[New disputes and interventions in the female body: divisions between gynecology and plastic surgery]. / Novas disputas e intervenções no corpo feminino: fronteiras entre ginecologia e cirurgia plástica.

This article analyzes the tensions and disputes between the fields of gynecology and esthetic plastic surgery, the specialties which are authorized to perform aesthetic female genital surgeries in Brazil. Documentary materials are used, including scientific articles from the 1990s onward and institutional websites. While gynecologists have remained more cautious, recommending the surgery only for functional reasons, plastic surgeons have been more influential in publicizing these procedures and emphasizing the aesthetic dimension. Beyond professional disputes, we debate whether this phenomenon needs to be understood in light of the growing emphasis on self-improvement via biomedical resources and gender imperatives.

Este artigo analisa tensões e disputas entre o campo da ginecologia e da cirurgia plástica estética, especialidades autorizadas a realizar a cirurgia estética genital feminina no Brasil. Utiliza material documental, incluindo artigos científicos desde a década de 1990, e sites institucionais. Enquanto ginecologistas têm se mantido mais cautelosos com a prática, defendendo sua realização apenas quando há indicações funcionais, cirurgiões/ãs plásticos/as têm sido mais influentes na disseminação do procedimento, privilegiando a dimensão estética. Argumenta-se que, para além de disputas entre campos profissionais, esse fenômeno precisa ser entendido à luz da crescente ênfase no aprimoramento de si, via recursos biomédicos, e dos imperativos de gênero.

Three Arguments Against Institutional Conscientious Objection, and Why They Are (Metaphysically) Unconvincing.

The past decade has seen a burgeoning of scholarly interest in conscientious objection in healthcare. While the literature to date has focused primarily on individual healthcare practitioners who object to participation in morally controversial procedures, in this article we consider a different albeit related issue, namely, whether publicly funded healthcare institutions should be required to provide morally controversial services such as abortions, emergency contraception, voluntary sterilizations, and voluntary euthanasia. Substantive debates about institutional responsibility have remained largely at the level of first-order ethical debate over medical practices which institutions have refused to offer; in this article, we argue that more fundamental questions about the metaphysics of institutions provide a neglected avenue for understanding the basis of institutional conscientious objection. To do so, we articulate a metaphysical model of institutional conscience, and consider three well-known arguments for undermining institutional conscientious objection in light of this model. We show how our metaphysical analysis of institutions creates difficulties for justifying sanctions on institutions that conscientiously object. Thus, we argue, questions about the metaphysics of institutions are deserving of serious attention from both critics and defenders of institutional conscientious objection.

Navigating the Science System: Research Integrity and Academic Survival Strategies.

Research Integrity (RI) is high on the agenda of both institutions and science policy. The European Union as well as national ministries of science have launched ambitious initiatives to combat misconduct and breaches of research integrity. Often, such initiatives entail attempts to regulate scientific behavior through guidelines that institutions and academic communities can use to more easily identify and deal with cases of misconduct. Rather than framing misconduct as a result of an information deficit, we instead conceptualize Questionable Research Practices (QRPs) as attempts by researchers to reconcile epistemic and social forms of uncertainty in knowledge production. Drawing on previous literature, we define epistemic uncertainty as the inherent intellectual unpredictability of scientific inquiry, while social uncertainty arises from the human-made conditions for scientific work. Our core argument-developed on the basis of 30 focus group interviews with researchers across different fields and European countries-is that breaches of research integrity can be understood as attempts to loosen overly tight coupling between the two forms of uncertainty. Our analytical approach is not meant to relativize or excuse misconduct, but rather to offer a more fine-grained perspective on what exactly it is that researchers want to accomplish by engaging in it. Based on the analysis, we conclude by proposing some concrete ways in which institutions and academic communities could try to reconcile epistemic and social uncertainties on a more collective level, thereby reducing incentives for researchers to engage in misconduct.

Ontological pluralism and social values.

There seems to be an emerging consensus among many philosophers of science that non-epistemic values ought to play a role in the process of scientific reasoning itself. Recently, a number of philosophers have focused on the role of values in scientific classification or taxonomy. Their claim is that a choice of ontology or taxonomic scheme can only be made, or should only be made, by appealing to non-epistemic or social values. In this paper, I take on this "argument from ontological choice," claiming that it equivocates on the notion of choice. An ontological choice can be understood either in terms of determining which taxonomic scheme is valid, or in terms of deciding which taxonomic scheme to deploy in a given context. I try to show that while the latter can be determined in part by social values, the former ought not to be so determined.

What's Wrong with Restrictivism?

Emily Carroll and Parker Crutchfield propose a new inconsistency argument against abortion restrictivism. In response, I raised several objections to their argument. Recently Carroll and Crutchfield have replied and seem to be under the impression that I'm a restrictivist. This is puzzling, since my criticism of their view included a very thinly veiled, but purposely more charitable, anti-restrictivist inconsistency argument. In this response, I explain how Carroll and Crutchfield mischaracterize my position and that of the restrictivist.

ChainAgile: A framework for the improvement of Scrum Agile distributed software development based on blockchain.

Software Development based on Scrum Agile in a distributed development environment plays a pivotal role in the contemporary software industry by facilitating software development across geographic boundaries. However, in the past different frameworks utilized to address the challenges like communication and collaboration in scrum agile distributed software development (SADSD) were notably inadequate in transparency, security, traceability, geographically dispersed location work agreements, geographically dispersed teamwork effectiveness, and trust. These deficiencies frequently resulted in delays in software development and deployment, customer dissatisfaction, canceled agreements, project failures, and disputes over payments between customers and development teams. To address these challenges of SADSD, this paper proposes a new framework called ChainAgile, which leverages blockchain technology. ChainAgile employs a private Ethereum blockchain to facilitate the execution of smart contracts. These smart contracts cover a range of functions, including acceptance testing, secure payments, requirement verification, task prioritization, sprint backlog, user story design and development and payments with the automated distribution of payments via digital wallets to development teams. Moreover, in the ChainAgile framework, smart contracts also play a pivotal role in automatically imposing penalties on customers for making late payments or for no payments and penalties on developers for completing the tasks that exceed their deadlines. Furthermore, ChainAgile effectively addresses the scalability limitations intrinsic in blockchain technology by incorporating the Interplanetary File System (IPFS) is used for storage solutions as an off-chain mechanism. The experimental results conclusively show that this innovative approach substantially improves transparency, traceability, coordination, communication, security, and trust for both customers and developers engaged in scrum agile distributed software development (SADSD).

Persistent interaction patterns across social media platforms and over time.

Growing concern surrounds the impact of social media platforms on public discourse1-4 and their influence on social dynamics5-9, especially in the context of toxicity10-12. Here, to better understand these phenomena, we use a comparative approach to isolate human behavioural patterns across multiple social media platforms. In particular, we analyse conversations in different online communities, focusing on identifying consistent patterns of toxic content. Drawing from an extensive dataset that spans eight platforms over 34 years-from Usenet to contemporary social media-our findings show consistent conversation patterns and user behaviour, irrespective of the platform, topic or time. Notably, although long conversations consistently exhibit higher toxicity, toxic language does not invariably discourage people from participating in a conversation, and toxicity does not necessarily escalate as discussions evolve. Our analysis suggests that debates and contrasting sentiments among users significantly contribute to more intense and hostile discussions. Moreover, the persistence of these patterns across three decades, despite changes in platforms and societal norms, underscores the pivotal role of human behaviour in shaping online discourse.

Portable devices for diagnosis and monitoring of glaucoma: a scoping review protocol.

INTRODUCTION: Glaucoma is the leading cause of irreversible blindness in the world. The need to diagnose glaucoma early in its natural history before extensive sight loss occurs cannot be overemphasised. However, glaucoma is largely asymptomatic in the early stages of the disease making it complex to diagnose clinically and requires the support of technology. The objective of this scoping review is to determine the nature and extent of the evidence for use of portable devices in the diagnosis of glaucoma. METHODS: We will consider studies conducted in all healthcare settings using portable devices for the detection of all type of adult glaucoma. We will also include any systematic reviews or scoping reviews, which relate to this topic. Searches will be conducted in MEDLINE, Embase, CENTRAL on the Cochrane Library and Global Health databases, from their inception to the present. Reference lists from publications identified in the searches will also be reviewed. Two authors will independently screen titles and abstracts, followed by full-text screening to assess studies for inclusion. Any disagreements will be discussed and resolved with a third author. Tables accompanied by narrative descriptions will be employed to discuss results and show how it relates to review questions. ETHICS AND DISSEMINATION: Ethical approval is not required in this review. Only published and publicly accessible data will be used. We will publish our findings in an open-access, peer-reviewed journal and develop an accessible summary of results and recommendations.

AI and the nature of disagreement.

Litigation is a creature of disagreement. Our essay explores the potential of artificial intelligence (AI) to help reduce legal disagreements. In any litigation, parties disagree over the facts, the law, or how the law applies to the facts. The source of the parties' disagreements matters. It may determine the extent to which AI can help resolve their disputes. AI is helpful in clarifying the parties' misunderstanding over how well-defined questions of law apply to their facts. But AI may be less helpful when parties disagree on questions of fact where the prevailing facts dictate the legal outcome. The private nature of information underlying these factual disagreements typically fall outside the strengths of AI's computational leverage over publicly available data. A further complication: parties may disagree about which rule should govern the dispute, which can arise irrespective of whether they agree or disagree over questions of facts. Accordingly, while AI can provide clarity over legal precedent, it often may be insufficient to provide clarity over legal disputes. This article is part of the theme issue 'A complexity science approach to law and governance'.