The historical making of human dignity is usually understood either as a result of a progressive history of the recognition of the human being’s worthiness or as an upward equalization of ranks. Th...

AimBased on the Theory of Reasoned Action, we examined whether attitudes of nurses from different ethnic groups, subjective norms, behavioral intentions, assessments of relationships and communication were associated with their perceptions of the quality of perinatal care provided to lesbian women.BackgroundNurses administer healthcare, provide pertinent information and consultation to lesbians from pregnancy planning through birth.IntroductionDuring the past few decades, worldwide, there has been a rise in lesbian-parenting. Despite the changes in Israeli society’s public and legal reality, intolerance and discrimination to (...) the homosexual population is still prevalent in Israel’s healthcare system.MethodsA cross-sectional study conducted between 12/2015-4/2016. Of the 270 nurses approached, 184 completed a self-report anonymous questionnaire.FindingsThis is an important and timely study reflecting nurses’ perceptions of the quality of perinatal care provided to lesbians. The study findings reflect that attitudes, subjective norms, behavioral intentions, assessments of relationships and communication of nurses from different ethnic groups are associated with their perceptions of the quality of perinatal care provided to the lesbians. The hierarchical regression analysis demonstrated that attitudes, subjective norms, behavioral intentions, assessments of relationships and communication of nurses contributed 56% to the variance of nurses’ perception of their own quality of perinatal care.DiscussionTRA conceptualization predicted the quality of care of nurses from different ethnic groups treating lesbians in a perinatal setting.ConclusionTRA provides a useful framework for understanding and predicting the motivational effect of health care personnel with the lesbian population, being at risk for stigmatization and receiving less quality perinatal care.Implications for nursing and heath policyOur findings revealed the importance of formulating a recognized policy in the field of LGBT medicine at the national level. Further training of nurses as to the lesbians’ unique health needs, might improve the nurses’ relationships and communication as well as the quality of perinatal nursing care. (shrink)

Inhaltsverzeichnis/Table of Contents:IntroductionAntónio ZILHÃO: Folk-Psychology, Rationality and Human ActionJoão BRANQUINHO: The Problem of Cognitive DynamicsJ.P. MONTEIRO: Hume, Induction and Single ExperimentsMarco RUFFINO: The Primacy of Concepts and the Priority of Judgments in Frege's LogicJoão Vergílio Gallerani CUTER: Die unanwendbare Arithmetik des TractatusSílvio PINTO: Wittgenstein's Anti-PlatonismFernando FERREIRA: A Substitutional Framework for Arithmetical ValidityJ.R. CROCA & R.N. MOREIRA: Indeterminism Versus CausalismLuíz MONIZ PEREIRA: The Logical Impingement of Artifical Intelligence.

INCONTINENCE, HONOURING SUNK COSTS AND RATIONALITY According to a basic principle of rationality, the decision to engage in a course of action should be determined solely by the analysis of its consequences. Thus, considerations associated with previous use of resources should have no bearing on an agent’s decision-making process. Frequently, however, agents persist carrying on an activity they themselves judge to be nonoptimal under the circumstances because they have already allocated resources to that activity. When this is the case, agents (...) are said to be honouring sunk costs. Honouring sunk costs is thus typically viewed as irrational economic behaviour. Two striking findings of the psychological literature on the sunk cost effect are that it is, in general, not lessened by having taken previously courses in economics, and that agents who did take such courses and that do honour sunk costs seem to be frequently aware of a cognitive dissonance in their behaviour. Davidson’s account of the possibility conditions of incontinent action renders continent action materially unfeasible. The very idea of incontinent action becomes thus a hollow one. I’ll present an alternative description of these possibility conditions that renders continent action materially feasible, and both, continent and incontinent action, cognitively plausible. In a nutshell, my proposal rests upon the drawing of an essential cognitive contrast between explicit processes of deliberative reasoning and lower level heuristic procedures. I conclude the paper arguing that my redescription of incontinent action accounts for the above mentioned cognitive dissonance effect better than the alternatives and that viewing at least an important subset of behaviours of honouring sunk costs as incontinent actions will enable us to consider them as peculiar manifestations of a more general and meaningful pattern in human behaviour. (shrink)

Is our moral cognition “colored” by the language(s) that we speak? Despite the centrality of language to political life and agency, limited attempts have been made thus far in contemporary political philosophy to consider this possibility. We therefore set out to explore the possible influence of linguistic relativity effects on political thinking in linguistically diverse societies. We begin by introducing the facts and fallacies of the “linguistic relativity” principle, and explore the various ways in which they “color,” often covertly, current (...) normative debates. To illustrate this, we focus on two key Rawlsian concepts: the original position and public reason. We then move to consider the resulting epistemic challenges and opportunities facing contemporary multilingual democratic societies in an age of increased mobility, arguing for the consequent imperative of developing political metalinguistic awareness and political extelligence among political scientists, political philosophers, and political actors alike in an irreducibly complex linguistic world. (shrink)

Boycotts of various types and forms have become in recent years an increasingly common feature of political life. And yet, despite both their ubiquity and clear ethical grounding, they remain to date under-explored in academic philosophy. I examine in this article the question of the ethics of boycotting, using the academic and cultural boycott of Israel as a case study. I propose that the boycott exhibits an intriguing pattern of continuous tension between its own stated principles and its realised practices, (...) and suggest that this tension is not a dysfunction of the boycott but rather a structural feature, which emanates from its primary commitment to the idea of anti-normalisation as an ethical imperative. I explore the complex cross-linguistic political pragmatics of the notion of normalisation, and argue that the commitment to it on the part of the boycott movement, as a group actor, effectively amounts to a capricious form of arbitrary treatment of the boycotted. I then propose that the effective validation of arbitrary treatment constitutes, first, a harm in itself; and, second, that it hinders the capacity of the campaign to draw on and contribute to a general theory of the ethics of boycotting. (shrink)

Antonio Negri wrote the two essays that comprise Time for Revolution while serving a prison sentence for alleged involvement with radical left-wing groups. Although the essays were written two decades apart, their concerns are the same: is there a place for resistance in a society utterly subsumed by capitalism? In the wake of the global crisis of capitalism heralded by the 2008 crash, the question has never been more relevant and Negri remains an insightful and passionate guide to any (...) attempt to answer it. (shrink)

Although well established in developed countries, Ethics review boards in the academia, and specifically for social and behavioral sciences (SBS) research, is a relatively new, and still a controversy inducing endeavor. This study explores the establishment and functioning of ERBs in Israeli academia, serving as a case study for the challenges and progress made in ensuring ethical research practices in non-medical related spheres. A purposeful sample of 46 participants was selected, comprising ERB current or past members and SBS researchers, who (...) each interacted extensively with ERB’s evaluation processes. The participants came from all eight research universities of Israel, as well as seven large public and private academic colleges. Open, semi structured In-depth interviews were conducted in order to facilitate a critical reflective stance among the various participants, exploring their experiences, behaviors and the meanings they assign to ERB processes. Our research revealed two major themes. The first is the developmental trajectories in the construction processes of ERBs in Israel, comprised of the following stages: Initiation, expansion, opposition, and acceptance and assimilation. The second was a typology of participation throughout the ERBs’ construction process. Inspired by Merton’s strain theory, this typology includes conformists, ritualists, ideologists, control-freaks, and insurgents. The findings expose a unique perspective into the initiation, establishment, and development of ERBs, which can shed light on the role of ERBs in general, as well as point out how resistance to ERBs, as well as the different reasons for championing them, affected not only ERBs form and their legitimacy, but also their interaction with researchers. (shrink)

Undergraduate social work students are exposed to ethical and legal dilemmas during their fieldwork training. This article presents a study that examined these ethical dilemmas in an Israeli sample of undergraduate social work students. 117 students who participated in a course in ethics submitted 31 written presentations of ethical-dilemma analysis. Their oral presentations were recorded and transcribed. Using a qualitative analysis, three major themes emerged: 1. The tension between the duty to maintain client's confidentiality and its violation under certain conditions; (...) 2. The students’ conflict of loyalty toward the client vs. the organization; 3. The question of the clients’ right to self-determination when, in the student's view, this is against their best interests.Our findings point to the vital role of an ethics course in the social work undergraduate curriculum that can enhance students’ knowledge of specific laws relevant to the limits of confidentiality in social work and their ability to analyze ethical dilemmas as future professionals. Furthermore, it is essential to raise awareness in educators and supervisors concerning moral distress that may afflict students coping with ethical dilemmas at this early professional developmental phase. (shrink)

The notion of solidarity can be said to be premised on shared intention and joint action, particularly when oriented towards questions of social and political justice. Yet conceptions of solidary relations remain surprisingly thin on language, and the ethics of the linguistic practices and mechanisms through which individuals formulate a sufficiently meaningful backdrop necessary for shared intention and joint action. My aim in this article, therefore, is to begin filling this gap, in the form of a general normative account that (...) identifies the multilayered interrelations between solidarity and language, and examines their moral and practical implications. I begin with a brief overview of solidarity and language in the context of normative debates on bounded political communities. I then proceed to offer a more critical account of solidarity and linguistic difference, challenging some of the assumptions underlying its present understanding in that literature. In order to highlight and illustrate that critique, I explore its relevance to the highly political and often overlooked question of solidarity and language loss. I conclude with a brief reflection on the field of political theory and philosophy, asking what theoretical, conceptual and methodological insights may be gained from a closer attention to the language of solidarity in the theoretical and practical pursuit of justice. (shrink)

Cet article propose un tour d’horizon de différents types de biais que l’on peut rencontrer dans les études basées sur l’annotation de corpus vidéo de langue des signes. En tâchant de situer objectivement les choix effectués et les biais potentiels à chaque étape, nous décrivons les méthodologies que nous avons mises en place dans trois études, portant respectivement sur la synchronisation des composantes corporelles, le mouvement des sourcils et les clignements des yeux, puis la coarticulation.

Caro leitor! Em busca de sempre mais apresentar reflexões consistentes e relevantes para o pensar teológico, em conexão com o mundo e às urgências da Igreja, a presente edição trás importantes temas que ajudam refletir a realidade humana à luz do mistério de Deus. Por isso, os artigos oferecidos nas mais variadas áreas, a saber: bíblico-teológica, dogmática, moral, pastoral, antropologia teológica, filosofia e eclesiologia, dão suporte científico e metodológico para a reflexão teológica. Antes de conferir as novidades desta edição, gostaria (...) de comunicar que esta Revista Eletrônica conquistou um espaço ainda maior de publicação, ao tornar-se indexada na base de dados do Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). (shrink)

Contemporary realities of global population movement increasingly bring to the fore the challenge of quality and equitable health provision across language barriers. While this linguistic challenge is not unique to immigration contexts and is likewise shared by health systems responding to the needs of aboriginal peoples and other historical linguistic minorities, the expanding multilingual landscape of receiving societies renders this challenge even more critical, owing to limited or even non‐existing familiarity of modern and often monolingual health systems with the particular (...) needs of new linguistic minorities. The centrality of language to health beliefs, attitudes, practices, cultural scripts, and conceptual frameworks emphasizes its pivotal role in the healthcare process, and consequently in the adverse effects of treatment that is language‐insensitive and unaware. Such an attitude on the part of medical authorities risks considerable epistemic injustice in the form of a (mis)judgement of patients’ intelligence, credibility, and rationality based on the language that they speak and the manner in which they speak it, consequently impacting the quality and equity of care provided. This danger, I argue, may be effectively countered by fostering among the participants in the healthcare process a sense of epistemic humility through greater metalinguistic awareness. Outlining a range of operative steps that can be used to facilitate this. I argue that the reality of language barriers in the healthcare process, while not entirely eliminable, may nevertheless be successfully addressed, in order to mitigate the challenge of quality and equitable healthcare provision in multilingual societies. (shrink)

In this Article I argue that the citizenship status of Israel’s Palestinian citizens has been eroding since the "events" of October 2000 and that, as a result, Israel, within its rpe-1967 borders, may be moving from a form of democracy that has been termed "ethnic democracy" towards a form of non-democratic state that has been termed "ethnocracy." My argument is based primarily on two legal documents: the new Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law, 2003, which denies Palestinian citizens the right (...) to unite with their closest family members who are residents of the Occupied Territories, and the decision of the High Court of Justice that upheld the constitutionality of this law in 2006. Two other developments that seem to support my thesis are analyzed as well: the "events" of October 2000 themselves and the report of the state commission of inquiry that investigated these events, and the plan, advanced by Yvette Lieberman and his political party, "Yisrael Beytenu," to shift the border between Israel and the West Bank westward, depriving tens of thousands of citizen-Palestinians of their Israeli citizenship. (shrink)

Public debates on linguistic integration as a socially desired outcome often share a prevailing sentiment that newcomers ought to “learn the language.” But the intensity of that sentiment is rarely accompanied by an equally robust understanding of what, precisely, it means in practice. This results in a notion of linguistic integration with an inbuilt tension between a seemingly pragmatic and commonsensical appearance, on the one hand, and a minimal action‐guidance capacity, on the other hand. This paper explores this intriguing tension, (...) and it identifies three moral and practical challenges that this challenge presents to the normative theorizing of the practical ethics of linguistic integration: (1) a predicament of arbitrary treatment; (2) the interpersonal structure of social and linguistic learning; and (3) the affective dimension of linguistic integration. (shrink)

Language is central to political philosophy, yet until now there has been little in the way of a common framework capable of bridging disciplines that share an interest in language, power, and ethics. Studies are predominantly carried out in isolated disciplinary silos - notably linguistics, philosophy, political science, public administration, and education. This volume proposes a new vision for understanding the political ethics of language, particularly in linguistically diverse societies, and it establishes the necessary common framework for this field of (...) inquiry: language ethics. Through creative and constructive thinking, Language Ethics considers how to advance our understanding of the human commonalities of moral and linguistic capacities and the challenge of linguistic difference and societal interdependence. The book embraces the longstanding centrality of language to moral reasoning and reinterprets it in a manner that draws on the social and political life of real-world inter- and intralinguistic issues. Contributors to this collection are leading international experts from different disciplines and approaches whose voices add diverse insight to the discourse on ethics and language justice. Exploring social, political, and economic realities, Language Ethics illuminates the complex nexus between ethics and language and highlights the contemporary challenges facing multilingual societies, including the uncertainties, ambiguities, anxieties, and hopes that accompany them. (shrink)

This review, based on analysis of the abstracts of 271 academic publications, critically examines the development of girlhood studies within a specific sociocultural context – Israeli society. By examining one particular context the authors hope to contribute to the discourse on the worldwide evolution of girlhood studies. The following research questions were posed: How did the body of literature on Israeli girls develop over time? What is the distribution of disciplines and topics represented? Who are the girls at the focus (...) of the writing? What are the methodological and paradigmatic approaches adopted? The findings point to the tentative development of a girlhood studies perspective that began in the 1980s and expanded over time, revealing the spread and reclaiming of feminist theoretical tenets as embodied in the study of girls. The review both sheds light on the pace and the manner in which Western feminist ideas spread to a specific local arena, and identifies unique local influences impacting this process. (shrink)

Normative theorizing in language involves a reflective consideration on the role that language plays in the shaping and reshaping of social and political orders. This is a complex endeavor resulting from the complex nature of the politics of language, in which change is constant and often unpredictable, and in which there exist an irreducible tension between linguistic and moral difference, on the one hand, and a need for societal interdependence on the other hand. The theoretical, conceptual, and methodological challenges emanating (...) from these realities suggest the usefulness of an adaptive approach to the normative theorizing of the political life of language. (shrink)

Several terms encountered in Mesopotamian sources stand for titles of persons who served either in the palace or in the temple and displayed ambiguous gender qualities. Some of these persons, albeit being males, were characterized by feminine traits and were therefore considered by their society to be effeminate. One of the terms related to these gender-ambiguous persons was kulu’u, whose exact meaning has never been fully determined, mainly because of the scarcity of its textual attestations. On several occasions this term (...) is mentioned in contexts expressing scorn and contempt and was thus used as a pejorative expression. This paper aims at elucidating this phenomenon by clarifying the nature of the vague term kulu’u and subsequently the reasons for its use as a derogatory term. (shrink)

Self-sufficient ideographies are rare because they are stifled by the issue of standardization. Similar issues arise with abstract art or drawings created by young children or great apes. We propose that mathematical indices and artificial intelligence can help us decode ideography, and if not to understand its meaning, at least to know that meaning exists.

This article aims to propose some connections between the conceptions of poetry of the Mexican poet Octavio Paz and the German philosopher Martin Heidegger. Both see in poetry the element of recognition of the original condition of the human being, not as an interpretation, but as a perception and affectation of the existential reality of human beings. So that the event of the "poetic saying" is configured as a call to the possibility of glimpsing the being of each entity, inhabiting (...) oneself and, thus, learning to be with others, establishing the poetic field as the clearing of perception and of existential affectation. Poetic speech goes beyond the limits of language, creating and establishing meanings and representations to the affectations that poetry provides. Thus, through poetry man recognizes himself in his worldliness, in search of his own being and in his relationship with other beings. (shrink)

Columbia University Press's multivolume _Prison Notebooks_ is the only complete critical edition of Antonio Gramsci's seminal writings in English. Based on the authoritative Italian edition of Gramsci's work, _Quaderni del Carcere_, this comprehensive translation presents the intellectual as he ought to be read and understood, with critical notes that clarify Gramsci's history, culture, and sources; an index of names; and a contextualization of the thinker's ideas against his earlier writings and letters. This set includes notebooks 1 through 8 with (...) all attendant notes and materials and is an indispensible resource for scholars in the humanities and social sciences. (shrink)

Book Description (Blurb): Cognitive Design for Artificial Minds explains the crucial role that human cognition research plays in the design and realization of artificial intelligence systems, illustrating the steps necessary for the design of artificial models of cognition. It bridges the gap between the theoretical, experimental and technological issues addressed in the context of AI of cognitive inspiration and computational cognitive science. -/- Beginning with an overview of the historical, methodological and technical issues in the field of Cognitively-Inspired Artificial Intelligence, (...) Lieto illustrates how the cognitive design approach has an important role to play in the development of intelligent AI technologies and plausible computational models of cognition. Introducing a unique perspective that draws upon Cybernetics and early AI principles, Lieto emphasizes the need for an equivalence between cognitive processes and implemented AI procedures, in order to realise biologically and cognitively inspired artificial minds. He also introduces the Minimal Cognitive Grid, a pragmatic method to rank the different degrees of biologically and cognitive accuracy of artificial systems in order project and predict their explanatory power with respect to the natural systems taken as source of inspiration. -/- Providing a comprehensive overview of cognitive design principles in constructing artificial minds, this text will be essential reading for students and researchers of artificial intelligence and cognitive science. (shrink)

_NeuroAnalysis _investigates using the neural network and neural computation models to bridge the divide between psychology, psychoanalysis, and neuroscience when diagnosing mental health disorders and prescribing treatment. Avi Peled builds on Freud's early attempts to explain the neural basis of mental health by introducing neural computation as a bridging science to explain psychiatric disorders. Peled describes the brain as a complex system of interconnected units and goes on to suggest that conscious experience, feelings, and mood are emergent properties arising from (...) these complex organisations. This model describes mental health disorders in terms of perturbation to the optimal brain organisation, and demonstrates how particular disorders can be identified through a specific breakdown pattern of the brain’s organisation. This fresh approach to the diagnosis of psychiatric disorders will interest students, professors, and researchers of psychoanalysis, neuroscience, and their related fields. (shrink)

My key argument will be that by shifting the debate over Jewish emancipation from the plane of theology, where it had been traditionally fought, to the plane of sociology, Marx was able to circumvent one of Bauer's main arguments against emancipating the Jews. Bauer had contended that as a religion of law, not of faith, Judaism was by its very nature a public creed. It was incompatible, therefore, with life in a free state, where religion could only be a private (...) matter. Marx chose to ignore this argument, treat Judaism as no different from Christianity, and focus his discussion on the nature of the state on the one hand and on the role played by the Jews in civil society on the other. This was less than a satisfactory response to Bauer's argument, but it enabled Marx to present a powerful case for emancipation while, at the same time, launching his critique of economic alienation. Thus, the philosophical advances made by Marx in On the Jewish Question were necessitated by, and integrally related to, his commitment to Jewish emancipation. (shrink)

In this paper we identify and characterize an analysis of two problematic aspects affecting the representational level of cognitive architectures (CAs), namely: the limited size and the homogeneous typology of the encoded and processed knowledge. We argue that such aspects may constitute not only a technological problem that, in our opinion, should be addressed in order to build arti cial agents able to exhibit intelligent behaviours in general scenarios, but also an epistemological one, since they limit the plausibility of the (...) comparison of the CAs' knowledge representation and processing mechanisms with those executed by humans in their everyday activities. In the fi nal part of the paper further directions of research will be explored, trying to address current limitations and future challenges. (shrink)

All efforts undertaken so far to establish peace between Israel and the Palestinians have failed to seriously address the right of return of the Palestinian refugees. This failure stemmed from a conviction that the question of historical justice in general had to be avoided. Since justice is a subjective construct, it was argued, allowing it to become a subject of negotiation would only perpetuate the conflict. However, the experience of these peace efforts has shown that without solving the problem of (...) the Palestinian refugees an agreement cannot be reached. And the problem cannot possibly be solved without addressing the key Palestinian demand on this issue — the right of return. For both sides, the right of return, more than any other issue, touches on the essence of their history since the beginning of the conflict between them, and on their future. The national narrative of each side thus centers on its version of the history of the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, in the course of which the Palestinian refugee problem was created. And each side maintains the fundamental belief that its future national existence hinges on whether, and how, the issue of the right of return is resolved. For the Palestinians, the right of return is an inalienable right that defines their national identity and their struggle for liberation. For Israeli Jews, the right of return is perceived as an existential threat to the Jewish character of their society, if not to its very existence. It is not surprising, therefore, that within each of the two societies a national consensus has been built around this issue and that the position of each society seems to stand in complete opposition to that of the other. However, we argue that a morally and politically sound basis could and should be established for a workable solution and that such a basis can be provided by the notion of "transitional justice." Transitional justice stresses two major steps as necessary for reconciliation between parties involved in an historic conflict: recognition and restitution. Recognition entails revealing the historical truth about the injustices committed and according their victims dignity and respect as rights-bearing human beings. Restitution is meant to alleviate some of the material deprivation suffered by the victims and is also a form of recognition. In the Israeli-Palestinian case, recognition by Israel of the right of return would entail its assumption of responsibility for the uprooting of the majority of Palestinian society in 1948. This would satisfy a demand that has become a fundamental element in Palestinian national identity. Recognition would then enable the two parties to enter negotiations over restitution, in particular the implementation of the right of return. In these negotiations, as many Palestinian political leaders have indicated, the concerns of Israeli Jews with their national identity would be taken into account. Only if the fundamental concerns of the two parties, which center on the issue of the right of return, are met can the road towards reconciliation between them be opened. (shrink)

In actuarial parlance, the price of an insurance policy is considered fair if customers bearing the same risk are charged the same price. The estimate of this fair amount hinges on the expected value obtained by weighting the different claims by their probability. We argue that, historically, this concept of actuarial fairness originates in an Aristotelian principle of justice in exchange (equality in risk). We will examine how this principle was formalized in the 16th century and shaped in life insurance (...) during the following two hundred years, in two different interpretations. The Domatian account of actuarial fairness relied on subjective uncertainty: An agreement on risk was fair if both parties were equally ignorant about the chances of an uncertain event. The objectivist version grounded any agreement on an objective risk estimate drawn from a mortality table. We will show how the objectivist approach collapsed in the market for life annuities during the 18th century, leaving open the question of why we still speak of actuarial fairness as if it were an objective expected value. (shrink)

La Critique de la raison impure rapproche deux auteurs, deux oeuvres, a priori inconciliables : Le Banquet de Platon et Pour en finir avec le jugement de dieu d'Antonin Artaud. On ne peut bien sûr pas savoir si Platon a vraiment douté de ses propres thèses, mais il a probablement eu conscience de l'impasse de la métaphysique, du peu de consistance de la connaissance contemplative au regard de l'évidence des "faits construits" de la connaissance opératoire qui, au lieu de constituer (...) le réel comme sujet absolu, l'appréhende comme objet. Pour sa part, Antonin Artaud ne semble pas avoir douté des siennes, ne saisissant jamais le réel qu'en le reconstruisant, qu'en le recomposant, par la manipulation de quelques prélèvements soigneusement choisis. C'est sur cette base qu'il était possible de réunir Platon et Antonin Artaud, et aussi avec la thématique du scandale : s'il est camouflé, dans Le Banquet, par l'aspect anecdotique et quelque peu bouffon de l'intervention d'Alcibiade, avec ce subterfuge Platon n'affichait pas moins de défiance envers "dieu" qu'Antonin Artaud dans son émission radiophonique interdite d'antenne en 1948."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

The book addresses the representation of three groups of "others" in Israeli schoolbooks: Holocaust victims, presented as the stateless persecuted Jews "we" might become again if "we" lose control over the second group of "others" - Palestinian Arabs - who are racialized, demonized and Nazified, and presented as "our" potential exterminators. The third group comprises non-European (Mizrahi and Ethiopian) Jews, portrayed as backward people who lack history or culture, requiring constant acculturation by "Western" Israel. Thus, a rhetoric of victimhood and (...) power evolves, and a nationalistic interpretation of the "never again" imperative is inculcated, justifying the Occupation and oppression of Palestinians and the discrimination of non-European Jews. Advocating a multidirectional memory, the book proposes an alternative Hebrew-Arabic, multi-voiced and poly-centered curriculum that would relate the untold accounts of the people whom the pedagogic version of history seeks exclude. Instead of traumatizing and urging vengeance, it will encourage discussion and celebrate diversity and hybridity. (shrink)

Transmembrane receptor tyrosine kinases that bind to peptide factors transmit essential growth and differentiation signals. A growing list of orphan receptors, of which some are oncogenic, holds the promise that many unknown ligands may be discovered by tracking the corresponding surface molecules. The neu gene (also called erbB‐2 and HER‐2) encodes such a receptor tyrosine kinase whose oncogenic potential is released in the developing rodent nervous system through a point mutation. Amplification and overexpression of neu are thought to contribute to (...) malignancy of certain human adenocarcinomas. The search for soluble factors that interact with the Neu receptor led to the discovery of a 44 kDa glyco‐protein that induces phenotypic differentiation of cultured mammary tumor cells to growth‐arrested and milk‐producing cells. The Neu differentiation factor (NDF or heregulin), however, also acts as a mitogen for epithelial, Schwann and glial cells. Multiple forms of the factor are produced by alternative splicing and their expression is confined predominantly to the central and to the peripheral nervous systems. One identified neuronal function of this family of polypeptides is to control the formation of neuromuscular junctions, but their physiological role in secretory epithelia is still unknown. Other open questions relate to the transmembrane topology of various precursors, the identity of a putative co‐receptor, the possible existence of additional ligands of Neu and the functional significance of the interaction between Neu and at least three highly related receptor tyrosine kinases. (shrink)