Differences in Moral Reasoning Among Medical Graduates Compared With Graduates of Other Degrees and Adults Without Professional Degrees

Background. When we talk about morality, a question arises as to whether it is a natural characteristic of humans—that is, whether it is what people should pursue as individuals or whether it is a social construct. Kohlberg established six progressive stages of moral judgment that form three levels of moral development, showing the development of people’s thinking on moral issues that is characterized by the aforementioned criteria. Methods. This study’s objective was to compare the level of moral reasoning among graduate students in medicine with a group of young graduates from other degrees and a group of non-professional adults.The moral reasoning questionnaire (Defining Issues Test, DIT) designed by James Rest based on Kohlberg’s theory (Rest 1979) was applied. In total, 304 questionnaires were completed. Results. Depending on the population studied, differences have been found in the profile of moral development. The profile of family clinic users showed a very high predominance of subjects in category 1 at 70%, but only 4.5% in category 3, while in the group of pediatric specialty students, 37.5% were found in category 1 and 34% in category 3. They were the group with the highest percentage in this category. This vast difference could be because the differences in the age and socio-education levels of the beneficiaries are much wider than that of the residents. However, differences are also found if the profiles of residents are compared with those of master’s students because the latter comprised 56% in category 1 and 19% in category 3. We also found differences in the profiles of moral development based on the highest education level. Conclusions. Based on the results of this study, the population could be classified into three levels of moral development, the first level being the predominant one and the third the least common, as we expected prior to the study. The reason why some individuals reach the highest level while others do not remains a question to be addressed. The results show us that there is a difference in some populations depending on education level and even the type of degree pursued.

Fishing Quota and International Obligation: Why Has Indonesia been Indicated as a Non-Compliant State

Indonesia committed to conserving the tuna resources by participating in some RFMOs. From all regional organizations where Indonesia has been joined, the CCSBT is the unique one, due to it governs a single tuna species, which is called Southern Bluefin Tuna. This kind of tuna is essential for Indonesia because it is the world’s most expensive tuna and SBT migrates through Indonesian fisheries management zones and goes even further within the territorial waters, where the SBT spawning area is located. This natural characteristic distinguishes Indonesia from other Parties to CCSBT. Nevertheless, the Country has been dealing with its obligation to comply with national quota allocation. For some fishing season periods, the CCSBT indicated Indonesia as a non-compliant. By applying the qualitative approach, this study considers how Indonesia’s non-compliance has been addressed in fishing for shared fish stocks. The data collection was conducted through semi-structured interviews and legal analysis of law and policy instruments. This method leads the elaboration to reveal domestic factors affecting non-compliance by Indonesia. This study argues, the fisheries legislation should consider the provision concerning fishing for resources under quota system, hence, it will provide sufficient legal base to take enforcement measures towards non-compliance with fishing quota.

Study of the Structure and Electronic Properties of the ZnO Monolayer: Density Functional Theory

ZnO has received considerable attention since it has promising applications in electronic devices. Although many studies have explored the potential of ZnO as a promising material, the precise role of geometric in ZnO remains unclear. This study deals with the electronic structure of the ZnO monolayer using density functional theory (DFT). The DFT was used to investigate the band structure and density of states of the ZnO monolayer. It is observed that the structural change of ZnO from bulk to monolayer increases the bandgap by 1.84 eV without changes its natural characteristic. Moreover, This study provides information about the properties of the ZnO monolayer and its potential in electronic and magnetic devices application.

Flexibility-aware graph-based algorithm improves antigen epitopes identification

Epitopes of an antigen are the surface residues in the spatial proximity that can be recognized by antibodies. Identifying such residues has shown promising potentiality in vaccine design, drug development and chemotherapy, thus attracting extensive endeavors. Although great efforts have been made, the epitope prediction performance is still unsatisfactory. One possible issue accounting to this poor performance could be the ignorance of structural flexibility of antigens. Flexibility is a natural characteristic of antigens, which has been widely reported. However, this property has never been used by existing models. To this end, we propose a novel flexibility-aware graph-based computational model to identify epitopes. Unlike existing graph-based approaches that take the static structures of antigens as input, we consider all possible variations of the side chains in graph construction. These flexibility-aware graphs, of which the edges are highly enriched, are further partitioned into subgraphs by using a graph clustering algorithm. These clusters are subsequently expanded into larger graphs for detecting overlapping residues between epitopes if exist. Finally, the expanded graphs are classified as epitopes or non-epitopes via a newly designed graph convolutional network. Experimental results show that our flexibility-aware model markedly outperforms existing approaches and promotes the F1-score to 0.656. Comparing to the state-of-the-art, our approach makes an increment of F1-score by 16.3%. Further in-depth analysis demonstrates that the flexibility-aware strategy contributes the most to the improvement.

Should I judge safety or danger? Perceived risk depends on the question frame

Linguistic polarity is a natural characteristic of judgments: Is that situation safe/dangerous? How difficult/easy was the task? Is that politician honest/dishonest? Across six studies (N = 1599), we tested how the qualitative frame of the question eliciting a risk judgment influenced risk perception and behavior intention. Using a series of hypothetical scenarios of skiing in avalanche terrain, experienced backcountry skiers judged either how safe or how dangerous each scenario was and indicated whether they would ski the scenario. Phrasing risk judgments in terms of safety elicited lower judged safety values, which in turn resulted in a lower likelihood of intending to ski the slope. The frame “safe” did not evoke a more positive assessment than the frame “danger” as might be expected under a valence-consistent or communication-driven framing effect. This seemingly paradoxical direction of the effect suggests that the question frame directed attention in a way that guided selective information sampling. Uncertainty was not required for this effect as it was observed when judging objectively safe, uncertain, and dangerous scenarios. These findings advance our theoretical understanding of framing effects and can inform the development of practices that harness question framing for applied risk perception and communication.

Kugel ball as an interesting application of designing the hydrosphere

Analytical solutions are not available for the partial hemispherical hydrosphere which called as the Kugel ball fountain or the Kugel ball. However, this study offers a comprehensive idea about this phenomenon presenting a design map that gives a panoramic sight enabling the designers to easily choose whatever specifications needed for their fountain. Through simplifying the author previous formulae for this type of bearings, this paper removes the mystery of the Kugel ball phenomenon and shows that no complicated mathematic or physics are needed, as believed, to be grasped for producing such fountains. A new simple design technique is used and the most two famous fountains (at the House of Science in Patras, Greece and the largest at the Science Museum of Virginia, Richmond, USA.) are checked as an application of this design. One of the most important side results of this study is finding the equilibrium point, discovered in the author previous papers, which was considered as the equilibrium point between the forces of centripetal inertia, viscosity and friction due to the surface roughness. It becomes clear that this point is a natural characteristic of this type of bearings.

Who speaks for the night?

Efforts to control artificial light at night (ALAN) through public policies began in the late 1950s, yet light pollution continues to grow at a global average rate roughly twice that of population growth. The current global ALAN regulatory regime is clearly inadequate to solve the problem, and achieving meaningful light pollution reductions requires a new approach. This paper reviews the legal status quo, introduces the “Rights of Nature” doctrine, and advances the idea of nighttime darkness as a natural characteristic of sufficient inherent value to merit legal consideration in the Rights of Nature context. It concludes with a series of recommendations for ways forward, including the recognition of the intrinsic value of dark skies in the preambulatory language of legislation, formulating new policies in anticipation of broad adoption of Rights of Nature statutes, and advancing the significance of natural nighttime darkness in case law arguments.

VARIOUS FACTORS AFFECT THE QUALITY OF FERMENTED CASSAVA STARCH

Fermented cassava starch is one of modified cassava starch products and used in many countries in several food products. The fresh extracted cassava starch is modified by a process of fermentation and sun drying by means the traditional methods. Several works have shown that fermentative process alters the starch granule, giving fermented starch its characteristics are different from those of the native cassava starch. The main difference between fermented cassava starch[A1] and native cassava starch reside in the expansion property. Understanding the transformation of physico-chemical properties of cassava starch during fermentation is important for controlling the production processes. This discourse refers to the several works that intend to chemically show the expansion property of fermented cassava starch, considered a chemically and enzymatically modified product, with acidic characteristics, perforated granules and high expansion capacity. Expansion is a natural characteristic of fermented cassava starch, defined as the growth rate of the dough during oven cooking, also referred to as expansion rate. The main aim of this discourse is to get a better understanding how to manage the production processes in order to achieve greater consistency in the quality of sour cassava starch.Â

On the Transient Queue with the Dropping Function

We deal with a queueing system, in which arriving packets are being dropped with the probability depending on the queue size. Such a scheme is used in several active queue management schemes proposed for Internet routers. In this paper, we derive and analyze a selected transient characteristic of the model, i.e., the probability that in a given time interval the queue size is kept under a predefined level. As the main purpose of the discussed queueing scheme is to maintain the queue size low, this is a natural characteristic to study. In addition to that, the average time to reach a given level is derived. Theoretical results for both characteristics are accompanied by numerical examples. Among other things, they demonstrate that the transient behavior of the queue may vary significantly with the shape of the dropping function, even if the steady-state performance remains unaltered.

Building positive resilience through vulnerability analysis

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to propose an integrative framework for vulnerability analysis in social marketing systems by identifying, investigating and problematising the relationships among several interrelated concepts, including power, power asymmetry, vulnerability and resilience, in the context of social marketing systems. Design/methodology/approach This is a conceptual paper synthesising literature from social marketing, sociology and marketing management. Findings The main outcome of the discussion is a proposed integrative framework for vulnerability analysis. The framework identifies the main groups of stakeholders within a social marketing system and the bases for their power and consequential power asymmetries. It focusses on the types and states of vulnerability to identify the distinct characteristics of the social conditions of vulnerability for micro-level system actors. It leads to building positive resilience through efforts aiming to change the power asymmetries at the downstream, midstream and upstream levels. Originality/value The integrative framework for vulnerability analysis answers the call from Wood (2019) for the development of practical approaches to better understand resilience-building approaches in social marketing programmes. The framework provides reconciliation for diverse dimensions of vulnerability as a natural characteristic of all social marketing systems and as a universal, constant and inherent social condition.