The National Science Foundation's (NSF) role in, and influence on, the National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI) can best be understood through an examination of the NSF's history. Because of the NSF's weakened position at its founding in 1950 and obstacles faced throughout its history, the NSF developed a discursive strategy that focuses on making a causal link between support for basic science and societal benefits, and an operational strategy focused on growing its constituency through infrastructural support. The hallmarks of both of (...) these strategies are present in the NNI. (shrink)

Freud's Mexican disciples, Mexican books, Mexican antiquities, and Mexican dreams.

Cet article vise à contribuer à l’élaboration d’une théorie critique du capitalisme global. Il s’appuie pour ce faire, d’une part, sur une relecture serrée des deux ouvrages cosignés par Sandro Mezzadra et Brett Neilson, La Frontière comme méthode (2013) et The Politics of Operations (2019). Il esquisse d’autre part un diagnostic historique de la séquence enclenchée par la crise de 2008. L’article se développe en trois temps, l’un sur le « multivers capitaliste », où sont considérées les dimensions spatio-temporelles de (...) la dynamique capitaliste, le second de critique de la violence politique nécessaire à la reproduction élargie du capital, le troisième ouvrant sur des problèmes de stratégie politique sous le prisme d’une reproblématisation actualisée des « soviets » et du « double pouvoir ». (shrink)

A worldwidemental health crisis is expected, as millions worldwide fear death and disease while being forced into repeated isolation. Thus, there is a need for new proactive approaches to improve mental resilience and prevent mental health conditions. Since the 1990s, art has emerged as an alternative mental health therapy in the United States and Europe, becoming part of the social care agenda. This article focuses on how visual esthetic experiences can create similar patterns of neuronal activity as those observed when (...) the reward system is activated. The activation of the reward structures could have a stress buffering effect, given the interdependence observed between the reward and stress systems. Therefore, could visual esthetic experiences stimulate mental resilience? And if this were the case, could art-based interventions be offered for mental health in the context of COVID-19 and beyond? (shrink)

In questo contributo vengono indagati alcuni concetti della teologia aristotelica (il concetto di divino e quello di trascendenza) a partire da un’espressione emblematica utilizzata dallo storico francese Étienne Gilson per descrivere il Primo Motore Immobile aristotelico: “centrale elettrica della natura”. L’espressione del noto studioso non è soltanto particolarmente accattivante, ma risulta essere filosoficamente assai significativa poiché veicola perfettamente il significato che assume il Dio di Aristotele nell’economia complessiva del cosmo, più in particolare nel ciclo eterno delle corruzioni e delle generazioni. (...) La ricostruzione storica è finalizzata a mostrare la novità del messaggio cristiano contenuto nella Rivelazione e che trova nelle pagine di Tommaso d’Aquino una chiarezza concettuale, filosofico-metafisica, di eccezionale valore. In esse è possibile osservare la piena maturazione della nuova visione di tipo creazionista (basata sulla Metafisica dell’Esodo 3,14) che, pur in continuità con la visione aristotelica, ne approfondisce smisuratamente i presupposti metafisici. (shrink)

Richard Bourke brings Hegel back to the forefront of the debate with masterful theoretical clarity, philosophical acumen, historical accuracy, and impressive knowledge, presenting to us a vivid account of Hegel's political thought. In this brief note I discuss the central philosophical, hermeneutical, and historical concerns of the book while highlighting its principal contributions to the wider scholarship on Hegel, in the history of political thought, and to recent debates about revolutions in nineteenth-century Europe.

As coleções paleontológicas representam uma herança natural e cultural, que deve ser salvaguardada em acervos institucionais. Dentre elas, destaca-se a Coleção de Paleovertebrados do Departamento de Geologia e Paleontologia do Museu Nacional (DGP-MN), que sofreu uma considerável perda, em decorrência do incêndio sofrido por este museu em 2018. Uma forma de recuperar as informações históricas e científicas desta coleção está em seu registro iconográfico. Nesse contexto, o presente trabalho inventaria e ilustra o acervo, que ficou conhecido no Departamento de Geologia (...) e Paleontologia do Museu Nacional como “Coleção Cope”. Trata-se de uma centena de vertebrados fósseis que foram enviados, sob a forma de empréstimo, ao paleontólogo norte-americano Edward Drinker Cope (1840-1897), no final do século XIX, para identificação e descrição. Grande parte desta coleção foi obtida durante a construção da Estrada de Ferro da Bahia ao São Francisco, inaugurada em 1860. A implementação e consequente ampliação da rede ferroviária no Brasil, no final do século XIX, trouxe não só crescimento econômico, como possibilitou a formação de muitas coleções paleontológicas, uma vez que os cortes abertos nos terrenos para a construção das estradas de ferro revelaram o registro fossilífero, como é o caso da “Coleção Cope”. Se esta não mais existe fisicamente, ao menos a listagem e o registro iconográfico aqui apresentados poderão revalidá-la para a paleontologia brasileira. (shrink)

O presente texto relata a experiência da produção de dois vídeos: Rotas da Marrabenta - Música Moçambicana em Movimento e “Esta cultura que te conduz a saber ser”: Um olhar sobre o fortalecimento das capacidades nacionais para a salvaguarda do patrimônio imaterial nos países africanos de língua oficial portuguesa.. Discutindo a categoria de Patrimônio Cultural Imaterial o texto aponta as possibilidades de se pensar e mostrar a diversidade cultural e social do continente africano por meio de uma linguagem audiovisual em (...) diálogo com a antropologia. Palavras Chave: Patrimônio Cultural Imaterial, audiovisual, Moçambique, Cabo Verde. (shrink)

The primary goal of the peer review of research grant proposals is to evaluate their quality for the funding agency. An important secondary goal is to provide constructive feedback to applicants for their resubmissions. However, little is known about whether review feedback achieves this goal. In this paper, we present a multi-methods analysis of responses from grant applicants regarding their perceptions of the effectiveness and appropriateness of peer review feedback they received from grant submissions. Overall, 56–60% of applicants determined the (...) feedback to be appropriate, although their judgments were more favorable if their recent application was funded. Importantly, independent of funding success, women found the feedback better written than men, and more white applicants found the feedback to be fair than non-white applicants. Also, perceptions of a variety of biases were specifically reported in respondents’ feedback. Less than 40% of applicants found the feedback to be very useful in informing their research and improving grantsmanship and future submissions. Further, negative perceptions of the appropriateness of review feedback were positively correlated with more negative perceptions of feedback usefulness. Importantly, respondents suggested that highly competitive funding pay-lines and poor inter-panel reliability limited the usefulness of review feedback. Overall, these results suggest that more effort is needed to ensure that appropriate and useful feedback is provided to all applicants, bolstering the equity of the review process and likely improving the quality of resubmitted proposals. (shrink)

This paper aims at discussing some contributions, limitations and opportunities that efficiency and equity studies could make to form a better understanding of ethical issues involved in health technology assessment (HTA). Prenatal detection of Down syndrome is used as a case study for further discussions regarding efficiency and equity, as well as other ethical principles including beneficence, non-maleficence and autonomy. The development and use of adequate methods and the need for context appraisal are two imperative issues in this field of (...) knowledge. The analysis of ethical implications in HTA should account for both. Economic evaluation methodologies have great potential in the assessment of some key ethical principles such as efficiency and equity but are of limited use concerning other fundamental principles. Social and individual values play a prominent role in this respect. (shrink)

A fascinating property of germ cells is their ability to maintain totipotency throughout development. At fertilization, this totipotency is unleashed and the egg generates all the cell types needed to make a brand new organism. Occasionally, germ cells differentiate precociously in the embryo or in the gonads and form teratomas, tumors containing many differentiated somatic cell types. Until recently, the genetic basis for teratoma formation was not known. The unexpected discovery of a teratoma in a C. elegans double mutant points (...) to translational control as a key mechanism to maintain totipotency in developing germ cells. BioEssays 28: 865–867, 2006. © 2006 Wiley periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

In light of the growing need to pay attention to general public opinions and sentiments toward AI, this paper examines the levels of understandings amongst the Australian public toward the increased societal use of AI technologies. Drawing on a nationally representative survey of 2019 adults across Australia, the paper examines how aware people consider themselves to be of recent developments in AI; variations in popular conceptions of what AI is; and the extent to which levels of support for AI are (...) liable to alter with additional exposure to information about AI. While a majority of respondents consider themselves to have little knowledge and familiarity with the topic of AI, the survey nevertheless finds considerable range of relatively ‘plausible’ basic understandings of what AI is. Significantly, repeated questioning highlights a willingness among many people to reassess their opinions once having received further information about AI, and being asked to think through issues relating to AI and society. These patterns remain relatively consistent, regardless of respondents’ political orientation, income, social class and other demographic characteristics. As such, the paper concludes by considering how these findings provide support for the development of public education efforts to further enhance what might be termed ‘public understanding of AI’. (shrink)

L’État constitue, pour Levinas, l’institution d’une limite à la responsabilité infinie. Mais il soutient aussi que le politique fondé sur la justice peut virer à la violence lorsque s’impose une logique autonome, où le pouvoir s’exerce en vue de lui-même, à travers un système abstrait et impersonnel, qui conduit à une logique totalitaire lorsqu’elle oublie l’expérience concrète d’autrui dont la société est issue. Il revient alors à l’anarchie éthique d’opérer un contrôle sur l’État, ce qui nous ramène à une impossibilité (...) de retrancher la socialité, cette source vive qui inspire la politique et continue de l’inspirer, mais qui reste aussi à sa marge. (shrink)

Si pour Husserl la conscience est la source du sens, la phénoménologie semble ainsi revenir à une pure analyse du travail constitutif de la conscience qui détermine la constitution du monde. Ce sens de la phénoménologie est bien différent de celui de Hegel. En effet, la Phénoménologie de l’Esprit rappelle une véritable conjonction de la conscience avec le contexte qui l’entoure et montre comment le développement de la conscience émerge de sa relation avec son contexte ainsi qu’avec l’histoire. Bien que (...) Levinas s’inscrive ouvertement dans la tradition de Husserl et que plusieurs de ses textes engagent ouvertement un dialogue avec Husserl, le but de cet article est de montrer que la conception de la conscience de Levinas implique une distance avec Husserl en engageant dans sa conception de la phénoménologie une conception hégélienne, selon une approche où la conscience n’est pas donnée comme point de départ pour la description des phénomènes, mais émerge en même temps qu’elle se rapporte à ses phénomènes. Par conséquent, nous soutenons qu’il est possible de démontrer que dans un certain sens dans Totalité et infini, il est possible de parler d’une Phénoménologie de l’Esprit qui est en cours. (shrink)

Este artículo busca presentar el legado teórico-político de Rousseau a través de la interpretación de su _Discurso sobre los orígenes y fundamentos de la desigualdad entre los hombres y el Contrato social_, entendidos como una unidad argumentativa y metodológica en la obra del ginebrino. Para esto se expondrán en un primer momento las consideraciones normativas y antropológicas que marcan el problema político de Rousseau. A partir de allí se presentarán las ideas principales de su noción de democracia, para finalmente concluir (...) que el legado democrático de Rousseau resulta particularmente útil como elemento crítico en el contexto de la hegemonía de las democracias representativas liberales actuales. (shrink)

As a result of advances in healthcare, the worldwide average life expectancy is steadily increasing. However, this positive trend has societal and individual costs, not least because greater life expectancy is linked to higher incidence of age-related diseases, such as dementia. Over the past few decades, research has isolated various protective “healthy lifestyle” factors argued to contribute positively to cognitive aging, e.g., healthy diet, physical exercise and occupational attainment. The present article critically reviews neuroscientific evidence for another such factor, i.e., (...) speaking multiple languages. Moreover, with multiple societal stakeholders in mind, we contextualize and stress the importance of the research program that seeks to uncover and understand potential connections between bilingual language experience and cognitive aging trajectories, inclusive of the socio-economic impact it can have. If on the right track, this is an important line of research because bilingualism has the potential to cross-over socio-economic divides to a degree other healthy lifestyle factors currently do not and likely cannot. (shrink)

This text through the direct use to Foucault’s work and using the concepts of ‘care of the self’ and biopolitics is questioning and analyzing resistance and practices of freedom. Mainly, from the Foucault’s courses at the College de France and the methodological tools found there, here I present a discussion about Gilles Deleuze’s contributions to Foucault’s thought and I develop a dialog where I try to explain the concepts of domination, power, ethics, esthetics and the relationship of the self with (...) himself. (shrink)

We investigated the contribution of bilingual experience to the development of cognitive reserve when compared with other, traditionally more researched, CR proxies, in a sample of cognitively healthy senior bilingual speakers. Participants performed in an online study where, in addition to a wide inventory of factors known to promote CR, we assessed several factors related to their second language use. In addition, participants’ inhibitory executive control was measured via the Flanker Task. We used Structural Equation Modeling to derive a latent (...) composite measure of CR informed by traditional CR proxies. We examined whether bilingualism may act as a mediator of the effects of such proxies on cognitive performance therefore assessing the unique contribution of dual language use to CR. First, our analyses revealed facilitatory effects of both L2 age of acquisition and L2 proficiency on the executive performance. Second, our analyses confirmed the moderating role of bilingual experience on the relationship between other factors known to promote CR and cognitive integrity, revealing a strong contribution by bilingualism to CR development. Our findings provide further support to the notion that bilingualism plays an important role in mitigating cognitive decline and promoting successful aging. (shrink)

In questo contributo tenterò di rispondere ad una domanda fondamentale e assai complessa: la concezione di Dio come Esse Ipsum Subsistens rischia una deriva verso il monismo parmenideo? L’indagine verterà dapprima sul superamento di Aristotele della visione parmenidea e poi si concentrerà sulla metafisica dell’essere di Tommaso d’Aquino che, se correttamente intesa, non rischia affatto una deriva verso il monismo ontologico. Saranno infatti presentati alcuni passi che comprovano come il concetto centrale della concezione di Tommaso, quello di partecipazione, garantisca proprio (...) dal rischio del monismo, a patto che si intenda la presenza di Dio negli enti non in un senso quantitativo. (shrink)

Seamon, Luo, and Gallo reported evidence that nonconscious processes could produce false recognition in a converging-associates task, whereby subjects falsely remember a nonstudied lure after studying a list of related words . Zeelenberg, Plomp, and Raaijmakers failed to observe this false recognition effect when list word recognition was at chance. We critically evaluate the evidence for nonsconscious processing and report the results of a new experiment designed to overcome previous methodological limitations. Consistent with Seamon et al., we found that (...) conscious activation of a related lure during study was not necessary for its subsequent recognition; consistent with Zeelenberg et al., we found no evidence for recognition of related lures under conditions where there was no memory for studied words. It is currently unknown whether conscious recollection of the studied items is necessary for false recognition or if nonconscious activation of the lure is sufficient. (shrink)

Scientific peer reviewers play an integral role in the grant selection process, yet very little has been reported on the levels of participation or the motivations of scientists to take part in peer review. The American Institute of Biological Sciences developed a comprehensive peer review survey that examined the motivations and levels of participation of grant reviewers. The survey was disseminated to 13,091 scientists in AIBS’s proprietary database. Of the 874 respondents, 76% indicated they had reviewed grant applications in the (...) last 3 years; however, the number of reviews was unevenly distributed across this sample. Higher review loads were associated with respondents who had submitted more grant proposals over this time period, some of whom were likely to be study section members for large funding agencies. The most prevalent reason to participate in a review was to give back to the scientific community and the most common reason to decline an invitation to review was lack of time. Interestingly, few suggested that expectation from the funding agency was a motivation to review. Most felt that review participation positively influenced their careers through improving grantsmanship and exposure to new scientific ideas. Of those who reviewed, respondents reported dedicating 2–5% of their total annual work time to grant review and, based on their self-reported maximum review loads, it is estimated they are participating at 56–87% of their capacity, which may have important implications regarding the sustainability of the system. Overall, it is clear that participation in peer review is uneven and in some cases near capacity, and more needs to be done to create new motivations and incentives to increase the future pool of reviewers. (shrink)

Work Integration Social Enterprises (WISE) are a means of redressing injustices that People With Mental Illness and/or Intellectual Disability (PWMI/ID) face in the labor market. As the field’s understanding of WISE improves, many have argued for the need to study their underlying philosophies and ethical foundations. We present a case study of a WISE for PWMI/ID that responds to a humanistic-personalist framework. This framework is based on the consideration of several features of the person: their wholeness, uniqueness, intrinsic dignity, innate (...) rights, and capacity for permanent development. Under this perspective, human work entails dignity because it is a potential source of meaning and personal growth. The humanistic-personalist framework is more comprehensive than other approaches presented in the literature, based on justice and human rights or care ethics, thereby advancing our knowledge of how WISE may provide economically viable and meaningful work experiences to underserved communities. Drawing from this humanistic-personalist perspective, we provide six criteria that can serve as a normative framework for organizations, particularly WISE for PWMI/ID. The case study focuses on La Fageda, a 40-year-old Spanish WISE that has achieved significant social and economic success. La Fageda is based on a sound understanding of the human person. From its foundations and practices, three pillars are identified: the rehabilitating power of work, the practice of designing individual itineraries, and the pursuit of economic success as a means to social success, which is the project’s mission. (shrink)