In this article we discuss the molecular signaling mechanisms that coordinate interactions between Schwann cells and the neurons of the peripheral nervous system. Such interactions take place perpetually during development and in adulthood, and are critical for the homeostasis of the peripheral nervous system (PNS). Neurons provide essential signals to control Schwann cell functions, whereas Schwann cells promote neuronal survival and allow efficient transduction of action potentials. Deregulation of neuron–Schwann cell interactions often results in developmental abnormalities and diseases. Recent (...) investigations have shown that during development, neuronally provided signals, such as Neuregulin, Jagged, and Wnt interact to fine‐tune the Schwann cell lineage progression. In adult, the signal exchange between neurons and Schwann cells ensures proper nerve function and regeneration. Identification of the mechanisms of neuron–Schwann cell interactions is therefore essential for our understanding of the development, function and pathology of the peripheral nervous system as a whole. -/- . (shrink)

Mutations in enhancer‐associated chromatin‐modifying components and genomic alterations in non‐coding regions of the genome occur frequently in cancer, and other diseases pointing to the importance of enhancer fidelity to ensure proper tissue homeostasis. In this review, I will use specific examples to discuss how mutations in chromatin‐modifying factors might affect enhancer activity of disease‐relevant genes. I will then consider direct evidence from single nucleotide polymorphisms, small insertions, or deletions but also larger genomic rearrangements such as duplications, deletions, translocations, and inversions (...) of specific enhancers to demonstrate how they have the ability to impact enhancer activity of disease genes including oncogenes and tumor suppressor genes. Considering that the scientific community only fairly recently has begun to focus its attention on “enhancer malfunction” in disease, I propose that multiple new enhancer‐regulated and disease‐relevant processes will be uncovered in the near future that will constitute the mechanistic basis for novel therapeutic avenues. (shrink)

La mondialisation apparaît inhérente à la logique économique capitaliste. La longue marche de la mondialisation s'est accélérée avec la déréglementation américaine des télécommunications. Or, les dualités et les fractures se renforcent dans ce nouvel ordre. En réalité, ne sommes-nous pas aujourd'hui dans un monde où se déploient à outrance des technologies sans information et sans communication? Un monde dont il faudrait retrouver le sens perdu...Globalization is inherent in the capitalist economic logic. The long march of globalization has accelerated with the (...) deregulation of American telecommunications. However, the dualities and fractures reinforce in this new order. In reality, we are not in a world where excessive deploy technology without information and communication? A world where it would find the lost sense.. (shrink)

This paper is a personal account of the events associated with the author’s work at the University of Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children on a drug, deferiprone, for the treatment of thalassaemia. Trials of the drug were sponsored by the Canadian Medical Research Council and a drug company which would have been able, had the trials been successful, to seek regulatory approval to market the drug. When evidence emerged that deferiprone might be inadequately effective in a substantial proportion of patients, (...) the drug company issued legal threats when the author proposed informing her patients and the scientific community. Until protests were made by international authorities in her field of research, the hospital and university did not adequately support the author’s academic freedom and responsibilities as a medical practitioner. It is argued that underlying cause of this, and of other similar cases, is the political philosophy which is driving the commercialisation of universities and bringing about the deregulation of drug approval procedures. Together these changes constitute a serious threat to the public good. (shrink)

Emergent technologies are undermining both decisional privacy (intimacy) and informational privacy. Regarding the former consider, e.g., technical intrusions on burglar alarms and telephone calls. Regarding the latter consider how routinely technologies enable intrusion into electronic data processing (EDP) in spite of government efforts to maintain control. These efforts are uneven among nations thus inviting selective choice of a data storage country. Deregulation of telecommunications and assigning operators First Amendment rights invites multiple efforts to profit from preferential treatment of multiple (...) competitors. (shrink)

Purpose In the face of the enormous rise in digital fraud and criminality, resulting in diverse afflictions to millions of user-victims, emanating from users’ horizontal interactive and transactive exchanges on the internet, but due significantly to internet’s deregulation and anonymity, this study aims to showcase the need for a socially grounded self-regulation. It holds, that this is feasible and that it can be achieved through large scale, comprehensive digital communication education programs. Design/methodology/approach The composite methodology of the study comprises (...) four types of components, namely, analytic, exploratory-discursive, constructionist and propositional. The construction-creation element consists of the design of an original combinational research tool: triangular relational pattern. Through TRPs, researchers can locate the types of relations involved between three implicated entities, namely, the affliction, the culprit and the victim and can study them in-depth. Subsequently, based on the TRP, DCE programs are composed, which are, also, proposed to be deployed by educational authorities and digital civil society associations. Findings The created, applied here and proposed TRPs can be used by other researchers aiming to locate, map and analyze the variants of internet criminality and victimhood and their implications across the global frontierless world and in the digital human condition, educational purposes but also to create social cohesion. Originality/value The study offers two original contributions. The TRP as a significant relational research tool-grid. The DCE programs that are linked to the repertories of digital relations and can be introduced in the general education programs. (shrink)

In his 2018 essay Down to Earth, the French philosopher Bruno Latour proposes a hypothesis that connects a number of contemporary issues, ranging from climate denialism to deregulation and growing inequality. While his hypothesis, namely that the elites act as if they live in another world and are leaving the rest of the world behind, might seem like a conspiracy theory, I will argue that there is a way to make sense of it. To do so, I will turn (...) to two other authors, Timothy Mitchell and Shoshana Zuboff, to highlight the kind of logic that Latour seems to have in mind. In the final section, I will propose to capture the commonalities of these authors through the concept of shifting reciprocities and will return to Latour’s political plea to define one’s territories, reinterpreted as reciprocities. (shrink)

The concept of negative liberty as non-interference is operative in the concept of a free market and stipulates that market relations remain outside the purview of social control. As a purported self-regulating system, however, the market functions as a system of necessity that facilitates and rules social life. I argue that Isaiah Berlin’s defense of negative liberty leads to a paradox as it entails subjection to the external necessity of a self-regulating market. The argument for the self-defeating nature of negative (...) liberty relies on two philosophical insights that have their roots in G. W. F. Hegel’s theory of self-determination. First, negative liberty fails to account for the inner and outer conditions of freedom and thus reduces to mere whim or arbitrariness, subject to heteronomous forces but masquerading as license. Second, individual freedom is intersubjectively mediated in its deliberative process and framed by social and political institutions in its exercise; thus, free agency must be theorized as embedded agency. I challenge the association of freedom and the market and the automatic and unchallenged implication of deregulation and freedom. Deregulation, rather, leaves the community’s future development to the whims of economic players using a rhetoric of freedom as both lure and principle. (shrink)

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to argue that in spite of the widely optimistic held view on the effect of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in promoting the “knowledge society” in Europe and economic development elsewhere, evidence suggests that ICT's could be strengthening labour duality world wide.Design/methodology/approachThe paper addresses these issues by presenting a brief assessment of the “Washington Consensus” and the emergence of ICTs in terms of trade, growth and inequality in different regions of our planet. The paper (...) also describes the effects of globalisation and ICTs on European economies. Finally, the paper presents the key finding and raises some policy implications to exploit ICT potentialities to ensure welfare systems in advanced economies and development in emerging countries.FindingsThe lack of sufficient institutional mechanism of distribution in developing economies is not only making it more difficult for economic growth to translate into development but it is also favouring relocations of production, pressures to deregulate employment, control salaries and social expenditure in Europe. This feeds complex processes of social segmentation world wide. To meet this challenge Europe has no choice but to opt for the development of avant‐garde sectors. However, measures linked to the development of the knowledge society may not be sufficient to maintain our welfare states in the current context of globalisation. Europe must play a more internationally active role in the design of another model of globalisation that would encompass social policies at a global scale as one of its pillars.Originality/valueThere are very few studies of ICTs' role in the relationship between openness‐growth‐development‐inequality. What are ICTs responsible for? What are ICTs' effects on development and welfare state sustainability? (shrink)

Is religion becoming ‘deregulated’ in secular, pluralist societies? In the public sphere in which freedom of opinion laid the foundations of democracy, no single comprehensive worldview could be allowed to dominate. The warring Christian confessions of Europe discredited the public role of religion, which gave way to Enlightenment rationalism as the regulative norm of society and the newly emerging sciences. But religion is now assuming a new status as the public sphere becomes global. The religions themselves are part of the (...) new global dynamic and the search for a global ethic. Human dignity, on which human rights must be based in global civil society, is nurtured by the narrative traditions of the religions. The God of the monotheistic faiths is thus regaining a public and political role, but there is a danger that this will turn out to be that of a legitimator of violence and a guarantor of exclusive truth claims. The mystics of these traditions teach us that God’s absence can be a mode of God’s presence. If God’s presence in the public sphere does not take the form of dominance, it could also provide a basis for dialogue with non-theistic traditions. Neither the neutral public rationality of the Enlightenment nor a universal theology is an adequate response to the need for shared values in the emerging global public sphere. We must learn to negotiate meanings and values in an ongoing process of communicative interaction and intersubjective universality. (shrink)

Propelled by neoliberalism, an enormous wave of mergers has led to a steady oligopolization of the world's media and telecommunications networks. This paper explores the reasons and forces that underlie this phenomenon, particularly deregulation, as they pertain to democratic access to information, including the Internet. It summarizes the major firms that dominate the world's information systems, focusing on Rupert Murdoch and the News Corporation. The paper considers the social and spatial equity implications of corporate control, including the digital divide. (...) Finally, it turns to the political implications of media and communications oligopolization for democracy, arguing that the concentration of ownership in a declining number of hands is inherently conservative and anti-democratic in nature and implication. (shrink)

Multi-modal versions of propositional logics S5 or S4—commonly accepted as logics of knowledge—are capable of describing static states of knowledge but they do not reflect how the knowledge changes after communications among agents. In the present paper (part of broader research on logics of knowledge and communications) we define extensions of the logic S5 which can deal with public communications. The logics have natural semantics. We prove some completeness, decidability and interpretability results and formulate a general method (...) that solves certain kind of problems involving public communications—among them well known puzzles of Muddy Children and Mr. Sum & Mr. Product. As the paper gives a formal logical treatment of the operation of restriction of the universe of a Kripke model, it contributes also to investigations of semantics for modal logics. (shrink)

Human chromosome 11p15 comprises two imprinted domains important in the control of fetal and postnatal growth. Novel studies1-3 establish that imprinting at one of these, the IGF2-H19 domain, is epigenetically deregulated (with loss of DNA methylation) in Silver-Russell Syndrome (SRS), a congenital disease of growth retardation and asymmetry. Previously, the exact opposite epigenetic alteration (gain of DNA methylation) had been detected at the domain's ‘imprinting control region’ (ICR) in patients with Beckwith-Wiedemann Syndrome (BWS), a complex disorder of fetal overgrowth. However, (...) more frequently, BWS is caused by loss of DNA methylation at the ICR that regulates the second imprinted domain at 11p15. Interestingly, a similar epigenetic alteration (with loss of methylation) at a putative ICR on human chromosome 6q24, is involved in transient neonatal diabetes mellitus (TNDM), a congenital disease with intrauterine growth retardation and a transient lack of insulin. Thus, fetal and postnatal growth is epigenetically controlled by different ICRs, at 11p15 and other chromosomal regions. BioEssays 28: 453–459, 2006. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Volume 39, Issue 4, October-December 2024, Page 295-295.

As contemporary universities become increasingly deregulated and neoliberalised structures, how is grassroots student political organising to adapt? What role could student organisers, working in coalition with academics, unions and communities, play in shaping the Future University? We argue that student organising has an even more crucial place in the site of the neoliberal university, working against both the corporatisation of the contemporary university, as well as rising neoliberal conditions in the broader communities within which tertiary education is embedded. These conditions, (...) without doubt, have the potential to stultify student movements by burdening students with ever-increasing debt, and packaging degrees as a commodity with a market-determined value. However, we argue, the neoliberalisation of education also engenders an opportunity for students in shaping the Future University, through grassroots advocacy for staff working conditions, and for critical pedagogies that enable the integration of transformative social justice movements with academic theory. For us, the Future University is a space that nourishes critical and creative thinking, and produces students that are able to integrate theory with radical praxis. However, for this to be realised, the ideological function of the university, in justifying and naturalising hegemonic power structures, and the very meaning of public education, must be exposed and critiqued from the ground up. (shrink)

The purpose of advance care planning is to allow an individual to maintain autonomy in end-of-life medical decision-making even when incapacitated by disease or terminal illness. The intersection of EOL medical technology, ethics of EOL care, and state and federal law has driven the development of the legal framework for advance directives. However, from an ethical perspective the current legal framework is inadequate to make ADs an effective EOL planning tool. One response to this flawed AD process has been the (...) development of Physician Orders for Life Sustaining Treatment. POLST has been described as a paradigm shift to address the inadequacies of ADs. However, POLST has failed to bridge the gap between patients and their autonomous, preferred EOL care decisions. Analysis of ADs and POLST reveals that future policy should focus on a communications-based approach to ACP that emphasizes ongoing interactions between healthcare providers and patients to optimize EOL medical care to the individual patient. (shrink)

The current financial crisis is one rooted not in recent deregulation but in the breaking of ancient (religious) laws, and this crisis is one of many ethical problems today that have religious roots. The tone of this essay is informed by a document from the World Council of Churches, which affirms "greed as violence" and that Christians do not have all the answers to the problem of greed; therefore, Christians need to seek solutions with other religious communities. Furthermore, religious (...) leaders, theologians, and ethicists, by their very station in life, are not able to effectively listen to the voices of the poor and marginalized people of the world. Self-critically examining the mainstream traditions within Christianity for its allegiance to empires, the article calls for engaging the alternative, rather than the mainstream traditions within religions whose interpretations of Scripture have provided insights that are at variance with the mainstream. It calls those who engage in this work to be double-headed: to examine others' beliefs from the perspective of the other—while continuing to be rooted in one's own center—and to recognize that the voices of those in poor or marginalized communities are inaccessible, unless those who are poor themselves become the mediators of dialogue. (shrink)

The increased usage of marketing communications on the internet has presented a number of significant business ethics issues. And, while regulatory agencies have increased their vigilance in protecting consumers from injury, the uniqueness of business via the internet has challenged these agencies to respond in evolving ways. This paper provides a brief overview of the application of the FTC''s lesser known unfairness doctrine as a potential framework for better understanding emerging privacy and e-commerce issues, and specific examples are provided (...) for illustration. (shrink)

Early research on the cell cycle revealed correlations between protein accumulation and cell proliferation. In this review, I describe the data showing that abnormality of cell growth and tumor development are dependent upon oncogene‐induced increases in the levels and activity of factors that determine the rate of protein synthesis. It is proposed that the establishment of a vicious circle, namely oncoproteins → increase in translation → oncoproteins, is a major biological mechanism that fuels neoplastic growth. The constitutively high rates of (...) protein synthesis and accumulation of proteins, including those necessary for DNA replication and mitosis, would drive cells to excessive proliferation. (shrink)

The thesis of "Freedom of Communicative Action" is that Jurgen Habermas's theory of communicative action illuminated the deep structure of the First Amendment freedom of speech. Haberams's theory takes speech act theory as its point of departure. Communicative action coordinates indivudal behavior through rational understanding. Communicative action is distinguished from strategic action--the use of communication to manipulate, deceive, or coerce. Part I offers an introduction. Part II outlines a hermeneutic approach to interpretation of the First Amendent. Part III explores and (...) criticizes existing theories of the freedom of speech. Part IV explicates Habermas's theory of communicative action. Part V developes a theory of the freedom of expression based on Habermas's theory of communication. Part VI applies that theory to particular problems in free speech doctrine. Part VII draws some conclusions about the implications of this exercise for the development of doctrine and the theory of communicative action. "Freedom of Communicative Action" was published in 1989, and some of the views expressed in the article are no longer affirmed by the author. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2017 Heft: 215 Seiten: 281-304.

This paper aims to examine the role that the various vehicles of marketing communications can play with respect to communicating, publicising and highlighting organisational CSR policies to its various stakeholders. It will further endeavour to evaluate the impact of such communications on an organisation's corporate reputation and brand image. The proliferation of unsubstantiated ethical claims and so-called 'green washing' by some companies has resulted in increasing consumer cynicism and mistrust. This has made the task of communicating with, and (...) more importantly convincing, an organisation's stakeholders vis-à-vis its CSR credentials even more difficult. This paper argues that marketing communications tools can play a major role in conveying a company's CSR messages and communicating a more socially responsible image. (shrink)

Drug Safety Communications are used by the Food and Drug Administration to inform health care providers, patients, caregivers, and the general public about safety issues related to FDA-approved drugs. To assess patient knowledge of the messaging contained in DSCs related to the sleep aids zolpidem and eszopiclone, we conducted a large, cross-sectional patient survey of 1,982 commercially insured patients selected by stratified random sampling from the Optum Research Database who had filled at least two prescriptions for either zolpidem or (...) eszopiclone between July 1, 2012 and June 30, 2013. Among the 594 respondents, two-thirds reported hearing generally about drug safety information prior to starting a new drug, with the remaining one-third “rarely” or “never” hearing such information. Providers and pharmacists were primary sources of drug safety information. Two-thirds of zolpidem users and half of eszopiclone users reported having heard about the related DSC messages, ability to accurately identify the major factual messages was limited. Respondents reacted to new drug safety information about their sleep aids by reporting that they would want to learn about alternative ways to help them sleep and seek out more information about the safety of their specific sleeping pill. Opportunities may exist for the FDA to work with providers and pharmacies to help ensure the DSC information is more widely received and is more fully understood by those taking the affected medications. (shrink)

Effective community engagement is an important legal, ethical, and practical prerequisite for conducting field trials of genetically modified mosquitoes, because these studies can substantially impact communities and it is usually not possible to obtain informed consent from each community member. Researchers who are planning to conduct field trials should develop a robust community engagement strategy that meets widely recognized standards for seeking approval from the affected population, such as timeliness, consent, information sharing, transparency, understanding, responsiveness, mutual understanding, inclusiveness, and respectfulness. (...) Additional research is needed on the effectiveness of different methods of engaging communities in field trials of genetically modified mosquitoes and how to respond to public opposition to genetically modified organisms. For research programs involving the genetic modification of disease vectors to move forward, they must have public acceptance and support, which cannot be achieved without effective community engagement. (shrink)

Too often, advocates of domain-specific belief systems overlook the implications of their beliefs when choosing communications technologies and strategies, although they rarely overlook the importance of content. This essay argues that both environmentalism and sustainable agriculture, as systems of belief, favor certain strategies of generating and distributing information over others; that is, the essay argues that both the content and form of communications imply certain value preferences, hence both are subject to value-relevant choices. An additional purpose of the (...) essay is to set a context for this special edition of Agriculture and Human Values. Collectively the articles in this edition discuss a wide variety of issues, including but not limited to questions connected to information generation, access to information and information technologies, and the value systems conveyed by communications vehicles, including what is conveyed and different discussions of what should be conveyed. This essay looks at the importance of four sets of domain-specific value systems (environmentalism, sustainable agriculture, and the conventionalism counters to both of these) for two different sets of value systems connected to information generation, and further discusses each of these value sets in connection to choosing asymmetrical or symmetrical communications. It is hoped that this discussion of the flow of information, from generation to distribution, will provide a context for reading the edition as a whole. (shrink)

Temporary work has expanded in the last three decades with adverse implications for inequalities. Because temporary workers are a constituency that is unlikely to impose political costs, governments often choose to reduce temporary work regulations. While most European countries have indeed implemented such reforms, France went in the opposite direction, despite having both rigid labor markets and high unemployment. My argument to solve this puzzle is that where replaceability is high, workers in permanent and temporary contracts have overlapping interests, and (...) governments choose to regulate temporary work to protect permanent workers. In turn, replaceability is higher where permanent workers’ skills are general and wage coordination is low. Logistic regression analysis of the determinants of replaceability—and how this affects governments’ reforms of temporary work regulations—supports my argument. Process tracing of French reforms also confirm that the left has tightened temporary work regulations to compensate for the high replaceability. (shrink)

Take your average publication on the dynamics of knowledge. In one of its first paragraphs you will probably encounter a phrase like “a logic of public announcements was first proposed by Plaza in 1989 (Plaza 1989).” Tracking down this publication seems easy, because googling its title ‘Logics of Public Communications’ takes you straight to Jan Plaza’s website where it is online available in the author’s own version, including, on that page, very helpful and full bibliographic references to the proceedings (...) in which it originally appeared. Those proceedings are then somewhat harder to find. In fact, I have never seen them. Unfortunately, for the research community, Plaza’s work has never been followed up by a journal version. I am very grateful to the editor Wiebe van der Hoek of the journal ‘Knowledge, Rationality, and Action’ to correct this omission.Plaza’s work is reprinted as such, without an update encompassing more than fifteen additional years of research in this area. This commentary aims to provide some background to bridge that gap. (shrink)

Sense of Community and its Sustenance in Africa There is no gainsaying the fact that Africa is inundated with many problems which have made the development and the attainment of social order, conceived in normative terms, daunting tasks. It is also a fact that there are many causes of this scenario such as political marginalization, ethnic chauvinism, economic mismanagement, religious bigotry and corruption in its various facets. However, in this disquisition we identify the lack of the development, internalization and application (...) of the sense of community, loosely tagged community consciousness, as a major factor that has aggravated the African crisis and which if addressed can reverse the order of things positively. It is the contention of this paper that fundamentally in the case of Africa, as shown in countries like the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan, Cote d'Ivoire, Guinea, Liberia and Nigeria, there has been a blind pursuit of private or individual interests to the detriment of the public sphere or public good. Ironically too, when leaders put up repressive laws in the pretense to pursue the public good, the underlying motive has always been the pursuit of selfish private whims and caprices. We noted that in contemporary Africa a major way towards a desired level of social order and development consists in engendering the required sense of community (a situation in which there is mutual co-operation, interdependence and fellow-feeling) on which other developments can be predicated. Although, the quest and realization of the sense of community is not a grand solution to our myriad of problems in Africa, at least it forms the basis on which we can start to address our problems in Africa in a meaningful way. (shrink)

Behrendt & Young (B&Y) propose that a dysfunction in the reticular thalamic nucleus contributes to disinhibition of specific thalamic nuclei, allowing cortical attention mechanisms to engage thalamic relay neurons, causing underconstrained activation of the cortex and hallucinations. The following hypothesis challenges the notion of impaired sensory gating by providing the alternative view that hypofrontality reduces the power of incoming stimuli, causing internal drives to override consciousness, resulting in hallucinations.

This paper makes the assumption that organ transplantation is, under some conditions at least, a proper use of communal medical resources. Proceeding from this assumption, the author: (1) sketches the history of the problem; (2) briefly examines the prevalent models of communal structure and offers an alternate version; (3) discusses notions of justice and obligation derived from these different models; (4) applies these to the practice of harvesting organs for transplantation; and then (5) offers a different process for harvesting organs (...) from the newly dead.If community is viewed as united by a set of shred goals and common values among which the value of community itself is important, then certain reciprocal obligations among members obtain. I suggest that routine salvage of organs from the newly dead be instituted but that it be routine salvage with a twist: rather early in life all members of the community are given the opportunity to refuse but their refusal carries the reciprocal condition that they cannot later become the recipients of that which they refuse to others. (shrink)

The problems of the influence of the second generation of myths on the consciousness of man and society are considered. The study is conditioned by the growing influence of the latest political and social myths, which are created on the basis of archetypes that formed the cultural foundations of modern civilisations. Crisis situations in society, when individuals in society are unable to explain the events taking place from the point of view of reason, intensify irrational factors in the interpretation of (...) existence, which actualises the appeal to the philosophical understanding of modern mythogenesis.The study shows that the creators of second-generation myths (newer myths that use the archetypes of first-generation myths) can have a different impact on society. By creating social myths, they can either help an individual to identify with a particular culture, social group, etc., contribute to unifying society, stabilising it and mobilising people’s efforts to achieve common goals, or lead to intolerance towards other groups in society. Destructive myth-making can be used by certain groups to destabilise and divide society.Based on a study of the impact of modern myth-making on the consciousness of individuals and society, the author concludes that the destructive influence of second-generation myths can only be countered if individuals are better acquainted with the history, culture, customs and traditions of other nations, which will allow them to rationally explain the content of myths. A philosophical understanding of the content of myths helps to be critical of their content, to understand the hidden meanings of their symbols, and to recognise in whose interests certain views and concepts are imposed. (shrink)

Background Community engagement models have provided much needed guidance for researchers to conceptualise and design engagement strategies for research projects. Most of the published strategies, however, still show very limited contribution of the community to the engagement process. One way of achieving this is to document experiences of community members in the CE processes during project implementation. The aim of our study was to explore the experiences of two research naïve communities, regarding a CE strategy collaboratively developed by researchers and (...) study communities in a multicountry study. Methods The study was carried out in two research naïve communities; Gwanda, Zimbabwe and uMkhanyakude, South Africa. The multicentre study was a community based participatory ecohealth multicentre study. A qualitative case study approach was used to explore the CE strategy. Data was collected through Focus Group Discussions, Key Informant Interviews and Direct Observations. Data presented in this paper was collected at three stages of the community engagement process; soon after community entry, soon after sensitisation and during study implementation. Data was analysed through thematic analysis. Results The communities generally had positive experiences of the CE process. They felt that the continuous solicitation of their advice and preferences enabled them to significantly contribute to shaping the engagement process. Communities also perceived the CE process as having been flexible, and that the researchers had presented an open forum for sharing responsibilities in all decision making processes of the engagement process. Conclusions This study has demonstrated that research naïve communities can significantly contribute to research processes if they are adequately engaged. The study also showed that if researchers put in maximum effort to demystify the research process, communities become empowered and participate as partners in research. (shrink)

In some practical uncertain situations decision makers are presented with described events that are out of sequence when having to make a causal attribution. A theoretical perspective concerning the causal coherence of the explanation is developed to predict the effect of this on causal attribution. Three experiments investigated the effect on causal judgement when the described order of events did not correspond to their causal order. Participants had to judge the relative probability of two possible causes of an outcome in (...) scenarios in which presentation order varied. All three experiments found that there was a preference to judge that the cause associated with events described in causal order was more responsible for the outcome when events associated with one cause were interleaved in their presentation order with those from a second cause. This occurred when there was a strong causal relationship between events. The results were consistent with the causal coherence explanation. (shrink)

The media, advertising and public relations are all regulated in some degree by ethical codes of practice, but do they work and do they help practitioners? The author is Senior Lecturer in public relations and philosophy at Leeds Business School, Leeds Metropolitan University, Leeds LS2 8AF. She is currently preparing material for a new MA in Business Policy and Ethics, to be offered jointly by Leeds Metropolitan University and the University of Leeds.

Ex parte communications can become an administrative quagmire for anyone trying to deal with tribunals that regulate business matters. These communications involve contact between a decision maker and one party outside the presence of another, interested party. At a time when codes of ethics are enacted to make corporate financial officers and boards of directors more accountable to their stockholders, and thus, to restore the confidence of the investing public, it appears most important that administrative judges and hearing (...) officers adhere strictly to their own Codes of Conduct. This article defines and explains ex parte contacts and consequent problems that might arise during administrative appeals. It is not the author’s intent to present the law of any specific jurisdiction, but to present a general overview of typical state law in the United States, a market of interest to many entrepreneurs and exporters worldwide. (shrink)

Human capital and ICT have a significant role in determining human development. The impacts of ICT and human capital on green growth and environmental sustainability should be explored for sustainable economic development. This research contributes to the literature on the role of ICTs and human capital in the determination of green growth and environmental performance. Based on time-series data 1990–2019, the study intends to investigate the impact of ICTs and human capital on environmental and green growth performance for China. The (...) study reports that ICTs tend to reduce CO2 emissions and improve green growth in the long-run. However, education reduces CO2 emissions in the long-run but does not produce any significant impact on green growth in the long-run. It is suggested that government should invest in environmental efficiency and environmental technologies simultaneously with human capital that could significantly contribute to pollution reduction. Lastly, policies to increase human capital should be implemented simultaneously with policies to promote ICTs contribution in order to confirm green growth and environmental protection. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:The judgments of conscientious and informed experts play a central role in two elements of clinical equipoise. The first, and most widely discussed, element involves ensuring that no participant in a randomized trial is allocated to a level of treatment that everyone agrees is substandard. The second, and less often discussed, element involves ensuring that trials are likely to generate social value by producing the information necessary to resolve a clinically meaningful uncertainty or disagreement about the relative merits of a (...) set of interventions. The distribution of judgments in expert communities can take many forms, each with important implications for whether a trial satisfies one or both elements of clinical equipoise. In this article we use a graphical approach to represent three ways in which expert community uncertainty can vary: by spread, modality, and skew. Understanding these different distributions of expert judgment has three important implications: it helps to make operational the requirement of social value, it shows that some conditions for initiating studies to promote social value diverge from common assumptions about clinical equipoise, and it has important implications for how trials should be designed and monitored, and what patients should be told during informed consent. (shrink)

In this paper I will be implicitly defending the following thesis: An individual X obtains knowledge of scientific claim p in virtue of being a member of a community A that regards claim p as knowledge. The thesis states is that a claim p only becomes scientific knowledge once it's been through a process of validation by a scientific community. This is meant to be contrasted with the claim that individuals first obtain scientific knowledge perception or inference, and then transmit (...) it to their colleagues, without the community playing any epistemological role. The strategy that I will follow is the following. In the first section I will consider the claim “that collaboration plays a causal role in advancing scientists' epistemic goals, and that its growing popularity is a consequence of its effectiveness in aiding communities of scientists to realize their epistemic goals”. I will conclude that the claim is rather weak in the sense that it only justifies certain sections of scientific practice and does not establish that in principle scientific knowledge is produced in the manner described above. An attempt to strengthen the thesis will be made through the presentation of evidence that all through history in what is widely recognised as scientific activity the scientist is never alone, even if they are the single author of a scientific work. I will draw on certain insights from Latour's study in the making of scientific knowledge to support the thesis that the individual scientist is necessarily surrounded by allies. This attempt will consist of two parts, the first being what the exploration of what I term the intra-laboratory aspect of scientific activity, and the second being the public forum aspect. I will conclude that the latter aspect is the aspect which supports the claim that the production of scientific knowledge is in principle social, that is that the appropriate unit of epistemological analysis of the production of scientific knowledge is the scientific community rather than the individual scientist. Finally, I will promote the thesis that community agreement is constitutive of knowledge, presenting and arguing for the communitarian account of scientific knowledge. I will briefly argue against an individualistic conception of knowledge acquisition, based on the model of the solitary Cartesian thinker and the notion that knowing something involves being in a certain mental state, and then briefly talk about belief as the property of plural subjects before I move on to present the communitarian model of knowledge acquisition. (shrink)