Purpose: The purpose of the study was to assess the socio-economic challenges faced by CoG-Kenya in poverty alleviation in Emuhaya District, Western Kenya.Methodology: This study was a cross-sectional research that sought to give an examining and descriptive scrutiny of the CoG-K’s activities in Emuhaya District of Western Kenya. This study sampled a total of 312 respondents (1 Bishop, 1 General Secretary, 1 General Assembly Trustee, 1 General Assembly Treasurer, 16 Directors, 282 Pastors, and 10 Elders) through purposive sampling method. Oral (...) interviews, questionnaire methods and focus group discussion were used to collect data from the respondents. Observation method was used to validate the information obtained through oral interviews and questionnaires. Secondary data was sourced from published and unpublished literature. Data was analyzed using the theological method of induction (TMI).Results: The study concludes that as much as the CoG-K has made concerted attempts towards development in Emuhaya District by influencing the peoples thinking on legitimacy of wealth and education, and on the moral value of saving and investing. However some of its programs and ceremonial functions like ordination, baptism, marriage and weddings tend to retard these efforts of alleviating poverty. Although such programs and celebrations serve the poor at the grassroots level, they delay change in behavioural and institutional transformation capable of sustaining economic growth.Unique contribution to theory, practice and policy: There is a need to change cultural practises that tend to retard development among the adherents of the CoG-K in Emuhaya District. The study posits that cultural practices surrounding marriage and death that are repugnant and detrimental to change should be discarded if development is to take place. (shrink)

"By combining recent advances in the physical sciences with some of the novel ideas, techniques, and data of modern biology, this book attempts to achieve a new and different kind of evolutionary synthesis. I found it to be challenging, fascinating, infuriating, and provocative, but certainly not dull."--James H, Brown, University of New Mexico "This book is unquestionably mandatory reading not only for every living biologist but for generations of biologists to come."--Jack P. Hailman, Animal Behaviour , review of the first (...) edition "An important contribution to modern evolutionary thinking. It fortifies the place of Evolutionary Theory among the other well-established natural laws."--R.Gessink, TAXON. (shrink)

Introduction: Early recognition of prediabetes may prevent progression to diabetes, yet not all adults are aware of their prediabetes risk. To reach all adults unaware of their risk, additional risk assessment strategies are warranted. Objectives: The objective of this study was to evaluate the potential scope of benefit from prediabetes risk assessment in the dental care setting and to identify characteristics of dental patients likely to unknowingly have prediabetes or diabetes. Methods: Data from 10,472 adults in the National Health and (...) Nutrition Examination Survey from 2013 to 2014 and 2015 to 2016 were analyzed for associations among prediabetes/diabetes risk factors, health care use, and hemoglobin A1C levels according to chi-square tests and multivariate logistic regression. Results: A total of 7.73% of US adults had seen a dentist but not a medical provider in the past 12 mo. The composition of this subpopulation was significantly different from that who saw a medical provider, in ways that might affect their diabetes risk. In addition, 31.27% of this subpopulation would be identified as being at high risk for prediabetes according to the CDC Prediabetes Screening Test, and 15.83% had hemoglobin A1C levels indicative of undiagnosed prediabetes or diabetes. Screening in a dental setting would have the highest odds of identifying someone unaware of his or her diabetes risk among those who were non-White, obese, or ≥45 y old. Conclusion: Extrapolation from this analysis indicates that screening for prediabetes at dental visits has the potential to alert an estimated 22.36 million adults of their risk for prediabetes or diabetes. Incorporating prediabetes or diabetes risk assessment into routine dental visits may enable 1) those with prediabetes to take action to decrease their risk of developing diabetes and 2) those with diabetes to engage in treatment to decrease their risk of diabetes-related complications. Knowledge Transfer Statement: Screening for prediabetes and diabetes during dental visits has the potential to raise patients’ awareness of diabetes risk and prevent prediabetes from progressing to diabetes. For some patients, the dental visit may be the only point of contact with the health care system, which heightens the importance of including diabetes risk assessment for patient well-being. (shrink)

Due to the competitive nature of business as a whole, it is sometimes difficult to develop moral relationships with others. However, though friendships are possible in business, most relationships must be kept on the lower level of business acquaintanceship.

It has been alleged that Bayesian usage of prior probabilities allows one to obtain empirical statements on the basis of no evidence whatever. We examine this charge with reference to several examples from the literature, arguing, first, that the difference between probabilities based on weighty evidence and those based on little evidence can be drawn in terms of the variance of a distribution. Moreover, qua summaries of vague prior knowledge, prior distributions only transmit the empirical information therein contained and, therefore, (...) their consequences for long-run frequency behavior are "a priori" in at best a Pickwickian sense. (shrink)

Offers a comprehensive nonmathematical treatment regarding the design and analysis of experiments, focusing on basic concepts rather than calculation of technical details. Much of the discussion is in terms of examples drawn from numerous fields of applications. Subjects include the justification and practical difficulties of randomization, various factors occurring in factorial experiments, selecting the size of an experiments, different purposes for which observations may be made and much more.

NCMRD initiated the Women in Management Research Program in January 1988. One of the objectives of the program is to help managers and policy makers deal with issues arising from women's increased participation in managerial and professional jobs backing research to help arrive at solutions to the problems being encountered both by institutions and by women themselves. Significant research funds have been raised from the private sector and ten projects have been funded to date. This article describes the early development (...) of the Program and its research mandate. (shrink)

We have considered two strategies for using native utterances as evidence for assigning native beliefs. We have shown that each of these two strategies (literalism and symbolism) can avoid the logical difficulties mentioned in section 1 — so long, at least, as we employ an account of the logical form of belief sentences developed by Burdick. We have also considered the methodological principles which provide the basis for translational practice. Based on our consideration of these principles, we then argued that (...) we must prefer the literalist strategy for attributing beliefs. Only the literalist strategy enables us to provide a recursive account of the significance of native utterances, and only the literalist strategy enables us to maximize the truth of our claims about native beliefs. (shrink)

The dominant view of women has changed radically during the last century. These changes have had an important impact on the way of life of women in general and, undoubtedly, on women as patients. So far, gender differences have received little attention when developing healthcare services. Stroke hits a great number of elderly women. Wyller et al. found that women seemed to be harder hit by stroke than men; they achieved lower scores in tests of motor, cognitive and ADL functions, (...) both in the acute phase and 1 year after stroke. It is reasonable to expect that differences in outcome among male and female sufferers may in part be explained by the fact that rehabilitation services are designed primarily to meet the needs of men. de Beauvoir's feminist theory maintains that one's body is fundamental in creating the person, which is a lifelong process. Traditionally, the female body has been exposed to alienation and oppression through life. This has led women to develop a life in immanence. This we feel can be of significance in connection with rehabilitation after a stroke, particularly for elderly women. In this article we will discuss how de Beauvoir's theory can throw new light on the experiences and rehabilitation of elderly women and point to ways of improving the process of rehabilitation. (shrink)

Ethical guidelines for conducting clinical trials have historically been based on a perceived therapeutic obligation to treat and benefit the patient-participants. The origins of this ethical framework can be traced to the Hippocratic oath originally written to guide doctors in caring for their patients, where the overriding moral obligation of doctors is strictly to do what is best for the individual patient, irrespective of other social considerations. In contrast, although medicine focuses on the health of the person, public health is (...) concerned with the health of the entire population, and thus, public health ethics is founded on the societal responsibility to protect and promote the health of the population as a whole. From a public health perspective, research ethics should be guided by giving due consideration to the risks and benefits to society in addition to the individual research participants. On the basis of a duty to protect the population as a whole, a fiduciary obligation to realise the social value of the research and the moral responsibility to distribute the benefits and burdens of research fairly across society, how a public health perspective on research ethics results in fundamental re-assessments of the proper course of action for two salient topical issues in research ethics is shown: stopping trials early for reasons of efficacy and the conduct of research on less expensive yet less effective interventions. (shrink)

A number of authors have drawn attention to the contributions to geology of Robert Hooke, and it has been pointed out that in several ways his ideas were more advanced than those of Steno, who is sometimes taken to be the founder of geology as a scientific discipline. Moreover, it has been argued that in a number of instances Hooke should receive the credit for ideas which are usually believed to have originated in the work of James Hutton. This recognition (...) of the significance of Hooke's work is regarded by the present writer as being well founded. But, by contrast, the relationship between Hooke's geological ideas and his views on the proper methods for conducting scientific enquiries has been largely overlooked, and his views on the methodology of science, as revealed in his Posthumous works, have received little discussion. Moreover, on one of the few occasions on which they were discussed, by William Whewell, they were belittled. Whewell regarded Hooke's methodological contribution as merely ‘an attempt to adapt the Novum organon to the age which succeeded its publication’, 5 and he implied that the ‘same imperfections’ were to be found in the writings of both Hooke and Bacon. The influence of Bacon is, to be sure, most obvious in Hooke's general philosophy. Nevertheless, it will be argued that Hooke had a much clearer idea than did Bacon of the importance of so-called ‘hypothetico-deductive’ methods in science, and that in many ways his methodological views represent a significant advance on those of Bacon. (shrink)

IntroductionIn this study, we tested a simple, active “ethical consistency” intervention aimed at reducing researchers’ endorsement of questionable research practices (QRPs).MethodsWe developed a simple, active ethical consistency intervention and tested it against a control using an established QRP survey instrument. Before responding to a survey that asked about attitudes towards each of fifteen QRPs, participants were randomly assigned to either a consistency or control 3–5-min writing task. A total of 201 participants completed the survey: 121 participants were recruited from a (...) database of currently funded NSF/nih scientists, and 80 participants were recruited from a pool of active researchers at a large university medical center in the southeastern US. Narrative responses to the writing prompts were coded and analyzed to assist post hoc interpretation of the quantitative data.ResultsWe hypothesized that participants in the consistency condition would find ethically ambiguous QRPs less defensible and would indicate less willingness to engage in them than participants in the control condition. The results showed that the consistency intervention had no significant effect on respondents’ reactions regarding the defensibility of the QRPs or their willingness to engage in them. Exploratory analyses considering the narrative themes of participants’ responses indicated that participants in the control condition expressed lower perceptions of QRP defensibility and willingness.ConclusionThe results did not support the main hypothesis, and the consistency intervention may have had the unwanted effect of inducing increased rationalization. These results may partially explain why RCR courses often seem to have little positive effect. (shrink)

We report the results of a randomized trial to assess the impact of an innovative ethics curriculum on the knowledge and confidence of 85 medical house officers in a university hospital programme, as well as their responses to a simulated clinical case. Twenty-five per cent of the house officers received a lecture series, 25 per cent received lectures and case conferences, with an ethicist in attendance, and 50 per cent served as controls. A post-intervention questionnaire was administered. Knowledge scores did (...) not differ among the groups. Confidence regarding ethical issues was significantly greater in the aggregate intervention group compared to the control group. Confidence regarding procedural issues related to ethics was significantly higher for the EI group than for the controls. Responses to a simulated case showed that significantly fewer house officers in the EI group would intubate a patient for whom such therapy would be futile. We conclude that ethics education can have an impact on house officers' confidence and their responses to a simulated case, and that the EI was more effective than the LI. Such results have implications regarding the implementation of ethics education during residency. (shrink)

This essay offers a critique of the culture of specio-vocationalism in American higher education by first drawing on Edmund Husserl’s conception of “world” and connecting this notion to education conceived as a “world-disclosing” activity. The essay will then give an account of how the trends of vocationalization and specialization manifest themselves in contemporary university culture, and how they work together to “de-world” the lives of our students and deprive them of possibilities that are part of what it means to be (...) human. After showing how this impoverishment undermines the world-disclosing function of higher education, the essay will then suggest one way to counter this “de-worlding of world”: the teaching of the situated finitude of the human condition by reminding our students that our knowledge or sense of the world is always only partial. It is this realization that has the potential of placing our students once again before the vastness of the world in wonder and curiosity. In this realization they will gain a better sense of the world as a distant horizon still to be explored in all of its inexhaustible complexity and meaning. At the same time, coming to grips with their own ignorance will imbue them with an intellectual humility that will shield them not only from their own finitude, but the finitude of others as well. (shrink)