The host actin nucleation machinery is subverted by many bacterial pathogens to facilitate their entry, motility, replication, and survival. The majority of research conducted in the past primarily focused on exploitation of a host actin nucleator, the Arp2/3 complex, by bacterial pathogens. Recently, new studies have begun to explore the role of formins, another family of host actin nucleators, in bacterial pathogenesis. This review provides an overview of recent advances in the study of the exploitation of the Arp2/3 complex and (...) formins by bacterial pathogens. Secreted bacterial effector proteins seem to manipulate the regulation of these actin nucleators or functionally mimic them to drive bacterial entry, motility and survival within host cells. An enhanced understanding of how formins are exploited will provide us with greater insight into how a fundamental eurkaryotic cellular process is utilized by bacteria and will also advance our knowledge of host‐pathogen interactions. (shrink)

Book synopsis: Vagueness is currently the subject of vigorous debate in the philosophy of logic and language. Vague terms-such as "tall", "red", "bald", and "tadpole"—have borderline cases ; and they lack well-defined extensions. The phenomenon of vagueness poses a fundamental challenge to classical logic and semantics, which assumes that propositions are either true or false and that extensions are determinate. Another striking problem to which vagueness gives rise is the sorites paradox. If you remove one grain from a heap of (...) sand, surely you must be left with a heap. Yet apply this principle repeatedly as you remove grains one by one, and you end up, absurdly, with a solitary grain that counts as a heap. This anthology collects papers in the field. After an introduction that surveys the field, the essays form four groups, starting with some historically notable pieces. The 1970s saw an explosion of interest in vagueness, and the second group of essays reprints classic papers from this period. The following group of papers represent current work on the logic and semantics of vagueness. The essays in the final group are contributions to the continuing debate about vague objects and vague identity. (shrink)

Conditional judgements—judgements employing ‘if’—are essential to practical reasoning about what to do, as well as to much reasoning about what is the case. We handle them well enough from an early...

Everything about Derrida suggests that he is for a radical reform or transformation of language, whilst Wittgenstein seems to vindicate a fidelity to ordinary language and to want to 'expunge' from language the 'metaphysical use' of words. But just how opposed are they? My contention in this paper is that Wittgenstein does not 'deconstruct', as some critics have rather loosely suggested, because, as we shall see, the expunging of metaphysical use favoured by Wittgenstein does not amount to the deconstruction of (...) metaphysical appurtenance practised by Derrida. However, there are interesting parallels to be drawn between the two philosophers which I shall try to articulate in the course of this paper. The first part provides the background, in Wittgenstein's writings, to his concept of 'metaphysi cal use'; the second is an exposition of what Derrida refers to as 'metaphysical appurtenance' and attendant notions such as those of binary oppositions and of the labouring of concepts; and the third is a summing up and a defence of the thesis that Wittgenstein does not, in any full-bodied sense of the term, 'deconstruct'. Key Words: Derrida • language • meaning • metaphysics • Wittgenstein. (shrink)

"This reviewer had to be restrained from stopping people in the street to urge them to read it: They would learn something of the way science is done,...

This classic, with a new introduction by Madeleine L'Engle, is by turns an entrancing mediation on language a piercing commentary on the nature of art and why so much of what we read, hear, and see falls short and a brilliant examination of the fundamental tenets of Christianity. The Mind of the Maker will be relished by those already in love with Dorothy L. Sayers and those who have not yet met her. A mystery writer, a witty and perceptive (...) theologian, culture critic, and playwright, Dorothy Sayers sheds new,unexpected light on a specific set of statements made in the Christian creeds. She examines anew such ideas as the image of God, the Trinity, free will, and evil, and in these pages a wholly revitalized understanding of them emerges. The author finds the key in the parallels between the creation of God and the human creative process. She continually refers to each in a way that illuminates both. (shrink)

"This book is very valuable. Today, there are too many books on the Work that are either deliberately impersonal and as a result are just a re-explaining of basic ideas which are already there in Ouspensky.

This paper proposes several recurrent neural network-based models for recognizing requisite and effectuation parts in Legal Texts. Firstly, we propose a modification of BiLSTM-CRF model that allows the use of external features to improve the performance of deep learning models in case large annotated corpora are not available. However, this model can only recognize RE parts which are not overlapped. Secondly, we propose two approaches for recognizing overlapping RE parts including the cascading approach which uses the sequence of BiLSTM-CRF models (...) and the unified model approach with the multilayer BiLSTM-CRF model and the multilayer BiLSTM-MLP-CRF model. Experimental results on two Japan law RRE datasets demonstrated advantages of our proposed models. For the Japanese National Pension Law dataset, our approaches obtained an \ score of 93.27% and exhibited a significant improvement compared to previous approaches. For the Japan Civil Code RRE dataset which is written in English, our approaches produced an \ score of 78.24% in recognizing RE parts that exhibited a significant improvement over strong baselines. In addition, using external features and in-domain pre-trained word embeddings also improved the performance of RRE systems. (shrink)

The research about strategic human resource management (SHRM) has suggested that human resource professionals (HRPs) have the opportunity to play a greater role in contributing to organizational success if they are effective in developing systems and policies aligned with the organization's values, goals, and mission. We suggest that HRPs need to raise the standard of their performance and that the competitive demands of the modern economic environment create implicit ethical duties that HRPs owe to their organizations. We define ethical stewardship (...) as a model of governance that honors obligations due to the many stakeholders and that maximizes long-term organizational wealth creation. We propose that if HRPs adopt an ethical stewardship framework and the qualities of transformative leaders, they will be more aware of their ethical duties to their organizations and more effective in helping their organizations to create increased wealth, achieve desired organizational outcomes, and establish work environments that are more satisfying to employees. (shrink)

This chapter provides the background to the American women philosophers’ works that are introduced and collected in Knowledge, Mind and Reality: An Introduction by Early Twentieth-Century American Women Philosophers. We describe the institutional context which made these works possible and their methodological and theoretical background. We also provide biographies for their authors.

The history of research on the genetics of intelligence is fraught with social bias. During the eugenics era, the hereditary theory of intelligence justified policies that encouraged the proliferation of favored races and coercively stemmed procreation by disfavored ones. In the 1970s, Berkeley psychologist Arthur Jensen argued that black students’ innate cognitive inferiority limited the efficacy of federal education programs. The 1994 controversial bestseller The Bell Curve, by Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray, rehashed the claim that race and class (...) disparities stem from immutable differences in inherited intelligence, which could not be eliminated through social interventions. Today most scientists studying the genetics of intelligence distance themselves from this history of social bias by arguing that their research need not investigate intellectual differences between social groups. Rather, they argue, examining the heritability of intelligence can be socially neutral and may even help to reduce social inequities. I argue, however, that research on the genetics of intelligence cannot be socially neutral. Even if we divorce the heritability of intelligence from a eugenicist mission, measuring intelligence remains useful only as a gage of individuals’ appropriate positions in society. Research into the genetics of intelligence ultimately helps to determine individuals’ inherited capacity for particular social positions, even when researchers aim to modify the effects of inheritance. (shrink)

Racism is a key driver of the social, political, and economic injustices that cause and maintain health inequities. Over centuries and across continents, racism has become deeply ingrained within societies. Therefore, we believe that it is our professional and ethical obligation as scientists, and public health scholars specifically, to address racism head on in order to ameliorate racialized health disparities. We argue that greater focus is needed on addressing racism rather than race and how race is described or defined. We (...) offer input from public health scholarship to help bioethicists and other scientists contribute to addressing racism. To do so effectively and comprehensively, public health scholars, bioethicists, and other scientists should work together to identify and implement equity-driven collaborations to eliminate the deleterious effects of racism on individuals, families, and communities. (shrink)

Settler colonisation continues to cause much damage across the globe. It has particularly impacted negatively on Indigenous peoples’ health and wellbeing causing great inequity. Health professional education is a critical vehicle to assist in addressing this; however, non‐Indigenous educators often feel unprepared and lack skill in this regard. In this qualitative study, 20 non‐Indigenous nursing, physiotherapy and occupational therapy educators in Australia were interviewed about their experiences and perspectives of teaching Indigenous health. Findings from the inductive thematic analysis suggest educators (...) require skill development to: identify their discomfort in teaching cultural safety; contextualise the sources of this discomfort and; reflect on how this understanding can improve their teaching. Additionally, educators require professional training to become practitioners of cultural humility and to be facilitators and colearners (rather than experts) of the Aboriginal‐led curriculum. Of relevance to this is educator training in how to decentre non‐Indigenous needs and perspectives. Educators can also renew their teaching practices by understanding what a dominant settler paradigm is, identifying if this is problematically present in their teaching and knowing how to remedy this. Crucial to improved cultural safety teaching is institutional support, which includes Indigenous leadership, institutional commitment, relevant policies, and well‐designed professional development. (shrink)

People seeking asylum are at risk of receiving poorer quality healthcare due, in part, to racist and discriminatory attitudes, behaviours and policies in the health system. Despite fleeing war and conflict; exposure to torture and traumatic events and living with uncertainty; people seeking asylum are at high‐risk of experiencing long‐term poor physical and mental health outcomes in their host country. This article aims to raise awareness and bring attention to some common issues people seeking asylum face when seeking healthcare in (...) high‐income countries where the health system is dominated by a Western biomedical view of health. Clinical case scenarios are used to highlight instances of racist healthcare policies and practices that create and maintain ongoing health disparities; limited access to culturally and linguistically appropriate health services, and lack of trauma‐informed approaches to care. Nurses and midwives can play an important role in countering racism in healthcare settings; by identifying and calling out discriminatory practice and modelling tolerance, respect and empathy in daily practice. We present recommendations for individuals, organisations and governments that can inform changes to policies and practices that will reduce racism and improve health equity for people seeking asylum. (shrink)

Ho Chi Minh City is a city which has received and accumulated many cultures and religions from around the world, from Oriental culture to Western civilization, from West Asian and East Asian cultures to South Asian and Southeast Asian cultures. The cultures of some African and Latin American countries have also arrived recently. Most world religions, regional religions, national religions and even new religions are present in the city. The characteristic of religions and cultural identities of Ho Chi Minh City (...) is in the process of transformation, receipt and selection of the cultural and religion elements of those cultures. Based on the research results of a scientific research on the topic, “Cultural and religion life in Ho Chi Minh City in the era of international integration”, we would like to share some opinions about the characteristics of culture and religions in the process of cultural exchange, acculturation and accumulation of Ho Chi Minh City from traditional to modern stage. (shrink)

The Cham Balamon people in Vietnam are an ethnic group with long religious and cultural traditions, who give a great importance to preserving their own cultural identity through generations. However, in recent years there are many economic, cultural and social changes in the life of the Cham Balamon community. One of the significant changes in the spiritual life of this community is the conversion of belief from Hinduism to Christianity. We think that this is an outstanding problem that needs to (...) be addressed by formal and comprehensive scientific research projects. We have dispatched several research groups to conduct field trips, deep interviews and sociological surveys on the spiritual life of the Cham Balamon community. This paper is the first step of those researches pointing out the problems and challenges to the Cham Balamon community in Ninh Thuan Province, Vietnam. These are cultural and belief conflicts among people in the community or even among family members. However, we would predict that the biggest challenge is the risk of losing cultural identities that the Cham Balamon community is facing today due to religious conversion. (shrink)

There is a prominent phenomenon in the religious life of Vietnam, which is the emergence of “new religions”. These phenomena have not only made the religious space of the nation more complex and multi-dimensional but also challenged stability and sustainable development within the religious communities in this key economic region. Having studied the new religious phenomenon in recent years, we have noted its progress and widespread characteristics within the ethnic communities. While it may appear that "new religion" is a simple (...) and gentle concept and practice, it is in fact, intrinsically related to and has significant implications on the social life of the community members. However, there is a growing concern, considerable suspicion and anxiety with regards to its impacts on individuals, families, social and cultural traditions, beliefs and religions; many have opined that it is radically changing the peaceful cohabitation of diverse religious traditions, revealing a potential for conflicts across groups. Based on the religious reality of the Southern region of Vietnam, the Center for Religion Studies has implemented a project regarding new religions in Ho Chi Minh City and the problems faced by the religious policy in Vietnam. This article is an overview of the results of this project. (shrink)

In a number of influential articles published since 1972, Dorothy Grover has developed the prosentential theory of truth. Brought together and published with a new introduction, these essays are even more impressive as a group than they were as single contributions to philosophy and linguistics. Denying that truth has an explanatory role, the prosentential theory does not address traditional truth issues like belief, meaning, and justification. Instead, it focuses on the grammatical role of the truth predicate and asserts that (...) “it is true” is a prosentence, functioning much as a pronoun does. Grover defends the theory by indicating how it can handle notorious paradoxes like the Liar, as well as by analyzing some English truth-usages. The introduction to the volume surveys traditional theories of truth, including correspondence, pragmatic, and coherence theories. It discusses the essays to come and, finally, considers the implications of the prosentential theory for other theories. Despite the fact that the prosentential theory dismisses the “nature of truth” as a red herring, Grover shows that there are important aspects of traditional truth theories that prosentential theorists have the option of endorsing. (shrink)

There has been a long debate on whether demonstratives are directly referential as Kaplan originally argued, or indirectly referential like a definite description. I propose a new analysis of demonstratives that combines intuitions from both direct and indirect approaches. The demonstrative is analyzed as an indirectly referential expression with a binary maximality operator that takes two arguments, where the second argument can be a deictic pointing, an anaphoric index, or a relative clause. Direct reference is encoded not in the meaning (...) of the demonstrative but in the meaning contributed by the pointing gesture, thus capturing both direct and indirect uses. I further propose that some pronouns in English function as demonstratives, realizing the binary structure and competing with the demonstrative. The main advantages of this proposal include (a) deriving the distribution of pronominal and adnominal demonstratives systematically; (b) capturing the unique interaction that demonstratives have with a pointing gesture; and (c) locating English demonstratives against a larger, cross-linguistic picture. (shrink)

Benedict Spinoza is feted as the philosopher par excellence of the popular democratic multitude by Antonio Negri and others. But Spinoza himself expresses a marked ambivalence about the multitude in brief asides, and as for his thoughts on what he calls “the rule of multitude,” that is, democracy, these exist only as meager fragments in his unfinished Tractatus Politicus or Political Treatise. This essay addresses the problem of Spinoza’s multitude. First, I reconstruct a vision of power that is found in (...) the Ethics but that tends to be overlooked in the scholarly literature: power is not just sheer efficacy or imposition of will, but rather involves a capacity for being-affected; I call this the conception of power as sensitivity. The second part of my argument shows how, given Spinoza’s emphatic political naturalism, the conception of power as sensitivity can be extended to his political philosophy to shed light on what Spinoza calls potentia multitudinis, or “the power of the multitude”—a term found solely in the Political Treatise and nowhere else in his oeuvre. This juxtaposition reveals significant qualifications to the liberatory potential of the multitude currently claimed in the scholarly literature. (shrink)

The developmental importance to humans of the human-constructed physical environment, including myriad modified natural objects or manufactured objects, is well recognized. The importance of the physical dimension of the constructed niche has also been recognized in nonhuman animals with respect to dwellings (e.g., beavers’ dams, birds’ nests, and bees’ hives), but has not previously been applied to technical traditions, despite the fact that enduring alterations of the physical environment left by social partners are part of the constructed niche that supports (...) the learning of technical skills through the phenomenon of delayed social facilitation. These alterations aid learning over a longer time scale than the actions themselves. Thus, technical skills that result in enduring physical artifacts, which themselves aid learning the skills, should be both more persistent in a population and more widespread than technical skills that do not share this feature. This perspective gives us a new lens through which to understand the origins of technical traditions in nonhuman animals, and by extension, in human ancestors. Understanding the process by which traditional technical skills are acquired in nonhuman species gives us insight into the ways that the combination of social and physical niche construction can support the evolution of technical aspects of culture from modest beginnings. (shrink)

The article argues that Marx’s use of the concept of ideology in The German Ideology is incidental to a sustained critique of how those he described as the German ideologists think and reason about society and history and that this critique is not simply of an idealist theory that represents society and history as determined by consciousness but of methods of reasoning that treat concepts, even of those of political economy, as determinants. His view of how consciousness is determined historically (...) by our social being does not envisage some kind of mechanical transfer of class status to class consciousness. Rather, he works with an epistemology that takes the concepts foundational to political economy as expressions or reflections of the social relations of a mode of production. The difference between ideology and science is the difference between treating those concepts as the primitives of theory and treating them as sites for exploring the social relations that are expressed in them. Thus, the historical rather than further undermining claims to knowledge, provides both the conditions under which knowledge is possible and its limitations. (shrink)

Six years ago, the Singer lab published a landmark paper which described how individual mRNA particles cross the nuclear pore complex in mammalian tissue culture cells. This involved the simultaneous imaging of mRNAs, each labeled by a large number of tethered fluorescent proteins and fluorescently tagged nuclear pore components. Now two groups have applied this technique to the budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Their results indicate that in the course of nuclear export, mRNAs likely engage complexes that are present on either (...) side of the pore and that these interactions are modulated by proteins present in the messenger ribonucleoprotein (mRNP) complex. These findings lend support to the notion that just before and/or after the completion of nuclear export, mRNPs undergo one or more maturation steps that prepare the packaged mRNAs for translation. These results represent new and exciting insights into the mechanism of mRNA nuclear export. (shrink)