This book explores the challenges of informed consent in medical intervention and research ethics, considering the global reality of multiculturalism and religious diversity. Even though informed consent is a gold standard in research ethics, its theoretical foundation is based on the conception of individual subjects making autonomous decisions. There is a need to reconsider autonomy as relational-where family members, community and religious leaders can play an important part in the consent process. The volume re-evaluates informed consent in multicultural contexts and features perspectives from Buddhism, Confucianism, Hinduism, Christianity, Judaism and Islam. It is valuable reading for scholars interested in bioethics, healthcare ethics, research ethics, comparative religions, theology, human rights, law and sociology.

This book explores what constitutes an enhancement fit for humanity in the age of nanotechnologies, biotechnologies, information technologies, and technologies related to the cognitive sciences. It considers the influence of emergent technology upon our understanding of human nature and the impact on future generations. Drawing on the Catholic tradition, in particular, the book gathers international contributions from scientific, philosophical, legal, and religious perspectives. Together they offer a positive step in an ongoing dialogue regarding the promises and perils of emergent technology for man's integral human development.

Attitudes towards science, medicine and the body are all profoundly shaped by people's worldviews. When discussing issues of bioethics, religion often plays a major role. In this volume, the role of genetic manipulation and neurotechnology in shaping human identity is examined from multiple religious perspectives. This can help us to understand how religion might affect the impact of the initiatives such as the UNESCO Declaration in Bioethics and Human Rights. The book features bioethics experts from six major religions: Buddhism, Confucianism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Judaism. It includes a number of distinct religious and cultural views on the anthropological, ethical and social challenges of emerging technologies in the light of human rights and in the context of global bioethics. The contributors work together to explore issues such as: cultural attitudes to gene editing; neuroactive drugs; the interaction between genes and behaviours; the relationship between the soul, the mind and DNA; and how can clinical applications of these technologies benefit the developing world. This is a significant collection, demonstrating how religion and modern technologies relate to one another. It will, therefore, be of great interest to academics working in bioethics, religion and the body, interreligious dialogue, and religion and science, technology and neuroscience.

Attitudes towards science, medicine and the body are all profoundly shaped by people's worldviews. When discussing issues of bioethics, religion often plays a major role. In this volume, the role of genetic manipulation and neurotechnology in shaping human identity is examined from multiple religious perspectives. This can help us to understand how religion might affect the impact of the initiatives such as the UNESCO Declaration in Bioethics and Human Rights. The book features bioethics experts from six major religions: Buddhism, Confucianism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Judaism. It includes a number of distinct religious and cultural views on the anthropological, ethical and social challenges of emerging technologies in the light of human rights and in the context of global bioethics. The contributors work together to explore issues such as: cultural attitudes to gene editing; neuroactive drugs; the interaction between genes and behaviours; the relationship between the soul, the mind and DNA; and how can clinical applications of these technologies benefit the developing world. This is a significant collection, demonstrating how religion and modern technologies relate to one another. It will, therefore, be of great interest to academics working in bioethics, religion and the body, interreligious dialogue, and religion and science, technology and neuroscience.

This book includes a number of distinct religious and secular views on the anthropological, ethical and social challenges of reproductive technologies in the light of human rights and in the context of global bioethics. It includes contributions of bioethics experts from six major religions-Buddhism, Confucianism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and Judaism-as well as secular authors. The chapters include commentaries discussing the content cross-religious/secular tradition to give a comparative perspective. Not only the volume editors but also the contributing authors took part in reviewing each others' chapter making this a unique collected volume, not common in interreligious dialogue today. This text appeals to researchers and students working in the fields of bioethics and religious/secular studies.

This book addresses a broad range of topics, from newly proposed techniques in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning to various applications such as decision-making, pattern classification for data, image and signals, robotics, and control systems. Big data applications are discussed, while improved methods and wholly new methods for using deep learning technologies are also presented. The topics covered are comprehensive and reflect a wide range of technologies in the area. In particular, the latest methods in deep learning approaches and applications are discussed in many parts of the book, providing a better understanding of these new technologies. The book's general scope includes the latest methods in the areas of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning for use in distributed computing as well as decision support systems. As the book covers a rather wide area, its intended readership ranges from those working in AI and machine learning technologies to those working on applications utilizing these technologies, researchers new to these areas who need background information on the technologies and applications, and more experienced researchers looking for new methods and applications.

With the advance of biomedicine, certain individuals and groups are vulnerable because of their incapacities to defend themselves. The International Bioethics Committee as a UNESCO working group has for the last several years dedicated to deepen this principle of human vulnerability and personal integrity. This book serves to supplement this effort with a religious perspective given a great number of the world’s population is affiliated with some religious traditions. While there is diversity within each of these traditions, all of them carry in them the mission to protect the weak, the underprivileged, and the poor. Thus, here presented is a collection of papers written by bioethics experts from six major world religions—Buddhism, Christianity, Confucianism, Hinduism, Islam and Judaism—who were gathered to discuss the meaning and implications of the principle of vulnerability in their respective traditions.        

With the advance of biomedicine, certain individuals and groups are vulnerable because of their incapacities to defend themselves. The International Bioethics Committee as a UNESCO working group has for the last several years dedicated to deepen this principle of human vulnerability and personal integrity. This book serves to supplement this effort with a religious perspective given a great number of the world's population is affiliated with some religious traditions. While there is diversity within each of these traditions, all of them carry in them the mission to protect the weak, the underprivileged, and the poor. Thus, here presented is a collection of papers written by bioethics experts from six major world religions-Buddhism, Christianity, Confucianism, Hinduism, Islam and Judaism-who were gathered to discuss the meaning and implications of the principle of vulnerability in their respective traditions.

This book describes the first comprehensive approach to the optimization of interconnect architectures in 3D systems on chips (SoCs), specially addressing the challenges and opportunities arising from heterogeneous integration. Readers learn about the physical implications of using heterogeneous 3D technologies for SoC integration, while also learning to maximize the 3D-technology gains, through a physical-effect-aware architecture design. The book provides a deep theoretical background covering all abstraction-levels needed to research and architect tomorrow's 3D-integrated circuits, an extensive set of optimization methods (for power, performance, area, and yield), as well as an open-source optimization and simulation framework for fast exploration of novel designs.

How did the breakdown of Roman rule in the Iberian Peninsula eventually result in the formation of a Visigothic kingdom with authority centralised in Toledo? This collection of essays challenges the view that local powers were straightforwardly subjugated to the expanding central power of the monarchy. Rather than interpret countervailing events as mere 'delays' in this inevitable process, the contributors to this book interrogate where these events came from, which causes can be uncovered and how much influence individual actors had in this process. What emerges is a story of contested interests seeking cooperation through institutions and social practices that were flexible enough to stabilise a system that was hierarchical yet mutually beneficial for multiple social groups. By examining the Visigothic settlement, the interplay between central and local power, the use of ethnic identity, projections of authority, and the role of the Church, this book articulates a model for understanding the formation of a large and important early medieval kingdom.

This book includes a number of distinct religious and secular views on the anthropological, ethical and social challenges of reproductive technologies in the light of human rights and in the context of global bioethics. It includes contributions of bioethics experts from six major religions-Buddhism, Confucianism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and Judaism-as well as secular authors. The chapters include commentaries discussing the content cross-religious/secular tradition to give a comparative perspective. Not only the volume editors but also the contributing authors took part in reviewing each others' chapter making this a unique collected volume, not common in interreligious dialogue today. This text appeals to researchers and students working in the fields of bioethics and religious/secular studies.

John Roberts directs this romantic comedy following a pair of sisters who head to Cuba to scatter the ashes of their deceased father. Rosa (Eva Birthistle), a committed socialist, is determined to rescue the memory of her father from the fate her stepmother has planned: using his ashes to make a golf trophy. In tribute to her father's glamorous past as a revolutionary who once visited Cuba, she steals the ashes and heads to the Caribbean island in the company of her more materialistic sister Ailie (Charity Wakefield) and their friend Conway (Bryan Dick). They come face-to-face with both the good and bad of the island in the form of conman Ernesto (Christopher Simpson) and protective tour guide Tomas (Carlos Acosta). How will the experience change them?

Abandoning Their Beloved Land offers an essential new history of the Bracero Program, a bilateral initiative that allowed Mexican men to work in the United States as seasonal contract farmworkers from 1942 to 1964. Using national and local archives in Mexico, historian Alberto Garcia uncovers previously unexamined political factors that shaped the direction of the program, including how officials administered the bracero selection process and what motivated campesinos from central states to migrate. Notably, Garcia's book reveals how and why the Mexican government's delegation of Bracero Program-related responsibilities, the powerful influence of conservative Catholic opposition groups in central Mexico, and the failures of the revolution's agrarian reform all profoundly influenced the program's administration and individuals' decisions to migrate as braceros.

Abandoning Their Beloved Land offers an essential new history of the Bracero Program, a bilateral initiative that allowed Mexican men to work in the United States as seasonal contract farmworkers from 1942 to 1964. Using national and local archives in Mexico, historian Alberto Garcia uncovers previously unexamined political factors that shaped the direction of the program, including how officials administered the bracero selection process and what motivated campesinos from central states to migrate. Notably, Garcia's book reveals how and why the Mexican government's delegation of Bracero Program-related responsibilities, the powerful influence of conservative Catholic opposition groups in central Mexico, and the failures of the revolution's agrarian reform all profoundly influenced the program's administration and individuals' decisions to migrate as braceros.