Soil is fragile and nonrenewable but the most basic of natural resources. It has a capacity to tolerate continuous use but only with proper management. Improper soil management and indiscriminate use of chemicals have contributed to some severe global environmental issues, e.g., volatilization losses and contamination of natural waters by sediments and agricultural fertilizers and pesticides. The increasing substitution of energy for labor and other cultural inputs in agriculture is another issue. Fertilizers and chemicals account for about 25% of the (...) production energy investment in agriculture. An additional 60% is accounted for by machinery, gasoline, electricity, and power-related inputs. Fertilizer additions to cropland are not utilized fully and significant amounts, depending on conditions, are either lost in surface runoff or leached into the ground water. The annual discharge of dissolved solids from agricultural lands to the waterways in the USA is substantial. The increasing use of herbicides in agriculture is a threat to the quality of surface and ground water, although this threat is dependent upon both the chemistry of the compound and the ecosystem in which it is used. Especially within the Third World, development of an environmental ethic and environmental laws have not kept pace with the increase in pesticide use. Above all is the severe and global problem of soil degradation currently occurring at the rate of five to seven million hectares per year. The policy and moral aspects of these issues are discussed. (shrink)

Educational efforts in bioethics are prevalent, but little is known about their efficacy. Although previous work indicates that courses in bioethics have a demonstrable effect on medical students, it has not examined their effect on health care professionals. In this report, we describe a study designed to investigate the effect of bioethics education on health care professionals. At the Intensive Bioethics Course, a six-day course held annually at Georgetown University, we administered a questionnaire requiring open-ended responses to vignettes both (...) before and after the course. Following the course, respondents defended their responses more carefully and articulated their thoughts more clearly. In addition, after the course respondents seemed to have a more subtle understanding of the relevant issues in the cases and applied theory to these cases more frequently. These findings help to formulate an understanding of the effect of bioethics education on health care professionals. (shrink)

Observations from the Point of View of the Relationship between Economy and EthicsThe main goal of this review is not to discuss the different lectures one by one in order of appearance. In my opinion, it will be much more interesting to analyze the symposium thematically. First, I will discuss the way in which the problem of external debt as such has been presented. Secondly, I will focus on the different points of view from which the problem has been discussed. (...) Finally, I will reflect on the different arguments that have been formulated.The problem of external debt as such was presented by Prof. Garcia . He provided a detailed factual analysis of the problem, well illustrated and presented in its different aspects. Via official figures he showed the implications of external debt for the Third World countries as well as for the First World countries. What are the economic implications for both parties? For HIPC countries, the amount of total debt is situated between 200 and 300 percent of their annual export value and between 3 and 6 times their total annual GNP. For First World countries on the other hand, the cost of debt cancellation is equal to 1/6 of the UK military budget, to one-year's expenditure on cinema in the USA, or to one-year's expenditure on chocolate in the UK.On the social level he points to the following: nowadays, payments by the southern countries, corresponding to the external debt, are four times the official development aid sent by the northern countries. As a result of these payments, public expenditure on basic goods and services for the poorest population of the world is dramatically reduced. From a political point of view this means that the poorest and most excluded people of the world are paying the price for contracted loans about which they did not have anything to say. These were decisions made by the elites and most of the time guided by bad management or even by corruption. The poorest people have never benefited from these decisions, but at present they are undergoing the consequences of the debt. Garcia also shows that the problem of external debt in the South is not a matter of private, commercial affairs, but a matter of the public sector and of social justice. This means that debts are an issue of international politics and debt reduction a matter of international political willingness. (shrink)

What mental and physical distress do actors, camerapersons, and reporters experience when working on reenactments of traumatic moments in history? In Political Camerawork, D. Andy Rice theorizes that the intense feelings produced while creating these performed scenarios, called "simulation documentaries," connect difficult pasts to the present. Building on his background as a nonfiction film director, producer, editor, and cinematographer, Rice analyzes performance techniques to gain insight into the emotional toll of simulation documentaries, including those reliving the Vietnam War, the US (...) military's embodied training in California during the Iraq War, and an annual quadruple lynching reenactment organized by Black civil rights activists in Georgia. Investigating the lasting impact of these productions, Political Camerawork reveals that, by performing a simulation of a traumatic event they didn't directly experience, those involved become carriers of the trauma. (shrink)

National scientists have elaborated the reform's gist, approaches, stages and consequences in the Ukrainian agricultural sector during the XX - XXI centuries. These studies have been conducted by N. Zhulkanych, S. Zhyvora, M. Zyza, M. Lendiel, E. Mazur, O. Malyarchuk, V. Nechytailo and many others. The paper aims to perform the comprehensive study of general trends and peculiar features of the agricultural development of the Ukrainian SSR in 1963-1990 and to define actual advances and drawbacks on the basis of analysis (...) of historical records and scientific literature. The object of research is agriculture as part of socialist economy in the USSR. The subject of research is the implementation features of agricultural policy of the Soviet power in the Ukrainian SSR, using the Western region of the Republic as an example. The economic strategy of the Soviet power involved a long-term industrialization of the agricultural sector. A distinguishing feature of the industrialization process was the use of systems of machinery in all branches of agriculture. The technological chain had to embrace the process from the sporadic application of machinery to the overall mechanization and automation of crop and livestock farming. The industrial background of production predetermined the implementation of the system of machinery with extensive power consumption, i.e. with the new technical bases. The resolutions of the March Plenum of the CPSU Central Committee defined the economic priorities and capacity development of the Republic. Capital investments were the economic basis for the increase of production potential of collective and state farms, solution of social problems in rural regions. The land productivity was increased mainly by means of land reclamation and production chemization, use of organic and mineral fertilizers, pesticides, fungicides, etc. The supply of mineral fertilizers increased, but most of them were of low quality, non-concentrated and unbalanced in nutritional ingredients. In its turn it caused irreparable damage to the environment and polluted agricultural products with chemicals. The chemization undermined the population health and disrupted the ecological balance. Despite ultimate achievements in the rise of the industrial level of agriculture of the Ukrainian SSR, it didn't meet the needs of collective and state farms. A great number of labour-intensive processes in animal and crop farming were performed manually. In state farms, contrary to collective farms, the stock of tractors was newer, but much smaller. For many years the USSR was in the top ten countries of the world in terms of consumption of energy and proteins, contained in food products per capita. However, the food patterns were inconsistent with the scientifically grounded norm. Structural imbalance of the food ration was the manifestation of the food crisis in the USSR. To meet primary needs of Soviet citizens in food products the May Plenum of the CPSU Central Committee adopted the "Food Program of the USSR for the Period until 1990 and Measures of Its Implementation". The main issue of the Food program was to increase grain harvest. Grain production was the basis for food and fodder supply of the country. Alongside with a substantial increase in food products output in public economy the attention was given to the development of subsidiary individual holdings and fruit-and-vegetable cooperatives. The cooperatives and subsidiary holdings produced a great number of dairy and meat products, vegetables and fruits both for their own needs and for sale in collective farm markets. The state food program predetermined the solution of agricultural problems by means of formerly used methods. The major problem of agriculture had to be solved by means of increase in the gross grain harvest. Thus, the implementation of agricultural policy of Soviet power in the Ukrainian SSR lead to great changes in agricultural production. At that time there appeared such new branches of economy specialized in services to agricultural production as waterworks and land reclamation, feed mill industry, farm building, machine engineering for animal farming and fodder production, procurement of agricultural products and agricultural processing. The study of this policy implementation proves that the average annual rates of agricultural production increased but they were inconsistent with high investments. On the one hand, the Food program testified the "food crisis in the USSR", demonstrating the lag of the world socialist community from capitalist states. On the other hand, it had to increase the level of food self-sufficiency, decrease the procurement of agricultural products from abroad and promote the solution of the world food problem in general. (shrink)

The "Sinderesi School" dedicated his annual research (2015-2016) to investigate "fast-paced living a new model of being." In fact, humanity has passed from a slow and static world to a fast and interconnected way of living. This change has consequences in dealing with space and time, in shaping a culture, in regulating daily work and, most of all, in searching for the meaning of human existence. These were the main fields of investigation, and are here presented as the fruits (...) of a shared intellectual journey. The first section of this collection three lectures regarding the different approaches to human changing, made by the eastern and Western cultural traditions. the second part gathers the findings of a shared and intensive debate on the various aspect of human life mentioned above. Overall, this book shows how humanity is charged with an unprecedented "stewardship of the earth" that could be assumed only in a reasonable spirit of dialogue and mutual understanding"--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

In 1963 Vilem Flusser presented a series of lectures at the Brazilian Institute of Philosophy (IBF) in Sao Paulo concerning the philosophy of language. The resulting ten essays would eventually be published in 1965 in the annual magazine of the Brazilian Institute of Technology and Aeronautics (ITA), and published here for the first time in book form. Flusser prepared each lecture as a response to the dialogs that followed the preceding lecture, thereby expanding and explicating his philosophy of language (...) in an intense dialogical process. Despite the fact that the other side of the dialogue was not recorded, it becomes clear to the reader that the resulting discussions and polemics generated by the lectures progressively and profoundly changed Flusser's intended trajectory for the course. This kind of philosophy in fieri was in part the result of a group effort between all of those present, and subsequently synthesized by Flusser in every essay. As a result of this experience, Flusser adopted this dialogic method as an integral part of his future work -- Provided by publisher. (shrink)

How did the levels of anti-Semitism in the 1930s compare to those of earlier decades? Did anti-Semitism vary in content and intensity across societies? In other words, were Germans more anti-Semitic than their European neighbors, and, if so, why? How does anti-Semitism differ from other forms of religious, racial, and ethnic prejudice? In this 2003 book, William I. Brustein offersa truly systematic comparative and empirical examination of anti-Semitism within Europe before the Holocaust. Brustein proposes that European anti-Semitism flowed from religious, (...) racial, economic, and political roots, which became enflamed by economic distress, rising Jewish immigration, and socialist success. To support his arguments, Brustein draws upon a careful and extensive examination of the annual volumes of the American Jewish Year Books and more than 40 years of newspaper reportage from Europe's major dailies. The findings of this informative book offer a fresh perspective on the roots of society's longest hatred. (shrink)

Propositionalism is the view that all intensional constructions (including nominal and clausal attitude reports) can be interpreted as relations to truth-evaluable propositional content. While propositionalism has long been silently assumed in semantics and the philosophy of language, it has only recently entered center stage in linguistic research. This article surveys the properties of intensional constructions, which require the introduction of fine-grained semantic values (intensions). It contrasts two ways of obtaining such values: through the introduction of either Russellian propositions or Frege-Church-style (...) senses. The article identifies propositionalism with a specific variant of the Russellian strategy, reviews key arguments for propositionalism, and compares familiar varieties of propositionalism on the basis of instructive examples. It closes by discussing various challenges for propositionalism and suggesting a generalization of propositionalism that meets some of these challenges. Because of the association of propositions with semantic information, the article also addresses the more general question of whether all information content (including mental and pictorial content) is propositional. (shrink)

Providing equitable food security for a growing population while minimizing environmental impacts and enhancing resilience to climate shocks is an ongoing challenge. Here, we quantify the resource intensity, environmental impacts and nutritional output of a small (0.075 ha) low-input subsistence Mediterranean agroecological farm in a developed nation that is based on intercropping and annual crop rotation. The farm provides one individual, the proprietor, with nutritional self-sufficiency (adequate intake of an array of macro- and micro-nutrients) with limited labor, no synthetic (...) fertilizers or herbicides, and zero waste, effectively closing a full farm-table-farm cycle. We find that the agroecological farm outperforms conventional farming as practiced in the same country in terms of both lower environmental burdens, across all examined environmental metrics (63% lower on average) per kg produce, and higher nutritional score (66% higher on average). Per equal farmland, the environmental lopsidedness was even higher (79% lower than conventional farming on average), with nearly the same nutritional score (3% lower on average). Moreover, when considering total land area, which includes farmland and supporting non-agricultural lands, as well as postgate impacts and food losses, the advantage of the agroecological system over conventional farming is even more pronounced. Situated within a Mediterranean region that is undergoing rapid climate change, this food system is a unique case study of nutrition- and environment-oriented food production system. While its deployment potential is limited by lack of supportive policies, it nonetheless represents one of the most starkly bold alternatives to current food systems. (shrink)

We study 944 shareholder proposals submitted to 343 U.S. firms on climate change issues during 2009–2022. We use logistic and two-stage regression to estimate the propensity for a firm to be targeted or subjected to a vote at the annual general meeting and, for voted proposals, the determinants of that vote. We also examine whether climate-related proposals affect investor returns and how they relate to firms’ future environmental performance and greenhouse gas emissions. Compared to a matched sample, we first (...) find that activists target larger, more carbon-intensive, and less R&D-active firms. Second, voting likelihood is higher for firms with repeated and operations-related proposals and lower pre-proposal environmental ratings. By contrast, disclosure-related proposals are likelier to be negotiated and withdrawn. Third, repeated and operations-related proposals receive higher votes in favor, whereas votes on carbon-intensive firms do not. Fourth, building on the theory that investors act as if they distinguish among the different shareholder proposals based on the expected cost to the firm, we find evidence to support this idea. We find that investors respond negatively to ex-ante costlier proposals, such as those that relate to emissions reduction and target carbon-intensive firms. Fifth, targets’ future environmental performance rating is almost twenty percent higher after a proposal than before compared to the matched sample, whereas emissions do not budge appreciably. (shrink)

This paper was originally presented at the annual meeting of the program board of the Division of Overseas Ministries of the National Council of Churches. It followed a discussion by Jorgen Randers showing the implications of present world trends in growth of population and industrialization, depletion of natural resources, rise in population, and full utilization of agricultural land. Referring to the two hours of his talk and the ensuing discussion, Randers said, “The entire purpose is to convince you that (...) exponential growth cannot go on forever in a world of fixed size.” Randers stressed that overtaxing of the natural environment is caused more by industrialization than by population. Industrial processes use natural resources and emit pollution. Capital‐intensive agriculture in time decreases the productivity of land. Limiting of capital accumulation is as necessary as limiting of population. World civilization must and will move from growth to equilibrium, either by human choice or by the pressure of natural and social forces.Many trade‐offs and choices lie before us in the approaching equilibrium. We can press forward along the historical growth curves, exceed the limits of the world environment, and endure a collapse of population and industrialization back to a level the world can support. Or we can choose a redirection of law, policies, and religions to create a smooth transition to world equilibrium. Even in choosing equilibrium, alternatives arise. The higher the population, the lower will be the achieveable standard of living and quality of life. Trade‐offs will be made consciously or implicitly between advantages in the immediate future compared to advantages in the distant future. An inherent conflict exists between time horizons. Choosing to maximize the present quality of life condemns future generations to suffer for their predecessors' advantage.The reader should, if possible, read first any of those cited in notes1, 2, or 6 listed at the end of this paper before reading the following text, —J A Y W. FORRESTER. (shrink)

The extraction of natural resources is a controversial business practice that has profound ethical and economic risk implications for both firms involved in extractive activities and society at large. In response to these implications, the Dodd–Frank Act of 2010 directed the Securities and Exchange Commission to create the first ever rules requiring annual corporate responsibility disclosures. The two proposed rules, requiring disclosure of the source of “conflict minerals” and of payments to foreign governments by extractive firms, conjured intense debate (...) among stakeholders, largely related to the risks of firms providing the information. These risks span from required disclosures increasing compliance costs for firms to non-disclosure threatening human rights. In this study, we seek to understand the way in which stakeholders perceive the risks associated with corporate responsibility disclosures. We analyze comment letters submitted to the SEC related to the two disclosure rules through the lens of Douglas’s cultural perspectives of risk. We find consistencies across the two proposed disclosures with regard to the presence of three risk perspectives within the comment letter discourse for each proposal. We find inconsistencies, however, in the underlying nature of risk perceived across the two rules, which we argue reveals an aspect of risk that incorporates ethicality and is ultimately linked to reputational considerations. We complement these insights by analyzing the market reaction to the proposed regulations. Overall, our analysis suggests that stakeholders’ perceptions of risk have consequences for how risk is perceived and acted upon in the market. (shrink)

Abstract“The singular state of the ice”. The Cartographic Knowledge of the Whaler William Scoresby. The English whaler William Scoresby, Jr. (1790–1857) made use of his annual voyages to the Greenland Sea for distinguished scientific work, detailed records and the production of amazing maps. Due to his intensive contacts to scientists as Robert Jameson and politicians as Joseph Banks and John Barrow his research achieved a great deal of attention and set a benchmark for at least half a century. (...) Scoresby combined the adventurous world of Arctic fishery with academic sciences. He attained the northernmost point anybody reached in his time, he extended the cartographic knowledge and forced the conquest and utilisation of the oceans for commercial fishing. But his biography enquires also about who got an opportunity for research and for what. Especially it demonstrates the strong impact practical knowledge of a whaler could have on geographic research and Arctic cartography. (shrink)

Background:Moral distress is a significant concern for nurses as it can lead to burnout and intentions to leave the profession. Pediatric nurses encounter stressful and ethically challenging situations when they care for suspected victims of child maltreatment. Data on pediatric nurses’ moral distress are limited, as most research in this field has been done in adult inpatient and intensive care units.Aim:The purpose of this study was to describe pediatric nurses’ moral distress and evaluate the impact of caring for suspected (...) victims of child maltreatment on nurses’ moral distress, burnout, and intention to leave. Design and method: This descriptive cross-sectional correlational study was conducted in a mid-Atlantic, urban area Magnet pediatric level I trauma center that cares for over 1800 cases of suspected child maltreatment annually. An anonymous electronic survey was sent to all the nurses working at the hospital.Ethical considerations:Institutional Review Board approval was received from the first author’s university and the hospital where the study was conducted.Findings:Overall, nurses ( N = 146) reported low levels of moral distress with a mean score of 59.54 (SD = 49.22) and a range of 0–300 on the Moral Distress Scale Neonatal–Pediatric version. Although the frequency of caring for suspected child maltreatment victims did not affect nurses’ moral distress, caring for victims with fatal maltreatment contributed to nurses’ intention to leave, χ2(1) = 5.35, p = 0.02.Conclusion:The results of this study add to the understanding of moral distress in pediatric nursing. Caring for victims with fatal maltreatment impacts pediatric nurses’ intention to leave. (shrink)

Surgical patients under anesthesia can wake up unpredictably and be exposed to intense, traumatic pain. Current medical techniques cannot maintain depth of anesthesia at a perfectly stable and safe level; the depth of unconsciousness may change from moment to moment. Without an effective consciousness monitor anesthesiologists may not be able to adjust dosages in time to protect patients from pain. An estimated 40,000 to 200,000 midoperative awakenings may occur in the United States annually. E. R. John and coauthors present the (...) scientific basis of a practical ''consciousness monitor'' in two articles. One article is empirical and shows widespread and consistent electrical field changes across subjects and anesthetic agents as soon as consciousness is lost; these changes reverse when consciousness is regained afterward. These findings form the basis of a surgical consciousness monitor that recently received approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. This may be the first practical application of research on the brain basis of consciousness. The other John article suggests theoretical explanations at three levels, a neurophysiological account of anesthesia, a neural dynamic account of conscious and unconscious states, and an integrative field theory. Of these, the neurophysiology is the best understood. Neural dynamics is evolving rapidly, with several alternative points of view. The field theory sketched here is the most novel and controversial. (shrink)

A screening test for more than 50 cancers at earlier stages would strike many as a godsend. Such a test would promise, prima facie, to save 160,000 lives annually from a premature death from cancer, reduce the intensity of medical treatment, and reduce social costs. In brief, this is what is promised by the Galleri test. We will delineate those claims in greater detail and critically assess them from medical, economic, and ethical perspectives. We conclude, with many others, that this (...) test lacks clinical validity and clinical utility. In addition, annual public funding of $100 billion for this test would be socially unaffordable; the opportunity costs would be unacceptable for both ethical and economic reasons. Further, the least well off with respect to cancer care would be made worse off if this test were publicly funded for everyone over the age of fifty. (shrink)

In every generation the overwhelming majority of those who inhabited the imperium Romanum worked on the land and derived their sustenance directly from it. The notion is commonplace and scarcely admits of debate, but its implications for long have suffered unwarranted neglect. The well-being of any society ultimately rests upon the quantity and diversity of its food supplies, but the immediacy of their contact with the soil continually reminded the Roman people of this platitude with a force which few students (...) of their history today can readily appreciate. The annual yield of wheat in particular, always a staple item in the Roman diet, and to a lesser extent of such cereals as panic and millet, acutely affected every segment of the Roman community. One example will serve to illustrate the point. The dependence of the plebs urbana upon imported surpluses is notorious, equally the intense suffering and violence which typically accompanied any disruption of their supply. Such outbreaks frequently punctuated the chaotic final decades of the Republic, but they also scarred more than one régime during the first two centuries of the Principate. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Pleasures of FictionDenis DuttonHuman Beings Expend staggering amounts of time and resources on creating and experiencing art and entertainment—music, dancing, and static visual arts. Of all of the arts, however, it is the category of fictional story-telling that across the globe today is the most intense focus of what amounts to a virtual human addiction. A recent government study in Britain showed that if you add together (...) class='Hi'>annual attendances in plays and cinema with hours watching television drama, the average Briton spends roughly 6% of all waking life watching dramatic performances. And that figure does not even include books and magazines: further vast numbers of hours spent reading short stories, bodice-rippers, mysteries, and thrillers, as well as so-called serious fictions, old and new.The origins of this obsession with comic and dramatic fictions are lost in remote prehistory, as lost as the origins of language itself. But like language, we know the obsession with fiction is universal: stories told, read, and dramatically or poetically performed are independently invented in all known cultures, literate or not, having advanced technologies or not. Wherever printing arrives, it is used to reproduce fictions. Whenever television appears in the world, soap operas soon show up on the schedule. Both the forms that fiction takes and the ideas, types of characters, and kinds of conflict that make up its content can be shown to be strikingly similar across cultures. It has specialist practitioners—rhapsodes, novelists, playwrights, actors—and is governed both informally with stylistic conventions and sometimes formally—for example, by censorship laws. A love of fiction is as universal as governance, marriage, jokes, religion, and the incest taboo. [End Page 453]The question for any general aesthetics is: Why? Joseph Carroll is a literary theorist who has applied his probing mind over the last decade to the origins, nature, and functions of literary experience. His new collection of essays and reviews, Literary Darwinism: Evolution, Human Nature, and Literature (Routledge, $85.00 boards, $23.95 paper) looks at literature and literary theory through the lens of evolutionary psychology. At the same time, Carroll's eye is that of an extremely perceptive literary critic. In fact, I would judge him to be one of the most acute and knowledgeable readers of fiction I've ever encountered. It should not come as a surprise, therefore, that he is sometimes dubious, or even scathing, about evolutionary explanations of literature that have been offered up by writers whose grasp of psychology exceeds, in his opinion, their command of high literature. His complaints, however, are not to the fundamental notion that evolution by natural and sexual selection have made human beings into the story-loving animals they have become: his adjustments are intended to increase the accuracy and usefulness of Darwin's revolution. However critical he is of evolutionary psychologists, Carroll remains a Darwinian through and through.Carroll holds that the only way to attain a general theory of literature is through an account of human nature that builds from the ground up, from the most basic conditions for the evolution of the human species. A Darwinian literary theory first needs a Darwinian psychology. Once we have a basic Darwinian psychology in place, we can see that the narrative proclivities of human beings, far from being an incidental by-product of the evolved mind, are central to some of its most human functions. The structures of basic motives and dispositions are what would be appropriate for a species, as Carroll describes it, that "is highly social and mildly polygynous, that displays concealed ovulation, continuous female receptivity, and postmenopausal life expectancy corresponding to a uniquely extended period of childhood development, that has extraordinary aptitudes for technology, that has developed language and the capacity for peering into the minds of its conspecifics, and that displays a unique disposition for fabricating and consuming aesthetic and imaginative artifacts." Such a list alone, he contends, would make it impossible to imagine a blank-slate view of the mind, in which the mind evolves in a vacuum, goes onto produce culture, which then gives back to the mind all content and structure.Some of the mental processes that grow from... (shrink)

This is the twenty-ninth volume in This World, a series on religion and public affairs. It focuses on theological and moral questions of deep significance for our time. The lines of division separating secular and religious outlooks, modernity and postmodernism, and romantic and classical styles of thought are some of the topics treated in this volume. Additional features are an exchange of opinions and a position paper intended to generate further discussion. This ongoing series of volumes seeks to provide a (...) wide-ranging forum for differing views on religious and ethical considerations. Theologies and Moral Concern include the following major contributions: "Distinctions of Power: How Church and State Divide America" by Brian Mitchell; "Beyond the Impasses: Making Moral Sense of Abortion" by Anthony Matteo; "Are Religions Ever Traditional" by Jacob Neusner; "Philosophical Issues in Darwinian Theory" by Kenneth T. Gallagher; "Monotheism and Skepticism" by Aryeh Botwinick; "Defining Romantic Theology" by Gerhard Spiegler; and "The YMCA and Suburban America" by Clifford Putney. In addition, the volume features a dialogue between Michael A. Weinstein and Paul Gottfried on what constitutes the proper role for liberal arts education in contemporary American society as well as a position paper titled "The Pitfalls of Political Correctness" by Lawrence Nannery. Theologies and Moral Concern is part of an annual survey of religion and public life which aims to provide relevant information and ideas about significant issues of the day. It is directly pertinent to understanding the connection between religion and the state. This particular volume, coming at a time of intense public scrutiny of fundamentalism, evangelicism, and new religious movements generally, should have special appeal for political scientists, American studies specialists, sociologists, and those involved in the creation of public policy. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Ethics & the Environment 8.1 (2003) 57-60 [Access article in PDF] The Art of Impurity Patsy Hallen I was taken aback when I received a request from the West Australian government to write a response to the question, "What Is The Ethical Foundation For Planning A More Sustainable Future?" My first reaction was: Does not every one want a future? And doesn't this necessarily mean a commitment to sustainability? (...) Would not everyone earnestly want a more sustainable future?To have to ask the question at all shows just how far out of balance our crazy, greed-driven culture is. To ask the question is to imply that many people do not want to live on, or, at least, do not want the next generation to live on. It was like being asked: How can one morally justify a flourishing, joyful life for every being on earth?In a profound sense, there cannot and need not be any moral justification for sustainability because sustainability is the foundation for morality, not the other way around. As the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle cautioned, it shows a lack of education to try and prove everything. You can't prove logic, for example, because logic presupposes proof. Likewise, our ultimate norms such as "Love is better than hate" must be gained by intuition; they can't be proved.No sooner had I received this request than I became ill (no causal connection, I assure you!) and in my fever-induced reveries I penned imaginary responses. I wrote:"The Ethical Foundation of Sustainability is 'Joy' or 'Life' or 'An Ethic of Flourishing'." [End Page 57]'Survival' seemed the most appropriate candidate (especially as the fever escalated), until I settled on Love.Of course, Love.* * *He was huge. He was unbelievably huge. He just kept coming and coming. He was so close.His blue-grey body turned the intensely deep blue depths into a translucent green, like an enormous halo hovering just below the surface.I was drawn into his presence like ink into blotting paper.He blew, rhythmically expelling air. I, too, exhaled and this made me 'come to', returning me to my body. I realized I was wet-by his breath. I had been baptized, the most magnificent baptism one could imagine.In my baptism, luckily, I was spared being hit by a dollop of phlegm.It does happen.His breath smelt... not sweet but not sour-primordial, like the origin of life. I became aware of someone softly counting the breaths: "17... 18... 19..." it seemed everlasting.Then after 19 breaths, he dove, not with a rush, just leisurely, almost seamlessly, like the pulse of life itself, hardly a splash.I hadn't even remembered to be seasick.He is one of the largest animals ever to have lived on earth. His tongue weighs more than an elephant. He measures a length of 26 meters, a weight of around 160 tons.This is the Pygmy Blue Whale, Balaenoptera Brevicanda, hunted close to extinction by the whaling industry, and now slowly returning from the brink. Whoever named him "Pygmy" must have had delusions of grandeur.We were 30 nautical miles off the west end of Rottenest Island (near Perth), on board "Whalesong," a 13-meter catamaran built and sailed by Curt and Mich Jenner, who have been researching whales on the West Australian coast for over 10 years.We were at "the trench," where Pygmies feed. Mich and Curt had spent the summer trying to learn about this Rorqual Whale, before sailing north for the winter to follow Humpbacks on their annual migratory path from their feeding grounds in the southern ocean to their breeding enclaves in the Kimberley.Very little is known about Pygmy Blues. They are a tropical subspecies of the Blue Whale, but might possibly be a new species altogether. No one [End Page 58] knows where they go to mate or to give birth. Very few people have even seen them. Like the Whale Sharks, they are one of the last unfathomable mysteries of the planet.We stayed with this foundational animal for 2 hours, until the last... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Editor’s IntroductionRichard A. Cohen (bio) and Jolanta Saldukaitytė (bio)For more than a decade, Levinas Studies has served admirably as the only English-language journal dedicated exclusively to the academic study of the thought of Emmanuel Levinas. It is an honor to coedit an issue of Levinas Studies — not only to contribute articles but also to organize an entire volume. Volume 11 of Levinas Studies gathers together essays from scholars (...) who have (with the exception of James Mensch) participated in one or more of the annual Levinas Philosophy Summer Seminar (LPSS), held from 2013 to 2016, directed by Richard A. Cohen, with the assistance of James McLachlan, and organized jointly by Cohen and Jolanta Saldukaitytė, coeditors of the present volume.The LPSS has met in different countries at different venues around the world, each time with ten invited international participants (and some additional auditors). Each summer these dedicated scholars join up for one very intense week of reading and conversation, finding a deeper understanding of an important topic in Levinas’s philosophy. As a one-week Seminar for College and University Teachers, 16 American scholars gathered at the University at Buffalo (SUNY), Buffalo, to discuss “Emmanuel Levinas: On Morality, Justice and the Political.” As the ancient Greek philosophers along with the biblical prophets understood, ethics and politics are inseparable. [End Page vii]Participants usually attend only one LPSS, but some have returned for more, and two scholars have attended four. This and Levinas’s philosophy, and a few e-mail updates to former participants, have created a modicum of continuity and group spirit, or so we hope. The contents of the present volume of Levinas Studies contributes to that collegiality and continuing discussion, enabling a much wider audience of Levinas scholars to look over our shoulders, as it were, and join the conversation. Most of the topics and concerns of the present issue of Levinas Studies — embodiment, Eros, aesthetics, Kant, and difficult freedom — reflect those of past LPSS gatherings.Volume 11 starts with Irina Poleshchuk’s essay, “Transcendence and Sensibility: Affection, Sensation, and Nonintentional Consciousness.” Underscoring the importance of sensibility in Levinas’s philosophy, she shows that subjectivity is not only a vulnerable and affected selfhood but also that, in and through, its sensible subjectivity is endowed with transcendence. Affected by the other, the vulnerability and sensibility of selfhood are “nonintentional” and radically passive. By introducing the phenomenon of a sensibility with two distinct dimensions — one on the level of enjoyment and the other on the suffering of the face-to-face encounter — she shows the double character of affection, both constituting and constituted. Sensibility is both source and shocked in the face-to-face relation. Elaborating sensibility as enjoyment and sensibility as nonintentional consciousness and passivity, Poleshchuk deepens our understanding of the core Levinasian structures of one-for-the-other and hospitality. In contrast to the idealistic leanings of philosophy’s ontological tradition, Poleshchuk shows that transcendence in Levinas’s ethical philosophy becomes flesh in sensibility.Sensibility also features centrally in Brigitta Keintzel’s essay, “ ‘Like a Virgin’: Levinas’s Anti-Platonic Understanding of Love and Desire.” This essay questions how sensual love and ethical desire relate to Levinas’s description of the relations linking “intimate” and “real” society. On the one hand, she shows that Levinasian ethical desire coincides with the Platonic notion of love as desire, and hence not as an existing or already accomplished knowledge. On the other hand, Keintzel [End Page viii] underlines that Platonic love does not coincide with what Levinas calls “Desire,” since the latter is directed not toward an idea but toward the face of the Other. Love for Levinas begins as a subject addressed in his/her direct, vulnerable, traumatized passivity. Eros lies in love’s ability to orient itself to the future. Virginity, then, has to be understood beyond biological attributes, in relation to the intersubjective transcendence that defines the human as such. “Like a virgin” is not biological innocence, or eternal youth, or an exclusively female matter, but being “not-yet,” the open orientation of one to the Other. Finally, the figure of the Third — care for others, for justice — deepens the difference between ethical desire and... (shrink)

Introduction. Artificial intelligence is a trend of NBIC-convergence and information technologies in particular. Since the 70s of the 20th century it has been a subject of intense debate in the scientific community. A direct indicator of the importance of the topic is the publication dynamics and the annual increase in the number of indexed articles. According to the statistics, Western social sciences are in the top five industry leaders. The purpose of the study is to analyze the Scopus database (...) and identify the key mythologems of the scientific discourse of social sciences (in the field of artificial intelligence). The latter go beyond the boundaries of research norms and standards and express non-reflective research intentions. Methods. The reference base of scientific arti- cles includes works published during the decade (2010—2020). Methods for detecting verbal mark- ers and content analysis were used. At the same time, the emphasis was mainly placed not on quan- titative, but on qualitative analytics as well. The basis for the choice of markers was the frequency of their use in abstracts (abstracts), headings (titles) and keywords. The selection of verbal markers was made in accordance with two conditionally desig- nated categories: «trends», or frequency engineering, technical and social and humanitarian terms, expressing the direction of research practic- es and «mythologemes», or elements of a second- ary semiotic system. Scientific novelty of the study. Scientific novelty is due to the specification of the research subject. In the West, the direction of the so-called «Tech- nological mythology», which focuses mainly on the discourses of art and ideological documents is being developed. The analytics of scientific content makes it possible to remove the existing research limitations of the subject and identify prospects for further study of modern mythology. Content analysis made it possible to identify some extreme- ly general formulations of technological mythologe- mes, which can be refined and concretized. Results. Following the results of the study, a de- scription of three metatrends was made — techno- logical, social and anthropological. All key directions within the boundaries of each trend are listed. At the same time, it is argued that the anthropotrend has a relatively smaller share in the discourse of Western social sciences. As a debatable aspect of the study, five scientific mythologemes were iden- tified and conditionally designated. Interpretations and characteristic examples of the functioning of each are offered. Conclusion. The technological trend is constituted by the data of technical sciences and engineering developments with a social orientation. Sociotrend is determined by the spectrum of technology application areas. The conclusion is made about the diffusion of two trends and the discourses serving these trends. Discursively, the technotrend serves to construct a strictly scientific discourse based not on abstract, but on specific and precise proposi- tions. Particular attention is paid to the discursive mainstream of «smartization», which is characteris- tic of the scientific content of the second decade of the 21st century. Emphasis is placed on the anthro- pological risks of extrapolating «smartization» to specialized practices. (shrink)

Since 1974 Belgian traditional sectors have been facing important financial difficulties, which compelled them to seek both increased productivity through more capital intensive techniques, and goods with higher valued added.This twofold evolution implied investments and job-reductions that could hardly have been possible without adequate public policies. As far as steel and textile are concerned those policies used mainly a common scheme based on public financial intervention and social measures. Public financial support required to cover annual losses and investments (...) consisted of either grants or state equities. It amounted to over 200 billions BEF.Besides, policies were designed in favour of people losing their jobs : early retirement was made possible and was even accompanied with tax cuts. However the budgetary cost of those policies is very high, they may be considered successful as Belgian producers now seem able to stand unternational competition. (shrink)

At the present time, when we are experiencing one of the extraordinary conditions in which the basics of life are shaken, exceptional practices concerning the sources of the meaning of the world of life have become one of the urgent issues for the sociology of religion to consider. This study discusses the reactions of people to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the regularity of social life in the early stages in the framework of Muslim religious groups. Since the (...) forms of social organization reveal reactions in their own specific forms, a research design that considers the differences were preferred. The provision that ‘man is social by nature,’ which is the indispensable principle of social sciences, has been the main feature of important issues to elaborate in the restrictions of today’s pandemic. Religious socialization, which is important for the inquiry, is a phenomenon that is desired to be carried out on a continuous basis. Its performative dimension draws attention to important elements that affect the formation and the social ontology of the group, such as consciousness and solidarity. While some religious groups insist on face-to-face interaction and rituals, some of them prefer to use effectively digital tools and channels. This differing approach has become a public issue, especially during the pandemic process. On the other hand, there is a discussion in the context of the digital world of new media tools and the travel possibilities of transportation technology. The theoretical basis of this study, which deals with the insistence of religious groups on face-to-face interaction and rituals is represented from the scope of Erving Goffman. His analyzes face-to-face communication and his comments emphasizing the ritualistic nature of daily life are operationalized through two basic case studies: the first case is the persistence and practice of Tablīghī Djamā‘at, in its annual meetings in the early days of the pandemic. The discussion started with the practice of the religious group in Delhi (Nizamuddin Markaz), since they did not cancel their annual meeting despite the diagnosis of the disease. The second case is based on the ritual insistence of pilgrims in visiting shrines in the Iranian city of Qom. The insistence of the Shiite Islamic understanding on ritual and pilgrimage and the solidarity built with the consciousness based on it is a well-known phenomenon. In the Covid-19 pandemic, the risk of contamination caused by the mobility of the pilgrims coming to the city of Qom from countries such as Pakistan was discussed, as well as the contact and social distance during the Hajj. Two cases were handled with a qualitative design including case analysis method and descriptive analysis technique. The main purpose and intended contribution of the article are to reveal the insistence of face-to-face interaction through the performative based on rituals as an analytical explanatory on the social level. Inferences based on the analysis of religious groups’ response to restrictions in times of emergency build the importance of the issue. Case information identified in the context of the case study shows that groups with traditional interaction forms insist on their own practice in the field of uncertainty and initiative. Unless necessity eliminates the initiative, the determination of this insistence of traditional religious groups is not only theological but also ontological confirmation. It is understood that the members of the group took the initiative to represent their reputation within the group and their extent to dedicate to the group. The fact that Tablīghī Djamā‘at, the largest group of the transnational Islamic da‘wa (call), did not give up on a method based on demographic mobility, has been a matter of discussion. The insistence of the group is because of the methods that require every ordinary believer to accept to convey the da‘wa as his primary duty. On the other hand, Shiism, which stands out with its traditional structure and ritual intensity in the Islamic world, insisted on the initiative process in the pilgrimage phenomenon, on which it attached special importance and built its solidarity and identity on this phenomenon. This insistence aims preserving the dynamics and social ontology of the religious group in the performance of the membership system. Essentially, the individual in the group insists on his position in face-to-face interaction because having a role in a group also means having a face. Thus, this insistence performance by religious groups should also be read as a reflection of self-technologies. In the final analysis, the insistence put forward should be considered essentially in relation to the insistence on the position in social ontology. (shrink)

Diatoms are important protists that generate one fifth of the oxygen produced annually on earth. These aquatic organisms likely derived from a secondary endosymbiosis event, and they display peculiar genomic and structural features that reflect their chimeric origin. Diatoms were one of the first models of cell division and these early studies revealed a range of interesting features including a unique acentriolar microtubule‐organising centre. Unfortunately, almost nothing is known at the molecular level, in contrast to the advances in other experimental (...) organisms. Recently the full genome sequences of two diatoms have been annotated and molecular tools have been developed. These resources offer new possibilities to re‐investigate the mechanisms of cell division in diatoms by recruiting information from more intensively studied organisms. A renaissance of the topic is further justified by the current interest in diatoms as a source of biofuels and for understanding massive diatom proliferation events in response to environmental stimuli. (shrink)

A stock divestment campaign is a common strategy used by social activists to pressure corporations to abandon undesirable practices. However, evidence on the effectiveness of the strategy remains mixed. In this paper, we examine the effectiveness of an international stock boycott by studying a large sample of institutional investor transactions in four emerging market stocks targeted by the Sudan divestment campaign from 2001 to 2012. We find evidence of a negative relationship between the intensity of the campaign and the ownership (...) breadth of the stocks, suggesting the effectiveness of the campaign in encouraging investors to divest from targeted companies. Additional analysis indicates that investors in countries that are sympathetic towards CSR activities are more responsive to the divestment campaign. Further, we find evidence consistent with higher campaign intensity being associated with more depressed stock prices. Finally, when performing qualitative content analyses of the annual reports and CSR reports, we find evidence about the effects of the campaign on the targeted companies’ corporate policies and activities in Sudan. In sum, our results support the effectiveness of the stock boycott. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Experiences of an Obese PatientChristine R. BrassIn the middle of an annual pelvic exam, the gynecologist said to me, “You should apply to be on ‘The Biggest Loser.’” I was too stunned and embarrassed to mutter anything more than a [End Page 88] comment that I didn’t think that, being quite introverted, I was a good candidate for a reality TV show. She argued with me about that. (...) I felt blindsided, intensely vulnerable, and dumbstruck—completely unable to respond—and later, when the shock wore off, incandescent with impotent rage.Four years later, I still don’t have words to adequately describe my outrage at this comment. It was only the second time I’d see this medical professional. The first time was the previous year, when she had been filling in for my regular doctor who was on maternity leave. At neither appointment did this physician ask me any questions about my lifestyle, whether or not I saw a primary care physician, or even if I had any concerns that day. She was very brisk, efficient and did not engage in conversation. Such a statement coming from a health care provider, who did not seek to understand or gather more information, surprised and dismayed me.Other incidents where physicians’ statements were not helpful:• Pediatrician: “Well, my wife has had great success with Weight Watchers.”—I was age 12, about 5’5 and weighted about 145 lbs. at that time. If you look at photos of me at the time, you would see I was not overweight.• Orthopedic Surgeon: “If you want her to look better, make her lose weight.”—This was directed to my mother. I was 19, weighed about 200 lbs., and in his office as per his directions to come back in seven years to see if the surgery he had done on my neck needed more attention.• Internist: “How did you get all those stretch marks?”—I was age 24, weighed approximately 220 lbs., and had lost and gained 50 or so pounds several times as a teenager and in college.• Gynecologist: “Lose weight and your periods will be regular.”—I was age 27, weighed 227 lbs. and my periods, which started at age 15, had never been regular.• Another Orthopedic Surgeon: “You don’t have to worry about osteoporosis; everything you do is a weight–bearing exercise.”—I was age 42 and weighed 300 lbs. This was after follow up surgery to remove pins from a broken ankle that had healed and I had asked about whether or not I should have a bone density test.Coming from a genetic heritage of predominately tall, large–boned people, I was tall and proportionally large compared to other girls my age until high school, when the others caught up. I was told I had to “watch my weight” by family members from my pre–teen years. Enforced dieting ensued, with little result because I wasn’t fat. I did not begin to be overweight until my junior and senior years of high school. I was 5’7” when I graduated from high school and weighed 187. By the time I graduated from college, I was no taller but 50 lbs. heavier. Now, nearing my 40th high school reunion, I am 120 lbs heavier than that. During the intervening years, I have done Weight Watchers®, TOPS®, medically–supervised programs (group and individual), and other popular diets, with periodic but temporary success, and hypnosis and aversion therapy, with no success at all.Over the years, I have been insulted, verbally abused, even bullied, because of my weight. I have been treated as though I am invisible, worthless, and stupid—a pariah. As a result, I have felt invisible, worthless, and stupid, even though I know I am none of those things. I have experienced and been treated for clinical depression. The descent into depression began in my late teen years, which was the time when I started gaining excess weight.In 2004, under medical supervision, I lost 70 lbs. over four–month period. I was delighted to finally lose a substantial amount of weight and feel physical lighter. My diabetes medications were significantly reduced, and... (shrink)

“The City of the Hospital” is a creative nonfiction writing workshop for medical students, which the author has conducted annually since 2002. Part of the required preclinical Narrative Medicine curriculum at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, this six-week intensive workshop includes close readings of literary works and in-class assignments that are then edited by fellow class members and rewritten for final submission. Over the years, students have produced a wide range of compelling essays and stories, and (...) they describe the class as having an effect that lasts throughout their further medical training. This special section includes selected works from class members. (shrink)

The annual UK potential donor audit captures families’ reasons for not consenting to donation of their deceased family members’ organs . Given that many families’ refusals and vetoes are based on false beliefs, cognitive bias and misunderstanding, it is incumbent upon doctors, nurses and transplant coordinators to invest sufficient time to facilitate informed consent or authorization. While such families are distressed, organ donation rates could be substantially improved if they were made aware of any mistaken beliefs, using recently suggested (...) criteria for the ethical use of persuasion . This article examines some of the reasons for refusal of donation and suggests ways to help families make better decisions. It emerges that the use of persuasion is ethically essential in order to prevent families making decisions that they may come to regret. (shrink)

With the expansion of artificial intelligence and advanced technologies, theworld in the 21st century is rapidly changing and imposing new living dynamics. Althoughsuch changes affect all age groups, younger generations accept them faster andreact more positively. The new cohorts - Generation Z and Alpha - live in a digital worldthat affect their lifestyle, interpersonal relations, quality of mental health, psychologicalwell-being and everyday challenges. The presence of the so called “Frankenstein effect”in some adults provoked by the fast development of artificial intelligence (...) and robotics,reflects a “humans versus machines” position, viewing artificial intelligence as athreat to humanity. However, the reality is that digital and human world are not inconflict, since many people are already using artificial intelligence tools on daily basis.It is implemented in certain aspects of medicine, education, business, law, agriculture,industry, space technology and in many other fields. With this in mind, the aspect ofmorality pops up as a very important one. A frequently asked question is: Does artificialintelligence have the capacity to make moral decisions independently? Therefore, integratingmorality into AI algorithms is one of the priorities that interdisciplinary teamsfrom engineering and computer sciences, psychology, philosophy, sociology, law, etc.are intensively working on. This paper addresses this issue by presenting findings fromrelevant research which discusses the challenges and possibilities for integrating thedimensions of morality and introducing human values into autonomous systems thatperform complex tasks. (shrink)

The middle ages is commonly seen as an age of inequality, when society was structured by fixed social hierarchies. However, beginning in the late eleventh century and continuing through the thirteenth century, widespread economic and cultural changes, together with a revival of spiritual intensity and widespread concern for religious reforms, transformed the dominant structures of Western European society. These changes did not immediately transform Europe into an egalitarian society, but they did give new saliency to ancient Christian ideals of equality, (...) particularly among scholastic theologians and canon lawyers of the period. In this paper, I focus on the virtue of obedience and its limits as one entrée into the scholastic concept of natural equality, further restricting myself to a comparison of Bonaventure and Aquinas on this topic. I will argue that while both theologians value the virtue of obedience highly, both also place clear limits on the obligation of obedience, limits which point beyond themselves to a norm of natural equality which constrains the exercise of authority. (shrink)

Nurses working in a newborn intensive care unit report that treatment decision disagreements for infants in their care may lead to ethical dilemmas involving all health-care providers. Applying Rest’s Four-Component Model of Moral Action as the theoretical framework, this study examined the responses of 224 newborn intensive care unit nurses to the Nurses Ethical Involvement Survey. The three most frequent actions selected were as follows: talking with other nurses, talking with doctors, and requesting a team meeting. The multiple (...) regression analysis indicates that newborn intensive care unit nurses with greater concern for the ethical aspects of clinical practice (p =.001) and an increased perception of their ability to influence ethical decision making (p =.018) were more likely to display Nurse Activism. Future research is necessary to identify other factors leading to and inhibiting Nurse Activism as these findings explained just 8.5% of the variance. (shrink)

Background: Dignity has been highlighted in previous research as one of the most important ethical concerns in nursing care. According to Eriksson, dignified caring is related to treating the patient as a unique human being and respecting human value. Intensive care unit patients are vulnerable to threatened dignity, and maintaining dignity may be challenging as a consequence of critical illness. Objectives: The aim is to highlight how nurses in an intensive care setting understand patient dignity, what threatens patient (...) dignity and how nurses can safeguard patient dignity. Research design and participants: Data materials were collected through a survey questionnaire which contained open questions about patient dignity, and the text was analysed using hermeneutic reading and text interpretation. Totally, 25 nurses employed in an intensive care unit in Finland participated in the study. Ethical considerations: The study follows the guidelines for good scientific practice by the Finnish Advisory Board on Research Integrity and the ethical principles according to the Declaration of Helsinki. Findings: Findings revealed that nurses recognize the patients’ absolute dignity by regarding them as unique human beings. The nurses also recognize the importance of shared humanity in preserving patient dignity. Intensive care patients’ dignity is threatened by negative attitudes and when their integrity is not being protected. Dignity is also threatened when patients and nurses are not part of the patients’ care and patient care decisions, when patients receive care against their will and because of the acute nature of intensive care. (shrink)

Life sciences research is increasingly international and data-intensive. Researchers work in multi-jurisdictional teams or formally established research consortia to exchange data and conduct research using computation of multiple sources and volumes of data at multiple sites and through multiple pathways. Despite the internationalization and data intensification of research, the same ethics review process as applies to single-site studies in one country tends to apply to multi-site studies in multiple countries. Because of the standard requirement for multi-jurisdictional or multi-site ethics (...) review, international research projects are subjected to multiple ethics reviews of the same research protocol. Consequently, the reviews may be redundant and resource-consuming, whilst the opinions delivered by ethics committees may be inconsistent both within and across jurisdictions. In this article, we present findings based on interviews conducted with international experts in research ethics on the topic of et... (shrink)

In the western healthcare, shared decision making has become the orthodox approach to making healthcare choices as a way of promoting patient autonomy. Despite the fact that the autonomy paradigm is poorly suited to paediatric decision making, such an approach is enshrined in English common law. When reaching moral decisions, for instance when it is unclear whether treatment or non-treatment will serve a child’s best interests, shared decision making is particularly questionable because agreement does not ensure moral validity. With reference (...) to current common law and focusing on intensive care practice, this paper investigates what claims shared decision making may have to legitimacy in a paediatric intensive care setting. Drawing on key texts, I suggest these identify advantages to parents and clinicians but not to the child who is the subject of the decision. Without evidence that shared decision making increases the quality of the decision that is being made, it appears that a focus on the shared nature of a decision does not cohere with the principle that the best interests of the child should remain paramount. In the face of significant pressures toward the displacement of the child’s interests in a shared decision, advantages of a shared decision to decisional quality require elucidation. Although a number of arguments of this nature may have potential, should no such advantages be demonstrable we have cause to revise our commitment to either shared decision making or the paramountcy of the child in these circumstances. (shrink)

Periodical reports are important information sources for investors and society to monitor, contribute to, and allocate resources to listed companies contributing to environmental sustainability. This article provides a preliminary investigation into environment-related information disclosure in annual reports of 61 representative companies in Vietnam, a country that has a rapidly developing stock market and is highly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. It was found that although most of the companies’ reports disclosed the goals to pursue sustainability and environmental (...) protection (over 93%), only one-third of them genuinely reported investment in or research on environmental directions. The proportion of companies reporting detailed information on greenhouse gas emissions, energy consumption, water consumption, and waste production is relatively low; even among leading companies in sustainable development, the reporting rates for these indicators remained below 60%. We suggest that a separate mandatory annual report on environmental issues will increase businesses’ and society’s consciousness of environmental impacts. Transparent disclosure of environmental information will also offer an avenue to empower society to monitor, participate, and steer businesses toward sustainable development, thereby fostering an eco-surplus culture throughout the economic system. (shrink)