With the advancement of human microbiome research, it is inevitable that a growing number of biobanks will include a collection of microbiota specimens to characterize the microbial communities that inhabit the human body and explore the relationships between the microbiota and their human hosts. Biobanks of human microbiota and their associated genetic information may become a valuable health resource. But, this area of research also presents ethical and social problems, some of which are distinct from those faced by biobanks that (...) store human tissue samples. This paper examines four core issues which are considered highly relevant to microbiome biobanking: the nature of human microbiome samples and how different understandings have an impact on benefit/risk evaluation, privacy, informed consent, and returning the result to participants. We argue that these issues should be addressed early on in microbiome research projects and also call for adjusting or developing new governance mechanism to better accommodate these changes. (shrink)

The ongoing legal and bioethics debates on consent requirements for collecting, storing, and utilizing human biological material for purposes of basic and applied research—that is, genomic research biobanking—have already managed to pass through three ostensibly dissimilar stages.

This paper discusses Wittgenstein's take on the problem of other minds. In opposition to certain widespread views that I collect under the heading of the “No Problem Interpretation,” I argue that Wittgenstein does address some problem of other minds. However, Wittgenstein's problem is not the traditional epistemological problem of other minds; rather, it is more reminiscent of the issue of intersubjectivity as it emerges in the writings of phenomenologists such as Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, and Heidegger. This is one sense in which (...) Wittgenstein's perspective on other minds might be called “phenomenological.” Yet there is another sense as well, in that Wittgenstein's positive views on this issue resemble the views defended by phenomenologists. The key to a proper philosophical grasp of intersubjectivity, on both views, lies in rethinking the mind. If we conceive of minds as essentially embodied we can understand how intersubjectivity is possible. (shrink)

When children are too young to make their ownautonomous decisions, decisions have to be madefor them. In certain contexts we allow parentsand others to make these decisions, and do notinterfere unless the decision clearly violatesthe best interest of the child. In othercontexts we put a priori limits on whatkind of decisions parents can make, and/or whatkinds of considerations they have to take intoaccount. Consent to medical research currentlyfalls into the second group mentioned here. Wewant to consider and ultimately reject one (...) ofthe arguments put forward for putting medicalresearch into the second category. We willargue that some objections to children'sparticipation in research are either based onan implausibly restrictive conception of whatis in fact in the child's best interests orthat there is an implicit and false premisehidden in this argument; i.e., the premise thatour children have so deeply fallen into moralturpitude that we must assume that they wouldnot want to fulfill their moral obligations,or, that they will grow up to be morallydeficient and will then wish not to have actedwell while a child. (shrink)

The Covid-19 pandemic creates an unprecedented threatening situation worldwide with an urgent need for critical reflection and new knowledge production, but also a need for imminent action despite prevailing knowledge gaps and multilevel uncertainty. With regard to the role of research ethics in these pandemic times some argue in favor of exceptionalism, others, including the authors of this paper, emphasize the urgent need to remain committed to core ethical principles and fundamental human rights obligations all reflected in research regulations and (...) guidelines carefully crafted over time. In this paper we disentangle some of the arguments put forward in the ongoing debate about Covid-19 human challenge studies (CHIs) and the concomitant role of health-related research ethics in pandemic times. We suggest it might be helpful to think through a lens differentiating between risk, strict uncertainty and ignorance. We provide some examples of lessons learned by harm done in the name of research in the past and discuss the relevance of this legacy in the current situation. (shrink)

A recent study has reported that the successful implementation of cognitive regulation of emotion depends on higher-level cognitive functions, such as top-down control, which may be impaired in stressful situations. This calls for “cognition free” self-regulatory strategies that do not require top-down control. In contrast to the cognitive regulation of emotion that emphasizes the role of cognition, traditional Chinese philosophy and medicine views the relationship among different types of emotions as promoting or counteracting each other without the involvement of cognition, (...) which provides an insightful perspective for developing “cognition free” regulatory strategies. In this study, we examined two hypotheses regarding the modulation of anger and aggressive behavior: sadness counteracts anger and aggressive behavior, whereas fear promotes anger and aggressive behavior. Participants were first provoked by reading extremely negative feedback on their viewpoints (Study 1) and by watching anger-inducing movie clips (Study 2). Then, these angry participants were assigned to three equivalent groups and viewed sad, fear-inducing, or neutral materials to evoke the corresponding emotions. The results showed that participants displayed a lower level of aggressive behavior when sadness was later induced and a higher level of anger when fear was later induced. These results provide evidence that supports the hypothesis of mutual promotion and counteraction relationships among these types of emotions and imply a “cognition free” approach to regulating anger and aggressive behavior. (shrink)

The volume advances research in the philosophy of technology by introducing contributors who have an acute sense of how to get beyond or reframe the epistemic, ontological and normative limitations that currently limit the fields of philosophy of technology and science and technology studies.

In Jacobsen, M.H. (ed.): Sociologies of the Unnoticed. Palgrave/Macmillan, 2008.

The Covid-19 pandemic has led to a health crisis of a scale unprecedented in post-war Europe. In response, a large amount of healthcare resources have been redirected to Covid-19 preventive measures, for instance population-wide vaccination campaigns, large-scale SARS-CoV-2 testing, and the large-scale distribution of protective equipment to high-risk groups and hospitals and nursing homes. Despite the importance of these measures in epidemiological and economic terms, health economists and medical ethicists have been relatively silent about the ethical rationales underlying the large-scale (...) allocation of healthcare resources to these measures. The present paper seeks to encourage this debate by demonstrating how the resource allocation to Covid-19 preventive measures can be understood through the paradigm of the Rule of Rescue, without claiming that the Rule of Rescue is the sole rationale of resource allocation in the Covid-19 pandemic. (shrink)

It is common to say that the origin of the membrane potential is attributed to transmembrane ion transport, but it is theoretically possible to explain its generation by the mechanism of ion adsorption. It has been previously suggested that the ion adsorption mechanism even leads to potential formulae identical to the famous Nernst equation or the Goldman-Hodgkin-Katz equation. Our further analysis, presented in this paper, indicates that the potential formula based on the ion adsorption mechanism leads to an equation that (...) is a function of the surface charge density of the material and the surface potential of the material. Furthermore, we have confirmed that the equation holds in all the different experimental systems that we have studied. This equation appears to be a key equation that governs the characteristics of the membrane potential in all systems. (shrink)

The feeling brings the "Hard Problem" to philosophy of mind. Does the subjective feeling have a non-ignorable impact on Intelligence? If so, can the feeling be realized in Artificial Intelligence (AI)? To discuss the problems, we have to figure out what the feeling means, by giving a clear definition. In this paper, we primarily give some mainstream perspectives on the topic of the mind, especially the topic of the feeling (or qualia, subjective experience, etc.). Then, a definition of the feeling (...) is proposed through a thought experiment, the "semi-transparent room". The feeling, roughly to say, is defined as "a tendency of changing input representations by representing its inner state". Also, a formalized definition is given. The definition does not help to verify "having the feeling", but it helps to provide evidence. Based on the definition, we think these are the hard problems of intelligence — whether the "innate" feeling plays an important role in Intelligence, whether the difference between the "simulated" feeling and the "innate" feeling will have a significant influence on Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), and, if so, where the "innate" feeling comes from and how to make an artificial agent possess it. (shrink)

In this paper, we propose a new mathematical model of retrieval of intentions from long-term memory. We model retrieval as a stochastic race between a plurality of potentially relevant intentions stored in long-term memory. Psychological theories are dominated by two opposing conceptions of the role of memory in temporally extended agency – as when a person has to remember to make a phone call in the afternoon because, in the morning, she promised she would do so. According to the Working (...) Memory conception, remembering to make the phone call is explained in terms of the construction and maintenance of intentions in working-memory. According to the Long-Term Memory conception, we should explain the episode in terms of an ability to store intentions in long-term memory. The two conceptions predict different processing profiles. The aim of this paper is to present a new mathematical model of the type of memory mechanism that could realise the long-term memory representations of intentions necessary for the Long-Term Memory conception. We present and illustrate the formal model and propose a new type of experimental paradigm that could allow us to test which of the two conceptions provides the best explanation of the role of memory in temporally extended agency. (shrink)

How are we individually and as a society to handle new and emerging technologies? This challenging question underlies much of the bioethical debates of modern times. To address this question we need suitable conceptions of the new technology and ways of identifying its proper management and regulation. To establish conceptions and to find ways to handle emerging technologies we tend to use analogies extensively. The aim of this article is to investigate the role that analogies play or may play in (...) the processes of understanding and managing new technology. More precisely we aim to unveil the role of analogies as analytical devices in exploring the "being" of the new technology as well the normative function of analogies in conceptualizing the characteristics and applications of new technology. Umbilical cord blood biobanking will be used as a case to investigate these roles and functions. (shrink)

Ample attention is being paid in the higher education literature to promoting active learning among students. However, critical examination of educational purposes and ends is largely lacki...

Discussions about the role of universities have long been framed in terms of questions of what is good for the public, as well as how and whether higher education serves that good. Today, the language of societal impact has become an accepted way for policymakers to frame the matter, but just who is included in the underlying definition of society that this formulation presupposes? In this paper, we consider how society has been constructed in discussions of the societal impact of (...) humanities research in Denmark, through an engagement with legislation, national political commentary, and institutional policy. We draw on the work of Martin Heidegger and Simone Weil to analyse the vision of society these policies construct. We conclude with proposals for alternative societies and forms of policy that these philosophers make possible. (shrink)

Most prior studies have reported that subject-extracted relative clauses (SRCs) are easier to process than object-extracted relative clauses (ORCs). However, whether such an SRC preference is universal across different languages remains an open question. Several reports from Chinese have provided conflicting results; thus, in the present study, we conducted two self-paced reading experiments to examine the comprehension of Chinese relative clauses. The results demonstrated a clear ORC preference that Chinese ORCs were easier to comprehend than Chinese SRCs. These findings were (...) most compatible with the prediction of the integration cost account, which claims that the processing difference between SRCs and ORCs arises at the point of dependency formation. The ORC preference in Chinese poses a challenge to the universality of the SRC preference assumed by the structural distance hypothesis and highlights the values of cross-linguistic research. (shrink)

Flap EndoNuclease‐1 (FEN‐1) is a multifunctional and structure‐specific nuclease involved in nucleic acid processing pathways. It plays a critical role in maintaining human genome stability through RNA primer removal, long‐patch base excision repair and resolution of dinucleotide and trinucleotide repeat secondary structures. In addition to its flap endonuclease (FEN) and nick exonuclease (EXO) activities, a new gap endonuclease (GEN) activity has been characterized. This activity may be important in apoptotic DNA fragmentation and in resolving stalled DNA replication forks. The multiple (...) functions of FEN‐1 are regulated via several means, including formation of complexes with different protein partners, nuclear localization in response to cell cycle or DNA damage and post‐translational modifications. Its functional deficiency is predicted to cause genetic diseases, including Huntington's disease, myotonic dystrophy and cancers. This review summarizes the knowledge gained through efforts in the past decade to define its structural elements for specific activities and possible pathological consequences of altered functions of this multirole player. BioEssays 27:717–729, 2005. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Anxious major depressive disorder is a common subtype of major depressive disorder; however, its unique neural mechanism is not well-understood currently. Using multimodal MRI data, this study examined common and specific alterations of amygdala subregions between patients with and without anxiety. No alterations were observed in the gray matter volume or intra-region functional integration in either patient group. Compared with the controls, both patient groups showed decreased functional connectivity between the left superficial amygdala and the left putamen, and between the (...) right superficial amygdala and the bilateral anterior cingulate cortex and medial orbitofrontal cortex, while only patients with anxiety exhibited decreased activity in the bilateral laterobasal and superficial amygdala. Moreover, the decreased activity correlated negatively with the Hamilton depression scale scores in the patients with anxiety. These findings provided insights into the pathophysiologic processes of anxious major depressive disorder and may help to develop new and effective treatment programs. (shrink)

PurposeThe purpose of this study was to introduce an orthogonal experimental design to improve the efficiency of building and optimizing models for freezing of gait prediction.MethodsA random forest model was developed to predict FOG by using acceleration signals and angular velocity signals to recognize possible precursor signs of FOG. An OED was introduced to optimize the feature extraction parameters.ResultsThe main effects and interaction among the feature extraction hyperparameters were analyzed. The false-positive rate, hit rate, and mean prediction time were 27%, (...) 68%, and 2.99 s, respectively.ConclusionThe OED was an effective method for analyzing the main effects and interactions among the feature extraction parameters. It was also beneficial for optimizing the feature extraction parameters of the FOG prediction model. (shrink)

With comparative case studies from China, Taiwan and Hong Kong, Jianlin Chen's new work offers a fresh, descriptive and normative perspective on law and religion. This presentation of the original law and religious market theory employs an interdisciplinary approach that sheds light on this subject for scholars in legal and sociological disciplines. It sets out the precise nature of religious competition envisaged by the current legal regimes in the three jurisdictions and analyses how certain restrictions on religious practices may (...) facilitate normatively desirable market dynamics. This updated and invaluable resource provides a new and insightful investigation into this fascinating area of law and religion in Greater China today. (shrink)

Background Ethical challenges constitute an inseparable part of daily decision-making processes in all areas of healthcare. Ethical challenges are associated with moral distress that can lead to burnout. Clinical ethics support has proven useful to address and manage such challenges. This paper explores how prehospital emergency personnel manage ethical challenges. The study is part of a larger action research project to develop and test an approach to clinical ethics support that is sensitive to the context of emergency medicine. Methods We (...) explored ethical challenges and management strategies in three focus groups, with 15 participants in total, each attended by emergency medical technicians, paramedics, and prehospital anaesthesiologists. Focus groups were audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim. The approach to data analysis was systematic text condensation approach. Results We stratified the management of ethical challenges into actions before, during, and after incidents. Before incidents, participants stressed the importance of mutual understandings, shared worldviews, and a supportive approach to managing emotions. During an incident, the participants employed moral perception, moral judgments, and moral actions. After an incident, the participants described sharing ethical challenges only to a limited extent as sharing was emotionally challenging, and not actively supported by workplace culture, or organisational procedures. The participants primarily managed ethical challenges informally, often using humour to cope. Conclusion Our analysis supports and clarifies that confidence, trust, and safety in relation to colleagues, management, and the wider organisation are essential for prehospital emergency personnel to share ethical challenges and preventing moral distress turning into burnout. (shrink)

Many scholars have conducted in-depth research on the evaluation and prediction of scholars’ scientific impact and meanwhile discovered various factors that affect the success of scholars. Among all these relevant factors, scholars’ ages have been universally acknowledged as one of the most important factors for it can shed light on many practical issues, e.g., finding supervisors, discovering rising stars, and research funding or award applications. However, due to the inaccessibility or the privacy issues of acquiring scholars’ personal data, there is (...) little research to explore the true ages of scholars currently. Alternatively, scholars’ publications’ information can be obtained through various digital libraries. Inspired by this fact, we propose a novel scholar’s age prediction method based on their articles’ information. Our method first classifies factors that affect scholars’ ages into intuitive and complex types according to their computational complexity and then apply machine learning algorithms to predict the ages of scholars based on these factors. The experimental results on the real dataset demonstrate that our method can effectively predict the true ages of scholars. Given that there is no completely accurate dataset because of the continuous publication of academic papers, we then apply our method on the incomplete dataset. Nevertheless, our method still has high prediction accuracy in such situations. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Bioethics Genethics Medical Ethics.

The structure and “metabolism” (movement and conversion of goods and energy) of urban areas has caused cities to be identified as “super‐organisms”, placed between ecosystems and the biosphere, in the hierarchy of living systems. Yet most such analogies are weak, and render the super‐organism model ineffective for sustainable development of cities. Via a cluster analysis of 15 shared traits of the hierarchical living system, we found that industrialized cities are more similar to eukaryotic cells than to multicellular organisms; enclosed systems, (...) such as factories and greenhouses, paralleling organelles in eukaryotic cells. We further developed a “super‐cell” industrialized city model: a “eukarcity” with citynucleus (urban area) as a regulating centre, and organaras (enclosed systems, which provide the majority of goods and services) as the functional components, and cityplasm (natural ecosystems and farmlands) as the matrix. This model may improve the vitality and sustainability of cities through planning and management. (shrink)

The rational allocation of functional areas is the foundation for addressing the sustainable development of cities. Efficient and accurate identification methods of urban functional areas are of great significance to the adjustment and testing of urban planning and industrial layout optimization. Firstly, by employing multisource geographic data, an identification method of urban functional areas was developed. A quantitative measurement approach of the urban functional area was then established considering the comprehensive effects of human-land, space-time, and thematic information to present the (...) covering area of ground objects, public awareness, and empirical research. Finally, the Zhengzhou city, which locates in Henan province of central China, was used to test the method. The results show that the developed method is efficient, accurate, and universal and can identify urban functional areas quickly and accurately. We found that the overall distribution of Zhengzhou’s functional areas presents a spatial pattern of single and multimixed coordinated development. The city’s commercial functional areas and commercial-based mixed functional areas are located in the city’s central area. The green square’s function area occupies relatively low and is mainly distributed in the city’s fringe. (shrink)

Background: Cognitive impairment is one of the core symptoms of schizophrenia, which is considered to be significantly correlated to prognosis. In recent years, many studies have suggested that metabolic disorders could be related to a higher risk of cognitive defects in a general setting. However, there has been limited evidence on the association between metabolism and cognitive function in patients with early-stage schizophrenia.Methods: In this study, we recruited 172 patients with early-stage schizophrenia. Relevant metabolic parameters were examined and cognitive function (...) was evaluated by using the MATRICS Consensus Cognitive Battery (MCCB) to investigate the relationship between metabolic disorder and cognitive impairment.Results: Generally, the prevalence of cognitive impairment among patients in our study was 84.7% (144/170), which was much higher than that in the general population. Compared with the general Chinese setting, the study population presented a higher proportion of metabolic disturbance. Patients who had metabolic disturbance showed no significant differences on cognitive function compared with the other patients. Correlation analysis showed that metabolic status was significantly correlated with cognitive function as assessed by the cognitive domain scores (p < 0.05), while such association was not found in further multiple regression analysis.Conclusions: Therefore, there may be no association between metabolic disorder and cognitive impairment in patients with early-stage schizophrenia.Trial Registration: Clinicaltrials.gov, NCT02880462. Registered August 26, 2016. (shrink)

The earlier volume in this series dealt with two religions of Indian origin, namely, Buddhism and Jainism. The Indian religious scene, however, is characterized by not only religions which originated in India but also by religions which entered India from outside India and made their home here. Thus religious life in India has been enlivened throughout its history by the presence of religions of foreign origin on its soil almost from the very time they came into existence. This volume covers (...) three such religions—Zoraoastrianism, Judaism, and Islam. In the case of Zoraostianism, even its very beginnings are intertwined with India, as Zoroastrianism reformed a preexisting religion which had strong links to the Vedic heritage of India. This relationship took on a new dimension when a Zoroastrian community, fearing persecution in Persia after its Arab conquest, sought shelter in western India and ultimately went on to produce India’s pioneering nationalist in the figure of Dadabhai Naoroji ( 1825-1917), also known as the Grand Old Man of India. Jews found refuge in south India after the destruction of the Temple by the Romans in 70 C.E. and have remained a part of the Indian religious scene since then, some even returning to Israel after it was founded in 1948. Islam arrived in Kerala as soon as it was founded and one of the earliest mosques in the history of Islam is found in India. Islam differs from the previously mentioned religions inasmuch as it went on to gain political hegemony over parts of the country for considerable periods of time, which meant that its impact on the religious life of the subcontinent has been greater compared to the other religions. It has also meant that Islam has existed in a religiously plural environment in India for a longer period than elsewhere in the world so that not only has Islam left a mark on India, India has also left its mark on it. Indeed all the three religions covered in this volume share this dual feature, that they have profoundly influenced Indian religious life and have also in turn been profoundly influenced by their presence in India. (shrink)

John Rawls' bog En teori om retfærdighed er blandt de absolut vigtigste værker i det 20. århundredes politiske filosofi. Det udkom første gang i 1971 og markerede et brud med en udbredt skepsis over for normative politiske teorier, det vil sige teorier, om hvorledes samfundet bør være indrettet. Med en sofistikeret version af klassisk kontraktteori argumenterer Rawls for en socialliberal vision om retfærdighed, hvor enhver sikres en frihed, der er forenelig med alles tilsvarende frihed, hvor de økonomisk dårligst stillede skal (...) stilles bedst muligt. I nærværende antologi diskuterer en række forskere vigtige temaer i såvel det nævnte hovedværk, som hans øvrige forfatterskab. Bidragene introducerer derved ikke blot til Rawls' politiske filosofi, men også til diskussioner, der står helt centralt i nyere politisk teori såsom vores forhold til fremtidige generationer, civil ulydighed og global retfærdighed. (shrink)

In this paper, a data-driven superheating control strategy is developed for organic Rankine cycle processes. Due to non-Gaussian stochastic disturbances imposed on heat sources, the quantized minimum error entropy is adopted to construct the performance index of superheating control systems. Furthermore, particle swarm optimization algorithm is applied to obtain optimal control law by minimizing the performance index. The implementation procedures of the presented superheating control system in an ORC-based waste heat recovery process are presented. The simulation results testify the effectiveness (...) of the presented control algorithm. (shrink)

This study investigated the effect of non-task language in language switching experiment. Non-task language refers to participants’ language(s) (regardless of proficiency level) that are not used in any trials throughout the experiment. We recruited 60 Tibetan-Chinese-English trilinguals (grade-12 high school students with a median age of 17) to perform a lexical decision (word vs. non-word) task in only two of their languages. We repeated the experiment three times to present each language pair once. In each experiment, the participants were divided (...) into two groups which significantly contrasted with each other in their non-task language while remained comparable in the two task languages. Response time (RT) and error rate (ER) have been examined to evaluate task performance. The interaction between task performance and the participants’ proficiency in the non-task language was also examined. The results showed null effect of language switching. In addition, the effect of the non-task language was not found. These results were interpreted with reference to the main models of bilingual visual word recognition and the role of orthography specificity. (shrink)