Background The use of lengthy, detailed, and complex informed consent forms is of paramount concern in biomedical research as it may not truly promote the rights and interests of research participants. The extent of information in ICFs has been the subject of debates for decades; however, no clear guidance is given. Thus, the objective of this study was to determine the perspectives of research participants about the type and extent of information they need when they are invited to participate in (...) biomedical research. Methods This multi-center, cross-sectional, descriptive survey was conducted at 54 study sites in seven Asia-Pacific countries. A modified Likert-scale questionnaire was used to determine the importance of each element in the ICF among research participants of a biomedical study, with an anchored rating scale from 1 to 5. Results Of the 2484 questionnaires distributed, 2113 were returned. The majority of respondents considered most elements required in the ICF to be ‘moderately important’ to ‘very important’ for their decision making. Major foreseeable risk, direct benefit, and common adverse effects of the intervention were considered to be of most concerned elements in the ICF. Conclusions Research participants would like to be informed of the ICF elements required by ethical guidelines and regulations; however, the importance of each element varied, e.g., risk and benefit associated with research participants were considered to be more important than the general nature or technical details of research. Using a participant-oriented approach by providing more details of the participant-interested elements while avoiding unnecessarily lengthy details of other less important elements would enhance the quality of the ICF. (shrink)

Malgré l’usage peu fréquent qu’il fait des termes epistrophè, epistrepheïn, metanoïa et metanoeïn, Paul n’accorde pas moins d’importance à la conversion dans ses écrits. À partir de la distinction qu’il établit entre la conversion- epistrophè et la conversion- metanoïa et du double mouvement qui les caractérise, il appelle ses auditeurs à la conversion au moyen d’un langage nouveau, notamment de nouvelles métaphores.

A major problem in developing an effective gene therapy for the nervous system lies in understanding the principles that maintain or turn off the expression of genes following their transfer into the CNS.

The principle of relativity, that there is no preferred state of uniform motion, has recently come into conflict with certain cosmological observations. In an attempt to overcome this difficulty, an alternative formulation is explored in which this principle is replaced by the principle of universal time, while retaining the invariance of the speed of light. These two postulates lead to a well-defined world model in which one inertial frame has a preferred status. But the invariance properties of the laws of (...) physics are unaffected, and the model may be regarded as a modified form of special relativity which is in accordance with the new cosmological evidence. (shrink)

Feed-forward Pavlovian conditioning can serve as a proximate mechanism for the evolution of social behavior. Feed-forward can provide the impetus for animals to associate other individuals' presence, and cooperation with them, with the acquisition of resources, whether or not the animals are genetically related. Other social behaviors such as play and grooming may develop as conditioned stimuli in feed-forward social systems.

In “Two Concepts of Liberty” Berlin notes the protean nature of the word “freedom” and then systematically proceeds to narrow its range of meanings. In the process, Berlin eliminates much of what most people, in everyday communication, regard as freedom, believing that this is in the best interest of intellectual clarity. As he puts it: [N]othing is gained by a confusion of terms. To avoid glaring inequality or widespread misery I am ready to sacrifice some, or all, of my freedom: (...) I may do so willingly and freely: but it is freedom that I am giving up for the sake of justice or equality or the love of my fellow men. I should be guilt‐stricken, and rightly so, if I were not, in some circumstances, ready to make this sacrifice. But a sacrifice is not an increase in what is being sacrificed, namely freedom, however great the moral need or the compensation for it. Everything is what it is: liberty is liberty, not equality or fairness or justice or culture, or human happiness or a quiet conscience. (Emphasis added). Berlin's other, perhaps overarching, aim is to show how inattention to the specificity of the meanings of concepts might have potentially dangerous political repercussions. He implicitly argues that the intellectuals who promoted the idea of positive freedom as opposed to that of negative freedom contributed to the emergence of totalitarianism and fascism in Europe. (shrink)

The objective of this work is to categorize the available fly ashes in different parts of the world into distinct groups based on its compositional attributes. Kohonen's self-organizing feature map and radial basis function networks are applied in a cascading fashion for the classification of fly ashes in terms of its chemical parameters. The basic procedure of the methodology consists of three stages: apply self-organizing neural net to ascertain possible number of groups, delineate them and identify the group sensitive attributes; (...) find mean values of sensitive attributes of the elicited groups and augment them as start-up prototypes in k-means algorithm and find the refined centroids of these groups; incorporate the centroids in a two layer radial basis function network and fine-tune the delineated groups and develop an indexing equation using the weights of the stabilized network. Further, to demonstrate the utility of this classification scheme, the so formed groups were correlated with their performance in High Volume Fly Ash Concrete System [HVFAC]. The categorization was found to be excellent and compares well with Canadian Standard Association's [CSA A 3000] classification scheme. (shrink)

The present paper is an extract from a thesis concerning the debate between bradley and russell on the nature of relations. it concerns only the most general points of interaction - the positive influence of bradley upon russell with respect to psychologism, logic, and constructions; the negative influence: russell's work seen as a reaction to bradley. the intention is to show that bradley was an extremely strong influence in russell's development hardly worthy of the disregard which russell showed him.

We consider Berezin's algebraic considerations regarding the quantization of phase space polynomials. After making a connection with Prugovečki's stochastic quantization approach, we give a particular construction of Berezin's L-Kernel in terms of Prugovečki's ξ-functions.

This paper uses the term “ surveillance ” in its widest sense to include data sharing and the revealing of identity information in the absence of consent of the individual concerned. It argues that the current debate about the nature of a “ surveillance society” needs a new structural framework that allows the benefits of surveillance and the risks to individual privacy to be properly balanced. To this end, the first part of this article sets out the reasons why reliance (...) on the current framework of data protection or human rights legislation, or on the current regulatory regime does not necessarily protect privacy. The second part sets out nine principles that can be used to assess whether individual privacy is comprehensively considered when surveillance policy is developed. These principles are applied to surveillance in the UK to identify the structural improvements that could create an effective balance. These principles are not legislative proposals but provide a means of exploring possible deficiencies in information law governance and, in particular, Parliament’s role in scrutinising the executive and the powers needed by a regulator when engaging with the Parliamentary process. As most European countries adopt a democratic, human rights framework, it is suggested that these principles are not limited in an application in the UK environment. The views expressed in this article are the author’s own. (shrink)

The prelims comprise: Introduction The Mother of All Cells Embryonic Stem (ES) Cells Specialized Stem Cells Therapeutic Implications of Stem Cell Biology Cellular Philosophy and the Mind Problem The New Alchemists Stem Cell Biology: God in a Test Tube?

The editor of this anthology discusses the distinction between normative ethics and meta-ethics, and provides lucid organizational prefaces to each of the five chapters. The first four are arranged on a "thesis-reply" model. For example, essays by Ayer and Stevenson present an 'emotive-imperative' account of moral judgments, while essays by Blanshard and Baier afford critical replies. There are similarly arranged treatments of objectivism, subjectivism and instrumentalism. The final chapter is given over to "new directions" in meta-ethical theory, and contains readings (...) on the use of moral words and the logic of moral reasoning.--N. S. C. (shrink)

In matters of rights, constitutions tend to avoid settling controversies. With few exceptions, rights are formulated in open-ended language, seeking consensus on an abstraction without purporting to resolve the many moral-political questions implicated by rights. The resulting view has been that rights extend everywhere but are everywhere infringed by legislation seeking to resolve the very moral-political questions the constitution seeks to avoid. The Negotiable Constitution challenges this view. Arguing that underspecified rights call for greater specification, Grégoire C. N. Webber draws (...) on limitation clauses common to most bills of rights to develop a new understanding of the relationship between rights and legislation. The legislature is situated as a key constitutional actor tasked with completing the specification of constitutional rights. In turn, because the constitutional project is incomplete with regards to rights, it is open to being re-negotiated by legislation struggling with the very moral-political questions left underdetermined at the constitutional level. (shrink)