Ambiguous Surface Structure and Phonetic Form in French.W. J. M. Levelt,W. Zwanenburg &G. R. E.Ouweneel -1970 -Foundations of Language 6 (2):260-273.detailsIn modern approaches to phonology a lack of clarity exists on the issue of whether phonetic facts are psychological or physical realities. The results from an experiment suggest that phonetic facts can be considered as psychological realities, but with the restriction that they can take acoustical shape. More specifically, the syntactic material consisted of ambiguous French sentences of the following sort: On a tourné ce film intéressant pour les étudiants. They were spoken in disambiguating contexts, without the readers noticing the (...) ambiguities, and without context, but with the instruction to make a conscious effort to disambiguate. By tape splicing, the contexts were removed from the context-embedded sentences. Twenty-eight native speakers of French listened to the sentences and judged whether one or the other meaning had been intended by the speaker. Subjects performed significantly above chance: 60% correct identifications for context-embedded sentences, 75% for context-free sentences. Pitch-amplitude analyses were made to determine the acoustical differences involved. (shrink)
Priors and prejudice.R. E. G. Upshur -1999 -Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics 20 (4):319-327.detailsThis paper explores the relationship between concepts of probability and hermeneutics. It seeks to examine the relationship between subjective (Bayesian) views of probability and hermeneutic descriptions of understanding. It is argued that Gadamer'saccount of the prejudicial nature of understanding, derived from Heidegger'sanalysis of foreunderstanding, offers a provocative model of clinical reasoning. The implications of this model for evidence-based medicine are discussed in conclusion.
Ethical issues at the university-industry interface: A way forward?G. R. Evans &D. E. Packham -2003 -Science and Engineering Ethics 9 (1):3-16.detailsThis paper forms an introduction to this issue, the contents of which arose directly or indirectly from a conference in May 2001 on Corruption of scientific integrity? — The commercialisation of academic science. The introduction, in recent decades, of business culture and values into universities and research institutions is incompatible with the openness which scientific and all academic pursuit traditionally require. It has given rise to a web of problems over intellectual property and conflict of interest which has even led (...) to corporate sponsors’ suppressing unfavourable results of clinical trials, to the detriment of patients’ health. Although there are those who see the norms of science developing to recognise the importance of instrumental science aiming at specific goals and of knowledge judged by its value in a context of application, none justifies the covert manipulation of results by vested interest. Public awareness of these problems is growing and creating a climate of opinion where they may be addressed. We suggest a way forward by the introduction of nationally and internationally-accepted guidelines for industrial collaboration which contain proper protections of the core purposes of universities and of the independence of their research. Some codes suggested for this purpose are discussed. We note that some universities are moving to adopt such codes of conduct, but argue the need for strong support from the government through its funding bodies. (shrink)
The virtues of evidence.Erica Zarkovich &R. E. G. Upshur -2002 -Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics 23 (4-5):403-412.detailsEvidence-based medicine has beendefined as the conscientious and judicious useof current best evidence in making clinicaldecisions. This paper will attempt to explicatethe terms ``conscientious'''' and ``judicious''''within the evidence-based medicine definition.It will be argued that ``conscientious'''' and``judicious'''' represent virtue terms derived fromvirtue ethics and virtue epistemology. Theidentification of explicit virtue components inthe definition and therefore conception ofevidence-based medicine presents an importantstarting point in the connection between virtuetheories and medicine itself. In addition, aunification of virtue theories andevidence-based medicine will illustrate theneed for (...) future research in order to combinethe fields of virtue-based approaches andclinical practice. (shrink)
Argumentation and evidence.R. E. G. Upshur &Errol Colak -2003 -Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics 24 (4):283-299.detailsThis essay explores the role of informal logicand its application in the context of currentdebates regarding evidence-based medicine. This aim is achieved through a discussion ofthe goals and objectives of evidence-basedmedicine and a review of the criticisms raisedagainst evidence-based medicine. Thecontributions to informal logic by StephenToulmin and Douglas Walton are explicated andtheir relevance for evidence-based medicine isdiscussed in relation to a common clinicalscenario: hypertension management. This essayconcludes with a discussion on the relationshipbetween clinical reasoning, rationality, andevidence. It is argued that (...) informal logic hasthe virtue of bringing explicitness to the roleof evidence in clinical reasoning, and bringssensitivity to understanding the role ofdialogical context in the need for evidence inclinical decision making. (shrink)
Distribution of activity in the cerebellar cortex resulting from passive limb movement.R. E. Poppele &G. Bosco -1997 -Behavioral and Brain Sciences 20 (2):262-263.detailsThe notion that cerebellar cortex geometry may play a unique role in its function is explored by Braitenberg et al. in the form of a new theory about the distribution of cortical activity. The theory makes specific predictions which are not verified by an experimental study of hindlimb movement in the cat.
The ethics of alpha: Reflections on statistics, evidence and values in medicine.R. E. G. Upshur -2001 -Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics 22 (6):565-576.detailsAs health care embraces the tenets of evidence-based medicine it is important to ask questions about how evidence is produced and interpreted. This essay explores normative dimensions of evidence production, particularly around issues of setting the tolerable level of uncertainty of results. Four specific aspects are explored: what health care providers know about statistics, why alpha levels have been set at 0.05, the role of randomization in the generation of sufficient grounds of belief, and the role of observational studies. The (...) essay concludes with recommendations to acknowledge the value permeation of outcome measures and suggests that attention to reasoning and argument analysis can augment traditional evidence-based approaches in providing a robust critical approach to medical knowledge. (shrink)
Infant homicide and accidental death in the United States, 1940-2005: ethics and epidemiological classification.J. E. Riggs &G. R. Hobbs -2011 -Journal of Medical Ethics 37 (7):445-448.detailsPotential ethical issues can arise during the process of epidemiological classification. For example, unnatural infant deaths are classified as accidental deaths or homicides. Societal sensitivity to the physical abuse and neglect of children has increased over recent decades. This enhanced sensitivity could impact reported infant homicide rates. Infant homicide and accident mortality rates in boys and girls in the USA from 1940 to 2005 were analysed. In 1940, infant accident mortality rates were over 20 times greater than infant homicide rates (...) in both boys and girls. After about 1980, when the ratio of infant accident mortality rates to infant homicide rates decreased to less than five, and the sum of infant accident and homicide rates became relatively constant, further decreases in infant accident mortality rates were associated with increases in reported infant homicide rates. These findings suggest that the dramatic decline of accidental infant mortality and recent increased societal sensitivity to child abuse may be related to the increased infant homicide rates observed in the USA since 1980 rather than an actual increase in societal violence directed against infants. Ethical consequences of epidemiological classification, involving the principles of beneficence, non-maleficence and justice, are suggested by observed patterns in infant accidental deaths and homicides in the USA from 1940 to 2005. (shrink)
Development of an expressed sequence tag resource for wheat : EST generation, unigene analysis, probe selection and bioinformatics for a 16,000-locus bin-delineated map. [REVIEW]G. R. Lazo,S. Chao,D. D. Hummel,H. Edwards,C. C. Crossman,N. Lui,V. L. de MatthewsCarollo,D. L. Hane,F. M. You,G. E. Butler,R. E. Miller,T. J. Close,J. H. Peng,N. L. V. Lapitan,J. P. Gustafson,L. L. Qi,B. Echalier,B. S. Gill,M. Dilbirligi,H. S. Randhawa,K. S. Gill,R. A. Greene,M. E. Sorrells,E. D. Akhunov,J. Dvorák,A. M. Linkiewicz,J. Dubcovsky,K. G. Hossain,V. Kalavacharla,S. F. Kianian,A. A. Mahmoud, Miftahudin,X. -F. Ma,E. J. Conley,J. A. Anderson,M. S. Pathan,H. T. Nguyen,P. E. McGuire,C. O. Qualset &O. D. Anderson -unknowndetailsThis report describes the rationale, approaches, organization, and resource development leading to a large-scale deletion bin map of the hexaploid wheat genome. Accompanying reports in this issue detail results from chromosome bin-mapping of expressed sequence tags representing genes onto the seven homoeologous chromosome groups and a global analysis of the entire mapped wheat EST data set. Among the resources developed were the first extensive public wheat EST collection. Described are protocols for sequencing, sequence processing, EST nomenclature, and the assembly of (...) ESTs into contigs. These contigs plus singletons were used for selection of distinct sequence motif unigenes. Selected ESTs were rearrayed, validated by 5′ and 3′ sequencing, and amplified for probing a series of wheat aneuploid and deletion stocks. Images and data for all Southern hybridizations were deposited in databases and were used by the coordinators for each of the seven homoeologous chromosome groups to validate the mapping results. Results from this project have established the foundation for future developments in wheat genomics. (shrink)
Ethical issues at the university-industry interface: A way forward? [REVIEW]Professor G. R. Evans &D. E. Packham -2003 -Science and Engineering Ethics 9 (1):3-16.detailsThis paper forms an introduction to this issue, the contents of which arose directly or indirectly from a conference in May 2001 on Corruption of scientific integrity? — The commercialisation of academic science. The introduction, in recent decades, of business culture and values into universities and research institutions is incompatible with the openness which scientific and all academic pursuit traditionally require. It has given rise to a web of problems over intellectual property and conflict of interest which has even led (...) to corporate sponsors’ suppressing unfavourable results of clinical trials, to the detriment of patients’ health. Although there are those who see the norms of science developing to recognise the importance of instrumental science aiming at specific goals and of knowledge judged by its value in a context of application, none justifies the covert manipulation of results by vested interest.Public awareness of these problems is growing and creating a climate of opinion where they may be addressed. We suggest a way forward by the introduction of nationally and internationally-accepted guidelines for industrial collaboration which contain proper protections of the core purposes of universities and of the independence of their research. Some codes suggested for this purpose are discussed. We note that some universities are moving to adopt such codes of conduct, but argue the need for strong support from the government through its funding bodies. (shrink)
Critical thoughts about critical realism.G. R. Steele -2005 -Critical Review: A Journal of Politics and Society 17 (1-2):133-154.detailsAs microeconomic calculus and macroeconomic estimation superseded earlier approaches to political economy, broad questions about how things are (ontology), how things might be known (epistemology), and how science should proceed (methodology) were neglected. As a corrective, Critical Realism (CR) has been proposed as an alternative to the orthodox deductive‐nomological (ODN) tradition; i.e., to mathematical deduction and statistical induction. In their place, retroduction—the use of analogy, metaphor, intuition and ordinary language—is supposed to illuminate root causes by identifying the deep mechanisms that (...) govern events. CR offers guidelines for social science that are of a most general kind: from initial “premises,” retroduction proceeds to hypotheses about deep structures and mechanisms. The initial premises are determined by a desire to understand events that surprise us. However, nothing is thereby excluded, including ODN. And since historical processes are revealed neither by assumption nor by the net effects of whatever initial conditions hold, it might be apposite to drop the search for (deep) socio‐economic laws and to use whatever evidence is at hand to see whether, and the extent to which, ideal types apply to any given historical sequence. (shrink)
Biological individuality and disease.G. R. Burgio -1993 -Acta Biotheoretica 41 (3):219-230.detailsThe concept of predisposition in medicine is ancient, and the term diathesis was used to express it since the days of Hippocrates and, especially, of Galen.The concept of diathesis was enormously popular throughout the nineteenth century, despite the vagueness of its actual meaning. It was clarified only in the early years of the twentieth century (1902), when it was however losing its clinical relevance, by a replacement of the concept ofchemical individuality by A.E. Garrod, followed thirty years later by the (...) concept ofinborn factors in disease (1931). (shrink)
Disability, technology, and place: Social and ethical implications of long-term dependency on medical devices.B. E. Gibson,R. E. G. Upshur,N. L. Young &P. McKeever -2007 -Ethics, Place and Environment 10 (1):7 – 28.detailsMedical technologies and assistive devices such as ventilators and power wheelchairs are designed to sustain life and/or improve functionality but they can also contribute to stigmatization and social exclusion. In this paper, drawing from a study of ten men with Duchenne muscular dystrophy, we explore the complex social processes that mediate the lives of persons who are dependent on multiple medical and assistive technologies. In doing so we consider the embodied and emplaced nature of disability and how life is lived (...) through bodies coupled with technologies and experienced as 'techno-body-subjects in situ'. Normative implications for theory and research, including bioethics research, are discussed. (shrink)
The Intermediate Neutrino Program.C. Adams, Alonso Jr,A. M. Ankowski,J. A. Asaadi,J. Ashenfelter,S. N. Axani,K. Babu,C. Backhouse,H. R. Band,P. S. Barbeau,N. Barros,A. Bernstein,M. Betancourt,M. Bishai,E. Blucher,J. Bouffard,N. Bowden,S. Brice,C. Bryan,L. Camilleri,J. Cao,J. Carlson,R. E. Carr,A. Chatterjee,M. Chen,S. Chen,M. Chiu,E. D. Church,J. I. Collar,G. Collin,J. M. Conrad,M. R. Convery,R. L. Cooper,D. Cowen,H. Davoudiasl,A. De Gouvea,D. J. Dean,G. Deichert,F. Descamps,T. DeYoung,M. V. Diwan,Z. Djurcic,M. J. Dolinski,J. Dolph,B. Donnelly,S. da DwyerDytman,Y. Efremenko,L. L. Everett,A. Fava,E. Figueroa-Feliciano,B. Fleming,A. Friedland,B. K. Fujikawa,T. K. Gaisser,M. Galeazzi,D. C. Galehouse,A. Galindo-Uribarri,G. T. Garvey,S. Gautam,K. E. Gilje,M. Gonzalez-Garcia,M. C. Goodman,H. Gordon,E. Gramellini,M. P. Green,A. Guglielmi,R. W. Hackenburg,A. Hackenburg,F. Halzen,K. Han,S. Hans,D. Harris,K. M. Heeger,M. Herman,R. Hill,A. Holin &P. Huber -unknowndetailsThe US neutrino community gathered at the Workshop on the Intermediate Neutrino Program at Brookhaven National Laboratory February 4-6, 2015 to explore opportunities in neutrino physics over the next five to ten years. Scientists from particle, astroparticle and nuclear physics participated in the workshop. The workshop examined promising opportunities for neutrino physics in the intermediate term, including possible new small to mid-scale experiments, US contributions to large experiments, upgrades to existing experiments, R&D plans and theory. The workshop was organized into (...) two sets of parallel working group sessions, divided by physics topics and technology. Physics working groups covered topics on Sterile Neutrinos, Neutrino Mixing, Neutrino Interactions, Neutrino Properties and Astrophysical Neutrinos. Technology sessions were organized into Theory, Short-Baseline Accelerator Neutrinos, Reactor Neutrinos, Detector R&D and Source, Cyclotron and Meson Decay at Rest sessions.This report summarizes discussion and conclusions from the workshop. (shrink)
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