228 research outputs found
The philosophical anthropology of Interculturality: a vehicle for creating inclusive identities and positive peace
This chapter illustrates how a philosophical anthropology of interculturality can be the vehicle of higher level social, political, and ethical identities. It explores interculturality as a dynamic and inclusive model for the encounter with cultural, ethnic, national, and religious difference. Anthropology offers cross-cultural perspectives on social behavior and moral learning regarding the management of conflict. Anthropology, with its vast documentation of indigenous societies, past and present, including descriptions of nonviolent modes of conflict resolution, approaches to peacemaking, and creation of peace systems, provides a pool of knowledge about successful approaches to creating and maintaining interculturality, for example, with propeace values and inclusive identities.Este capítulo refleja cómo una filosofía antropológica de la interculturalidad puede ser la herramienta de identidades de un mayor nivel social, político y ético. El texto explora la interculturalidad como modelo dinámico y participativo en su encuentro con diferencias culturales, étnicas, nacionales y religiosas. La Antropología ofrece perspectivas interculturales sobre comportamiento social y aprendizaje moral con respecto al manejo del conflicto. Así mismo, con su amplia información sobre sociedades indígenas, pasadas y presentes, la antropología incluye descripciones de modalidades no violentas de resolución de conflictos, acercamientos a la Paz y a la creación de sistemas de paz, y proporciona un acervo de conocimientos sobre métodos eficaces a la hora de crear y mantener la interculturalidad, por ejemplo, con valores pro-paz e identidades participativas
The Original Partnership Societies: Evolved Propensities for Equality, Prosociality, and Peace
This article focuses on what nomadic forager research suggests about human nature and examines how this ancestral form of human social organization is fundamentally partnership-oriented. Taking mobile forager social organization into consideration is important to partnership studies because all humanity lived as mobile foragers until very recently. The material considered in this article stems from 1) individual forager ethnographies, 2) qualitative comparative forager studies, and 3) research based on systematically sampled forager traits. The findings show the pervasiveness of egalitarianism (including gender equality), socialization and social control mechanism geared toward promoting prosocial behaviors such as sharing and the caring for others, conflict avoidance and resolution mechanisms, and no inclination toward warfare in values or practice. Such patterns that cut across nomadic forager societies from around the world call into question a familiar narrative about the supposedly self-centered, warlike, and hording nature of humanity. Mobile forager studies support an alternative narrative that challenges assumptions about the ‘'primitive versus civilized,’ normative progress and modernity, and biased projections of innate depravity onto all humanity. The article concludes by proposing that our nomadic forager forbearers solved the challenges of survival over evolutionary time not by making war, developing slavery, or ranking people into domination hierarchies of ‘haves’” and ‘have nots’—social institutions with which we are all too familiar today—but rather, our mobile forager ancestors promoted egalitarianism, cooperation, caring and sharing as they developed ways to resolve disputes with a minimum of bloodshed and sidestepped the development of war
The Original Partnership Societies: Evolved Propensities for Equality, Prosociality, and Peace
This article focuses on what nomadic forager research suggests about human nature and examines how this ancestral form of human social organization is fundamentally partnership-oriented. Taking mobile forager social organization into consideration is important to partnership studies because all humanity lived as mobile foragers until very recently. The material considered in this article stems from 1) individual forager ethnographies, 2) qualitative comparative forager studies, and 3) research based on systematically sampled forager traits. The findings show the pervasiveness of egalitarianism (including gender equality), socialization and social control mechanism geared toward promoting prosocial behaviors such as sharing and the caring for others, conflict avoidance and resolution mechanisms, and no inclination toward warfare in values or practice. Such patterns that cut across nomadic forager societies from around the world call into question a familiar narrative about the supposedly self-centered, warlike, and hording nature of humanity. Mobile forager studies support an alternative narrative that challenges assumptions about the ‘'primitive versus civilized,’ normative progress and modernity, and biased projections of innate depravity onto all humanity. The article concludes by proposing that our nomadic forager forbearers solved the challenges of survival over evolutionary time not by making war, developing slavery, or ranking people into domination hierarchies of ‘haves’” and ‘have nots’—social institutions with which we are all too familiar today—but rather, our mobile forager ancestors promoted egalitarianism, cooperation, caring and sharing as they developed ways to resolve disputes with a minimum of bloodshed and sidestepped the development of war
A statistical test of emission from unresolved point sources
We describe a simple test of the spatial uniformity of an ensemble of
discrete events. Given an estimate for the point source luminosity function and
an instrumental point spread function (PSF), a robust upper bound on the
fractional point source contribution to a diffuse signal can be found. We
verify with Monte Carlo tests that the statistic has advantages over the
two-point correlation function for this purpose, and derive analytic estimates
of the statistic's mean and variance as a function of the point source
contribution. As a case study, we apply this statistic to recent gamma-ray data
from the Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT), and demonstrate that at energies
above 10 GeV, the contribution of unresolved point sources to the diffuse
emission is small in the region relevant for study of the WMAP Haze.Comment: 11 pages, 7 figures. Final version, accepted by Mon. Not. R. Astron.
Soc. The definitive version is available at www.blackwell-synergy.com
“Righting the wrong”:A multicountry study on people’s perceptions of “making things right” in the wake of human rights violations.
More and more academics and policy makers advocate that countries ought to deal with past human rights violations. In this article, we explore whether people across the world agree with this normative expectation, and if so, what they think should be done to “make things right” and why. Our overarching objective was to see whether we can observe any universal patterns or common themes in this regard or whether people’s ideas and intuitions are primarily subject to cross-country variation. Through 283 interviews conducted in Burkina Faso, Costa Rica, Indonesia, Japan, Jordan, the Netherlands, Poland, and the United States, we found that people largely share the belief that countries should deal with past transgressions, and that they see this as a multidimensional process that includes multiple measures that help ensure security and stability, restore harmony and peace, as well as meet other collective economic, social, and moral needs. Our findings also suggest, however, that people’s ideas about the specific measures that should be part of this process are at least partially shaped by the local social, economic, cultural, and political context as well. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved
Survey of the quality of experimental design, statistical analysis and reporting of research using animals
For scientific, ethical and economic reasons, experiments involving animals should be appropriately designed, correctly analysed and transparently reported. This increases the scientific validity of the results, and maximises the knowledge gained from each experiment. A minimum amount of relevant information must be included in scientific publications to ensure that the methods and results of a study can be reviewed, analysed and repeated. Omitting essential information can raise scientific and ethical concerns. We report the findings of a systematic survey of reporting, experimental design and statistical analysis in published biomedical research using laboratory animals. Medline and EMBASE were searched for studies reporting research on live rats, mice and non-human primates carried out in UK and US publicly funded research establishments. Detailed information was collected from 271 publications, about the objective or hypothesis of the study, the number, sex, age and/or weight of animals used, and experimental and statistical methods. Only 59% of the studies stated the hypothesis or objective of the study and the number and characteristics of the animals used. Appropriate and efficient experimental design is a critical component of high-quality science. Most of the papers surveyed did not use randomisation (87%) or blinding (86%), to reduce bias in animal selection and outcome assessment. Only 70% of the publications that used statistical methods described their methods and presented the results with a measure of error or variability. This survey has identified a number of issues that need to be addressed in order to improve experimental design and reporting in publications describing research using animals. Scientific publication is a powerful and important source of information; the authors of scientific publications therefore have a responsibility to describe their methods and results comprehensively, accurately and transparently, and peer reviewers and journal editors share the responsibility to ensure that published studies fulfil these criteria
Recombinant plants provide a new approach to the production of bacterial polysaccharide for vaccines
Bacterial polysaccharides have numerous clinical or industrial uses. Recombinant plants could offer the possibility of producing bacterial polysaccharides on a large scale and free of contaminating bacterial toxins and antigens. We investigated the feasibility of this proposal by cloning and expressing the gene for the type 3 synthase (cps3S) of Streptococcus pneumoniae in Nicotinia tabacum, using the pCambia2301 vector and Agrobacterium tumefaciens-mediated gene transfer. In planta the recombinant synthase polymerised plant-derived UDP-glucose and UDP-glucuronic acid to form type 3 polysaccharide. Expression of the cps3S gene was detected by RT-PCR and production of the pneumococcal polysaccharide was detected in tobacco leaf extracts by double immunodiffusion, Western blotting and high-voltage paper electrophoresis. Because it is used a component of anti-pneumococcal vaccines, the immunogenicity of the plant-derived type 3 polysaccharide was tested. Mice immunised with extracts from recombinant plants were protected from challenge with a lethal dose of pneumococci in a model of pneumonia and the immunised mice had significantly elevated levels of serum anti-pneumococcal polysaccharide antibodies. This study provides the proof of the principle that bacterial polysaccharide can be successfully synthesised in plants and that these recombinant polysaccharides could be used as vaccines to protect against life-threatening infections
Randomized trials fit for the 21st century. A joint opinion from the European Society of Cardiology, American Heart Association, American College of Cardiology, and the World Heart Federation
© The Author(s) 2022. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The articles are identical except for minor stylistic and spelling differences in keeping with each journal's style. When citing this article, a citation from any of the journals listed is appropriate. For commercial re-use, please contact [email protected] controlled trials are the cornerstone for reliably evaluating therapeutic strategies. However, during the past 25 years, the rules and regulations governing randomized trials and their interpretation have become increasingly burdensome, and the cost and complexity of trials has become prohibitive. The present model is unsustainable, and the development of potentially effective treatments is often stopped prematurely on financial grounds, while existing drug treatments or non-drug interventions (such as screening strategies or management tools) may not be assessed reliably. The current ‘best regulatory practice’ environment, and a lack of consensus on what that requires, too often makes it unduly difficult to undertake efficient randomized trials able to provide reliable evidence about the safety and efficacy of potentially valuable interventions. Inclusion of underrepresented population groups and lack of diversity also remain among the
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