The various problems associated with co-authorship of research articles have attracted much attention in recent years. We believe that this growing awareness is a very welcome development. However, we will argue that the particular and increasing importance of authorship and the harmful implications of current practices of research authorship for junior researchers have not been emphasised enough. We will use the case of our own research area to illustrate some of the pitfalls of current publishing practices—in particular, the impact on (...) the evaluation of one’s work in the area of employment or funding. Even where there are explicit guidelines, they are often disregarded. This disregard, which is often exemplified through the inflation of co-authorship in some research areas, may seem benign to some of us; but it is not. Attribution of co-authorship for reasons other than merit in relation to the publication misrepresents the work towards that publication, and generates unfair competition. We make a case for increasing awareness, for transparency and for more explicit guidelines and regulation of research co-authorship within and across research areas. We examine some of the most sensitive areas of concern and their implications for researchers, particularly junior ones, and we suggest several strategies for future action. (shrink)

The notion of rationality underlying contemporary business and business ethics, or the “rational actor” model of moral decision-making in business, links a roughly utilitarian notion of the good to a contractarian notion of human agency. The “C-Umodel” provides inadequate means for explaining how business people do or ought to behave or think about their behavior, because the notion of rationality upon which it relies is far too narrow a picture of business people’s character. An alternative to these assumptions and to (...) the Contractarian-Utilitarian model, is offered in an ethics of virtue. Despite the traditional apparent conflict between these divergent models, the C-U model, if founded in a notion of rationality consistent with Aristotelian ethics, is recognized as a useful instrument in business ethics and business decision-making. Hence, a reconciliation is effected between the C-U model and virtue ethics. (shrink)

The role of nursing faculty members in charge of ethics education is important. Although all nursing students receive the same bioethics education, their experiences differ, related to ethical qualification, which depends on the personal socialization process. This Korean study aimed to provide nursing faculty members with the basic data to help them develop as bioethics experts and provide nursing students with knowledge to improve their ethical decision-making abilities. We used a survey design to assess recognition of bioethical issues and ethical (...) qualification in nursing students and faculty members. A total of 1225 undergraduate students and 140 faculty members participated in this study. The results revealed that nursing students and nursing faculty members generally understood the seriousness of various bioethical issues and both considered the most serious issue to concern abortion. Ethical behavior can be improved by education, and accordingly, nursing ethics should be a mandatory subject, rather than an elective one. (shrink)

We developed a technique to examine the effects of emotional content and context on verbal memory. Two sets of sentences were devised: in the first, each sentence was emotionally arousing due to the inclusion of an emotional “target” word. In the second set, “targets” were replaced with well-matched neutral words. Subjects read aloud a selection of emotional and neutral sentences, and were then surprised with memory tasks after a range of time delays. Emotional target words were remembered significantly better than (...) neutral words in all experiments. Recognition of emotional words was relatively stable despite increasing delays between encoding and recognition testing, in contrast to memory for neutral words, which decayed over time. Memory for neutral non-target words was enhanced when words had been presented in an emotional context. The results confirm the phenomenon of emotional enhancement of memory at short and long delays and suggest that emotional context may be encoded independently of word meaning. (shrink)

Since 2019, the COVID-19 pandemic, as a global public health emergency, has led to stringency measures of various degrees worldwide. As these measures such as social distancing measures and mandatory lockdown are intended to minimize social mobility, they have exerted remarkable impact on individuals’ mental health, particularly, adolescents and children. The mental health problems caused include fear, anxiety, sense of isolation and development of more maladaptive behaviors due to prolonged lockdown and restricted interpersonal contact. However, well adaption status and stable (...) interpersonal relationships play an important role in maintaining and promoting the mental health of adolescents and children. This study aims to gain a new sight of understanding of the mental health quality of Chinese adolescents during the COVID-19 Pandemic in terms of adaptation and interpersonal quality. The study is based on a survey on a total of 7,318 junior and senior high school students aged 12–18 years in various regions of China, and intended to examine the differences in adolescent mental health quality by sociodemographic variables such as gender, grade, urban and rural areas, only child, and parental education level. Our study finds that Chinese adolescents show an overall good adaptation and interpersonal quality during the lockdown. However there exists disparity across different categories in developmental patterns of adaptation and interpersonal quality. In addition, good family environment, moderate financial and emotional support, higher parental education level, etc. contribute to the cultivation and improvement of adolescents’ mental health quality. Finally, we suggest that the government and researchers should pay more attention to adolescents’ mental health issues in terms of adaption status and interpersonal relationships during the COVID-19 pandemic, especially for disadvantaged social groups such as girls, younger students, and low-income family students. (shrink)

This ethnographic study of service interactions in Korean immigrant women–owned nailsalons in New York City introduces the concept “body labor” to designate a type of gendered work that involves the management of emotions in body-related service provision. The author explores variation in the performance of body labor caused by the intersection of the gendered processes of beauty service work with the racialized and class-specific service expectations of diverse customers. The study examines three distinct patterns of service provision that are shaped (...) by racial and class inequalities between women: high-service body labor, expressive body labor, and routinized body labor. These patterns demonstrate that a caring, attentive style of emotional display is dominant in workplaces governed by white, middle-class “feeling rules” but that different racial and class locations call forth other forms of gendered emotionalmanagement that focus on displaying respect, reciprocity, fairness, competence, and efficiency. (shrink)

Advances in fertility medicine have led some ethicists to call for stricter regulations on assisted reproduction. One counterargument is that such restrictions are unfair, for they impose far more...

Healthcare cybersecurity is increasingly targeted by malicious hackers. This sector has many vulnerabilities and health data is very sensitive and valuable. Consequently, any damage caused by malicious intrusions is particularly alarming. The consequences of these attacks can be enormous and endanger patient care. Amongst the already-implemented cybersecurity measures and the ones that need to be further improved, this paper aims to demonstrate how penetration tests can greatly benefit healthcare cybersecurity. It is already proven that this approach has enforced cybersecurity in (...) other sectors. However, it is not popular in healthcare since many prejudices still surround the hacking practice and there is a lack of education on hackers’ categories and their ethics. The present analysis aims to comprehend what hacker ethics is and who ethical hackers are. Currently, hacker ethics has the status of personal ethics; however, to employ penetration testers in healthcare, it is recommended to draft an official code of ethics, comprising principles, standards, expectations, and best practices. Additionally, it is important to distinguish between malicious hackers and ethical hackers. Amongst the latter, penetration testers are only a sub-category. Acknowledging the subtle differences between ethical hackers and penetration testers allows to better understand why and how the latter can offer their services to healthcare facilities. (shrink)

This paper mainly studies the communication performance of visible light communication link in fire smoke environment. Compared with the previous studies, this study no longer only considers a single wavelength and considers the influence of smoke and background light noise. Firstly, the variation of background light noise caused by sunlight during a day was analyzed, then signal-to-noise ratio and bit error rate of the visible light communication link in fire smoke environment with different visibility were calculated, and finally, the variation (...) of received power with the angle β between the LED optical axis and the communication link was analyzed. The results show that, during a day from 07:00 to 18:30, background light noise first increases and then decreases, BER changes in the same trend and reaches the maximum at about 13:00, while SNR changes in the opposite trend and reaches the minimum at about 13:00. When visibility is 100 m, the maximum difference of SNR between 7:00 and 13:00 is about 19 dB, and the maximum difference of BER is about 5.3E-10. At 7:00, the maximum difference of SNR is about 13 dB between the visibility of 1 m and the visibility of 100 m, and the maximum difference of BER is about 1.44E − 11, and received power decreases with the increase of β. In addition, SNR increases with visibility of fire smoke environment, and BER changes in the opposite trend. Lastly, in order to enhance the performance of visible light communication in fire smoke environment, this paper gives the transmitting power scheme. (shrink)

This paper surveys the meaning of aither in Empedocles. Since Aristotle, Empedoclean aither has been generally considered synonymous with air and understood anachronistically in terms of its Aristotelian conception as hot and wet. In critiquing this interpretation, the paper first examines the meaning of “air” in Empedocles, revealing scant and insignificant use of the term. Next, the ancient controversy of Empedocles’ “four roots” is recast from the perspective that aither, rather than air, designates the fourth root. Finally, the nineteen instances (...) of aither in Empedocles’ fragments are considered, revealing a bright and energetic root closely related to the force of life. (shrink)

This chapter explores what we actually mean by data donation after death, and what different types of data donation metadata are involved in the process. It then provides an analysis of the ethical ramifications of each of these different types of data, outlines the concepts of data advance directives and data donation guardians as one way of dealing with these issues, and considers alternative governance mechanisms. The degree of control given to the first data donors may need to be high (...) in order to maintain trust, but over time attitudes may evolve towards everyone giving “big consent” to data donation. (shrink)

If you are kind to me, I am likely to reciprocate and doing so feels fair. Many theories of social exchange assume that such reciprocity and fairness are well aligned with one another. We argue that this correspondence between reciprocity and fairness is restricted to interpersonal dyads and does not govern more complex multilateral interactions. When multiple people are involved, reciprocity leads to partiality, which may be seen as unfair by outsiders. We report seven studies, conducted with people from the (...) United States, in which participants were asked to evaluate situations involving resource distribution in contexts such as economic games, government, and the workplace. Specifically, we find that equal resource distribution in multilateral interactions is seen as more fair than engaging in reciprocity. We also find that negative reciprocity is seen as more fair than positive reciprocity in these multilateral situations because positive reciprocity is perceived as based in favoritism. We rule out alternative explanations and demonstrate that there are contexts where favoritism is not viewed as unfair. These findings are important for theories of fairness and reciprocity as they demonstrate the central role of perceived partiality in the evaluation of multi‐party resource allocation. (shrink)

Many families refuse to consent to donation from their deceased relatives or over-rule the consent given before death by the patient, but giving families more information about the potential recipients of organs could reduce refusal rates. In this paper, we analyse arguments for and against doing so, and conclude that this strategy should be attempted. While it would be impractical and possibly unethical to give details of actual potential recipients, generic, realistic information about the people who could benefit from organs (...) should be provided to families before they make a decision about donation or attempt to over-rule it. (shrink)

Almost all existing genetic programming systems deal with fitness evaluation solely by testing. In this paper, by contrast, we present an original approach that combines genetic programming with Hoare logic with the aid of model checking and finite state automata, henceby proposing a brand new verification-focused formal genetic programming system that makes it possible to evolve reliable programs with mathematicallyverified properties.

When I say that the Chinese people have woken up, I mainly mean that young Chinese intellectuals have woken up. It is increasingly evident that they have shaken off the "worship-America" mentality that had its beginnings in the 1980s; today, they dare to criticize the United States spontaneously, and have no fear of being rejected for a visa to the United States or for a "green card.".

In this article, I indicate and illustrate several flaws in a recent “ethical defence” of homeopathy. It transpires that the authors’ arguments have several features in common with homeopathic remedies, including strong claims, a lack of logic or evidence, and no actual effect.

Driven by the dissatisfaction and turmoil in religion at the time this book was originally published in 1923, the author sets out a belief that all people have an inborn religion and investigates what the future of this religion might be as it changes from age to age. In the short chapters here the author reflects on the current trends in theology at the time and the history of Christianity. This is an early critique of formalised religion and a simple (...) advocacy of natural religion which is a glimpse into the basic philosophy of the early twentieth century. (shrink)

Validity is a central principle of assessment relating to the appropriateness of the uses and interpretations of test results. Usually, one of the inferences that we wish to make is that the score reflects the extent of a student?s learning in a given domain. Thus, it is important to establish that the assessment tasks elicit performances that reflect the intended constructs. This research explored the use of three methods for evaluating whether there are threats to validity in relation to the (...) constructs elicited in international A level geography examinations: (a) Rasch analysis; (b) analysis of processes expected and apparent when students answer questions; and (c) qualitative analysis of responses to items identified as potentially problematic. The results provided strong evidence to support validity with regard to the elicitation of constructs although one question part was identified as a threat to validity. Strengths and weaknesses of the methods can be identified. (shrink)

The question whether facial expression processing may be impaired in Parkinson’s disease (PD) patients so far has yielded equivocal results – existing studies, however, have focused on testing expression processing in recognition tasks with static images of six standard, emotional facial expressions. Given that non-verbal communication contains both emotional and non-emotional, conversational expressions and that input to the brain is usually dynamic, here we address the question of potential facial expression processing differences in a novel format: we test a range (...) of conversational and emotional, dynamic facial expressions in three groups – PD patients ( n = 20), age- and education-matched older healthy controls ( n = 20), and younger adult healthy controls ( n = 20). This setup allows us to address both effects of PD and age-related differences. We employed a rating task for all groups in which 12 rating dimensions were used to assess evaluative processing of 27 expression videos from six different actors. We found that ratings overall were consistent across groups with several rating dimensions (such as arousal or outgoingness) having a strong correlation with the expressions’ motion energy content as measured by optic flow analysis. Most importantly, we found that the PD group did not differ in any rating dimension from the older healthy control group (HCG), indicating highly similar evaluation processing. Both older groups, however, did show significant differences for several rating scales in comparison with the younger adults HCG. Looking more closely, older participants rated negative expressions compared to the younger participants as more positive, but also as less natural, persuasive, empathic, and sincere. We interpret these findings in the context of the positivity effect and in-group processing advantages. Overall, our findings do not support strong processing deficits due to PD, but rather point to age-related differences in facial expression processing. (shrink)