Endothelial cells line the inside of all blood vessels, forming a structurally and functionally heterogenous population of cells. Their complexity and diversity has long been recognized, yet very little is known about the molecules and regulatory mechanisms that mediate the heterogeneity of different endothelial cell populations. The constitutive organ‐ and microenvironment‐specific phenotype of endothelial cells controls internal body compartmentation, regulating the trafficking of circulating cells to distinct vascular beds. In contrast, surface molecules associated with the activated cytokine‐inducible endothelial phenotype play (...) a critical role in pathological conditions including inflammation, tumor angiogenesis, and wound healing. Differentiation of the endothelial cell phenotypes appears to follow similar mechanisms to the differentiation of hematopoietic cells, with the exception that endothelial cells maintain transdifferentiating competence. The present review offers a scheme of endothelial cell differentially expressed endothelial cell molecules as targets for directed therapeutic intervention. (shrink)

Respiratory rhythms sustain biological life, governing the homeostatic exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide. Until recently, however, the influence of breathing on the brain has largely been overlooked. Yet new evidence demonstrates that the act of breathing exerts a substantive, rhythmic influence on perception, emotion, and cognition, largely through the direct modulation of neural oscillations. Here, we synthesize these findings to motivate a new predictive coding model of respiratory brain coupling, in which breathing rhythmically modulates both local and global neural (...) gain, to optimize cognitive and affective processing. Our model further explains how respiratory rhythms interact with the topology of the functional connectome, and we highlight key implications for the computational psychiatry of disordered respiratory and interoceptive inference. (shrink)

Marcus trouva dans le livre de Dingier, L’Effondrement de la science [Dingier 1926], des arguments importants en faveur de sa propre lut­te contre la crise scientifique et culturelle de l’époque, contre l’induction et le relativisme. Une correspondance s’engagea alors entre Dingier et Marcus. Elle fut poursuivie, après la mort de ce dernier en 1928, par son ami Friedlaender/Mynona. Marcus était conscient que Dingier refusait l’apriorisme kantien, il le voyait malgré tout comme un allié. Friedlander/Mynona critiqua sévèrement l’ambivalence de Dingier, en (...) particulier ses tendances irrationalis­tes. La constellation de ces trois auteurs a été jusqu’ici ignorée par les cher­cheurs, à l’exception de H. Lütdtke [Lüdtke 1989] qui a édité la correspondance Marcus-Dingler. Cet article, qui rassemble tous les documents connus ainsi que des inédits, permet d’exemplifier le débat intemporel entre un volontarisme empiriste et opportuniste d’une part, l’idéalisme kantien d’autre part. (shrink)

Gottlob Frege ist der Begründer der modernen Logik und einer der Väter der analytischen Philosophie. Bertrand Russell, Rudolf Carnap und Ludwig Wittgenstein haben seine Ideen aufgegriffen und weiterentwickelt. Dieses Buch liefert eine Bestandsaufnahme zu Werk und Wirkung Freges. Gewürdigt werden seine Leistungen als Logiker, Mathematiker, Sprachphilosoph und Methodologe. Im Ausgang von historischen Untersuchungen zum ursprünglichen 'kontinentalen' Ort des Frege schen Denkens wird die internationale Rezeption und das systematische Gewicht der Philosophie Frege s entfaltet. Mit Beiträgen von: Michael Astroh, Detlef (...) Gronau, Wolfgang Kienzler, Lothar Kreiser, Volker Peckhaus, Eva Picardi, Erich H. Reck, Marco Ruffino, Christiane Schildknecht, Joachim Schulte, Rainer Stuhlmann-Laeisz, Christian Thiel, Kai F. Wehmeier. (shrink)

Although to what extent Oswald Spengler served as a forerunner or precursor of National Socialism remains controversial, scholars unanimously agree that he was a virulent antidemocratic thinker. Indeed, the mere mentioning of his name immediately conjures up among students of German political philosophy associations of intense antidemocratic sentiment. The epithet of virulent opponent of democracy is certainly well-deserved for the period in his political-philosophical development when he was famous, spanning 1919, the year the heated controversy surrounding his major work The (...) Decline of the West erupted, to his untimely death in 1936. Yet what about the little-known, but important phase in the evolution of Spengler's political thought, the years immediately before the shocking military collapse of Imperial Germany and the outbreak of socialist revolution in the fall of 1918 aroused the hostility of the entire right against Germany's first democracy? These were years when Spengler, as an unknown private scholar industriously composing his chef-d'oeuvre, was politically inactive. Was Spengler passionately anti-democratic before he became an embittered man? The following investigation of this rather obscure but important period in his thought, which draws heavily upon his private papers in the Spengler Archives, surprisingly reveals that he was not vehemently antidemocratic during this time and was, in fact, a cynical and opportunistic conservative advocate of the idea of the quasi-democratization of the Second Reich. Spengler scholars, it should be noted, including among others Anton Mirko Koktanek, Gilbert Merlio, H. Stuart Hughes, Klemens von Klemperer, Horst Moller, Walter Struve and Detlef Felken, do not argue this novel position as they are not of the opinion that any significant changes in his attitude towards democratization in Germany took place in his intellectual career. (shrink)

Autobiographical essay covering the first twenty five years of the author's life.

It has been argued that if an animal is psychologically like us, there may be more scientific reason to experiment upon it, but less moral justification to do so. Some scientists deny the existence of this dilemma, claiming that although there are scientifically valuable similarities between humans and animals that make experimentation worthwhile, humans are at the same time unique and fundamentally different. This latter response is, ironically, typical of pre-Darwinian beliefs in the relationship between human and non-human animals. Another (...) irony is that debate about such issues has facilitated the participation once more of philosophers in questions concerning experimental psychology: ironic because laboratory-oriented psychologists, especially since the turn of the last century, had been eager to establish the independence of their subject from any influence of philosophy and its investigative methods, as well as from any kind of anthropomorphism.In Britain, certainly more so than in the United States, ethical constraints have prevented the development of psychological research with animals along certain routes. By the 1980s British professional and academic societies had published codes of conduct and guidelines for their members, in part responding to public concern about the welfare of animals in the psychological laboratory. What led to the establishment of these codes and guidelines? This paper analyses the historical background against which professional concern for ethical cost in experimental animal psychology began to take shape, leading to the societies' open pronouncements of the 1980s. (shrink)

Physician-assisted suicide offers a moral and theological Rorschach test. Foundational commitments regarding morality and theology are disclosed by how the issue is perceived and by what moral problems it is seen to present. One of the cardinal differences disclosed is that between Western and Orthodox Christian approaches to theology in general, and the theology of dying and suicide in particular. Confrontation with the issue of suicide is likely to bring further doctrinal development in many of the Western Christian religions, so (...) as to be able to accept physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia. (shrink)

Aischylos darf als der eigentliche Schöpfer der Tragödie als literarischer Kunstform gelten, so sehr diese im 5. vorchristlichen Jahrhundert auch an ihren kultischen Ursprung gebunden bleibt. Aischylos führt den zweiten Schauspieler ein und nutzt technische Erfindungen zur Steigerung szenischer Effekte. Außerdem ist er der große Gestalter der tetralogischen Komposition, d.h. der Verbindung dreier Tragödien und eines Satyrspiels zu einer Handlungseinhait, die es ihm ermöglicht, die Verkettung von Hybris, Ate und Dike an ganzen Geschlechtern über Generationen hin zur Darstellung zu bringen. (...) Im Mittelpunkt seines Denkens steht die notwendig schuldhafte Existenz des handelnden Menschen, für den die Erfüllung einer überpersönlichen Forderung zugleich den Verstoß gegen eine andere, ebenso gültige Norm bedeutet. Überbrückt wird diese tragische Weltsicht im Glauben an die von Zeus repräsentierte Weltordnung, die den Menschen im einzelnen zwar unbegreiflich bleibt, deren grundsätzliche Sinnhaftigkeit sich ihm jedoch im Leiden erschließt. Adäquaten Ausdruck findet dieses Denken in einer urtümlichen und gewaltigen Sprache, deren Übersetzung in der hier vorliegenden Ausgabe philologisch präzis ist und gleichzeitig das Verständnis des aischyleischen Dramas erleichtert. (shrink)

In Crawford, C. & Krebs, D. (eds.) Foundations of evolutionary psychology: Ideas, issues, applications and findings. (2nd Ed.) Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum Associates.

The book called The Consolation of Philosophy was throughout the Middle Ages, and down to the beginnings of the modern epoch in the sixteenth century, the scholars familiar companion. Few books have exercised a wider influence in their time. It has been translated into every European tongue, and into English nearly a dozen times, from King Alfreds paraphrase to the translations of Lord Preston, Causton, Ridpath, and Duncan, in the eighteenth century.