Impacts of the Absence of General Hospitals on 119 Emergency Medical Services: Focusing on the Case of the Baptist Hospital in Busan

This study investigates the impact of the lack of general hospitals on the residents of Busan, South Korea. In particular, it analyzes the impact of 119 emergency medical services on hospital transit time. Multiple regression analysis was conducted using the data on hospital transfer time obtained from the Busan Fire and Disaster Headquarters 119 EMS activity log as the dependent variable. The analysis indicated that, after the Baptist hospital was closed, the average transit time in Geumjeong-gu increased, especially in the case of emergency patients. The average time increased in most dongs in Geumjeong-gu but more so in the ones located in the outer city. These results demonstrate the importance of general hospitals in local communities. In the case of emergency, patients who must be transferred to a general hospital, the fact that it can affect not only the relevant area but also neighboring areas can provide the basis for empirical logic at the present time to regenerate a baptist hospital into a public hospital.

Villagers Strategies for Mitigating Environmental Health Risks

The unclear scientific relationship between pollution and cancer, combined with weak governance systems, means that villagers have only incomplete information about pollution and disease. Their own lack of scientific knowledge is a further obstacle to their accurate perception of health risks. But villagers do not just resign themselves to their fate. They use the social structure and cultural mechanisms of the ‘familiar society’, to maximize their use of available information, and they rely on their life experience and common-sense strategies to mitigate the impact of pollution. Village social structure also affects the actions villagers take to avoid pollution. Thus, although they lack scientific guidance in mitigating health risks from pollution, their actions are informed by their own unique empirical logic.

Electoral Ergonomics

This chapter focuses on electoral ergonomics, defined as the interface between every aspect of electoral organization and the psychology of the voters. It argues that every small detail in the organization of the vote (electoral ergonomics) matters not only mechanically, but also because of the way it may trigger different psychological mechanisms and emotional reactions, and that as a result, the ergonomic interface will have different effects on different types of voter, such as ‘referees’ or ‘supporters’. Indeed, electoral ergonomics affects the way citizens experience the vote, their attitudes, their likeliness to vote in elections, and their actual electoral choice. The chapter then unpacks the theoretical and empirical logic behind the influence of electoral ergonomics, both in general and through specific case studies. These case studies include the impact of the use of remote voting on electoral experience in the general population, its influence on the electoral choice of young voters, and the effect of ballot-paper design (including paper vs electronic ballots) on the electoral experience.

Exploring the Effect of Emerging Technologies on Scientific Knowledge Production and the Industrial Advancement of Society

The main application area of the digital transformation has been so far on the industrial and manufacturing process. Nevertheless, the concept Industry 4.0 has enormous potential in other areas such as its combination with the scientific method and the empirical logic. The term technoscience, coined in the second half of the 20th century, links both fields, the technological and the scientific field, establishing a joint growth where scientific knowledge takes advantage (and requires) of a technological infrastructure in order to advance. This chapter proposes to analyze some of the most relevant concepts in these matters in order to provide a more philosophical approach to technology, its effect on the proper engineering and scientific knowledge, and what some of the social features are that are inferred from these emerging technologies.

Political representation and the normative logic of two-level games

This paper develops the normative logic of two-level games linking international negotiation and domestic acceptability. The kernel of the logic is to be found in the claim that normatively governed relations involve agents simultaneously asking whether the expectations that they have under an agreement are reasonable given the expectations of others under that agreement. This normative logic mirrors the empirical logic that Putnam (1988) identified in his seminal account.The normative logic is derived from a consideration of relevant concepts of representation, and in particular the concepts of authorization in international negotiation and accountability in domestic ratification. Rawls’ (1996) distinction between the reasonable and the rational is then deployed to state normative conditions of domestic acceptability as well as the obligations of fairness that states owe to one another. Two implications for democratic theory are drawn.