum of universities in Cameroon in order that the next generation of scientists may be better equipped with thorough knowledge and practice of HRE. This, we believe, would be one way of fighting the occurrence of research scandals, which have not yet abated significantly, especially those arising from negligence or inexcusable ignorance. (shrink)

Contemporary global health crises that involve mothers necessarily invoke the varied cultural problematics of maternal embodiment. Examining breastfeeding in light of current concerns about maternal contagion and contamination, with special attention to HIV and environmental toxins, allows us to consider how ambivalence toward maternal embodiment affects the ways we address these health crises within which mothers figure so significantly.