Zygon®, Volume 56, Issue 4, Page 984-993, December 2021.

Technology transfer is a multi-level process of communication involving a variety of senders and receivers of ideas and materials. As a response to market failure, or as an effort to accelerate market-driven social change, technology transfer may combine public and private aparatus or rely solely on public institutional mechanisms to identify, develop, and deliver innovations and information. Technology transfer institutions include universities, government ministries, research institutes, and what may be termed the ‘project sector’. Four farm- and village-level change models are (...) considered: traditional community development, adoption-diffusion, training and Visit Extension, and Farming Systems Research. The challenges to technology transfer efforts center on developing indigenous capacity to generate and adapt agricultural technology to local conditions. This is the primary objective of technology transfer in agriculture and the basis for advancing rural development. (shrink)

This article draws from theories of business-government relations and Austrian economics to develop a model relating firm performance to the firm’s market and nonmarket actions. Nonmarket actions represent one mechanism for the implementation of firm strategies. The model is tested using an original data set covering airlines serving international routes in the North Atlantic region. Results suggest that nonmarket actions have a positive and significant impact on performance, measured in three ways: profits, market share, and capacity utilization.

The purpose of this study was to extend the previous research on ethics in retailing. Prior research of Dornoff and Tankersley (1985–1976), Gifford and Norris (1987), Norris and Gifford (1988), and Burns and Rayman (1989) examined the ethics orientation of retail sales persons, sales managers, and business school students. These studies found the college students less ethically-oriented than retail sales people and retail managers. The present study attempts to extend the research on ethics formation to a geographically and academically diverse (...) sample, and to determine if retail management experience in the form of a professional practicum or internship, or entry level management training programs, such as experienced by recent graduates, are critical factors in the formation of business ethics. The sample consisted of thirty-three students majoring in Human Ecology with a concentration in Retail Merchandising and 51 recent graduates of the retail Merchandising program. The series of fourteen vignettes developed by Dornoff and Tankersley (1975–1976) was used. An acknowledged limitation of this study is the validity of the questionnaire developed by Dornoff and Tankersley due to the method of development and new laws concerning warranties and credit etc. which have occurred since 1976. The instrument was used, however, to maintain consistency with earlier studies for the purpose of comparison of groups. No significant differences were found in the students' perceptions of the fourteen actions presented in the vignettes, but the range of the responses in the post-internship tests increased in many cases. The alumni appeared to be slightly more ethical than the students but not as ethical as the managers surveyed in 1986 by Norris and Gifford. Indications are that the critical point of ethics formation may be at the mid-management level and that internships and management training programs have little effect on the ethical perceptions of participants. These findings are consistent with studies such as Gable and Topol (1988), and Jordan and Davis (1990) which showed high Machiavellian scores among young retailing executives, often buyers, as opposed to upper level retailing management. Scales with measure Machiavellianism, or manipulativeness, have been used as an alternative method of examining business ethics. (shrink)

Digital medicine is a medical treatment that combines technology with drug delivery. The promises of this combination are continuous and remote monitoring, better disease management, self-tracking, self-management of diseases, and improved treatment adherence. These devices pose ethical challenges for patients, providers, and the social practice of medicine. For patients, having both informed consent and a user agreement raises questions of understanding for autonomy and informed consent, therapeutic misconception, external influences on decision making, confidentiality and privacy, and device dependability. For providers, (...) digital medicine changes the relationship where trust can be verified, clinicians can be monitored, expectations must be managed, and new liability risks may be assumed. Other ethical questions include direct third-party monitoring of health treatment, affordability, and planning for adverse events in the case of device malfunction. This article seeks to lay out the ethical landscape for the implementation of such devices in patient care. (shrink)

Despite the promise of international collaboration and sharing by bringing together bioethicists from throughout the world at the 2024 IAB conference in Qatar, I will not be attending. The authors...

In 2005, President George Bush read John Barry’s The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History. After his experiences of 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina, Bush began the first White...

This essay elaborates the nature and consequences of compression and noise, understood as interdependent phenomena determining current aesthetic regimes and modes of perception in the “cognitive co...

In “Artificial Intelligence, Social Media and Depression: A New Concept of Health-Related Digital Autonomy,” Laacke and colleagues posit a revised model of autonomy when using digital algori...

This article examines how two of Statius’ late works—the Achilleid and Silvae 3.4, composed roughly contemporaneously—use their central characters for similar explorations of issues of gender and genre. Both poems feature boys whose journeys to manhood are arrested by detours into situations with troubled gender boundaries: Achilles’ stay on Scyros as a girl and an imperial eunuch’s celebration of a rite of passage into adulthood. Similarities in plot, character, and language invite a close reading of both poems together as part (...) of the poet’s exploration of the genre boundaries so intimately connected with epic’s self-definition through gender and masculinity. (shrink)

Craig, Barry M A characteristic feature of Luke's Gospel is that of the journey, with Jesus from chapter 9 resolutely heading to Jerusalem; of the more than eighty verses naming Jerusalem in the New Testament only a handful are not in Luke-Acts. Last Sunday's gospel reading was taken from the last day of teaching given after entering Jerusalem and reclaiming the Temple, and before the Passover and arrest. But Jesus is not the only one to whom the journey motif (...) applies. Last Sunday reference was made to the Son of Man coming in power, and the exhortation to the disciples to stand ready is akin to that of people prepared for a journey. Today we return to just before the commencement of the public ministry, with John the Baptist exhorting people to prepare a way for the Lord. A simple reading of this text suggests that it is the way on which God proceeds that needs making straight, but it is not: it refers to the path on which those God rescues are brought in procession. This is the procession referred to in the second reading, for which mountains are levelled and the valleys filled so that Jerusalem's captive children may be brought back safely from the land of bondage, Babylon. (shrink)

Although the AAMC requires annual reporting of medical humanities teaching, most literature is based on single-school case reports and studies using information reported on schools’ websites. This study sought to discover what medical humanities is offered in North American allopathic and osteopathic undergraduate medical schools. An 18-question, semi-structured survey was distributed to all 146 member schools of the American Association of Medical Colleges and the American Association of Colleges of Osteopathic Medicine. The survey sought information on required and elective humanities (...) content, hours of humanities instruction, types of disciplines, participation rates, and humanities administrative structure. The survey was completed by 134 schools. 70.8% of schools offered required and 80.6% offered electives in humanities. Global health and writing were the most common disciplines. Schools required 43.9 mean and 30 median hours in humanities. In the first two years, most humanities are integrated into other course work; most electives are offered as stand-alone classes. 50.0% of schools report only 0-25% of students participating in humanities electives. Presence of a certificate, concentration or arts journal increased likelihood of humanities content but decreased mean hours. Schools with a medical humanities MA had a higher number of required humanities hours. Medical humanities content in undergraduate curriculum is lower than is indicated in the AAMC annual report. Schools with a formal structure have a greater humanities presence in the curriculum and are taken by more students. (shrink)

The intersection of language, stigma, and neuropsychiatry is an integral area of concern for limited english proficiency (LEP) communities, demanding a greater focus in U.S. healthcare systems. Lan...

This full-color book of photographs records Wisconsin from an unusual viewpoint: a camera suspended from a kite and controlled by photographer Craig M. Wilson from the ground. Taken from fifty to a few hundred feet in the air, Wilson’s photos capture natural and man-made views that wouldn’t otherwise be possible. The result is a vibrant collection that captures Wisconsin in all its shifting beauty in landscapes and cityscapes, festivals, Door County’s lighthouses, Milwaukee’s neighborhoods, and the crowd at a Badger (...) football game. Captions are provided in English, Spanish, German, and Mandarin Chinese. (shrink)

Much of the recent AI-LLM literature has been apocalyptic in pointing out the risks of AI technology, “mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal...

Craig, Barry M As we return from the Lent-Easter cycle to Ordinary Time, the last Sunday of which was the Sixth, on 15 February, we pick up on the Eleventh Sunday and so miss chapters 2 and 3 of Mark. For six Sundays this quarter we will read from chapters 4 to 6, but at the point of his first account of the feeding of a multitude we will switch to John to lead into the four Sundays of his (...) Bread of Life discourse - a valuable detour, but one that inhibits a more thorough reading of Mark. (shrink)

Academic programs in the medical/health humanities have proliferated widely in recent years, and the professional, academic, and cultural drivers of this growth promise sustained new program development. In this article, we present the results of a survey sent to representatives of one hundred twenty-four baccalaureate and ten graduate programs in the medical/health humanities to assess the experiences and needs of existing programs. Survey results confirm the interest in and need for a descriptive toolkit as opposed to a prescriptive manual; indicate (...) what data and materials are most needed to support the successful development of new academic programs in the field; and identify areas for future research. Recognizing a need for program development resources, the Health Humanities Consortium has initiated the creation of a comprehensive online toolkit. We discuss survey results and the toolkit in relation to the drivers of new program growth. Finally, we describe resources now available through the HHC’s new online program toolkit, including existing programs; sample syllabi; sample curricula templates; program rationale; proposal templates; and graduation data. (shrink)

The Health Humanities Consortium was established in 2015 to “promote health humanities scholarship, education, and practice through transdisciplinary methods and theories that focus on the intersection of the arts and humanities, health, illness, and healthcare.” As the founding co-chairs of the HHC, we provide a history of the founding of this organization in this article, describing the journey of its creation, the choices and challenges it faced as a new organization, and our hopes for a rich future.

This book argues that the moral quality of an act comes from the agent's inner states. By arguing for the indispensable relevance of intention in the moral evaluation of acts, the book moves against a mainstream, 'objective' approach in normative ethics. It is commonly held that the intentions, knowledge, and volition of agents are irrelevant to the moral permissibility of their acts. This book stresses that the capacities of agency, rather than simply the label 'agent', must be engaged during an (...) act if its moral evaluation is to be coherent. The author begins with an ontological argument that an act is a motion or a causing of change in something else. He argues that the source of an act's moral meaning is in the agent: specifically, what the agent, if aware of relevant facts around her, aims to accomplish. He then moves to a series of critical chapters that consider arguments for mainstream approaches to act evaluation, including Thomson's dismissal of the agent knowledge and volition requirements, Scanlon's arguments for a derivative relevance of intentions to permissibility, Frowe's "causal roles" of agents in the moral evaluation of acts, and Bennett's explicit defense of the objective approach. The book concludes by offering the author's preferred replacement for the objective approach, an Aristotelian-Thomist view of acts. Acts, Intentions, and Moral Evaluation will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in ethics, just war theory, the ethics of self-defense, and philosophy of action. (shrink)

This study interprets the movement of Heidegger's famous "turn" through an analysis of his critique of Kant, Schelling, and Hegel in the period spanning roughly 1925 to 1936. Heidegger's "turn" sought to overcome the traditional metaphysical conception of being that had come to absolute expression through Hegel's method of dialectical reflection. Heidegger was successful to the extent that he provided the final "con-text" of being as a discourse that both frames the historical "text" of being and permeates it, allowing the (...) coherence of that text to appear in a new light. Heidegger's interpretation of the original sense of time as temporality opposed the latent dogmatism in Kant's critique of reason by shifting the locus of unity in experience away from the spontaneity of the self toward an intuitional transcending of the self as "being-in-the-world." This pointed Heidegger toward a novel revelatory conception of freedom as "letting being be," which he posed as an alternative to the absolutizing of subjectivity that took place in German idealism. Heidegger used Schellings anti-Hegelian conception of the origination of freedom from nature to clarify the meaning of Hegel's key metaphysical notion of reflection. In so doing he developed an alternative interpretation of the "nothing," in contrast to Hegel's method of double negation, that set the meaning of negation into a greater contextual perspective. Heidegger's goal of uncovering the meaning and possibility of reflection as the original possibility of evil led him to a qualified retrieval of his early Roman Catholic orientation to thinking. Transforming these paradigms into a new deconstructive discourse, Heidegger advanced beyond Schellings critique of Hegel, allowing him to establish a hermeneutical relationship with Hegel's system that simultaneously confronts and preserves it. Heidegger's early phenomenological interpretation of Pauline eschatology and Augustinian original sin thus, finally situates his interpretation of the "nothing" as the abyss of being retrieved from the primal Greek conception of nature . Heidegger thereby provides the ultimate "con-text" of metaphysics in its necessary and reciprocal relation to Hegel's conception of presence as an all-encompassing, "self-absolving" system. (shrink)

Volume 20, Issue 10, October 2020, Page 29-31.

While the ethical use of deception has been discussed in literature, the ethics and acceptability of nursing deception has yet to be studied. The current study examined nurses’ and nursing students’ ratings of the ethics and acceptability of nursing deception. We predicted that nurses and nursing students would rate a truthful vignette as more ethical than a deceptive vignette. We also predicted that participants would rate nursing deception as unethical and unacceptable. A mixed design was used to examine ethics scores (...) as a within-subjects factor and order as a between-groups design factor. A total of 131 nurses and nursing students were recruited from university nursing programs and hospitals in Texas. Participants were provided with a truthful vignette and deceptive vignette and used the Multidimensional Ethics Scale-Revised 1 to rate each vignette. Participants also completed the Lies in Nursing Ethics Questionnaire. The truthful nursing vignette was rated as more ethical than the deceptive vignette. Results indicated that most participants rated nursing deception as unethical, unacceptable, and a violation of the ANA ethical code. Some participants deemed that nursing deception may be acceptable within some cases. Age and years of experience were not related to the perceived ethics and acceptability of nursing deception. Nurses and nursing students believe that using deception with patients is unethical and unacceptable. However, some participants believed that deception may be warranted within some cases. These findings may reflect nurses’ placing the patient at the core of their values and viewing honesty as important for the nurse-patient relationship. Further implications and directions are discussed. (shrink)

The practice of psychology in rural areas offers unique challenges for psychologists as they try to provide optimal care, often with a minimum of resources. Psychologists are frequently required to be creative and flexible in order to provide effective services to a wide range of clients. However, these unique challenges often confront psychologists with ethical dilemmas and problems for which their urban-based training has not prepared them. The author examines how certain characteristics of rural communities may lead to specific ethical (...) dilemmas. By being a part of a small community, psychologists will inevitably face multiple relationship dilemmas. Confidentiality is harder to maintain in a small town, particularly with its informal information-sharing network. To provide services to meet community needs, with a limited number of referral options, psychologists typically need to be generalists. This may lead to concerns about scope of practice, training, and experience with diverse populations. Psychologists also face other competency issues, such as a lack of supervision and consultation resources. Other concerns addressed include the psychologist's visibility in the community, having clients know about the psychologist's personal life, and the blurring of professional and personal roles. Suggestions are made for coping with each of these ethical issues, although more quantitative research and discussion are needed on the practice of psychology in rural areas. (shrink)

The automobile is a tool like no other. There is much excitement and enthusiasm for new and emerging transportation tools such as vehicle automation and driver assistance systems. Although there are high hopes for these technologies, there are many unknowns including the extent to which these new transportation tools can realistically and reliably improve driver safety and affect the subjective driving experience. This paper explores these questions in the context of evaluating collision warning systems on the behavior and perceptions of (...) drivers with different amounts of experience and places the results in the greater context of tool use and skilled learning focusing on the adoption and utilization of mental models. (shrink)

Craig, Barry M Several solemnities fall on Sundays this year, displacing the usual readings and prayers. Three occur in this period, Sundays 24, 31 and 32, giving way respectively to Exaltation of the Holy Cross, All Saints and Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed, and Dedication of the Lateran Basilica. A further complication is that All Saints outranks All Souls, so Mass on Saturday evening is of All Saints, not of All Souls, just as when Christmas falls on a (...) Saturday, the evening Mass is of Christmas not the Holy Family. This results in disruption to the Lectionary, and some repetitions. For Holy Cross, the second reading, which is also read on Good Friday, reappears two weeks later unless the shorter form is used; and the gospel was part of that read on Trinity Sunday. On All Souls readings are to be chosen from the Lectionary's provision for Masses for the Dead. For convenience, a set is provided in the Sunday book, but its first reading repeats all but the last phrase from three weeks earlier, and much of the second reading was read on the third Sunday in Lent, while the gospel has also already been read. So, for All Souls this year parishes are advised to exercise the prerogative to choose readings, for which reason no reflection can be given here that may cover all. (shrink)

Oaksford & Chater's (O&C's) account of deductive reasoning is parsimonious at a local level (because a rational model is used to explain a wide range of behavior) and at a global level (because their Bayesian approach connects to other areas of research). Their emphasis on environmental structure is especially important, and the power of their approach is seen at both the computational and algorithmic levels.

In the fall of 2021 a news story reported of a successful experimental xenotransplant of a genetically engineered pig kidney in to the circulatory system of a research subject who was dead by neurological criteria. Although not a first of its kind, this case raises the issue of the ethics of research on those declared brain dead. Such possibilities have been discussed in the published literature since 1974, when Willard Gaylin expressed concern over human dignity when he imagined hospital wards (...) filled with “neomorts” used for education, teaching, research, and manufacturing. In this essay, the author explores the nuances of whether such subjects are considered alive, dead, or something in between. Notions of consent/ permission and risk/benefit are determined by this categorization. After discussing the 2005 Consensus Panel Guidelines on Research with the Recently Dead, the essay concludes with the need for a liminal state between living and dead that respects human dignity but also recognizes the utilitarian value of such experiments to protect fully alive humans. Having not just guidelines but oversight structures such as the University of Pittsburgh’s Committee for Oversight of Research Involving the Dead (CORID) and regulations are necessary if such work is to become more common. (shrink)

This article presents formal correspondences between the ontological and logical structures of Deleuze’s theory of sense-events in the Logic of Sense as a “post-Cantorian orientation of thought” (Livingston 2012), grappling with an essential incompleteness or inconsistency at the heart of both Being and thought, one which Deleuze champions positively under the equation Ungrounding = Becoming. Through it, Deleuze’s sometimes slippery use of the concept of singularity (and its relation to the virtual) is elaborated, elucidating a post-Cantorian metaphysics of events, distinct (...) from and preceding Badiou’s, that concretely defines the role of the singular in Deleuze’s early major works. (shrink)

Background: Legislation on physician-assisted suicide is being considered in a number of states since the passage of the Oregon Death With Dignity Act in 1994. Opinion assessment surveys have historically assessed particular subsets of physicians.Objective: To determine variables predictive of physicians’ opinions on PAS in a rural state, Vermont, USA.Design: Cross-sectional mailing survey.Participants: 1052 physicians licensed by the state of Vermont.Results: Of the respondents, 38.2% believed PAS should be legalised, 16.0% believed it should be prohibited and 26.0% believed it should (...) not be legislated. 15.7% were undecided. Males were more likely than females to favour legalisation . Physicians who did not care for patients through the end of life were significantly more likely to favour legalisation of PAS than physicians who do care for patients with terminal illness . 30% of the respondents had experienced a request for assistance with suicide.Conclusions: Vermont physicians’ opinions on the legalisation of PAS is sharply polarised. Patient autonomy was a factor strongly associated with opinions in favour of legalisation, whereas the sanctity of the doctor–patient relationship was strongly associated with opinions in favour of not legislating PAS. Those in favour of making PAS illegal overwhelmingly cited moral and ethical beliefs as factors in their opinion. Although opinions on legalisation appear to be based on firmly held beliefs, approximately half of Vermont physicians who responded to the survey agree that there is a need for more education in palliative care and pain management. (shrink)