Volume 11, Issue 1, March 2020, Page 140-149.

Not to brag, but I am a hit at parties. I tend to shine in the company of new faces, oftentimes scientists who work with my spouse.

The 2009 Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act aims to promote the use of electronic health records by providing over $27 billion in financial incentives for eligible health care providers who become “meaningful users” of them. The goal of increased “meaningful” electronic health record adoption is to create a more efficient, patient‐centered health care system by lowering providers’ administrative costs, improving coordination of care among multiple providers, and increasing patients’ participation in and responsibility for their own (...) care. Recently published data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Health Statistics indicate that the HITECH Act's passage has led to a significant increase in electronic health record use among physicians. However, everyone involved in the conversations surrounding the HITECH Act—health care analysts, policy‐makers, and providers alike—must recognize that “meaningful use” of electronic health records can only be authentically meaningful to both clinicians and patients when certain structural issues are also addressed. (shrink)

This article considers the relationship between moral philosophy and constitutional theory through a detailed examination of the work of Jeremy Waldron—an unavoidable voice in contemporary constitutionalist debate. Through a rigorous, original and holistic deconstruction of his work and its philosophical implications, I argue that Waldron’s engagement with core philosophy within his constitutional scholarship is wholly problematic, containing a number of ambiguities and apparent inconsistencies. These issues, I suggest, may stem from an at times rather casual treatment of the realist/anti-realist issue (...) of core philosophy, perhaps owing something to his view that it is in fact safely irrelevant to his constitutional pursuits. In any case, this view, I argue, is misguided, and the problems which result are real: they not only create issues of theoretical consistency and clarity; they put Waldron’s constitutional theory in danger. Like all good tales, I suggest there are lessons to be learned from this: one must think, and think carefully, about the philosophical background of one’s work, and take care in setting this out in a clear, thorough and coherent way—the stakes are too high not to. With this in mind, this article also lays some groundwork for a path into constitutional theory firmly grounded in my own anti-realist moral scepticism. (shrink)

Transcriptional enhancer sequences have been shown to play a pivotal role in the regulation of some highly expressed genes. First described in eukaryotic viruses, the discovery of enhancers has augmented the previously defined control‐sequence motifs to give a more complete understanding of eukaryotic transcriptional regulatory mechanisms. Some properties of enhancers that distinguish them from other regulatory sequences include their ability to function in a position‐ and orientation‐independent manner. Furthermore, the observation that some enhancers and transcriptional promoters exhibit tissue specificity in (...) their activity has generated considerable interest. Enhancer activation is thought to involve sequence‐specific DNA‐binding proteins but the process by which this leads to an increase in the initiation of transcription remains obscure. Although viral enhancers are more fully characterized, several cellular enhancers have recently been identified. One such enhancer sequence has been detected in a 3′ flanking region of a highly expressed human placental lactogen gene. This enhancer can increase the transcriptional rate of an adjacent gene by at least 50‐fold. (shrink)

Despite promising early work into the role of immune cells such as eosinophils in adipose tissue (AT) homeostasis, recent findings revealed that elevating the number of eosinophils in AT alone is insufficient for improving metabolic impairments in obese mice. Eosinophils are primarily recognized for their role in allergic immunity and defence against parasitic worms. They have also been detected in AT and appear to contribute to adipose homeostasis and drive energy expenditure, but the underlying mechanisms remain elusive. It has long (...) been recognized that immune cells such as macrophages respond to external signals to regulate adipose homeostasis and energy balance, however, less is known about the relevance of eosinophil activity in AT. As the authors propose in this review, given recent debate over the relative importance of their tissue‐specific abundance, the stage is now set for exploring the functionality and activation states of AT eosinophils. (shrink)

Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein (2008) contend that mandated choice is the most practical nudge for increasing organ donation. We argue that they are wrong, and their mistake results from failing to appreciate how perceptions of meaning can influence people's responses to nudges. We favor a policy of default to donation that is subject to immediate family veto power, includes options for people to opt out (and be educated on how to do so), and emphasizes the role of organ procurement (...) organizations and in-house transplant donation coordinators creating better environments for increasing the supply of organs and tissues obtained from cadavers. This policy will provide better opportunities for offering nudges in contexts where in-house coordinators work with families. We conclude by arguing that nudges can be introduced ethically and effectively into these contexts only if nudge designers collaborate with in-house coordinators and stakeholders. (shrink)

Volume 20, Issue 7, July 2020, Page 160-162.

Pietraszewski asserts that social psychological research on groups is too vague, tautological, and dependent on intuitions to be theoretically useful. We disagree. Pietraszewski's contribution is thought-provoking but also incomplete and guilty of many of the faults he attributes to others. Instead of rototilling the existing knowledge landscape, we urge for more integration of new and old ideas.

Because visual narratives demand complex inference abilities, they can potentially be used as a tool for developing inferential skills in other domains, like reading. The Inferential Language Comprehension (iLC) Framework proposes an approach to using visual narratives in educational settings to sponsor inference skills by building on cognitive, developmental, and language research.

Research into robotic social learning, especially that concerned with imitation, often focuses at differing ends of a spectrum from observational learning at one end to following or matched-dependent behaviour at the other. We study the implications and differences that arise when carrying out experiments both at the extremes and within this spectrum. Physical Khepera robots with minimal sensory capabilities are used, and after training, experiments are carried out where an imitating robot perceives the dynamic movement behaviours of another model robot (...) carrying a light source. It learns the movement behaviour of the model by either statically observing the model, dynamically observing the model or by following the model. It finally re-enacts the learnt behaviour. We compare the results of these re-enactments and illustrate the differences and trade-offs that arise between static observational and reactive following learning methods. We also consider circumstances where, for this robotic embodiment, dynamic observation has both advantages and disadvantages when compared to static observation. We conclude by discussing the implications that arise from using and combining these types of social learning. (shrink)

Higher education institutions are mining and analyzing student data to effect educational, political, and managerial outcomes. Done under the banner of “learning analytics,” this work can—and often does—surface sensitive data and information about, inter alia, a student’s demographics, academic performance, offline and online movements, physical fitness, mental wellbeing, and social network. With these data, institutions and third parties are able to describe student life, predict future behaviors, and intervene to address academic or other barriers to student success (however defined). Learning (...) analytics, consequently, raise serious issues concerning student privacy, autonomy, and the appropriate flow of student data. We argue that issues around privacy lead to valid questions about the degree to which students should trust their institution to use learning analytics data and other artifacts (algorithms, predictive scores) with their interests in mind. We argue that higher education institutions are paradigms of information fiduciaries. As such, colleges and universities have a special responsibility to their students. In this article, we use the information fiduciary concept to analyze cases when learning analytics violate an institution’s responsibility to its students. (shrink)

We raise two objections to Slote’s article. First, empathy cannot provide information about the world in the direct way Slote proposes. Emotional contagion might be able to do so, but this type of process is different from the empathic one. Second, even if we accept his view of empathy, his claim that we make moral judgments via empathizing with the ‘warmth’ or ‘coldness’ of the actor seems misguided because, we usually empathize with the patient, and we empathize with emotions, not (...) “temperatures”. (shrink)

Ethical sourcing and socially responsible purchasing is increasingly on the business agenda, but developing and implementing policy and practice across a global network of suppliers is challenging. The purpose of this paper is to expand theory on the nature of linkages between firms in a social network, specifically postulating how ties between organizations can be configured to facilitate development, diffusion, and adoption of sustainability initiatives. The theory development provides a lens with which to view the influence of a firm’s structural (...) embeddedness in its organizational social network on developing, diffusing and adopting sustainability initiatives. The focus is on brokers who in various structural alignments help bridge the focal firm’s sustainability initiatives with distant or disconnected stakeholders the focal firm is trying to reach. The brokers help the focal firm engage these stakeholders by sharing knowledge and information regarding sustainability initiatives and by incorporating localized needs into the development of the initiatives to facilitate better diffusion and adoption. The theoretical contribution of this manuscript is a novel perspective on sustainability in organizational networks. This perspective allows for greater explanatory power regarding how organizations can achieve sustainable outcomes that meet a broad base of stakeholder needs and better facilitate sustainability initiatives across a diverse and expansive network. (shrink)

In recent years, educational institutions have started using the tools of commercial data analytics in higher education. By gathering information about students as they navigate campus information systems, learning analytics “uses analytic techniques to help target instructional, curricular, and support resources” to examine student learning behaviors and change students’ learning environments. As a result, the information educators and educational institutions have at their disposal is no longer demarcated by course content and assessments, and old boundaries between information used for assessment (...) and information about how students live and work are blurring. Our goal in this paper is to provide a systematic discussion of the ways in which privacy and learning analytics conflict and to provide a framework for understanding those conflicts. -/- We argue that there are five crucial issues about student privacy that we must address in order to ensure that whatever the laudable goals and gains of learning analytics, they are commensurate with respecting students’ privacy and associated rights, including (but not limited to) autonomy interests. First, we argue that we must distinguish among different entities with respect to whom students have, or lack, privacy. Second, we argue that we need clear criteria for what information may justifiably be collected in the name of learning analytics. Third, we need to address whether purported consequences of learning analytics (e.g., better learning outcomes) are justified and what the distributions of those consequences are. Fourth, we argue that regardless of how robust the benefits of learning analytics turn out to be, students have important autonomy interests in how information about them is collected. Finally, we argue that it is an open question whether the goods that justify higher education are advanced by learning analytics, or whether collection of information actually runs counter to those goods. (shrink)

Ces études débordent le problème du temps chez les Stoïciens et se proposent d’établir que cette question, en apparence modeste, permet d’éclairer, et en même temps commande l’ensemble du système.Au premier abord en effet, la théorie du temps se présente comme une simple section d’un chapitre de la Physique, celui qui traite des Incorporels. Mais déjà la simple interprétation des textes transmis fait voir que cette théorie tient étroitement à d’autres théories, comme celle des incorporels en général, des catégories, de (...) la substance. Abordant ensuite les thèses majeures de la logique et de l’éthique, on s’aperçoit qu’à leur tour elles sont solidaires de la conception du temps qui, dans bien des cas, fait évanouir leur apparence de paradoxe. A cela même, il n’y a rien d’étrange, si l’on se souvient que le stoïcisme, plus que tout autre philosophie antique, constitue un système cohérent. Mais plus particulièrement, le problème du temps a dû former comme le noeud de la réflexion stoïcienne qui vise, contre les lourdes autorités de Platon et d’Aristote, à rétablir dans sa réalité et dans sa dignité, le concret, le sensible, disqualifié comme « sujet à la génération et à la corruption », c’est-à-dire, en un mot, comme « l’être dans le temps ». (shrink)

Mobile devices with health apps, direct-to-consumer genetic testing, crowd-sourced information, and other data sources have enabled research by new classes of researchers. Independent researchers, citizen scientists, patient-directed researchers, self-experimenters, and others are not covered by federal research regulations because they are not recipients of federal financial assistance or conducting research in anticipation of a submission to the FDA for approval of a new drug or medical device. This article addresses the difficult policy challenge of promoting the welfare and interests of (...) research participants, as well as the public, in the absence of regulatory requirements and without discouraging independent, innovative scientific inquiry. The article recommends a series of measures, including education, consultation, transparency, self-governance, and regulation to strike the appropriate balance. (shrink)

This is a letter to the editor in response to “Bioethics Consultation in the Private Sector” by Baruch Brody et al. (HCR May-June, 2002). The letter argues that increased steps need to be taken to minimize potential conflicts of interest when bioethicists are paid to consult for pharmaceutical companies.