BackgroundThe conduct of research is critical to advancing human health. However, there are issues of ethical concern specific to the design and conduct of research in conflict settings. Conflict-affected countries often lack strong platform to support technical guidance and monitoring of research ethics, which may lead to the use of divergent ethical standards some of which are poorly elaborated and loosely enforced. Despite the growing concern about ethical issues in research, there is a dearth of information about ethical compliance in (...) conflict areas. Valid and ethically informed decision-making is a premier pact with research participants in settling possible ethical issues before commencing the research, which is ensured by gaining informed consent from prospective participants of the research.AimsThis research aimed to explore compliance with research ethics and consent validity in community-based epidemiological research conducted previously.MethodsResearch participants were recruited in the western part of Ethiopia in three districts subjected to conflicts. A community-based cross-sectional study design was utilized, and 338 residents were enrolled as study participants. All participants had previously been enrolled as research participants in epidemiological studies. Data was collected using a questionnaire that was pilot-tested before the commencement of the main data collection. The questionnaire focused on participants’ experiences of the informed consent process followed when they were recruited for an epidemiological study and covered themes such as essential information provided, level of comprehension, and voluntarism of consent.ResultsOver half of the study participants, 176 (52%), were not provided with essential information before consenting. And 135 (40%) of them did not comprehend the information provided to them. One hundred and ninety (56%) participants freely and voluntarily agreed to partake in one of these epidemiological studies, with over a quarter (97; 28.7%) of them reporting they were subjected to undue influence. Written consent was obtained from only 32 (9.4%) of the participants. (shrink)

Feministische Aktivist*innen haben sich schon immer verschiedener Medien bedient, um zu kommunizieren, sich zu artikulieren und zu vernetzen. Durch die Digitalisierung und die damit verbundenen Möglichkeiten erweitern sich feministische Aktionsräume und verlagern sich zunehmend ins Social Web. So lässt sich feststellen, dass Plattformen wie twitter, instagram oder auch facebook vielfach genutzt werden, um feministische Anliegen in die Öffentlichkeit zu tragen. Der gegenwärtige mediale Diskurs um feministische Ideen und Forderungen wird dabei maßgeblich durch antifeministische Akteur*innen beeinflusst, deren Anliegen es ist, feministische (...) Stimmen aus dem medialen Raum zu verbannen. Die vorliegende Arbeit greift diese Thematik auf und geht der Frage nach, wie feministische Aktivist*innen antifeministische, digitale Gewalt wahrnehmen und damit umgehen. Die Ergebnisse verweisen darauf, dass insbesondere Aspekte der Sexuellen Identität und der Mehrfachdiskriminierung entscheidend sind für das Ausmaß der digitalen Gewalt, die erfahren wird. Weiterhin wird deutlich, welche Rolle Solidarität, Vernetzung und Empowerment im Kampf gegen den Antifeminismus spielen. Die Autorin Anja Roß studierte Pädagogik und Soziologie an der Universität Bielefeld. Sie arbeitet als wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin am Institut für Pädagogik an der Universität Oldenburg. Hier promovierte sie 2024 zum feministischen Aktivismus im Social Web und den Umgang mit digitaler Gewalt. (shrink)

This study analyses the social and political discourses related to environment and sustainable development in Costa Rica. The central interest is on those development institutions and ideologies that promote social interventions in the name of sustainable development, and on those social processes and economic relations on which the discursive formation of environment and sustainability is articulated. Four different kinds of ideologies of environmental sustainability are analysed: Environmentalism for Nature, Environmentalism for Profit, Environmentalism for the People, and Alternative Environmentalism. The study (...) highlights the complexity of political discourses that construct the relationship between nature and society, and the multiplicity of the means by which the control over natural resources, within the internally differentiated development apparatus, is defined. (shrink)

Ethical thought experiments such as the trolley dilemma have been investigated extensively in the past, showing that humans act in utilitarian ways, trying to cause as little overall damage as possible. These trolley dilemmas have gained renewed attention over the past few years, especially due to the necessity of implementing moral decisions in autonomous driving vehicles. We conducted a set of experiments in which participants experienced modified trolley dilemmas as drivers in virtual reality environments. Participants had to make decisions between (...) driving in one of two lanes where different obstacles came into view. Eventually, the participants had to decide which of the objects they would crash into. Obstacles included a variety of human-like avatars of different ages and group sizes. Furthermore, the influence of sidewalks as potential safe harbors and a condition implicating self-sacrifice were tested. Results showed that participants, in general, decided in a utilitarian manner, sparing the highest number of avatars possible with a limited influence by the other variables. Derived from these findings, which are in line with the utilitarian approach in moral decision making, it will be argued for an obligatory ethics setting implemented in ADVs. (shrink)

When the first publication of Hans-Georg Gadamer's magnum opus Wahrheit und Methode came to life in I960, the work was initially received with a slight sense of puzzlement and yet concurrently acknowledged as monumental. The title, in English, Truth and Method, was regarded by the philosophical community both in Germany and abroad as being somewhat obscure, as Gadamer himself would later admit, but the ingeniousness of the book's content could hardly be debated. Since its initial publication, Truth and Method has, (...) respectively helped to expand and light up the horizon of modern hermeneutics by provoking, at once, a reconsideration of the phenomenon of understanding while, at the same time, enlivening the debate over scientific methodology and its exclusive claim to truth. The central aim of the present thesis has been to focus on Part I of Truth and Method, concentrating primarily on the 'guiding humanistic concepts' and the experience of truth in art, to clarify Gadamer's understanding of truth and to shed new light as to how the experience of tmth is to be grasped in relation to the human sciences, i.e. the humanities. The humanistic concepts, I believe, are vital to understanding the experience of truth. One reason, which leads me to this conclusion, is that in Truth and Method Gadamer begins his philosophical undertaking with the elucidation of the humanistic concepts rather than with a direct exposition of truth. By opening with the humanistic concepts, Gadamer seems to demonstrate subtly the phenomenological and ontological nature of knowledge and understanding. The outcome of this manoeuvre is that one comes to realise that truth does not simply belong to method and that it is not something which can be defined solely as 'absolute certainty'. Moreover, in my interview with Professor Gadamer, the humanistic concepts, he explained to me, are the most 'natural' and 'original' concepts. By natural and original he means that these concepts are intrinsic. They evolve from life as well as being a part of life, i.e. a way of living. Thus these concepts, he affirmed, represent 'a way of life' and a way to truth. Consequently, insofar as comprehending the phenomenon of truth, I believe any and every investigation of the concept of truth must begin with the understanding of the humanistic tradition. The following thesis however does not end simply with the humanistic concepts. It also devotes to examining the truth-claim or the 'truth-experience' of art. This part of the inquiry centres on two important questions: How are we to understand art? What does it mean to experience art? The challenge here has been to show how Gadamer overcomes Kant's subjectivation of the aesthetic experience and to demonstrate how and why Gadamer considers the experience of art as the 'self-presentation' of being. In surveying the various works of criticism I have tried to draw attention to what seem to me to be the most insightful comments and analyses. If 1 have failed in any way to supply proper acknowledgement to ideas, which might seem close to other critical works, I offer my apologies. As I am sure those in the research business know well, in reflection ideas often interfuse with one's own, making it difficult sometimes to discriminate between one's own ideas from another's. However, I have tried my best to keep from that error. (shrink)

The focus of this article is on elderly patients’ and nursing staff perceptions of privacy in the care of elderly patients/residents in five European countries. Privacy includes physical, social and informational elements. The results show that perceptions of privacy were strongest in the UK (Scotland) and weakest in Greece. Country comparisons revealed statistically significant differences between the perceptions of elderly patients and also between those of nurses working in the same ward or long-term care facility. Perceptions of privacy by patients (...) and their nursing staff were quite similar in Finland, Germany and the UK. In contrast, in Greece and Spain these perceptions were different: nurses believed that they took account of their patients’ privacy needs more often than the patients themselves felt this was the case. Among Spanish and UK patients, an association was found between lower levels of independence and comparatively less positive perceptions of privacy. No associations were established between nurses’ perceptions and their demographic factors. This is the third of a set of five articles published together in this issue of Nursing Ethics in which the results of this comparative research project are presented. (shrink)

Philosophy &Public Affairs, Volume 50, Issue 3, Page 271-300, Summer 2022.

The focus of this article is on elderly patients’ and nursing staff perceptions of informed consent in the care of elderly patients/residents in five European countries. The results suggest that patients and nurses differ in their views on how informed consent is implemented. Among elderly patients the highest frequency for securing informed consent was reported in Finland; the lowest was in Germany. In contrast, among nurses, the highest frequency was reported in the UK (Scotland) and the lowest in Finland. In (...) a comparison of patients’ and nurses’ perceptions, nurses had more positive views than patients in all countries except Finland. Patients with less need for nursing interventions in Greece and Spain gave their consent less often. The German and Greek patients were older, and the results also point to an association between this and their lower frequency of giving consent. In Spain, patients who were married or who had a family member or friend to look after their personal affairs were more likely to be included in the group whose consent was sought less often. This is the fourth of a set of five articles published together in this issue of Nursing Ethics in which the results of this comparative research project are presented. (shrink)

The spreading of COVID-19 misinformation on social media could have severe consequences on people's behavior. In this paper, we investigated the emotional expression of misinformation related to the COVID-19 crisis on Twitter and whether emotional valence differed depending on the type of misinformation. We collected 17,463,220 English tweets with 76 COVID-19-related hashtags for March 2020. Using Google Fact Check Explorer API we identified 226 unique COVID-19 false stories for March 2020. These were clustered into six types of misinformation. Applying the (...) 226 classifiers to the Twitter sample we identified 690,004 tweets. Instead of running the sentiment on all tweets we manually coded a random subset of 100 tweets for each classifier to increase the validity, reducing the dataset to 2,097 tweets. We found that only a minor part of the entire dataset was related to misinformation. Also, misinformation in general does not lean towards a certain emotional valence. However, looking at comparisons of emotional valence for different types of misinformation uncovered that misinformation related to “virus” and “conspiracy” had a more negative valence than “cures,” “vaccine,” “politics,” and “other.” Knowing from existing studies that negative misinformation spreads faster, this demonstrates that filtering for misinformation type is fruitful and indicates that a focus on “virus” and “conspiracy” could be one strategy in combating misinformation. As emotional contexts affect misinformation spreading, the knowledge about emotional valence for different types of misinformation will help to better understand the spreading and consequences of misinformation. (shrink)

Background: Despite the growing potential of mobile-based technologies, innovative interventions targeting the reduction of acute stress in daily life remain under-researched. Music listening is an easy-to-administer activity that is associated with lower levels of biological and self-reported stress. However, the application of music as an intervention in moments of acute stress in daily life remains to be examined. We developed a just-in-time intervention delivering music in moments of stressful experiences in daily life and tested its feasibility using a mixed methods (...) approach.Methods: In this uncontrolled pilot study, the ecological momentary music intervention was tested by 10 chronically stressed women aged 23.5 ± 3.3 years. Over 18 consecutive days, whenever participants reported stressful experiences, they were encouraged to listen to a self-compiled playlist. Subjective stress levels and saliva samples were assessed at three time points per stress report. We analyzed app-based log data, in-the-moment responses, questionnaire data, and semi-structured interview data.Results: On average, participants’ compliance with the study protocol lay at 70%. Overall, 65 stressful experiences were reported, 51 of which were followed by music listening, for an average duration of 12:53 min. Complete data were provided for 46 stressful experiences. Participants reported immediate relaxation and distraction through music listening. The interviews revealed that the intervention was easy to use and that music listening in moments of perceived stress was viewed as a new and pleasant activity. Several aspects of the protocol were identified, which should be improved in future studies.Conclusion: Since repeated stressful experiences in daily life can pose a threat to physical and mental integrity, interventions that are easily applicable and deliver support when needed most are necessary. Following minor adaptations, the EMMI can be considered as a feasible approach to target psychobiological stress responses in daily life, which is worthy of investigation in future larger-scale trials. (shrink)

Interactions among membrane proteins regulate numerous cellular processes, including cell growth, cell differentiation and apoptosis. We need to understand which proteins interact, where they interact and to which extent they interact. This article describes a set of novel approaches to measure, on the surface of living cells, the number of clusters of proteins, the number of proteins per cluster, the number of clusters or membrane domains that contain pairs of interacting proteins and the fraction of one protein species that interacts (...) with another protein within these domains. These data can then be interpreted in terms of the function of the protein‐protein interactions. BioEssays 26:196–203, 2004. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

As one of the most widely read genres of literature, travel writing plays a crucial role in forming popular images and understandings of foreign places and foreign peoples. This essay examines the dominant images of rainforests and rainforest peoples portrayed in accounts of travels in tropical America published in National Geographic. Special attention is paid to the issues of how particular representations are privileged in this magazine's travel accounts and how these representations relate to questions of authority and power. The (...) analysis shows that the prevailing representations of the tropical forests and tropical forest-dwellers in the travel accounts of National Geographic rely on historically changing, but equally categorical distinctions between ‘good’ and ‘bad’, and ‘natural’ and ‘unnatural’. (shrink)

Ein Dekonstruktivist sagt: "Ich rede von der Demokratie als von etwas Kommendem."l Doch die Rede soIl hier nicht von einer empirisch gestiitz­ ten Vorhersage oder einer normativen Utopie sein, sondern von der ethisch­ politischen Perspektive, die die Geste der Dekonstruktion offnet. Den Hori­ zont dieser Perspektive bildet die Demokratie, dessen Unerreichbarkeit in der politischen Praxis der Demokratisierung affirmiert wird. Dekonstruktion und Demokratisierung stehen dabei weder in einem parallelen noch einem additiven Verhiiltnis, auch wenn die Konjunktion "und" dies suggerieren mag. Es (...) handelt sich um zwei offene, einander verschiebende Prozesse, deren Verschriinkung diese Studie darlegen mochte. Eine temporale Meta­ pher tragt dabei solange, wie sie nicht teleologisch miBverstanden wird: Die Demokratie ist die Zukunft der Dekonstruktion,2 wenn die Dekonstruktion die andere Gegenwart bleibt. Die Spur einer dekonstruktiven Bewegung hat sich lange schon, minde­ stens seit einem Jahrhundert, vergegenwartigt.3 An sie gekoppelt ist gleich­ wohl die Angst vor einem Nihilismus, der das emanzipatorische Verspre­ chen verneinen konnte. Als anti-moderne Reaktion, die sich schein bar nicht auf Zukiinftiges beziehen kann, wird die Dekonstruktion immer wieder als Zeitgeisterscheinung zuriickgewiesen. Doch phanomenologische Periodisie­ rungsversuche, die die Subversion moderner rationalistischer Essenzen wie Subjekt, Gesellschaft und Geschichte etwa als ideologischen Ausdruck der Entwicklung zum Spatkapitalismus oder auch als intellektuelle Konsequenz der politischen Aufbruchsstimmung der sechziger Jahre interpretieren wol- Friedrich Nietzsche, Menschliches. Allzumenschliches. Ein Buch for /reie Geister, Slimtli­ che Werke Bd. 3 (Stuttgart 1964),313. 2 Vgl. zu dieser Fonnulierung auch Simon Critchley, The Ethics a/Deconstruction. Derrida and Levinas (Oxford/Cambridge 1992), 241. (shrink)

Aesthetics is no longer merely the philosophy of perception and the arts. Nelson Goodman, Arthur Danto and others have contributed to develop aesthetics from a field at the margins of philosophy to one permeating substantial areas of theoretical and practical philosophy. New approaches like environmental and ecological aesthetics widened the understanding of the aesthetics of nature. The contributions in this volume address the most important issues in contemporary aesthetics, many of them from a Wittgensteinian perspective. The 39th International Ludwig Wittgenstein (...) Symposium, organized by the Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society, was held at Kirchberg am Wechsel, Lower Austria, from August 7th to 13th 2016 and aimed at taking an inventory of important tendencies and positions in contemporary aesthetics. The volume includes a selection of the invited papers. (shrink)

The view that agents are not obliged to do more than their initial fair shares when their fellow duty bearers fail to comply has prominent defenders, including Liam Murphy and David Miller. While Murphy thinks that asking agents to take up other agents’ slack would be unfair, Miller claims that slack-taking cannot be required because primary responsibility does not migrate from noncompliers to compliers. This paper argues, by contrast, that there are a number of circumstances in which there is a (...) duty to take up the slack even though it is unfair and even though responsibility stays where it is. The central claim is that what agents owe to third parties is a separate issue from how they relate to fellow duty bearers. This proposal also runs counter to familiar defenses of slack-taking that weigh its unfairness against the moral importance of the interests at stake for third parties. (shrink)

What is the wrong behind the widely criticized presentist bias of democracies? In this paper I argue that it is not that future generations are excluded from present-day democratic decision-making quite generally. Rather, I claim that due to the unique risks associated with representing future generations and the limitations on affecting future generations both institutionally and causally, the focus ought to be on including them on a more specific, narrower, set of issues, namely only those that threaten to lead to (...) their domination. I identify such issues as those that may end up being purpose-determining: that may subject future generations to previous generations’ will by forcing them to exert a substantial amount of their energies on dealing with problems caused by their predecessors. I conclude by reflecting on the extent to which political representation together with providing avenues of contestation can minimize the risk of intergenerational domination. (shrink)

In highly structured organisational fields individual efforts to deal rationally with uncertainty and constraints tend to lead, in the aggregate, to greater homogeneity in structure, culture and output. Drawing on institutional theory, this paper develops research propositions regarding the nature and scope of corporate social responsibility (CSR) engagement at trade/industry association level. The cases of the water and sewerage and film industries are used in order to test these propositions. The findings suggest that (a) trade associations in more homogeneous industries (...) are more likely to engage with CSR‐related issues; (b) trade associations in industries that face greater external scrutiny and threats to legitimacy are more likely to engage with CSR‐related issues; and (c) trade associations are more likely to engage with those substantive CSR issues that are of greater concern to the industry's most salient stakeholders. The findings also suggest that trade associations may have a greater tendency to engage in symbolic legitimation efforts through CSR if faced with the task of repairing industry legitimacy. (shrink)

In light of new biomedical technologies, such as artificial reproduction, stem cell research, genetic selection and design, the question of what we owe to future persons-and unborn life more generally-is as contested as ever. In A Theory of Unborn Life: From Abortion to Genetic Manipulation, author Anja J. Karnein provides a novel theory that shows how our commitments to persons can help us make sense of our obligations to unborn life. We should treat embryos that will develop into persons (...) in anticipation of these persons. But how viable is this theory? Moreover, what does it mean to treat embryos in anticipation of the future persons they will develop into? Exploring the attractiveness of this approach for Germany and the U.S. - two countries with very different legal approaches to valuing unborn life-Karnein comes to startling conclusions to some of today's greatest ethical and legal debates. (shrink)

This introduction outlines the threefold contribution that this Focus section on research film offers. First, it introduces the vast collection of films from the former Institute for Scientific Film (Institut für den Wissenschaftlichen Film [IWF]), arguably the most ambitious endeavor ever undertaken to manage the distribution, production, and archiving of research films. At the same time, the institute’s questionable roots in the National Socialist education system and in war research are addressed. Second, the introduction points out that the Focus section (...) enters largely uncharted terrain in the history of research films. Third, it argues that a focus on the multiple reuses of research films, as this section attempts, not only suits the medium specificity of film but helps us to map the aesthetic, intermedial, and cultural-political practices of disseminating knowledge. In this vein, the organizers asked established scholars working on film and science to share with us a short story of a reused research film. Scott Curtis, Vinzenz Hediger, Anja Laukötter, and Hanna Rose Shell responded. Their contributions can be found in the supplementary materials to the online edition. (shrink)

Wilke et al. make significant headway in gaining a better understanding of the influence affect cues may have on action perception and judgement. In our view their account also brings up a row of important questions demanding further research. This concerns the role of conceptual and non-conceptual content and the different effects emotions of the same valence may play in the perception and judgement of action.

This book explores the structure and function of memory and imagination, as well as the relation and interaction between the two states. It is the first book to offer an integrative approach to these two emerging areas of philosophical research. The essays in this volume deal with a variety of forms of imagining and remembering. The contributors come from a range of methodological backgrounds: empirically minded philosophers, analytic philosophers engaging mainly in conceptual analysis, and philosophers informed by the phenomenological tradition. (...) Part 1 consists of novel contributions to ontological issues regarding the nature of memory and imagination and their respective structural features. Part 2 focuses on questions of justification and perspective regarding both states. The chapters in Part 3 discuss issues regarding memory and imagination as skills or abilities. Finally, Part 4 focuses on the relation between memory, imagination, and emotion. Philosophical Perspectives on Memory and Imagination will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in philosophy of memory, philosophy of imagination, philosophy of mind, and epistemology. (shrink)

The institutional reform of the Belgian state seems to run parallel with a redefinition of the whole of Belgian society. 'Subnationalism' has overtaken the traditional ethno-linguistic definitions which used to provide a basis for political identification and mobilisation. The territorial demarcation of the regions and the politicisation of cultural life on both sides of the linguistic border constitute basic ingredientsfor 'nationbuilding'projects in Flanders and Wallonia. A number of elements are distinguished to explain why the 'nationalism' of the regions will have (...) repercussions on the political developments in the capital area. Language and territoriality have always played a special role in Brussels. Changes in connection with definitions of territoriality and identity now seem to create opportunities to redefine the relationship between the communities in Brussels. It is not inconceivable that, in the long run, the linguistic divide wilt fade out and wilt be replaced by an identification on the basis of a territorial criterion shared by all the Brussels' inhabitants. (shrink)

Conrad Gessner was town physician and lecturer at the Zwinglian reformed lectorium in Zurich. His approach towards the world and mankind was centred on his preoccupation with the human soul, an object of study that had challenged classical writers such as Aristotle and Galen, and which remained as important in post-Reformation debate. Writing commentaries on Aristotles De Anima was part of early-modern natural philosophy education at university and formed the preparatory step for studying medicine. This article uses the case study (...) of Gessners commentary on De Anima to explore how Gessners readers prioritised De Animas information. Gessners intention was to provide the students of philosophy and medicine with the most current and comprehensive thinking. His readers responses raise questions about evolving discussions in natural philosophy and medicine that concerned the foundations of preventive healthcare on the one hand, and of anatomically specified pathological medicine on the other, and Gessners part in helping these develop. (shrink)

Asthereisa permanent shortage of human organs for transplantation purposes new methods to provide organs are being developed. The author deals with these new developments as there are artificial organs, genetically engineered animal organs and therapeutical cloning or embryonie stem cells to cultivate human organs. The goal of the article is to give an overview on these approaches and to summarize ethical aspects related to research, development and application of these methods.