Introduction of O2 to Earth's early biosphere stimulated remarkable evolutionary adaptations, and a wide range of electron acceptors allowed diverse, energy-yielding metabolic pathways. Enzymatic reduction of O2 yielded a several-fold increase in energy production, enabling evolution of multi-cellular animal life. However, utilization of O2 also presented major challenges as O2 and many of its derived reactive oxygen species are highly toxic, possibly impeding multicellular evolution after the Great Oxidation Event. Remarkably, ROS, and especially hydrogen peroxide, seem to play a major (...) part in early diversification and further development of cellular respiration and other oxygenic pathways, thus becoming an intricate part of evolution of complex life. Hence, although harnessing of chemical and thermo-dynamic properties of O2 for aerobic metabolism is generally considered to be an evolutionary milestone, the ability to use ROS for cell signaling and regulation may have been the first true breakthrough in development of complex life. The importance of Earth's oxygen cycle and reactive oxygen species produced on the evolution of complex life. The ability to detoxify oxygen species is not a trait that emerged as a response to increased O2 levels but rather crucial adaptation to the early Earth's weakly oxic microenvironments. (shrink)

The word pro-tasis is etymologically a near equivalent of pre-mise, pro-position, and ante-cedent—all having positional, relational connotations now totally absent in contemporary use of proposition. Taking protasis for premise, Aristotle’s statement (24a16) -/- A protasis is a sentence affirming or denying something of something…. -/- is not a definition of premise—intensionally: the relational feature is absent. Likewise, it is not a general definition of proposition—extensionally: it is too narrow. This paper explores recent literature on these issues.

Until now, adult crying has received relatively little interest from investigators, whereas in the popular media there are many strong claims about crying of which the scientific basis is not clear. In this review, we provide an overview of the current state of the scientific literature with respect to crying. We identify gaps in knowledge and propose questions for future research. The following topics receive special attention: Ontogenetic development, antecedents, individual and gender differences, and the intra- and interindividual effects of (...) crying. We conclude that the study of crying may help us obtain better insight into human nature, that is, not only our emotional, but also social, and moral functioning. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIn two experimental studies, we explored the role of attachment in predicting emotional reactivity after frustration induction. In the first study, using a cognitive frustration task, we examined in a college sample how attachment styles related to the experience and expression of emotions after frustration induction. In the second study, we investigated in college students the effect of conscious priming of the secure base schema on mood disturbance after the performance of a cognitive frustration task. Results showed that individuals experienced (...) and expressed emotions after frustration induction independent of their attachment styles. Conscious priming of the secure base script attenuated self-reported emotional reactivity after frustration induction independent of individuals’ attachment styles. These findings suggest that the mechanism of attachment-related emotional reactivity might not pertain to frustration during an unsolvable cognitive task, but that the activation of... (shrink)

Producing emotional tears is a universal and uniquely human behavior. Until recently, tears have received little serious attention from scientists. Here, we summarize recent theoretical developments and research findings. The evolutionary approach offers a solid ground for the analysis of the functions of tears. This is especially the case for infant crying, which we address in the first part of this contribution. We further elaborate on the antecedents and functions of emotional tears in adults. The main hypothesis that emerges from (...) this overview is that crying evolved as an emotional expression that signals distress and promotes prosocial behaviors in conspecifics. Further, shedding tears may influence the mood of the crier and his/her outlook on life primarily as a consequence of fulfillment of the proposed signaling function of tears. We also describe how cultural phenomena such as ritual weeping nicely fit within this framework, as they often aim to support a request for help to a powerful person or deity and promote social bonding. (shrink)

BackgroundUnderstanding representations of disease in various art genres provides insights into how patients and health care providers view the diseases. It can also be used to enhance patient care and stimulate patient self-management.MethodsThis paper reviews how cardiovascular diseases are represented in novels, films, and paintings: myocardial infarction, aneurysm, hypertension, stroke, heart transplantation, Marfan’s disease, congestive heart failure. Various search systems and definitions were used to help identify sources of representations of different cardiovascular diseases. The representations of the different diseases were (...) considered separately. The Common Sense Model was used a theoretical model to outline illness perceptions and self-management in the various identified novels, films, and paintings.ResultsMyocardial infarction followed by stroke were the most frequently detailed diseases in all three art genres. This reflects their higher prevalence. Representations ranged from biomedical details through to social and psychological consequences of the diseases.ConclusionsArtistic representations of cardiovascular diseases reflect cognitions, emotions, and images of prevalent disease. These representations shape views and behaviour of ill and healthy persons regarding heart diseases. As these representations are amenable to change, they deserve further research, which may be instrumental in improving the quality of life of persons struck by cardiovascular diseases. Changing illness perceptions appears to be a method to improve self-management and thereby quality of life in patients with various cardiovascular diseases. (shrink)

The obstacle to more objective knowledge of early Pythagoreanism is the ideological conflict over the proper mission of historiography. Not only the confusing evidence, but also the different investigative procedures and theories of history employed, make solving the Pythagorean problem difficult. I analyze the historiographic methodologies of some modern historians of Pythagoreanism in respect to the kinds of historical explanation they provide. Immediately ideological controversy arises between idealist and materialist historians. ;My critical evaluation proceeds from two theses. The content of (...) ideas reflects their social referents. Consequently, one must identify the class interests of early Pythagoreans. Writing history is a contemporary undertaking by which historians reflect their own social interests. Therefore, historiographic methodology continually must be objectified to overcome the subjectivism of historical relativism. ;I review the reconstructions of six historians. John Burnet, an empiricist, held that the Greeks entirely broke from their religious past to develop philosophy. F. M. Cornford, a Durkheimian, used anthropology to reveal philosophy's totemic content. J. E. Raven is a philologist; he maintaned that ancient philosophy was the Eleatic-Pythagorean debate. W. K. C. Guthrie, an eclectic, held that science served Pythagorean religious interests. These idealist historians attributed the Greek achievement to absolutized temperaments or racial factors; the development of ideas is not mediated by practical necessity. George Thomson and Alban Winspear are historical materialists. They explained ancient philosophy by showing the class interests of philosophers in a mercantile economy based on slave labor. ;After introducing the Pythagorean problem, I present, by chapter, first an exposition of each historian's account of the causes of Greek philosophy and then his exposition of early Pythagoreanism. My analyses follow each section. In the first part of the final chapter I discuss each historian in the context of the ideological controversy. In the second part I present a general outline of procedure for scientific historiography. (shrink)

Recent accounts of the life of Protagoras differ widely from one another in their treatment of the ancient sources, and in the conclusions which they draw from them. A re-examination of the evidence, undertaken in 1949–50 as part of a study of the Prometheus trilogy, has convinced me that a new discussion is urgently needed if we are to place the earlier stages of the sophistic movement in the right context historically; and the purpose of this paper is to lay (...) at least a part of the foundation for such a discussion. Since the evidence for the life of Protagoras includes some allusions to his relations with Democritus, and there are some obvious affinities between the careers of Protagoras and Anaxagoras, I have added a short account of the relevant points in the biography of Democritus and a more detailed study of the evidence for the life of Anaxagoras. (shrink)

Here is a thoroughly updated edition of a classic in palliative medicine. Two new chapters have been added to the 1991 edition, along with a new preface summarizing where progress has been made and where it has not in the area of pain management. This book addresses the timely issue of doctor-patient relationships arguing that the patient, not the disease, should be the central focus of medicine. Included are a number of compelling patient narratives. Praise for the first edition "Well (...) written. . .should be read by everyone in medical practice or considering a career in medicine."---JAMA. "Memorable passages, important ideas, and critical analysis. This is a book that clinicians and educators should read."---New England Journal of Medicine. (shrink)

Plato's "Politicus" (Statesman) stands, both in date and in political thought, between the "Republic" and the "Laws". It presents his thought at the point when he was chastened by disappointment with his attempts to put theory into practice at Syracuse. The dialogue reflects contemporary controversies on the method of definition; but its logical exercises and the impressive 'myth' of the two cosmic eras serve to bring out its essential political teaching. This volume contains the text in translation. In this second (...) edition, Skemp made corrections to his extensive introduction and running commentary, and added a new appendix taking into account scholarship since the first (1952) edition. (shrink)

Seminal essays on environmental philosophy from Indian, Chinese, and Japanese traditions of thought. Environmental Philosophy in Asian Traditions of Thought provides a welcome sequel to the foundational volume in Asian environmental ethics Nature in Asian Traditions of Thought. That volume, edited by J. Baird Callicott and Roger T. Ames and published in 1989, inaugurated comparative environmental ethics, adding Asian thought on the natural world to the developing field of environmental philosophy. This new book, edited by Callicott and James McRae, includes (...) some of the best articles in environmental philosophy from the perspective of Asian thought written more recently, some of which appear in print for the first time. Leading scholars draw from the Indian, Chinese, and Japanese traditions of thought to provide a normative ethical framework that can address the environmental challenges being faced in the twenty-first century. Hindu, Buddhist, Confucian, and Daoist approaches are considered along with those of Zen, Japanese Confucianism, and the contemporary philosophy of the Kyoto School. An investigation of environmental philosophy in these Asian traditions not only challenges Western assumptions, but also provides an understanding of Asian philosophy, religion, and culture that informs contemporary environmental law and policy. J. Baird Callicott is University Distinguished Research Professor of Philosophy at the University of North Texas and author and editor of many books, including Beyond the Land Ethic: More Essays in Environmental Philosophy, also published by SUNY Press. James McRae is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Religion at Westminster College in Missouri. He is the coeditor (with Robert Arp and Adam Barkman) of The Philosophy of Ang Lee. (shrink)

The increasing use of transnational standard-setting bodies to address quality uncertainties and coordination issues across the global economy raises questions about how these bodies establish and maintain their legitimacy and accountability outside the sovereignty of democratic states. Based on a discussion of the legitimacy challenge posed by global governance, we provide an overview of mechanisms by which such bodies can defend their legitimacy claims and examine the actual mechanisms used by the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB). While the IASB staked (...) its initial credibility on technical competence and independence, it has increasingly emphasized due process norms in its claim for support. Our analysis evaluates the IASB due process against the cultural benchmarks established by domestic standard-setters in the USA and UK and against a normative model of procedural legitimacy. These comparisons help us to understand the modifications that were made in the hope of due process adding legitimacy to accounting standard-setting beyond the state. They also reveal the broader political context of competing legitimacy criteria that confronts transnational standard-setters. (shrink)

Modus ponens is the argument from premises of the form If A, then B and A to the conclusion B. Nearly all participants agree that the modus ponens conclusion logically follows when the argument appears in this Basic form. However, adding a further premise can lower participants’ rate of agreement—an effect called suppression. We propose a theory of suppression that draws on contemporary ideas about conditional sentences in linguistics and philosophy. Semantically, the theory assumes that people interpret an indicative conditional (...) as a context-sensitive strict conditional: true if and only if its consequent is true in each of a contextually determined set of situations in which its antecedent is true. Pragmatically, the theory claims that context changes in response to new assertions, including new conditional premises. Thus, the conclusion of a modus ponens argument may no longer be accepted in the changed context. Psychologically, the theory describes people as capable of reasoning about broad classes of possible situations, ordered by typicality, without having to reason about individual possible worlds. The theory accounts for the main suppression phenomena, and it generates some novel predictions that new experiments confirm. (shrink)

A naturalistic theory of intentionality is proposed that differs from previous evolutionary and tracking theories. Full-blown intentionality is constructed through a series of evolvable refinements. A first, minimal version of intentionality originates from a conjectured internal process that estimates an organism’s own fitness and that continually modifies the organism. This process produces the directedness of intentionality. The internal estimator can be parsed into intentional components that point to components of the process that produces fitness. It is argued that such intentional (...) components can point to mistaken or non-existing entities. Different Fregian senses of the same reference correspond to different components that have different roles in the estimator. Intentional components that point to intentional components in other organisms produce directedness towards semi-abstract entities. Finally, adding a general, population-wide means of communication enables intentional components that point to fully abstract entities. Intentionality thus naturalized has all of its expected properties: being directed; potentially making errors; possibly pointing to non-existent, abstract, or rigid entities; capable of pointing many-to-one and one-to-many; distinguishing sense and reference; having perspective and grain; and having determinate content. Several examples, such as ‘swampman’ and ‘brain-in-a-vat’, illustrate how the theory can be applied. (shrink)

In this article I review attempts to define the term “ad hoc hypothesis,” focusing on the efforts of, among others, Karl Popper, Jarrett Leplin, and Gerald Holton. I conclude that the term is unhelpful; what is “ad hoc” seems to be a judgment made by particular scientists not on the basis of any well-established definition but rather on their individual aesthetic senses. Further, a hypothesis considered ad hoc can apparently be retroactively declared non–ad hoc on the basis of subsequent data, (...) rendering the term meaningless. (shrink)

Philosophers have proposed many accounts of biological function. A coarse-grained distinction can be made between backward-looking views, which emphasise historical contributions to fitness, and forward-looking views, which emphasise the current contribution to fitness or role of a biological component within some larger system. These two views are often framed as being incompatible and conflicting with one another. The emerging field of synthetic biology, which involves applying engineering principles to the design and construction of biological systems, complicates things further by adding (...) intentional design as a source of function. In the current study we explored how biology experts and novices think about function in the context of single-celled, multi-celled, and synthetic organisms. We also explored the extent to which each group were function pluralists, and if they were function pluralists, which accounts of function tended to be endorsed together. The results showed a surprising degree of similarity between experts and novices in most contexts, although certain differences were apparent. Most surprisingly, we found evidence not only of function pluralism in both groups, but pluralism between backward-looking and forward-looking accounts. We discuss these findings in the context of the philosophical debate on function and consider the practical implications for public acceptance of synthetic biology. First, we argue that philosophers of biology should re-examine the purported incompatibility between accounts of function. Second, we argue that due to the introduction of an intentional aetiology in synthetic biology, there may be an inherent conflict between the views of experts and novices when thinking about synthetic biology. (shrink)

The Perceptions of Conscience Questionnaire (PCQ) and the Stress of Conscience Questionnaire (SCQ) have previously been developed and validated within the ‘Stress of Conscience Study’. The aim was to revalidate these two questionnaires, including two additional, theoretically and empirically significant items, on a sample of healthcare personnel working in direct contact with patients. The sample consisted of 503 healthcare personnel. To test variation and distribution among the answers, descriptive statistics, item analysis and principal component analysis (PCA) were used to examine (...) the underlying factor structure of the questionnaires. Support for adding the new item to the PCQ was found. No support was found for adding the new item to the SCQ. Both questionnaires can be regarded as valid for Swedish settings but can be improved by rephrasing some of the PCQ items and by adding items about private life to the SCQ. (shrink)

The familiar issue of corporate social responsibility takes on a new topic. Added to the list of concerns from affirmative action and environmental integrity is their growing contributions to education. At first glance, the efforts may appear to be ordinary gestures of communal good will in terms of providing computers, sponsoring book covers, and interactive materials provided by Scholastic Magazine. A closer view reveals a targeted market of student life who are vulnerable to commercials placed in these formats. Among the (...) most effective corporate intervention is Channel One News. It offers a newsworthy show but with mandatory commercial viewing. This increasing trend of corporations intervening to assist schools that need more money and/or equipment is disingenuous.In this essay, I present the background of this commercialization of education and demonstrate the violations against student autonomy and integrity. Although there may be utilitarian merits to some interventions, I argue that these infringe upon the moral value of personhood. Advertising in schools in its current practice is immoral on deontological grounds. (shrink)

This article examines a series of Schelling-like models of residential segregation, in which agents prefer to be in the minority. We demonstrate that as long as agents care about the characteristics of their wider community, they tend to end up in a segregated state. We then investigate the process that causes this and conclude that the result hinges on the similarity of informational states among agents of the same type. This is quite different from Schelling-like behavior and suggests that segregation (...) is an instance of macrobehavior that can arise from a wide variety of micromotives. (shrink)

This article engages various critiques of Fair Trade, from its participation in commodification to providing a cover for "Fair-washing" corporations, and argues that Fair Trade has the potential to answer the challenges contained within them if and when it initiates an ongoing process of developing the "ethical valuedadded" content of the label. This argument is made in a number of ways. First, by distinguishing between economic and human development impacts and ethics, this article argues that these impacts are necessary but (...) not sufficient conditions for ethical trade. Second, it engages the question of the possibility of ethical practice in economics generally; developing the idea that when economics is concerned with securing the material basis of a broad range of life capacities it becomes ethical. Third, Fair Trade practice itself is examined from this standpoint, and is conceived of as both comprising a promising ethical value-added practice as well as posing a problem in its current formulation that the framework of ethical valueadded can help understand and resolve. Finally, an examination of these theoretical ideas in practice is undertaken through a case study of Café Femenino, a Fair Trade coffee produced in Peru. In conclusion it is argued that for Fair Trade to build upon its economic and human impacts, and therefore remain a meaningful ethical and economic alternative to corporate capitalism and globalization, it must distinguish itself clearly in ethics from those market relations it wishes, explicitly or implicitly, to challenge. (shrink)

Continuing the dialogue: postcolonial feminist scholarship and Bourdieu — discourses of culture and points of connection Postcolonial feminist theories provide the analytic tools to address issues of structural inequities in groups that historically have been socially and economically disadvantaged. In this paper we question what value might be added to postcolonial feminist theories on culture by drawing on Bourdieu. Are there points of connection? Like postcolonial feminists, he puts forward a position that aims to unmask oppressive structures. We argue that, (...) while there are points of connection, there are also epistemologic and methodologic differences between postcolonial feminist perspectives and Bourdieu's work. Nonetheless, engagement with different theoretical perspectives carries the promise of new insights — new ways of ‘seeing’ and ‘understanding’ that might enhance a praxis‐oriented theoretical perspective in healthcare delivery. (shrink)

Everyday reasoning requires more evidence than raw data alone can provide. We explore the idea that people can go beyond this data by reasoning about how the data was sampled. This idea is investigated through an examination of premise non‐monotonicity, in which adding premises to a category‐based argument weakens rather than strengthens it. Relevance theories explain this phenomenon in terms of people's sensitivity to the relationships among premise items. We show that a Bayesian model of category‐based induction taking premise sampling (...) assumptions and category similarity into account complements such theories and yields two important predictions: First, that sensitivity to premise relationships can be violated by inducing a weak sampling assumption; and second, that premise monotonicity should be restored as a result. We test these predictions with an experiment that manipulates people's assumptions in this regard, showing that people draw qualitatively different conclusions in each case. (shrink)

Background Neuroimaging and lesion studies suggested that the dorsolateral prefrontal and posterior parietal cortices mediate visual metacognitive awareness. The causal evidence provided by non-invasive brain stimulation, however, is inconsistent. -/- Objective/hypothesis Here we revisit a major figure discrimination experiment adding a new Kanizsa figure task trying to resolve whether bilateral continuous theta-burst transcranial magnetic stimulation (cTBS) over these regions affects perceptual metacognition. Specifically, we tested whether subjective visibility ratings and/or metacognitive efficiency are lower when cTBS is applied to these two (...) regions in comparison to an active control region. -/- Methods A within-subjects design including three sessions spaced by one-week intervals was implemented. In each session, every participant was administered bilateral cTBS to either prefrontal, control or parietal cortices. Two concurrent tasks were performed, a real and an illusory figure task, stabilising objective performance with use of an adaptive staircase procedure. -/- Results When performing the replicated task, cTBS was found insufficient to disrupt neither visibility ratings nor metacognitive efficiency. However, with use of Kanizsa style illusory figures, cTBS over the dorsolateral prefrontal, but not over the posterior parietal cortex, was observed to significantly diminish metacognitive efficiency. -/- Conclusion(s) Real and illusory figure tasks demonstrated different cTBS effects. A possible explanation is the involvement of the prefrontal cortex in the creation of expectations, which is necessary for efficient metacognition. Failure to replicate previous findings for the real figure task, however, cannot be said to support, conclusively, the notion that these brain regions have a causal role in metacognitive awareness. This inconsistent finding may result from certain limitations of our study, thereby suggesting the need for yet further investigation. (shrink)

Amyloid-beta peptide plaque in the brain is the primary diagnostic criterion of Alzheimer's disease . The physiological role of Abeta are poorly understood. We have previously determined an Abeta interacting domain in the promoters of AD-associated genes . This AbetaID interacts in a DNA sequence-specific manner with Abeta. We now demonstrate novel Abeta activity as a possible transcription factor. Herein, we detected Abeta-chromatin interaction in cell culture by ChIP assay. We observed that human neuroblastoma cells treated with FITC conjugated Abeta1-40 (...) localized Abeta to the nucleus in the presence of H2O2-mediated oxidative stress. Furthermore, primary rat fetal cerebrocortical cultures were transfected with APP and BACE1 promoter-luciferase fusions, and rat PC12 cultures were transfected with polymorphic APP promoter-CAT fusion clones. Transfected cells were treated with different Abeta peptides and/or H2O2. Abeta treatment of cell cultures produced a DNA sequence-specific response in cells transfected with polymorphic APP clones. Our results suggest the Abeta peptide may regulate its own production through feedback on its precursor protein and BACE1, leading to amyloidogenesis in AD. (shrink)

The extent to which we generalize a novel property from a sample of familiar instances to novel instances depends on the sample composition. Previous property induction experiments have only used samples consisting of novel types (unique entities). Because real‐world evidence samples often contain redundant tokens (repetitions of the same entity), we studied the effects on property induction of adding types and tokens to an observed sample. In Experiments 1–3, we presented participants with a sample of birds or flowers known to (...) have a novel property and probed whether this property generalized to novel items varying in similarity to the initial sample. Increasing the number of novel types (e.g., new birds with the target property) in a sample produced tightening, promoting property generalization to highly similar stimuli but decreasing generalization to less similar stimuli. On the other hand, increasing the number of tokens (e.g., repeated presentations of the same bird with the target property) had little effect on generalization. Experiment 4 showed that repeated tokens are encoded and can benefit recognition, but appear to be given little weight when inferring property generalization. We modified an existing Bayesian model of induction (Navarro, Dry, & Lee, 2012) to account for both the information added by new types and the discounting of information conveyed by tokens. (shrink)

Inscrutability arguments threaten to reduce interpretationist metasemantic theories to absurdity. Can we find some way to block the arguments? A highly influential proposal in this regard is David Lewis’ ‘ eligibility ’ response: some theories are better than others, not because they fit the data better, but because they are framed in terms of more natural properties. The purposes of this paper are to outline the nature of the eligibility proposal, making the case that it is not ad hoc, but (...) instead flows naturally from three independently motivated elements; and to show that severe limitations afflict the proposal. In conclusion, I pick out the element of the eligibility response that is responsible for the limitations: future work in this area should therefore concentrate on amending this aspect of the overall theory. (shrink)

It is shown that the determinacy of $G_{\delta \sigma }$ games of length $\omega ^2$ is equivalent to the existence of a transitive model of ${\mathsf {KP}} + {\mathsf {AD}} + \Pi _1\textrm {-MI}_{\mathbb {R}}$ containing $\mathbb {R}$. Here, $\Pi _1\textrm {-MI}_{\mathbb {R}}$ is the axiom asserting that every monotone $\Pi _1$ operator on the real numbers has an inductive fixpoint.

We characterize the determinacy of $F_\sigma $ games of length $\omega ^2$ in terms of determinacy assertions for short games. Specifically, we show that $F_\sigma $ games of length $\omega ^2$ are determined if, and only if, there is a transitive model of ${\mathsf {KP}}+{\mathsf {AD}}$ containing $\mathbb {R}$ and reflecting $\Pi _1$ facts about the next admissible set.As a consequence, one obtains that, over the base theory ${\mathsf {KP}} + {\mathsf {DC}} + ``\mathbb {R}$ exists,” determinacy for $F_\sigma $ (...) games of length $\omega ^2$ is stronger than ${\mathsf {AD}}$, but weaker than ${\mathsf {AD}} + \Sigma _1$ -separation. (shrink)

This is a collection of papers, all but one of which were previously published, by one of England's leading logicians. Goodstein has described his position in the philosophy of mathematics as that of a "constructive formalist": leaning toward the Hilbert school, but emphasizing the constructive nature of mathematical entities. The papers are more or less technical and symbolic; those most difficult are "The Nature of Mathematics," "The Decision Problem," and "The Definition of Number." Other titles are "Proof by Reductio ad (...) Absurdum," "Logic Paradoxes", "Language and Experience," "The Meaning of Counting," "Mathematical Systems," "The Axiomatic Method," "Pure and Applied Mathematics," and "The Significance of Incompleteness Theorems"; the last-mentioned paper is also quite difficult, but it constitutes not only one of the best semi-formal presentations of Gödel's theorems, but also helps make quite clear what their relevance is to considerations of the expressive power of formal languages in general. This collection constitutes a fine introduction to the philosophy of mathematics.—P. J. M. (shrink)

The Report of the Ad Hoc Adivisory Group on the Operation of NHS Research Ethics Committees has resulted in a strange mixture of the timid, the revolutionary, and the bizarre.The Report of the Ad Hoc Advisory Group on the Operation of NHS Research Ethics Committees is a curious document.1 The remit of the review was focused on the workings and effectiveness of NHS research ethics committees and the multicentre committees ). The Group was primarily set up in response to a (...) series of complaints from medical researchers about the new research governance regime in the UK as a result of the Clinical Trials Directive2 and the Governance Arrangements for NHS Research Ethics Committees.3 The opportunity was also taken to consider the role of research ethics committees in a wider context, and take account of recent developments in relation to the ethics review of social care research,4 student projects,5 as well as recent legislation such as the Human Tissue Act,6 and the Mental Capacity Act.7 However, the resulting report is a strange mixture of the timid, the revolutionary, and the bizarre.A good example of the report’s timidity is its reluctance to propose fundamental change to the process of review or seriously limit the type of research that requires REC review. To its credit AHAG does suggest that some research ‘especially surveys and many studies on NHS staff, could normally be conducted safely without a requirement for REC review’ .1 This is, of course, to be welcomed. However, the report ultimately seems dismissive of the general complaint from researchers that the current process is inappropriately uniform. For example, in section 3.2, it is argued that the ‘common perception that the NHS REC system is dominated …. (shrink)

We explain two ways of revising a tense logic like kripke's (1963) modal logic by adding predicate modifiers. first we show that modifiers allow us to render valid some mixing formulas--conditionals reversing the order of a quantifier and an operator--within a complete bivalent system. then we show how modifiers enable a tense logic to give analyses close to the surface form for sentences with temporal qualifications of singular terms, e.g., 'toby was fatter then than william is today'.