The U.S. Food and Drug Administration's rationale for supporting the development and approval of BiDil for heart failure specifically in black patients was based on under-powered, post hoc subgroup analyses of two relatively old trials , which were further complicated by substantial covariate imbalances between racial groups. Indeed, the only statistically significant difference observed between black and white patients was found without any adjustment for potential confounders in samples that were unlikely to have been adequately randomized. Meanwhile, because the accepted (...) baseline therapy for heart failure has substantially improved since these trials took place, their results cannot be combined with data from the more recent trial amongst black patients alone. There is therefore little scientific evidence to support the approval of BiDil only for use in black patients, and the FDA's rationale fails to consider the ethical consequences of recognizing racial categories as valid markers of innate biological difference, and permitting the development of group-specific therapies that are subject to commercial incentives rather than scientific evidence or therapeutic imperatives. This paper reviews the limitations in the scientific evidence used to support the approval of BiDil only for use in black patients; calls for further analysis of the V-HeFT I and II data which might clarify whether responses to H-I vary by race; and evaluates the consequences of commercial incentives to develop racialized medicines. We recommend that the FDA revise the procedures they use to examine applications for race-based therapies to ensure that these are based on robust scientific claims and do not undermine the aims of the 1992 Revitalization Act. (shrink)

This paper explores the comparative dynamics of self-mutilation among young, contemporary, female self-cutters, and the holy stigmatics of the Middle Ages. It addresses the types of personalities that engage in self-mutilation and how some manipulate their self-inflicted pain into a method for healing and empowerment. The similarities between teenage cutters and female stigmatics are striking in their mutual psychoanalytical need for self-alteration as a means of escaping their own disassociative identities; and offers evidence of how their mutual bricolage of pain, (...) imagining, languaging, and subsequent self-mutilation often provide a transformation from bodies under siege to a resemblance of health and transformation. (shrink)

This study was a preliminary exploration of the value changes taking place in the United States since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in New York, which was a significant emotional event or cultural upheaval. Rokeach told us that "a person's total value system may undergo change as a result of socialization, therapy, or cultural upheaval..." (Rokeach, The Nature of Human Values, 1973, p. 37). The researchers explored the value changes of 500 aviation industry employees (...) before the attack and 500 after the attack. The statistically significant research results showed a total of twenty-seven of thirty-six values changed. Before the attack respondents valued much higher self-esteem and self-actualization values like A Sense of Accomplishment and Self-Respect. After the attack respondents placed a much higher value importance on survival, safety and security values like A World at Peace, Freedom, Family Security, National Security, Mature Love, Salvation, and True Friendship. (shrink)

Cognitive control of physical activity and sedentary behavior is receiving increased attention in the neuroscientific and behavioral medicine literature as a means of better understanding and improving the self-regulation of physical activity. Enhancing individuals’ cognitive control capacities may provide a resilient means to increase physical activity and reduce sedentary behavior. First, this paper reviews emerging evidence of the antecedence of cognitive control abilities in successful self-regulation of physical activity, and in precipitating self-regulation failure that predisposes to sedentary behavior. We then (...) highlight the brain networks that may underpin the cognitive control and self-regulation of physical activity, including the default mode network, prefrontal cortical networks and brain regions and pathways associated with reward. We then discuss research on cognitive training interventions that document improved cognitive control and that suggest promise of influencing physical activity regulation. Key cognitive training components likely to be the most effective at improving self-regulation are also highlighted. The review concludes with suggestions for future research. (shrink)

Background: Pre-licensure ethics nursing education does not adequately prepare and instill confidence in nurses to address ethical issues, and yet ethics education provides nurses with greater confidence to take moral action, which can mitigate the negative effects of moral distress. Objectives: To assess the feasibility and acceptability of a nursing ethics education program that included simulated case-based ethics competencies as a form of evaluation. The program aimed at building nurses’ ethical knowledge and confidence to respond to ethical challenges in practice. (...) Research design: A prospective, longitudinal, correlational, single-cohort feasibility study using an investigator-developed survey and intervention field data. Participants and research context: Registered nurses were recruited from an academic quaternary-care medical center and 9 small- to mid-sized regional hospitals within one health system in the Midwest United States. Ethical considerations: IRB approval was obtained. Participants could complete the educational program regardless of research process participation. Findings: Of 20 participants, 19 (95%) provided post-program surveys and 18 completed competencies. Median (IQR) scores with quartiles for scheduling, timing, and length of sessions were all 10.0 [9.0, 10.0], and participants perceived that the content was interesting, increased knowledge and confidence in ethics, increased skills in providing ethical care, and would recommend the program to colleagues. Of factors, an increase in ethics knowledge had the highest “always agree” (17, 89.5%) response. Most participants reported that ethics competencies were appropriate 9.0 [9.0, 10.0] and sufficiently challenging 10.0 [9.0, 10.0]. Discussion: The education program developed nurses’ ethics knowledge and confidence. The single-cohort feasibility design provided early-stage intervention outcomes; however, a larger randomized controlled trial would substantiate program value. Conclusion: This novel ethics education program was highly feasible and acceptable to hospital-based nurses who reported increased knowledge and confidence in providing ethical care. Simulated case-based ethics competencies were an appropriate evaluation method. (shrink)

We report the identification of a recurrent, 520-kb 16p12.1 microdeletion associated with childhood developmental delay. The microdeletion was detected in 20 of 11,873 cases compared with 2 of 8,540 controls and replicated in a second series of 22 of 9,254 cases compared with 6 of 6,299 controls. Most deletions were inherited, with carrier parents likely to manifest neuropsychiatric phenotypes compared to non-carrier parents. Probands were more likely to carry an additional large copy-number variant when compared to matched controls. The clinical (...) features of individuals with two mutations were distinct from and/or more severe than those of individuals carrying only the co-occurring mutation. Our data support a two-hit model in which the 16p12.1 microdeletion both predisposes to neuropsychiatric phenotypes as a single event and exacerbates neurodevelopmental phenotypes in association with other large deletions or duplications. Analysis of other microdeletions with variable expressivity indicates that this two-hit model might be more generally applicable to neuropsychiatric disease. © 2010 Nature America, Inc. All rights reserved. (shrink)

This collection brings together fourteen contributions by authors from around the globe. Each of the contributions engages with questions about how local and global bioethical issues are made to be comparable, in the hope of redressing basic needs and demands for justice. These works demonstrate the significant conceptual contributions that can be made through feminists' attention to debates in a range of interrelated fields, especially as they formulate appropriate responses to developments in medical technology, global economics, population shifts, and poverty.

Dive et al. argue to limit the scope, scale, and quantity of results in genomic screening programs at the population level. Their analysis offers two interrelated reasons for this recommendation: f...

In a lengthy article E. Scerri and J. Worrall put forward the case for a novel ‘accommodationist’ version of the events surrounding the development of Mendeleef's Periodic Table 1869–1899. However these authors lay undue stress on the fact that President of the Royal Society of London Spottiswoode made absolutely no mention of Mendeleef's famous predictions in the Davy Medal eulogy in 1883 and undue stress on the fact that Cleve's classic 1879 Scandium paper contained an acknowledgement of Mendeleef's prior prediction (...) of eka-boron.They also fail to analyse in any detail the so-called ‘rare earth problem’ which, in the opinion of this author, causes problems for their account but not for a predictivist account. (shrink)

R. Renehan's ingenious solutions to the problems of Symphosius 42. 1 and Anth. Lat. 207 in this journal , 471 f.) are much to be welcomed. On the other hand, I do not think that his defence of the manuscript reading in Anth. Lat. 24. 3 marcent post rorem violae, rosa perdit odorem holds water. Taking rorem as = rorem marinum he explains that ‘the poet is not presenting us with a piece of botanical information about the relative seasons of (...) the violet and rosemary; he means rather that all flowers wither and fade’. Actually, however, the poet on this showing does present information; and whether the information is botanically correct or not , that is an odd way to make his point. Stranger still is his choice of rosemary out of all the fading flowers of field and garden. It was bound to be I misunderstood. As Renehan indicates, ros = ros marinus is supported only by Virg. Georg. 2. 212–13, where the identity has been doubted, and Plin. HN 24. 100, where ex rore supra dicto refers back to ros marinum in 99. Renehan may well be the first reader not to take rorem as dew. And an evergeen shrub makes a singularly unfortunate illustration of floral decay, even though the shrub does produce a flower. Pliny classes it with herbs. (shrink)

Debates over the causes and consequences of the “Axial Age” – and its relevance for understanding and explaining “modernity” – continue to rage within and across a wide variety of academic disciplines, including anthropology, sociology, archaeology, history, social theory, and cognitive science. We present a computational model that synthesizes three leading theories about the emergence of axial civilizations. Although these theories are often treated as competitors, our computational model shows how their most important conceptual insights and empirically based causal claims (...) can be integrated within a single computational architecture. The plausibility of the latter is supported by the results of our simulation experiments, which were able to simulate the emergence and growth of an axial civilization. The model shows how the relevant theories can be rendered consistent, while challenging the claims of any one to comprehensiveness. (shrink)

This paper, accessible for a general philosophical audience having only some fleeting acquaintance with set-theory and category-theory, concerns the philosophy of mathematics, specifically the bearing of category-theory on the foundations of mathematics. We argue for six claims. (I) A founding theory for category-theory based on the primitive concept of a set or a class is worthwile to pursue. (II) The extant set-theoretical founding theories for category-theory are conceptually flawed. (III) The conceptual distinction between a set and a class can be (...) seen to be formally codified in Ackermann's axiomatisation of set-theory. (IV) A slight but significant deductive extension of Ackermann's theory of sets and classes founds Cantorian set-theory as well as category-theory, and therefore can pass as a founding theory of the whole of mathematics. (V) The extended theory does not suffer from the conceptual flaws of the extant set-theoretical founding theories. (VI) The extended theory is not only conceptually but also logically superior to the competing set-theories because its consistency can be proved on the basis of weaker assumptions than the consistency of the competition. (shrink)

R. Renehan's ingenious solutions to the problems of Symphosius 42. 1 and Anth. Lat. 207 in this journal, 471 f.) are much to be welcomed. On the other hand, I do not think that his defence of the manuscript reading in Anth. Lat. 24. 3 marcent post rorem violae, rosa perdit odorem holds water. Taking rorem as = rorem marinum he explains that ‘the poet is not presenting us with a piece of botanical information about the relative seasons of the (...) violet and rosemary; he means rather that all flowers wither and fade’. Actually, however, the poet on this showing does present information; and whether the information is botanically correct or not, that is an odd way to make his point. Stranger still is his choice of rosemary out of all the fading flowers of field and garden. It was bound to be I misunderstood. As Renehan indicates, ros = ros marinus is supported only by Virg. Georg. 2. 212–13, where the identity has been doubted, and Plin. HN 24. 100, where ex rore supra dicto refers back to ros marinum in 99. Renehan may well be the first reader not to take rorem as dew. And an evergeen shrub makes a singularly unfortunate illustration of floral decay, even though the shrub does produce a flower. Pliny classes it with herbs. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Annual Meeting of the Society for Buddhist-Christian Studies:Atlanta, Georgia, USA, 29-30 October 2010Sandra Costen KunzThis past fall the Society for Buddhist-Christian Studies (SBCS) presented two sessions at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion (AAR) in Atlanta, Georgia. On Friday afternoon, 29 October, an extremely well-attended and in many ways inspiring session titled "The Scholarly Contributions of Rita M. Gross" was presented. The second panel, titled (...) "Can/Should Buddhists and Christians Do Theology/ Buddhology Together?" was presented on Saturday morning, 30 October. It also drew a considerable crowd.Each of the six members of Friday's panel addressed a different aspect of the work of Rita Gross, longtime SBCS leader and now professor emerita of comparative studies in religion, University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. She is also a senior teacher (lopon) in Jetsun Khandro Rinpoche's U.S. Lotus Garden center. The session was organized and moderated by current SBCS president Miriam M. Levering, professor of religious studies and Asian studies at University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and an international advisor at Rissho Ko-Sekei in Tokyo. I will give highlights from the panelists' presentations in the order in which they spoke.Kathleen Erndl, associate professor of religion at Florida State University, focused on Gross's work as teacher and mentor. Although she taught primarily undergraduates, Gross, in her writing, speaking, and generous conversation with rising scholars, not only moved the field toward taking religious practices and women's religious experience more seriously but also had a huge influence on how "women in religion" is taught. Gross was one of the first scholars to use the term "androcentric." Nancy Auer Falk, professor emerita of comparative religion at Western Michigan University, coedited Unspoken Worlds: Women's Religious Lives (1981) with Gross. Now in its third edition, this groundbreaking collection of case studies watered the flowering of cross-cultural studies in the lived religion of women. Falk reminded us of Gross's role in the election of the first female member of the AAR's board and the establishment of its working group on women and religion. Judith Simmer-Brown, professor of religious [End Page 221] studies at Naropa University, focused on Gross's work in Tibetan Buddhist studies, especially her pointing out the discrepancy between the prophetic voices about women's roles in early Buddhist texts and Tibetan monasticism's institutionalized androcentrism. Simmer-Brown emphasized the importance of Gross's work in Buddhist theology—for example, her deconstructing "Theravada/Mahayana/Vajrayana put-downs" and "incipient fundamentalisms" in Western Buddhism.The fourth panelist, Paul F. Knitter, professor of theology, world religions, and culture at Union Theological Seminary, described Gross's contributions to Buddhist-Christian dialogue, recounting that they met at the Society's founding conference in 1980. He said, "Rita is the Christian theologians' friendly gadfly, always asking questions that make us very uncomfortable." Particularly provocative has been her insistence that claims on the part of religious communities to religious superiority or exclusive truth are incompatible with support of religious diversity. SBCS vice president Terry Muck, dean of the E. Stanley Jones School of World Mission and Evangelism at Asbury Theological Seminary, spoke about Gross's contributions to the society, noting that she has held every office except treasurer. He and Gross coedited Buddhist-Christian Studies from 1995-2005, in part because the society had decided— after founding editor David Chappell retired—that the ideal would be one male and one female editor and one Buddhist and one Christian editor. He usually handled the work with the publisher while she usually worked with article selection along with the reviewers. Rosemary Radford Ruether, professor emerita at the Pacific School of Religion, reviewed Gross's contributions to feminist scholarship. She reminded us that while still a student at the University of Chicago, Gross crafted a fundamental methodology for studying women and religion and insisted that turning a blind eye to 80 percent of the religious practice in various cultures is simply bad empiricism. Gross has consistently pointed out that colonialism is connected with privileging males and texts, Reuther claimed, and that no one studies religion with "objectivity."Gross's response to these presentations focused on... (shrink)

In responding to Ms Rowell’s commentary on her original paper the author points out that the job of all bioethicists, namely, speaking truth to power, is a daunting task which is unlikely to succeed “if we do not learn to ask for and to accept, to offer and to provide, moral support and meaningful help.”In my article “The Olivieri debacle: where were the heroes of bioethics?”1 I make four comments about Ms Rowell’s involvement in the case. In my first comment (...) relating to Ms Rowell, I suggest that a careful reader of the Naimark report could reasonably conclude “that the role of bioethics in helping to resolve the controversy was, at best, very limited”. In reaching this conclusion, I relied on the findings of the two official reports/inquiries about this case. Though the two reports reach different conclusions about the case, there appears to be agreement on the very limited role of bioethics. As noted in my original article, in the 160 page Naimark report there are but a few paragraphs about bioethics and Ms Rowell’s role in the Olivieri case. This is surprising, and I say as much in my article. In the 540 page report of the Committee of Inquiry, which Ms Rowell describes as “a review that I believe to provide a public report of integrity”, little more detail is provided regarding Ms Rowell’s role. I included all references to Ms Rowell from the first report in the original article. I did not do so with the second report. This was not done to diminish any contribution Ms Rowell might have made. In my view, no new evidence germane to the points I wanted to make was provided in the text that I did not include in my article.In …. (shrink)

Cet article explore le moment où le thème de la formation professionnelle des femmes, longtemps négligé, s’invite dans le débat public sous la pression d’organisations internationales et nationales. À partir d’un corpus de documentaires et reportages filmés diffusés à la télévision française entre 1958 et 1973 et de différents fonds d’archives, il analyse l’émergence d’une figure de femme en formation professionnelle féminine, celle d’une femme au foyer souhaitant (re)trouver un travail après une longue interruption pour raison familiale. Cette figure en (...) vient à éclipser toute autre image, notamment celle de la salariée en formation. Les documents filmés sont pris ici comme des révélateurs des manières de penser la formation et son public dans une période de transition historique, celle d’une remise en question des rôles socio-sexuels en particulier vis-à-vis du travail. (shrink)

Much of Essler''s work has been devoted to bringing science andphilosophy together for the purpose of conceptual clarification. Oneparticularly interesting area for such cooperation between science andphilosophy has been relativity theory. In this paper I will consider oneinstance of such interplay: the transformation that our notions of rotationand rigidity have undergone in general relativity and what this process canteach us. I will start by saying a little about the physics of the situation andthen go on to some philosophical observations about (...) meaning and theory. (shrink)

Philosophy of history is the Cinderella of contemporary philosophy. Philosophers rarely believe that the issues dealt with by philosophers of history are matters of any great theoretical interest or urgency. In their view philosophy of history rarely goes beyond the question of how results that have already been achieved elsewhere can or should be applied to the domain of historical writing. Moreover, contemporary philosophers of history have done desperately little to dispel the low opinion that their colleagues have of them. (...) In this essay I argue that Arthur Danto is the exception confirming the rule, for Danto’s philosophy of representation may help us understand how texts relate to what they are about. The main shortcoming of philosophy of language undoubtedly is that it never bothered to investigate the philosophical mysteries of the text. The writing of history is a philosophical goldmine and we must praise Danto for having reminded us of this. (shrink)

We initiate the study of computable presentations of real and complex C*-algebras under the program of effective metric structure theory. With the group situation as a model, we develop corresponding notions of recursive presentations and word problems for C*-algebras, and show some analogous results hold in this setting. Famously, every finitely generated group with a computable presentation is computably categorical, but we provide a counterexample in the case of C*-algebras. On the other hand, we show every finite-dimensional C*-algebra is computably (...) categorical. (shrink)