How kids play in virtual worlds, how it matters for their offline lives, and what this means for designing educational opportunities.

The theme of Aesthetics in Present Future concerns the new chances the arts have and the deep changes they are undergoing, due to the new media, and the digital world in which we are growingly immersed. That this world is to be understood from an aesthetic point of view, become clear if we think of how much of what we produce, and observe and study is offered through images in particular and perceptual means in general.

This book presents a collection of contemporary discourses that reconsider the relationship of democracy as a political ideology and American ideal and education as the foundation of preparing democratic citizens in America.

The generalized thermodynamic potential analysis of nonlinear irreversible processes precludes the analysis of rotational processes. The nonexistence of scalar potential functions necessitates a thermodynamic analysis of the system forces. A field analysis in the phase space of the generalized displacements and velocities treats the force components as tensors of second order that tend to deform and rotate the irreversible process, which is viewed as an elastic material. The analysis of chemical oscillatory processes involves the introduction of the thermodynamic vector potential, (...) which is subsequently used in the formulation of a variational principle and to define an energy flux vector. The direction of energy flow elucidates the mechanism by which steady motion is maintained and it is a characteristic property of open systems. Field analyses of systems that are described by half and single degrees of freedom are contrasted. (shrink)

Background: Pre-licensure ethics nursing education does not adequately prepare and instill confidence in nurses to address ethical issues, and yet ethics education provides nurses with greater confidence to take moral action, which can mitigate the negative effects of moral distress. Objectives: To assess the feasibility and acceptability of a nursing ethics education program that included simulated case-based ethics competencies as a form of evaluation. The program aimed at building nurses’ ethical knowledge and confidence to respond to ethical challenges in practice. (...) Research design: A prospective, longitudinal, correlational, single-cohort feasibility study using an investigator-developed survey and intervention field data. Participants and research context: Registered nurses were recruited from an academic quaternary-care medical center and 9 small- to mid-sized regional hospitals within one health system in the Midwest United States. Ethical considerations: IRB approval was obtained. Participants could complete the educational program regardless of research process participation. Findings: Of 20 participants, 19 (95%) provided post-program surveys and 18 completed competencies. Median (IQR) scores with quartiles for scheduling, timing, and length of sessions were all 10.0 [9.0, 10.0], and participants perceived that the content was interesting, increased knowledge and confidence in ethics, increased skills in providing ethical care, and would recommend the program to colleagues. Of factors, an increase in ethics knowledge had the highest “always agree” (17, 89.5%) response. Most participants reported that ethics competencies were appropriate 9.0 [9.0, 10.0] and sufficiently challenging 10.0 [9.0, 10.0]. Discussion: The education program developed nurses’ ethics knowledge and confidence. The single-cohort feasibility design provided early-stage intervention outcomes; however, a larger randomized controlled trial would substantiate program value. Conclusion: This novel ethics education program was highly feasible and acceptable to hospital-based nurses who reported increased knowledge and confidence in providing ethical care. Simulated case-based ethics competencies were an appropriate evaluation method. (shrink)

Rarita-Schwinger (RS) quantum free field is reexamined in the context of deformation quantization (DQ). It is interesting to consider this alternative for the specific case of the spin 3/2 field because DQ avoids the problem of dealing from the beginning with the extra degrees of freedom which appears in the conventional canonical quantization. It is found out that the subsidiary condition does not introduce any change either in the Wigner function or in other aspects of the Weyl-Wigner-Groenewold-Moyal formalism, such as: (...) the Stratonovich-Weyl quantizer and normal ordering, in relation to de Dirac field case. The RS propagator is also calculated within this framework. (shrink)

The dynamical behaviour of a very general model of neural networks with random asymmetric synaptic weights is investigated in the presence of random thresholds. Using mean-field equations, the bifurcations of the fixed points and the change of regime when varying control parameters are established. Different areas with various regimes are defined in the parameter space. Chaos arises generically by a quasi-periodicity route.

The tutelage of our mentors as scientists included the analogy that writing a good scientific paper was an exercise in storytelling that omitted unessential details that did not move the story forward or that detracted from the overall message. However, the advice to not get lost in the details had an important flaw. In science, it is the many details of the data themselves and the methods used to generate and analyze them that give conclusions their probative meaning. Facts may (...) sometimes slow or distract from the clarity, tidiness, intrigue, or flow of the narrative, but nevertheless they are important for the assessment of what was done, the trustworthiness of the science, and the meaning of the findings. Nevertheless, many critical elements and facts about research studies may be omitted from the narrative and become hidden from scholarly scrutiny. We describe a “baker’s dozen” shortfalls in which such elements that are pertinent to evaluating the validity of scientific studies are sometimes hidden in reports of the work. Such shortfalls may be intentional or unintentional or lie somewhere in between. Additionally, shortfalls may occur at the level of the individual or an institution or of the entire system itself. We conclude by proposing countermeasures to these shortfalls. (shrink)

We first relate the random matrix model to a Fokker-Planck Hamiltonian system, such that the correlation functions of the model are expressed as the vacuum expectation values of equal-time products of density operators. We then analyze the universality of the random matrix model by solving the Focker-Planck Hamiltonian system for large N. We use two equivalent methods to do this, namely the method of relating it to a system of interacting fermions in one space dimension and the method of collective (...) fields for large N matrix quantum mechanics. The final result using both these methods is the same Hamiltonian system of chiral bosons on a circle, which manifestly exhibits the universality of the random matrix model. (shrink)

Objective: To explore the ways in which health care practitioners working within the morally contested area of prenatal screening balance their professional and private moral values.Design: Qualitative study incorporating semistructured interviews with health practitioners followed by multidisciplinary discussion groups led by a health care ethicist.Setting: Inner city teaching hospital and district general hospital situated in South East England.Participants: Seventy practitioners whose work relates directly or indirectly to perinatal care.Results: Practitioners managed the interface between their professional and private moral values in (...) a variety of ways. Two key categories emerged: “tolerators”, and “facilitators”. The majority of practitioners fell into the “facilitator” category. Many “facilitators” felt comfortable with the prevailing ethos within their unit, and appeared unlikely to feel challenged unless the ethos was radically challenged. For others, the separation of personal and professional moral values was a daily struggle. In the “tolerator” group, some practitioners sought to influence the service offered directly, whereas others placed limits on how they themselves would contribute to practices they considered immoral.Conclusions: The “official” commitment to non-directiveness does not encourage open debate between professionals working in morally contested fields. It is important that practical means can be found to support practitioners and encourage debate. Otherwise, it is argued, these fields may come to be staffed by people with homogeneous moral views. This lack of diversity could lead to a lack of critical analysis and debate among staff about the ethos and standards of care within their unit. (shrink)

A survey of the field of hypercomputation, including discussion of a variety of objections.

The 1995 Encyclopedia of Bioethics is an almost complete reworking of the original 1978 edition, due to the expanding nature of the field. The following article focuses on how the second edition of the Encyclopedia deals with the topic of “clinical ethics” and three related topics: “nursing ethics”, “trust”, and “conflict of interest”. We assess their relevance to the current developments in these fields and the Encyclopedia's usefulness as a resource to ethics consultants, researchers and clinicians. We emphasize the (...) heterogeneity of clinical ethics as a still new and evolving field. (shrink)

In 2014, the editorial board of BMC Medical Ethics came together to devise sections for the journal that would give structure to the journal help ensure that authors’ research is matched to the most appropriate editors and help readers to find the research most relevant to them. The editorial board decided to take a practical approach to devising sections that dealt with the challenges of content management. After that, we started thinking more theoretically about how one could go about classifying (...) the field of medical ethics. This editorial elaborates and reflects on the practical approach that we took at the journal, then considers an alternative theoretically derived approach, and reflects on the possibilities, challenges and value of classifying the field more broadly. (shrink)

Translational ethics (TE) has been developed into a specific approach, which revolves around the argument that strategies for bridging the theory‐practice gap in bioethics must themselves be justified on ethical terms. This version of TE incorporates normative, empirical and foundational ethics research and continues to develop through application and in the face of new ethical challenges. Here, I explore the idea that the academic field of bioethics has not yet sufficiently analysed its own philosophical foundation for how it can, and (...) should, be practically relevant; neither has it comprehensively discussed the limitations on what impacts bioethicists should pursue. As a result, there has not been adequate training on how to suitably and appropriately impact real‐world practices. Moreover, bioethical perspectives are often competing with other strong interests, for example, economic and political, which may weaken their impact on policy‐making. The TE approach I propose can not only facilitate practical impacts of academic bioethics by being better informed by real‐world ethical issues but it also supports targeted and ethical justifications of the actual impact of academic work in real‐world contexts. In this paper, I clarify the premises for this TE approach, identify further challenges and sketch out potential solutions for the implementation of this methodological framework. (shrink)

Paul Thompson’s excellent book, From Field to Fork: Food Ethics for Everyone, argues that contemporary food ethics persistently ignores the nature and actual impact of GMOs, Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations, food aid to developing countries, and more. On Thompson’s view, such philosophical analyses must incorporate empirical knowledge. Additional strengths of Thompson’s book: its attention to quality-of-life issues, its openness to the concerns of the marginalized, and its emphasis on the interconnectedness of problems in food ethics. I raise one area of (...) disagreement with Thompson: his treatment of GMOs is, I argue, insufficiently skeptical. I suggest a three-fold revision of the book’s treatment of the precautionary principle, and I levy an additional argument against GMOs, the Inductive Argument. Using the herbicide Roundup as a case study of the ways in which industry urges the use of technologies that have not been fully vetted or monitored, I argue that products originally seen as safe often turn out instead to be harmful to the environment and health. Significant inductive experience with similar cases gives people additional reason to be even more suspicious of GMOs than Thompson suggests. (shrink)

Ekstein has shown that causal independence neither implies nor is implied by commutativity in an infinite-dimensional, reducible construction. DeFacio and Taylor have presented a finite-dimensional irreducible example of Ekstein's proposition. Avishai and Ekstein have shown that the original question regarding locality for algebraic quantum field theories remainsopen. We concur with that claim and offer additional arguments. A new denumerably infinite-dimensional, irreducible example is presented here which shows that a sort of “orthogonality” among operators is involved. Some observations on localC*-andW*-algebras are (...) given. (shrink)

© 2017. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.We present new observations of the low-mass companion to HD 984 taken with the Gemini Planet Imager as a part of the GPI Exoplanet Survey campaign. Images of HD 984 B were obtained in the J and H bands. Combined with archival epochs from 2012 and 2014, we fit the first orbit to the companion to find an 18 au orbit with a 68% confidence interval between 14 and 28 au, an eccentricity (...) of 0.18 with a 68% confidence interval between 0.05 and 0.47, and an inclination of 119°with a 68% confidence interval between 114°and 125°. To address the considerable spectral covariance in both spectra, we present a method of splitting the spectra into low and high frequencies to analyze the spectral structure at different spatial frequencies with the proper spectral noise correlation. Using the split spectra, we compare them to known spectral types using field brown dwarf and low-mass star spectra and find a best-fit match of a field gravity M6.5 ±1.5 spectral type with a corresponding temperature of K. Photometry of the companion yields a luminosity of log=2.88 ± 0.07 dex with DUSTY models. Mass estimates, again from DUSTY models, find an age-dependent mass of 34 ±1 to 95 ±4 M Jup. These results are consistent with previous measurements of the object. (shrink)

It is shown that the physics and semantics of quantum measurement provide a natural interpretation of the weak neighborhoods of the states on observable algebras without invoking any idea of “a reading error” or “a measured range.” Then the state preparation process in quantum measurement theory is shown to give the normal (or locally normal) states on the observable algebra. Some remarks are made concerning the physical implications of normal states for systems with an infinite number of degrees of freedom, (...) including questions on open and closed algebraic theories. (shrink)

The existential proposition is treated as the unit of meaning in this analysis of cognitive meaning; the notion of a physical field is the principle ingredient in the analysis. Such problems as meaning, reference, belief, and the unity of a judgment are also discussed in the light of contemporary logic and the psychology of perception. Stephen Pepper contributes a helpful introduction to this short but perspicacious work.--G. B.

© 2016 Regents of the University of California.The Review summarizes much of particle physics and cosmology. Using data from previous editions, plus 3,062 new measurements from 721 papers, we list, evaluate, and average measured properties of gauge bosons and the recently discovered Higgs boson, leptons, quarks, mesons, and baryons. We summarize searches for hypothetical particles such as supersymmetric particles, heavy bosons, axions, dark photons, etc. All the particle properties and search limits are listed in Summary Tables. We also give numerous (...) tables, figures, formulae, and reviews of topics such as Higgs Boson Physics, Supersymmetry, Grand Unified Theories, Neutrino Mixing, Dark Energy, Dark Matter, Cosmology, Particle Detectors, Colliders, Probability and Statistics. Among the 117 reviews are many that are new or heavily revised, including those on Pentaquarks and Inflation. The complete Review is published online in a journal and on the website of the Particle Data Group. The printed PDG Book contains the Summary Tables and all review articles but no longer includes the detailed tables from the Particle Listings. A Booklet with the Summary Tables and abbreviated versions of some of the review articles is also available. (shrink)

After centuries of neglect, the ethics of food are back with a vengeance. Justice for food workers and small farmers has joined the rising tide of concern over the impact of industrial agriculture on food animals and the broader environment, all while a global epidemic of obesity-related diseases threatens to overwhelm modern health systems. An emerging worldwide social movement has turned to local and organic foods, and struggles to exploit widespread concern over the next wave of genetic engineering or nanotechnologies (...) applied to food. Paul B. Thompson's book applies the rigor of philosophy to key topics in the first comprehensive study explore interconnections hidden deep within this welter of issues. Bringing to bear more than thirty years of experience working closely with farmers, agricultural researchers and food system activists, he explores the eclipse of food ethics during the rise of nutritional science, and examines the reasons for its sudden re-emergence in the era of diet-based disease. Thompson discusses social injustice in the food systems of developed economies and shows how we have missed the key insights for understanding food ethics in the developing world. His discussions of animal production and the environmental impact of agriculture break new ground where most philosophers would least expect it. By emphasizing the integration of these issues, Thompson not only brings a comprehensive philosophical approach to moral issues in the production, processing, distribution, and consumption of food -- he introduces a fresh way to think about practical ethics that will have implications in other areas of applied philosophy. (shrink)