To mitigate the spread of schistosomiasis, a deterministic human-bovine mathematical model of its transmission dynamics accounting for contaminated water reservoirs, including treatment of bovines and humans and mollusciciding is formulated and theoretically analyzed. The disease-free equilibrium is locally and globally asymptotically stable whenever the basic reproduction number R0<1\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$R_0<1$$\end{document}, while global stability of the endemic equilibrium is investigated by constructing a suitable Lyapunov function. To support the analytical results, parameter values from published (...) literature are used for numerical simulations and where applicable, uncertainty analysis on the non-dimensional system parameters is performed using the Latin Hypercube Sampling and Partial Rank Correlation Coefficient techniques. Sensitivity analysis to determine the relative importance of model parameters to disease transmission shows that the environment-related parameters namely, εs\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\varepsilon _s$$\end{document} (snails shedding rate of cercariae), ps\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$p_s$$\end{document} (probability that cercariae shed by snails survive), c (fraction of the contaminated environment sprayed by molluscicides) and μc\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\mu _c$$\end{document} (mortality rate of cercariae) are the most significant to mitigate the spread of schistosomiasis. Mollusciciding, which directly impacts the contaminated environment as a single control strategy is more effective compared to treatment. However, concurrently applying mollusciciding and treatment will yield a better outcome. (shrink)

Schistosomiasis, a vector-borne chronically debilitating infectious disease, is a serious public health concern for humans and animals in the affected tropical and sub-tropical regions. We formulate and theoretically analyze a deterministic mathematical model with snail and bovine hosts. The basic reproduction number R0\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$R_0$$\end{document} is computed and used to investigate the local stability of the model’s steady states. Global stability of the endemic equilibrium is carried out by constructing a suitable Lyapunov function. (...) Sensitivity analysis shows that the basic reproduction number is most sensitive to the model parameters related to the contaminated environment, namely: shedding rate of cercariae by snails, cercariae to miracidia survival probability, snails-miracidia effective contact rate and natural death rate of miracidia and cercariae. Numerical results show that when no intervention measures are implemented, there is an increase of the infected classes, and a rapid decline of the number of susceptible and exposed bovines and snails. Effects of the variation of some of the key sensitive model parameters on the schistosomiasis dynamics as well as on the initial disease transmission threshold parameter R0\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$R_0$$\end{document} are graphically depicted. (shrink)

A new, social epistemology of science that addresses practical as well as theoretical concerns.

The work of Tversky, Kahneman and others suggests that people often make use of cognitive heuristics such as availability, salience and representativeness in their reasoning and decision making. Through use of a historical example--the recent plate tectonics revolution in geology--I argue that such heuristics play a crucial role in scientific decision making also. I suggest how these heuristics are to be considered, along with noncognitive factors (such as motivation and social structures) when drawing historical and epistemological conclusions. The normative perspective (...) is community-wide, contextual, and instrumental. (shrink)

This paper advances a new paradigm in clinical ethics education that not only emphasizes development of individual cli but also focuses on the institutional context within which health care professionals work. This approach has been applied to the goal of improving the care provided to critically and terminally ill adults. The model has been adopted by about thirty hospitals and nursing homes; additional institutions will soon join the program, entitled Decisions Near the End of Life. Here, we describe the history (...) and rationale for this approach, its goals, pedagogical assumptions, and design. (shrink)

THE BIG QUESTIONS: A SHORT INTRODUCTION TO PHILOSOPHY tackles the tough issues and helps you form your own opinions while presenting the best philosophical ...

Miranda Fricker developed the concept of hermeneutic injustice as a subtype of epistemic injustice focusing on socially discriminatory obstacles to self-understanding. So, for example, before the consciousness- raising movement, women did not have the conceptual framework to understand their individual experiences as systematic sexual harassment. Fricker makes much of the ‘ah-ha’ moment (‘hermeneutical enlightenment’) that characterizes the experience of reaching greater self-understanding; feminist social epistemologists have described this in terms of achieving ‘standpoint’. While this is a fruitful and insightful example, (...) it has been carefully critiqued by Ishani Maitra. This paper considers other examples from Fricker’s work and from the literature in philosophy of psychiatry to make a fuller assessment of Fricker’s ideas: Asperger Disorder (which was short-lived, in DSM-IV only), postpartum depression, schizophrenia, and the general concept of a psychiatric disorder. In each of these cases, the newly proposed concept has mixed (positive and negative) consequences for self-understanding. ‘Hostage taking’ – an ethically problematic strategy described by Hilde Lindemann Nelson – is common. In all cases, moments of ‘hermeneutical enlightenment’ may pass after reflection on such mixed consequences and after further research on the social cat egories in question. (shrink)

Horror is not the same as fear, and while fear contains an essential action tendency horror does not. And while we can enjoy fear there is no enjoying of horror.

This chapter introduces many of the themes that are developed in more detail in later contributions: the notion that deception and self-deception are essential to self-maintenance; the suspicion that philosophers place too high a price on the truth, and naively fail to recognize the importance of false beliefs and even lies for human flourishing; the complex nature of both deception and self-deception, and their importance to communication; the observation that lies and self-deceptions are crucial to social interaction; the difficulties of (...) defining lie and deception; and the suggestion that it may be the motives behind a deception and not the deception itself that people find morally blameworthy. Nevertheless, it stresses that the truth is to be prized, and deceptions are to be viewed as a kind of necessary evil. (shrink)

The turn of the nineteenth century marked a rich and exciting explosion of philosophical energy and talent. The enormity of the revolution set off in philosophy by Immanuel Kant was comparable, in Kant's own estimation, with the Copernican Revolution that ended the Middle Ages. The movement he set in motion, the fast-moving and often cantankerous dialectic of "German Idealism," inspired some of the most creative philosophers in modern times: including G. W. F. Hegel and Arthur Schopenhauer as well as those (...) who reacted against Kant--Marx and Kierkegaard, for example. This volume traces the emergence of German Idealism from Kant and his predecessors through the first half of the nineteenth century, ending with the irrationalism of Kierkegaard. It provides a broad, scholarly introduction to this period for students of philosophy and related disciplines, as well as some original interpretations of these authors. Also included is a glossary of technical terms as well as a chronological table of philosophical, scientific and other important cultural events. (shrink)

In this essay, I want to reconsider sympathy as a “natural” emotion or sentiment. Adam Smith famously defended it as such (as did his friend David Hume) but both used the term ambiguously and in a different sense than we use it today. Nevertheless, it seems to me that Smith got it quite right, that the basis of morality and justice is to be found in the realm of affect rather than in theory and principles alone, and that sympathy is (...) a “natural” or should we say a “basic” emotion. But that means that morality may not be an exclusively human characteristic, as many philosophers (including Smith and Hume) have assumed. But some contemporary thinking in psychology and philosophy makes that extension plausible. (shrink)

We study the measure independent character of Godel speed-up theorems. In particular, we strengthen Arbib's necessary condition for the occurrence of a Godel speed-up [2, p. 13] to an equivalence result and generalize Di Paola's speed-up theorem [4]. We also characterize undecidable theories as precisely those theories which possess consistent measure independent Godel speed-ups and show that a theory τ 2 is a measure independent Godel speed-up of a theory τ 1 if and only if the set of undecidable sentences (...) of τ 1 which are provable in τ 2 is not recursively enumerable. (shrink)

When Dan Callahan and Will Gaylin began The Hastings Center, they saw and sought to study the unseen. They were among the very first to recognize that remarkable advances in biomedical technology were generating questions our society had never before faced. As I take the helm of The Hastings Center forty‐plus years later, it's now my job to be sure we see, name, grapple with, and act on today's questions. Over the next two years, the Center will engage its scholars, (...) our Fellows, other bioethicists, scientists, social science and humanities scholars, health care policy‐makers, and key stakeholders such as journalists, educators, and patients in defining today's set of critical questions. (shrink)

In the early 1920s, the Rockefeller Foundation's International Health Board was presenting itself as the watchtower of public health for the world at large. Yet Soviet Russia was never included in any of the International Health Board's programs, despite the efforts of the Russians to reach out to the Board. This paper examines the exclusion of Russia as a function of the conceptual and structural lenses through which the International Health Board 'saw' post-revolutionary Soviet public health. It also speculates about (...) the ways in which those who spoke on behalf of Soviet public health contributed to the perceptions of the Board. (shrink)

Edmund Pellegrino was a huge figure who leaves a huge legacy. Since his death on June 13, 2013, much has been written to honor his prodigious accomplishments in scholarship, public policy, and institution‐building and to express gratitude for his kindness, humility, and sense of humor. I want to honor his commitment to living a life in which ideas mattered. For him, ideas were not just the stuff by which to build an academic career or rocks to hurl at opposing scholars (...) and policy‐makers. (shrink)

Anya Plutynski’s Explaining Cancer extends the insights of contemporary philosophy of biology to research on cancer and cancer treatment. Cancer is conceptualized as a complex process for which a pluralist theoretical approach is the most appropriate. This review essay explores implications for philosophy of science and cancer research.

For the last forty years, two claims have been at the core of disputes about scientific change: that scientists reason rationally and that science is progressive. For most of this time discussions were polarized between philosophers, who defended traditional Enlightenment ideas about rationality and progress, and sociologists, who espoused relativism and constructivism. Recently, creative new ideas going beyond the polarized positions have come from the history of science, feminist criticism of science, psychology of science, and anthropology of science. Addressing the (...) traditional arguments as well as building on these new ideas, Miriam Solomon constructs a new epistemology of science. After discussions of the nature of empirical success and its relation to truth, Solomon offers a new, social account of scientific rationality. She shows that the pursuit of empirical success and truth can be consistent with both dissent and consensus, and that the distinction between dissent and consensus is of little epistemic significance. In building this social epistemology of science, she shows that scientific communities are not merely the locus of distributed expert knowledge and a resource for criticism but also the site of distributed decision making. Throughout, she illustrates her ideas with case studies from late-nineteenth- and twentieth-century physical and life sciences. Replacing the traditional focus on methods and heuristics to be applied by individual scientists, Solomon emphasizes science funding, administration, and policy. One of her goals is to have a positive influence on scientific decision making through practical social recommendations. (shrink)

How is medical knowledge made? There have been radical changes in recent decades, through new methods such as consensus conferences, evidence-based medicine, translational medicine, and narrative medicine. Miriam Solomon explores their origins, aims, and epistemic strengths and weaknesses; and she offers a pluralistic approach for the future.

This volume collects thirty years worth of articles on the emotions written by the distinguished philosopher Robert Solomon. Solomon's thesis is that we are significantly responsible for our emotions, which are evaluative judgments that in effect we choose. This is the first of several volumes that document work in the emotions.

This article examines some current U.S. policies regarding the ethics of information control in scientific research, such as the requirements for “timely” publication and information sufficient for replication. The appropriateness of these policies is called into question by recent work in science studies, which suggest the importance of informal and nonlinguistic channels of information and the impossibility of exact replication of experiments. Policy change is recommended, but it needs to take into account considerations of privacy and enforceability.