The Not So Obvious Impact of COVID 19: The Hidden “Curriculum”

The last two years of the Covid 19 pandemic has certainly brought on and inculcated a variety of changes, new practices, innovative approaches and altered mindsets. Some of these were intended, planned and incorporated into pathways and practices. There were many lessons and new experiences. Without our complete realization, there were also many less obvious lessons: the hidden curriculum. This refers to the unwritten, unspoken, unplanned and less obvious values, behaviour and norms practised or experienced during the pandemic. The hidden curriculum is conveyed and communicated without our direct awareness and intent. The hidden curriculum will certainly contribute towards healthcare staff resilience, handling of stressors, decisions on utilization of resources and patient care. Not to be forgotten, it will also impact how they develop friendships, partnerships, collaborations, negotiate their self-development and strengthen their sense of purpose and challenge assumptions. In this paper, the author, who worked at the frontline during the pandemic shares some of her views on the new healthcare landscape, mindset changes, technology adoption, psychological safety and the meaning of ‘staying home’. They represent her views, coloured by her experiences as an emergency physician, a medical educator, academic medicine practitioner and researcher.

The Search Function and Evolutionary Novelty

Search is a pervasive phenomenon of biological and economic life. But search is hard, especially in uncertain and dynamic environments. In this chapter we directly address the hard problem of search. We develop a generalized form of question-answer probing as a way of simplifying search, with implications for understanding biological and economic novelty. Question-answer probes are organism-specific search images and ‘search-for-functions’ that direct awareness. This form of search simultaneously constrains and enables search spaces in counterintuitive ways. Question-answer probing not only illustrates relatively mundane search activity (such as foraging for food or looking for a lost item), but also provides the foundation for explaining the emergence of both evolutionary novelty and economic value. An organism’s (or organization’s) directed search (especially the search for function) supplies a key mechanism for realizing adjacent possibilities and niches. Our approach contrasts with extant evolutionary, computational (such as serial processing or Bayesian priors and updating), and physics-oriented approaches to search, which lack organism-specific mechanisms. Our approach also contrasts with popular, physics-oriented conceptions of mind, organism, and consciousness. Throughout the chapter, we offer biological and economic examples to illustrate our points. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of our arguments for economics and innovation.

Transcendental Ground of Intrinsic Worth in Russian Literature

The essay is a phenomenological study of Russian literature as a point of critique of two lifeworlds: the traditional Russian Feudalism with its “decadent” aristocracy, and the modern Western Enlightenment with its values, specifically the “subjective” construction of val-uations of all environment and human activities. Russian writers, from Turgenev all the way to Gogol found themselves between those two worlds and sought an answer which of them answers the existential question of human self-worth as an “eidetic” criterion of all values and life worlds, given in direct awareness. Self-worth does not belong to the world of categories, but is apparent in active commitments, such as being truthful, honorable, other and self respect‒dimensions absent among modern values.El ensayo es un estudio fenomenológico de la literatura rusa como un punto de crítica de dos mundos: el Feudalismo ruso tradicional con su aristocracia "decadente" y la Ilustración occidental moderna con sus valores —concretamente, la construcción "subjetiva" de evaluaciones de todo tipo de ambiente y actividades humanas. Los escritores rusos, desde Turgenev hasta Gogol, se encontraron entre esos dos mundos y buscaron una respuesta que respondiera a la cuestión existencial de la auto-estima humana como un criterio "eidético" de todos los valores y mundos de la vida, dado en conciencia directa. La autoestima no pertenece al mundo de las categorías, sino que se manifiesta en los compromisos activos, tales como ser veraz, ser honorable, respeto propio y ajeno —dimensiones ausentes entre los valores modernos.

The Validity of the SEEV Model as a Process Measure of Situation Awareness: The Example of a Simulated Endotracheal Intubation

Objective In the context of anesthesiology, we investigated whether the salience effort expectancy value (SEEV) model fit is associated with situation awareness and perception scores. Background The distribution of visual attention is important for situation awareness—that is, understanding what is going on—in safety-critical domains. Although the SEEV model has been suggested as a process situation awareness measure, the validity of the model as a predictor of situation awareness has not been tested. Method In a medical simulation, 31 senior and 30 junior anesthesiologists wore a mobile eye tracker and induced general anesthesia into a simulated patient. When inserting a breathing tube into the mannequin’s trachea (endotracheal intubation), the scenario included several clinically relevant events for situation awareness and general events in the environment. Both were assessed using direct awareness measures. Results The overall SEEV model fit was good with no difference between junior and senior anesthesiologists. Overall, the situation awareness scores were low. As expected, the SEEV model fits showed significant positive correlations with situation awareness level 1 scores. Conclusion The SEEV model seems to be suitable as a process situation awareness measure to predict and investigate the perception of changes in the environment (situation awareness level 1). The situation awareness scores indicated that anesthesiologists seem not to perceive the environment well during endotracheal intubation. Application The SEEV model fit can be used to capture and assess situation awareness level 1. During endotracheal intubation, anesthesiologists should be supported by technology or staff to notice changes in the environment.

Trait-Unconsciousness, State-Unconsciousness, Preconsciousness, and Social Miscalibration in the Context of Implicit Evaluation

Implicit evaluations are often assumed to reflect “unconscious attitudes.” We review data from our lab to conclude that the truth of this statement depends on how one defines “unconscious.” A trait definition of unconscious according to which implicit evaluations reflect cognitions that are introspectively inaccessible at all times appears to be inaccurate. However, when unconscious is defined as a state which cognitions can be in at specific times, some data suggest that the cognitions reflected on implicit evaluations may sometimes unfold without direct awareness, in that people seem to rarely pay attention to them. Additionally, people appear to be miscalibrated in their reports in that they construe even conscious biases in self-serving ways. This analysis suggests that implicit evaluations do not reflect unconscious cognitions per se, but rather awareness-independent cognitions that are often preconscious and miscalibrated. Discussion centers on the meaning of this analysis for theory and application.

The changing patterns of liver cancer in Saudi Arabia over a 22-year period

Background: Liver cancer is a major public health problem in the developing world. It is the sixth most common cancer in the developed world and the second leading cause of death among cancer patients, globally. This study evaluated the trends and geographical distributions of liver cancer in the Saudi Arabian population.Methods: A secondary data analysis was performed on liver cancer cases registered in the Saudi Cancer registry for the period 1994 to 2015. In all, 8,785 liver cancer cases were included in the analysis, all of them Saudi nationals.Results: There were significant decreases in the mean age-standardised rates of liver cancer over the study period. The incidence of liver cancer varied by region. A strong positive correlation was observed between liver cancer incidence and age. Hepatocellular carcinoma-NOS is the most common histopathology subtype among the Saudi population.Conclusions: The overall trend of the liver cancer age-standardised rate for males and females decreased among the Saudi population. This rate varies by region. Studying this variation in more detail will help improve public health policy, optimise distribution of resources and allocation of funding for research on prevention and diagnosis and direct awareness programs to the regions that are most in need.

Construction of the Meaning of a Motorcycle taxi Driver in Student Perception

The development of technology gave birth to a new profession. Millennials plunge into online motorcycle taxi drivers. The presence of various online transportation applications such as Go-Jek, Grab, Uber opens wide opportunities to become partners. Millennials are not ashamed but feel proud. The motorcycle taxi profession which is often underestimated is now in demand by various groups. This study aims to explain the changes in the construction of the meaning of motorcycle taxi drivers in the perception of students who become online motorcycle taxi drivers. The change in meaning construction has made the online motorcycle taxi profession attractive to the younger generation. Changes in construction will be described in various stages of the scheme, the process of externalization, objectification and internalization of values. This research strategy is phenomenological research. The basic question according to Patton (2002) is to find out the essence of experience. Littlejohn (1999: 199) defines phenomenology as the study of experiences that come from consciousness or the way we understand something by consciously experiencing something. Hegel (in Moustakas 1994: 26) states that phenomenology refers to experience as arises from consciousness, he further explains phenomenology is the science of describing what a person receives, feels and knows in his direct awareness and experience. What arises from consciousness is what is called a phenomenon. With this strategy, the researcher seeks to obtain a systematic, logical and coherent reflection of the reality phenomenon about the motorcycle taxi profession

Divine knowledge as direct awareness: a defence of Alston

In his ‘Does God have beliefs?’, William Alston argues for an intuitive construal of the nature of Divine knowledge according to which God's knowledge consists in His direct awareness without any beliefs. Recently, Travis Dickinson has raised some objections to Alston's view and has developed an alternative account of God's knowledge as His acquaintance with a fact, a corresponding thought or belief, and a correspondence between these two. In this article, I respond to Dickinson's objections and show that there is no reason to favour his acquaintance construal of God's knowledge over Alston's intuitive view of the nature of God's knowledge.

Vasubandhu (4th or 5th century AD)

An Indian Buddhist philosopher of the fourth or fifth century, Vasubandhu was a prolific author of treatises and commentaries. Best known for his synthesis of the Sarvāstivāda school of Abhidharma, he was sympathetic with the Sautrāntika school and frequently criticized Sarvāstivāda theory from that perspective. Vasubandhu eventually became an eminent exponent of the Yogācāra school. He also wrote short treatises on logic that influenced Dignāga, traditionally said to have been his disciple. Probably the most original of Vasubandhu’s philosophical works are his two short works in verse, known as the Viṃśatikākārikāvṛtti (Twenty-Verse Treatise) and the Triṃśikākārikāvṛtti (Thirty-Verse Treatise). In these two works, he argues that one can never have direct awareness of external objects, but can be aware only of images within consciousness. Given that some of these images, such as those in dreams and hallucinations, are known to occur without being representations of external objects, one can never be certain whether a given image in awareness corresponds to an external object. Because one can never be sure of what is externally real but can be sure of internal experiences, he concludes, a person seeking nirvāṇa should focus attention on the workings of the mind rather than on the external world.

Knowledge by acquaintance and description

The attempt to distinguish knowledge by acquaintance from knowledge by description is most closely associated with Bertrand Russell. The distinction is also crucial to one way of trying to develop a plausible foundationalist theory of justification and knowledge. According to Russell one can distinguish the two kinds of knowledge in terms of their respective objects. Put crudely, one has knowledge by acquaintance of things, and one has knowledge by description of propositions (representations of reality that are either true or false). But this crude characterization of the two kinds of knowledge is misleading. Russell also seemed to believe that one can have knowledge by acquaintance of properties and even facts (where a fact is a complex consisting of a thing’s exemplifying a quality or standing in a relation to another thing). The distinction, then, might be better put in terms of a kind of knowledge which has as its object something that is neither true nor false (knowledge by acquaintance) and a kind of knowledge which has as its object a bearer of truth value (knowledge by description). According to Russell, all knowledge of truths ultimately rests on knowledge by acquaintance. The traditional foundationalist in epistemology holds that although I can know one truth by inferring it from something else I know, not everything I know can be inferred in this way. We can avoid a regress of knowledge by holding that at least some truths are known as a result of direct awareness of or acquaintance with those aspects of the world that make the corresponding propositions true.