Plant cell culture systems have become an attractive and sustainable approach to produce high‐value and commercially significant metabolites under controlled conditions. Strategies involving elicitor supplementation into plant cell culture media are employed to mimic natural conditions for increasing the metabolite yield. Studies on nanoparticles (NPs) that have investigated elicitation of specialized metabolism have shown the potential of NPs to be a substitute for biotic elicitors such as phytohormones and microbial extracts. Customizable physicochemical characteristics allow the design of monodispersed‐, stimulus‐responsive‐, and (...) hormone‐carrying‐NPs of precise geometries to enhance their elicitation capabilities based on target metabolite/plant cell culture type. We contextualize advances in NP‐mediated elicitation, especially stimulation of specialized metabolic pathways, the underlying mechanisms, impacts on gene regulation, and NP‐associated cytotoxicity. The novelty of the concept lies in unleashing the potential of designer NPs to enhance yield, harness metabolites, and transform nanoelicitation from exploratory investigations to a commercially viable strategy. (shrink)

Lawrence O'Donnell, Jr., Deadly Force: The True Story of How a Badge Can Become a License to Kill. New York: William Morrow and Company, 1983, 384 pp. Robert E. Goodin, Political Theory and Public Policy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982, ix + 286 pp.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 155 Humanae Vitae: A Generation Later. By JANET SMITH. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1991. Pp. xvi + 425. $42.95 hardcover; $17.95 paper. This is an ambitious and important study. I will first offer an overview of the volume to indicate its scope and note some of its major features. I will then respond briefly to some of the major criticisms Smith makes of (...) the argument against contraception advanced by Germain Grisez, Joseph Boyle, John Finnis, and myself. The work contains 8 chapters and 4 appendices. Chapters 3 and 4, as Smith says, "provide an analysis of Humanae Vitae itself and thus constitute the heart of the hook" (p. xi). Since this is so I will first summarize briefly Chapters 1, 2, 5, 6, 7, and 8 and then center atten· tion on the two central chapters and the four appendices. Chapters 1 and 2 provide the context for Humanae Vitae. The first chapter is devoted largely to an account of the so-called " Minority " and "Majority" documents of the Papal Commission for the Study of Problems of the Family, Population, and Birth Rate, while the second seeks to summarize Catholic teaching on Christian marriage prior to the encyclical. This summary draws principally from Pius XI's Casti Connubii and from nn. 47-52 of Vatican II's Gaudium et Spes. Smith takes up in some detail the issue of the" primacy" of procreation, concluding that Gaudium et Spes " seems to sidestep " this issue which, in her judgment, is irrelevant to the question of contraception. She thinks that this central document of Vatican II sent " mixed signals " on the question of contraception, although she believes that several passages " can very plausibly he read to support the position that contraception is portrayed as a violation not only of the procreative good of marriage hut also of the values of conjugal love" (p. 66). Chapter 5 deals with a wide range of theological issues: the biblical foundations for the teaching found in Humanae Vitae, the relevance of the concept of munus for this teaching, the possibility of acting " in good conscience " in a way contrary to its teaching, and the infallibility of the teaching. Of special value is the extended discussion of the con· cept expressed by the Latin term munus. Smith examines the rich meaning of this term in several magisterial documents, including Gaudium et Spes as well as Humanae Vitae. While a munus implies duties, it is essentially a noble, honor-bringing "gift" or "reward," signifying a vocation and sublime honor. Paul VI, in developing the integral vision of marriage in his encyclical, uses this concept to show that God, in giving to spouses the munus of handing on new life, has conferred on them the honor of sharing with him in the work of bring· 156 BOOK REVIEWS ing new life into the world. Smith shows beautifully how the rich theological meaning of this term helps " illuminate and enrich " the teaching of the encyclical. Chapters 6 and 7 investigate the arguments presented by dissenting theologians after Humanae Vitae to justify their repudiation of its teaching. In Chapter 6 Smith considers the views of Charles Curran and Bernard Haering, while in Chapter 7 she examines the proportionalist approach to moral issues developed by Joseph Fuchs, Richard McCormick and others. She provides intelligent criticism both of Curran and Haering and of proportionalist thought, focusing on the repudiation of specific moral absolutes. In Chapter 8 Smith provides a very helpful summary of Pope John Paul II's understanding of the human person, human sexuality and marriage. In particular, she takes up his notion that in marriage and in the act proper rto it man and woman make a " gift " of themselves to one another. Simultaneously to choose to give themselves to each other in the marital act and to contracept is then seen to involve an inner contradiction, a falsification of the " language of the body " (pp. 230258 ). Smith also takes up some of the major criticisms levelled against John Paul II's thought, in particular Lisa Sowle Cahill's, which charges him with an overromantic view of love and a failure to recognize that... (shrink)

Daniel K. Finn’s Moral Agency Within Social Structures and Culture: A Primer on Critical Realism for Christian Ethics (Moral Agency for short) contributes well to the mutual enrichment of critical...

In this study, complex dynamics of Briggs–Rauscher reaction system is investigated analytically and numerically. First, the Briggs–Rauscher reaction system is reduced into a new nonlinear parametric oscillator. The Melnikov method is used to derive the condition of the appearance of horseshoe chaos in the cases ω = Ω and ω ≠ Ω. The performed numerical simulations confirm the obtained analytical predictions. Second, the prediction of coexisting attractors is investigated by solving numerically the new nonlinear parametric ordinary differential equation via the (...) fourth-order Runge–Kutta algorithm. As results, it is found that the new nonlinear chemical system displays various coexisting behaviors of symmetric and asymmetric attractors. In addition, the system presents a rich variety of bifurcations phenomena such as symmetry breaking, symmetry restoring, period doubling, reverse period doubling, period-m bubbles, reverse period-m bubbles, intermittency, and antimonotonicity. On the contrary, emerging chaotic band attractors and period-1, period-3, period-9, and period-m bubbles routes to chaos occur in this system. (shrink)

Tom Andersen’s reflecting team process, which allowed families to witness and respond to the talk of professionals during therapy sessions, has been described as revolutionary in the field of family therapy. Reflecting teams are prominent in a number of family therapy approaches, more recently in narrative and dialogical therapies. This way of working is considered more a philosophy than a technique, and has been received positively by both therapists and service users. This paper describes how dialogical therapists conceptualise the reflective (...) process, how they work to engage families in reflective dialogues and how this supports change. We conducted semi-structured, reflective interviews with 12 dialogical therapists with between 2 and 20 years of experience. Interpretative Phenomenological analysis of transcribed interviews identified varying conceptualisations of the reflecting process and descriptions of therapist actions that support reflective talk among network members. We adopted a dialogical approach to interpretation of this data. In this sense, we did not aim to condense accounts into consensus but instead to describe variations and new ways of understanding dialogical reflecting team practices. Four themes were identified: Lived experience as expertise; Listening to the self and hearing others; Relational responsiveness and fostering connection; and Opening space for something new. We applied these themes to psychotherapy process literature both within family therapy literature and more broadly to understand more about how reflecting teams promote helpful and healing conversations in practice. (shrink)

Is the tonal ordering of music, and the order of European triadic tonality in particular, the developed manifestation of an essential musical structure—a structure naturally suited to our human capacity to organize sounds musically? Historically and geographically, triadic tonality is a highly local phenomenon, limited to music beginning in the mid-seventeenth century and, until the nineteenth century, almost wholly confined to the Western European musical tradition. Some theorists accordingly regard tonality as a dispensable aesthetic convention—and one which, moreover, has had (...) its day. For many listeners, however, works within this tradition possess a distinctive ability to embody musical movement and expression. This paper examines Roger Scruton's defense of tonality as developed in the European common practice period. I examine his reasons for supposing that tonality is an ineliminable feature of sounds heard and understood as music. Those reasons, I conclude, are inconclusive; on their own they do not show that tonality either will or should persist as an authoritative musical order. Triadic tonality has, at best, an uncertain future. (shrink)

In the past decade, the notion of a neural correlate of consciousness has become a focal point for scientific research on consciousness. A growing number of investigators believe that the first step toward a science of consciousness is to discover the neural correlates of consciousness. Indeed, Francis Crick has gone so far as to proclaim that ‘we need to discover the neural correlates of consciousness. For this task the primate visual system seems especially attractive. No longer need one spend time (...) attempting to endure the tedium of philosophers perpetually disagreeing with each other. Consciousness is now largely a scientific problem’. Yet the question of what it means to be a neural correlate of consciousness is actually far from straightforward, for it involves fundamental empirical, methodological, and philosophical issues about the nature of consciousness and its relationship to the brain. Even if one assumes, as we do, that states of consciousness causally depend on states of the brain, one can nevertheless wonder in what sense there is, or could be, such a thing as a neural correlate of consciousness. (shrink)

Patrick Lancaster Gardiner is best known and most widely esteemed for his work on the nature of historical explanation. By addressing the problem of the limits of objectivity in relation to a variety of philosophical issues, he presciently identified the source of a number of philosophical disputes well before they had properly developed. This was certainly the case in Gardiner's treatment of historical explanation, and it is true also of his later treatment of the claims of the personal versus the (...) impersonal in ethical life. (shrink)

Kvantory kak vtoropori︠a︡dkovye predikaty: ot Frege k abstraktnym logikam -- Kvantory kak funkt︠s︡ii vybora: ot Pirsa k IF-logikam -- Kvantifikat︠s︡ii︠a︡ i ėkzistent︠s︡ii︠a︡ -- Ėkzistent︠s︡ii︠a︡ i negat︠s︡ii︠a︡.

Both the author and the date of this five-volume poem, the first Western document to link the houses of the zodiac with the course of human affairs, are uncertain. The author's name may be Marcus Manilius, or Manlius, or Mallius, and the latest datable event mentioned in the books themselves is the disastrous defeat of Varus' Roman legions by the German tribes in 9 CE. The writing shows knowledge of the work of Lucretius, but the work is not referred to (...) by any subsequent writer, suggesting that it was never widely disseminated. A manuscript was rediscovered by Poggio Bracciolini in 1416 or 1417, and editions were produced by Scaliger and Bentley, but this immensely erudite edition of 1903–1930 by the scholar and poet A. E. Housman is regarded as authoritative. Volume 1 covers the creation and arrangement of the heavens and their division into spheres. (shrink)

Both the author and the date of this five-volume poem, the first Western document to link the houses of the zodiac with the course of human affairs, are uncertain. The author's name may be Marcus Manilius, or Manlius, or Mallius, and the latest datable event mentioned in the books themselves is the disastrous defeat of Varus' Roman legions by the German tribes in 9 CE. The writing shows knowledge of the work of Lucretius, but the work is not referred to (...) by any subsequent writer, suggesting that it was never widely disseminated. A manuscript was rediscovered by Poggio Bracciolini in 1416 or 1417, and editions were produced by Scaliger and Bentley, but this immensely erudite edition of 1903–1930 by the scholar and poet A. E. Housman is regarded as authoritative. Volume 5 describes the non-zodiacal signs and their influence. (shrink)

Quantum frameworks for modeling competitive ecological systems and self-organizing structures have been investigated under multiple perspectives yielded by quantum mechanics. These comprise the description of the phase-space prey–predator competition dynamics in the framework of the Weyl–Wigner quantum mechanics. In this case, from the classical dynamics described by the Lotka–Volterra (LV) Hamiltonian, quantum states convoluted by statistical gaussian ensembles can be analytically evaluated. Quantum modifications on the patterns of equilibrium and stability of the prey–predator dynamics can then be identified. These include (...) quantum distortions over the equilibrium point drivers of the LV dynamics which are quantified through the Wigner current fluxes obtained from an onset Hamiltonian background. In addition, for gaussian ensembles highly localized around the equilibrium point, stability properties are shown to be affected by emergent topological quantum domains which, in some cases, could lead either to extinction and revival scenarios or to the perpetual coexistence of both prey and predator agents identified as quantum observables in microscopic systems. Conclusively, quantum and gaussian statistical driving parameters are shown to affect the stability criteria and the time evolution pattern for such microbiological-like communities. (shrink)

This is a volume on the concepts, theories, models and social consequences of creativity. It contains articles by well-known cognitive scientists, economists, mathematicians, philosophers and psychologists.