The nm23 gene, a putative metastasis suppressor gene, was originally identified by its reduced expression in highly metastatic K‐1735 murine melanoma cell lines, as compared to related, low metastatic melanoma cell lines. Transfection of nm23 cDNA has been reported to suppress malignant progression in Drosophila and mammalian cells. Highly conserved homologues of nm23 have been found in organisms ranging from the prokaryote Myxococcus xanthus to Drosophila, where the gene is involved in normal development and differentiation. The product of the nm23 (...) gene exhibits a nucleoside diphosphate kinase activity, yet the nucleoside diphosphate kinase activity of Nm23 does not correlate with its apparent biological functions. We review recent cellular, genetic, biochemical and X‐ray crystallographic data to formulate and evaluate hypotheses concerning the molecular mechanism of nm23 action. (shrink)

Despite the prodigious inventiveness of the Middle Ages, the era is often characterized as deeply suspicious of novelty. But if poets and philosophers urged caution about the new, Patricia Clare Ingham contends, their apprehension was less the result of a blind devotion to tradition than a response to radical expansions of possibility in diverse realms of art and science. Discovery and invention provoked moral questions in the Middle Ages, serving as a means to adjudicate the ethics of invention and (...) opening thorny questions of creativity and desire. The Medieval New concentrates on the preoccupation with newness and novelty in literary, scientific, and religious discourses of the twelfth through sixteenth centuries. Examining a range of evidence, from the writings of Roger Bacon and Geoffrey Chaucer to the letters of Christopher Columbus, and attending to histories of children's toys, the man-made marvels of romance, the utopian aims of alchemists, and the definitional precision of the scholastics, Ingham analyzes the ethical ambivalence with which medieval thinkers approached the category of the new. With its broad reconsideration of what the "newfangled" meant in the Middle Ages, The Medieval New offers an alternative to histories that continue to associate the medieval era with conservation rather than with novelty, its benefits and liabilities. Calling into question present-day assumptions about newness, Ingham's study demonstrates the continued relevance of humanistic inquiry in the so-called traditional disciplines of contemporary scholarship. (shrink)

Using the Godel incompleteness result for leverage, Roger Penrose has argued that the mechanism for consciousness involves quantum gravitational phenomena, acting through microtubules in neurons. We show that this hypothesis is implausible. First the Godel result does not imply that human thought is in fact non-algorithmic. Second, whether or not non-algorithmic quantum gravitational phenomena actually exist, and if they did how that could conceivably implicate microtubules, and if microtubules were involved, how that could conceivably implicate consciousness, is entirely speculative. Third, (...) cytoplasmic ions such as calcium and sodium are almost certainly present in the microtubule pore, barring the quantum-mechanical effects Penrose envisages. Finally, physiological evidence indicates that consciousness does not directly depend on microtubule properties in any case, rendering doubtful any theory according to which consciousness is generated in the microtubules. (shrink)

Nineteenth‐ and twentieth‐century North Atlantic theology has seen a succession of Trinitarian revivals. Some observers take as an index of a theologian's success whether he or she has much interesting to say about the Holy Spirit, and some, including Robert Jenson, have also noted a tendency to announce the Spirit and talk about the Son. While Rogers shares that concern, he qualifies the characterization to note that authors in three traditions sometimes admit the charge and demur, claiming that is (...) how it should be, citing passages in Calvin, Rahner, and Pavel Florensky. Of these the boldest is Florensky, who anticipates Jenson's critique but, writing in 1913, makes it not of Barth but of Eastern Orthodox theology , even in its liturgy. Rogers leaves this puzzle unresolved. (shrink)

Americans have always been divided over whether to welcome or to discourage immigration. But virtually all American leaders have rested their views on notions that the United States has unique providential or world-historical significance-as an asylum for the world's oppressed, as a model to the world, or even as the world's leader. Today, it is normatively desirable for the U.S. to view itself not as the world's "city on a hill" but simply as one worthy political society among many others. (...) Whether such a view can be made politically appealing to most Americans, however, remains in doubt. (shrink)

Populist protests against Coronavirus-related restrictions in the US appear paradoxical in three respects. Populism is generally hostile to expertise, yet it has flourished at a moment when expertise has seemed more indispensable than ever. Populism thrives on crisis and indeed often depends on fabricating a sense of crisis, yet it has accused mainstream politicians and media of overblowing and even inventing the Corona crisis. Populism, finally, is ordinarily protectionist, yet it has turned anti-protectionist during the pandemic and challenged the allegedly (...) overprotective restrictions of the nanny-state. I address each apparent paradox in turn before speculating in conclusion about how populist distrust of expertise, antipathy to government regulation, and skepticism toward elite overprotectiveness may come together – in the context of intersecting medical, economic, political, and epistemic crises – in a potent and potentially dangerous mix. (shrink)

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is an urgent threat to global public health and development. Mitigating this threat requires substantial short-term action on key AMR priorities. While international legal agreements are the strongest mechanism for ensuring collaboration among countries, negotiating new international agreements can be a slow process. In the second article in this special issue, we consider whether harnessing existing international legal agreements offers an opportunity to increase collective action on AMR goals in the short-term. We highlight ten AMR priorities and (...) several strategies for achieving these goals using existing “legal hooks” that draw on elements of international environmental, trade and health laws governing related matters that could be used as they exist or revised to include AMR. We also consider the institutional mandates of international authorities to highlight areas where additional steps could be taken on AMR without constitutional changes. Overall, we identify 37 possible mechanisms to strengthen AMR governance using the International Health Regulations, the Agreement on the Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures, the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, the Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade, the International Convention on the Harmonized Commodity Description and Coding System, and the Basel, Rotterdam, and Stockholm conventions. Although we identify many shorter-term opportunities for addressing AMR using existing legal hooks, none of these options are capable of comprehensively addressing all global governance challenges related to AMR, such that they should be pursued simultaneously with longer-term approaches including a dedicated international legal agreement on AMR. (shrink)

Can human beings be free and responsible if there is an all-powerful God? Anselm of Canterbury offers viable answers to questions which have plagued religious people for at least two thousand years. Katherin Rogers examines Anselm's reconciliation of human free will and divine omnipotence in the context of current philosophical debates.

Self-Interest discusses the reconciliation of inevitable self-concern with its manifest potential for harm. This anthology brings together the efforts of twenty three renown philosophers to address the matter of how to bring about such a reconciliation. The drive for self-preservation, as observed by Aquinas, is the first law of nature. With this self-love, however, comes the threat of "the excessive love of self". Self-Interest brings into discussion the reconciliation of necessary self-concern with its manifest potential for harm. This anthology brings (...) together the work of twenty-three important philosophers to address the question of how to bring about such a reconciliation. Contributors include: Democritus, Plato, Aristotle, Augustine of Hippo, Aquinas,Hobbes, Nicole, Mandeville, Butler, Hutchenson, Hume, Smith, Kant, Bentham, Mill, James, Nietzsche, Dewey, Rand, and Gauthier. (shrink)

Traditionally, physicians and parents made decisions about children’s health care based on western practices. More recently, with legal and ethical development of informed consent and recognition for decision making, children are becoming active participants in their care. The extent to which this is happening is however blurred by lack of clarity about what children — of diverse levels of cognitive development — are capable of understanding. Moreover, when there are multiple surrogate decision makers, parental and professional conflict can arise concerning (...) children’s ‘best interest’. Giving children a voice and offering choice promotes their dignity and quality of life. Nevertheless, it also presents with many challenges. Case studies using pseudonyms and changed situational identities are used in this article to illuminate the complexity of ethical challenges facing nurses in end-of-life care with children and families. (shrink)

The doctrine of divine simplicity (DDS) is an important aspect of the classical theism of philosophers like Augustine, Anselm, and Thomas Aquinas. Recently the doctrine has been defended in a Thomist mode using the intrinsic/extrinsic distinction. I argue that this approach entails problems which can be avoided by taking Anselm’s more Neoplatonic line. This does involve accepting some controversial claims: for example, that time is isotemporal and that God inevitably does the best. The most difficult problem involves trying to reconcile (...) created libertarian free will with the Anselmian DDS. But for those attracted to DDS the Anselmian approach is worth considering. (shrink)

_The Undiscovered Dewey_ explores the profound influence of evolution and its corresponding ideas of contingency and uncertainty on John Dewey's philosophy of action, particularly its argument that inquiry proceeds from the uncertainty of human activity. Dewey separated the meaningfulness of inquiry from a larger metaphysical story concerning the certainty of human progress. He then connected this thread to the way in which our reflective capacities aid us in improving our lives. Dewey therefore launched a new understanding of the modern self (...) that encouraged intervention in social and natural environments but which nonetheless demanded courage and humility because of the intimate relationship between action and uncertainty. Melvin L. Rogers explicitly connects Dewey's theory of inquiry to his religious, moral, and political philosophy. He argues that, contrary to common belief, Dewey sought a place for religious commitment within a democratic society sensitive to modern pluralism. Against those who regard Dewey as indifferent to moral conflict, Rogers points to Dewey's appreciation for the incommensurability of our ethical commitments. His deep respect for modern pluralism, argues Rogers, led Dewey to articulate a negotiation between experts and the public so that power did not lapse into domination. Exhibiting an abiding faith in the reflective and contestable character of inquiry, Dewey strongly engaged with the complexity of our religious, moral, and political lives. (shrink)

A methodical study of the primitive cultures of the hunting-gathering peoples which focuses on their social structures and economic relations.

As persons we are irreducibly unique and essentially relational. In many contexts individual uniqueness has been accentuated at the expense of communal relationality. Our age has been marked by the loss of deep and meaningful relations to one another, and still more dramatically to the earth and its living creatures. The cosmological dimension of human personhood, that is, has been largely obscured. This chapter argues that our age has been marked increasingly by anesthetizing, alienating, and anonymizing tendencies. It proposes three (...) commensurate responses: aestheticization, or embodied philosophical knowing that remains faithful to the earth; anacarnation, or willful return to the wonders of embodied life, purged of romantic sentimentality; and attestation, or speaking up on behalf of the haecceitas or thisness of living creatures systematically instrumentalized for profit and pleasure. Together these responses help us to regain touch with animality by embracing the earth that hosts us, thus becoming more gracious guests, and to become more fully human by becoming better hosts to the multitude of earth's creatures, whose lives hang in the balance. (shrink)

Published in two volumes, these books provide a student audience with an excellent scholarly edition of Malthus' Essay on Population. Written in 1798 as a polite attack on post-French revolutionary speculations on the theme of social and human perfectibility, it remains one of the most powerful statements of the limits to human hopes set by the tension between population growth and natural resources. Based on the authoritative variorum edition of the versions of the Essay published between 1803 and 1826, and (...) complete with full introduction and bibliographic apparatus, this edition is intended to show how Malthusianism impinges on the history of political thought, and how the author's reputation as a population theorist and political economist was established. This is the two volume set. (shrink)

This article reviews four papers presented at the 33rd Annual Richard R. Baker Colloquium in Philosophy that was held at the University of Dayton on March 6-8, 2008. The second section reflects on the current form of these papers from a pedagogical perspective that emphasizes the importance of continual reflection on the conceptualization of intersectionality, the importance of reflecting on practices which may prevent us from the practice of intersectional understanding and action, and the theoretical and pedagogical need to continue (...) to be attentive to the discourse of the dominant and how this discourse constructs our social and political realities as well as our individual identities. (shrink)

In Black Bodies, White Gazes, George Yancy investigates how the experiences of blacks both come into view and are simultaneously distorted by the racialized gaze of whites. In the process of distortion by whites, often unbeknownst to themselves, they are continually implicated in the oppression of blacks that reflexively reinvests "whiteness as the transcendental norm" (xxiii). Precisely because whiteness is tied to socially embedded historical power and privilege that functions on multiple levels of social life, undoing its ill effects, to (...) borrow from James Baldwin, is an ongoing process of entering "into battle with the historical creation, Oneself, and attempt[ing] to re[-]create oneself according to a .. (shrink)

Élégamment écrit, l’ouvrage de Barbara Reeves-Ellington raconte une histoire de rencontres improbables entre protestantes américaines et habitant.e.s des Balkans ottomans au xixe siècle. À partir d’une série d’études de cas centrées sur la Bulgarie, avec un dernier chapitre où l’action se situe à Constantinople, l’historienne détaille le rôle des femmes dans l’action missionnaire et l’impact de leur action tant dans les Balkans qu’au sein du mouvement missionnaire aux États-Unis. Puisant dans...

In his work, Being Given, Jean-Luc Marion calls for a phenomenological investigation of the givenness (donation) of the phenomenon. As a phenomenologist of religion, Marion aims to give a philosophical account of the possibility of revelation, something which by definition is unconditionally given. In Being Given, he contends that his phenomenological reduction to unconditional givenness (in the figure of the saturated phenomenon) can account for religious phenomena in a way that respects the subject matter, all the while remaining philosophically neutral. (...) In this paper I argue that Marion's aim to maintain strict philosophical neutrality interferes with his attempt to respect the subject matter of his own investigation, i.e., the givenness of revelation, since revelation is recognizably given, even as possibility, only in the non-neutral context of an interpretive tradition. I establish the latter claim with recourse to Heidegger's early hermeneutic sketches of ‘primordial Christian religiosity.’ In turn, I call for a phenomenological Destruktion of Marion's work in order to release its potential as a non-neutral investigation of a distinctively Catholic religiosity. (shrink)

This paper sketches an account of public health ethics drawing upon established scholarship in feminist ethics. Health inequities are one of the central problems in public health ethics; a feminist approach leads us to examine not only the connections between gender, disadvantage, and health, but also the distribution of power in the processes of public health, from policy making through to programme delivery. The complexity of public health demands investigation using multiple perspectives and an attention to detail that is capable (...) of identifying the health issues that are important to women, and investigating ways to address these issues. Finally, a feminist account of public health ethics embraces rather than avoids the inescapable political dimensions of public health. (shrink)