Activity-dependent neuroprotective protein, discovered in our laboratory in 1999, has been characterized as a master gene vital for mammalian brain formation. ADNP de novo mutations in humans result in a syndromic form of autism-like spectrum disorder, including cognitive and motor deficits, the ADNP syndrome. One of the most important cellular processes associated with ADNP is the autophagy pathway, recently discovered by us as a key player in the pathophysiology of schizophrenia. In this regard, given the link between the microtubule and (...) autophagy systems, the ADNP microtubule end binding protein motif, namely, the neuroprotective NAP, was found to enhance autophagy while protecting microtubules and augmenting ADNP's association with both systems. Thus, linking autophagy and ADNP is proposed as a major target for intervention in brain diseases from autism to Alzheimer's disease and our findings introduce autophagy as a possible novel target for treating schizophrenia. Activity-dependent neuroprotective protein binds to microtubule-associated protein light chain 3, which forms the membrane of the autophagosome, a key organelle in the autophagy process and regulates beclin1 formation, an inducer of autophagy. Autophagy plays a major role in Alzheimer's disease and as recently discovered in schizophrenia and autism. (shrink)

Contributors to this volume present methodological foundations for deductive modeling in policy analysis, applications to particular areas of public policy, and applications to the institutional framework within which particular policies are chosen.

The first theory of confirmation that Carnap developed in detail is to be found in "Testability and Meaning". In this paper, he addressed the issue of a definition of empiricism, several years after abandoning the quest for a unique and universal logical framework supposed to be the basis of a clear distinction between the meaningful sentences of science and the pseudo-sentences of metaphysics. The principle of tolerance (according to which everyone is free to build up his own form of language (...) as he wishes) had been adopted near the end of 1932, at a time when it was already obvious to Carnap that a strictly verificationist criterion of meaning was inadequate. He therefore considered a variety of empiricisms and a variety of choices for the language of science. As Carnap put it, "there are many different possibilities in framing an empiricist language" and, correspondingly, several degrees of liberalization of the criterion of meaning. It was in this context that Carnap provided both a logical (syntactical) and an empirical analysis of confirmation (and of testing), before distinguishing requirements of different strengths which served the purpose of defining several versions of empiricism. (shrink)

Projecting essence onto a social category means to think, talk, and act as if the category were a discrete natural kind and as if its members were all endowed with the same immutable attributes determined by the category's essence. Essentializing may happen implicitly or on purpose in representing ingroups and outgroups. We argue that essentializing is a versatile representational tool that is used to create identity in groups with chosen membership in order to make the group appear as a unitary (...) entity, that outsiders often draw on a group's essentialist self-construal in their judgements about the groups, that judgements about members of forced social categories are often informed by essentialist thinking that easily switches to discrimination and racism, and that under certain historical and political conditions members of social categories and groups may contest their essentialized identity, such as parts of the feminist movement, or that they may attempt to reconstruct an essentialized identity, such as parts of the homosexual movement or the largely defunct European nobility. Besides explicit political and power interests, we see communication processes and language use as a tacit force driving essentialization of social categories. (shrink)

In recent decades, the belief in progress that was widespread across the two centuries following the French Revolution has withered away. This article suggests, though, that the diagnosis of the end of progress can be used as an occasion to rethink what progress meant and what it might mean today. The proposal for rethinking proceeds in two big steps. First, the meaning of progress that was inherited from the Enlightenment is reconstructed and contrasted with the way progress actually occurred in (...) history. In this step, it is demonstrated that progress was expected through human autonomy, but that it was actually brought about by domination and resistance to domination. A look at the short revival of progress after the middle of the twentieth century will confirm this insight and direct the attention to the transformation of the world over the past half century, on which the second step focuses. This socio-political transformation is analyzed as spelling (almost) the end of formal domination. The current era has often been characterized by the tendencies towards globalization and individualization as well as, normatively, by the increasingly hegemonic commitment to human rights and democracy. A critical analysis of the current socio-political constellation, however, shows that the end of formal domination does not mean the end of history; it rather requires the elaboration of a new understanding of possible progress. Progress can no longer predominantly be achieved through resistance to domination, but rather through autonomous collective action and through the critical interpretation of the world one finds oneself in. (shrink)

In these highly selective and condensed considerations, I could only offer a comparison of the main sociological themes in Gurwitsch's inaugural dissertation with the corresponding themes in Schutz's first book. Other sociological themes were not discussed, mainly because they were not developed far enough in one or the other or both sources. The crucial theme of explicit and implicit ontological presuppositions had to be ignored because it demands an extensive treatment of its own. The same goes for the proper consideration (...) of the particular conceptions of Husserl mobilized by each author for his purposes.Even so, I hope to have conveyed an idea of the convergences and differences in the early views of Gurwitsch and Schutz, as mirrored in the studies which were compared. This article should be seen as a small beginning of the huge task of studying comprehensively the unique personal and intellectual friendship of two seminal thinkers and the influences they exercised upon each other's work, even though they operated in substantively quite different areas. (shrink)

We show that a stable groupG satisfying certain commutator conditions is nilpotent. Furthermore, a soluble stable group with generically splitting automorphism of prime order is nilpotent-by-finite. In particular, a soluble stable group with a generic element of prime order is nilpotent-by-finite.

Two experiments were conducted to show that the IF … THEN … rules used in the different versions of Wason 's selection task are not psychologically—though they are logically—equivalent. Some of these rules are considered by the participants as strict logical conditionals, whereas others are interpreted as expressing a biconditional relationship. A deductive task was used jointly with the selection task to show that the original abstract rule is quite ambiguous in this respect, contrary to deontic rules: the typical “error” (...) made by most people may indeed be explained by the fact that they consider the abstract rule as a biconditional. Thus, there is no proper error or bias in the selection task as it is still argued, but a differential interpretation of the rule. The need for taking into account a pragmatic component in the process of reasoning is illustrated by the experiments. (shrink)

Central and Eastern Europe, 1944–1993: Detour from the Periphery to the Periphery. By Ivan T. Berend. Cambridge Studies in Modern Economic History, xviii + 414 pp. £45.00 cloth. The Transition in Eastern Europe, vol. 2: Restructuring: A National Bureau of Economic Research Project Report. Edited by Olivier Jean Blanchard, Kenneth A. Froot, and Jeffrey D. Sachs £38.50/$55.25 cloth. Children of Atlantis: Voices from the former Yugoslavia. Edited by Zdenko Lesic. 183 pp. £7.99 paper.

Es scheint mir fruchtbar, bestimmte theologisch-anthropologische Grundkonzeption des Alten Testaments im Rahmen des Imperfektibilitäts-Diskurses zu beschreiben. Ausgangspunkt für die besonders an Gen 6,5 (im Kontext von Gen 6-8) anknüpfende Position der „Unfähigkeit des Menschen zur Vervollkommnung“: Alle Reflexionen geschehen in Gen 6,5ff. nur von Gott her und auf das Verhältnis Mensch-Gott hin; es gibt keine individuell/kollektive Unterscheidung bei dieser Problematik, sowohl der einzelne Mensch wie auch die Menschheit sind imperfektibel. Das Konzept ist offen für einen Inklusionsansatz, der vom Differenzprinzip her (...) denkt, verfolgt selbst aber eine andere, theologische, Zielrichtung und führt den Lesenden die Angewiesenheit des Menschen auf Gottes Gnade sowie ihre Zusage vor Augen. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Der Islam Jahrgang: 94 Heft: 1 Seiten: 94-114.

We present the notion of finite high-order Gowers games, and prove a statement parallel to Gowers's Combinatorial Lemma for these games. We derive ‘quantitative’ versions of the original Gowers Combinatorial Lemma and of Gowers's Dichotomy, which place them in the context of the recently introduced infinite dimensional asymptotic theory for Banach spaces.

This article analyses the link between innovation with high social benefits and corporate social performance (CSP) and the role that family firms play in this. This theme is particularly relevant given the large number of firms that are family-owned. Also the implicit potential of innovation to reconcile corporate sustainability aspects with profitability justifies an extended analysis of this link. Governments often support socially beneficial innovation with various policy instruments, with the intention of increasing international competitiveness and simultaneously supporting sustainable development. (...) In parallel, firms pursue corporate social responsibility (CSR) and environmental management activities partly in the hope that this will foster such innovation in their organisation (alongside their main aim of improving CSP). Hence, the main research question of this article is about the association of CSP with innovation with high social benefits and the determinants of the potential moderation of this association. Based on panel data, the article analyses the link between CSP and innovation, and the effect of being a family firm using panel estimation techniques. The results point to a moderating role of family firms on the link between innovation with high social benefits and CSP. The article concludes by assessing the policy implications of this insight. (shrink)

"International and domestic laws commonly hold states responsible for their wrongdoings. States pay compensation for their unjust wars, and reparations for their historical wrongdoings. Some argue that states should incur punitive damages for their international crimes. But there is a troubling aspect to these practices: States are corporate agents, comprised of flesh and blood citizens. When the state uses the public purse to finance its corporate liabilities, the burden falls on these citizens, even if they protested against the state's policies, (...) did not know about them, or entirely lacked channels of political influence. How can this "distributive effect" of state-level responsibly be justified? The book develops an answer to this question, which revolves around citizens' participation in their state. It argues that citizenship can be a type of massive collective action, where citizens willingly orient themselves around the authority of their state, and where state policies are the product of this collective action. While most ordinary citizens are not to blame for their participation in their state, they nevertheless ought to accept a share of the remedial obligations that flow from their state's wrongful policies. However, the distributive effect cannot be justified in all states. Specifically, in non-democratic states most citizens are not participating in their state in the full sense, and should not pay for their state's wrongdoings. This finding calls then for a revision of the way we hold states responsible in both the domestic and international levels"--. (shrink)

Philosophy &Public Affairs, Volume 46, Issue 4, Page 384-418, Fall 2018.

Towards the end of her seminal work on the notion of representation Hanna Pitkin makes the following observation:At the end of the Second World War and during the Nuremberg trials there was much speculation about the war guilt of the German people. [...] Many people might argue the responsibility of the German people even though a Nazi government was not representative. We might agree, however, that in the case of a representative government the responsibility would be more clear-cut.2As Pitkin suggests (...) in this quotation, there is a common underlying assumption, both in academic writings and in popular perceptions of democracy, that a people living under a democratic government is ultimately responsible for that .. (shrink)