Governments and other food system actors from the private sector, civil society, research and education institutions are being called upon to work together to enhance the sustainability, resilience and inclusiveness of food systems. The analysis presented in this study provides an insight into the process and direction of food system transformation, and the key capabilities required. It portrays the interplay of different internal and external dynamics combined with the capacity of food system actors to connect, forge alliances and commit to (...) specific actions that has enabled countries to move towards a more sustainable food system. (shrink)

We all ‘know’ that public opinion came to prominence in the political vocabulary of the late eighteenth century. It may be that this dates its rise a bit late, but it is not relevant to argue the matter here. My concern is rather that we be equally aware of the purposes for which people made use of the concept. Here I wish to consider various possible contexts for speaking or writing of public opinion, or ‘opinion’, as it was usually called (...) prior to the mid-eighteenth century. It may be possible to define, more fully than heretofore, the work that the expression did in eighteenth-century thought. As contemporary students of public opinion have been learning, an answer to this question may not even be wholly irrelevant to the task of specifying the nature of public opinion in our own time. (shrink)

This book examines the concept of public interest against the background of English politics from the Civil War to the coming of the Hanoverians. These years witnessed both the rise of the modern notion of the public interest as a part of ordinary political language and the growth of a social philosophy of individualism. The new ideas challenged the _status quo_, based on order, reason of state and national power, in the name of legitimate self-interest and respect for the rights (...) of the private person. In presenting a complex set of ideas in their historical context, the author examines both abstract philosophies and the issues of the day as recorded in press, pulpit and law courts. A chapter devoted to economic thought includes a re-assessment of the social assumptions of mercantilism. (shrink)

The present study applies a new method for investigating dynamic unconscious processes. The method consists of selection of words from patient interview and test protocols that in the clinicians' judgments capture the patients' conscious symptom experience and the hypothetical unconscious conflict related to the symptom, subliminal and supraliminal presentation of these words, signal analysis of event-related potentials obtained to the word presentations. Eight phobics and three patients suffering from pathological grief reactions served as subjects. A time-frequency ERP analysis revealed that (...) subjects' ERPs classified the unconscious conflict words better subliminally than supraliminally, while the reverse was true for the conscious symptom words = 2.82, p = .011). The relationship between frequency and latency revealed a similar mirror image pattern for the unconscious conflict and conscious symptom words . This method demonstrated that objective, brain-based evidence for unconscious conflict can be obtained. (shrink)

Focusing on a discussion by Ruddich and Stassen of the ?Remarks on Frazer's Golden Bough?, this paper shows that some of the usual criticisms made by sociologists of Wittgenstein are misplaced. He does not reject causal explanations of beliefs and actions and replace them with some other form of explanation, but dismisses the idea that any explanation is called for here. His argument that the origin of the desire to explain beliefs is to be found in a misconceived parallel between (...) science and magic is explained and discussed. (shrink)

Talents that selectively facilitate the acquisition of high levels of skill are said to be present in some children but not others. The evidence for this includes biological correlates of specific abilities, certain rare abilities in autistic savants, and the seemingly spontaneous emergence of exceptional abilities in young children, but there is also contrary evidence indicating an absence of early precursors of high skill levels. An analysis of positive and negative evidence and arguments suggests that differences in early experiences, preferences, (...) opportunities, habits, training, and practice are the real determinants of excellence. Key Words: exceptional ability; expertise; gift; innate capacity; music; potential; prodigy; specific ability; talent. (shrink)

F. H. Bradley did not write extensively or systematically on the philosophy of religion, and much of what he did write has the character of either tentative speculation or the pre-emptive rebuttal of potential misinterpretations that might threaten his general philosophical position. ‘I admit that on this subject I never had much to say’ he warns. But such a remark should not discourage us from considering his views on this topic, since the disclaimer is typically Bradleian, and more reflective of (...) his high standards for what is required in order to claim to have something to say about some matter than of any genuine lack of opinion. On closer inspection we find that he has, scattered throughout his work, a great many important things to say about this subject. (shrink)

v. 1. Nicomachean ethics. Politics. The Athenian Constitution. Rhetoric. On Poetics.--v. 2. Logic.--v. 3. Physics. Metaphysics. On the soul. Short physical treaties.--v. 4. On the heavens. On generation and corruption. Meteorology. Biological treatises.

This article provides ethical guidance on using race in health research as a variable or in defining the study population. To this end, a plain, non-exhaustive checklist is provided for researchers and research ethics committees, preceded by a brief introduction on the need for justification when using race as a variable or in defining a study population, the problem of exoticism, that distinctions pertain between race, ethnicity and ancestry, the problematic naming of races, and that race does not serve well (...) as a presumed biological construct in genetic research. (shrink)

Evaluates trade-offs and uncertainties inherent in achieving sustainable energy, analyzes the major energy technologies, and provides a framework for assessing policy options.

James A Edwards1, David W Mathes21Department of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, Skagit Valley Hospital, Mount Vernon, WA, USA; 2Division of Plastic Surgery, University of Washington Medical Center, Seattle, WA, USA: The surgical history of transplantation in the modern era begins in 1956 with the successful transplantation of a kidney between identical twins. Since then the field of transplantation has seen remarkable advancements in both surgical techniques and our understanding and ability to manipulate the immune response. Composite tissue allotransplantation involves the (...) transplantation of any combination of vascularized skin, subcutaneous tissue, blood vessels, nerves, muscle, and bone. Orthotopic hand transplantation is considered the first clinical example of CTA and has seen success at many different centers worldwide. Facial allotransplantation is a recent development in the field of CTA and the first successful case was performed as recently as November 2005. Since then there have been a number of successful facial transplants. The purpose of this paper is to examine some of the issues surrounding facial transplantation including the complex ethical issues, the surgical and clinical issues, cost and administrative issues, and future directions for this new, exciting, and controversial field.Keywords: composite tissue allograft, facial transplantation. (shrink)

Let S denote the variety of Sugihara algebras. We prove that the lattice (K) of subquasivarieties of a given quasivariety K S is finite if and only if K is generated by a finite set of finite algebras. This settles a conjecture by Tokarz [6]. We also show that the lattice (S) is not modular.

A number of nonmonotonic reasoning formalisms have been introduced to model the set of beliefs of an agent. These include the extensions of a default logic, the stable models of a general logic program, and the extensions of a truth maintenance system among others. In [13] and [16], the authors introduced nonmonotomic rule systems as a nonlogical generalization of all essential features of such formulisms so that theorems applying to all could be proven once and for all. In this paper, (...) we extend Rieter's normal default theories, which have a number of the nice properties which make them a desirable context for belief revision, to the setting of nonmonotonic rule systems. Reiter defined a default theory to be normal if all the rules of the default theory satisfied a simple syntatic condition. However, this simple syntatic condition has no obvious analogue in the setting of nonmonotonic rule systems. Nevertheless, an analysis of the proofs of the main results on normal default theories reveals that the proofs do not rely on the particular syntactic form of the rules but rather on the fact that all rules have a certain consistency property. This led us to extend the notion of normal default theories with respect to a general consistency property. This extended notion of normal default theories, which we call Forward Chaining normal , is easily lifted to nonmonotomic rule systems and hence applies to general logic programs and truth maintenance. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to introduce the reader to some intellectual origins of Simone Weil’s philosophy through a summary of and comment on her Lectures on Philosophy given when she was a teacher at a girls’ school at Roanne in the Loire region of central France. The article provides a comment on Simone Weil’s Lectures on Philosophy. There is a brief Introduction followed by a summary of Weil’s life which indicates her various interest as a religious thinker, mystic, (...) anarchist, and political activist and some of the important academic commentaries on these aspects of her life and work. The source of the Lectures on Philosophy edited by her pupil Anne Reynaud-Guérithault is then discussed followed by a detailed summary of and comment on the Lectures themselves. They are grouped under five headings which are considered in turn. These are: The materialist point of view; after the discovery of mind; politics and social theory; ethics and aesthetics; miscellaneous topics and essay plans. There is a further discussion of Simone Weil’s later philosophical thought which shows that what she published reveals classical learning and intellectual quality, but also the several antimonies with which she struggled in her thinking, the two major influences on her thought being Ancient Greece and Christianity. There is a short Conclusion and Bibliography. (shrink)