Throughout the biological and biomedical sciences there is a growing need for, prescriptive ‘minimum information’ (MI) checklists specifying the key information to include when reporting experimental results are beginning to find favor with experimentalists, analysts, publishers and funders alike. Such checklists aim to ensure that methods, data, analyses and results are described to a level sufficient to support the unambiguous interpretation, sophisticated search, reanalysis and experimental corroboration and reuse of data sets, facilitating the extraction of maximum value from data sets (...) them. However, such ‘minimum information’ MI checklists are usually developed independently by groups working within representatives of particular biologically- or technologically-delineated domains. Consequently, an overview of the full range of checklists can be difficult to establish without intensive searching, and even tracking thetheir individual evolution of single checklists may be a non-trivial exercise. Checklists are also inevitably partially redundant when measured one against another, and where they overlap is far from straightforward. Furthermore, conflicts in scope and arbitrary decisions on wording and sub-structuring make integration difficult. This presents inhibit their use in combination. Overall, these issues present significant difficulties for the users of checklists, especially those in areas such as systems biology, who routinely combine information from multiple biological domains and technology platforms. To address all of the above, we present MIBBI (Minimum Information for Biological and Biomedical Investigations); a web-based communal resource for such checklists, designed to act as a ‘one-stop shop’ for those exploring the range of extant checklist projects, and to foster collaborative, integrative development and ultimately promote gradual integration of checklists. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Werke, and: Vol. 1, Schriften zum Spinozastreit (1998), and: Vol. 2, Schriften zum transzendentalen Idealismus (2004), and: Vol. 3, Schriften zum Streit um die göttlichen Dinge und ihre Offenbarung (2000)Rolf AhlersFriedrich Heinrich Jacobi. Werke. Edited by Klaus Hammacher and Walter Jaeschke. Vol. 1, Schriften zum Spinozastreit ( 1998). Vol. 2, Schriften zum transzendentalen Idealismus ( 2004). Vol. 3, Schriften zum Streit um die göttlichen Dinge und ihre (...) Offenbarung ( 2000). Pp. x + 640. Cloth, € 168,00 (Vol. 1). Pp. vii + 823. Cloth, € 264,00 (Vol. 2). Pp. vi + 262. Cloth, € 78,00 (Vol. 3). Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1998, 2000, 2004.The new critical Jacobi Werke Ausgabe (JWA), accompanied by four volumes of the still incomplete Briefwechsel (in progress at Frommann-Holzboog Publishers since 1981), is a masterpiece of research on Jacobi, early German Idealism and early Romanticism. Now [End Page 491] available are Volumes I, II and III. Volume I (1998) carries the title Schriften zum Spinozastreit and contains Jacobi's Spinozabriefe in the three editions of 1785, 1789, and 1819, Wider Mendelssohns Beschuldigungen of 1786, and the Vorbericht (Preface) of the third edition of the Spinozabriefe of 1819. The running text of all writings contains all editions, variant readings clearly identifiable with page references in the margins, subscripted to identify the various editions. This method enables the identification of various disputes which Jacobi provoked and in which his writings played a role. The Anhang, appendix, to all texts contains a) a list of abbreviations, and b) the editorial principles used and also a description of the circumstances leading to the writing of the texts. But the bulk of the Anhang of each volume is c) the "Kommentar," the commentary. It provides the key to the highly nuanced and, without guidance, the often cryptic allusions and references of Jacobi's texts. This commentary (separately bound in Volumes I and II) really brings Jacobi's work to life. The end of the Anhang contains d) a bibliography of all works mentioned not only by Jacobi himself but also emerging in the literary debate unlocked by the commentary, as well as e) an extensive index of names. Volume II (2004) is Schriften zur Transzendentalphilosophie, and contains David Hume of 1787, the Sendschreiben an Fichte, Ueberflüssiges Taschenbuch, both of 1799, and other essays such as Three Letters to Köppen of 1803. Volume III (2000) is Schriften zum Streit um die Göttlichen Dinge and contains mainly the famous essay Von den Göttlichen Dingen of 1811 plus three other writings. This book deals with the controversy between Schelling and Jacobi while both were at Munich. Other major works of Jacobi, such as the novel Allwill, are to follow in later volumes.This critical edition of Fr. H. Jacobi (1743–1819) definitively revises the standard interpretation of the man and his work. The standard interpretation (advocated by such figures as Fr. Schlegel, Moses Mendelssohn, and H. Heine) views his thought as promoting irrationalism, specifically a religious irrationalism of faith, taking form in "personalism." Heine spoke of Jacobi as a "whiney old biddy." Fr. Schlegel characterized Jacobi's salto mortale as the "leap into the arms of divine mercy," promoting an irrational "philosophical non-philosophy" (KFSA XVIII 13, Nr. 101). Schlegel criticized Jacobi at the very end of in his Woldemar Review of 1796 thus: "So (Jacobi's) Woldemar is really an invitation to meet God..., and (his) theological masterpiece ends, as do all moral excesses, with a salto mortale... into the abyss of divine mercy" (Früher Idealismus und Frühromantik PlS I.1, ed. W. Jaeschke [Hbg: Meiner, 1995], 270). Carl Philipp Moritz credited Jacobi with "fanaticism and superstition."In contrast, Jacobi himself was quite critical of this characterization of his thought, especially in the Sendschreiben of 1799, and earlier in his Briefe. Jacobi already in 1786 thought it was "outrageous" for Mendelssohn to suggest he surrenders a philosophy of reason in favor of the Christian faith, or worse. He addresses this problem, which is still today the dominant view of the "irrationality" of his "leap," with admirable clarity in his letter to Neeb of May 30, 1817: "I do not at all advocate a head-first... (shrink)

Within this 1963 text, Professor Watson writes as a physicist seeking to understand how it is that physics goes on at an ever increasing pace to reveal new ...

Effort is then well-nigh indescribable. Not wholly so, else it would be meaningless. Description is a matter of degree: who can fully describe red or wet? To be sure, description comes down in the end to the pointing to certain given qualities or relations or events which are just there. All connotation rests on denotation, though it may be something more. But the unique positive thing about effort is its originality; to which indeed we can point, since every one experiences (...) it in himself. Yet common to all men though it is, it is so intangible! more spirit than body, more force than substance. We should perhaps best call it not a datum but a factum, or better still, a fiat, a doing rather than a deed, yet not merely a becoming, for we see things coming to be, we hear a melody progressing and touch a moving object. Effort, dynamic as it is, is not just the process, rather it is--we must re-iterate--the start, the initiative of the process. Nor is the experience of it properly called mystical. Even if mystical experience were indescribable, as has been wrongly alleged, these would be two quite different indescribables, the one receptive, the other originative. All we can say perhaps is that effort is analogous to the push that starts the ball rolling, not the motion of the ball, not the acceleration, but the enforcement of these. Its witness does not lie in its value as explanation of the motion; the witness is direct, the immediate experience which every man has. It seems to be no object of scientific investigation in the technical sense. It cannot be measured by itself, as acceleration and motion are measured. That is why physics has abandoned the old notion of force, the physical analogue of effort, replacing it by mass-acceleration. That is why the rationalists in modern philosophy look askance at this direct experience of man, so intangible that we can draw from it no logical implications. For it has no structure. Its characteristic is not clearness nor distinctness. We might be tempted to say it is like a point in space, too small to be envisaged, yet not a zero; but it is more like a dot or spark, so small as to be just seen, so small as to have no visible spread, no content that we can analyze to draw out rational consequences connecting it with other things. Here too we see why the contemplative thinker seldom believes in free choice, which the natural man naturally accepts. Free choice is the kind of thing that might well belong to this experience; free choice is origination. Not necessarily that all effort is freely made. The baby exercises no free choice when he sucks hard at the nipple, nor the adult when he wrestles for his life with an enemy. But they want, need, desire; that is the point. Desire--that is the essence of effort. Desire has the originative quality; it comes as it were out of one's self and from no other source, it is what we want, our self insisting on its own. But the business is so deep within that it is easily overlooked, or deliberately excluded from the gaze, and without a qualm. We might say it is too near to be noticed, or too deep down to obtrude itself, as the water in the well is easy to see, but not the spring at the bottom of the well. Effort disappears from the scene when the thinker is calmly gazing; but when he acts it is felt, and strongly felt. It is in fact the very essence of the self, the well-spring of its worth and its growth. A man is what he does. His worth lies in what he makes. All that he is responsible for, all that he earns, is credited with, or guilty of, comes from this innermost source. So thinks the practical man, so we all believe when we are conducting our lives in intercourse with one another and with nature. But for the contemplative attitude there is here too little of clear articulation, of object-matter for analysis; no use can be made of it in a deductive system. So the system-builders discard it. (shrink)

This paper considers the relationship between G. H. von Wright's solution to the paradoxes of confirmation and his "Principal Theorem of Confirmation". The former utilizes the order of our knowledge of the qualities of confirming instances of an hypothesis; the latter states the way in which an instance contributes to the probability of an hypothesis. It is shown that these two, as stated by von Wright, are logically incompatible. Then the most thorough possible emendation of the paradoxes solution is considered, (...) and it is shown that this still prohibits use of the "Principal Theorem" to confirm hypotheses stating necessary causal conditions, and to confirm by deliberate experiment hypotheses stating sufficient causal conditions. It is concluded that any solution of the paradoxes must rest solely upon the relation of the data to the hypothesis involved. (shrink)

For two hundred years, Americans have believed that they have an obligation to improve the lot of humanity, a belief that has consistently shaped U.S. foreign policy. Yet within this consensus, there are two competing schools of thought: the "exemplarist" school (Brands' term) which holds that what America chiefly owes the world is the benign example of a well-functioning democracy, and the "vindicationist" school which argues that force must sometimes supplement a good example. In this book, H.W. Brands traces the (...) evolution of these two schools as they emerged in the thinking and writing of the most important public thinkers of the past two centuries. (shrink)

L'A. soutient, contre Germain Grisez, Joseph Boyle, John Finnis et William May, que le contrôle naturel des naissances pratiqué avec une intention mauvaise n'est pas contraception. Il montre que les auteurs identifient de façon incorrecte la fin prochaine de la contraception comme choix qu'il n'y ait pas d'enfant, alors que la fin prochaine véritable est d'empêcher un enfant de venir au monde . Ainsi donc, puisque en NFP un couple ne cherche pas à empêcher la venue au monde d'un enfant, (...) NFP n'implique pas d'action contraceptive. L'A. soutient aussi qu'identifier la fin prochaine comme choix qu'il n'y ait pas d'enfant ne spécifie pas de façon adéquate une classe homogène d'actes objectifs, bien que cela spécifie une classe homogène d'actes moraux. (shrink)

In One Priest argues for the contradictoriness of Unity. The argument is that the unity of complex things is contradictory. It is contradictory that there are complex wholes composed of many parts. But there are. Thus, the explanation of unity has to be a contradictory entity, a gluon, which both is and is not an object. The book then develops and utilises a theory of gluons. The argument for the contradictoriness of Unity is crucial; without it there is no motivation (...) for the theory of gluons. It fails. It does so because ‘because’ is a sentential connective. So what follows it must be a sentence, not a list. So Priest is wrong to say that in a complex whole there must be something, an entity, which binds the parts together. (shrink)

The recent discussions about alternative sources of human embryonic stem cells , while stirring new interest in the developmental potential of the various abnormal embryos or constructs proposed as such sources, also raise questions about the potential of the derived embryonic stem cells. The data on the developmental potential of embryonic stem cells that seem relevant for ethical considerations and aspects of patentability are discussed. Particular attention is paid to the meaning of “totipotency, omnipotency and pluripotency” as illustrated by a (...) comparison of the developmental potential of three-dimensional clusters of blastomeres , embryonic stem cells, somatic or stem cells or other somatic cells. This paper focuses on embryoid bodies and on direct cloning by tetraploid complementation. Usage and patenting of these cells cannot be considered to be ethically sound as long as totipotency and tetraploid complementability of embryonic stem cells are not excluded for the specific cell line in question. Testing this poses an ethical problem in itself and needs to be discussed in the future. (shrink)