BackgroundInternational guidelines recommend ethical and scientific quality standards for managing and reporting adverse events occurring during clinical trials to competent research ethics committees and regulatory authorities. The purpose of this study was to determine whether clinical trial protocols in Cameroon are developed in line with national requirements and international guidelines as far as detecting, reporting and investigating of adverse events is concerned.MethodsIt was a documentary review of all approved clinical trial protocols that were submitted at the Cameroon National Ethics Committee (...) for evaluation from 1997 through 2012. Data were extracted using a preconceived and validated grid. Protocol review process targeted the title, abstract, objectives, methodology, resources, and the chapter on safety.ResultsIn total, 106 clinical trial protocols were identified from 2173 protocols seen in the archive and 104 included for review. Seventy six trials did not include the surveillance of adverse events as part of their objective. A total of 91 protocols did not budget for adverse event surveillance, 76 did not have a data safety management board, 11 included insurance for participants, 47 did not include a case definition for serious adverse events, 33 described procedures to detect adverse events, 33 described procedure for reporting and 22 described procedure for investigating adverse events.DiscussionsMost clinical trial protocols in Cameroon are developed to focus on benefits and pay little attention to harms. The development of national guidelines can improve the surveillance of adverse events in clinical trial research conducted in Cameroon. Adverse events surveillance tools and a budget are critical for an adequate planning for adverse event surveillance when developing trial protocols.ConclusionClinical trial protocols submitted in the Cameroon National Ethics Committee do not adequately plan to assess adverse events in clinical trial protocols. In order to improve on the safety of participants and marketed drug, there is a need to develop national guidelines for clinical trials by the government, and to improve evaluation procedures and monitoring of ongoing trials by the ethics committee. (shrink)

his paper presents a unified treatment of the propositional and first-order many-valued logics through the method of tableaux. It is shown that several important results on the proof theory and model theory of those logics can be obtained in a general way. We obtain, in this direction, abstract versions of the completeness theorem, model existence theorem (using a generalization of the classical analytic consistency properties), compactness theorem and Lowenheim-Skolem theorem. The paper is completely self-contained and includes examples of application to (...) particular many-valued formal systems. (shrink)

Deep neural networks (DNNs) have found many useful applications in recent years. Of particular interest have been those instances where their successes imitate human cognition and many consider artificial intelligences to offer a lens for understanding human intelligence. Here, we criticize the underlying conflation between the predictive and explanatory power of DNNs by examining the goals of modeling.

What is the role of consciousness in nature? The science of consciousness has largely neglected the question through its emphasis on human experience. In this précis of A Philosophy for the Science of Animal Consciousness, I outline how we can move from a top-down approach that begins with investigations in humans to an evolutionary bottom-up approach that targets the adaptive origins of even the most minimal forms of subjective experience. I will also offer an introduction to the central thesis of (...) the book, i.e. the pathological complexity thesis, according to which consciousness evolved in order to enable animals to adaptively respond to their life history challenges. (shrink)

Helmut Fleischer has distinguished three different approaches to history in the development of Marx's thinking: the "anthropological" , the "pragmatological" , and the "nomological" . However, these represent a less continuous and coherent development than Fleischer claims. The 1857 Introduction to the Grundrisse can be instanced as a fourth view, more focused than the others on historiography, and at variance with what Marx says elsewhere. The sequence and overlapping of these four views call into question both the interpretation of Marx's (...) development as smoothly continuous and the interpretation of his development as "ruptured" into "early" and "late.". (shrink)

The providential state.--The collectivist movement.--The reconstruction of liberalism.--The testament of liberty.

This original and accessible text is more than an introduction to comparative philosophy in the East and West. It is also a guide to 'philosophizing' as a thinking process. In addition to outlining the presuppositions of different traditions, it discusses their methods and techniques for reasoning in what the author calls four dimensions of 'philosophical space': object, subject, the situational and the aspective/perspective dimension.

The author nationally recognized for the quality and depth of his teaching in religious studies has written the first full-scale introduction to the history and methods of the study of religion.

A small, insignificant-looking intellectual with absurdly long legs, Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) was a veritable Hans Christian Andersen caricature of a man. A strange combination of witty cosmopolite and melancholy introvert, he spent years writing under a series of fantastical pseudonyms, lavishing all the splendor of his magnificent mind on a seldom-appreciative world. He had a tragic love affair with a young girl, was dominated by an unforgettable Old Testament father, fought a sensational literary duel with a popular satiric magazine, and (...) died in the midst of a violent quarrel with the state church for which he had once studied theology. Yet this iconoclast produced a number of brilliant books that have profoundly influenced modern thought. In this classic biography, the celebrated Kierkegaard translator Walter Lowrie presents a charming and warmly appreciative introduction to the life and work of the great Danish writer. Lowrie tells the story of Kierkegaard's emotionally turbulent life with a keen sense of drama and an acute understanding of how his life shaped his thought. The result is a wonderfully informative and entertaining portrait of one of the most important thinkers of the past two centuries. This edition also includes Lowrie's wry essay "How Kierkegaard Got into English," which tells the improbable story of how Lowrie became one of Kierkegaard's principal English translators despite not learning Danish until he was in his 60s, as well as a new introduction by Kierkegaard scholar Alastair Hannay. (shrink)

In addition to the obvious social and ethical risks, there are philosophical hazards behind artificial intelligence and machine learning. I try to raise here some critical points that might counteract some naive optimism, and warn against the possibility that synthetic intelligence may surreptitiously influence the agenda of science before we can realize it.

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and other psychiatric disorders can interfere with a person’s capacity to control the nature of his mental states and how they issue in his decisions and actions. Insofar as this sort of control is identified with free will, and psychiatric disorders can impair this control, these disorders can impair free will. The will can be compromised by dysregulated neural networks that disable the mental mechanisms necessary to regulate thought, motivation, and action. Neural and mental dys-function result in (...) the maladaptive and pathological behaviors associated with these disorders. In “Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, Free Will, and Control,” Gerben Meynen (2012) rightly .. (shrink)