Heterocyst spacing in blue -green bacteria is widely assumed to be due to a diffusible inhibitor. The inhibitor, a nitrogen-rich compound, probably glutamine, is produced via the N2-fixing enzymes of the heterocyst and in turn serves to suppress the induction of these enzymes and of the differentiation of vegetative cells to heterocysts. This simple morphogenetic mechanism operating in growing cellular filaments ofAnabaena species is investigated on the basis of a continuous and a discrete cellular model, as well as by cell-by-cell (...) simulation of the inhibitor transport. The resulting distances between heterocysts and kinetics of their production are compared with observations, and the values of physical parameters are estimated from the models. (shrink)

Donors to biobanks are typically asked to give blanket consent, allowing their donation to be used in any research authorized by the biobank. This type of consent ignores the evidence that some donors have moral, religious, or cultural concerns about the future uses of their donations – concerns we call “non-welfare interests”. The nature of non-welfare interests and their effect on willingness to donate to a biobank is not well understood. In order to better undersand the influence of non-welfare interests, (...) we surveyed a national sample of the US population using a probability-based internet panel. Logistic regression models assessed the demographic and attitudinal characteristics associated with participants’ willingness to give consent for unspecified future uses of their donation when presented with 7 research scenarios that raised possible non-welfare interest concerns. Most people had non-welfare interests that significantly affect their willingness to donate to a biobank using blanket consent. Some non-welfare interests are associated with subgroups but others are not. A positive attitude toward biomedical research in general was associated with increased willingness to donate, while concerns about privacy and being African American were associated with decreased willingness. Non-welfare interests matter and can diminish willingness to donate to a biobank. Our data suggest that trust in research promotes willingness to donate. Ignoring non-welfare interests could erode this trust. Donors’ non-welfare interests could be accommodated through greater transparency and easier access to information about the uses of donations. (shrink)

The present paper presents a philosophical analysis of earth science, a discipline that has received relatively little attention from philosophers of science. We focus on the question of whether earth science can be reduced to allegedly more fundamental sciences, such as chemistry or physics. In order to answer this question, we investigate the aims and methods of earth science, the laws and theories used by earth scientists, and the nature of earth-scientific explanation. Our analysis leads to the tentative conclusion that (...) there are emergent phenomena in earth science but that these may be reducible to physics. However, earth science does not have irreducible laws, and the theories of earth science are typically hypotheses about unobservable (past) events or generalised - but not universally valid - descriptions of contingent processes. Unlike more fundamental sciences, earth science is characterised by explanatory pluralism: earth scientists employ various forms of narrative explanations in combination with causal explanations. The main reason is that earth-scientific explanations are typically hampered by local underdetermination by the data to such an extent that complete causal explanations are impossible in practice, if not in principle. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Object and Aims of Earth Science The Autonomy of Earth Science Explanation in Earth Science Conclusion Acknowledgment References.

The aim of this empirical study is to understand how bachelor students at universities of applied sciences (UAS) use their ethical compasses during internships. Semi-structured interviews were held with 36 fourth-year bachelor students across four UAS and three different programs in the Netherlands: Initial Teacher Education, Business Services, and Information and Communication Technology. To our knowledge, no studies appear to have investigated and compared students from multiple professional fields, nor identified the dynamics and the sequence of the strategies in the (...) decision-making process that students use when faced with ethical dilemmas during internships. We found that students’ ethical dilemmas stemmed from: mentors’ or managers’ behaviours/requests, colleagues’ behaviours, organisations’ morally questionable incentives, pupils’ home situations, and pupils’ behaviours/personal stories. The majority of students used multiple strategies and first investigated the ethical dilemmas they encountered and then avoided, intervened, delegated responsibilities, or adjusted to their environments. Students’ values played an important role in experiencing an ethical dilemma, however, these values were not always acted upon. We identified that rather students’ beliefs about having influence and/or ownership (or not), personal interest(s) and power relations influenced the way how they used their ethical compasses. Thus, instead of navigating on moral standards (of their profession), students reacted on beliefs which reflected the ways in which they constructed their internship contexts, social relationships and their own (and others) needs. As a result, half of the mentioned dilemmas were resolved in a prudent-strategic manner (e.g., by prioritising personal interests), instead of morally. This indicates that students did not always convert (moral) values into moral action and did not use their ethical compasses in the way UAS aspires. Finally, this study found that the ways in which students used their ethical compasses were strongly influenced by their environments. (shrink)

Kripke's discussion in Naming and Necessity strongly suggests that semantic stipulation allows us to have new de re thoughts and make new de re claims. For example, it seems we could name the winning ticket in the next lottery 'Tickie' and thereby come to have singular thoughts about Tickie as opposed to merely general thoughts about the winning ticket (whichever one that is). This, in turn, seems to put us into a position to know that Tickie is the winning ticket. (...) If so, it seems we now know which ticket will win the lottery. So it seems semantic stipulation puts us in a position to have all sorts of knowledge that, intuitively, we don't have. We argue that semantic stipulation does put you in a position to have new singular thoughts, though those thoughts will usually be informationally isolated. We think you also typically know these singular propositions, but it is misleading for you to say that you do since you typically cannot act on your knowledge in the expected way. On the other hand, since you can't act on the information in the right way, perhaps your knowledge is thwarted. If so, you don't know Tickie will win since you can't act on that information in order to (e.g.) buy Tickie and no other ticket. We develop both views and argue that they are preferable to the alternatives. (shrink)

Intensional logic (IL) and its application to natural language, which the present monograph addresses, was first developed by Richard Montague in the late 1960s (e.g., Montague 1970a, 1970b). Through the efforts of (especially) Barbara Partee (e.g., Partee 1975, 1976), and Richmond Thomason, who edited the posthumous collection of Montague’s works (Thomason 1974), this became the main framework for those who aspired to a formal semantic theory for natural language, and these included computational linguists as early as Jerry Hobbs in the (...) late 1970s (e.g., Hobbs and Rosenschein 1977). In fact, until the advent of the current interest in statistical linguistics with its own conception of what semantics is, IL, or some variant of it, was perhaps the main theory of semantics within computational linguistics generally. And within current computational semantics it still is. But over the years, philosophers, linguists, and computational linguists have noted a variety of shortcomings in Montague’s version of IL. Montague defined intensions as functions from possible worlds to extensions in that world. But this had the effect of making logically equivalent expressions have the same intension, thus leading to the problem of “logical omniscience” (believing/knowing all the logical consequences of what is believed/known). Montague had based his IL on Church’s simple theory of types (Church 1940), supplemented with intensions of each type. But this implies that each natural language item accepts only arguments of some one fixed type. However, this is not true for natural language, where conjunctions, verbs, and pretty much any functional term that accepts arguments at all can accept arguments of different types. (For example, and can accept arguments that are of the sentence type, of the verb phrase type, of the adjective type, etc.; and indeed, it can accept arguments of differing types in its different argument.. (shrink)

Next SectionIn this remark, I first show that a Lewis–Kratzer–von Fintel style semantics of conditionals and modals (Lewis 1973; Kratzer 1991a, b; von Fintel 1994; a.o.) together with the downward-entailing-based (DE-based) approach to the licensing of negative polarity items (NPIs) incorrectly predicts that NPIs are ungrammatical in the if-clause of a conditional with a possibility modal in the main clause (i.e., a conditional of the form if p, ◊q; henceforth, CPM; e.g., If John has ever been to Paris, he might (...) become a good chef). I then list three possible solutions to this problem to be explored in future work. (shrink)

The Cambridge Handbook of the Psychology of Prejudice: Concise Student Edition aims to answer the questions: why is prejudice so persistent? How does it affect people exposed to it? And what can we do about it? With cutting-edge research from top scholars in the field, the chapters present an overview of psychological models of prejudice and investigate key domains such as racism, sexism, and the criminal justice system. This student edition of the award-winning Handbook includes new pedagogical features such as (...) learning objectives, core terms and definitions, summary points, discussion questions, recommended readings, and instructor's test bank. It also features a new conclusion chapter that analyzes eight hard problems currently faced by researchers and activists, thus engaging students in deep, forward-thinking discussion. Developed specifically for use in Psychology of Prejudice courses at the undergraduate and graduate levels, the Concise Student Edition is an essential teaching and learning resource. (shrink)

The past 50 years have seen an accumulation of evidence suggesting that associative learning depends on high-level cognitive processes that give rise to propositional knowledge. Yet, many learning theorists maintain a belief in a learning mechanism in which links between mental representations are formed automatically. We characterize and highlight the differences between the propositional and link approaches, and review the relevant empirical evidence. We conclude that learning is the consequence of propositional reasoning processes that cooperate with the unconscious processes involved (...) in memory retrieval and perception. We argue that this new conceptual framework allows many of the important recent advances in associative learning research to be retained, but recast in a model that provides a firmer foundation for both immediate application and future research. (shrink)

: Discussions of ethical approaches in nursing have been much enlivened in recent years, for instance by new developments in the theory of care. Nevertheless, many ethical concepts in nursing still need to be clarified. The purpose of this contribution is to develop a fundamental ethical view on nursing care considered as moral practice. Three main components are analyzed more deeply--i.e., the caring relationship, caring behavior as the integration of virtue and expert activity, and "good care" as the ultimate goal (...) of nursing practice. For the development of this philosophical-ethical interpretation of nursing, we have mainly drawn on the pioneering work of Anne Bishop and John Scudder, Alasdair MacIntyre, Lawrence Blum, and Louis Janssens. We will also show that the European philosophical background offers some original ideas for this endeavor. (shrink)

Accelerated changes to the planet have created novel spaces to re-imagine the boundaries and foci of environmental health research. Climate change, mass species extinction, ocean acidification, biogeochemical disturbance, and other emergent environmental issues have precipitated new population health perspectives, including, but not limited to, one health, ecohealth, and planetary health. These perspectives, while nuanced, all attempt to reconcile broad global challenges with localized health impacts by attending to the reciprocal relationships between the health of ecosystems, animals, and humans. While such (...) innovation is to be encouraged, we argue that a more comprehensive engagement with the ethics of these emerging fields of inquiry will add value in terms of the significance and impact of associated interventions. In this contribution, we highlight how the concept of spatial and temporal scale can be usefully deployed to shed light on a variety of ethical issues common to emerging environmental health perspectives, and that the potential of scalar analysis implicit to van Potter’s conceptualization of bioethics has yet to be fully appreciated. Specifically, we identify how scale interacts with key ethical issues that require consideration and clarification by one health, ecohealth, and planetary health researchers and practitioners to enhance the effectiveness of research and practice, including justice and governance. (shrink)

In this response, we provide further clarification of the propositional approach to human associative learning. We explain why the empirical evidence favors the propositional approach over a dual-system approach and how the propositional approach is compatible with evolution and neuroscience. Finally, we point out aspects of the propositional approach that need further development and challenge proponents of dual-system models to specify the systems more clearly so that these models can be tested.