The second messenger molecules cAMP and Ca2+ regulate a large number of eukaryotic cellular events. cAMP acts on protein kinases and Ca2+ works through a ubiquitous calcium‐binding protein, calmodulin. The two systems are not independent, however, but interact in several important fashions. These interactions, and, in particular, the modulation of the cAMP signal by two Ca2+/calmodulin‐regulated proteins, cyclic nucleotide phosphodiesterase and calcineurin, are described here.

The influence of externally focused organizational capabilities on the generation of proactive environmental strategies was examined under contingenteffects of uncertainty in the general business environment in 134 North American and European ski resorts. Capabilities of strategic proactivity and continuous innovation were found to be associated with proactive environmental strategies. Managerial perceptions of uncertainty in the general business environment were found to moderate the deployment of the capability of continuous innovation at all levels of uncertainty and stakeholder engagement at low and (...) average levels of uncertainty. The study contributes to the resource-based view by illuminating an important contingency under which these capabilities are likely to be deployed to generate such a strategy. (shrink)

BackgroundAn increasing number of studies utilize intracranial electrophysiology in human subjects to advance basic neuroscience knowledge. However, the use of neurosurgical patients as human research subjects raises important ethical considerations, particularly regarding informed consent and undue influence, as well as subjects’ motivations for participation. Yet a thorough empirical examination of these issues in a participant population has been lacking. The present study therefore aimed to empirically investigate ethical concerns regarding informed consent and voluntariness in Parkinson’s disease patients undergoing deep brain (...) stimulator (DBS) placement who participated in an intraoperative neuroscience study.MethodsTwo semi-structured 30-minute interviews were conducted preoperatively and postoperatively via telephone. Interviews assessed participants’ motivations for participation in the parent intraoperative study, recall of information presented during the informed consent process, and participants’ postoperative reflections on the research study.ResultsTwenty-two participants (mean age = 60.9) completed preoperative interviews at a mean of 7.8 days following informed consent and a mean of 5.2 days prior to DBS surgery. Twenty participants completed postoperative interviews at a mean of 5 weeks following surgery. All participants cited altruism or advancing medical science as “very important” or “important” in their decision to participate in the study. Only 22.7% (n = 5) correctly recalled one of the two risks of the study. Correct recall of other aspects of the informed consent was poor (36.4% for study purpose; 50.0% for study protocol; 36.4% for study benefits). All correctly understood that the study would not confer a direct therapeutic benefit to them.ConclusionEven though research coordinators were properly trained and the informed consent was administered according to protocol, participants demonstrated poor retention of study information. While intraoperative studies that aim to advance neuroscience knowledge represent a unique opportunity to gain fundamental scientific knowledge, improved standards for the informed consent process can help facilitate their ethical implementation. (shrink)

Supersaturated hcp f -Zr alloys containing 22-28 at.% N were prepared by nitriding sheets of Zr in an atmosphere of high-purity N 2 , followed by homogenization under high-purity Ar gas. Quenching and isothermal ageing of the alloys for various times between 500 and 650°C resulted in precipitation of a metastable phase, rather than the equilibrium phase ZrN. This investigation focused on determining the structure, orientation relationship, habit plane, morphology, growth kinetics and atomic growth mechanism of this non-equilibrium precipitate using (...) transmission electron microscopy imaging and diffraction techniques, high-resolution transmission electron microscopy, electron-energy-loss spectroscopy and various simulation programs. The precipitate, which was arbitrarily designated the  phase, has a monoclinic Bravais lattice. Its lattice parameters are a = 0.32 nm, b = 0.60 nm, c = 0.56 nm, f = g = 90° and n = 121.5°. Its orientation relationship with the f matrix is $$ _alpha /mskip-2/ _xiquad adquad [01bar 10] _alpha /mskip-2/ [001]_xi, $$ and the average habit plane of lenticularly shaped precipitates is $_alpha$ . Determination of the structure and other aspects of the phase transformation are discussed. (shrink)

Over the last two decades, corporate sustainability has been established as a legitimate research topic among management and organization scholars. This introductory article explores potential avenues for advances in research on corporate sustainability by readdressing some of the fundamental aspects of the sustainability debate and approaching some novel perspectives and insights from outside the corporate sustainability field. This essay also sketches out how each of the six articles of this special issue contribute to the literature by going back to some (...) of the conceptual roots of sustainability and/or by offering novel perspectives for research on corporate sustainability. As these six articles and the outlook on future research opportunities show, broadening the inquiry of corporate sustainability in terms of topics, theories, and methodologies holds considerable potential to improve our understanding of how decision makers and organizations respond to sustainability. (shrink)

Arvind Sharma seeks to place this debate with particular reference to the work of such writers as William James, F.R. Tennant, Paul Tillich, J.H. Randall, R.B. Braithwaite, D.Z. Phillips, R.M. Harre, Basil Mitchell, John Hick, W.A. Christian, and W.C. Smith, in the Buddhist context.

Twenty first century is posing unprecedented challenges for the human existence and development. This era has witnessed awesome economic & technological growth, increased connectedness but great poverty, malnutrition, anxiety, mental stress and environmental degradation. Thus, this time depicts great contradiction, uncertainty, and risk. Accordingly, in this era a holistic education system has to deal with the challenges such as population growth, terrorism, environmental degradation, hegemony of machines, mental stress, cultivating creativity, bridging the skill and wisdom gap, and expanding human potential (...) etc. To find a sustainable solution to such challenges, we need to develop a holistic education system which acknowledges various dimension of human being. For this task, this paper will try to highlight some philosophical themes which are commonly suggested by various prominent thinkers such as M.K. Gandhi, R.N. Tagore, J. Krishnamurti, S. Radhakrishnan etc. in India, and J. Dewey, I. Illich, and B. Russell etc. in the west. They have put forward their philosophy to discuss the aims of education which are relevant to this century. In this paper, we will analyze their views from the perspective of the challenges that the twenty-first century world is going to face. Our investigation will analyze agreements and disagreements among the approaches taken by these educators. However, the focus will be on the commonalities, so that we can identify some philosophical themes which can work as the solid foundation for holistic model of education. (shrink)

Over the last decade, numerous interventions and techniques that aim to engender, strengthen, and expand compassion have been created, proliferating an evidence base for the benefits of compassion meditation training. However, to date, little research has been conducted to examine individual variation in the learning, beliefs, practices, and subjective experiences of compassion meditation. This mixed-method study examines changes in novice meditators’ knowledge and contemplative experiences before, during, and after taking an intensive course in CBCT®, a contemplative intervention that is increasingly (...) used for both inter- and intrapersonal flourishing. The participants in this study were Christian healthcare chaplains completing a 1-year residency in Clinical Pastoral Education who learned CBCT as part of their professional chaplaincy training curriculum. Prior to and upon completion of training, we surveyed participants to assess their beliefs about the malleability of compassion, types of engagement in compassion meditation, and perceptions of the impact of taking CBCT. We also conducted in-depth interviews with a subset of participants to gain a qualitative understanding of their subjective experiences of learning and practicing compassion meditation, a key component of CBCT. We found that participants reported increases in the extent to which they believed compassion to be malleable after studying CBCT. We also found high levels of variability of individual ways of practicing and considered the implications of this for the study of contemplative learning processes. This multi-methodological approach yielded novel insights into how compassion practice and compassion-related outcomes interrelate, insights that can inform the basic scientific understanding of the experience of learning and enacting compassion meditation as a means of strengthening compassion itself. (shrink)

This book seeks to critically expound and appraise the thoughts of the foremost British philosopher, J.M.E. McTaggart, with respect to three principal themes of his philosophy: substance, self, and immortality. Sharma draws on all of McTaggart’s major writings to provide a comprehensive exposition of his overall theory of reality.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:An Introduction to Mādhva VedāntaRobert ZydenbosAn Introduction to Mādhva Vedānta. By Deepak Sarma. Ashgate World Philosophies Series. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003. Pp. xiii + 159. Paper.The school of Vedānta philosophy founded by Madhva (1238-1317 C.E.) is popularly known as Dvaita, a name Madhva himself never used and which is somewhat misleading, as it suggests a dualism while Madhva's philosophy is rather a pluralistic one. The adjective Mādhva, derived from (...) Madhva's name, is used to designate the followers of Madhva's Vaiṣṇava variety of brahminical Hinduism, and may be used to unambiguously identify this kind of Vedānta. Although this school plays an important role in the history of Indian thought, it has been sadly neglected by modern Vedānta scholarship, which tends to focus on Advaita and Viśiṣṭādvaita. The first serious modern study, written in German by Helmut von Glasenapp, was Madhva's Philosophie des Vishnu-Glaubens (Bonn, 1923), of which the English translation by S. Shrothri, Madhva's Philosophy of the Vishnu Faith (Bangalore, 1992), is not beautiful but has the merit that a few minor errors in von Glasenapp's pioneer work have been corrected in footnotes. In the well-known histories of Indian philosophy, Surendranath Dasgupta's treatment of Madhva (A History of Indian Philosophy, vol. 4) is considerably better than the rather scanty one by Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (Indian Philosophy, vol. 2, chap. 10, sections 6-14).The amount of Sanskrit writing in the tradition of Madhva is considerable, and in this still very living tradition there is a huge production of literature in modern Indian languages, almost all of it in Kannada, the tradition having originated and still having its stronghold in what today is the Kannada-speaking state of Karnataka in southern India (Madhva was a native speaker of Tulu, a language spoken in southwestern Karnataka, which has hardly any written literature). Among modern authors writing in English, the best known is B.N.K. Sharma (The Philosophy of Śrī Madhvācārya: A History of the Dvaita School of Vedānta and Its Literature), most of whose writings unfortunately suffer from a polemically sectarian outlook. As a general historical and systematic introduction to Madhva, his works, and his thought, the French La doctrine de Madhva by Suzanne Siauve (Pondichéry, 1968) remains unsurpassed. More recently, the most important studies of Madhva's works that appeared outside India are again in German, by Roque Mesquita: Madhva und seine unbekannten literarischen Quellen (Vienna, 1997; now also available in an English translation as Madhva's Unknown Literary Sources: Some Observations. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan, 2000) and his superb translation and study of one of Madhva's most important works, Madhva: Viṣṇutattvanirṇaya (Vienna, 2000).Madhva's doctrine is considered one of the three main currents in Vedānta, next to Viśiṣṭādvaita-Vedānta (the monistic doctrine formulated by Rāmānuja) and the variety that is best known in the Western world, Advaita-Vedānta (the illusionistic [End Page 665] monism that received its classical form at the hands of Śankara). According to the hagiography, Madhva grew up in an Advaitin environment but came to consider the Advaitins his main philosophical opponents, because monism, and particularly one that essentially denied the reality of the phenomenal world, did not support his Vaiṣṇava (recognizing Viṣṇu as the supreme being) devotional religiosity. He therefore sought to establish a pluralistic philosophy that did not dismiss phenomenal reality as illusory.Dvaita- or Mādhva-Vedānta is actually much more than the exegesis, sometimes rather imaginative, of the standard set of mainstream brahminical texts that one would expect from Vedānta. Madhva was a creative thinker, and his doctrine is an intellectual tour de force that seeks to combine elements from several sources and currents of religious and philosophical thought into one coherent whole: a philosophical terminology from Vedānta; ritualism from the Pāñcarātra āgamas; mythology from the Vedas, Upanishads, the great epics, and the purāṇas (Madhva wrote an extensive commentary on the Bhāgavatapurāṇa); and an ontology and epistemology that reveal the influence of Jainism.It... (shrink)

In The Face of Emotions, which was Carroll Izard’s first major attempt at elaborating his differential emotions theory (DET), he stated that the book “presents a theoretical framework for the study of emotions and their role in personality and interpersonal processes.” Yet, over the years, his contribution to personality theory has generally been overshadowed by the attention focused on his views on facial expressions and the structure of emotions. This article will begin with a brief overview of the DET perspective (...) on personality development. Then, it will examine how the DET framework can be used to organize recent findings from three lines of research on adult personality. It will conclude with suggestions for future research as well as some personal recollections. (shrink)

Los estudios recientes sobre el pensamiento político de Unamuno han venido adscribiéndolo al liberalismo sin insertar su pensamiento en el desarrollo histórico del pensamiento liberal. Es por ello por lo que en este artículo acometemos una revisión del liberalismo de Unamuno, ubicando sus ideas en la historia del pensamiento liberal. Ello nos llevará a matizar las etiquetas políticas que se han puesto a Unamuno, así como a alcanzar las siguientes conclusiones: 1) Unamuno carecía de un conocimiento profundo del liberalismo según (...) éste se consolidó en la filosofía política de su tiempo; 2) su liberalismo oscila entre el liberalismo social y el liberalismo individualista, 3) propendiendo en los años treinta al liberalismo individualista de Mill y Spencer, precursor del liberal conservadurismo. (shrink)

In the sense in which astronomy or botany are sciences, philosophy is not a science. Philosophers have theories, but their theories do not enable them to make predictions; they can not be empirically confirmed or refuted in the way that scientific theories can. But, it will be objected, this is not true of all the sciences. Palaeontologists do not make predictions: in pure mathematics there is no appeal to experience. But even if they are not predictive the propositions which figure (...) in the historical sciences are at any rate empirically testable: and even if the propositions of pure mathematics are not confutable by observation, they are subject to recognized methods of proof. There are standard procedures for deciding whether they are true or false. But where in philosophy are such procedures to be found? If anywhere, in formal logic which has come very close to mathematics. Nowadays, indeed, it is hardly possible to draw a line between them. But by the very process of becoming a science, formal logic detaches itself from philosophy. Philosophers do indeed make use of formal logic. They employ deductive arguments; sometimes they are able to take advantage of the economy and precision of logical symbolism. But the premises on which they reason, the propositions which the use of logical symbolism helps them to state more clearly, are not themselves drawn from formal logic. The truths which can be established by formal logic alone are not philosophical. (shrink)

The author contends that the analogies between "the logical roles of singular and universal statements" are important but do not "justify the conclusion that singular statements are reducible to propositions" of the forms a, E, I, And o. (staff).

A cross-sectional study to ascertain what the Singapore population would regard as material risk in the anaesthesia consent-taking process and identify demographic factors that predict patient preferences in medical decision-making to tailor a more patient-centered informed consent. A survey was performed involving patients 21 years old and above who attended the pre-operative evaluation clinic over a 1-month period in Singapore General Hospital. Questionnaires were administered to assess patients’ perception of material risks, by trained interviewers. Patients’ demographics were obtained. Mann–Whitney U (...) test and Kruskal-Wallis one-way analysis of variance was used. Statistical significance was taken at p < 0.05. Four hundred fourteen patients were eligible of which 26 refused to participate and 24 were excluded due to language barrier. 364 patients were recruited. A higher level of education, being employed and younger age group are factors identified in patients who wanted greater participation in medical decisions. Gender, marital status, type of surgery, and previous surgical history did not affect their level of participation. The complications most patients knew about were Nausea, Drowsiness and Surgical Wound Pain. Patients ranked Heart Attack, Death and Stroke as the most significant risks that they wanted to be informed about in greater detail. Most patients wanted to make a joint decision with the anaesthetist, instead of letting the doctor decide or deciding for themselves. Discussion with the anaesthetist is the preferred medium of communication compared to reading a pamphlet or watching a video. Age and educational level can influence medical decision-making. Despite the digital age, most patients still prefer a clinic consult instead of audio-visual multimedia for pre-operative anaesthetic counselling. The local population appears to place greater importance on rare but serious complications compared to common complications. This illustrates the need to contextualize information provided during informed consent to strengthen the doctor-patient relationship. (shrink)

Stakeholder involvement in design is desirable from both a practical and an ethical point of view. It is difficult to do well, however, and some problems recur again and again, both of a practical nature, e.g. stakeholders acting strategically rather than openly, and of an ethical nature, e.g. power imbalances unduly affecting the outcome of the process. Hidden Design has been proposed as a method to deal with the practical problems of stakeholder involvement. It aims to do so by taking (...) the observation of stakeholder actions, rather than the outcomes of a deliberative process, as its input. Furthermore, it hides from stakeholders the fact that a design process is taking place so that they will not behave differently than they otherwise would. Both aspects of Hidden Design have raised ethical worries. In this paper I make an ethical analysis of what it means for a design process to leave participants uninformed or deceived rather than acquiring their informed consent beforehand, and to use observation of actions rather than deliberation as input for design, using Hidden Design as a case study. This analysis is based on two sets of normative guidelines: the ethical guidelines for psychological research involving deception or uninformed participants from two professional psychological organisations, and Habermasian norms for a fair and just process. It supports the conclusion that stakeholder involvement in design organised in this way can be ethically acceptable, though under a number of conditions and constraints. (shrink)

Suppose that the axioms of conjoint measurement hold for quantities having two independent components and that the axioms of extensive measurement hold for each of these components separately. In a recent paper, Luce shows that if a certain axiom relates the two measurement systems, then the conjoint measure on each component is a power function of the extensive measure on that component. Luce supposes that each component set contains all "rational fractions" of each element in that set; in this note (...) we present an alternative form of the axiom relating the measurement systems that enables us to prove Luce's result without requiring that such "rational fractions" exist. (shrink)