To its advocates, posthuman enhancement represents the pinnacle of what contemporary humanist scientific and technological endeavour can achieve; to its detractors, it has come to represent the fullest realisation of human technological folly. But while it is perhaps unsurprising that such a contentious, emotive and seemingly bi-polar issue has resulted in a scramble to arms, what is a surprise...

Planetary boundaries (PBs) and global catastrophic risk (GCR) have emerged in recent years as important paradigms for understanding and addressing global threats to humanity and the environment. This article compares the PBs and GCR paradigms and integrates them into a unified PBs-GCR conceptual framework, which we call Boundary Risk for Humanity and Nature (BRIHN). PBs emphasizes global enviro...

The attribution of uniquely human characteristics to the outgroup may favor the search for contact with outgroup members and, vice versa, contact experiences may improve humanity attributions to the outgroup. To explore this bidirectional relationship, two studies were performed. In Study 1, humanity perceptions were manipulated using subliminal conditioning. Two experimental conditions were cr...

participation in clinical trials can be useful for the health of a person, in who it is conducted, but it does not have to be - it can even be harmful. therefore, primary motive to accept such risk is humanity and human wish to contribute to the progress of medicine; this is expressed by personal consent. the consent, however, can be an expression of personal humanity, and for this, it is not l...

This paper addresses the question of the relative gravity of crimes against humanity vis-à-vis war crimes. The issue is tackled from a double perspective. First, the categories of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes are compared at the general or legislative level. The analysis is mainly based on international treaties and other instruments that consider these crimes from the viewp...

Journal of Futures Studies, November 2005, 10(2): 1 12 For quite some time already, there has been a debate on humanity reaching an evolutionary threshold. This is becoming a hot topic because of the exciting aspects it covers. To start with – humanity reaching a new threshold has a significant dose of drama: it is important, it is challenging and it holds some danger should we fail to be up to...

Paleoclimate d ata show that climate sensitivity is ~3°C for doubled CO2, including only fast feedback processes. Equilibrium sensitivity, including slower surface albedo feedbacks, i s ~6°C for doubled CO 2 fo r the range o f cl imate states between glacial conditions and ice-free Antarctica. Decreasing CO2 was the main cause of a cooling trend that began 50 m illion yea rs a go, the pl anet b...

A brief history of the preparation of the Seville Statement on Violence (SSV) and a short exposition of its propositions are provided. The SSV was originated by ISRA (International Society for Research on Aggression), a UN-Committee launched in the late seventies of the past century. Which were the main reasons urging us to elaborate the Statement, which difficulties were found on the way and h...

The NIJL has developed variety kinds of databases, i.e., catalogue databases, image databases, movie databases, and full text databases. As these systems have been developed under different backgrounds, users have to learn different command for each database. Furthermore, although some databases have similar contents, users cannot access related information unless they understand NIJL database ...