Daniela Popescul, Lily Murariu, Laura-Diana Radu
et al.
Utilizing readily accessible information and communication technologies (ICTs), such as mobile devices, applications, and simple Internet of Things (IoT) sensors, and harnessing their potential through Experimentation as a Service (EaaS), crowdsensing, and gamification, represents one of the most effective approaches to implementing co-creation in smart cities. The benefits of this bottom-up approach are closely related to accurately identifying the real needs of city residents and increasing the chances of designing and implementing solutions with genuine impact, ensuring equity, social inclusion, sustainability, and community resilience. This paper investigates the utilization of ICTs to support social sustainability by analyzing 157 smart city projects funded under the Horizon 2020 program at the European Union level and 5 smart city projects from Canada. The results reveal the utilization of technological solutions such as testbeds, living labs, EaaS, crowdsensing, open data, and more for co-creation in smart city projects. In the discussion part, we point out the importance of focusing on technologies that are familiar to the beneficiaries and on leveraging resources already available as wearable devices or in the citizens’ homes, the versatility of the technological solutions analyzed, the role of heterogeneous and open data, and cross-disciplinary teams in creating new perspectives on urban problems, reducing inequity in the development of solutions to solve them. The concerns raised and problems reported relate to the technology itself (errors in operation), users (difficulties in stimulating their involvement and keeping it constant), and data (quality of data collected, difficult to process, ethics and security of data collection and use). Based on our results, we extract, synthetize and present six distinct categories of lessons learned by the implementation teams of the analyzed projects.
Abstract Background The swift advancement of intensive care medicine, coupled with technological possibilities, has prompted numerous ethical inquiries regarding decision-making processes concerning the withholding or withdrawal of treatment due to medical futility. This study seeks to delineate the decision-making approaches employed by intensive care physicians in Türkiye when faced with medical futility at the end of life, along with an ethical evaluation of these practices. Methods Grounded theory, a qualitative analysis method was employed, conducting semi-structured, in-depth interviews with eleven intensive care physicians in Türkiye. The subsequent text analysis was carried out using MAXQDA software. Results Participants assert that the decisions made by Turkish physicians determine whether treatment is futile, rely on medical consensus, and lack a standardized decision-making process. The decisions are influenced by legal and social pressures, resource constraints, and occasional conflicts of interest. The significance of professional hierarchy is notable, with limited consideration given to the opinions of nurses and other staff. The unstructured medical consensus processes are shaped by normative concepts such as benefit, age, justice, and conscience. Furthermore, it was observed that the conscientious opinions of physicians carry more weight than adherence to ethical principles and guidelines. Conclusion To create optimal conditions for doctors to make ethically justifiable decisions, the dynamics within the treatment team should be improved, emphasizing the minimization of hierarchy, and ensuring the active participation of all team members in the decision-making process. Additionally, efforts should be directed toward narrowing the gap between the conscience of the individual doctor and established ethical principles. A potential solution lies in the nationwide implementation of clinical ethics committees and the establishing of clinical ethics guidelines, aiming to address, and overcome the identified challenges.
Leslie Alcouffe, Leslie Alcouffe, Leslie Alcouffe
et al.
ContextFrench Guiana is a French overseas department where very different linguistic, cultural and societal populations live together in a small area. Health issues and their specific epidemiological profiles call for research projects crossing several cultures. In this context, health mediators have a role to play in research. The aim of this study was to describe the perceptions, attitudes and opinions on research of mediators and researchers collaborating on research projects, and to describe the strengths and difficulties encountered during this cooperation.MethodsThe Inter-med project was conducted in French Guiana between February 2022 and April 2023 on the base of semi-directive interviews with mediators, or researchers, all working in health research in the intercultural context of French Guiana. The socio-demographic characteristics of the participants were described. An inductive thematic analysis was carried out on all the interviews, and word occurrence analysis on certain themes. The information was triangulated with field coordination notebooks from two epidemiological surveys conducted in French Guiana between 2021 and 2022.ResultsA total of 26 semi-structured interviews were conducted and 1,328 notebook pages analyzed. Mediation was described as an indispensable interface between the world of research and that of the population targeted by a survey. Mediators have a role to play at different stages of projects, in respect of good clinical practice, ethics and legislation. They act as interfaces between languages, concepts and representations. Their profession remains under-defined and under-dimensioned. The jobs offered are often precarious. Mediation work is emotionally costly, calls on soft skills and requires a combination of rigor and flexibility. All these aspects are implemented in the specific world of research, where there are common concepts and divergent perceptions. Researchers and mediators converge on a common goal: improving health.ConclusionThis study covers several aspects of the development and implementation of research projects. Respect for good clinical practice and people, transparency and data quality are redundant concerns, and this study touches on ethnocentrism, stigmatization and cultural representations. This study points out that the integration and recognition of mediators could be beneficial in research conducted in a cross-cultural context.
AbstractThis paper proposes to generate awareness for developing Artificial intelligence (AI) ethics by transferring knowledge from other fields of applied ethics, particularly from business ethics, stressing the role of organizations and processes of institutionalization. With the rapid development of AI systems in recent years, a new and thriving discourse on AI ethics has (re-)emerged, dealing primarily with ethical concepts, theories, and application contexts. We argue that business ethics insights may generate positive knowledge spillovers for AI ethics, given that debates on ethical and social responsibilities have been adopted as voluntary or mandatory regulations for organizations in both national and transnational contexts. Thus, business ethics may transfer knowledge from five core topics and concepts researched and institutionalized to AI ethics: (1) stakeholder management, (2) standardized reporting, (3) corporate governance and regulation, (4) curriculum accreditation, and as a unified topic (5) AI ethics washing derived from greenwashing. In outlining each of these five knowledge bridges, we illustrate current challenges in AI ethics and potential insights from business ethics that may advance the current debate. At the same time, we hold that business ethics can learn from AI ethics in catching up with the digital transformation, allowing for cross-fertilization between the two fields. Future debates in both disciplines of applied ethics may benefit from dialog and cross-fertilization, meant to strengthen the ethical depth and prevent ethics washing or, even worse, ethics bashing.
This article weaves together relational tendencies in recent scholarship spanning philosophy, mycology, psychopharmacology and timbre studies in order to argue that timbre’s unbounded ontology and cyclical re-use across electronic dance music (EDM) history affords listeners experiential access into radically distributed modes of being. Taking its cue from the biological structure of fungal mycelium, from whose flowers the psychoactive compounds of many psychedelic drugs are derived, this study builds on established models of EDM’s affectivity to propose that timbre in EDM manifests a psychedelic and specifically social form of consciousness. Highlighting the potential for entrainment that EDM’s synthesised timbres make possible, a conception of timbre as a mycelial “zone of entanglement” is put forward, in which the material and cultural, individual and social and spiritual and fleshly dimensions of the listening experience are folded into a reverberant unity, in turn encouraging a negotiation of the ethics that this entanglement entails.
Jane Addams'ın 1902 tarihli ufuk açıcı eseri "Democracy and Social Ethics" (Demokrasi ve Sosyal Etik), yazarın toplumsal sorunlara pratik yaklaşımlarını teorik bir çerçeveye oturtarak, modern endüstriyel toplumda demokratik ideallerin etik sorumluluklarla nasıl birleşmesi gerektiğini savunan temel bir sosyolojik incelemedir; Addams, Hull House'daki deneyimlerinden yola çıkarak, bireysel erdemin yerini toplumsal etiğe bırakması gerektiğini, çünkü modern yaşamın karmaşıklığının ve birbirine bağımlılığının, ahlaki kararların sadece kişisel değil, aynı zamanda kolektif sonuçlar doğurduğunu gösterir; kitap, aile hayatı, endüstri, eğitim ve siyaset gibi alanlarda demokratik ilkelerin ve etik anlayışın nasıl uygulanacağını tartışarak, gerçek demokrasinin ancak tüm vatandaşların refahına ve katılımına odaklanan bir sosyal vicdan ile mümkün olabileceği fikrini vurgular.⌒