Meiosis is the process by which diploid germ cells divide to produce haploid gametes for sexual reproduction. The process is highly conserved in eukaryotes, however the recent availability of mouse models for meiotic recombination has revealed surprising regulatory differences between simple unicellular organisms and those with increasingly complex genomes. Moreover, in these higher eukaryotes, the intervention of physiological and sex-specific factors may also influence how meiotic recombination and progression are monitored and regulated. This review will focus on the recent studies (...) involving mouse mutants for meiosis, and will highlight important differences between traditional model systems for meiosis (such as yeast) and those involving more complex cellular, physiological and genetic criteria. BioEssays 23:996–1009, 2001. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (shrink)

O presente artigo consiste no registro de memórias de um diretor e de uma diretora que atuaram em escolas públicas de M inas Gerais, e na análise de suas narrativas. O objetivo foi captar suas representações sobre as práticas administrativas e pedagógicas rememoradas dos anos de exercício profissional. Com a metodologia da história oral, nossa investigação buscou construir uma interpretação a respeito de atitudes, posturas e práticas enraizadas nos rituais da escola contemporânea. Pudemos observar que no período estudado havia uma (...) política extremamente centralizada, cujas diretrizes eram difundidas pelos órgãos centrais da administração burocrática. O trabalho de gestão das unidades escolares era pautado, principalmente, pelo controle do cumprimento das normas estabelecidas pela política pública de educação. (shrink)

Nuclear weapons proliferation is at the top of the news these days. Most recent reports have focused on the nuclear efforts of Iran and North Korea, but they also typically warn that those two acute diplomatic headaches may merely be the harbingers of a much darker future. Indeed, foreign policy sages often claim that what worries them most is not the small arsenals that Tehran and Pyongyang could build for themselves, but rather the potential that their reckless behavior could catalyze (...) a process of runaway nuclear proliferation, international disorder, and, ultimately, nuclear war. (shrink)

_341_ _Objectives: _In patients with multivessel disease both the detection of the culprit lesion and the exact allocation are important preconditions for sufficient treatment and improved outcome. In a vessel based approach the combination of quantitative coronary angiography and fractional flow reserve measured by a pressure wire should be advantageous compared to myocardial SPECT, as morphological and functional information is delivered simultaneously. Therefore our aim was to evaluate MS in the detection and allocation of hemodynamically significant stenoses obtained by the (...) combined gold standard QCA plus FFR in patients with multivessel disease. _Methods: _FFR and QCA of 95 vessels in 80 patients have been evaluated. Hemodynamically significant target lesions were defined as intermediate stenoses between 50 and 75% with an FFR. (shrink)

There continues to be a debate on whether addiction is best understood as a brain disease or a moral condition. This debate, which may influence both the stigma attached to addiction and access to treatment, is often motivated by the question of whether and to what extent we can justly hold addicted individuals responsible for their actions. In fact, there is substantial evidence for a disease model, but the disease model per se does not resolve the question of voluntary control. (...) Recent research at the intersection of neuroscience and psychology suggests that addicted individuals have substantial impairments in cognitive control of behavior, but this "loss of control" is not complete or simple. Possible mechanisms and implications are briefly reviewed. (shrink)

For years, both psychologists and the general public have been fascinated with the notion that there are gender differences in cognitive abilities; even now, flashy cover stories exploiting this idea dominate major news magazines, while research focuses on differences in verbal, mathematical, spatial, and scientific abilities across gender. This new volume in the Counterpoints series not only summarizes and addresses the validity of such research, but also questions its ideology and consequences. Why do we search so intently for these differences? (...) And what are the social and cultural implications of this relentless emphasis? Do biological mechanisms, in fact, contribute to the male-female differences in cognition? These are just a few of the questions generated by this controversial topic as it is debated throughout the book. (shrink)

Pantomime has long been considered distinct from co-speech gesture. It has therefore been argued that pantomime cannot be part of gesture-speech integration. We examine pantomime as distinct from silent gesture, focusing on non-co-speech gestures that occur in the midst of children’s spoken narratives. We propose that gestures with features of pantomime are an infrequent but meaningful component of a multimodal communicative strategy. We examined spontaneous non-co-speech representational gesture production in the narratives of 30 monolingual English-speaking children between the ages of (...) 8- and 11-years. We compared the use of co-speech and non-co-speech gestures in both autobiographical and fictional narratives and examined viewpoint and the use of non-manual articulators, as well as the length of responses and narrative quality. The use of non-co-speech gestures was associated with longer narratives of equal or higher quality than those using only co-speech gestures. Non-co-speech gestures were most likely to adopt character-viewpoint and use non-manual articulators. The present study supports a deeper understanding of the term pantomime and its multimodal use by children in the integration of speech and gesture. (shrink)

Este artigo analisa a conceção agostiniana do belo a partir da relação dinâmica entre três elementos fundamentais: a congruência, o desejo e a felicidade. Nesta análise assinalam-se duas etapas do desenvolvimento da teoria agostiniana do belo. Uma primeira caracteriza-se pela adesão a uma conceção intelectualista do belo e da vida feliz. Uma segunda mostra como Agostinho, confrontado com o problema da visão de Deus in patria, integra a corporeidade na experiência do belo na fruição do bem supremo. Na conclusão, evidencia-se (...) a valoração do corpo na fruição do belo na última doutrina de Agostinho e a ideia de congruência que lhe subjaz. (shrink)

A era pós moderna revela algumas sintomas de uma razão enferma, sendo os pnncipais a fragmentação dos modelos racionais e a restrição do horizonte epistémico deles. A recusa a assumir referentes universais sobre os quais edificar validamente um sistema racional leva consigo a derrocada de todo o princípio de validação, teórico ou prático. Tal facto compromete decisivamente qualquer ensaio de fundamentação em bioética. A ausência de uma concepção substantiva de bens e de fins manifesta-se na diversidade de sentidos dados ao (...) princípio de beneficência no interior de paradigmas também eles plurais. A questão premente é a de saber se, em tal situação, a tarefa de fundamentação em bioética é possível e, em caso afirmativo, como sanar as enfermidades da razão. Postmodern philosophy shows symptoms of some reason ills, the most evident of them being the fragmentation of rational paradigms together with the narrowness of their epistemic scope. Rejecting the possibility of knowing universal references upon which reason might construct a rational system, every essay of values foundation fails. As a result, dealing with the foundation of bioethics becomes a hard endeavor. Because a substantive notion of good and ends is absent, plural and opposite contemporary paradigms of bioethics foundation provide plural and opposite senses to the principle of beneficence. This article analyzes some of these contradictory theses. The central issue is to know if, being so, the foundation of bioethics is still possible and, if so, which therapies are suitable to heal the ills of contemporary reason. (shrink)

This paper analyses the questions on the science of the soul and on the immortality of the soul in two commentaries on Aristotle’s De anima that subsist in the manuscripts of the teaching of philosophy in Coimbra in the sixteenth-century. The paper shows that the positions of the two commentators – Petrus Fonsecae (attr.) and Christophorus Gilli – are in total opposition, concerning either the commentary tradition on Aristotle’s De anima or the theories on the soul they assume. Focused on (...) unpublished and less studied sources this research brings to light some innovative aspects of the teaching of philosophy in Coimbra. We thus suggest that the manuscript sources of the period be reassessed and studied in comparison to the published works. (shrink)

The current work builds a definition of irritability from both academic definitions and lay perspectives. In Study 1, a quantitative content analysis of academic definitions resulted in eight main content categories. In Study 2, a community sample of 39 adults participated in qualitative interviews. A deductive thematic analysis resulted in two main themes. The first main theme dealt with how participants positioned irritability in relation to other negative states. The second dealt with how participants constructed irritability as both a loss (...) of control and as an experience that should be controlled. The discussion integrates the findings of both studies and provides a concise, but comprehensive definition. (shrink)

A era pós moderna revela algumas sintomas de uma razão enferma, sendo os pnncipais a fragmentação dos modelos racionais e a restrição do horizonte epistémico deles. A recusa a assumir referentes universais sobre os quais edificar validamente um sistema racional leva consigo a derrocada de todo o princípio de validação, teórico ou prático. Tal facto compromete decisivamente qualquer ensaio de fundamentação em bioética. A ausência de uma concepção substantiva de bens e de fins manifesta-se na diversidade de sentidos dados ao (...) princípio de beneficência no interior de paradigmas também eles plurais. A questão premente é a de saber se, em tal situação, a tarefa de fundamentação em bioética é possível e, em caso afirmativo, como sanar as enfermidades da razão. Postmodern philosophy shows symptoms of some reason ills, the most evident of them being the fragmentation of rational paradigms together with the narrowness of their epistemic scope. Rejecting the possibility of knowing universal references upon which reason might construct a rational system, every essay of values foundation fails. As a result, dealing with the foundation of bioethics becomes a hard endeavor. Because a substantive notion of good and ends is absent, plural and opposite contemporary paradigms of bioethics foundation provide plural and opposite senses to the principle of beneficence. This article analyzes some of these contradictory theses. The central issue is to know if, being so, the foundation of bioethics is still possible and, if so, which therapies are suitable to heal the ills of contemporary reason. (shrink)

Heyman's target article is an analytical tour de force, but it makes too hard a distinction between voluntary and driven behavior. It is more fruitful to think about brain and behavior as shifting, interacting “agents,” represented by multiple neural circuits. This has the virtue of better connecting behavioral analysis with wet neuroscience.

This paper presents the development andvalidation of new measurement tools to exploreself-efficacy toward service and toward civicparticipation. We developed and administereda survey to 851 students in an AACSB-accreditedcollege of business at a comprehensive publicuniversity located in the Midwest. Traditionalscale development methodologies plusconfirmatory factor analysis and simultaneousfactor analysis in several populations wereused to analyze both a primary sample and aholdback sample. Results strongly support thevalidity and reliability of the surveyinstrument. Future use for the instrumentincludes verification of the effectiveness ofpedagogies designed to (...) increase self-efficacytoward service and motivation for civicparticipation in business students. (shrink)

La influencia de la obra y doctrina de Francisco Suárez en la conformación del pensamiento moderno ha sido ampliamente estudiada en áreas como la filosofía política y del derecho, la metafísica o la epistemología. Sin embargo, la filosofía moral de Suárez, en concreto aquella que, como él mismo explica, habrá de servir de base a sus tratados de teología moral, está todavía por analizar. El objetivo de este trabajo es traer a luz algunos aspectos de la teoría suareciana sobre la (...) causalidad final en los agentes libres, confrontando su doctrina sobre la causalidad del fin en dos comentarios, escritos en distintos períodos, a las cuestiones I-IIae de la Suma de Teología de Tomás de Aquino: el manuscrito inédito De beatitudine y el tratado De ultimo fine hominis, publicado por Baltasar Álvares. La cuestión aquí analizada —qué significa actuar por un fin— se asume como un instrumento heurístico para dar a conocer sea estas dos fuentes estudiadas, sea el interés filosófico de las doctrinas de Suárez a respecto de la causalidad final. Las conclusiones apuntan a los siguientes aspectos: i) la proximidad, aun con dudas, de Suárez a la doctrina tomista de la causalidad del fin, en el comentario de 1579; ii) la asunción parcial de la doctrina tomista en cuanto a la función del intelecto en el actuar libre, y la afirmación de que el locus finis es la voluntad, en el comentario de 1628. Trabajando con estos matices hemos querido establecer algunos puntales de encuentro que permitan hacer visibles los puentes que emergen entre una tradición escolástica que enfrenta una nueva imagen del hombre, y la filosofía moral inmediatamente posterior que despojando aquella de su fundamento teológico, avanza con paso firme hacia la modernidad. (shrink)

Alfonso Monsalve Solórzano: Colombia: democracia y paz. Medellín, Fondo Editorial Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana, 1999, pp. 378.