Physical Realm Research Articles

THE HUMAN GENOME PROJECT: ETHICAL AND LEGAL CHALLENGES IN HUMAN SOCIETIES

The Human Genome Project is the biggest scientific project in human history and a major factor in changing the world-view of human societies. The results of this scientific project has lead to the discovery of genetic make-up of human and other organisms (Viruses, Bacteria, Plants, Animals). In experimental sciences, these discoveries have had a significant impact and have influenced fields such as law, philosophy and psychology. Due to the significance of the issue, many scientific and research centers in the fields of human sciences have studied the consequences of using the new genomic sciences, especially in the fields of law and ethics. The world experts in ethics and law collectively believe that the power of genetics and genomics technologies in early detection before birth, gender selection, diagnosis and treatment of diseases before birth and during life, enhancement of life in the present generation and future generations, delaying death, privacy of genetic information of individuals and their relatives, forecasting diseases and potentials in physical and non-physical realms have the potential to change the foundations of many ethical and legal foundations that human societies have known as facts throughout history. Please cite this article as: Motevally Zadeh Ardekani A. The Human Genome Project: Ethical and Legal Challenges in Human Societies. Iran J Bioethics 2016; 6(19): 101-124.

Navigating Primary Care

Navigating Primary Care

Slow Fashion and Fiber Farming: Nexus for Community Engagement

Agriculture and fashion become intertwined when fiber animals are used as a source of “raw materials,” including wool and mohair for clothing and textile production. This study evaluates the emerging visibility of fiber farms in the United States with sheep, alpacas, and angora goats in physical and virtual realms. This study explores twenty-first century fiber farmer discourses that contribute to Slow Fashion. Farmers have extensive expertise about their animals, fibers, and the farm landscape. The research methodology included a virtual ethnography on Facebook, and on-site visits to US fiber farms during 2013. Findings from the virtual ethnography conveyed how fiber farmers in Texas, Virginia, New York, and Illinois individualize the fiber animals with photographs, names, and descriptions of their personality characteristics. Individualizing fiber animals led to user engagement and interest in physically visiting fiber farms. Findings from on-farm visits in New York, led to deeper insight about alpaca fibers, a heritage breed of sheep, and the farmer’s role in the community. The “open” atmosphere created by fiber farmers suggests the sustained development of a local fiber industry, and opportunities for collaborations between fiber farms and the fashion industry.

Security policy enforcement for networked smart objects

In the Internet of Things (IoT) heterogeneous technologies concur to the provisioning of customized services able to bridge the gap between the physical and digital realms. Security, privacy and data quality are acknowledged to represent key issues to be tackled in order to foster the large-scale adoption of IoT systems and technologies. One instrumental aspect concerns the ability of the system to preserve security in the presence of external attacks. In such a scenario, the integration of a flexible IoT middleware, able to handle a large number of data streams and of interconnected devices, with a flexible policy enforcement framework is needed and presented in this paper. The proposed solution aims to ease the management of interactions across different realms and policy conflicts. Its effectiveness is validated by means of a lightweight and cross-domain prototypical implementation.

Ethnography on the Cyberian Frontier

Virtual worlds are persistent, multi-user, computer generated environments, established and maintained via internet technologies. Cyber-ethnography is the adaptation of the ethnographic method to the study of virtual worlds. The collective and interactive nature of life in contemporary digital space has incited the interest of a new generation ofethnographers and awakened the discipline of anthropology to the possibility of studying a form of sociality that exists beyond the confines of the physical realm. Virtual world communities are crafted through an amalgamation of technology and human sociality; by studying these emergent worlds, ethnographers are able to observe culture in the making.After twenty years of development, virtual worlds have emerged as distinct domains of human being worthy of study in their own right. However, as a discipline cyber-ethnography is still trying to establish itself and demonstrate the contributions it can make to both anthropology and the arts and social sciences in general. The developments within cyberethnography have mirrored advancements in computing technologies and reflect wider debates within the discipline of anthropology. The following review shows how online ethnography can help us understand our digital life-worlds. The article begins by defining virtual worlds, describing the virtual field site Entropia Universe and documenting the development of the discipline. It culminates with an exploration of being and place incyberspace, drawing on ethnographic data from the virtual world Entropia Universe.

Seeds of Change — Polemobotany in the Study of War and Culture

Throughout history, plants and plant science have been intimately associated with military activities, forging inexorable connections to sociocultural evolution. However, this is frequently neglected in war and culture research, despite a pivotal relationship existing both during conflicts and peacetime. This network of botanical connections spans physical and psychological realms — from war materiel to strategies for coping with conflict traumas. Wars have accelerated scientific research, frequently leading to post-war societal benefit. A cyclical process exists whereby military activities shape landscapes and floras, which in turn impact upon the perceptions and activities of those who live and fight within them. Botanic gardens and natural history museums are widely perceived as unconnected to war, yet there resides within these organizations an ‘alternative’ legacy of war. Future research should include polemobotany for a truly multidisciplinary approach, permitting deeper understanding of the relationships among plants, war and culture, as well as facilitating novel mechanisms for public engagement.

The attitudes of the undergraduate nursing students towards lesbian women and gay men

This study was conducted to determine the attitudes of undergraduate nursing students towards lesbian women and gay men. Nursing education in Turkey is conducted holistically; in other words, it is an integration of the physical, spiritual, mental and social realms. Students are therefore expected to not express any discrimination due to factors such as religion, language, race and gender. However, some serious problems still exist in terms of the practical applications of that philosophy. This study was descriptive. This study included 964 students. The Attitudes towards Lesbian Women and Gay Men scale and a questionnaire were used to learn about the attitudes of undergraduate nursing students regarding gay men and lesbian women. Results of this study have indicated that the attitudes of religiously educated and/or conservative students towards lesbian women and gay men were negative. Female students from families with high incomes and highly educated families attended social activities and read more than other female students. The students with free life choice options expressed very positive attitudes towards gay men. The nursing education curriculum should cover information about patients with diverse sexual orientations and their absolute rights for equally optimal healthcare. Strategies to discourage traditional gender role stereotypes and educational and media experiences for better acceptance of sexual minorities need to be developed by educational policy makers. Antidiscrimination policies protecting lesbian women and gay men should be developed by the legislative authorities and then taught to students during their nursing education. Getting familiar with diverse sexual orientations might create awareness among nursing students and reduce their attitudinal and behavioural prejudices and biases. To provide equal healthcare services for all patients, nurses must have accurate information about lesbian women, gay men and modify their attitude and behaviour accordingly.

Energy Ontologies: Wind, Biomass, and Fossil Transportation

This article uses literary sources to draw ontological distinctions among three distinct energy sources: wind power, biomass, and fossil fuels. The primary aim is to demonstrate how radically our fossil fuel regime has changed human ontology in the last two centuries during which we have entered the Anthropocene. Because this radical transformation contains myriad elements, this article will focus on transportation: the speed, quality, and quantity of travel permitted by successive energy sources. To consider the comparative literatures of energy as they relate to transportation, we will begin with wind, then consider muscle-driven biomass giving way to coal locomotion, and conclude with the highest octane fuel, petroleum. The central interest is in how the fuel depicted in literature illuminates historical moments in which the interfaces between self, society, and nature are configured by specific energy regimes. By using literature as a source text, we may arrive at an emotionally and philosophically more robust synthesis of energy history than the social and natural sciences, relying upon objective accounts and statistics, are able to provide. By re-reading literature through the lens of the Anthropocene, we gain perspective on how earlier insights into the relationship between energy and experience can inform our explorations of today’s ontological reality. Energy literature instructs us out of the fossil fuel mindset of world domination and back to a physical realm in which we are small actors in a world guided by capricious forces. Such a reality requires hard muscular work and emotional immersion to restore an ethic of care and sustainability.

Micro Synchrophasor-Based Intrusion Detection in Automated Distribution Systems: Toward Critical Infrastructure Security

Because electric power distribution systems are undergoing many technological changes, concerns are emerging about additional vulnerabilities that might arise. Resilient cyber-physical systems (CPSs) must leverage state measures and operational models that interlink their physical and cyber assets, to assess their global state. Here, the authors describe a viable process of abstraction to obtain this holistic state exploration tool by analyzing data from micro-phasor measurement units (μPMUs) and monitoring distribution supervisory control and data acquisition (DSCADA) traffic. To interpret the data, they use semantics that express the specific physical and operational constraints of the system in both cyber and physical realms.

The Online/Offline Cognitive Divide: Implications for Law

While the online and offline realms continue to converge, this piece argues that a significant cognitive divide remains. This is especially the case as regards the use of social media. The structural mechanisms of these platforms encourage (and even propel) speech, which facilitates a unique cognitive environment for users; an atmosphere where individuals tend to be much more likely to engage in speech than in the physical realm. Many argue that such disinhibition is due to anonymity, but research has demonstrated that it is a more complex picture than previously believed. For the most part the law has ignored these distinct online characteristics, treating speech over social media as if it were “cafe” or “pub talk”. In fact most of the current UK legislation used to regulate speech over the internet, including of course speech over social media, was enacted before these neoteric services came into existence. While prosecution guidelines throughout the UK have been updated to include social media considerations, it is highly debateable as to whether they have proven effective in recognising social media as a unique cognitive environment. And although policies based around technological neutrality remain increasingly attractive to law-makers, especially as the online and offline realms become less distinct, it is important to remember that law cannot properly operate based on such real or perceived eventualities.

The Online/Offline Cognitive Divide: Implications for Law

While the online and offline realms continue to converge, this piece argues that a significant cognitive divide remains. This is especially the case as regards the use of social media. The structural mechanisms of these platforms encourage (and even propel) speech, which facilitates a unique cognitive environment for users; an atmosphere where individuals tend to be much more likely to engage in speech than in the physical realm. Many argue that such disinhibition is due to anonymity, but research has demonstrated that it is a more complex picture than previously believed. For the most part the law has ignored these distinct online characteristics, treating speech over social media as if it were “cafe” or “pub talk”. In fact most of the legislation used to regulate speech over the internet, including of course speech over social media, was enacted before these neoteric services came into existence. And while prosecution guidelines throughout the UK have been updated to include social media considerations, it is highly debateable as to whether they have proven effective in recognising social media as a unique psychological environment.

Virtually Standing Up or Standing By? Correlates of Enacting Social Control Online

Research has consistently established the robustness of the bystander effect, or the tendency of individuals to not intervene on behalf of others in emergency situations. This study examines the bystander effect in an online setting, focusing on factors that lead individuals to intervene, and therefore enact informal social control, on behalf of others who are being targeted by hate material. To address this question, we use an online survey (N=647) of youth and young adults recruited from a demographically balanced sample of Americans. Results demonstrate that the enactment of social control is positively affected by the existence of strong offline and online social bonds, collective efficacy, prior victimization, self-esteem, and an aversion for the hate material in question. Additionally, the amount of time that individuals spend online affects their likelihood of intervention. These findings provide important insights into the processes that underlie informal social control and begin to bridge the gap in knowledge between social control in the physical and virtual realms.

Community in the information age: Exploring the social potential of web-based technologies in landscape architecture and community design

Critics have pointed at new technologies as culprits in the decline of civic life, neighboring and social capital construction in Western societies. When applied to community design and planning processes, technologies can empower residents to actively engage in decision-making, foster connections across social groups, with positive consequences on life and socialization in public spaces. What kind of participation do technologies foster? And is it the kind that bridges social and ideological divides?The 2012 community design process for Hawthorne Park in Medford, Oregon illustrates many of the challenges and opportunities connected to the use of new technologies in design. In the process, technologies were instrumental in enlisting a larger-than-usual number of residents to participate in the design of the park. Blogs and online questionnaires were successful in gathering people׳s thoughts on the design choices being made, but also favored a limited, intermittent form of engagement. The results are synthesized in principles for the successful integration of web-based technologies in future community design efforts: adaptability, full participation, nuanced participation and the need for links to the physical realm.

“A Person perverted into a Thing”: Cannibalistic Metaphors and Dehumanizing Physicality in Late Eighteenth-Century British Abolitionism

The world’s first mass consumer boycott coalesced around a cannibalistic image—the idea that sugar was soaked in the blood of the slaves who grew it. This essay moves beyond previous critical examinations of blood-sugar metaphors to reveal how the choice of cannibalism as a conceptual frame emphasized the physical realm and, as a result, racial difference. The essay examines a range of late eighteenth-century works, offering an extended reading of Robert Southey’s rarely studied antislavery sonnets as well as a brief turn to Afro-Caribbean abolitionists who suggest the potential for cannibalistic metaphors that critique slavery without dehumanizing enslaved people.

Habitat Design: New Directives

For a city in transition not only is there a need for planners to provide accountability of development and growth continuum but also ensure a pattern for objective spatial description network. Orientation towards ideal cognition and provision of a framework for accountability is vital. Interpretation of the structure of mould forming the physical environment made up of people and space with time playing an integral contextually relevant catalyst is essential to evolve experiential knowledge about the urban stature. The planned or self evolved urban grammar owing a perceptual sense of order with accountability for continuum could often be treated as the base order with perpetual indicators defining the edges of physical realm associated with a developing conurbation.The study provides insight into new urbanisation trends prevailing in India and approaches propagated by individuals, organisations and statutory bodies for realizing a better built habitat. A theoretical ideation: Critical Proposition Theory, a decisive framework to ensure progress in the right direction has been derived, supported by graphical - visual illustrations with cognitive reasoning. It is apparently evident, how these cities are envisioned with time would determine the practicability of subsistence for future generations.

Bringing Back Ubuntu.

I awoke to the sound of drums at 6:30 a.m. Despite an exhausting journey of over 10,000 miles, I had not slept well. Countless stray dogs had howled back and forth to each other long into the night. Unfortunately, the prospect of getting more sleep was out of the question; the drums were even more persistent than the barking. I rolled out of bed, threw on another sweatshirt, replaced my pajama bottoms with a pair of jeans, and grabbed an apple as I headed for the door. I could hear a faint swell of voices begin to join the drums in rhythmic song. As I hurried along the well-worn path between the banana field and the compound wall, I heard shrill, exuberant ululations periodically pierce the growing chorus and felt the sun begin to push back the chill of night. I turned a final corner and joined the stream of people making their way to the outdoor auditorium for the morning devotional. I found an open seat and began to clap along. My fatigue was replaced by anticipation of what the day might bring as I was swept along by the energy of the song. A smile crept over my face. Ayear had passed since my last visit, and it felt good to be back. I was at Kafakumba Training Center (Kafakumba) in the Copperbelt Region of northern Zambia, just south of the border with the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and west of Tanzania. Prior to boarding the plane 2 days earlier, my role as an academic psychiatrist had focused primarily on medical education and community engagement at an academic health center in the USA. Once I set foot on the tarmac in Zambia, however, my role transitioned to a visiting faculty member for the annual Kafakumba Pastors’ School. Sincemoving to Zambia from the DRC in the late 1990s, Kafakumba has hosted pastors for 6 weeks annually to complete a curriculum that spans 8 years. They travel from the DRC, Tanzania, and throughout Zambia to study theology and learn skills related to leadership, communication, economic development, and health. During the remaining 46 weeks, they serve as trusted leaders who, due to their positions as faith leaders and the limited access to local health care, are often approached by individuals seeking guidance about both spiritual and physical health in their communities [1]. Explanatory models of ill health in many of the region’s rural communities are commonly rooted in traditional beliefs that involve evil spirits, conflict between the physical and spiritual realms, and failure to appease one’s ancestors [2]. The pastors straddle worldviews shaped by traditional beliefs and Christianity, the latter providing an opportunity to understand disease and illness in a manner that does not rely solely on spiritual and magical causes. In the late 1990s, many people were succumbing to AIDS despite the advice of traditional healers and the prayers of the Christian community. In this context, the Director of Kafakumba invited me in 2001 to provide a different perspective on the health issues confronting the pastors, thereby offering an alternative explanatory model through which to understand disease, illness, and death. That visit was the first of many. Cultural humility and mutual respect guide my interactions with these faith leaders, with most of their worldviews differing significantly from mine. Upon arriving each year, I spend the first couple of classes listening to them share their pressing health education needs. We then prioritize these topics and create a curricular framework to focus our sessions. During my first few years, basic education regarding HIV/AIDS dominated the curriculum.More recently, however, neglected tropical diseases, mental illness, gender-based violence, and the * Mary Kay Smith marykay.smith@utoledo.edu

Identity Change in the World of International Migration. Book review for the volume Schimbari identitare in lumea migratiei internationale, author Viorica – Cristina Cormos, Lumen Publishing House

In this new publication, Cristina Cormos professionally addresses a sensitive issue, complex and difficult in the same time, and ambitiously manages to give us a picture of international viewed through identity change. Starting from the hypothesis that migration is a change that simultaneously occurs in both physical and socio-cultural realms, which implies not only movement from one community to another, but also the disintegration of structural bonds in the departure area, paralleled by a cultural assimilation of the destination environment, the author analyzes identity changes of the emigrants throughout the entire process, the factors underlying these changes, as well as the consequences and implications of these factors in the return migration. The issues addressed within this book also cover the changes occurred in the family and community of origin as a result of the absence of one of its members and of the manifestation of identity changes respectively.

A New Method for Profile Generation in an Internet of Things Environment: An Application in Ambient-Assisted Living

Ambient-assisted living (AAL) is currently one of the important research and development areas, where accessibility, usability, and learning play a major role and where future interfaces are an important concern for applied engineering. The general goal of AAL solutions is to apply ambient intelligence technology to enable people with specific demands, e.g., handicapped or elderly, to live in their preferred environment longer. The term “Internet of Things” (IoT) is used as an umbrella keyword for covering various aspects related to the extension of the Internet and the Web into the physical realm, by means of the widespread deployment of spatially distributed devices with embedded identification, sensing and/or actuation capabilities. In this context, we propose a new methodology based on self organizing maps (SOMs) and fuzzy C-means (FCM) algorithms for profile generation as regards the activities of the user and their correlation with the available sensors. Moreover, we utilize the provided context to assign the generated profiles to more contextually complex activities. Our methodology is being evaluated into an AAL structure equipped with several sensors. More precisely, we assess the proposed method in a data set generated by accelerometers and its performance over a number of everyday activities.

Grounding Causal Closure

AbstractWhat does it mean to say that mind‐body dualism is causally problematic in a way that other mind‐body theories, such as the psychophysical type identity theory, are not? After considering and rejecting various proposals, I advance my own, which focuses on what grounds the causal closure of the physical realm. A metametaphysical implication of my proposal is that philosophers working without the notion of grounding in their toolkit are metaphysically impoverished. They cannot do justice to the thought, encountered in every introductory class in the philosophy of mind, that dualism has a special problem accounting for mental causation.

Taking a critical look at holographic critical matter

Despite a recent urry of applications of the broadly defined (‘non-AdS/non-CFT’) holographic correspondence to a variety of condensed matter problems, the status of this intriguing, yet highly speculative, approach remains largely undetermined. Here we expose a number of potential inconsistencies between the previously made holographic predictions and advocate for a compelling need to systematically contrast the latter against the results of alternate, more conventional, approaches as well as experimental data. It is also proposed to expand the list of computed observables and utilize the general relations between them as a further means of bringing the formal holographic approach into a closer contact with the physical realm.