The tautological implications of “innate talents” are outlined. Analogies are drawn between the present review and the nature–nurture controversies of 40 years ago. Ferguson 's theoretical positions are proposed as a context in which to consider present and future attempts to resolve this long-standing issue.

This is the corner into which I beheld a capitalist driven. I say capitalist. But the man was only a day-laborer, and had found it difficult to keep a small family in ordinary comfort. “Nobody is to blame but myself that I am not rich,” he said, “I have neglected to pursue the proper course. But that course was open to me, as it is to everybody in this country. The way is before every man’s eyes; it needs but the (...) will and—the brains!” So, I said, he was a capitalist. If he lay in the gutter and drank swill, he would still be a capitalist. For “out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh,” even with more oracular power than out of the abundance of gold. (shrink)

Durante la expansión del Islam por Oriente Medio, los primeros autores calcedonianos que tuvieron conocimiento de las ideas religiosas que los invasores árabes traían, pusieron de relieve ciertas nociones que ellos entendían como confusas o negativas sobre Cristo. A mediados del siglo VIII, los araboparlantes calcedonianos de Siria-Palestina (que pronto serían denominados «Melquitas» por sus adversarios), comenzaron a citar el Corán con la intención de explotar el potencial probatorio de la lengua para propósitos apologéticos, especialmente en Cristología. Este artículo rastrea (...) ese enfoque en la Cristología y el Corán, que se mantiene de forma continuada en el desarrollo de la teología calcedoniana en lengua árabe, en los trabajos de los más importantes autores de la tradición melquita temprana. Este análisis nos hace pensar que ese «combate» de la comunidad melquita como reacción al desafío religioso del Islam, con el paso del tiempo, hace necesaria una ortodoxia árabe-cristiana reconocible que vendría a ser designada con el término Melquita. (shrink)

Pain is one of the most frequent presenting symptoms for patients who come to a physician's office. Despite the frequency of this presentation, little consistent, systematic information is provided to medical students or physicians about the treatment of pain. In addition, relatively little information is given about the recognition and prevention of drug abuse and about how to prescribe analgesics rationally to minimize the chances for abuse. This lack of educational preparation for both pain and addiction contributes to significant fear (...) and inability on the part of health professionals to diagnose and treat both conditions. It creates a barrier of fear to prescribe adequate doses of pain medications for patients who present with both acute and chronic pain problems. Inadequate medicating can be caused by the physician's overriding worry about creating addiction in a patient. Morgan has called this problem “opiophobia.”. (shrink)

Pain is one of the most frequent presenting symptoms for patients who come to a physician's office. Despite the frequency of this presentation, little consistent, systematic information is provided to medical students or physicians about the treatment of pain. In addition, relatively little information is given about the recognition and prevention of drug abuse and about how to prescribe analgesics rationally to minimize the chances for abuse. This lack of educational preparation for both pain and addiction contributes to significant fear (...) and inability on the part of health professionals to diagnose and treat both conditions. It creates a barrier of fear to prescribe adequate doses of pain medications for patients who present with both acute and chronic pain problems. Inadequate medicating can be caused by the physician's overriding worry about creating addiction in a patient. Morgan has called this problem “opiophobia.”. (shrink)

Stem cell policy in the United States is an amalgam of federal and state policies. The scientific development of human pluripotent embryonic stem cells triggered a contentious national stem cell policy debate during the administration of President George W. Bush. The Bush “compromise” that allowed federal funding to study only a very limited number of ESC derived cell lines did not satisfy either the researchers or the patient advocates who saw great medical potential being stifled. Neither more restrictive legislation nor (...) expansion of federal funding proved politically possible and the federal impasse opened the door for a variety of state-based experiments. In 2004, California became the largest and most influential state venture into stem cell research by passing “Prop 71,” a voter initiative that created a new stem cell agency and funded it with $3 billion. Several states followed suit with similar programs to protect the right of investigators to do stem cell research and in some cases to invest state funding in such projects. Other states devised legislation to restrict stem cell research and in five states, criminal penalties were included. Thus, the US stem cell policy is a patchwork of multiple, often conflicting, state and federal policies. (shrink)

Ethical medical care of pregnant women in Australia should include the real provision of information regarding the risks and benefits of vaginal birth. Routinely obtaining consent for the different ways in which childbirth is commonly intervened on and the assistance involved (such as midwife-led care or a planned caesarean section) and providing sufficient information for women to evaluate the harms and benefits of the care on offer, would not only enable the empowerment of women but would align with the current (...) standard of care as established by Rogers v Whittaker. (shrink)

The human masticatory system is a complex functional unit characterized by a multitude of skeletal components, muscles, soft tissues, and teeth. Muscle activation dynamics cannot be directly measured on live human subjects due to ethical, safety, and accessibility limitations. Therefore, estimation of muscle activations and their resultant forces is a longstanding and active area of research. Reinforcement learning (RL) is an adaptive learning strategy which is inspired by the behavioral psychology and enables an agent to learn the dynamics of an (...) unknown system via policy-driven explorations. The RL framework is a well-formulated closed-loop system where high capacity neural networks are trained with the feedback mechanism of rewards to learn relatively complex actuation patterns. In this work, we are building on a deep RL algorithm, known as the Soft Actor-Critic, to learn the inverse dynamics of a simulated masticatory system, i.e., learn the activation patterns that drive the jaw to its desired location. The outcome of the proposed training procedure is a parametric neural model which acts as the brain of the biomechanical system. We demonstrate the model’s ability to navigate the feasible three-dimensional (3D) envelope of motion with sub-millimeter accuracies. We also introduce a performance analysis platform consisting of a set of quantitative metrics to assess the functionalities of a given simulated masticatory system. This platform assesses the range of motion, metabolic efficiency, the agility of motion, the symmetry of activations, and the accuracy of reaching the desired target positions. We demonstrate how the model learns more metabolically efficient policies by integrating a force regularization term in the RL reward. We also demonstrate the inverse correlation between the metabolic efficiency of the models and their agility and range of motion. The presented masticatory model and the proposed RL training mechanism are valuable tools for the analysis of mastication and other biomechanical systems. We see this framework’s potential in facilitating the functional analyses aspects of surgical treatment planning and predicting the rehabilitation performance in post-operative subjects. (shrink)

Medicine is unique among professions and trades, offering a 'product' which is unlike any other. The consequences for patients of being attracted by misleading information to an inappropriate doctor or service are such as to demand special restrictions on the advertising of doctors' services. Furthermore, health care in the UK is organised around the 'referral system', whereby general practitioners refer patients to specialists when necessary rather than have specialists accept patients on self-referral. But this need not inhibit the provision of (...) helpful factual information to those who need it. Recent policy changes by the General Medical Council considerably broaden the scope for general practitioners to make factual information of their services available to local people, while safeguarding the public against promotional activities which are designed to increase demand for certain kinds of specialist service by playing upon individuals' fears and lack of medical knowledge. (shrink)

In Neutrality and the Academic Ethic, distinguished philosopher Robert L. Simon explores the claim that universities can and should be politically neutral. He examines conceptual questions about the meaning of neutrality, distinguishes different conceptions of what neutrality involves, and considers in what sense, if any, institutional neutrality is both possible and desirable. In Part II, a collection of original and previously published essays provides different views on these and related issues.

Studies on American poetry by ten contributors. Notes at the end of each chapter.

This volume explores how Catholicism began and continues to open its doors to the wider world and to other confessions in embracing ecumenism, thanks to the vision and legacy of the Second Vatican Council. It explores such themes as the twentieth century context preceding the council; parallels between Vatican II and previous councils; its distinctively pastoral character; the legacy of the council in relation to issues such as church-world dynamics, as well as to ethics, social justice, economic activity. Several chapters (...) discuss the role of women in the church before, during, and since the council. Others discern inculturation in relation to Vatican II. The book also contains a wide and original range of ecumenical considerations of the council, including by and in relation to Free Church, Reformed, Orthodox, and Anglican perspectives. Finally, it considers the Council’s ongoing promise and remaining challenges with regard to ecumenical issues, including a groundbreaking essay on the future of ecumenical dialogue by Cardinal Walter Kasper. (shrink)

John Dewey and the spirit of pragmatism, by H. M. Kallen.--Dewey and art, by I. Edman.--Instrumantalism and the history of philosophy, by G. Boas.--Culture and personality, by L. K. Frank.--Social inquiry and social doctrine, by H. L. Friess.--Dewey's theories of legal reasoning and valuation, by S. Ratner.--John Dewey and education, by J. L. Childs.--Dewey's revision of Jefferson, by M. R. Konvitz.--Laity and prelacy in American democracy, by H. W. Schneider.--Organized labor and the Dewey philosophy, by M. Starr.--The desirable and emotive (...) in Dewey's ethics, by S. Hook.--John Dewey's theory of inquiry, by F. Kaufman.--Dewey's theory of natural science, by E. Nagel.--Concerning a certain Deweyan conception of metaphysics, by A. Hofstadter.--Dewey's theory of language and meaning, by P. D. Wienpahl.--Language, rules, and behavior, by W. Sellars.--The analytic and the synthetic: an untenable dualism, by M. G. White.--John Dewey and Karl Marx, by J. Cork.--Dewey in Mexico, by J. T. Farrell. (shrink)

The nature and aim of science, by E. Nagel.--Truth and provability, by L. Henkin.--Completeness, by L. Henkin.--Computability, by S. C. Kleene.--Necessary truth, by W. V. Quine.--What is a scientific theory? By P. Suppes.--Science and simplicity, by N. Goodman.--Scientific explanation, by C. G. Hempel.--Observation and interpretation, by N. R. Hanson.--Probability and confirmation, by H. Putnam.--Utility and acceptance of hypotheses, by I. Levi.--Space and time, by A. Grünbaum.--Problems of microphysics, by P. Feyerabend.--Aspects of explanation in biological theory, by M. Beckner.--Psychologism and methodological (...) individualism, by S. Morgenbesser.--Science, fact, and value, by M. Scriven.--The justification of induction, by M. Black. (shrink)