For focal neurodegenerative diseases or brain tumors, localized delivery of protein or genetic vectors may be sufficient to alleviate symptoms, halt disease progression, or even cure the disease. One may circumvent the limitation imposed by the blood-brain barrier by transplantation of genetically altered cell grafts or focal inoculation of virus or protein. However, permanent gene replacement therapy for diseases affecting the entire brain will require global delivery of genetic vectors. The neurotoxicity of currently available viral vectors and the transient nature (...) of transgene expression invivomust be overcome before their use in human gene therapy becomes clinically applicable. (shrink)

We argue that Brandon and Carson's (1996) "The Indeterministic Character of Evolutionary Theory" fails to identify any indeterminism that would require evolutionary theory to be a statistical or probabilistic theory. Specifically, we argue that (1) their demonstration of a mechanism by which quantum indeterminism might "percolate up" to the biological level is irrelevant; (2) their argument that natural selection is indeterministic because it is inextricably connected with drift fails to join the issue with determinism; and (3) their view that experimental (...) methodology in botany assumes indeterminism is both false and incompatible with the commitment to discoverable causal mechanisms underlying biological processes. We remain convinced that the probabilism of the theory of evolution is epistemically, not ontologically, motivated. (shrink)

For focal neurodegenerative diseases or brain tumors, localized delivery of protein or genetic vectors may be sufficient to alleviate symptoms, halt disease progression, or even cure the disease. One may circumvent the limitation imposed by the blood-brain barrier by transplantation of genetically altered cell grafts or focal inoculation of virus or protein. However, permanent gene replacement therapy for diseases affecting the entire brain will require global delivery of genetic vectors. The neurotoxicity of currently available viral vectors and the transient nature (...) of transgene expression invivomust be overcome before their use in human gene therapy becomes clinically applicable. (shrink)

The heme‐containing cytochromes P‐450 are a ubiquitous family of monooxygenase isozymes responsible for the oxidative metabolism of a wide variety of endogenous as well as exogenous compounds. Many of the compounds metabolized by this enzyme system are effectively detoxified and converted to derivatives more easily eliminated from the organism. However, some compounds can be activated to reactive species capable of eliciting a cascade of toxic lesions, including cancer. Since its discovery nearly 30 years ago, the cytochrome P‐450 enzyme system has (...) received a great deal of attention, particularly in the areas of their mechanisms of metabolism, range of substrate specificity, the purification and characterization of the multiple isozymes and, more recently, the regulation of expression of specific forms. This review will discuss current notions concerning the expression of at least one cytochrome P‐450 isozyme and future directions that should lead to a more complete understanding of cytochrome P‐450 gene expression in general, particularly as it impacts upon biochemical pharmacology. (shrink)

Answering important public health questions often requires collection of sensitive information about individuals. For example, our understanding of how HIV is transmitted and how to prevent it only came about with people's willingness to share information about their sexual and drug-using behaviors. Given the scientific need for sensitive, personal information, researchers have a corresponding ethical and legal obligation to maintain the confidentiality of data they collect and typically promise in consent forms to restrict access to it and not to publish (...) identifying data.The interests of others, however, can threaten researchers' promises of confidentiality when legal demands are made to access research data. In some cases, the subject of the litigation is tightly connected to the research questions, and litigants' interest in the data is not surprising. Researchers conducting studies on tobacco or occupational or other chemical exposures, for example, are relatively frequent targets of subpoenas. (shrink)

This paper is premised on the thought that aside from Emerita Quito, who is generally considered in the Philippines as the "Filipino philosopher, " there is another Filipina philosopher who is unfortunately ignored in the various philosophy circles in the country but whose works and scholarship can easily rival those of the former. This paper, therefore, surveys the thoughts of Mary John Mananzan in order to understand her contributions to the development of Filipino philosophy. To attain such a goal, this (...) paper discusses six substantive sections, which tackle the following: (]) her intellectual biography, (2) her critique of patriarchal religion, (3) her critique of the Philippine political economy, (4) her critique of patriarchal everyday culture, (5) her critique of Philippine colonization, and (6) her recollections on her own political praxis. This paper defines the place of Mananzan among the various discourses of Filipino philosophy and assesses her contributions to such a philosophy. (shrink)

Perhaps the most distinct question in science throughout the ages has been the one of perceivable reality, treated both in physics and philosophy. Reality is acting upon us, and we, and life in general, are acting upon reality. Potentiality, found both in quantum reality and in the activity of life, plays a key role. In quantum reality observation turns potentiality into reality. Again, life computes possibilities in various ways based on past actions, and acts on the basis of these computations. (...) This book is about a new approach to biology. Its subtitle suggests a perpetual movement and interplay between two elusive aspects of modern science — reality/matter and potentiality/mind, between physics and biology — both captured and triggered by mathematics — to understand and explain emergence, development and life all the way up to consciousness. But what is the real/potential difference between living and non-living matter? How does time in potentiality differ from time in reality? What we need to understand these differences is an integrative approach. This book contemplates how to encircle life to obtain a formal system, equivalent to the ones in physics. Integral Biomathics attempts to explore the interplay between reality and potentiality. (shrink)

Colorado has consistently had one of the highest rates of suicide in the United States, and El Paso County has the highest number of suicide and firearm-related suicide deaths within the state. Community-based solutions like those of the Suicide Prevention Collaborative of El Paso County may be more effective in preventing suicide as they are specific to local issues, sensitive to local culture, and informed by local data, community members, and stakeholders.

Much evidence suggests that, from a young age, humans are able to generalize information learned about a subset of a category to the category itself. Here, we propose that—beyond simply being able to perform such generalizations—people are biased to generalize to categories, such that they routinely make spontaneous, implicit category generalizations from information that licenses such generalizations. To demonstrate the existence of this bias, we asked participants to perform a task in which category generalizations would distract from the main goal (...) of the task, leading to a characteristic pattern of errors. Specifically, participants were asked to memorize two types of novel facts: quantified facts about sets of kind members and generic facts about entire kinds. Moreover, half of the facts concerned properties that are typically generalizable to an animal kind, and half concerned properties that are typically more idiosyncratic. We predicted that—because of the hypothesized bias—participants would spontaneously generalize the quantified facts to the corresponding kinds, and would do so more frequently for the facts about generalizable properties. In turn, these generalizations would lead to a higher rate of quantified-to-generic memory errors for the generalizable properties. The results of four experiments supported this prediction. Moreover, the same generalizable-versus-idiosyncratic difference in memory errors occurred even under cognitive load, which suggests that the hypothesized bias operates unnoticed in the background, requiring few cognitive resources. In sum, this evidence suggests the presence of a powerful bias to draw generalizations about kinds. (shrink)

Development of the knowledge base for a profession depends on research and scholarship that builds on the insights and work of scholars within the discipline and is disseminated through the literature. The purpose of this study was to examine a unique collection of 79 articles selected by editors as representative of their nursing journals. Articles were assessed for congruence with long‐standing values and conceptual definitions of nursing, and the extent to which they built on prior literature published in nursing. Articles (...) were scored based on whether they reflected four characteristics of nursing as a discipline (holism, social context, goal of health, and consistency with common definitions of nursing); an abstract score on the extent to which the title, abstract, or keywords indicated a general focus on nursing; and a distinction score based on whether the article distinguished nurses or nursing from other providers. Fifty of the articles received an article score of 4, indicating all four disciplinary characteristics were present in the article's content. While the majority of the articles were congruent with fundamental nursing values and perspectives, only 28% of the sources cited were from nursing sources. The lack of citations to nursing literature, coupled with an assessment that reveals gaps in substantive content that builds on nursing knowledge, raises questions about the future of nursing perspectives in the literature. (shrink)

The reproducibility movement in psychology has resulted in numerous highly publicized instances of replication failures. The goal of the present work was to investigate people’s reactions to a psychology replication failure vs. success, and to test whether a failure elicits harsher reactions when the researcher is a woman vs. a man. We examined these questions in a pre-registered experiment with a working adult sample, a conceptual replication of that experiment with a student sample, and an analysis of data compiled and (...) posted by a psychology researcher on their public weblog with the stated goal to improve research replicability by rank-ordering psychology researchers by their “estimated false discovery risk.” Participants in the experiments were randomly assigned to read a news article describing a successful vs. failed replication attempt of original work from a male vs. female psychological scientist, and then completed measures of researcher competence, likability, integrity, perceptions of the research, and behavioral intentions for future interactions with the researcher. In both working adult and student samples, analyses consistently yielded large main effects of replication outcome, but no interaction with researcher gender. Likewise, the coding of weblog data posted in July 2021 indicated that 66.3% of the researchers scrutinized were men and 33.8% were women, and their rank-ordering was not correlated with researcher gender. The lack of support for our pre-registered gender-replication hypothesis is, at first glance, encouraging for women researchers’ careers; however, the substantial effect sizes we observed for replication outcome underscore the tremendous negative impact the reproducibility movement can have on psychologists’ careers. We discuss the implications of such negative perceptions and the possible downstream consequences for women in the field that are essential for future study. (shrink)

La pensée conventionnaliste de l’environnement se heurte à un problème central : l’absence d’un ordre de grandeur écologiste qui obéisse à la même grammaire que les six autres. Cet article propose une piste afin de surmonter ce problème. Il s’agit d’envisager l’écologisme, non plus sous le modèle idéal de la cité, mais comme une critique du capitalisme. Dans cette perspective, les fondements théoriques et l’effectivité historique de la critique écologiste du capitalisme sont étudiés. Codes JEL : B5, N5, O13, O440, (...) P10, Q5. (shrink)

Cancer rates in men and women of reproductive age have continued to increase in recent years; however, therapy has dramatically decreased the mortality rates. Since 1990, the prevalence of cancer survivors in young adults increased from 1 in 1,000 to 1 in 250 patients due to more aggressive therapies. Current therapies may have profound toxic effects on gamete function with infertility as an expected consequence of cancer therapy. Depending on the site and stage of cancer, age of the patient, and (...) the type of treatment, approximately 90% of men and women diagnosed with cancer may be at risk of permanent infertility.Fertility preservation has emerged as a discipline dedicated to improving the future reproductive potential of cancer survivors. Significant progress in the advancement of fertility preservation therapies and a heightened awareness of the availability of therapies has occurred in the past 10 years. The American Society of Clinical Oncology and the American Society of Reproductive Medicine have advanced these efforts by formally recognizing the importance of fertility awareness. (shrink)

In this thorough compendium, nineteen accomplished scholars explore, in some manner the values they find inherent in the world, their nature, and revelence through the thought of Frederick FerrZ. These essays, informed by the insights of FerrZ and coming from manifold perspectives—ethics, philosophy, theology, and environmental studies, advance an ambitious challenge to current intellectual and scholarly fashions.

Members of the Ethics and Public Policy Committee of the International Society of Nurses in Genetics prepared this article to assist nurses in interpreting the American Nurses Association (2015) Code of Ethics for Nurses with Interpretive Statements (Code) within the context of genetics/genomics. The Code explicates the nursing profession’s norms and responsibilities in managing ethical issues. The nearly ubiquitous application of genetic/genomic technologies in healthcare poses unique ethical challenges for nursing. Therefore, authors conducted literature searches that drew from various professional (...) resources to elucidate implications of the code in genetic/genomic nursing practice, education, research, and public policy. We contend that the revised Code coupled with the application of genomic technologies to healthcare creates moral obligations for nurses to continually refresh their knowledge and capacities to translate genetic/genomic research into evidence-based practice, assure the ethical conduct of scientific inquiry, and continually develop or revise national/international guidelines that protect the rights of individuals and populations within the context of genetics/genomics. Thus, nurses have an ethical responsibility to remain knowledgeable about advances in genetics/genomics and incorporate emergent evidence into their work. (shrink)

i am doing a research for my university about the writing system of ancient egyptian.

Flaubert himself, in an early and now famous letter, identifies in "bêtise" the effect of an inordinate desire to conclude: "Oui, la bêtise," he writes, "consiste à vouloir conclure. Nous sommes un fil et nous voulons savoir la trame" . This is to say stupidity, to Flaubert, is less a given content of discourse than a particular order of that discourse itself.1 It is the sign of an hasty and elliptical intervention into thought of a series of preconceived conclusions, the (...) source of which may be situated in the doxa and in the rhetoric of verisimilitude that sustains the persuasive power of the doxa. Stupidity, as the project of the Dictionnaire demonstrates, is an endless fabric of maxims and probable syllogisms the function of which is to determine the particular and the specific, the singular and the different, as paradigmatic exempla of the larger discourse of encyclopaedic universality expressed in the verisimilitude of received ideas. It is in this sense that one can see in Flaubert's notion of "bêtise" the denunciation by the writer of an especially vulgarised form of the Aristotelian concept of verisimilitude, which, built around the rhetorical figures of the probable syllogism—the enthymeme—and the exemplum , is directed towards winning adhesion to a particular thesis by appealing to generalities and probabilities, and which constructs its arguments from material drawn from the doxa.2 It is this rhetoric of persuasion by verisimilitude that Flaubert, in the various discourses of the lover, the dreamer, and the politician, will throw into ironic relief in Madame Bovary and L'Éducation sentimentale. · 1. Cf. Valéry, Oeuvres, 1:1452.· 2. The concept of verisimilitude is a difficult one and one which had received much critical attention in recent years. I have taken the term here to refer to the complex network of constraints by which the mimetic novelist, like the rhetorician, is able to engage his audience in a contract of mutual recognition and to persuade them of the "sense of reality" of his narrative, that his is a plausible interpretation of reality, worthy of belief . It is here that Aristotle's elaboration of mimesis and of the art of rhetoric is decisive. Both in the Poetics and in the Rhetoric, Aristotle distinguishes two concepts with regards to the manner in which the artist or the rhetorician solicits from his audience the belief in the justness of his reconstruction of reality. The first concept is that of pithanon, the plausible or the persuasive. This corresponds to the speculative consideration of what strategy will be most forceful in any given case. Rhetoric is indeed defined as "the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion " . As such, pithanon is the sign of a desire to convince, a decision on the part of an individual in a particular situation. For this desire to convince to become fully operative in the context of an audience, it needs to be recast not as a plausibility, but as a probability, as eikos. Aristotle defines eikos as "a thing that usually happens: not . . . anything whatever that usually happens, but only if it belongs to the class of the 'contingent' or 'variable.' It bears the same relation to that in respect of which it is probable as the universal bears to the particular" . Eikos is on one level a collection of contents, of topoi. But it is more than this. For otherwise this would mean that works deriving from different historical contexts would become unintelligible to the uninitiated reader. Eikos is a patterning of discourse, a rhetorical syntax, based upon the integration of the singular in the universal, and translated in the text by the enthymeme and the exemplum. The homogeneity of the mimetic novel derives from the way in which the desire to convince is mediated and dissimulated by a totalising, "natural" eikos, when, in other words, the narrator is "objective." It is when these two dimensions are dissociated, as in Bouvard et Pécuchet, that all manner of disturbance is generated. . Leslie Hill, fellow in Clare College, Cambridge University, is presently doing research on Flaubert and on general aspects of the modern French novel. This is his first publication. (shrink)

There is a growing literature demonstrating a link between lower socioeconomic status (SES) and poorer neuroanatomical health, such as smaller total and regional gray and white matter volumes, as well as greater white matter lesion volumes. Little is known, however, about the relation between SES and white matter integrity. Here we examined the relation between SES and white matter integrity of the brain’s primary cortical regions, and evaluated potential moderating influences of age and self-identified race. Participants were 192 neurologically intact, (...) community-dwelling African American and White adults (mean age = 52 years; 44% male, 60% White, low SES = 52%) from the Healthy Aging in Neighborhoods of Diversity across the Life Span (HANDLS) SCAN study. Participants underwent 3.0-T cranial magnetic resonance imaging. Diffusion tensor imaging was used to estimate regional fractional anisotropy (FA) to quantify the brain’s white matter integrity and trace to capture diffusivity. Multiple regression analyses examined independent and interactive associations of SES, age, and race with FA of the frontal, temporal, parietal, and occipital lobes bilaterally. Sensitivity analyses assessed the influence of several biopsychosocial risk factors on these associations. Exploratory analyses examined these relations with trace and using additional SES indicators. Results indicated there were no significant interactions of SES, age, and race for any region. Individuals with low SES had lower FA in all regions, and higher trace in the right and left frontal, right and left temporal, and left occipital lobes. Findings remained largely unchanged after inclusion of sensitivity variables. Older age was associated with lower FA and greater trace for all regions, except for the right temporal lobe with FA. No main effects were found for race in FA, and Whites had higher trace values in the parietal lobes. Novel findings of this study indicate that relative to the high SES group, low SES was associated with poorer white matter integrity and greater diffusivity. These results may, in part, reflect exposures to various biopsychosocial risk factors experienced by those of lower SES across the lifespan, and may help explain the preponderance of cognitive and functional disparities between socioeconomic groups. (shrink)

The complexity of these terms and their relationship with truth and truthfulness are put on display by the contributors to this volume.

Surveying developments in a quarter-century of Anglophone legal philosophy, Leslie Green argues that there has been progress in some problems, such as the understanding of rules and reasons in the law; that in other areas —in particular, in discussions of the relationship between law and morality— there has been a marked narrowing of attention; and that with respect to the relationship between law and coercion, we have advanced very little beyond HLA Hart’s 1961 argument against reductionism. Here, we have (...) lost sight of one of the reasons for attending to the coercive aspect of law in the first place: that this is the most obvious way that law exercises power. Finally, the recent ‘methodological turn’ in jurisprudence is examined. To its benefit, the subject has become more self-conscious about its own status and methods. The paper concludes by exploring Dworkin’s revival of Fuller’s idea that a theory of law must be potentially useful to a lawyer or judge. Resisting this view, Green holds that while law is practical, a theory of the nature of law must answer to the truth about law. Unlike law itself, jurisprudence must be true in order to be good.Resumen:Al sopesar los avances de la filosofía jurídica angloparlante durante 25 años, Leslie Green sostiene que ha habido progreso en algunos problemas, como el del entendimiento de las reglas y las razones en el derecho; mientras que en otras áreas —en particular, en las discusiones sobre la relación entre el derecho y la moral— ha habido un desinterés creciente; y que con respecto a la relación entre el derecho y la coacción, se ha avanzado muy poco desde aquel argumento que H. L. A. Hart presentara, en 1961, contra el reduccionismo. En este punto se ha perdido de vista una de las razones centrales para ocuparse del aspecto coactivo del derecho: que ésta es la manera más directa en que el derecho ejerce su poder. Por último, el autor examina el reciente “giro metodológico” dentro de la filosofía del derecho; por fortuna, la materia ahora tiene más conciencia en cuanto a su estatus y a sus métodos. El ensayo concluye explorando la manera en que Dworkin retoma la idea de Fuller de que la teoría del derecho debe tener la capacidad de ser útil a los abogados y a los jueces. En contraste con esta perspectiva, Green aduce que si bien el derecho es práctico, una teoría sobre la naturaleza del derecho debe elaborarse en función de la verdadera naturaleza del derecho. A diferencia del derecho, la filosofía del derecho tiene que ser verdadera para ser buena. (shrink)

Derrida's Glas found one of its most attentive readers in Maurice Blanchot, whose fragmentary volume L'Ecriture du désastre responds in a number of ways to Derrida's book, in particular to its reading of Hegel. This article retraces the silent dialogue between Derrida and Blanchot as it unfolds in the two texts mentioned as well as in several others, including some of Blanchot's earlier essays and fiction, notably La Folie du jour and L'Arrêt de mort.