Inductive reasoning is fundamental to human cognition, yet it remains unclear how we develop this ability and what might influence our inductive choices. We created novel categories in which crucial factors such as domain and category structure were manipulated orthogonally. We trained 403 4–9-year-old children to categorise well-matched natural kind and artefact stimuli with either featural or relational category structure, followed by induction tasks. This wide age range allowed for the first full exploration of the developmental trajectory of inductive reasoning (...) in both domains. We found a gradual transition from perceptual to categorical induction with age. This pattern was stable across domains, but interestingly, children showed a category bias one year later for relational categories. We hypothesise that the ability to use category information in inductive reasoning develops gradually, but is delayed when children need to process and apply more complex category structures. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to contribute to understanding the changing role of government in promoting corporate social responsibility (CSR). Over the last decade, governments have joined other stakeholders in assuming a relevant role as drivers of CSR, working together with intergovernmental organizations and recognizing that public policies are key in encouraging a greater sense of CSR. This paper focuses on the analysis of the new strategies adopted by governments in order to promote, and encourage businesses to adopt, CSR (...) values and strategies. The research is based on the analysis of an explanatory framework, related to the development of a relational analytical framework, which tries to analyze the vision, values, strategies and roles adopted by governments, and the integration of new partnerships that governments establish in the CSR area with the private sector and social organizations. The research compares CSR initiatives and public policies in three European countries: Italy, Norway and the United Kingdom, and focuses on governmental drivers and responses. The preliminary results demonstrate that governments are incorporating a common statement and discourse on CSR, working in partnership with the private and social sectors. For governments, CSR implies the need to manage a complex set of relationships in order to develop a win–win situation between business and social organizations. However, the research also focuses on the differences between the three governments when applying CSR public policies. These divergences are based on the previous cultural and political framework, such as the welfare state typology, the organizational structures and the business and social and cultural background in each country. (shrink)

A recurring concern within contemporary philosophy of language has been with the ways in which speakers can be illocutionarily silenced, i.e. hindered in their capacity to do things with words. Moving beyond the traditional conception of silencing as uptake failure, Mary Kate McGowan has recently claimed that silencing may also involve other forms of recognition failure. In this paper I first offer a supportive elaboration of McGowan’s claims by developing a social account of speech act performance, according to which the (...) success of an illocutionary act is not only a function of the intentions of and the conventions deployed by the speaker, but partly depends on how the act is recognized or taken up by the hearer. I then provide a comprehensive definition of illocutionary silencing and spell out what it means for it to occur in a systematic manner. (shrink)

Patient and citizen participation is now regarded as central to the promotion of sustainable health and health care. Involvement efforts create and encounter many diverse ethical challenges that have the potential to enhance or undermine their success. This article examines different expressions of patient and citizen participation and the support health ethics offers. It is contended that despite its prominence and the link between patient empowerment and autonomy, traditional bioethics is insufficient to guide participation efforts. In addition, the turn to (...) a “social paradigm” of ethics in examinations of biotechnologies and public health does not provide an account of values that is commensurable with the pervasive autonomy paradigm. This exacerbates rather than eases tensions for patients and citizens endeavoring to engage with health. Citizen and patient participation must have a significant influence on the way we do health ethics if its potential is to be fulfilled. (shrink)

Discussions of psychological measurement are largely disconnected from issues of measurement in the natural sciences. We show that there are interesting parallels and connections between the two, by focusing on a real and detailed example (temperature) from the history of science. More specifically, our novel approach is to study the issue of validity based on the history of measurement in physics, which will lead to three concrete points that are relevant for the validity debate in psychology. First of all, studying (...) the causal mechanisms underlying the measurements can be crucial for evaluating whether the measurements are valid. Secondly, psychologists would benefit from focusing more on the robustness of measurements. Finally, we argue that it is possible to make good science based on (relatively) bad measurements, and that the explanatory success of science can contribute to justifying the validity of measurements. (shrink)

OBJECTIVE: To investigate whether eligibility criteria that exclude the elderly, persons with psychiatric disease, and persons with substance abuse problems from participation in randomized controlled trials (RCTs) are subjective and hence a source of variability in enrolment decisions and investigator uncertainty. DESIGN: Survey questionnaire. PARTICIPANTS: Cancer investigators from the United States and Canada. INTERVENTIONS: Investigators were presented with clinical vignettes from 3 patient categories--eligible, ineligible and uncertain--for each of 5 eligibility criteria--3 subjective and 2 objective--and were asked whether they would (...) enrol the patient in a trial and how sure they were of this decision. Demographic characteristics of the investigators were also collected. OUTCOME MEASURES: The difference in enrolment decisions between subjective and objective criteria, and the difference in the certainty associated with these decisions. RESULTS: Of 365 questionnaires sent out, 224 usable ones were returned. Compared with the objective criteria, the subjective criteria were associated with more variable enrolment decisions (p = 0.07 for the "eligible" scenario and p = 0.0001 for the "ineligible" and "uncertain" scenarios), and investigators were less sure about the decisions they made (p = 0.0001 for all scenarios). Demographic characteristics of the investigators failed to explain the observed differences. CONCLUSIONS: Subjective eligibility criteria may interfere with the conduct and interpretation of RCTs and, therefore, their use ought to be justified explicitly in the study protocol. RCT designers, funding agencies and research ethics boards have an important role in reviewing eligibility criteria for their necessity. (shrink)

Las posibilidades educativas que ofrece la realidad virtual inmersiva (RVI) son actualmente incuestionables, si bien aún se cuenta con escasas propuestas que estén diseñadas expresamente por y para el aula. En esta contribución se presentan los primeros pasos de una interesante iniciativa diseñada por la Fundación Integra (Región de Murcia) entre las que se encuentra el desarrollo de un videojuego de RVI de temática histórica ambientado en el Teatro Romano de Cartagena y al que se juega con gafas Oculus Rift (...) o HTC VIVE. El videojuego ha sido diseñado a modo de serious game y se completa con una secuencia didáctica que permite su integración en el aula. A pesar de que aún no se ha realizado la fase de evaluación de los aprendizajes, la observación de los primeros prepilotajes del juego con estudiantes parecen mostrar su valor como elemento para el aprendizaje y favorecer un acercamiento motivador a la historia. (shrink)

Chronic diseases are major causes of health inequalities. Community nurses can potentially make large contributions to chronic illness prevention and management in Israel but may be obstructed by professional dominance of physicians. However, insufficient research exists about community nursing in Israel, and how it may differ from other countries. This study aims to document chronic disease‐related community nursing roles in Israel, identify changes and trends in community nursing roles that may increase social justice, and understand how the roles and trends (...) in community health nursing in Israel may differ from developments in other countries. In‐depth interviews were performed with 55 Israeli health system professionals, and 692 nurse care‐givers were asked open‐ended questions. Interview answers were analyzed to find themes and trends. The study found that community nurse roles in Israel have expanded, especially for chronic disease control. Commonalities exist with countries such as the United States and the UK, albeit with important differences. However, continued conflicts with physicians exist, which can limit nurses' contributions to reducing health inequalities. Community nurses' importance is growing. Enabling them to overcome professional dominance and improve chronic disease control can help reduce health inequalities in Israel and elsewhere. (shrink)

This article presents an analysis of the structure and use of the Finnish independent infinitives. Although typological studies have shown that syntactically independent non-finite constructions are widespread in many languages, the understanding of their semantic and intersubjective motivation is still in its early stages. The current paper aims to enrich the understanding of independent non-finite constructions by closely looking at free-standing infinitive constructions in spoken and written Finnish: it combines theoretical concepts of Cognitive Grammar with the methodological tools of Interactional (...) Linguistics to explore the nature of independent infinitives as a resource for conceptualization and the intersubjective functions that it affords. The paper suggests that the fact that independent infinitives are grammatically ungrounded makes them useful in interactional and textual sequences involving affect display. As the indexical functions of infinitives can be explained from their own morphosyntactic and semantic characteristics, the paper makes the more general claim that there is no synchronic evidence that would support the assumption that such constructions ever evolved, via ellipsis, from finite constructions. Methodologically and theoretically, the paper advocates an approach that takes into account both the social and cognitive nature of language, and promotes the view that Cognitive Grammar offers a flexible, semantically rich starting point for the description of intersubjective meanings conveyed by grammar, when combined with the context-sensitive and microanalytical methodology of Interactional Linguistics. (shrink)

The idea at the core of the New Mechanical account of explanation can be summarized in the claim that explaining means showing ‘how things work’. This simple motto hints at three basic features of Mechanistic Explanation (ME): ME is an explanation-how, that implies the description of the processes underlying the phenomenon to be explained and of the entities that engage in such processes. These three elements trace a fundamental contrast with the view inherited from Hume and later from strict logical (...) empiricism (see Creath 2017), focused on epistemic and formal features of science and according to which issues concerning the kind of entities and processes that lie within a theory’s domain are extraneous to science and belong instead to ontology or metaphysics. Philosophers belonging to the new mechanical philosophy believe that the received view of scientific explanation (Hempel 2001), pivoting on the notion of law of nature, overshadows this insight. Since its origin in the 17th century, mechanical philosophy aimed to explain natural phenomena by reducing them to mechanisms. Traditional attempts to define the concept of mechanism involved the identification of a limited set of fundamental elements as, for instance, contact action, action at a distance, inertial motion (see e.g. Hesse 2005), and, more recently, transmission of a mark, or of a conserved quantity (see Frisch, this volume). The new mechanical philosophy rejects this austere characterization of mechanisms and mechanistic explanation and aim at providing a novel, philosophically rigorous explication of the concept of mechanism and of its role in scientific explanation and practice. ME has been adopted with profit in philosophy of special sciences (for instance in biomedical sciences, e.g. in the explanation of chemical transmission at synapses ((Machamer, Darden and Craver 2000), MDC henceforth); but also in social sciences, e.g. the three kinds of social mechanisms in Coleman’s analysis of Max Weber’s account of the role of the Protestant ethic in the growth of capitalism (Hedström and Swedberg 1998)), where exceptionless regularities are rarely ever found. In physics, it is generally possible to formulate explanations in law-based form, with the result that the plurality of explanatory forms might be overlooked. This should not come as a surprise, given that physics was the main inspiration for logical empiricists, and, in particular, Newtonian physics was a template for Hempel’s formulation of the covering law model. However, this situation is unfortunate, since, we will argue, knowing how things work is often part of the explanation of physical phenomena. In this chapter, we provide an introduction to the basic features of ME, with specific focus on its application to physics (section 1). The main part of the chapter is devoted to the defence of two theses: on the one hand, some domains of physics are not compatible with mechanistic reasoning and explanation (section 2); on the other hand, a comprehensive account of explanation in physics can’t dispense with ME (section 3). (shrink)

In this chapter, I focus on the faculties by which we gain knowledge, namely, sensibility and the understanding, as well as on the methodological framework within which Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz examines them. I stress the importance that the author gives to sensibility and the physiological apparatus that grounds and explains sensation.With respect to her conception of understanding, I will show that it is both the sign of man’s filiation with God and a faculty that displays deficiencies and (...) limitations with respect to the difficult task of attaining knowledge.Finally, I examine Sor Juana’s criticism both of the Neoplatonic method, which looks for a vision of the universe as a whole, as well as of the deductive method of the Aristotelian- Scholastic tradition, which attempts to reduce the unmanageable diversity of beings to some specific characteristics and laws.My conclusion is that Sor Juana shares with modern philosophers the critical attitude against tradition; she holds that traditional methods do not enable us to reach knowledge about either the remotest causes or the closest effects. On my view, Sor Juana takes an epistemological approach to philosophy, as do Bacon and Descartes, but she does not propose a new method; this is not because of some radical skepticism on her part, but because of the enormity of the task of the human mind achieving complete knowledge. (shrink)

Background: Psychiatric interventions are a contested area in medicine, not only because of their history of abuses, but also because their therapeutic goal is to affect emotions, thoughts, beliefs...

ABSTRACTRecent research suggests that impaired emotion regulation may play an important role in the development of youth psychopathology. However, little research has explored the effects of ER strategies on affect in early adolescents. In Study 1, we examined if early adolescents are able to use distraction and whether the effects of this strategy are similar to talking to one’s mother. In Study 2, we compared the effects of distraction, cognitive reappraisal, acceptance, and rumination. In both studies, participants received instructions on (...) how to regulate their emotions after a standardised negative mood induction. In general, the results indicated that distraction, but also cognitive reappraisal and acceptance, had promising short-term effects on positive and negative affect in early adolescents. These findings suggest that targeting adaptive ER skills, such as distraction, acceptance, and cognitive reappraisal, may be an important strategy to prevent or treat psychological pro... (shrink)

This systematic review identifies and critically evaluates instruments that have been developed to measure clinical trial informed consent comprehension in non-cognitively-impaired adults. Literature searches were carried out on Medline (Ovid), PsycInfo, CINHAL, ERIC, ScienceDirect, and Cochrane Library for English language articles published between January 1980 and September 2008. Instruments were excluded if they focused on consent onto paediatric trials, the construct under study was primarily capacity or competency, or the instrument was developed specifically for psychiatric or cognitively-impaired populations. Instruments selected (...) for review were evaluated against the following criteria: (1) method of item generation; (2) type and format of test items; (3) administration and interpretation of test results; and (4) psychometric properties. Three instruments met our defined inclusion criteria: the Deaconess Informed Consent Comprehension Test (DICCT), the Quality of Informed Consent (QuIC) questionnaire and the Brief Informed Consent Protocol (BICEP). Each instrument varied in terms of content measured. Significantly, these are the first standardized instruments developed to assess comprehension in non-cognitively-impaired adults. Yet, each instrument had its own set of limitations such as the lack of generalizability and the absence of details pertaining to how test results should be used to guide clinical decision-making. Standardized clinical trial informed consent comprehension assessments have been developed to identify gaps in research participants' understanding and ensure that respect for patient autonomy is satisfied. (shrink)

By comparing the role of harmony in Eryximachus’ discourse with other Platonic passages, especially from the Timaeus, this article aims to provide textual evidence concerning Plato’s conception of cosmological medicine as “harmonic techne”. The comparison with other dialogues will enable us to demonstrate how Eryximachus’ thesis is consistent with Plato’s cosmology — a cosmology which cannot be reduced to a physical conception of reality but represents the expression of a dialectical, and erotic cosmos, characterized by the agreement of parts. Arguably, (...) Eryximachus’ discourse is expression of the Platonic tendency to translate onto the philosophical plane the implications of a model peri physeos. Harmonic techne is thus always linked to the theme of moral responsibility: the philosopher is also doctor, musician and demiurges in his harmonizing activity. The speech of Eryximachus can be approached as a Platonic step which is fundamental for establishing the need for a “medicine” to cure disorder, with a view to obtaining a cosmos ordered according to the harmonic principle. (shrink)

New agricultural technologies are often justified morally in terms of their expected benefits, e.g., feeding the world's hungry. Such justifications stand or fall, not only on whether such benefits are indeed forthcoming, but on whether or not they are outweighed by attendant dangers. The practical details of easch case are, therefore, all-important. In this paper agriculture and aquaculture are examined from the perspective of ecosystem integrity, and with further reference to the uncertain effects of anthropogenic changes in the earth's atmosphere. (...) The principle of integrity provides a strong justification for a cautious approach to new technologies, and particularly so in the case of transgenics. (shrink)

Apoptotic pathways have always been regarded as a key‐player in preserving tissue and organ homeostasis. Excessive activation or resistance to activation of cell death signaling may indeed be responsible for several mechanisms of disease, including malignancy and chronic degenerative diseases. Therefore, targeting apoptotic factors gained more and more attention in the scientific community and novel strategies emerged aimed at selectively blocking or stimulating cell death signaling. This is also the case for the TMEM219 death receptor, which is activated by a (...) circulating ligand, the Insulin‐like growth factor binding protein 3 (IGFBP3) and induces a caspase‐8‐dependent apoptosis of the target cells. Interestingly, stimulation of the IGFBP3/TMEM219 axis exerts an anti‐proliferative effect, while blockade of the TMEM219 deleterious signal protects TMEM219‐expressing cells of the endocrine pancreas, lung, and intestine from damage and death. Here, we summarize the most updated reports on the role of the IGFBP3/TMEM219 apoptotic axis in disease conditions, including intestinal disorders and diabetes, and we describe the advancements in designing and testing novel TMEM219‐based targeting approaches in emerging potential clinical applications. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Notes and Fragments WEISKEL'S SUBLIME AND THE IMPASSE OF KNOWLEDGE by Laura Quinney Since the publication of Thomas Weiskel's The Romantic Sublime in 1976, scholars of the sublime, in America at any rate, have taken their cue from the demystifying character ofWeiskel's analysis.1 Before Weiskel the most ambitious twentieth-century account of the sublime was Samuel Monk's largely descriptive work The Sublime: A Study of Critical Theories inEighteenth-CenturyEngland.2 With (...) the advent ofsemiotic and psychoanalytic approaches in the late sixties and early seventies, studies of the sublime shifted into a more critical mode. Neil Hertz had taken a skeptical tack in his early essay "A Reading of Longinus," but it was with Weiskel's book that the possibilities of demystifying die sublime were first explored fully.3 Weiskel's treatment is comprehensive, covering all the English Romantic poets as well as Burke and Kant. His thinking is sophisticated, incisive, and often inspired; though The Romantic Sublime was published nearly twenty years ago, it remains an admirable and influential work. In some respects it has never been superseded. Most major American scholars of the sublime—de Man, Knapp, and de Bolla, among others—have adopted the skeptical mode of Weiskel and Hertz.4 But die demystifying approach Weiskel's book helped to pioneer, while it has led to powerful argument, has certain limitations. Weiskel's precocious effort to "desublimate" the sublime shows diese limitations clearly, and it is die purpose of this essay to explore them. In die course of exposing the sublime as a mystified notion, and separating the naive believers from the canny skeptics, Weiskel also Philosophy and Literature, © 1994, 18: 309-319 310Philosophy and Literature separates intellectual insight from aesthetic capacity, and thus he uncritically reiterates die old Romantic dialectic of knowledge and power. The figure of Wordsworth plays a central role in establishing these oppositions. Weiskel portrays Wordsworth as the most successful poet of the sublime—the most successful, and tiierefore the most beguiled. In his remarkable concluding chapter, Weiskel locates the source of Wordsworth's powerful "liminal sublime" in a kind of intellectual regression. Wordswortii refuses the whole Symbolic order, the ghastly product of the Oedipus complex, for that order spells die deatii or disappearance of the signified, and die end of an imaginatively fruitful narcissism. Wordswortii retreats from the Symbolic to the Imaginary radier than endure tiiis threat to poetic life. And he is well rewarded for his dodge, since as a consequence the images of his memory thrill with the fascination of the ineffable. The Prelude gains its momentum from the project of memory; but the rich opacity and mysterious beckoning of memory's images are in a sense contrived. They spring out of a sublimation, the images colored widi the intensity of the signification Wordswortii has repudiated. Wordswortii sacrifices insight and intellectual progress for imaginative power. This is a strictly ambivalent exchange, as Weiskel makes clear in his conclusion; Wordsworth's rejection of the Oedipus complex and of the descent into the Symbolic Order, is "purely illusory, a fiction," but "the fiction is a necessary and saving one; it founds die self and secures the possibility—the chance for a self-conviction—of originality" (p. 203). Wordswortii's poetic success arises from his acceptance of an illusion, a "saving fiction" both enviable and degraded. This selfdelusion is essential to the poetic flourishing of the sublime, and only Wordsworth had the odd insensitivity to maintain it. Weiskel contrasts faith in the efficacy and excellence of sublimation with skeptical insight into its origin and end—its origin in mystification, and its end in alienation from the phenomenal world. The faith of Wordswortii's egotistical sublime is that imaginative perception provides die highest and paradoxically truest form of perception. It is easy enough to see how such a faith could provide hope and energy, and tiius could be compromised by wish-fulfillment in its generation, and direatened by extinction in its analysis. But what lies behind Weiskel's opposition of faith and insight is the old dichotomy—or series of interrelated dichotomies—that date back at least to Romanticism. Weiskel admits that his opposition of fruitful illusion and dessicating realism... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Narrative Symposium:Conflicting Interests in MedicineLaura Jean Bierut, Sal Cruz-Flores, Laura E. Hodges, Anthony A. Mikulec, Govind K. Nagaldinne, Erine L. Bakanas, John F. Peppin, Joel S. Perlmutter, William H. Seitz Jr., Edward Diao, Andre N. Sofair, and David M. Zientek• To Recruit or Not to Recruit for a Clinical Trial• An Unexpected Lesson• Am I on call for the entire Midwest?• Why is Medicare Wasting Away?• The Downside (...) of the Informed Consent Juggernaut• Expert Testimony at the Food and Drug Administration: Who Wants the Truth?• Crossroads: The Intersection of Personal, Professional Society, and Industry Relationships• A Change of Heart• The Evolution of Conflicts of Interest in a New Subspecialty: A Case Study of the Development of Interventional CardiologyCopyright © 2011 The Johns Hopkins University Press... (shrink)

Aldo Leopold’s influence on environmental ethics cannot be overstated. I return to Leopold’s work in order to show the connection between the ethics of integrity and many of the points made by Leopold in his writings. I also show how the spirit of Leopold’s land ethic and his love and respect for wilderness is present and current in the Wildlands Project, and that it is a live part of public policy in North America, albeit a debated one.

Corcoran’s 27 entries in the 1999 second edition of Robert Audi’s Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy [Cambridge: Cambridge UP]. -/- ancestral, axiomatic method, borderline case, categoricity, Church (Alonzo), conditional, convention T, converse (outer and inner), corresponding conditional, degenerate case, domain, De Morgan, ellipsis, laws of thought, limiting case, logical form, logical subject, material adequacy, mathematical analysis, omega, proof by recursion, recursive function theory, scheme, scope, Tarski (Alfred), tautology, universe of discourse. -/- The entire work is available online free at more than (...) one website. Paste the whole URL. http://archive.org/stream/RobertiAudi_The.Cambridge.Dictionary.of.Philosophy/Robert.Audi_The.Cambrid ge.Dictionary.of.Philosophy -/- The 2015 third edition will be available soon. Before you think of buying it read some reviews on Amazon and read reviews of its competition: For example, my review of the 2008 Oxford Companion to Philosophy, History and Philosophy of Logic,29:3,291-292. URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01445340701300429 -/- Some of the entries have already been found to be flawed. For example, Tarski’s expression ‘materially adequate’ was misinterpreted in at least one article and it was misused in another where ‘materially correct’ should have been used. The discussion provides an opportunity to bring more flaws to light. -/- Acknowledgements: Each of these entries was presented at meetings of The Buffalo Logic Dictionary Project sponsored by The Buffalo Logic Colloquium. The members of the colloquium read drafts before the meetings and were generous with corrections, objections, and suggestions. Usually one 90-minute meeting was devoted to one entry although in some cases, for example, “axiomatic method”, took more than one meeting. Moreover, about half of the entries are rewrites of similarly named entries in the 1995 first edition. Besides the help received from people in Buffalo, help from elsewhere was received by email. We gratefully acknowledge the following: José Miguel Sagüillo, John Zeis, Stewart Shapiro, Davis Plache, Joseph Ernst, Richard Hull, Concha Martinez, Laura Arcila, James Gasser, Barry Smith, Randall Dipert, Stanley Ziewacz, Gerald Rising, Leonard Jacuzzo, George Boger, William Demopolous, David Hitchcock, John Dawson, Daniel Halpern, William Lawvere, John Kearns, Ky Herreid, Nicolas Goodman, William Parry, Charles Lambros, Harvey Friedman, George Weaver, Hughes Leblanc, James Munz, Herbert Bohnert, Robert Tragesser, David Levin, Sriram Nambiar, and others. -/- . (shrink)

Currently, millions of minors are being inoculated against SARS-CoV-2 in many countries in the world. Ethical concerns about clinical research involving children have barely been addressed in the literature, despite the fact that the paediatric population is particularly vulnerable within this context. Children should be included in the research plans for COVID-19 vaccines. Nevertheless, it is necessary to critically assess to what extent clinical trials are being conducted according to methodological and ethical criteria that allow us to conclude that the (...) results are valid and, in consequence, how far the vaccination plans for children are scientifically justified.The principal aim of this article is to analyse critically the process of clinical research on COVID-19 vaccines involving children, highlighting the ethical concerns that arise, including the need to stratify the results from older adolescents separately for analysis before proceeding, if further research is warranted, in descending age order. The development of COVID-19 vaccines is examined, with a special look at the participation of children throughout their clinical development, including a review of the clinical trials registered in three international databases. We also offer some additional considerations about the inclusion of minors in vaccination plans. Finally, we conclude with some recommendations, with particular emphasis on the following ethical duties: research in children should be carried out only once the relevant research in adults has previously been conducted; issues that concern children’s needs and rights should be specifically addressed; and, therefore, the highest standards of ethical and scientific quality should be met. (shrink)

Fundamental problems in developmental biology, such as the generation of asymmetry, differential transcription, and the execution of positional information, are all exhibited by a prokaryotic system, the Caulobacter cell cycle. Progeny cells resulting from each cell division have different developmental programs with respect to patterns of transcription and the initiation of DNA replication. The binary fission that yields dissimilar progeny results from asymmetry generated in the parent cell. An aspect of this fundamental developmental event is the temporally‐controlled biogenesis of a (...) polar flagellum. Several flagellar promoters require the histone‐like protein, integration host factor (IHF) for transcription activation. IHF introduces bends in DNA resulting in the reorganization of the higher‐order structure of the promoter region. These promoters appear to be transcribed from the chromosome in the swarmer pole of the predivisional cell. The newly replicated chromosomes in the predivisional cell differ in sedimentation coefficient and in the ability to initiate replication in the progeny cell. We hypothesize that the differential higher order structure of the two chromosomes contributes to both replication potential and transcription specificity. (shrink)

This paper compares Kant's positions on space, time, the relational character of noumena, and the relational character of the self, with the somewhat similar accounts of those things in two philosophers of the Kyoto school: Keiji Nishitani and Nishida Kitaro. I will argue that the philosophers of the Kyoto school had a more coherent and better integrated account of those ideas, that was open to Kant. I think that the comparison both clarifies Kant's position on these topics, and elucidates the (...) topics. (shrink)

Child Law starts with the question "Who is the Child?" In direct contrast to the CRC, which calls for putting the interests of the child first in all policies dealing with children, it appears that the interests of others are the major consideration de facto. In law, children's right to protection is severely limited by the presence of a maximum age limit, with no consideration of the starting point: current and ongoing scientific research has demonstrated the effects of this non-consideration (...) in a number of abnormalities and diseases, not only in children, but in adults and the elderly. The WHO has published a number of studies to that effect, and the 2012 Report on Endocrine Disruptors more than confirms this claim. This and other scientific insights that have largely been ignored show the flaws and inadequacies of the legal regimes intended to protect children, in a number of areas, from the basic public health to the right to normal development; child labor law conventions; in conflict situations; as a result of climate and other events; children as illegal migrants; and as inmates in prison camps. (shrink)

Public policy on alcohol in the UK relies on health promotion campaigns that encourage individuals who misuse alcohol to make healthier choices about their drinking. Individuals with alcohol-dependence syndrome have an impaired capacity to choose health. As a result, individuals with the worst alcohol misuse problems lie largely outside the reach of choice-based policy. However, such policy has been widely criticized and efforts to reform it are underway. This paper argues that the British Medical Association's recent attempt to improve policy (...) on alcohol in the UK by introducing strategies which have been shown to control drinking within populations still gives insufficient attention to alcohol dependence. This is because it fails accurately and consistently to characterize alcohol dependence and gives insufficient attention to the social challenges it presents. (shrink)