It is widely recognised that mainstream economics has failed to translate micro consistently into macro economics and to provide endogenous explanations for the continual changes in the economic system. Since the early 1980s, a growing number of economists have been trying to provide answers to these two key questions by applying an evolutionary approach. This new departure has yielded a rich literature with enormous variety, but the unifying principles connecting the various ideas and views presented are, as yet, not apparent. (...) This 2005 volume brings together fifteen original articles from scholars - each of whom has made a significant contribution to the field - in their common effort to reconstruct economics as an evolutionary science. Using meso economics as an analytical entity to bridge micro and macro economics as well as static and dynamic realms, a unified economic theory emerges. (shrink)

The semantics Vann McGee gives for his 1989 conditional logic is based on Stalnaker’s 1968 semantics but replaces the familiar concept of truth at a world with the novel concept of truth under a hypothesis. Developed here is a semantics of the standard type, in which sentences are true at worlds, only with additional constraints imposed on the accessibility relation and the selection function. McGee conditionals of the form A ⇒ X are translated into Stalnaker conditionals of the form \A (...) > X. An interpretation of the semantics is provided, and a few implications for the theory of indicative conditionals and their probabilities are noted. (shrink)

Mathematics -- Experimental physics -- Chemistry -- Natural history -- Medicine.

In William Angoff's recent article in Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology, he presented several thought-provoking philosophical issues of concern to measurement-oriented psychologists. The first of these issues, the notion of test and item bias, is the topic of the present paper. In his article, he reports that average score differences in the performance on many cognitive tests have appeared among racial or ethnic groups. Twenty to thirty years ago, differential psychologists, summarizing and critically evaluating studies demonstrating performance differences on tests and (...) in other behavior among cultural, ethnic and racial groups, agreed that such group differences indeed existed, but that causal interpretations differed markedly among the investigators at the time. More recently, the focus has shifted to what has been termed test fairness, with the focus falling more upon tests and their inadequacies than the behavior which underlies the tests. Similar findings and conclusions were frequently advanced in physiological tests of strength and endurance which are often used for civil service positions such as those in the fire fighting service and which frequently disadvantage women. The question raised is simply whether the discrimination is fair or not; that is, do given test score differences reflect variation in performance between groups which are reflective of true behavioral differences or are these differences artifactual and embedded in the assessment device itself, whether intentional or not. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS "Success has a thousand fathers" is a familiar expression. And while it is for the readers to judge the success of what follows, ...

This personal account traces a series of studies that led from DNA physical chemistry to anticancer drug mechanisms. Chemical crosslinking as a basis for anticancer drug actions had been suspected since the time of the first clinical reports of the effectiveness of nitrogen mustard in 1946. After the elucidation of the DNA helix‐coil transition, several nearly concurrent findings in the early 1960s established the paradigm of DNA interstrand crosslinking. The DNA filter elution phenomenon was discovered in the early 1970s, and (...) lent itself to the development of practical assays for DNA crosslinks and other DNA lesions in mammalian cells. The assays allowed studies of the effects of DNA damaging agents at pharmacologically or toxicologically relevant doses, and have been widely applied in studies of mutagenic and chemotherapeutic agents. During the period 1979–1986, DNA filter elution studies led to the paradigm of DNA topoisomerases as targets of anticancer drug action, and this has become one of the most active areas of anticancer drug development. (shrink)

BREYSIG: SEIN U. ERK. GESCHICHTL. DINGE BD. 3.