The primary purpose of Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) is to protect the rights and welfare of human research participants. Evaluation and measurement of how IRBs satisfy this purpose and other important goals are open questions that demand empirical research. Research on IRBs, and the Human Research Protection Programs (HRPPs) of which they are often a part, is necessary to inform evidence-based practices, policies, and approaches to quality improvement in human research protections. However, to date, HRPP and IRB engagement in empirical (...) research about their own activities and performance has been limited. To promote engagement of HRPPs and IRBs in self-reflective research on HRPP and IRB quality and effectiveness, barriers to their participation need to be addressed. These include: extensive workloads, limited information technology systems, and few universally accepted or consistently measured metrics for HRPP/irb quality and effectiveness. Additionally, institutional leaders may have concerns about confidentiality. Professional norms around the value of participating in this type of research are lacking. Lastly, obtaining external funding for research on IRBs and HRPPs is challenging. As a group of HRPP professionals and researchers actively involved in a research consortium focused on IRB quality and effectiveness, we identify potential levers for supporting and encouraging HRPP and IRB engagement in research on quality and effectiveness. We maintain that this research should be informed by the core principles of patient- and community-engaged research, in which members and key stakeholders of the community to be studied are included as key informants and members of the research team. This ensures that relevant questions are asked and that data are interpreted to produce meaningful recommendations. As such, we offer several ways to increase the participation of HRPP professionals in research as participants, as data sharers, and as investigators. (shrink)

In this article, we present results from a literature review of intrinsic, instrumental, and relational values of nature conducted for the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, as part of the Methodological Assessment of the Diverse Values and Valuations of Nature. We identify the most frequently recurring meanings in the heterogeneous use of different value types and their association with worldviews and other key concepts. From frequent uses, we determine a core meaning for each value type, which is (...) sufficiently inclusive to serve as an umbrella over different understandings in the literature and specific enough to help highlight its difference from the other types of values. Finally, we discuss convergences, overlapping areas, and fuzzy boundaries between different value types to facilitate dialogue, reduce misunderstandings, and improve the methods for valuation of nature's contributions to people, including ecosystem services, to inform policy and direct future research. © 2023 The Author(s). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Institute of Biological Sciences. (shrink)

Background Institutional review board (IRB) expertise is necessarily limited by maintaining a manageable board size. IRBs are therefore permitted by regulation to rely on outside experts for review. However, little is known about whether, when, why, and how IRBs use outside experts.Methods We conducted a national survey of U.S. IRBs to characterize utilization of outside experts. Our study uses a descriptive, cross-sectional design to understand how IRBs engage with such experts and to identify areas where outside expertise is most frequently (...) requested.Results The survey response rate was 18.4%, with 55.4% of respondents reporting their institution’s IRB uses outside experts. Nearly all respondents who reported using outside experts indicated they do so less than once a month, but occasionally each year (95%). The most common method of identifying an outside expert was securing a previously known subject matter expert (83.3%). Most frequently, respondents sought consultation for scientific expertise not held by current members (69.6%). Almost all respondents whose IRBs had used outside experts reported an overall positive impact on the IRB review process (91.5%).Conclusions Just over half of the IRBs in our sample report use of outside experts; among them, outside experts were described as helpful, but their use was infrequent overall. Many IRBs report not relying on outside experts at all. This raises important questions about what type of engagement with outside experts should be viewed as optimal to promote the highest quality review. For example, few respondents sought assistance from a Community Advisory Board, which could address expertise gaps in community perspectives. Further exploration is needed to understand how to optimize IRB use of outside experts, including how to recognize when expertise is lacking, what barriers IRBs face in using outside experts, and perspectives on how outside expert review impacts IRB decision-making and review quality. (shrink)

Digital competencies were part of online education and now when returning to the classroom what will happen or what we expect for the future in education. The objective is to analyze and describe the perspectives of the level of digital competence, the non-experimental descriptive quantitative methodology is used with 1987 university students. Resulting that the instrument adapted to the Peruvian version is adequate according to statistics such as Cronbach's Alpha. Concluding that the digital competences improved the academic quality and have (...) a good level. Society is waiting for the next step to know what is presented to us in education. (shrink)

In the target article “Promoting Ethical Payment in Human Infection Challenge Studies,” Fernandez Lynch et al. call for more information sharing about research payment amounts to study parti...

For Kant and his followers, pure reason can be practical, and its substantive practical command is, broadly speaking, that we treat ourselves and others as worthy of respect as free and equal. If those who have defended the Kantian morality system are correct, this moral imperative will not be authoritative and inescapable simply because we don't know how to coherently reweave our practical commitments so as to leave it out, but because it is presupposed by the possibility of practical reason. (...) On this model, the rational authority of moral dictates would be understood as absolute and universal. ;But what if Kant and his followers have been wrong? What if the search for practical unconditionality turned out to be vain? Kant himself would most likely react to this news by pronouncing that, without a priori necessity, there could be no moral necessity, and without moral necessity, there could be no purity of motive, and without purity of motive, there could be no moral worth, and without moral worth, there could be no legitimate ascriptions of praise and blame. In short, for Kant and his orthodox followers, without unconditionality, the morality system would collapse. ;I will argue that the search for a priori necessity behind moral law is indeed hopeless, but that this does not entail the collapse of the morality system. It does however force us to conceive a new way of accounting for practical normativity in the absence of unconditionality. It also requires that, in order to preserve morality, we find a defensible place for it as a contingent subset of ethics broadly construed. My answer is to provide a new account of morality, and practical normativity in general, against the backdrop of neopragmatism. My hope is to provide an alternative story which preserves the Kantian insight that practical necessity is driven by rational authority, but which does not presuppose unconditionality to explain the latter's force and inescapability. In short I will attempt to show that ethical principles, when considered in linguistic space, need not be a priori necessary to bind individuals in a genuinely authoritative sense. (shrink)

This review of the book The Ethics of War: Essays provides a general description of the book and some brief commentary on several of its chapters.

Ante la gravedad de la mentira, causante de todos los males, difundida desde hace muchas décadas en el Mundo Hispánico, este libro, con la fuerza del conocimiento de la verdad, pretende orientar a ese mismo mundo hacia su estabilidad, su concordia y su libertad, puestas hoy en peligro por tantas falsedades. Lo hace principalmente mostrando cómo la Corona Española, desde 1493, ordenaba tratar "muy bien y amorosamente a los indios", los cuales siempre encontraron en ella su principal bienhechora y, por (...) ello, en el siglo XIX, prefirieron seguir vinculados a ella frente a los descendientes de los encomenderos independentistas. Índice: PREFACIO DE DON JUAN DE BORBÓN INTRODUCCIÓN SIGLAS Y ABREVIATURAS I. APROXIMACIÓN A LA REINA ISABEL I II. REINA HUMANISTA III. HUMANISMO FRENTE A ESCLAVITUD IV. «QUE TODOS TRATEN MUY BIEN Y AMOROSAMENTEA LOS INDIOS» V. «¿QUÉ PODER TIENE MÍO EL ALMIRANTE PARA DARA NADIE MIS VASALLOS?» VI. «CON MUCHO AMOR» VII. LOS ÚLTIMOS DOCE AÑOS DE LA REINA ISABEL VIII. LAS CASAS Y EL REY FERNANDO IX. LA UNIVERSITAS CHRISTIANA DE CARLOS V X. LA INCORPORACIÓN DE LAS INDIAS A LACORONA DE CASTILLA Y LEÓN XI. LA ENCOMIENDA Y LA ESCLAVITUD NATURAL XII. CARLOS V Y LOS DERECHOS DE LOS INDIOS XIII. LA JUNTA CONVOCADA POR EL EMPERADOR EN 1550 XIV. FILOSOFÍA POLÍTICA DE VITORIA Y LA ESCUELA DE SALAMANCA XV. LA RECOPILACIÓN DE LEYES DE LOS REINOS DELAS INDIAS XVI. LA MONARQUÍA A PARTIR DEL SIGLOXVIII XVII. LA FUNCIÓN DE LA CORONA EN HISPANOAMÉRICA BIBLIOGRAFÍA. (shrink)

En los estudios de Marx sobre el modo de producción específicamente capitalista en la periferia, más allá de Europa occidental, encontramos un doble movimiento: sus estudios históricos configuran todo un campo de tensiones en el que podemos examinar sus posiciones políticas y teóricas entrecruzadas con los cambios y las contradicciones históricas del siglo xix. Analizando las opiniones de Marx sobre la cuestión colonial y la cuestión nacional en casos tan variados como los de India, América Latina, China, Irlanda, Polonia o (...) Rusia comprobamos su distanciamiento creciente pero irregular con respecto al “sistema” hegeliano, que nunca dejó de inspirarlo, en un intento de superar la teleología de la historia. En cuestionamiento se encontraba el presupuesto de que las formas sociales superiores surgen del agotamiento y la aniquilación de las directamente inferiores. Aunque imperfecta, la superación de la teleología acercó a Marx al reconocimiento de la coexistencia en el espacio y en el tiempo de formas sociales heterogéneas, lo que apuntaba hacia una concepción diferente de la teoría y la acción política. (shrink)

parada se ha pre-sentado como una de las gran-des alternativas a la teología de las religiones. Esta idea surge debido al bloqueo que sufrió el triple paradigma promovido por el ‘esquema tipológico’ dentro de la teología de las religiones. Para los teólogos comparatistas esa forma concreta de teología de las religiones no logró respon-der adecuadamente a la necesa-ria tensión que debe mantenerse entre las particularidades cons-titutivas de cada tradición reli-giosa y la apertura dialogante y el aprecio auténtico hacia las otras (...) religiones. La llamada ‘nueva teología comparada’ cree haber encontrado la forma de mantener esa tensión sin renunciar a nin-guno de sus dos principios funda-mentales: identidad y alteridad. (shrink)

Illustrated with sumptuously detailed panel-style artwork and based on the Eastern philosophies of the Tao Te Ching, a lyrical picture book explores the eternal question of how to promote world peace and shares inspiring quotes from famous peacemakers while counseling readers on how to find peace within oneself.

The origin of chordates and the consequent genesis of vertebrates were major events in natural history. The amphioxus (lancelet) is now recognised as the closest extant relative to the stem chordate and is the only living invertebrate that retains a vertebrate‐like development and body plan through its lifespan, despite more than 500 million years of independent evolution from the stem vertebrate. The inspiring data coming from its recently sequenced genome confirms that amphioxus has a prototypical chordate genome with respect to (...) gene content and structure, and even chromosomal organisation. Pushed by joint efforts of amphioxus researchers, amphioxus is now entering a new era, namely its maturation as a laboratory model, through the availability of a large amount of molecular data and the advent of experimental manipulation of the embryo. These two facts may well serve to illuminate the hidden secrets of the genetic changes that generated, among other vertebrates, ourselves. (shrink)

This is the first volume on the subject of the alleviation of world suffering. At the same time it is also the first book framing the fields of global socio-economic development, world health, human rights, peace studies, sustainability, and poverty within the challenge of alleviating suffering and improving quality of life. Both international studies and global development have become specialized and fragmented, whereas this work assembles all of these development fragments together in order to determine whether common ground exists to (...) make headway in reducing global suffering. Leading experts in these various fields of development and suffering have been recruited worldwide to give scholarly assessments of the major human problems and how they can be successfully tackled. (shrink)

The essays in this book have grown out of conversations between the authors and their colleagues and students over the last decade and a half.

Embodied Cognition is growing up, and How the Body Shapes the Mind is both a sign of, and substantive contributor to this ongoing development. Born in or about 1991, EC is only now emerging from a tumultuous but exciting childhood marked in particular by the size and breadth of the extended family hoping to have some impact on its early education and upbringing. As family members include computer science, phenomenology, developmental and cognitive psychology, analytic philosophy of mind, linguistics, neuroscience, and (...) eastern mysticism, just to name a few, EC has both benefited and suffered from a wealth of different and often incompatible ideas about who and what it is, what it should do with its life, even what language it should speak. Gallagher brings some cohesion and consistency to this situation, not by surveying and synthesizing these competing approaches, but by focusing on some fundamental issues, and carefully marshalling the evidence and developing the vocabulary to thoroughly consider them. (shrink)

The purpose of this book is to assist health care professionals in understanding some of the complex contemporary issues that they confront and to provide guidance in making decisions. These issues are described and analyzed in the context of philosophical principles and methods in language that is understandable to the professional who is unfamiliar with the study of philosophy and ethics. -from Preface.

Recent evidence readily confirms that ethical conduct in human interaction has declined in the context of business, but also in virtually every phase of life. An alarming number of government leaders at all levels have demonstrated by their conduct that their primary goal is the pursuit of self-interest for themselves, their party, and their constituents - regardless of whether the choices they make are in the long-term best interests of those whom they are obligated to serve. Academic institutions and their (...) leaders similarly seem to be either tied to past assumptions and traditions that seem, or blatantly out of touch with the needs of their students and the communities that they serve. Increasingly, college and university academic programs are being taught by part-time and temporary faculty who are paid less than their elementary and high school counterparts who lack their educational preparation, level of knowledge, or responsibility in preparing students for their chosen careers. Non-governmental organizations also struggle to earn the respect of the public, and their trustworthiness has been called into question as chief executive officers and staff receive high salaries, but lack accountability for achieving results or acting with integrity. Those who work in the media are as a group no longer trusted to provide an objective and unbiased assessment of the news. Even religious institutions are under attack and their leaders are being asked to be accountable to the standards which their doctrines advocate. Implicit in ethical conduct is the responsibility to identify the far goals of human achievement - rather than short-term interests that undermine long-term value creation and outcomes that best serve society. Abraham Maslow has wisely noted that the pursuit of efficiency must be evaluated in terms of the specific goals intended to be achieved, but the ramifications of individual and collective actions often seem to be out of focus, misdirected, and short-sighted. (shrink)

Monica A. Coleman achieves remarkable rigor in bringing together in one volume her long-standing interests in process philosophy and theology, womanist theology and ethics, African diaspora studies, West African religions, and African American women’s literature. Making a way out of No Way (2008) is a tour de force in contemporary African American constructive theology and especially in womanist discourse on the religious experience(s) of African American women. Coleman insists on understanding black women’s religious experience through the lens of their complex (...) subjectivity, which is irreducible to singularity or totality. As typically found in academic womanist theology, Coleman does not begin her theology with .. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Ovid: Dichter und WerkWilliam S. AndersonNiklas Holzberg. Ovid: Dichter und Werk. Munich: C. H. Beck, 1997. 218 pp. Cloth, DM 48, SFr 44.50, ÖS 350.Looking at the dust cover of this volume, which features a Pompeiian wall painting with an impetuous satyr tightly grasping a nude, buxom, and resistant female, a reader might be led to expect a conventionally shallow literary biography of Ovid, the poet of erotic (...) enjoyment. Probably Holzberg had nothing to do with the choice of the cover, which was designed only to attract buyers. If he did, he would have been ironically aware of the surprises he had in store for unsuspecting readers: there is little in this book to excite the average modern satyr. Instead of titillating his audience with erotic images, Holzberg focuses our attention on the elegiac system, from which, as he shows, the poet Ovid ingeniously worked.The reader receives warning in the foreword, where Holzberg says little about the historical personage Ovid but directs us instead to the variety of roles the poet Ovid developed in his different works. It is these roles that have familiarized us with Ovid, not the historical facts that have accumulated around him [End Page 651] outside his poems. Holzberg declares, then, that he wishes to read Ovid’s poetry as “novels,” that is, as fictional accounts by a fictional speaker who uses the first person.Before proceeding to the poetic works in chronological order, Holzberg devotes two important introductory chapters to discussing his approach first to the work, then to the poet. That of course reverses the order of his subtitle, but by way of correction: this writer and this book are primarily interested in the poetry that Ovid created and that we can still critically read: the poet is far more problematical. So we start with a paradox: our present time is an Ovidian Age (aetas Ovidiana), as was the era in cultivated Western Europe about a thousand years ago. We probably read Ovid today as well as, if not better than, the people who rushed to multiply Ovidian manuscripts in that previous era. However, the question is: do we read and hear Ovid with the awareness of those original Roman audiences, nearly a millennium earlier, who enjoyed what we may consider the first aetas Ovidiana, when Ovid himself was present to register his amazing effects in Rome (and to recall them fondly in exile)? The answer that Holzberg produces is: no, we don’t read Ovid as a Latin audience; instead, we pick out what makes him like us, modern. To read his works as Holzberg wants, then, we must first grasp the features which belong to the doctus poeta. Ovid was what Holzberg calls “a poet between texts” (a clever variation on Fraenkel’s famous phrase for Ovid, “a poet between two worlds”). That stresses the literary practice of intertextuality rather than the cultural interrelationships that occupied Fraenkel and his contemporaries. It also justifies the role of Holzberg, who steps in to help the helpless “modern reader” and to explain some of the key intertexts that functioned directly for Ovid’s first audiences. Similarly, a modern reader needs to step back from the trap of the plausibly witty story that Ovid’s first-person speaker narrates, to appreciate the conventions with which the poet ably plays for the amusement of his well-read audiences; and this means understanding what Holzberg calls the “elegiac system,” which serves as the basis of all Ovid’s work. Recognizing the fundamental elements of the system, we can see better how he modifies and innovates with familiar material, whether it is a form like that of the exclusus amator or the interesting variations he creates on the “slavery of love.”Holzberg’s approach to Ovid the poet is deliberately skeptical. Our only contemporary “evidence” about him is the dubious and fictional series of details and events which emerge from the mouth of the “speaker” in the poems. Holzberg distrusts even the prodigious memory of Seneca the Elder. And it is notable that Tacitus, who had the opportunity of giving Ovid an obituary around A.D. 17, in what survives of the... (shrink)

Peirce's cosmogony involves an apparent tension concerning the statusof initial ideas. They appear both dependent and independent. Peirce appears to resolve this tension, maintaining elements of both his realism and his idealism in his cosmogony, by asserting that God serves as a necessary condition for the reality of the initial ideas and by holding, through his agapasticism, that the ideas, as firsts, retain an element of spontaneity or freedom. From another angle, it is plausible to suggest that for Peirce God (...) functions as a continuum of other continua. Such a view allows Peirce to understand evolutionas a developmental teleology in which both order and spontaneity playsignificant roles. (shrink)