Unfinished business: ongoing ethical exceptionalism in the oversight of human pluripotent stem cell research in Canada

In this article, we critically examine the arguments for and against the exceptional status given human pluripotent stem cell research in Canada (through the latest [December 2010] revision of the Tri-Council Policy Statement: Ethical Conduct for Research Involving Humans), and conclude that this exceptionalism is unwarranted and ethically unsound. In our view, the three federal research granting agencies should honor their longstanding commitment that researchers, research sponsors, and Research Ethics Boards in Canada have access to "a single reference document for all research involving humans conducted under the auspices of institutions eligible for Agency funding." As well, responsibility for the development, interpretation, and implementation of Canada's research ethics guidelines should be under the authority of a single oversight body that is independent of the federal research granting Agencies.     

Online ghettoes,perils or supernannies? Australian young people with chronic illness and disability challenge some moral panics about young people online

Current literature focusing on young people’s digital technology use often reflects concerns that they may live virtual lives and withdraw from locally geographically situated spaces. It assumes the existence of a split between offline and online ‘worlds’ corresponding to ‘real ‘and ‘non-real’ respectively. This article reports research findings on how young people locate new social media technologies in their daily lives with particular focus on the relationship between their online and offline experiences. The voices of the young people guided the research, which found that their social media use contradicts conventional narratives of moral panic about the alleged unreality and fearful dangers of online spaces for young people.     

Predicting online gambling self-exclusion: an analysis of the performance of supervised machine learning models

As gambling operators become increasingly sophisticated in their analysis of individual gambling behaviour, this study evaluates the potential for using machine learning techniques to identify individuals who used self-exclusion tools out of a sample of 845 online gamblers, based on analysing trends in their gambling behaviour. Being able to identify other gamblers whose behaviour is similar to those who decided to use self-exclusion tools could, for instance, be used to share responsible gaming messages or other information that aids self-aware gambling and reduces the risk of adverse outcomes. However, operators need to understand how accurate models can be and which techniques work well. The purpose of the article is to identify the most accurate technique out of four highly diverse techniques and to discuss how to deal analytically and practically with a rare event like self-exclusion, which was used by fewer than 1% of gamblers in our data-set. We conclude that balanced training data-sets are necessary for creating effective models and that, on our data-set, the most effective method is the random forest technique which achieves an accuracy improvement of 35 percentage points versus baseline estimates.     

Deleuze and the grandeur of Palestine: Song of Earth and Resistance

The article re-examines the Deleuzian concept of cartography and opens on the question of that race a fortiori minor called to philosophy and the constitution of an earth. Who are these people? Who are these people who, according to Deleuze, are missing? What is their name and what is their territory? The problem of minorities, “of the missing people”, analysed by Deleuze through Kafka finds a resonance and a quite particular affinity – and in this way a designation and a name – through the struggle of the Palestinian people; deterritorialized, “inferior, dominated, always becoming”. Deleuze’s pro-Palestinian engagement in no way manifests a rupture between philosophy and politics, but establishes itself as the essential correlate of a philosophically dynamic, creative and resistant reflection whose tenor has been constantly written into the realm of politics. After nearly 30 years, Deleuze’s pro-Palestinian positions are today the object of severe criticism, if not a cabal, launched by Eric Marty and Roger-Pol Droit, who aim at exhuming Deleuze’s philosophical corpus in order to extract from it a so-called “anti-Semitic complacency”.     

Has the HIV Epidemic Peaked?

This study reviews the highly diverse regional and country patterns of HIV epidemics and discusses possible causes of the geographic variation in epidemic sizes. Past trends and projections of the epidemics are presented and the peak years of epidemics are estimated. The potential future impact of new prevention technologies is briefly assessed. A final section summarizes the future impact of the epidemic on key demographic variables. The main finding of this analysis is that the HIV epidemic reached a major turning point over the past decade. The peak years of HIV incidence rates are past for all regions, and the peaks of prevalence rates are mostly in the past except in Eastern Europe, where they are expected to peak in 2008. But owing in part to the life‐prolonging effect of antiretroviral therapy and to sustained population growth, the absolute number of infected individuals is expected to keep growing slowly in sub‐Saharan Africa and to remain near current levels worldwide, thus posing a continuing challenge to public health programs. No country is expected to see a decline in its population size between 2005 and 2050 that is attributable to high mortality related to AIDS.     

A protective service system

This article presents the results of a small scale study of the protective service caseload of a mid-western metropolitan area. The basic characteristics of the caseload match the national picture presented by the American Humane Association's National Study on Child Abuse and Neglect. The present study focused on the degree to which “systematic” vs. “random” forces appear to be at work in the progress of cases through the system. The overall picture is of some systematic efforts to conduct the process of referrals to community agencies but of a great deal of “randomness” in the bureaucratic closing of cases. This is a major area of concern.     

Supporting the development of empathy: The role of theory of mind and fantasy orientation

Theory of mind (ToM) and empathy are separate, but related components of social understanding. However, research has not clearly defined the distinctions between them. Similarly, related constructs, such as fantasy orientation (FO), are associated with better ToM understanding; however, little is known about how FO may provide a context in which both ToM and affective empathy develop. Children between the ages of 3 and 5 (N = 82) completed a battery of ToM, empathy, and FO measures. Results demonstrated a developmental progression from ToM to affective empathy: 3‐year‐olds were likely to have neither, 4‐year‐olds were likely to have ToM only, and 5‐year‐olds were likely to have both. Additionally, results indicated that FO predicted affective empathy above and beyond ToM ability, suggesting that children whose play is high in fantasy are more practiced than their peers in sharing emotions. These findings are discussed in terms of how children's propensity toward fantasy play may contribute to their social development.     

Trajectories of Breadth of Participation in Organized Activity During Childhood

This study aimed to identify the trajectories of breadth of participation in organized activities during childhood and to examine the predictors of membership in these trajectories (child's individual and family characteristics measured in Kindergarten). A sample of 1038 children, recruited in Kindergarten, was assessed yearly between Kindergarten and grade 4. Semiparametric group‐based modeling brought out four trajectories: the no participation group (13.5 percent), the increasing group (26.4 percent), the decreasing group (14.1 percent), and the high group (46.1 percent). Prosociality predicted membership in the no participation group, as compared with the increasing group. Social withdrawal predicted membership in the no participation group, as compared with the high group. High family income and higher maternal education predicted membership in the increasing, decreasing, and high trajectory groups, as compared with the no participation group. Higher paternal education predicted membership in the high group, as compared with the increasing group. Overall, family variables had a greater impact than individual variables on the probability that the child would participate in a broader range of organized activities.