Emotions in scientific research are typically portrayed as short-lived responses or dispositions to manifest such responses. Some philosophers have argued that this fails to capture long-term emotions (e.g., love, hate, and grief). This article examines whether the emerging field of affect dynamics (or emotion dynamics), which studies how emotions fluctuate over time, can address the philosophical critique. I argue that there are still aspects of long-term emotion (i.e., their temporal components and temporal dynamics) missing from affect (...) dynamics. I end by proposing a few positive steps psychologists working in affect dynamics can take to mitigate these shortcomings. (shrink)

AI-enabled State surveillance capabilities are likely to exert chilling effects whereby individuals modify their behavior due to a fear of the potential consequences if that behavior is observed. The risk is that chilling effects drive individuals towards the mainstream, slowly reducing the space for personal and political development. This could prove devastating for individuals’ ability to freely develop their identity and, ultimately, for the evolution and vibrancy of democratic society. As it stands, human rights law cannot effectively conceptualize this cumulative, (...) longer-term, harm, and so cannot accurately evaluate the cost/benefit of AI tools, risking irreparable harm. As chilling effects impact individuals’ ability to live a good, self-determined life, the concept of human flourishing is relevant. This article engages with Aristotelian naturalism, the life-satisfaction approach, and the capabilities approach to determine which best resonates with the concept of identity as relevant to chilling effects and human rights law. It concludes that the capabilities approach may overcome some of the problems associated with the human rights law approach and may provide a framework capable of capturing both the intricate processes of free identity development and of conceptualizing the harm linked to AI surveillance. The challenge, however, is to ‘operationalize’ this approach. (shrink)

Background: Due to the major changes occurring in the demographic composition of the world’s population, the number of older individuals is increasing, which puts pressure on the healthcare systems in many different countries. The involvement of volunteers and family members may become necessary to fulfil a patient’s needs for follow-up treatments and long-term care in their homes. Aim: This study aimed to explore how nurses and physicians experienced and addressed ethical challenges when they dealt with relatives in what (...) have traditionally been one-on-one consultations at two Norwegian hospital outpatient clinics. Research Design and Methods: A total of eight nurses and two physicians from two different hospitals participated in individual in-depth interviews. The transcribed interviews were analysed using an eclectic approach called ‘bricolage’ inspired by Kvale and Brinkmann. We combined cross-case thematic and theoretical normative analyses. Ethical considerations: The principles of voluntariness, confidentiality, withdrawal and anonymity were respected throughout the research process. In addition, the Norwegian Social Science Data Services approved this study. Findings: The findings showed that respect for a patient’s autonomy was used as an argument for delimiting the relatives’ access to the patient’s consultations. We found that there were insufficient routines in place for inviting and involving relatives in the patient consultations in the outpatient clinics. Discussion: The traditional Western attitudes towards the principles of patient autonomy will likely be challenged due to the growing need for family involvement in the care of a patient in the future. Conclusion: This study’s description of the nurses and physicians’ interpretations of ‘patient autonomy’ as a phenomenon uncover the need for systematic ethical deliberation in the clinical setting. On an organisational level, there is a strong indication of the need to discuss the routines that are in place to invite the next of kin to participate in such patient’s healthcare consultations. (shrink)

Most commentary about the influence of scientific and economic ‘experts’ in post-war Britain focuses on policy failures – on the inadequacy of medium-term decisions, and on missed targets and political reverses. This is particularly so in the field of very long term economic and social planning, given the scrapping of most controls in the early to mid-1950s and the abandonment of the ill-fated National Plan of 1965. This essay seeks to recover a more detailed and less normative (...) story about the use of new technocratic and scientific forecasting techniques inside post-war British governance. It draws on the work of the civil service’s Very Long-Term Planning Committee to unpackage ‘official’ Britain’s view of the likely future, as that Committee tried to look forward to what the country would look like in 1980 and 2000. In so doing, the article will demonstrate that Britain’s long-term look ahead was presciently focused on defence and transport infrastructure, capital investment, the returns to spending on social services, education’s contribution to growth, more expert management inside government and the strategic role of the state in industrial modernisation – all of which would re-emerge again and again as key themes in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. (shrink)

Long-term ecological research (LTER), addressing problems that encompass decadal or longer time frames, began as a formal term and program in the United States in 1980. While long-term ecological studies and observation began as early as the 1400s and 1800s in Asia and Europe, respectively, the long-term approach was not formalized until the establishment of the U.S. long-term ecological research programs. These programs permitted ecosystem-level experiments and cross-site comparisons that led to (...) insights into the biosphere’s structure and function. The holistic ecosystem approach of this initiative also allowed the incorporation of the human-dimension of ecology and recently has given rise to a new concept of long-term socio-ecological research (LTSER). Today, long-term ecological research programs exist in at least thirty-two countries (i.e., members of the International Long-Term Ecological Research Network, ILTER). However, consolidation of the international network within the long-term socio-ecological research paradigm still requires: (1) inclusion of certain remote regions of the world, such as southwestern South America, that are still poorly represented; (2) modifications of the type of research conducted, such as integrating social and natural sciences with the humanities and ethics; and (3) the incorporation of findings and results into broader social and political processes. In this context, a nascent long-term socio-ecological research network in Chile, which extends over the longest latitudinal range of temperate forest in the Southern Hemisphere, adds a new remote region to international long-term ecological research previously overlooked. In addition, collaboration with the University of North Texas and other international partners helps to further develop an interdisciplinary approach for the integration of the ecological sciences and environmental philosophy together with traditional ecological knowledge, informal and formal education, policy, the humanities, socio-political processes, and biocultural conservation. (shrink)

As long-term childhood cancer survivors are at risk for late effects, ongoing medical care is crucial to detect and treat physical illnesses as early as possible. However, previous research from around the world has shown that many adult survivors did not participate in long-term medical follow-up. This study aimed to provide insight into German survivors’ care situation, with a particular focus on barriers to follow-up care. We investigated a sample of adult CCS drawn from the German (...) Childhood Cancer Registry’s oldest cohort. Our analyses included data from a standardized medical examination, a self-report questionnaire, and in-depth interviews with a subsample. Half of the participants reported participating in some kind of medical follow-up. In a logistic regression analysis, attendance of medical follow-up care was associated with higher age. Reasons for non-attendance were assigned to four categories: lack of information about medical follow-up and/or its purpose, termination by the health care provider, structural barriers, and emotional-motivational aspects. The interviews contributed to a better understanding of how these reported barriers played out in the care of individual survivors. Further, they revealed that some survivors currently in medical follow-up had had periods without follow-up care in the past—which were also in many cases related to a lack of information, both on the part of health care providers and CCS themselves. The results indicated that a large proportion of long-term CCS do not receive the recommended follow-up care. Further, there is a great need for more information regarding the aims of long-term medical follow-up and available offers. This is an important prerequisite for CCS to make informed decisions. (shrink)

Long-term ecological research (LTER), addressing problems that encompass decadal or longer time frames, began as a formal term and program in the United States in 1980. While long-term ecological studies and observation began as early as the 1400s and 1800s in Asia and Europe, respectively, the long-term approach was not formalized until the establishment of the U.S. long-term ecological research programs. These programs permitted ecosystem-level experiments and cross-site comparisons that led to (...) insights into the biosphere’s structure and function. The holistic ecosystem approach of this initiative also allowed the incorporation of the human-dimension of ecology and recently has given rise to a new concept of long-term socio-ecological research (LTSER). Today, long-term ecological research programs exist in at least thirty-two countries (i.e., members of the International Long-Term Ecological Research Network, ILTER). However, consolidation of the international network within the long-term socio-ecological research paradigm still requires: (1) inclusion of certain remote regions of the world, such as southwestern South America, that are still poorly represented; (2) modifications of the type of research conducted, such as integrating social and natural sciences with the humanities and ethics; and (3) the incorporation of findings and results into broader social and political processes. In this context, a nascent long-term socio-ecological research network in Chile, which extends over the longest latitudinal range of temperate forest in the Southern Hemisphere, adds a new remote region to international long-term ecological research previously overlooked. In addition, collaboration with the University of North Texas and other international partners helps to further develop an interdisciplinary approach for the integration of the ecological sciences and environmental philosophy together with traditional ecological knowledge, informal and formal education, policy, the humanities, socio-political processes, and biocultural conservation. (shrink)

Investigations of the behavior of the geomagnetic field on geological timescales rely on globally distributed data sets from dated lava flows. We present the first suitable data from the Arctic region, comprising 37 paleomagnetic directions from Jan Mayen and Spitsbergen and five paleointensity results. Dispersion of the Arctic virtual geomagnetic poles over the last 2 Ma is significantly lower than that from published Antarctic data sets. Arctic average virtual axial dipole moment is high in comparison to Antarctica over the same (...) time interval, although the data are still too sparse in the Arctic to be definitive. These data support a long-lived hemispheric asymmetry of the magnetic field, contrasting higher, more stable fields in the north with lower average strength and more variable field directions in the south. Such features require significant non-axial-dipole contributions over 10 5 -10 6 years. © 2013. American Geophysical Union. All Rights Reserved. (shrink)

It is shown that the evolution of physics canin several regards be described by elements of``regression'', i.e., that within a certaintradition of ideas one begins with theconstruction of most ``plausible'' statements(axioms) at hand, and then ``works onselfbackwards'' with respect to developmental terms.As a consequence of this strategy, the furtherwork proceeds along such a ``regressive'' path,the more one arrives at concepts andrelationships which are unexpected or evencounter-intuitive in terms of our everydayexperiences. However, a comparable phenomenology is wellknown from studies on states (...) of consciousness.In particular, the evolutionary logic of theconstructions of major ``cognitive invariances''in physics, which is in part due to everincreasing rates of data processing, ismirrored in a logic of states of consciousnesswhich deviate from a ``normal'' state of dailyroutine along increasing levels of centralnervous arousal. Examples are given from the evolution ofphysics, and future perspectives are brieflyoutlined on the basis thereof. (shrink)

This paper defends cognitive neuroscience’s project of developing mechanistic explan- ations of cognitive processes through decomposition and localization against objections raised by William Uttal in The New Phrenology. The key issue between Uttal and researchers pursuing cognitive neuroscience is that Uttal bets against the possibility of decomposing mental operations into component elementary operations which are localized in distinct brain regions. The paper argues that it is through advancing and revising what are likely to be overly simplistic and incorrect decompositions that (...) the goals of cognitive neuroscience are likely to be achieved. (shrink)

Purpose This paper aims to formalize long-term trajectories of human civilization as a scientific and ethical field of study. The long-term trajectory of human civilization can be defined as the path that human civilization takes during the entire future time period in which human civilization could continue to exist. Design/methodology/approach This paper focuses on four types of trajectories: status quo trajectories, in which human civilization persists in a state broadly similar to its current state into the (...) distant future; catastrophe trajectories, in which one or more events cause significant harm to human civilization; technological transformation trajectories, in which radical technological breakthroughs put human civilization on a fundamentally different course; and astronomical trajectories, in which human civilization expands beyond its home planet and into the accessible portions of the cosmos. Findings Status quo trajectories appear unlikely to persist into the distant future, especially in light of long-term astronomical processes. Several catastrophe, technological transformation and astronomical trajectories appear possible. Originality/value Some current actions may be able to affect the long-term trajectory. Whether these actions should be pursued depends on a mix of empirical and ethical factors. For some ethical frameworks, these actions may be especially important to pursue. (shrink)

Long-term care is controversial because it involves foundational disputes. Some are moral-economic, bearing on whether the individual, the family, or the state is primarily responsible for long-term care, as well as on how one can establish a morally and financially sustainable long-term-care policy, given the moral hazard of people over-using entitlements once established, the political hazard of media democracies promising unfundable entitlements, the demographic hazard of relatively fewer workers to support those in need of (...) long-term care, the moral hazard to responsibility of shifting accountability to third parties, and the bureaucratic hazard of moving from individual and family choice to bureaucratic oversight. These disputes are compounded by controversies regarding the nature of the family (Is it to be regarded primarily as a socio-biological category, a fundamental ontological category of social reality, or a construct resulting from the consent of the participants?), as well as its legal and moral autonomy and authority over its members. As the disputes show, there is no common understanding of respect and human dignity that will easily lead out of these disputes. The reflections on long-term care in this issue underscore the plurality of moralities defining bioethics. (shrink)

Subjects classified visible 2-digit numbers as larger or smaller than 55. Target numbers were preceded by masked 2-digit primes that were either congruent (same relation to 55) or incongruent. Experiments 1 and 2 showed prime congruency effects for stimuli never included in the set of classified visible targets, indicating subliminal priming based on long-term semantic memory. Experiments 2 and 3 went further to demonstrate paradoxical unconscious priming effects resulting from task context. For example, after repeated practice classifying 73 (...) as larger than 55, the novel masked prime 37 paradoxically facilitated the “larger” response. In these experiments task context could induce subjects to unconsciously process only the leftmost masked prime digit, only the rightmost digit, or both independently. Across 3 experiments, subliminal priming was governed by both task context and long-term semantic memory. (shrink)

The aim of this study was to explore ethically problematic situations in the long-term nursing care of elderly people. It was assumed that greater awareness of ethical problems in caring for elderly people helps to ensure ethically high standards of nursing care. To obtain a broad perspective on the current situation, the data for this study were collected among elderly patients, their relatives and nurses in one long-term care institution in Finland. The patients (n=10) were interviewed, (...) while the relatives (n=17) and nurses (n=9) wrote an essay. Interpretation of the data was based on qualitative content analysis. Problematic experiences were divided into three categories concerning patients’ psychological, physical and social integrity. In the case of psychological integrity, the problems were seen as being related to treatment, self-determination and obtaining information; for physical integrity, they were related to physical abuse and lack of individualized care; and for social integrity, to loneliness and social isolation. This study provided no information on the prevalence of ethical problems. However, it is clear from the results that patient integrity warrants more attention in the nursing care of elderly patients. (shrink)

Do neurobiologists aim to discover natural kinds? I address this question in this chapter via a critical analysis of classification practices operative across the 43-year history of research on long-term potentiation. I suggest that this 43-year history supports the idea that the structure of scientific practice surrounding LTP research has remained an obstacle to the discovery of natural kinds as philosophers of science have traditionally conceived them.

There seems to be dilemma whether we should direct our efforts in AI ethics towards problems that are clearly visible on the horizon today (short-term), or towards problems for which we see significant probability of them occurring at some point (long-term), provided they are significant enough. Some authors have argued that we should put a heavy focus on the one or the other. I will argue that this is a false dilemma: Any rational agent will consider both (...) short- and long-term consequences (as well as other factors). My analysis is that the supposed dilemma rests on the assumption that we are at a very unusual situation that forces favouring of one option – what I call an “ethical singularity”. The only serious argument for this view is that the longer term involves a) an ethically “significantly different” situation, and b) that this demands a version of “ethical fanaticism”. Both premises turn out to have little in their favour. We should thus return to the “normal balance” of expected utility in AI ethics and solve problems in all relevant time horizons concurrently. (shrink)

This provocation critiques the notion of long-term thinking and the claims of its proponents that it will help address failures in dominant conceptions of time, particularly in regard to environmental crises. Drawing on analyses of the Clock of the Long Now and Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future, the article suggests that we be more wary of the concept’s use in what we might call chronowashing. Like the more familiar greenwashing, where environmental issues are hidden (...) by claims to be addressing the problem, the article explores how these examples of long-term thinking distract from extractivism, racism, and environmental injustice, making it harder to address the complexities involved. In particular, the article discusses examples where long-term thinking provides a veneer of environmental concern that actually disconnects from the work of building more equitable forms of relation. As a contrast, the article’s author asks: What is lost when we diagnose a problem as arising due to short-term thinking and propose long-term thinking as the solution? Against chronowashed environmental time, the author argues for more complex approaches that explicitly take into account the temporalities of inequality, political organization, ethical responsibilities and much else. The article engages with approaches to time that foreground the work needed to create time and move ethically within it, including Charles W. Mills’s white time and Kyle Powys Whyte’s kinship time. The author suggests that a stronger emphasis on the temporality of community, solidarity, and coalition—versus what James Hatley and Deborah Bird Rose have described as temporal narcissism—can better foreground the kinds of work that needs to be done, particularly by those with privilege. (shrink)

Many of the problems currently facing our societies are long-term. Long-term problems are complex, often large-scale, and may require considerable planning and resources to avert undesirable outcomes in the (far) future. Consider issues such as climate change, nuclear waste disposal, and the sustainable management of ecosystems. The ability of a society to adequately address the most relevant problems depends on appropriate long-term governance, i.e., strategic, consistent, and coherent governance over an extended period of time. (...) Serious obstacles are inherent in long-term governance. These include short election cycles, intergenerational trade-offs, and the uncertainties involved in long-term decision-making. Liberal democracies appear to encounter difficulties in providing adequate responses to pertinent long-term issues, such as climate change, due to the institutions’ current design, which primarily focuses on safeguarding the interests of the present generation. This paper introduces long-term governance as a distinct philosophical topic by defining it in relation to a novel perspective on long-term challenges. The paper defends an obligation to engage in long-term governance based on the basic rights of those who do not yet vote. This includes, in particular, an obligation to engage in research into long-term governance institutions. (shrink)

Long-term potentiation (LTP) is operationally defined as a long-lasting increase in synaptic efficacy following high-frequency stimulation of afferent fibers. Since the first full description of the phenomenon in 1973, exploration of the mechanisms underlying LTP induction has been one of the most active areas of research in neuroscience. Of principal interest to those who study LTP, particularly in the mammalian hippocampus, is its presumed role in the establishment of stable memories, a role consistent with descriptions of memory (...) formation. Other characteristics of LTP, including its rapid induction, persistence, and correlation with natural brain rhythms, provide circumstantial support for this connection to memory storage. Nonetheless, there is little empirical evidence that directly links LTP to the storage of memories. In this target article we review a range of cellular and behavioral characteristics of LTP and evaluate whether they are consistent with the purported role of hippocampal LTP in memory formation. We suggest that much of the present focus on LTP reflects a preconception that LTP is a learning mechanism, although the empirical evidence often suggests that LTP is unsuitable for such a role. As an alternative to serving as a memory storage device, we propose that LTP may serve as a neural equivalent to an arousal or attention device in the brain. Accordingly, LTP may increase in a nonspecific way the effective salience of discrete external stimuli and may thereby facilitate the induction of memories at distant synapses. Other hypotheses regarding the functional utility of this intensely studied mechanism are conceivable; the intent of this target article is not to promote a single hypothesis but rather to stimulate discussion about the neural mechanisms underlying memory storage and to appraise whether LTP can be considered a viable candidate for such a mechanism. (shrink)

Longtermism, the view that emphasizes the importance of the long-term consequences of our actions, has predominantly been focused on humans. Gary O’Brien (2024) argues that this is a mistake and instead, longtermism should be animal inclusive. While I find merit in O’Brien’s core argument, I offer critiques to certain aspects of it in this article. Moreover, in the spirit of extending the sphere of moral considerability, I believe that we should also consider longtermism for environmental values more widely. (...) This article proposes a non-anthropocentric approach to longtermism that acknowledges not only sentient animals but also ecological systems and all forms of life to invoke a more diverse discussion about longtermism. It also explores potentially effective interventions that such an extended perspective might yield. (shrink)

The realities and myths of long-term care and the challenges it poses for the ethics of autonomy are analyzed in this perceptive work. The book defends the concept of autonomy, but argues that the standard view of autonomy as non-interference and independence has only a limited applicability for long term care. The treatment of actual autonomy stresses the developmental and social nature of human persons and the priority of identification over autonomous choice. The work balances analysis (...) of the ethical concepts associated with autonomy with discussion of the implications of the ethical analysis for long term care. A central chapter involves a phenomenological analysis of four general features of everyday experience (space, time, communication, and affectivity) and explores their practical implications for long term care. This work concludes with a discussion of the advantages associated with a phenomenologically-inspired treatment of actual autonomy for the ethics of long-term care. (shrink)

Long-term potentiation is one of the most extensively studied forms of neuroplasticity and is considered the strongest candidate mechanism for memory and learning. The use of event-related potentials and sensory stimulation paradigms has allowed for the translation from animal studies to non-invasive studies of LTP-like synaptic plasticity in humans. Accumulating evidence suggests that synaptic plasticity as measured by stimulus-specific response modulation is reduced in neuropsychiatric disorders such as major depressive disorder, bipolar disorders and schizophrenia, suggesting that impaired synaptic (...) plasticity plays a part in the underlying pathophysiology of these disorders. This is in line with the neuroplasticity hypothesis of depression, which postulate that deficits in neuroplasticity might be a common pathway underlying depressive disorders. The current study aims to replicate and confirm earlier reports that visual stimulus-specific response modulation is a viable probe into LTP-like synaptic plasticity in a large sample of healthy adults. Further, this study explores whether impairments in LTP-like synaptic plasticity is associated with self-reported subclinical depressive symptoms and stress in a healthy population. Consistent with prior research, the current study replicated and confirmed reports demonstrating significant modulation of visual evoked potentials following visual high-frequency stimulation. Current results further indicate that reduced LTP-like synaptic plasticity is associated with higher levels of self-reported symptoms of depression and perceived stress. This indicate that LTP-like plasticity is sensitive to sub-clinical levels of psychological distress, and might represent a vulnerability marker for the development of depressive symptoms. (shrink)

Long-term modifications of synaptic efficacy at excitatory synapses are considered as a putative cellular substrate for learning and memory processes. Cerebellar long-term depression (LTD) occurring at parallel fibers (PF)-Purkinje neurons (PN) synapses is thought to repre-sent a cellular model of motor learning. Crépel et al. and Linden describe this phenomenon by utilizing different tissue preparations. [CRÉPEL et al., LINDEN].

Cerebellar long-term depression (LTD) is a form of synaptic plasticity, first described by Ito and co-workers, in which simultaneous activation of two excitatory inputs to a Purkinje neuron, parallel fibers (PFs) and climbing fibers (CFs), results in a sustained depression of PF synaptic drive. The purpose of this target article is not to assess the possible role of this synaptic alteration in motor learning, an issue which is addressed by other authors in this volume, nor is it to (...) provide a detailed summary of the work on cerebellar LTD to this point (see Linden & Connor 1993; Crépel et al. 1993 for review) or to place cerebellar LTD within the context of other forms of persistent synaptic depression that occur within the mammalian brain (see Linden 1994b). Rather, it is to discuss results obtained using a very reduced preparation for the study of LTD, embryonic Purkinje neurons grown in culture and stimulated with exogenous excitatory amino acids, and to consider some advantages and limitations of this approach. Recent work using this preparation has suggested that three processes are necessary for the induction of cerebellar LTD: Ca influx through voltage-gated channels, Na influx through AMPA receptor-associated channels or voltage-gated Na channels, and protein kinase C activation - which is dependent upon activation of the metabotropic glutamate receptor mGluRl. In addition, input-specific induction of LTD has been demonstrated in this preparation Under conditions where both spontaneous and evoked neurotransmitter release are reduced or eliminated, indicating that postsynaptic alterations are sufficient to confer this important computational property. (shrink)

Background The use of seclusion and other restraints in forensic mental health settings are intended to be employed as a last resort and for the shortest time possible to achieve therapeutic effect. And yet, in Canadian forensic hospital settings, patients can remain in seclusion for weeks, months, even years. An ambiguous legal framework across Canadian provinces lacks mechanisms to limit or forbid the long-term seclusion of patients, which we define as any continuous confinement lasting 15 days or longer. (...) Research objectives The paper undertakes a critical examination of long-term seclusion practices in forensic hospitals, based on the results of a qualitative study examining nursing practices with ‘difficult’ patients. Agamben’s concepts of homo sacer and bare life and Guenther’s concept of social death provide the framework for this critical examination. Research design A qualitative research design was employed, utilizing a critical discourse analysis methodology. Participants and context 7 nurses working in a high security forensic hospital setting in Canada participated in qualitative interviews. Ethical considerations The paradox of custody and caring is central to the considerable ethical challenges nurses face with patients in long-term seclusion. Findings/results Integration of study findings with existing (limited) studies of this phenomenon illustrate that, though rare, patients in forensic hospital settings may be subject to lengthy and legally ambiguous periods of seclusion. Nursing practices and interventions are aimed at providing patients temporary reprieve from a state of bare life and to alleviate their social death. However, no mechanisms exist to prevent the use of long-term seclusion. Conclusions Long-term seclusion represents a regrettable practice in forensic hospital settings aimed at the management of ‘difficult’ patients but is devoid of therapeutic value or intent. Existing nursing practices can only temporarily relieve patients from this state. More substantive and lasting solutions are proposed, focusing on the role of the nurse. (shrink)

Background Professional care workers face ethical issues in long-term care settings (LTCS) for older adults. They need to be independent and responsible, despite limited resources, a shortage of skilled professionals, global and societal changes, and the negative reputation of LTCS work. Research aim Our aim was to describe the care workers’ lived experiences of ethical issues. The findings can be used to gain new perspectives and to guide decision-making to improve the quality of care, occupational well-being and nursing (...) education. Research design Focus group interviews were analyzed using a hermeneutic-phenomenological method. The analysis comprised three steps: naïve reading, structural analysis, and comprehensive understanding. Participants and research context We randomly sampled LTCS service providers in Finland and 53 care workers with different educational backgrounds from seven organizations participated in focus group interviews in 2021. Ethical considerations This was a sensitive study, which was connected to the participants’ individual views of the world, professional ethics and social and health care legislation. The participants' provided informed consent and their anonymity was guaranteed. Findings Care workers spoke about their lived experiences of ethical issues in an emotional way, using practical examples. They talked about how they were experts at caring and advocating for residents, balanced the responsibilities of their different roles, and defended their work to the wider society. The care workers said that ethical aspects of their work were too difficult to solve on their own. There were elements of their working environment and practices that caused unnecessary strain and they needed the commitment of managers, organizations, and society to solve ethical issues in LTCS. Conclusions Ethical issues were related to the well-being of both residents and care workers and reflected both internal and external pressures. Some issues could not be resolved by individuals and needed input from managers, organizations, and society. (shrink)

While often presented as promising assistive technologies for motor-impaired users, electroencephalography (EEG)-based Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCIs) remain barely used outside laboratories due to low reliability in real-life conditions. There is thus a need to design long-term reliable BCIs that can be used outside-of-the-lab by end-users, e.g., severely motor-impaired ones. Therefore, we propose and evaluate the design of a multi-class Mental Task (MT)-based BCI for longitudinal training (20 sessions over 3 months) of a tetraplegic user for the CYBATHLON BCI series (...) 2019. In this BCI championship, tetraplegic pilots are mentally driving a virtual car in a racing video game. We aimed at combining a progressive user MT-BCI training with a newly designed machine learning pipeline based on adaptive Riemannian classifiers shown to be promising for real-life applications. We followed a two step training process: the first 11 sessions served to train the user to control a 2-class MT-BCI by performing either two cognitive tasks (REST and MENTAL SUBTRACTION) or two motor-imagery tasks (LEFT-HAND and RIGHT-HAND). The second training step (9 remaining sessions) applied an adaptive, session-independent Riemannian classifier that combined all 4 MT classes used before. Moreover, as our Riemannian classifier was incrementally updated in an unsupervised way it would capture both within and between-session non-stationarity. Experimental evidences confirm the effectiveness of this approach. Namely, the classification accuracy improved by about 30% at the end of the training compared to initial sessions. We also studied the neural correlates of this performance improvement. Using a newly proposed BCI user learning metric, we could show our user learned to improve his BCI control by producing EEG signals matching increasingly more the BCI classifier training data distribution, rather than by improving his EEG class discrimination. However, the resulting improvement was effective only on synchronous (cue-based) BCI and it did not translate into improved CYBATHLON BCI game performances. For the sake of overcoming this in the future, we unveil possible reasons for these limited gaming performances and identify a number of promising future research directions. Importantly, we also report on the evolution of the user's neurophysiological patterns and user experience throughout the BCI training and competition. (shrink)

Across various fields it is argued that the self in part consists of an autobiographical self-narrative and that the self-narrative has an impact on agential behavior. Similarly, within action theory, it is claimed that the intentional structure of coherent long-term action is divided into a hierarchy of distal, proximal, and motor intentions. However, the concrete mechanisms for how narratives and distal intentions are generated and impact action is rarely fleshed out concretely. We here demonstrate how narratives and distal (...) intentions can be generated within cognitive agents and how they can impact agential behavior over long time scales. We integrate narratives and distal intentions into the LIDA model,and demonstrate how they can guide agential action in a manner that is consistent with the Global Workspace Theory of consciousness. This paper serves both as an addition to the LIDA cognitive architecture and an elucidation of how narratives and distal intention emerge and play their role in cognition and action. (shrink)

. Recent years have witnessed the proliferation of “Christian” companies in the U.S. These firms declare their belief in, and active pursuit of, the successful merging of biblical principles with business activities. Economic success, hard work, and biblical values are seen as capable of existing together in harmony. While the number of such businesses appears to be growing, there has been a dearth of any scientific study of these companies. No empirical research has been conducted to determine whether these religious (...) values and behaviors have any significant impact on a company’s performance. The present study is designed to partially fill this gap. Specifically, it seeks to determine whether there are differences in long-term performance between self-proclaimed “Christian-based” businesses and their secular counterparts. Data were collected from 312 companies. A multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA), followed by univariate ANOVAs, found significant differences between these two groups of firms on three of the four performance variables that were analyzed. Some explanations as well as limited generalizations and implications are developed. (shrink)

As human longevity increases, with people living well into their seventies and eighties, the need for long-term care for the elderly most certainly will grow. The longer people live, the more likely they fall prey to chronic disease(s), as well as to the standard toll the aging process takes on human bodies and psyches. In this article, I examine some of the concerns that a wide variety of governments, individuals, and families have expressed about meeting the long- (...) class='Hi'>term care needs of large numbers of people over sixty-five. I then claim that each of these groups must do its share of long-term care for the elderly, depending on its ability to do so. Finally, I conclude that the more committed a country is to the deconstruction of ingrained notions about who should care (women) and who should work (men) (Belkin 2008), the more able it will be to meet the long-term care needs of the elderly and other vulnerable populations fairly. (shrink)

UK law permits parents to use mitochondrial replacement to have genetically-related children without serious mitochondrial disease. However, long-term follow-up is required for each case. Whet...

Lisa A. Eckenwiler, Long-term care, globalization, and justice, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012, reviewed by Lynette Reid.

Electroencephalogram (EEG) recordings are increasingly used to evaluate patients with disorders of consciousness (DOC) or assess their prognosis outcome in the short-term perspective. However, there is a lack of information concerning the effectiveness of EEG in classifying long-term (many years) outcome in chronic DOC patients. Here we tested whether EEG operational architectonics parameters (geared towards consciousness phenomenon detection rather than neurophysiological processes) could be useful for distinguishing a very long-term (6 years) clinical outcome of DOC (...) patients whose EEGs were registered within 3 months post-injury. The obtained results suggest that EEG recorded at third month after sustaining brain damage, may contain useful information on the long-term outcome of patients in vegetative state: it could discriminate patients who remain in a persistent vegetative state from patients who reach a minimally conscious state or even recover a full consciousness in a long-term perspective (6 years) post-injury. These findings, if confirmed in further studies, may be pivotal for long-term planning of clinical care, rehabilitative programs, medical-legal decisions concerning the patients, and policy makers. (shrink)

From an evolutionary perspective, phenotypic, social, and environmental factors help to shape the different costs and benefits of pursuing different reproductive strategies from one individual to another. Since men’s reproductive success is mainly constrained to women’s availability, their mating orientations should be partially calibrated by features that women prefer in a potential partner. For long-term relationships, women prefer traits that signal access to resources, protection skills, and the willingness to share them. Using generalized linear models with laboratory data (...) taken from a Chilean population, this study aimed to test whether real and potential resources, protection skills, and the willingness to provide resources and protection are related to mating orientation in men. Our predictions were: socioeconomic status would be positively associated with long-term and short-term mating orientation but for long-term-oriented individuals, this would be enhanced by having a more favorable parenthood disposition and strength would be positively related to long-term mating orientation in men with higher socioeconomic status and a favorable disposition toward parenthood and it would have a positive and direct association with short-term mating orientation. Our results partially supported the first hypothesis, since men with higher socioeconomic status were more long-term oriented, but parenting disposition did not moderate this effect. Contrary to our expectations, socioeconomic status was not related to short-term mating orientation. Strength appeared not to be significant for long-term mating orientation, even interacting with other traits. However, strength by itself was powerfully linked with a short-term mating orientation. Our results suggest that only some individuals that are attractive for long-term relationships are indeed long-term oriented and may reflect the overall conflict of interests between mating strategies among sexes. (shrink)

This article describes the long-term trends in marital status mortality differences in the Netherlands using a unique dataset relating to the period 1850–1970. Poisson regression analysis was applied to calculate relative mortality risks by marital status. For two periods, cause-of-death by marital status could be used. Clear differences in mortality by marital status were observed, with strongly increasing advantages for married men and women and a relative increase in the mortality of widowed compared with non-married people. Excess mortality (...) among single and formerly married men and women was visible in many cause-of-death categories, and this became more widespread during the last decades of the nineteenth century. Hypotheses are formulated that might explain why married men and women underwent a stronger decrease in mortality up until the end of World War II. (shrink)

The landscape of the Sundarbans today is a product of two countervailing forces: conversion of wetland forests to cropland vs. sequestration of the forests in reserves to be managed for long-term sustained yield of wood products. For two centures, land-hungry peasants strove to transform the native tidal forest vegetation into an agroecosystem dominated by paddy rice and fish culture. During the colonial period, their reclamation efforts were encouraged by landlords and speculators, who were themselves encouraged by increasingly favorable (...) state policies (land grants, tax incentives, cadastral surveys, and eventually colonization projects and subsidized irrigation) designed by revenue officials to maximize the rate of transformation of wetland forest to taxable agricultural land.In the late nineteenth century, as the rate of agricultural conversion increased, the colonial Forest Department succcessfully sought to preserve large areas of the remaining Sundarbans tidal forest by giving them legal status as Reserved or Protected Forests. These forests were intensively managed to provide a sustainable supply of timber and firewood for the increasing population of southern Bengal. Institutionalization of conflicting policies by the Revenue and Forest Departments reflected the escalating needs for both food and forest products as the colony grew. Today, supplies of some economically valuable trees have been depleted, and some mammals are locally extinct (although the Bengal tiger remains), but government policy in both Bangladesh and India now favors use of the Sundarbans as forest rather than its transformation to agricultural land. Further expansion of cropland to meet the grain demands of the burgeoning Bengali population in both nations has largely taken place outside the boundaries of the Sundarbans. Overexploitation of these forests for wood products remains a possibility, but large-scale clearing for rice paddies is unlikely under present policies. (shrink)

Conducting nursing research in long-term care facilities and with samples of older people requires careful attention to research ethics and the ethical conduct of the study. This review analysed the research ethics of the empirical studies that focus on older people in long-term care settings as research participants. Articles (n = 66) focussing on older people in long-term care settings as research informants were retrieved from an electronic search of MEDLINE (1990 to February 2012) (...) using the MESH terms ‘Nursing’ AND ‘Long-term care’ (578 citations) and ‘Institutionalization’ and ‘Nursing’ (89 citations). Ethical approval procedure was reported in more than half of the studies (58%) and informed consent in two-thirds of the studies (70%). Ethical issues in data collection were described in most of the articles, but only a few reported ethics in problem statement, reporting or presenting implications. There is a need to focus on reporting research ethics and procedures in empirical research on vulnerable people. (shrink)

This paper consists in a critical review of Peter Goldie's book, The Emotion. A Philosophical Exploration (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). Goldie is right to distinguish between long-term emotions and emotional experiences. And he is also right to reject the view that emotions are reducible to 'feelingless' states plus some extra feelings. However, Goldie's own account in terms of "feeling towards" is problematic. Goldie would have been better advised to claim that emotional experiences are necessarily emotional representations of (...) something as being F (disgusting, attractive, admirable, etc.), that is, that emotional experiences are apprehensions or representations of evaluative features. (shrink)

Conducting nursing research in long-term care facilities and with samples of older people requires careful attention to research ethics and the ethical conduct of the study. This review analysed the research ethics of the empirical studies that focus on older people in long-term care settings as research participants. Articles (n = 66) focussing on older people in long-term care settings as research informants were retrieved from an electronic search of MEDLINE (1990 to February 2012) (...) using the MESH terms ‘Nursing’ AND ‘Long-term care’ (578 citations) and ‘Institutionalization’ and ‘Nursing’ (89 citations). Ethical approval procedure was reported in more than half of the studies (58%) and informed consent in two-thirds of the studies (70%). Ethical issues in data collection were described in most of the articles, but only a few reported ethics in problem statement, reporting or presenting implications. There is a need to focus on reporting research ethics and procedures in empirical research on vulnerable people. (shrink)

This study examines the link between the extent of long-term institutional ownership in corporate stock and firm social performance. The empirical analysis highlights the heterogeneity of long-term investors and distinguishes between funds that are internally and externally managed, between private and public sector funds and between types of funds that face different institutional pressures.

Objective To assess the issue of ‘retrospective consent’ among a cohort of patients who had survived with unfavourable outcome and to assess attitudes among next of kin regarding their role as surrogate decision makers. Methods Twenty patients who had survived for at least 3 years with an unfavourable outcome following a decompressive craniectomy for severe traumatic brain injury were assessed with their next of kin. During the course of a semistructured interview, participants were asked whether they would have provided consent (...) if they had known their eventual outcome. They were also asked for general comments regarding all aspects of the clinical journey. Eighteen patients had next of kin who were available for interview. For two patients, there was no longer any family involvement. Results Of the 20 patients, 13 were able to provide a response and 11 felt that they would have provided consent even if they had known their eventual outcome. Of the 18 next of kin who were able to express an opinion, 10 felt that they would have provided retrospective consent. Conclusions Many patients appeared to have adapted to a level of disability that competent individuals might deem unacceptable. This does not necessarily mean that such outcomes should be regarded as ‘favourable’, nor that decompressive craniectomy must be performed for patients with predicted poor outcome. Nevertheless, those burdened with the initial clinical decisions and thereafter the long-term care of these patients may draw some support from the knowledge that unfavourable may not necessarily be unacceptable. (shrink)