In developed countries some parents have decided not to provide routine vaccinations for their children, while in many developing countries there are inadequate rates of vaccination for various reasons. The consequences for children, and members of the community in which they live, can be significant and even tragic. Although some parents may worry that vaccines will harm their child, there is ...

AARP, celebrating 40 years of service to Americans of all ages, is the nation’s leading organization for people age 50 and older. It serves their needs and interests through information and education, advocacy, and community services which are provided by a network of local chapters and experienced volunteers throughout the country. The organization also offers members a wide range of special b...

The interests of the public and both the medical and legal professions are best served when scientifically sound and unbiased expert witness testimony is readily available in civil and criminal proceedings. As members of the medical community, patient advocates, and private citizens, pediatricians have ethical and professional obligations to assist in the civil and criminal judicial processes. ...

The progress in www-technologies and the trends toward ubiquitous computing have led to web-based user communities in recent years. Community members meet in virtual space and share information. Member interactions are mainly based on centralised services. This paper introduces Agent Assisted Communities, an approach to enhance member interactions and community forming in mobile environments. B...

This paper questions the utility of the ethical principles that are usually invoked to deal with genomic issues, particularly genetic databases. Concepts such as solidarity, benefit sharing, equity, public participation, and collective identity are discussed. The author argues that genetic banks are precipitating new concern over group interest, as opposed to concern over issues arising from in...

To address the extreme dynamism and the rapidly changing user’s requirements in current information systems, an Autonomous Community Information System (ACIS) has been developed. ACIS is a decentralized architecture that forms a community of individual end-users (community members) having the same interests and demands at specified time and location. It admits them to mutually cooperate and sha...

in recent years, virtual communities have been significantly popular and almost all of them are targeted for business profitability. in our study, the profitability of these communities for businesses has been analyzed from a commercial perspective. the study considers virtual community as a business model which can have a great impact on consumer purchase decision process. with respect to refe...

Knowledge communities allow individuals to share knowledge and collaborate with each other based on common interests. The authors apply socio-technical theory as the overarching theoretical framework to propose a research model which posits that both technical factors (system quality and information quality) and social factors (community governance and pro-sharing norms) collectively influence ...