For more than 25 years, research misconduct is defined as fabrication, falsification, or plagiarism —although other research misbehaviors have been also added in codes of cond...

The spatial organization of the genome is intimately linked to its biological function, yet our understanding of higher order genomic structure is coarse, fragmented and incomplete. In the nucleus of eukaryotic cells, interphase chromosomes occupy distinct.

The Covid-19 pandemic creates an unprecedented threatening situation worldwide with an urgent need for critical reflection and new knowledge production, but also a need for imminent action despite prevailing knowledge gaps and multilevel uncertainty. With regard to the role of research ethics in these pandemic times some argue in favor of exceptionalism, others, including the authors of this paper, emphasize the urgent need to remain committed to core ethical principles and fundamental human rights obligations all reflected in research regulations and (...) guidelines carefully crafted over time. In this paper we disentangle some of the arguments put forward in the ongoing debate about Covid-19 human challenge studies (CHIs) and the concomitant role of health-related research ethics in pandemic times. We suggest it might be helpful to think through a lens differentiating between risk, strict uncertainty and ignorance. We provide some examples of lessons learned by harm done in the name of research in the past and discuss the relevance of this legacy in the current situation. (shrink)

Ample attention is being paid in the higher education literature to promoting active learning among students. However, critical examination of educational purposes and ends is largely lacki...

G. A. Cohen argues that egalitarians should compensate for expensive tastes or for the fact that they are expensive. Ronald Dworkin, by contrast, regards most expensive tastes as unworthy of compensation — only if a person disidentifies with his own such tastes (i.e. wishes he did not have them) is compensation appropriate. Dworkinians appeal, inter alia, to the so-called ‘first-person’ or ‘continuity’ test. According to the continuity test, an appropriate standard of interpersonal comparison reflects people's own assessment of their relative (...) standing: Person A can only legitimately demand compensation from person B if he regards himself as worse off, all things considered, than B. The typical bearer of expensive tastes does not regard herself as being worse off than others with less expensive tastes. Hence, in the typical case, pace Cohen, compensation for expensive tastes is inappropriate. The article scrutinizes this rationale for not compensating for expensive tastes. Especially, we try to bolster the continuity test by relating it to Dworkin's distinction between integrated and detached values, pointing out that an argument for the continuity test can be built on the assumption that equality has integrated value. In brief, the point is that a metric of equality should be assessed, partly, in virtue of its consequences for related ideals. One of these is the kind of justificatory community promoted by the continuity test. We defend this view against an objection to the effect that equality is a detached value. We conclude that the continuity test constitutes a strong foothold for the resourcist egalitarian reluctance to compensate people for their expensive tastes. (shrink)

Blasting in water-conveyance tunnels that cross rivers is vital for the safety and stability of embankments. In this work, a tunnel project that crosses the Yellow River in the north district of the first-phase Eastern Line of the South-to-North Water Diversion Project was selected as the research object. A complex modeling and numerical simulation on embankment stability with regard to the blasting power of the tunnel was conducted using the professional finite difference software FLAC3D to disclose the relationships between the (...) blasting seismic waves with vibration velocity and embankment displacement under different excavation steps. Calculation results demonstrated that displacement generally attenuated from the tunnel wall to the internal structure of rocks under the effect of blasting seismic waves. The tunnel wall was in tension, and tensile stress gradually transformed into compressive stress with increased depth into the rocks. The curtain-grouting zone was mainly concentrated in the compressive zones. For different excavation steps, the vibration velocity at different feature points was high at the beginning of blasting and then gradually decreased. The resultant displacement was relatively small in the early excavation period and slowly increased as blasting progressed. The effects of different excavation steps on the safety of surrounding rocks and embankment under blasting seismic waves were simulated. We found that the blasting-induced vibration velocity was within the safe range of the code and that the calculated displacement was within the allowed range. Numerical simulation was feasible to assess the safety and stability of engineering projects. (shrink)

The earlier volume in this series dealt with two religions of Indian origin, namely, Buddhism and Jainism. The Indian religious scene, however, is characterized by not only religions which originated in India but also by religions which entered India from outside India and made their home here. Thus religious life in India has been enlivened throughout its history by the presence of religions of foreign origin on its soil almost from the very time they came into existence. This volume covers (...) three such religions—Zoraoastrianism, Judaism, and Islam. In the case of Zoraostianism, even its very beginnings are intertwined with India, as Zoroastrianism reformed a preexisting religion which had strong links to the Vedic heritage of India. This relationship took on a new dimension when a Zoroastrian community, fearing persecution in Persia after its Arab conquest, sought shelter in western India and ultimately went on to produce India’s pioneering nationalist in the figure of Dadabhai Naoroji ( 1825-1917), also known as the Grand Old Man of India. Jews found refuge in south India after the destruction of the Temple by the Romans in 70 C.E. and have remained a part of the Indian religious scene since then, some even returning to Israel after it was founded in 1948. Islam arrived in Kerala as soon as it was founded and one of the earliest mosques in the history of Islam is found in India. Islam differs from the previously mentioned religions inasmuch as it went on to gain political hegemony over parts of the country for considerable periods of time, which meant that its impact on the religious life of the subcontinent has been greater compared to the other religions. It has also meant that Islam has existed in a religiously plural environment in India for a longer period than elsewhere in the world so that not only has Islam left a mark on India, India has also left its mark on it. Indeed all the three religions covered in this volume share this dual feature, that they have profoundly influenced Indian religious life and have also in turn been profoundly influenced by their presence in India. (shrink)

As part of the conference commemorating Theoria's 75th anniversary, a round table discussion on philosophy publishing was held in Bergendal, Sollentuna, Sweden, on 1 October 2010. Bengt Hansson was the chair, and the other participants were eight editors-in-chief of philosophy journals: Hans van Ditmarsch (Journal of Philosophical Logic), Pascal Engel (Dialectica), Sven Ove Hansson (Theoria), Vincent Hendricks (Synthese), Søren Holm (Journal of Medical Ethics), Pauline Jacobson (Linguistics and Philosophy), Anthonie Meijers (Philosophical Explorations), Henry S. Richardson (Ethics) and Hans Rott (Erkenntnis).

This book undertakes an extensive study of the constellation of two eminent thinkers of post-idealism for the first time. The contributions in this volume analyze the relationship between Schopenhauer and Kierkegaard systematically and historically from a number of thematic perspectives: metaphysics and ethics, freedom and original sin, existential philosophy and the theory of suffering, art and aesthetics, religion and science. The book also goes into Kierkegaard s explicit disagreement with Schopenhauer and last but not least discusses the conflicting poles of (...) idealism and modernity. The volume is rounded off by a first complete and annotated German translation of the notes on Schopenhauer, which Kierkegaard wrote in his late journals.". (shrink)

The use of tanning beds has been identified as being among the most significant causes of melanoma and non-melanoma skin cancer. Accordingly, the activity is properly seen as one that involves profound harm to self. The article examines paternalistic reasons for restricting sunbed usage. We argue that both so-called soft and hard paternalistic arguments support prohibiting the use of sunbeds. We make the following three arguments: an argument from oppressive patterns of socialization suggesting that the autonomous nature of the conduct (...) in question is questionable; an argument from so-called evaluative delusions in which individuals attach incorrect weights to some of their values; a strictly hard paternalistic argument appealing to the harm in itself pertaining to the use of sunbeds. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Bioethics Genethics Medical Ethics.

This book contains the proceedings of the conference "What Social Robots Can and Should Do," Robophilosophy 2016 / TRANSOR 2016. Featuring 13 plenaries and 74 session and workshop talks, the event turned out to be the world's largest conference in Humanities research in and on social robotics.

This article presents an overview of generally available applications for creating multimedia and interactive educational materials, such as presentations, instructional videos, self-tests and interactive repetitions. With the use of the presented tools, pilot materials were developed to support the teaching of biostatistics at a medical university. The authors conducted surveys among students of faculties of medicine in order to evaluate the materials used in terms of quality and usefulness. The article presents the analysis of the results obtained.

The Covid-19 pandemic has led to a health crisis of a scale unprecedented in post-war Europe. In response, a large amount of healthcare resources have been redirected to Covid-19 preventive measures, for instance population-wide vaccination campaigns, large-scale SARS-CoV-2 testing, and the large-scale distribution of protective equipment to high-risk groups and hospitals and nursing homes. Despite the importance of these measures in epidemiological and economic terms, health economists and medical ethicists have been relatively silent about the ethical rationales underlying the large-scale (...) allocation of healthcare resources to these measures. The present paper seeks to encourage this debate by demonstrating how the resource allocation to Covid-19 preventive measures can be understood through the paradigm of the Rule of Rescue, without claiming that the Rule of Rescue is the sole rationale of resource allocation in the Covid-19 pandemic. (shrink)

The structure and “metabolism” (movement and conversion of goods and energy) of urban areas has caused cities to be identified as “super‐organisms”, placed between ecosystems and the biosphere, in the hierarchy of living systems. Yet most such analogies are weak, and render the super‐organism model ineffective for sustainable development of cities. Via a cluster analysis of 15 shared traits of the hierarchical living system, we found that industrialized cities are more similar to eukaryotic cells than to multicellular organisms; enclosed systems, (...) such as factories and greenhouses, paralleling organelles in eukaryotic cells. We further developed a “super‐cell” industrialized city model: a “eukarcity” with citynucleus (urban area) as a regulating centre, and organaras (enclosed systems, which provide the majority of goods and services) as the functional components, and cityplasm (natural ecosystems and farmlands) as the matrix. This model may improve the vitality and sustainability of cities through planning and management. (shrink)

This research uses an experimental approach to investigate the relationship between market orientation of a company and its level of success in international business. The aim of the study was to develop and use a market orientation scale that is appropriate to the sector. It was discovered that there are four hidden traits that drive market orientation. These include customers, rivals, departmental response, and overall customer satisfaction. According to the results, orientation toward one's customers is more essential than any of (...) the other traits, while orientation toward one's competitors has an inverted U-shaped connection with performance. The performance of the firm was not found to correlate in any way with the responsiveness of its departments. With the help of the comprehensive conceptualization, managers are able to develop specific kinds of orientations that are essential for higher levels of performance. (shrink)

The "morning morality effect"-the alleged phenomenon that people are more likely to act in unethical ways in the afternoon when they are tired and have less self-control than in the morning-may well be expected to influence prehospital anaesthesiologist manning mobile emergency care units (MECUs). The working conditions of these units routinely entail fatigue, hunger, sleep deprivation and other physical or emotional conditions that might make prehospital units predisposed to exhibit the "morning morality effect". We investigated whether this is in fact (...) the case by looking at the distribution of patient transports to hospital with and without physician escort late at night at the end of the shift as a surrogate marker for changing thresholds in ethical behaviour. All missions over a period of 11 years in the MECU in Odense were reviewed. Physician-escorted transports to hospital were compared with non-physician-escorted transports during daytime, evening, and night-time (which correlates with time on the 24 h shifts). In total, 26,883 patients were transported to hospital following treatment by the MECU. Of these, 27.4% (26.9%-27.9%) were escorted to the hospital. The ratio of patient transports to hospital with and without physician escort during the three periods of the day did not differ (p = 1.00). We found no evidence of changes in admission patterns over the day. Thus, no evidence of the expected "morning morality effect" could be found in a prehospital physician-manned emergency care unit. (shrink)

The question of how to become and remain an effective leader has been discussed for decades, and the answers that have been proposed have led to numerous theories and taxonomies of leadership behavior. By taking a critical approach to a contemporary integrative model of leadership behavior, this theoretical research proposes an alternative approach that can supplement both the integrative model and current leader–member exchange theory. Our approach is sensitive to both objective and subjective aspects of leadership behavior. We argue that (...) perceptions of leadership behavior are influenced by interpersonal relations and contextual variables in an organization. We further argue that multilevel aspects must be investigated to understand leadership behavior and that the perceptions thereof shape and are shaped by relations and contextual variables. A distinct methodological approach based on mixed methods is then proposed to better understand what influences perceptions of leadership behavior. The article discusses the conceptual, epistemological, and methodological consequences of studying leadership behavior and perceptions of such behavior. (shrink)

The present study developed the Chinese Parental Involvement and Support Scale for Preschool Children to measure parental involvement and support for preschool children. In Study 1, we conducted a literature review, open-ended interviews, a theoretical analysis, and expert interviews to create an item bank. In Study 2, 447 parents completed the item bank. Following item and Exploratory Factor Analysis, 30 items were retained. In Study 3, five new items were added to the 30-item version of the CPISSPC. A separate sample (...) of 471 parents completed the 35-item version of the CPISSPC. After Confirmatory Factor Analysis, a final 18-item version of the CPISSPC was created with four factors: psychological support, educational support, play support, and life support. Construct validity and internal reliability were satisfactory. Study 4 evaluated concurrent validity. CPISSPC scores significantly and positively correlated with perceived social support, marital gratification, and children’s self-efficacy. CPISSPC scores significantly and negatively correlated with parents’ levels of burnout and loneliness. The CPISSPC exhibits good psychometric properties and can be used as a tool to measure parental involvement and support for preschool children. (shrink)

Research on the relationship between emotions and job performance is ubiquitous, yet few scholars have examined the combined effects of different emotions. Drawing on the broaden-and-build theory and conservation of resources theory, we propose that employees’ daily emotion fluctuations will affect their service performance in opposite directions. Furthermore, we propose these effects will be moderated by psychological [i.e., regulatory emotional self-efficacy ] and physiological characteristics of the employees. Based on the experience sampling method, data obtained from 187 frontline employees of (...) 35 bank branches over 18 consecutive days supports our hypotheses. (shrink)

BackgroundPrevious studies on voxel-based morphometry have found that there were gray matter alterations in patients with hepatic encephalopathy. However, the reported results were inconsistent and lack a quantitative review. Therefore, this study aims for a quantitative meta-analysis of VBM analysis on patients with HE.MethodsThe studies in our meta-analysis were collected from Pubmed, Web of Science, and Embase, which were published from January 1947 to October 2021. The seed-based d mapping method was applied to quantitatively estimate the regional gray matter abnormalities (...) in patients with HE. A meta-regression analysis was applied to evaluate the relationship between plasma ammonia and gray matter alteration.ResultsThere were nine studies, with sixteen datasets consisting of 333 participants with HE and 429 healthy controls. The pooled and subgroup meta-analyses showed an increase in gray matter volume in the bilateral thalamus and the calcarine fissure but a decrease in the GMV in the bilateral insula, the basal ganglia, the anterior cingulate gyrus, and the cerebellum. The meta-regression showed that plasma ammonia was positively associated with the GMV in the left thalamus but was negatively associated with the GMV in the cerebellum and the bilateral striatum.ConclusionGray matter volume in patients with HE largely varied and could be affected by plasma ammonia. The findings of this study could help us to better understand the pathophysiology of cognitive dysfunction in patients with HE. (shrink)

With the outbreak of the COVID-19 crisis, the public keeps getting epidemic-related information on the media. News reports on the increasing number of fatalities have exposed individuals to death, which causes negative emotional experiences such as tension, anxiety, and fear. This study aimed to investigate whether creativity could serve as an anxiety-buffer when mortality is salient. Based on previous findings, the present study utilized type of creative task and personal search for meaning as moderators. In Study 1, a 2 × (...) 2 between-subject design was utilized, and 168 subjects were randomly assigned to four experimental conditions. In Study 2, 221 subjects were recruited. The experimental procedure was similar to Study 1, except that the priming paradigm of mortality was changed and search for meaning was included as an additional moderating variable. State anxiety was measured as the dependent variable in both studies. Results of Study 1 showed that, while the benevolent creative task could buffer anxiety in the mortality salience condition, the malevolent creative task did not have the same effect. Furthermore, there was a significant interaction between mortality salience, type of creative task, and search for meaning in life on anxiety. In Study 2, the buffering function of benevolent creativity was more intense for participants with a higher level of search for meaning. Together, these findings reveal the influence of different types of creative tasks on individual anxiety levels under death priming conditions and the moderating effect of search for meaning in this relationship. Further, they suggest the need to focus on the role of creativity in terror management. (shrink)

This study investigates the association between work-family conflict and organizational citizenship behavior and examines the mediated role of subjective happiness between and the moderated part of family support. A moderated mediation model is established based on the Conservation of Resources theory. We collected data from 386 employees of nine companies in China. This study shows that the work-family conflict of female professional employees is negatively correlated with organizational citizenship behavior, and that the relationship is mediated by subjective well-being. Furthermore, female (...) professional employees’ family support moderates the effects of work-family conflict on subjective happiness and organizational citizenship behavior, with the relationship weaker when family support is higher. This study enriches the literature on work-family conflict by using family support as a mediating mechanism for work-family conflict. It enhanced our understanding of the influencing mechanisms of organizational citizenship behavior by constructing a more detailed model. (shrink)