Collagen is the most abundant vertebrate protein and forms a stable fibrous architecture in connective tissues, such as bone, cartilage, skin and tendon. Much recent research has been directed towards an understanding of the molecular and cellular mechanisms involved in the synthesis and degradation of collagen, because a change in the normal balance, or an increased destruction of collagen, can cause loss of function of specialized tissues. This short review attempts to summarize present knowledge about the proteolytic destruction of collagen (...) and the exciting new work on the factors that are emerging as important controlling agents. An understanding of the regulatory processes is yielding some important clues regarding the levels at which they can fail in pathological conditions and we speculate about evolving strategies for preventing uncontrolled resorption. (shrink)

This book taps the best American thinkers to answer the essential American question: How do we sustain our experiment in government of, by, and for the people? Authored by an extraordinary and politically diverse roster of public officials, scholars, and educators, these chapters describe our nation's civic education problem, assess its causes, offer an agenda for reform, and explain the high stakes at risk if we fail.

The extant clinical literature indicates profound problems in the assessment, monitoring, and documentation of care in long-term care facilities. The lack of adequate resources to accommodate higher staff-to-resident ratios adds additional urgency to the goal of identifying more costeffective mechanisms to provide care oversight. The ever expanding array of electronic monitoring technologies in the clinical research arena demands a conceptual and pragmatic framework for the resolution of ethical tensions inherent in the use of such innovative tools. CareMedia is a project (...) that explores the utility of video, audio and sensor technologies as a continuous real-time assessment and outcomes measurement tool. In this paper, the authors describe the seminal ethical challenges encountered during the implementation phase of this project, namely privacy and confidentiality protection, and the strategies employed to resolve the ethical tensions by applying principles of the interest theory of rights. (shrink)

This is done through a chronology, an introductory essay, an extensive bibliography, and hundreds of cross-referenced dictionary entries on key terms and ...

A brief reference article on cultural relativism.

This paper explores two perspectives in Husserl's recently published writings on ethics and axiology in order to sketch anew a phenomenological account of practical reason. The paper aims a) to show that a phenomenological account of moral intentionality i) transcends the disputes between intellectualist-emotivist and intellectualist-voluntarist disputes and ii) points toward a position in which practical reason has an emotive content or, conversely, the emotions have a cognitive content, and the paper aims b) to show that a phenomenological ethics identifies (...) universal human goods that are, nevertheless, specified differently in varying cultural contexts. (shrink)

This is an extensive anthology of the writings of John Dewey, edited by John J. McDermott.

Following a brief summation of the phenomenological method, the paper considers three metaethical positions adopted by phenomenologists and the implications of those positions for a normative ethics. The metaethical positions combine epistemological and ontological viewpoints. They are non-intellectualism and strong value realism as represented by the axiological views of phenomenologists such as Scheler, Meinong, Reinach, Stein, Hartmann, von Hildebrand, and Steinbock; non-intellectualism and anti-realism as represented by the freedom-centered phenomenologies of Sartre, Beauvoir, and Merleau-Ponty; and weak intellectualism and weak value (...) realism as represented by Husserl and Drummond. The paper argues that only the third metaethical view can support a normative ethics that is consistent with the essential features of the phenomenological method, that allows for freedom in an agent’s choosing from a multiplicity of first-order goods, including vocational goods, practical identities, and life plans, available in the agent’s factical circumstances, and that provides norms governing the correctness of our actions and our obligations to others. The normative dimension is introduced, first, by the requirement that the fulfillment of first-order evaluations and choices be truthful, that is, that the evaluations be appropriate and the actions right. Second, transcendental considerations revealed in the phenomenological analysis of intentional experience disclose a notion of second-order goods of agency that universally bind agents in their exercise of freedom and their dealings with others. (shrink)

Engaging with phenomenology, moral philosophy, politics and psychology, and authored by an international team of leading scholars in the field, this volume explores the ethical and social significance of a variety of human emotions.

Cooperation can evolve in the context of cognitive activities such as perception, attention, memory, and decision making, in addition to physical activities such as hunting, gathering, warfare, and childcare. The social insects are well known to cooperate on both physical and cognitive tasks, but the idea of cognitive cooperation in humans has not received widespread attention or systematic study. The traditional psychological literature often gives the impression that groups are dysfunctional cognitive units, while evolutionary psychologists have so far studied cognition (...) primarily at the individual level. We present two experiments that demonstrate the superiority of thinking in groups, but only for tasks that are sufficiently challenging to exceed the capacity of individuals. One of the experiments is in a brain-storming format, where advantages of real groups over nominal groups have been notoriously difficult to demonstrate. Cognitive cooperation might often operate beneath conscious awareness and take place without the need for overt training, as evolutionary psychologists have stressed for individual-level cognitive adaptations. In general, cognitive cooperation should be a central subject in human evolutionary psychology, as it already is in the study of the social insects. (shrink)

Atheist Persona is a summary of the most recent research on the subject of atheism. In an effort to create a more courteous dialogue between theists and atheists, this book acknowledges that while there are reasons for believing in God, there are also reasons for not believing in God.

Books reviewed in this article: The Bible and Postmodern Imagination: Texts Under Negotiation. By Walter Brueggemann. In the Throe of Wonder: Intimations of the Sacred in a Post‐Modern World. By Jerome A. Miller. Interpreting Hebrew Poetry. By David L. Petersen and Kent Harold Richards. Exegetical Dictionary of the New Testament, Volume I: Aαρωυ‐Eυωχ. Edited by Horst Balz and Gerhard Schneiders. The Secretary in the Letters of Paul. By E. Randolph Richards. Revelation. By Wilfrid J. Harrington. Conversion to Christianity: Historical and (...) Anthropological Perspectives on a Great Transformation. Edited by Robert W. Hefner. The Metaphor of God Incarnate. By John Hick. Disputed Questions in Theology and the Philosophy of Religion. By John Hick. The Nature of God. By Gerard J. Hughes. The Animals Issue: Moral Theoy in Practice. By Peter Carruthers. Philosophy and Theology in the Middle Ages. By G. R. Evans. Modalities in Medieval Philosophy. By Simo Knuuttila. Da Descarres a Spinoza: Percorsi della teologia razionale nel seicento. By Maria Emanuela Scribano. Tra Descartes e Bayle: Poiret e la teodicea. By Gianluca Mori. Kierkegaard and the Limits of the Ethical. By Anthony Rudd. Kierkegaard on Art and Communication. Edited by George Pattison. Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan Volume 10: Topics in Education. Edited by Robert M. Doran and Frederick E. Crowe. A Theology of Reconstruction: Nation‐building and Human Rights. By Charles Villa‐Vicencio. Religious Methods and Resources in Bioethics. Edited by Paul F. Camenisch. Theological Developments in Bioethics. Edited by Andrew Lustig et al. Marriage in the Western Church: The Christianization of Marriage During the Patristic and Early Medieval Periods. By Philip L. Reynolds. Marriage in the Early Church. Translated and edited by David G. Hunter. The Clash of Gods: A Reinterpretation of Early Christian Art. By Thomas F. Mathews. A History of Religion in Britain: Practice and Belief from Pre‐Roman Times to the Present. Edited by Sheridan Gilley and W. J. Sheik. The Conversion of Henri IV: Politics, Power and Religious Belief in Early Modern France. By Michael Wolfe. English Polemics at the Spanish Court: Joseph Creswell's ‘Letter to the Ambassador from England’, The English and the Spanish Texts of 1606. Edited by Albert J. Loomie. (shrink)

This collection is the third of three planned volumes collecting Husserl's shorter essays, reviews, and lectures. Slightly more than one-third of the volume is devoted to five essays on the theme of renewal. All were written in the years from 1922 to 1924; the first three were published in the Japanese journal Kaizo in 1923 and 1924, but the fourth and fifth were not published. These essays arise out of Husserl's own experience of and reflection upon the First World War. (...) Husserl sees a crisis in which our loss of a proper sense of the human has consequences which are not merely theoretical but, much more broadly, ethical and cultural. His response to this crisis is to call for a philosophical renewal of the sort which can underwrite a cultural renewal. (shrink)

This very ambitious and remarkably detailed book examines some of the most fundamental themes in Husserl's philosophy. As is evident from the title, the book has two parts, the first of which (pp. 1-101) discusses Husserl's methodology, esp. the phenomenological reduction, and the second of which (pp. 103-347) investigates the themes of space, time, and other. These themes are selected because they are central to our mundane and embodied experience of an objective, physical and animate world.