生物伦理学先驱——阿尔贝特·施韦泽

阿尔贝特.施韦泽提出生物伦理学的“敬畏生命”的观点。认为:人必须像敬畏自己的生命意志一样敬畏所有的生命意志。这种生物伦理学是面向实践的伦理学,也是情境伦理学;通过不必要的杀戮和事实上必需的宰杀的区分,可以解决伦理实践中存在的诸多冲突和矛盾状况。有人认为在施韦泽伦理学的方法论中有“自然主义”的谬误,但是施韦泽的伦理学事实上并不是关于伦理规范的真正的逻辑演绎系统。尽管施韦泽没有真正找到富有意义的、始终如一地面向实践的、更温和的伦理学基础,但他是20世纪罕见的真正伟大的人道主义者之一。     

Effect of Low‐Income Unmarried Fathers' Presence at Birth on Involvement

The birth of a child represents a unique window of opportunity to understand and support ongoing father involvement among low‐income unmarried parents. Using data collected as part of a randomized controlled trial of a community‐based home visiting intervention provided to 248 low‐income African American women, a propensity score matching approach was used to estimate the effect of fathers' presence at birth on multiple measures of later father involvement over the first 2 years postpartum. The results indicated that participation in child care activities is the only form of involvement predicted by presence at birth at 4 months, and none of the forms of father involvement measured were predicted at 12 months; however, presence at birth was predictive of all 7 indicators of involvement at 24 months. Engaging fathers in the birth experience may represent an important opportunity to provide services.     

Sustainability—a theoretical idea or a practical recipe?

In this paper, the notion of sustainability as a general regulative idea is distinguished from sustainable development as a more concrete concept leading to practical actions. After that, different economic meanings of sustainable development are discussed, and a concept of critical sustainability is proposed especially with respect to the problem of climate change. Maintaining critical crash barriers and bottlenecks presupposes, however, demanding, continuous improvements in energy efficiency. After discussing problems of decision theory in cases of uncertainty, which is constitutive for climate change, the links between intragenerational and intergenerational justice are analyzed, and by using Barry's notion of justice and Goodin's concept of vulnerability, two possible positions of the general idea of fairness inherent in sustainable development are presented. We conclude by shortly sketching the notion of sufficiency as an additional supplementary sustainability strategy in cases where efficiency improvements based on innovation are less than sufficient for securing the (energetic) fundaments of economic activity and human life.     

Complexity of Some Problems Concerning 2CNF Formulas

In this paper we investigate the complexity of several problems concerning 2CNF formulas. At first, we show that the minimal unsatisfiability problem for 2CNF formulas can be solved in linear time. Then we prove that the problem determining if a 2CNF formula can be transformed to a minimal unsatisfiable formula is also solvable in linear time. Thirdly, we show the polynomial solvability of the satisfiability problem for symmetric monotone formulas in which all clauses has length 2 or ? n - k ( n is the number of variables and k is a fixed positive integer). Finally, we prove that the satisfiability of symmetric monotone formulas in which each literal occurs at most twice depends only on the 2-clauses they contains.     

The good will umbrella

The six reproductions concern a Mobil oil company public relations rationale. The artist discusses political art in a preface.     

Six of One and Half a Dozen of the Other: The Gender Subtext of Taylorism and Team-based Work

This article analyses gendering processes in two distinct models of work organization. It is a widespread belief that, compared to hierarchical (Tayloristic) organizations, team-based work offers opportunities for a high quality of working life to a broader range of employees, both men and women. Our research, however, suggests that gender inequality is (re)produced in both settings and results from the so-called gender subtext. The gender subtext is the set of often concealed power-based processes (re)producing gender distinction in social practices through organizational and individual arrangements. We draw a comparison between the gender subtext of Tayloristic and team-based work organizations through a theoretical analysis, illustrated by empirical data concerning the functioning of the gender subtext in organizations in the Dutch banking sector. Taylorism and team-based work differ in their conceptualization of organization and job design, but, when it comes to the gender subtext, it is six of one and half a dozen of the other. We argue that in both approaches a gender subtext contributes to the emergence of different but gendered notions of the ‘disembodied worker’. In both cases the notion of the abstract worker is implicitly loaded with masculine connotations. This gender bias is supported by two factors influencing the gendering of jobs: the gender connotations of care responsibilities and of qualification profiles. These implicit connotations produce and reinforce unequal opportunities for men and women to get highly qualified or management jobs. Our research, therefore, questions the self-evidence of stating that team-based work will offer opportunities for a higher quality of working life for women.     

Bayesian predictive power: choice of prior and some recommendations for its use as probability of success in drug development

Bayesian predictive power, the expectation of the power function with respect to a prior distribution for the true underlying effect size, is routinely used in drug development to quantify the probability of success of a clinical trial. Choosing the prior is crucial for the properties and interpretability of Bayesian predictive power. We review recommendations on the choice of prior for Bayesian predictive power and explore its features as a function of the prior. The density of power values induced by a given prior is derived analytically and its shape characterized. We find that for a typical clinical trial scenario, this density has a u‐shape very similar, but not equal, to a β‐distribution. Alternative priors are discussed, and practical recommendations to assess the sensitivity of Bayesian predictive power to its input parameters are provided. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Risk aversion for losses and the Nash bargaining solution

Theory and Decision - We call a decision maker risk averse for losses if that decision maker is risk averse with respect to lotteries having alternatives below a given reference alternative in...