Background Supporting physicians in Intensive Care Units s as they face dying patients at unprecedented levels due to the COVID-19 pandemic is critical. Amidst a dearth of such data and guided by evidence that nurses in ICUs experience personal, professional and existential issues in similar conditions, a systematic scoping review is proposed to evaluate prevailing accounts of physicians facing dying patients in ICUs through the lens of Personhood. Such data would enhance understanding and guide the provision of better support for (...) ICU physicians. Methods An SSR adopts the Systematic Evidenced Based Approach to map prevailing accounts of caring for dying patients in ICUs. To enhance the transparency and reproducibility of this process, concurrent and independent use of tabulated summaries, thematic analysis and directed content analysis is adopted. Results Eight thousand three hundred fifty-eight abstracts were reviewed from four databases, 474 full-text articles were evaluated, 58 articles were included, and the Split Approach revealed six categories/themes centered around the Innate, Individual, Relational and Societal Rings of Personhood, conflicts in providing end of life care and coping mechanisms employed. Conclusion This SSR suggests that caring for dying patients in ICU impacts how physicians view their personhood. To resolve conflicts within individual concepts of personhood, physicians use prioritization, reframing and rely on accessible, personalized support from colleagues to steer coping strategies. An adapted form of the Ring Theory of Personhood is proposed to direct timely personalized, appropriate and holistic support. (shrink)

Having adequate knowledge of the world is not just a matter of survival but also one of obligation. This obligation to "know well" is what philosophers have termed "epistemic responsibility." In this innovative and eclectic study, Lorraine Code explores the possibilities inherent in this concept as a basis for understanding human attempts to know and understand the world and for discerning the nature of intellectual virtue. By focusing on the idea that knowing is a creative process guided by imperatives (...) of epistemic responsibility, Code provides a fresh perspective on the theory of knowledge. From this new perspective, Code poses questions about knowledge that have a different focus from those traditionally raised in the two leading epistemological theories, foundationalism and coherentism. While not rejecting these approaches, this new position moves away from a primary concentration on determinate products and towards an examination of ever-changing processes. Arguing that knowledge never exists as an ungrounded abstraction but rather emerges through dialogue between variously authoritative "knowers" situated within particular social and historical contexts, she draws extensively on examples from lived social experience to illustrate the ways in which human beings have long tried to recognize and meet their epistemic responsibilities. This edition of Epistemic Responsibility includes a new preface from Lorraine Code"--Provided by the publisher. (shrink)

According to the spreading hypothesis of object-based attention, a subliminal cue that can successfully capture attention to a location within an object should also cause attention to spread throughout the whole cued object and lead to the same-object advantage. Instead, we propose that a subliminal cue favors shifts of attention between objects and strengthens the between-object link, which is coded primarily within the dorsal pathway that governs the visual guidance of action. By adopting the two-rectangle method and using an effective (...) subliminal cue to compare with the classic suprathreshold cue, we found a different result pattern with suprathreshold cues than with subliminal cues. The suprathreshold cue replicated the conventional location and object effects, whereas a subliminal cue led to a different-object advantage with a facilitatory location effect and a same-object advantage with an inhibitory location effect. These results support our consciousness-dependent shifting hypothesis but not the spreading hypothesis. (shrink)

This study examines whether human gaze lacking the confounding factor of eye whites can be processed unconsciously and explores the critical aspects for such process. Utilizing the continuous flash suppression paradigm, a schematic face—with direct or averted gaze, and with neutral, fearful or happy expressions—was presented to one eye while dynamic masks rendered it invisible to the other eye. Schematic faces were used to avoid unwanted influence from salient eye whites. Participants’ detection time of anything other than the masks was (...) used as an index of unconscious processing time. Faster detection was found for faces with direct gaze than those with averted gaze. However, there was no difference between detection times for different facial expressions and upright-face, inverted-face, and eyes-only conditions . These results confirm that, with schematic faces, gaze can be processed unconsciously regardless of facial expression, and eyes alone are sufficient for such process. (shrink)

Background: Moral distress occurs when nurses experience ethical dilemmas. Issues related to these dilemmas are addressed in some nursing education courses. Nurses’ reaction to dilemma such as moral distress is relatively less noticed. Objective: This study aimed to identify and describe the various types of perceptions of moral distress exhibited by nurses. Research design: This study applied Q methodology to explore the perspectives of nurses regarding moral distress. Data were collected in two stages. First, in-depth interviews were conducted to collect (...) nurses’ opinions. Sentences that best fit the concepts of moral distress were extracted for the construction of Q statements. Second, nurses subjectively ranked these Q statements so that the relevant severity of moral distress could be determined using Q sorts. The study participants were nurses at a regional teaching hospital in northeast Taiwan. A total of 60 participants were invited to rank 40 moral distress Q statements. Ethical considerations: The study protocol was approved by the institutional review board of National Yang-Ming University Hospital. Only the participants who signed an informed consent form participated in the study. The respondents’ right to withdraw from the study was respected. Findings: Five types of responses were identified regarding the nurses’ perspectives. These types were “conflict with personal values,” “excessive of workload,” “curbing of autonomy,” “constraint engendered by organizational norms,” and “self-expectation frustration.” Conclusion: The findings regarding nurses’ experiences of moral distress can be used to construct multifaceted policies and solutions and to incorporate ethical education in training programs. (shrink)

This study investigated students? perceptions of their own and their peers? academic dishonesty (AD), their reasons for this dishonesty, their achievement goals, and their willingness to report AD (WRAD) within a Chinese cultural context. The results identified students? belief that their peers had a greater likelihood of engaging in AD and had more motivation to do so than did the students themselves. Gender and academic major did not affect students? WRAD. However, students were significantly more willing to report classmates than (...) friends. In terms of the participants? self-perceptions and peer perceptions concerning motivations for AD, more female students cited the lack of penalties as the reason for their own and their peers? AD, whereas male students more frequently cited their lack of attention to schoolwork as the reason for their own AD. In contrast to students in the social sciences, business students more frequently cited inadequate capabilities as the reason for their AD, and engineering students more frequently attributed their AD to self-interest. Multiple regression analysis demonstrated that three motivations for AD (opportunism, inadequacy, and self-promotion) could positively predict AD, whereas mastery-approach goals could negatively predict AD. (shrink)

Previous research has shown implicit semantic processing of faces or pictures, but whether symbolic carriers such as words can be processed this way remains controversial. Here we examine this issue by adopting the continuous flash suppression paradigm to ensure that the processing undergone is indeed unconscious without the involvement of partial awareness. Negative or neutral words projected into one eye were made invisible due to strong suppression induced by dynamic-noise patterns shown in the other eye through binocular rivalry. Inverted and (...) scrambled words were used as controls to provide baselines at orthographic and feature levels, respectively. Compared to neutral words, emotion-described and emotion-induced negative words required longer time to release from suppression, but only for upright words. These results suggest that words can be processed unconsciously up to semantic level since under interocular suppression completely invisible words can lead to different processing speed due to the emotion information they carry. (shrink)

Social enterprises, as typical hybrid organisations, are embedded in a plural institutional environment in which some stakeholders regard achieving social goals as fundamental, while others see economic profit as the priority. A great challenge for social enterprises is dealing with the conflicts resulting from the diverse expectations of stakeholders. Based on the existing works on organisational legitimacy and the social business model, we propose a legitimacy-based social enterprise model composed of three main phases, namely, legitimacy proposition, legitimacy strategy planning, and (...) legitimacy strategy implementation. Our model is meant to serve as an effective legitimacy-building tool for social enterprises of various kinds. (shrink)

BackgroundIn the early days of COVID-19 outbreak, the normally orderly health system was severely challenged by large numbers of feverish patients and shortage of healthcare workers. The outbreak played a harmful role in the mental health of these healthcare workers.ObjectiveWe aim to assess the prevalence of moderate or severe anxiety and depression symptoms of healthcare workers in different regions during COVID-19 disaster and identify the potential risk factors.MethodsWe did a cross-sectional study on ADS of healthcare workers in epicenter-Hubei province and (...) regions in lower epidemic-other provinces by questionnaire online. The data of ADS, the demographic characteristics, occupational exposure, physical condition, family situation, and coping styles were collected and analyzed.ResultsA total of 24.68% of the respondents had experienced moderate or severe ADS. Moderate or severe ADSs were in a higher prevalence in Hubei than other provinces. Suspicious symptoms on their own and in family members were independent risk factors of moderate or severe ADS of all health workers. Working on the frontline was the independent risk factor for participants in Hubei province, whereas quarantine was the independent risk factor for those in other provinces. Moreover, among all participants, those with negative coping style were more than four times more likely to have moderate or severe ADS than those with positive coping style.ConclusionModerate or severe ADSs were in a higher prevalence in healthcare workers of Hubei province during COVID-19 outbreak. The coping style may have major impact on ADS in such situation. (shrink)

This article is a review of the rise and development of women’s studies and the sociology of women/gender, two interrelated academic fields in China. Informed by the sociology of knowledge, the authors analyze how historical and sociopolitical factors such as the legacy of Marxism, state/party control, economic reform, political upheavals, local conditions, and global influences have greatly shaped what and how women’s and gender issues are studied and the resultant characteristics and knowledge production of the two fields in China. Specifically, (...) the authors examine the dynamic process of knowledge development in sociology of women/gender in terms of its academic positioning, standpoint, content, research methodology, curriculum transformation, and teaching in China. Finally, the authors demonstrate how the characteristics and issues shared by the two fields have evolved in a dynamic interplay between Chinese Marxism and feminism. (shrink)

PurposeTo study the changes in functional connections between the left and right hemispheres of patients with high myopia and healthy controls by resting functional magnetic resonance imaging based on voxel-mirrored homotopic connectivity. To study the changes in resting-state functional connectivity between the left and right hemispheres of patients with HM and healthy controls at rest by using resting functional magnetic resonance imaging based on voxel-mirror homotopy connectivity.Patients and MethodsA total of 89 patients with HM and 59 HCs were collected and (...) matched according to gender, age, and education level. The VMHC method was used to evaluate the changes in rsFC between cerebral hemispheres, and a correlation analysis was carried out to understand the differences in brain functional activities between the patients with HM and the HCs.ResultsCompared with the HCs, the VMHC values of the putamen and fusiform in the HM group were significantly lower.ConclusionThis study preliminarily confirmed the destruction of interhemispheric functional connection in some brain regions of the patients with HM and provided effective information for clarifying the neural mechanism of patients with HM. (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)

The aim of this study was to analyze nurses' experiences of role strain when taking care of patients with severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). We adopted an interpretive/constructivist paradigm. Twenty-one nurses who had taken care of SARS patients were interviewed in focus groups. The data were analyzed using thematic analysis. The self-state of nurses during the SARS outbreak evolved into that of professional self as: (1) self-preservation; (2) self-mirroring; and (3) self-transcendence. The relationship between self-state and reflective practice is discussed.

Voluntary disclosures of sustainability information have recently received considerable attention by investors, regulators, and public companies in improving reliability and integrity of corporate reporting. We examine the association between the quantity and quality of sustainability disclosures and earnings quality in the context of corporate ethical value and culture. We posit that sustainability disclosures of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance reports are linked to earnings quality, because of the importance of both earnings quality and ESG sustainability disclosures to investors and (...) trustworthiness of corporate reporting. We collect our sample of 35,110 firm-year observations between 1999 and 2015. Using both difference-in-difference tests and OLS regression, we find that sustainability disclosure quantity is positively associated with innate earnings quality and negatively correlated with discretionary earnings quality in mitigating managerial earnings manipulation and unethical opportunistic reporting behavior. Further tests illustrate that sustainability disclosure quality can strengthen the positive relation between innate earnings quality and sustainability disclosure quantity and mitigate the negative relation between discretionary earnings quality and sustainability disclosure quantity. Finally, additional tests suggest that the relation between earnings quality and sustainability disclosure quantity is moderated by corporate structure and prior-year sustainability performance. Our results provide policy, practical, and research implications as ESG sustainability reporting is being integrated into corporate culture and business models. (shrink)

Objectivity has a history, and it is full of surprises. In Objectivity, Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison chart the emergence of objectivity in the mid-nineteenth-century sciences--and show how the concept differs from its alternatives, truth-to-nature and trained judgment. This is a story of lofty epistemic ideals fused with workaday practices in the making of scientific images. From the eighteenth through the early twenty-first centuries, the images that reveal the deepest commitments of the empirical sciences--from anatomy to crystallography--are those featured (...) in scientific atlases, the compendia that teach practitioners what is worth looking at and how to look at it. Galison and Daston use atlas images to uncover a hidden history of scientific objectivity and its rivals. Whether an atlas maker idealizes an image to capture the essentials in the name of truth-to-nature or refuses to erase even the most incidental detail in the name of objectivity or highlights patterns in the name of trained judgment is a decision enforced by an ethos as well as by an epistemology. As Daston and Galison argue, atlases shape the subjects as well as the objects of science. To pursue objectivity--or truth-to-nature or trained judgment--is simultaneously to cultivate a distinctive scientific self wherein knowing and knower converge. Moreover, the very point at which they visibly converge is in the very act of seeing not as a separate individual but as a member of a particular scientific community. Embedded in the atlas image, therefore, are the traces of consequential choices about knowledge, persona, and collective sight. Objectivity is a book addressed to anyone interested in the elusive and crucial notion of objectivity-- and in what it means to peer into the world scientifically. Lorraine Daston is Director at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin, Germany. She is the coauthor of Wonders and the Order of Nature, 1150-1750 and the editor of Things That Talk: Object Lessons from Art and Science. Peter Galison is Pellegrino University Professor of the History of Science and of Physics at Harvard University. He is the author of Einstein's Clocks, Poincaré's Maps: Empires of Time, How Experiments End, and Image and Logic: A Material Culture of Microphysics, and other books, and coeditor of The Architecture of Science. (shrink)

This book offers a comprehensive account of the major philosophical works on friendship and its relationship to self-love. The book gives central place to Aristotle's searching examination of friendship in the Nicomachean Ethics. Lorraine Pangle argues that the difficulties surrounding this discussion are soon dispelled once one understands the purpose of the Ethics as both a source of practical guidance for life and a profound, theoretical investigation into human nature. The book also provides fresh interpretations of works on friendship (...) by Plato, Cicero, Epicurus, Seneca, Montaigne and Bacon. The author shows how each of these thinkers sheds light on central questions of moral philosophy: is human sociability rooted in neediness or strength? is the best life chiefly solitary, or dedicated to a community with others? Clearly structured and engagingly written, this book will appeal to a broad swathe of readers across philosophy, classics and political science. (shrink)

Mark Coeckelbergh (Int J Soc Robot 1:217–221, 2009) argues that robot ethics should investigate what interaction with robots can do to humans rather than focusing on the robot’s moral status. We should ask what robots do to our sociality and whether human–robot interaction can contribute to the human good and human flourishing. This paper extends Coeckelbergh’s call and investigate what it means to live with disembodied AI-powered agents. We address the following question: Can the human–AI interaction contribute to our moral (...) development? We present an empirically informed philosophical analysis of how the AI personal assistant Siri changes its users’ way of life, based on the responses obtained from 20 semi-directive individual interviews with Siri users. We identify changes in the users’ social interaction associated with the adoption of Siri. These changes include: (1) the indirect effect of reducing opportunities of human interaction, (2) the second-order effect of diminished expectations toward each other in a community, and (3) the acquired preference to obtain hassle-free interaction with Siri over human interaction. We examine them in relation to concerns that are voiced in the current debates over the rise of AI, namely the suspicion that humans could become overly reliant on AI (Danaher 2019) and the worry that social AI could impede on moral development (Fröding and Peterson, Ethics Inf Technol 23:207–214, 2012; Li, Ethics Inf Technol 23:543–550, 2021). We analyze the ethical costs that come from these changes in light of virtue ethics and address potential objections along the way. We end by offering directions for thinking about how to live with AI personal assistant while preserving favorable conditions for moral development. (shrink)

In this lively and accessible book Lorraine Code addresses one of the most controversial questions in contemporary theory of knowledge, a question of fundamental concern for feminist theory as well: Is the sex of the knower epistemologically significant? Responding in the affirmative, Code offers a radical alterantive to mainstream philosophy's terms for what counts as knowledge and how it is to be evaluated. Code first reviews the literature of established epistemologies and unmasks the prevailing assumption in Anglo-American philosophy that (...) "the knower" is a value-free and ideologically neutral abstraction. Approaching knowledge as a social construct produced and validated through critical dialogue, she defines the knower in light of a conception of subjectivity based on a personal relational model. Code maps out the relevance of the particular people involved in knowing: their historical specificity, the kinds of relationships they have, the effects of social position and power on those relationships, and the ways in which knowledge can change both knower and known. In an exploration of the politics of knowledge that mainstream epistemologies sustain, she examines such issues as the function of knowledge in shaping institutions and the unequal distribution of cognitive resources. What Can She Know? will raise the level of debate concerning epistemological issues among philosophers, political and social scientists, and anyone interested in feminist theory. (shrink)

Evidence suggests divergent thinking is the cognitive basis of creative thoughts. Neuroimaging literature using resting-state functional connectivity has revealed network reorganizations during divergent thinking. Recent studies have revealed the changes of network organizations when performing creativity tasks, but such brain reconfigurations may be prolonged after task and be modulated by the trait of creativity. To investigate the dynamic reconfiguration, 40 young participants were recruited to perform consecutive Alternative Uses Tasks for divergent thinking and two resting-state scans were used for mapping (...) the brain reorganizations after AUT. We split participants into high- and low-creative groups based on creative achievement questionnaire and targeted on reconfigurations of the two brain networks: default-mode network and the network seeded at the left inferior frontal gyrus because the between-group difference of AUT-induced brain activation located at the left IFG. The changes of post-AUT RSFCs indicated the prolonged effect of divergent thinking. More specifically, the alterations of RSFCIFG−AG and RSFCIFG−IPL in the high-creative group had positive relationship with their AUT performances, but not found in the low-creative group. Furthermore, the RSFC changes of DMN did not present significant relationships with AUT performances. The findings not only confirmed the possibility of brain dynamic reconfiguration following divergent thinking, but also suggested the distinct IFGN reconfiguration between individuals with different creativity levels. (shrink)

Employees' emotions have an important effect on their job performance, thus leaders can influence subordinates' emotions through emotional contagion and emotional appeal and ultimately affect their job performance. Based on the affective events theory, this study examines the impact of emotional leadership on the subordinates' job performance, the mediating role of subordinates' positive emotions, and the moderating role of susceptibility to positive emotion. Hierarchical regression analysis of 362 valid questionnaires showed that: (1) emotional leadership has a significant positive effect on (...) subordinates' job performance; (2) subordinates' positive emotion partially mediated the relationship between emotional leadership and subordinates' job performance; (3) subordinates' susceptibility to positive emotion positively moderated the relationship between emotional leadership and positive emotions, i.e., the higher the subordinates' susceptibility to positive emotion, the greater the effect of emotional leadership on their positive emotions. This study validates affective events theory, deepens the understanding of the influence mechanism and boundary conditions of emotional leadership on subordinates' job performance, and provides some references for employee performance management. (shrink)

In recent years, the incidence of depressive symptoms among Chinese college students has been increasing. Studies have shown that depressive symptoms are related to a variety of psychosocial factors, among which neuroticism, resilience, and attention bias are most notably related, but the correlation among the three is not clear. This study aimed to investigate the influence mechanisms of different degrees of resilience, attentional bias, and neuroticism in the formation of depressive symptoms. The college freshmen of this study were selected through (...) stratified multi-stage cluster sampling. Students provided informed consent and then completed a general situation questionnaire and four scales: the Chinese version of the Connor–Davidson Resilience Scale, the Attention to Positive and Negative Information Scale, the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire, and the Zung Self-Rating Depressive Symptoms Scale. In total, 1,493 freshmen participated in the research group. Our results showed that low resilience, negative attention bias, and high neuroticism jointly increased the risk of depressive symptoms. There is a significant correlation between these three factors and depressive symptoms. Additionally, strength, tenacity, and attention bias all had more significant effects on the occurrence of depressive symptoms. These findings indicate that there may be an important psychological mechanism for the occurrence, development, and poor prognosis of depressive symptoms. (shrink)

The eukaryotic genome is organized into different domains by cis‐acting elements, such as boundaries/insulators and matrix attachment regions, and is packaged with different degrees of condensation. In the M phase, the chromatin becomes further highly condensed into chromosomes. The first step for transcriptional activation of a given gene, at a particular time during development, in any locus, is the opening of its chromatin domain. This locus needs to be kept in this state in each early G1 phase during every cell (...) cycle. Certain distal enhance elements, including locus control regions (LCRs) and enhancers, are believed to perform this target chromatin domain opening process and several models have been proposed to explain distal enhance action. But they did not explain precisely how a given chromatin domain is opened. Based on various studies, we propose a hypothesis for the mechanism of opening chromatin on a large scale. One important mechanism may involved breaking one or two DNA strands and reducing the linking numbers within chromatin domain. The topological changes can overpass some complexes formed on DNA strands and can be transmitted from specific localized points over a broad region, until boundary elements or insulators are reached. These may initiate downstream events such as propagation of histone acetylation and the binding of transcription factors to proximal promoters and may further augment the action mediated by distal enhancer elements. BioEssays 25:507–514, 2003. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

School violence research has mainly focused on the impact on students. Very few studies, even fewer from a cross-cultural perspective, have examined the relationships between school violence and teacher professional engagement, and the role played by teacher self-efficacy and school climate related factors. The present study utilizes a SEM research methodology to analyze the 2013 TALIS data. The purpose is to understand and compare the relationships in four different cultural contexts; the U.S., England, South Korea, and Mexico. Results indicate, on (...) average, that the significant and negative impacts of school violence on teacher professional engagement are partly mediated by teacher self-efficacy. The negativity of school violence is significantly alleviated by enhancing participation among school stakeholders and improving teacher–student relationships. The relationships among the factors apply across all four cultural systems, though, the effects of factors and variables vary to a degree. The paper also discusses other relevant issues and differences as well as their implications. (shrink)