Background: Funding organisations and research ethics committees should play a part in strengthening attention to gender equality in clinical research. In the research policy of European Union , funding measures have been taken to realise this, but such measures are lacking in the EU policy regarding RECs.Objective: To explore how RECs in Austria, Germany, Ireland, The Netherlands and Sweden deal with gender equality issues by asking two questions: Do existing procedures promote representation of women and gender expertise in the committee? (...) How are sex and gender issues dealt with in protocol evaluation?Methods: Two RECs were selected from each country. Data were obtained through interviews with key informants and content analysis of relevant documents .Results: All countries have rules to ensure the presence of women on RECs; gender expertise is not required. Drug study protocols are carefully evaluated, sometimes on a formal basis, as regards the inclusion of women of childbearing age. The reason for excluding either one of the sexes or including specific groups of women or making a gender-specific risk–benefit analysis are investigated by some RECs. Such measures are, however, neither defined in the regulations nor integrated in review tools.Conclusions: The RECs investigated in five European member states are found to pay limited attention to gender equality in their working methods and, in particular in protocol evaluation. Policy and regulations of EU are needed to strengthen attention to gender equality in the work of RECs. (shrink)

The moral significance of preserving natural environments is not entirely an issue of rights and social utility, for a person’s attitude toward nature may be importantly connected with virtues or human excellences. The question is, “What sort of person would destroy the natural environment--or even see its value solely in cost/benefit terms?” The answer I suggest is that willingness to do so may well reveal the absence of traits which are a natural basis for a proper humility, self-acceptance, gratitude, and (...) appreciation of the good in others. (shrink)

Interpretation of the classics in political theory seems to go in waves. For a while we had John Locke, the bourgeois thinker. Now we seem to be in a Locke-as-radical-democrat phase. Locke-the-bourgeois had problems of its own, but a radically democratic Locke -- not just the old Locke as liberal democrat but Locke as quasi-Leveller -- strains the interpretative imagination more than most; yet in recent years, several different kinds of argument have been advanced in support of it, both textual (...) and contextual. The most effective argument has proceeded by situating Locke in the context of radical Whig politics in the 1670s and '80s, the struggles over religious toleration and the royal succession, in particular the �Exclusion Crisis� of 1679-81. This contextual argument has been accompanied by various textual interpretations having to do with Locke's conceptions of property, consent, representation, the right of revolution and natural law. Among other things, these are supposed to show that while Locke had nothing explicit to say about the extent of the franchise, the weight of evidence suggests that he would have supported a fairly wide franchise, perhaps even something like the (almost) manhood suffrage advocated by the Levellers (at least according to some, and probably the most convincing, interpretations of their ideas). Most recently, in these pages, Martin Hughes, building on the work of James Tully and Richard Ashcraft in particular, has pushed the argument as far as it can probably go. His argument on taxation and suffrage has provided a motivation here for a wider exploration of Locke's views on representation, consent and the franchise. (shrink)

This study focuses on the spatialization and institutionalization of social networks of Russian women who migrated to Turkey via marriage in the last 30 years. Specifically, it investigates how and why their social networks have been changing at the local and transnational levels. We conducted in-depth interviews with 56 women between 2014−2021. Our extensive analysis indicates that despite their newly established status via marriages, the Russian women have weak ties with the locals regardless of the migration period, preferring mostly to (...) engage with other Russian women in Turkey. Even if the different migrant associations established by Russian migrants in Turkey do not actually aim this, they create an effect that increases the social distance with the host society and serves to strengthen the connection between the migrants. Also, unlike pioneer migrants, newer marriage migrants have established strong transnational ties with others living overseas, regardless of their gender or ethnic identity. Further, this study reveals that the migrant women's subjectivity, their spouses’ benefit-oriented negotiation styles, and the state's diaspora policy all shape the women's social networks at different levels. (shrink)

In this commentary, I briefly present in chronological order several historical developments which can explain some of the confusions with respect to arousal that have become entrenched in the contemporary debate. These historical developments include: Immanuel Kant's eighteenth-century division of the affects into sthenic vs. asthenic; the emergence of modern conceptions of pleasure and displeasure in the West; the nineteenth-century alignment of pleasure and displeasure with “sthenic” and “asthenic” in psycho-physiology; the early-twentieth-century disruption of this nineteenth-century alignment; the establishment of (...) a new-physiological order of emotions; and the emergence of “emotional excitement” as the new feeling of the new emotion order of physiology. (shrink)

For the first time, Walter Benjamin's critical comments on educator and philosopher Rudolf Steiner are examined in depth. In particular, Benjamin detected protofascist themes within Steiner's seemingly progressive notion of child-centered, arts-based, developmentally appropriate early childhood education. But this does not mean that Benjamin completely rejected Steiner's work as mere ideology. Instead, we can find the subtle trace of Steiner's influence in Benjamin's own reflections on childhood. Here Tyson E. Lewis calls for a dialectical approach modeled by Benjamin that allows (...) us to critically interrogate Steiner's progressive education for protofascist tendencies, while also redeeming various insights into the lives of children. This dialectical approach to understanding the complex relationship between progressive education and fascism is now more urgent than ever before. (shrink)

Decisions related to animal welfare standards depend on farmer’s multiple goals and values and are constrained by a wide range of external and internal forces. The aim of this paper is twofold, i.e., to develop a theoretical framework for farmers’ AW decisions that incorporates farmers’ goals, use and non-use values and to present an approach to empirically implement the theoretical framework. The farmer as a head of the farm household makes choices regarding production to maximize the utility of the household. (...) The overall utility of the farmer is determined by his multiple objectives. For the analysis of multi-objective problems, the multiple criteria decision - making paradigm provides an appropriate theoretical framework. However, theories from the field of social-psychology are needed to facilitate the identification of all relevant aspects in the decision making. The practical use of the conceptual framework is demonstrated using a simple numerical application of a multi-objective programming model. Two workshops were devoted to examining the scientific consistency and the practical usefulness of the approach. Implementing this approach will increase knowledge of the main factors and barriers that determine farmers’ decisions with regard to AW standards. This knowledge is relevant during the development of new AW concepts that aims to supply products that comply with above-legal AW standards for middle-market segments. (shrink)

In the fourth section of Goethe’s Zahme Xenien we find the quatrain from which I have taken the theme of such an old and new controversy, which, as I hope, concerns both Germanic studies and the other humanities: “What was it that kept you from us so apart?” I always read Plutarch again and again. “And what was the lesson he did impart?” “They were all human beings—so much is plain.”1 In the very years when Goethe wrote these lines, that (...) is in the 1820s, Hegel repeatedly gave his lectures on the philosophy of history. Right at the beginning he formulated the opposite view which I should like briefly to characterize as “cultural relativism.”Every age has such peculiar circumstances, such individual conditions that it must be interpreted, and can only be interpreted, by reference to itself…. Nothing is shallower in this respect than the frequent appeal to Greek and Roman example which so often occurred among the French at the time of their Revolution. Nothing could be more different than the nature of these peoples and the nature of our own times.2 What is at issue here is not, of course, Hegel’s assertion that ages and peoples differ from each other. We all know that, and Goethe, the attentive reader and traveler, also knew, for instance, that the Roman carnival differed in its character from the celebrations of the Feast of Saint Rochus at Bingen, both of which he had described so lovingly. What makes the cultural historian into a cultural relativist is only the conclusion which we saw Hegel draw, that cultures and styles of life are not only different but wholly incommensurable, in other words that it is absurd to compare the peoples of a region or an age with human beings of other zones because there is no common denominator that would justify us in doing so. 1. ‘Was hat dich nun von uns entfernt?’ Hab immer den Plutarch gelesen. ‘Was has du den dabei gelernt?’ Sind eben alles Menschen gewesen.’ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Sämtlich Werke. Jubiläums-ausgabe in 40 Bänden 4:73; with commentary.2. See Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Vorselungen über die Philosophie der Geschichte, Werke, 20 vols. , 12:17. E. H. Gombrich was director of the Warburg Institute and Professor of the History of the Classical Tradition at the University of London from 1959 to 1976. His many influential works include The Story of Art, Art and Illusion, Meditations on a Hobby Horse, The Sense of Order, Ideals and Idols, The Image and the Eye, Tributes, Aby Warburg, and New Light on Old Masters. His previous contributions to Critical Inquiry include “The Museum: Past, Present and Future” , “Standards of Truth: The Arrested Image and the Moving Eye” , and “Representation and Misrepresentation”. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Non-Appearance of the Phoenix at Tacitus Annals 6.28Elizabeth KeitelBook 6 is the stepchild of the first hexad of the Annals, little studied and even less appreciated, perhaps because of the large lacuna which breaks the continuity of the narrative after book 4, perhaps because of its allegedly static and monotonous content summarized thus by Syme: “The concluding book of the hexad carries a dreary epilogue down to the (...) extinction of the old emperor, with many prosecutions and deaths, with little extraneous or antiquarian matter for variegation.” 1 But let us consider here the placement and function of one minor episode in book 6, the alleged appearance of the Phoenix in Egypt.Paulo Fabio L. Vitellio consulibus post longum saeculorum ambitum avis phoenix in Aegyptum venit praebuitque materiem doctissimis indigenarum et Graecorum multa super eo miraculo disserendi. de quibus congruunt et plura ambigua, sed cognitu non absurda promere libet. sacrum Soli id animal, et ore ac distinctu pinnarum a ceteris avibus diversum consentiunt qui formam eius effin{x}ere; de numero annorum varia traduntur. maxime vulgatum quingentorum spatium; sunt qui adseverent mille quadringentos sexaginta unum interici, prioresque alites Sesoside primum, post Amaside dominantibus, dein Ptolemaeo, qui ex Macedonibus tertius regnavit, in civitatem, cui Heliopolis nomen, advolavisse, multo ceterarum volucrum comitatu novam faciem mirantium. sed antiquitas quidem obscura: inter Ptolemaeum ac Tiberium minus ducenti quinquaginta anni fuerunt. unde nonnulli falsum hunc phoenicem neque Arabum e terris credidere, nihilque usurpavisse ex his, quae vetus memoria firmavit. confecto quippe annorum numero, ubi mors propinquet, suis in terris struere nidum eique vim genitalem adfundere, ex qua fetum oriri: et primam adulto curam sepeliendi patris, neque id temere, sed sublato murrae pondere temptatoque per longum iter, ubi par oneri, par meatui sit, subire patrium corpus inque Solis aram perferre atque adolere. haec incerta et [End Page 429] fabulosis aucta: ceterum aspici aliquando in Aegypto eam volucrem non ambigitur. 2(Ann. 6.28)Previous scholarly discussion of this episode has not answered two basic questions: why the historian has placed it in 34 C.E., when Pliny the Elder (NH 10.2) and Dio (58.27.1) date it to 36, and why Tacitus devotes a whole chapter to what may have been a non-event, since he suggests that there was no genuine appearance of the bird in Tiberius’ time. These questions lead inevitably to a discussion of the role of this episode in the structure of book 6 and its relationship to the book’s predominant themes. I propose that Tacitus has placed the Phoenix in the year 34 to highlight two important concerns in book 6: the destruction of the nobility, and the unnatural cruelty of Tiberius and his heir, Gaius.Let us first address the question of Tacitus’ source or sources. Hahn may well be right that the source was an antiquarian work like that of Pliny the Elder, though not Pliny himself (praebuitque materiem doctissimis indigenarum et Graecorum multa super eo miraculo disserendi, Ann. 6.28.1). However, because Dio also reports the Phoenix, Hahn believed that it was already noted by the annalistic tradition when it reached Tacitus. Townend believed that Tacitus would not deliberately shift the Phoenix if he had found it clearly dated in his main annalistic source. Rather, the historian discovered this information, without any precise indication of the year, in a semihistorical work by Tiberius Balbillus, a former prefect of Egypt and probably the son of Thrasyllus, Tiberius’ astrologer. Then Tacitus simply inserted it at the first convenient place. We know from Pliny that Claudius displayed a Phoenix at Rome as part of his Secular Games, though no one believed it genuine (NH 10.2.5). So it is also possible that Tacitus, a member of the quindecimviri sacris faciundis in 88 C.E., when they were in charge of Domitian’s Secular Games (Ann. 11.11.1), might have had access, in the records of his priestly college, to a discussion of the possible link between the Egyptian Great Year and the Roman saeculum. This would have led him to conclude that the report of the Phoenix of the last years of Tiberius’ reign could not have been genuine, and it... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:American Journal of Philology 121.3 (2000) 423-452 [Access article in PDF] The Mourning After: Statius Thebaid 12 Victoria E. Pagán Wie er auf dem letzten Hügel, der ihm ganz sein Tal noch einmal zeigt, sich wendet, anhält, weilt--, so leben wir und nehmen immer Abschied. As he, on the last hill, which shows him his valley one last time, turns back, stops, lingers--, so we live and ever take (...) our leave. --Rilke, Eighth ElegyRecent, fruitful readings of the end of the Thebaid have come a long way toward identifying the political import of the arrival of Theseus and the laments of the Theban women, although consensus remains in the distance. 1 Some scholars have tried to resolve the difficulties posed by the oft-disparaged "superfluous" book 12 by examining Statius' resolution of the Theban epic against the backdrop of the endings of the Iliad or the Aeneid, for instance, thus bringing us closer to understanding the dilemma encountered when a poet does (or does not) reach the end of an epic. 2 Both the political and the literary-historical approaches to the problem, however, still fail to convince opponents that the poem does or does not end conclusively. Valid arguments accrue on both sides, and the mosaic of interpretations itself recreates the stunning effect produced in book 12.For present purposes I accept Braund's argument that the Thebaid ends, and that it ends several times over, and that the repeated gestures toward closure do not undermine but reinforce its ultimate termination. The last ten lines of book 12 (especially 816-17) display an [End Page 423] unease with the poem's status vis-à-vis the Aeneid and an apprehension at simply letting go, despite the need. But the sphragis, when considered in the context of what I call an "aftermath narrative," or the description which follows a battle, reveals more. The aftermath of a battle affects a community, and this highly emotional reaction is captured in narrative. Because aftermath narratives are present in different works of Latin literature, comparison allows a pattern to emerge. Once we identify the elements of this rhetorical commonplace, 3 we can observe the way Statius uses it and adapts it to his needs in book 12. With a better understanding of the phenomenon of aftermath, it is possible to appreciate the apprehension, as well as the finality, that accompanies the end of the epic.More specifically, the term "aftermath narrative" refers to the picture of a battlefield strewn with decaying corpses, weapons, horses, helmets, and debris. The field is inspected in broad daylight, usually on the morning after the battle, by the living, either the victorious generals or, less specifically, the survivors whose concern it is to bury the dead. 4 Thus the reader sees the aftermath through the eyes of those who return to the battlefield. This inspection is an intermediate step between the destruction of war and the funeral rites. Paradoxically, war gives the soldier an opportunity to earn laus and gloria and so to reaffirm the fame of his ancestors and enhance the fame of his progeny. 5 But in his death he also becomes a burden of responsibility to his kin. 6 His corpse is a polluted thing which must be purified by the act of burial. Thus aftermath is part of the transition from the violent disruption of war to the settlement of the dispute and a return to a state of equilibrium. A scene of aftermath necessarily looks backward and recreates the battle in the mind's eye, but it also looks forward to the more permanent results for the winners and the losers of the battle, and ultimately, of the [End Page 424] war. Thus when represented in literature, an aftermath narrative affords an author the opportunity to explore the intertwining nexus of past, present, and future. The survey of aftermath is the means by which those who have experienced the trauma of war come to terms with devastating loss and brutal destruction in their very midst.An author also experiences a sort of aftermath. For... (shrink)

For the good that I would, I do not; but the evil which I would not, that I do. Now if I do that I would not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. Romans 7.19-20.

The failure of the critics of corporate governance to agree on what should be done to improve the governance process can, in most cases, be traced to a different understanding of the role of corporate directors in that process. This article analyzes and contrasts the obligations of directors under two legal theories, the fictional person theory and the organic theory, of the corporation. A comparison of the director's obligations under each theory indicates that the organic theory provides a better basis (...) for assessing the performance of directors and initiating reform.Among the boards of directors of Fortune 500 companies, I estimate that 95% are not fully doing what they are legally, morally, and ethically supposed to do. And they couldn't, even if they wanted to. (shrink)

The idea of arousal as a non-specific state of activation has been implicated as an explanatory factor for many aspects of human behavior, ranging from emotional experiences to learning and memory. Critiques of this concept have highlighted that arousal is ambiguous and evidence for its role in emotion is mixed. However, contemporary emotion theories and empirical research continue to incorporate the concept of arousal in ways that fail to address its problems. Here, we review the origins of the term arousal (...) in physiology and trace how it has been translated and applied to psychology (particularly as it relates to emotion). We consider whether the construct of arousal is currently (a) consistent and (b) useful in understanding human behavior. (shrink)

In R. C. Flickinger's (3rd ed. second impression 1929) we read on pp. 171In the iambic trimeters written by Aeschylus a trisyllabic substitution (tribrach, anapaest or dactyl) for the pure disyllabic iambus occurs only once in about twenty-five verses.Tragic Drama of the Greekstrimeters’ lines like.

Dworkin respondeu afirmativamente à pergunta título do seu texto “Não existe mesmo nenhuma resposta certa em casos controversos?”. Posner criticou Dworkin e respondeu a mesma pergunta negativamente. Discute-se neste artigo as diferentes maneiras como cada filósofo entendeu a pergunta que acarreta diferentes respostas a ela, isto é, de que modo diferenças na concepção do que é o Direito acarretam diferenças a respeito da existência de respostas certas para questões jurídicas.