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Yields Insights (yield + insight)
Selected AbstractsBUDDHISM AND NEUROETHICS: THE ETHICS OF PHARMACEUTICAL COGNITIVE ENHANCEMENTDEVELOPING WORLD BIOETHICS, Issue 2 2009ANDREW FENTON ABSTRACT This paper integrates some Buddhist moral values, attitudes and self-cultivation techniques into a discussion of the ethics of cognitive enhancement technologies , in particular, pharmaceutical enhancements. Many Buddhists utilize meditation techniques that are both integral to their practice and are believed to enhance the cognitive and affective states of experienced practitioners. Additionally, Mah,y,na Buddhism's teaching on skillful means permits a liberal use of methods or techniques in Buddhist practice that yield insight into our selfnature or aid in alleviating or eliminating dukha (i.e. dissatisfaction). These features of many, if not most, Buddhist traditions will inform much of the Buddhist assessment of pharmaceutical enhancements offered in this paper. Some Buddhist concerns about the effects and context of the use of pharmaceutical enhancements will be canvassed in the discussion. Also, the author will consider Buddhist views of the possible harms that may befall human and nonhuman research subjects, interference with a recipient's karma, the artificiality of pharmaceutical enhancements, and the possible motivations or intentions of healthy individuals pursuing pharmacological enhancement. Perhaps surprisingly, none of these concerns will adequately ground a reflective Buddhist opposition to the further development and continued use of pharmaceutical enhancements, either in principle or in practice. The author argues that Buddhists, from at least certain traditions , particularly Mah,y,na Buddhist traditions , should advocate the development or use of pharmaceutical enhancements if a consequence of their use is further insight into our self-nature or the reduction or alleviation of dukha. [source] Association of vasopressin 1a receptor levels with a regulatory microsatellite and behaviorGENES, BRAIN AND BEHAVIOR, Issue 5 2005E. A. D. Hammock Vasopressin regulates complex behaviors such as anxiety, parenting, social engagement and attachment and aggression in a species-specific manner. The capacity of vasopressin to modulate these behaviors is thought to depend on the species-specific distribution patterns of vasopressin 1a receptors (V1aRs) in the brain. There is considerable individual variation in the pattern of V1aR binding in the brains of the prairie vole species, Microtus ochrogaster. We hypothesize that this individual variability in V1aR expression levels is associated with individual variation in a polymorphic microsatellite in the 5, regulatory region of the prairie vole v1ar gene. Additionally, we hypothesize that individual variation in V1aR expression contributes to individual variation in vasopressin-dependent behaviors. To test these hypotheses, we first screened 20 adult male prairie voles for behavioral variation using tests that measure anxiety-related and social behaviors. We then assessed the brains of those animals for V1aR variability with receptor autoradiography and used polymerase chain reaction to genotype the same animals for the length of their 5, microsatellite polymorphism in the v1ar gene. In this report, we describe the results of this discovery-based experimental approach to identify potential gene, brain and behavior interrelationships. The analysis reveals that V1aR levels, in some but not all brain regions, are associated with microsatellite length and that V1aR levels in those and other brain regions correlate with anxiety-related and social behaviors. These results generate novel hypotheses regarding neural control of anxiety-related and social behaviors and yield insight into potential mechanisms by which non-coding gene polymorphisms may influence behavioral traits. [source] Temporal aggregation and spurious instantaneous causality in multiple time series modelsJOURNAL OF TIME SERIES ANALYSIS, Issue 6 2002JÖRG BREITUNG Large aggregation interval asymptotics are used to investigate the relation between Granger causality in disaggregated vector autoregressions (VARs) and associated contemporaneous correlation among innovations of the aggregated system. One of our main contributions is that we outline various conditions under which the informational content of error covariance matrices yields insight into the causal structure of the VAR. Monte Carlo results suggest that our asymptotic findings are applicable even when the aggregation interval is small, as long as the time series are not characterized by high levels of persistence. [source] Qualitative Analysis of Medicare Claims in the Last 3 Years of Life: A Pilot StudyJOURNAL OF AMERICAN GERIATRICS SOCIETY, Issue 1 2005Amber E. Barnato MD Objectives: To study end-of-life care of a representative sample of older people using qualitative interpretation of administrative claims by clinicians and to explore whether this method yields insights into patient care, including continuity, errors, and cause of death. Design: Random, stratified sampling of decedents and all their Medicare-covered healthcare claims in the 3 years before death from a 5% sample of elderly fee-for-service beneficiaries, condensation of all claims into a chronological clinical summary, and abstraction by two independent clinicians using a standardized form. Setting: United States. Participants: One hundred Medicare fee-for-service older people without disability or end-stage renal disease entitlement who died in 1996 to 1999 and had at least 36 months of continuous Part A and Part B enrollment before death. Measurements: Qualitative narrative of the patient's medical course; clinician assessment of care continuity and apparent medical errors; cause, trajectory, and place of death. Results: The qualitative narratives developed by the independent abstracters were highly concordant. Clinicians felt that 75% of cases lacked continuity of care that could have improved the quality of life and the way the person died, and 13% of cases had a medical error identified by both abstracters. Abstracters disagreed about assignment of a single cause of death in 28% of cases, and abstracters and the computer algorithm disagreed in 43% of cases. Conclusion: Qualitative claims analysis illuminated many problems in the care of chronically ill older people at the end of life and suggested that traditional vital statistics assignation of a single cause of death may distort policy priorities. This novel approach to claims review is feasible and deserves further study. [source] Modernism and the Machine FarmerJOURNAL OF HISTORICAL SOCIOLOGY, Issue 2 2000Rod Bantjes In this paper I apply recent theoretical discussions of the spatial character of modernity to a ,rural' context. I argue that neither modernity nor ,modernism' has been an exclusively ,urban' phenomenon in the twentieth century, and that attention to modernism in the countryside yields insights into the modernist project. From the beginning of the twentieth century, the apparently ,rural' spaces of the prairie west were already integrated into modern trans-local structures. Wheat farmers were ahead of their contemporaries in their appreciation of the nature and scale of modern distanciated relationships. They were ,modernist' in embracing and celebrating the technologies, particularly organizational technologies, for dominating space and time. They were also innovators in modern organizational design, seeking creatively to control the modern "machine" and to bridge the local and the ,global.' Their progressive experimentation culminated in a surprising proposal for ,co-operative farms' not unlike Soviet collective farms. [source] Exploring consumer knowledge structures using associative network analysisPSYCHOLOGY & MARKETING, Issue 4 2010Thorsten A. Teichert This paper offers a new perspective on consumer knowledge analysis that combines Human Associative Memory (HAM) models from cognitive psychology with network analytic approaches in order to gain deeper insights into consumers" mental representations, such as brand images. An illustrative case study compares the associative networks of a manufacturer brand with a retail brand and is used to demonstrate the application and interpretation of various network measures. Network analysis is conducted on three levels: Node-level analysis yields insights about salient brand image components that can be affected through short-term marketing activities. Group-level analysis is concerned with brand image dimensions that characterize a brand and can be strategically influenced in the medium term. Finally, network-level analysis examines the network structure as a whole, drawing parallels to brand imagery, which needs to be managed over the long term. Management implications are derived and suggestions for further research are provided. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [source] | ||||||||||