The intracellular multiprotein complex β‐catenin destruction complex plays a key role in Wnt/β‐catenin signaling. Wnt stimulation induces the assembly of the receptor‐associated signalosome and the inactivation of the destruction complex, leading to β‐catenin accumulation and transcriptional activation of the target genes. The core components of the destruction complex include Axin, APC, GSK3β, CK1α and other proteins. Recent studies demonstrated that Axin and APC undergo liquid–liquid phase separation (LLPS), which is critical (...) for their function to regulate Wnt/β‐catenin signaling. Here, we discuss the possible roles of LLPS in Wnt/β‐catenin signaling and regulation of Axin LLPS by post‐translational modifications. (shrink)

The precise orchestration of two opposing protein complexes – one in the cytoplasm (β‐catenin destruction complex) and the other at the plasma membrane (LRP6 signaling complex) – is critical for controlling levels of the transcriptional co‐factor β‐catenin, and subsequent activation of the Wnt/β‐catenin signal transduction pathway. The Wnt pathway component Axin acts as an essential scaffold for the assembly of both complexes. How the β‐catenin destruction and LRP6 signaling complexes are modulated following (...) Wnt stimulation remains controversial. A recent study in Science by He and coworkers reveals an underlying logic for Wnt pathway control in which Axin phosphorylation toggles a switch between the active and inactive states. This mini‐review focuses on this and two other recent studies that provide insight into the initial signaling events triggered by Wnt exposure. We emphasize regulation of the β‐catenin destruction and LRP6 signaling complexes and propose a framework for future work in this area. (shrink)

The cytoplasmic domain of the cell adhesion molecule uvomorulin associates with three independent proteins, named catenins, which are structurally related in different cell types of various species. This complex formation connects uvnomorulin and cytoskeletal structures and might, moreover, be involved in other adhesion‐dependent mechanisms.

Cadherins are a large family of single‐pass transmembrane proteins principally involved in Ca2+‐dependent homotypic cell adhesion. The cadherin molecules comprise three domains, the intracellular domain, the transmembrane domain and the extracellular domain, and form large complexes with a vast array of binding partners (including cadherin molecules of the same type in homophilic interactions and cellular protein catenins), orchestrating biologically essential extracellular and intracellular signalling processes. While current, contrasting models for classic cadherin homophilic interaction involve varying numbers of specific repeats found (...) in the extracellular domain, the structure of the domain itself clearly remains the main determinant of cell stability and binding specificity. Through intracellular interactions, cadherin enhances its adhesive properties binding the cytoskeleton via cytoplasmic associated factors α‐ catenin, β‐catenin and p120ctn. Recent structural studies on classic cadherins and these catenin molecules have provided new insight into the essential mechanisms underlying cadherin‐mediated cell interaction and catenin‐mediated cellular signalling. Remarkable structural diversity has been observed in β‐catenin recognition of other cellular factors including APC, Tcf and ICAT, proteins that contribute to or compete with cadherin/catenin functioning. BioEssays 26:497–511, 2004. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

This paper analyzes the complex historical and regional factors that contribute to the escalation of destruction from 2003 on in Darfur. Darfur is not an isolated case that suddenly erupted in violence. It is the most recent case in a long history of repeated violations by the Sudanese state against its citizens. From the use of proxy militias (the Janjaweed) to signing peace agreements that fragment and weaken the opposition, destruction in Darfur continues government strategies of divide (...) and rule. At the same time, complex regional dynamics especially between Sudan, Chad and the Central African Republic add to violence and instability within states and across borders. The paper emphasizes the speed with which during 2003–2005 over 2.4 million were uprooted from their homes and the ongoing vulnerability of internally displaced persons to attacks, disease and malnutrition. This restructuring of the population in Darfur is part of a strategy to control the populace and redistribute land and other resources. The multicausal origin of the conflict and its increasing complexity points to the difficulty of providing security for the people in Darfur and resolving the conflict. (shrink)

Abstractβ‐Catenin/CTNNB1 is critical for leukemia initiation or the stem cell capacity of several hematological malignancies. This review focuses on a general evaluation of β‐catenin function in normal T‐cell development and T‐cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (T‐ALL). The integration of the existing literature offers a state‐of‐the‐art dissection of the complexity of β‐catenin function in leukemia initiation and maintenance in both Notch‐dependent and independent contexts. In addition, β‐catenin mutations are screened for in T‐ALL primary samples, and it is found that (...) they are rare and with little clinical relevance. Transcriptional analysis of Wnt family members (Ctnnb1, Axin2, Tcf7, and Lef1) and Myc in different publicly available T‐ALL cohorts indicates that the expression of these genes may correlate with T‐ALL subtypes and/or therapy outcomes. (shrink)

Cadherin‐mediated cell‐cell adhesion is perturbed in protein tyrosine kinase (PTK)‐transformed cells. While cadherins themselves appear to be poor PTK substrates, their cytoplasmic binding partners, the Arm catenins, are excellent PTK substrates and therefore good candidates for mediating PTK‐induced changes in cadherin behavior. These proteins, p120ctn, β‐catenin and plakoglobin, bind to the cytoplasmic region of classical cadherins and function to modulate adhesion and/or bridge cadherins to the actin cytoskeleton. In addition, as demonstrated recently for β‐catenin, these proteins also have (...) crucial signaling roles that may or may not be related to their effects on cell‐cell adhesion. Tyrosine phosphorylation of cadherin complexes is well documented and widely believed to modulate cell adhesiveness. The data to date, however, is largely correlative and the mechanism of action remains unresolved. In this review, we discuss the current literature and suggest models whereby tyrosine phosphorylation of Arm catenins contribute to regulation or perturbation of cadherin function. (shrink)

Purpose. Research of the phenomenon of human destructiveness in the context of metaphysical images and violence practices of late Modernism. Theoretical basis. The problem is that the philosophical reflection of violence as objectified, realized destructiveness of man is usually contextual in nature and is on the periphery of understanding its external manifestations. Accordingly, anthropological crisis remains behind the scenes, as evidenced by the devaluation of the humanistic potential of modern culture. That is why one should turn the focus from the (...) obvious, objectively conditioned incarnations of violence in the XXI century to the internal factors that are in the realm of existential. The departure from the consideration of violence as an abstract, faceless or ideologically colored evil allowed us to focus on man, his way of thinking, life and social orientations, feelings and internal contradictions, which find their expression in one or another form of destructiveness. Originality. Based on the works of M. Scheler and E. Fromm defining for philosophical anthropology and psychoanalysis, for the first time the conceptualization of positive and negative forms of manifestation of human destructiveness against the background of sociocultural transformations of late Modernism was carried out. It has been proved that its ontological principles are rooted in specifically human existence and relations with other members of society, while anthropological ones are directly connected with the endless struggle of the life, the vital with the spirit in man. Conclusions. Violence is a tool and a product of man’s transition to more mature and complex forms of existence. The interdependence of the violence and nonviolence practices ensures the progressive movement of humanity towards society humanization. This progress is accompanied by a natural internal conflict of personality, which can be both progressive and regressive. At the metaphysical level, destructiveness appears as a connection between the entropy of world existence as a whole and the instability of human existence itself, which is a complexly organized and open to the world system. Self-transcendence as an anthropological prerequisite for human destructiveness has a dual nature and combines negative and positive characteristics, the content and significance of which were revealed in the study. The authors are convinced that there is no other way to overcome the negative, malignant destructiveness, except for the incessant, daily gathering of life meanings around them and their development. After all, the loss of such core structures of the existence as the meaning, purpose and value of life has become a truly global problem for the modern world. Emphasis is placed on the need to keep in harmony the trinity of body-soul-spirit, which will allow a person in any social transformation to preserve and increase his integrity. (shrink)

This paper argues that severe and ongoing trauma (SOT) can lead to impairment at the level of the minimal self (MS), which is the core element in the structure of subjectivity. In the long-term, such impairments can result in complex post-traumatic stress disorder (CPTSD) and schizophrenia. The paper tackles this issue while trying to create meaningful bridges between phenomenology and neuroscience.

A generalization of a Burridge-Knopoff spring-block model is investigated to illustrate the dynamics of transform faults. The model can undergo Hopf bifurcation and fold bifurcation of limit cycles. Considering the cyclical nature of the spring stiffness, the model with periodic perturbation is further explored via a continuation technique and numerical bifurcation analysis. It is shown that the periodic perturbation induces abundant dynamics, the existence, the switch, and the coexistence of multiple attractors including periodic solutions with various periods, quasiperiodic solutions, chaotic (...) solutions through torus destruction, or cascade of period doublings. Throughout the results obtained, one can see that the system manifests complex dynamical behaviors such as chaos, self-organized criticality, and the transition of dynamical behaviors when it comes to periodic perturbations. Even very small variation of a parameter can result in radical changes of the dynamics, which provides a new insight into the fault dynamics. (shrink)

An extended analysis compared to observations shows that modern “globalised” world civilisation has passed through the invisible “complexity threshold”, after which usual “spontaneous”, empirically driven kind of development (“invisible hand” etc.) cannot continue any more without major destructive tendencies. A much deeper, non-simplified understanding of real interaction complexity is necessary in order to cope with such globalised world development problems. Here we introduce the universal definition, fundamental origin, and dynamic equations for a major related quantity of (systemic) risk characterising real (...) complex system development tendencies at any level of dynamics. Practically important conclusions are derived, opening further detailed applications in economy, finance and development practice. (shrink)

Autophagy and YAP1‐WWTR1/TAZ signalling are tightly linked in a complex control system of forward and feedback pathways which determine different cellular outcomes in differing cell types at different time‐points after perturbations. Here we extend our previous experimental and modelling approaches to consider two possibilities. First, we have performed additional mathematical modelling to explore how the autophagy‐YAP1 crosstalk may be controlled by posttranslational modifications of components of the pathways. Second, since analogous contrasting results have also been reported for autophagy as (...) a regulator of other transduction pathways engaged in tumorigenesis (Wnt/β‐catenin, TGF‐β/Smads, NF‐kB or XIAP/cIAPs), we have considered if such discrepancies may be explicable through situations involving competing pathways and feedback loops in different cell types, analogous to the autophagy‐YAP/TAZ situation. Since distinct posttranslational modifications dominate those pathways in distinct cells, these need to be understood to enable appropriate cell type‐specific therapeutic strategies for cancers and other diseases. (shrink)

This article applies some conceptual tools from semiotics to better understand the disastrous impacts of the world economy on global ecology. It traces the accelerating production of material disorder and waste to the logic of the money sign, as economic production processes simultaneously increase exchange-values and entropy. The exchange of indexical and iconic signs is essential to the dynamics of ecological systems and the proliferation of biological diversity. The human species has added a third kind of sign, the symbol, and (...) more recently a fourth: all-purpose money. Money does not refer to any referent either through contiguity, similarity, or convention. It is an empty sign, capable of assuming any significance that its owner attributes to it. The article argues that the concept of symbolic reference should be restricted to cultural and linguistic phenomena. Money qualifies as a new species of sign based on its exceedingly open mode of reference. It does not refer to any object by social convention but owes its specific properties precisely to the absence of such conventions. The logic of money pivots on decontextualisation: it presupposes and encourages the detachment of exchange values, people, and concepts from the particular and the local. Selective advantage is no longer primarily about calibration within local contexts, but increasingly a matter of transcending or emancipating oneself from the specific. This drift toward decontextualisation reverses the evolution of complexity and diversity throughout the planetary biosphere. (shrink)

Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport (RED-S) is a syndrome of impaired health and performance that occurs as a result of low energy availability (LEA). Whilst many health effects associated with RED-S have been widely studied from a physiological perspective, further research exploring the psychological antecedents and consequences of the syndrome is required. Therefore, the aim of this study was to qualitatively explore athlete experiences of RED-S. Twelve endurance athletes (female n= 10, male n= 2; M age = 28.33 years) reporting (...) past or current experiences of RED-S, associated with periods of LEA, took part in semi-structured interviews designed to explore: contexts and mechanisms underpinning the onset of RED-S; the subjective experience of RED-S; and contexts and mechanisms influencing “recovery” from RED-S. Regardless of how RED-S was initiated, all athletes experienced a multitude of physiological impairments, accompanied by significant psychological distress. This paper contributes novel understanding of the complex interplay between physiological and psychological components of RED-S from the perspective of information-rich cases. The findings suggest that system-wide educational prevention and awareness interventions are vital for athletes and support personnel, such as coaches, parents, dieticians, psychologists, and sports medicine staff. (shrink)

Wnt proteins can activate different intracellular signaling cascades in various organisms by interacting with receptors of the Frizzled family. The first identified Wnt signaling pathway, the Wnt/β‐catenin pathway, has been studied in much detail and is highly conserved among species. As to non‐canonical Wnt pathways, the current situation is more nebulous partly because the intracellular mediators of this pathway are not yet fully understood and, in some cases, even identified. However, there are increasing data that prove the existence of (...) non‐canonical Wnt signaling and demonstrate its involvement in different developmental processes. In vertebrates, Wnt‐11 and Wnt‐5A can activate the Wnt/JNK pathway, which resembles the planar cell polarity pathway in Drosophila. The Wnt/Ca2+‐pathway has only been described in Xenopus and zebrafish so far and it is unclear whether it also exists in other organisms. Two recent papers provide us with new insight into non‐canonical Wnt signaling by (1) presenting a new intracellular mediator of non‐canonical signaling in Xenopus1 and (2) implicating the existence of an additional non‐canonical Wnt signaling pathway in flies.2 BioEssays 24:881–884, 2002. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Peter Byrne tells the story of Hugh Everett III (1930-1982), whose "many worlds" theory of multiple universes has had a profound impact on physics and philosophy. Using Everett's unpublished papers (recently discovered in his son's basement) and dozens of interviews with his friends, colleagues, and surviving family members, Byrne paints, for the general reader, a detailed portrait of the genius who invented an astonishing way of describing our complex universe from the inside. Everett's mathematical model (called the "universal wave (...) function") treats all possible events as "equally real", and concludes that countless copies of every person and thing exist in all possible configurations spread over an infinity of universes: many worlds. Afflicted by depression and addictions, Everett strove to bring rational order to the professional realms in which he played historically significant roles. In addition to his famous interpretation of quantum mechanics, Everett wrote a classic paper in game theory; created computer algorithms that revolutionized military operations research; and performed pioneering work in artificial intelligence for top secret government projects. He wrote the original software for targeting cities in a nuclear hot war; and he was one of the first scientists to recognize the danger of nuclear winter. As a Cold Warrior, he designed logical systems that modeled "rational" human and machine behaviors, and yet he was largely oblivious to the emotional damage his irrational personal behavior inflicted upon his family, lovers, and business partners. He died young, but left behind a fascinating record of his life, including correspondence with such philosophically inclined physicists as Niels Bohr, Norbert Wiener, and John Wheeler. These remarkable letters illuminate the long and often bitter struggle to explain the paradox of measurement at the heart of quantum physics. In recent years, Everett's solution to this mysterious problem - the existence of a universe of universes - has gained considerable traction in scientific circles, not as science fiction, but as an explanation of physical reality. (shrink)

Many philosophers have believed that colours and the other qualia ofexperience are simples and that colour terms are unanalysable. Colour termsare unanalysable because colours are simples, colours are known to be simple because colour terms are unanalysable. I shall try to show that things are not as simple as this. Nothing in the paper will depend on the general Wittgensteinian thesis of the relativity of simplicity. The thought I shallpursue is the more specific one that the philosophers who have believed (...) in the simplicity of colours have been the victims of certain false images of what the relevant kind of simplicity is like, and that when these images are destroyed the belief is clearly false. Most importantly they have confused logical simplicity with visual uniformity, the kind of simplicity which could intelligibly be attributed to coloured patches or expanses of colour andthe kind of simplicity which can be attributed to colours. So the paper is concerned with the destruction of spatial and material images which distort our understanding of concepts which are neither spatial nor material ones.The wider epistemological implications of the non-existence of simple ideas of colours will not be discussed. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: How can we think about a universal ethics that could be adopted by any intelligent being, including the rising population of cyborgs, intelligent machines, intelligent algorithms or even potential extraterrestrial life? We generally give value to complex structures, to objects resulting from a long work, to systems with many elements and with many links finely adjusted. These include living beings, books, works of art or scientific theories. Intuitively, we want to keep, multiply, and share such structures, as well (...) as prevent their destruction. Such objects have value not because more information would simply mean more value. Instead, they have value because they require a long computational history, numerous interactions for their construction that we can assimilate to a computation, and they display what we call organized complexity. To propose the foundations of a universal ethics based on the intrinsic value of organized complexity, we first discuss conceptions of complexity, and argue that Charles Bennett’s logical depth is certainly a first approximation of what we are looking for. We then put forward three fundamental imperatives: to preserve, augment and recursively promote organized complexity. We show a broad range of applications with human, non-human and non-living examples. Finally, we discuss some specific issues of our framework such as the distribution of complexity, of managing copies and erasures, and how our universal ethics tackles classical ethical issues. In sum, we propose a clear, homogenous and consistent ethical foundation that can integrate many universal ethics desiderata. (shrink)

In a volume that traverses multiple disciplines, Michael Robbins proposes that the structures of the mind that distinguish us as uniquely human also incline us towards destructive behaviours on a personal and societal level. Psychoanalysis was created by Freud in an effort to understand neurosis and psychosis, the names he gave to individual human destructiveness. His understanding was limited and incorrect because the science of evolution and the disciplines of sociology and cultural anthropology were in their infancy when he formulated (...) his ideas. He did not comprehend that destructiveness is qualitatively different in humans than in other species and he ignored the problem of how biological instincts become mental processes. These limitations left psychoanalysis with one of its most perplexing unsolved problems, the mysterious leap from mind to body. The book explains how neoteny, the prolonged period of post-natal immaturity that distinguishes humans from other animals, requires and enables complex learning from caregivers. It is the knowledge acquired from this learning and its intergenerational transmission that links the biological theory of evolution with the psychosocial theory of psychoanalysis and explains how the human species is unique. The book will be of interest to those who want to learn about how integrating the findings of evolutionary science, primatology, sociology and cultural anthroplogy with the theory of psychoanalysis expands our understanding of what makes humans unique and its implications for the future of our species, and empowers us to influence the destiny of humankind. (shrink)

Vassiliki ADRYMI-SISMANI Le palais de Iolkos et sa destruction p. 1-54 Depuis 1977, un important habitat mycénien (ca 10 ha) est fouillé à Dimini, à l'Est de la colline qu'occupe le site préhistorique bien connu, dans la plaine du côté de la mer. On y a mis au jour onze maisons — fondées sur des mégarons mésohelladiques et des couches du Bronze Ancien — bordant de part et d'autre une rue centrale qui traverse l'habitat, ainsi qu'un grand four céramique. (...) Un complexe architectural composé de deux mégarons (A et B), d'une cour centrale, d'ateliers et de magasins est exploré depuis 1997, complexe auquel aboutit la rue centrale qui traverse l'habitat. La destruction du complexe, datée dans la phase de transition HR III B2-HR III C Ancien, a entraîné la chute des crépis dans le Mégaron A et un violent incendie dans le Mégaron Β ; certaines pièces du Mégaron A sont réoccupées après déblaiement et de petites réfections, le Mégaron Β au contraire n'est pas réoccupé. Les pièces réoccupées du Mégaron A ont livré de la céramique mycénienne du HR III C Ancien, de la céramique grise tournée pseudo-minyenne et de la céramique lustrée faite à la main ; cette céramique est totalement absente du Mégaron B. La céramique témoigne que la réoccupation a été immédiate après la destruction et a duré fort peu de temps. (shrink)

Despite growing awareness around human impacts on marine ecosystems, little action is taken to reduce the negative effects of organizations on the ocean, thus increasing risks of global collapse. In this paper, I argue that organizations act as systems of ocean destruction, and I explore how to operate a shift to organizations as systems of ocean conservation and thriving, enabling human–ocean socio‐ecological coviability. To do so, I analyze the organizational affordances of the ocean: incommensurability, open access and complex (...) property regimes, structural domination by humans and land, perceived inexhaustibility, and cognitive distance. Then, based on the transdisciplinary analysis of mechanisms of ocean destruction, I discuss the constitution of ocean negative commons and the ruining of the ocean. Lastly, based on four drivers (technology and innovation, consumption, marginalization and social orders), I suggest alternative organizing principles that might allow to manage these commons and to transform organizations to achieve socio‐ecological coviability with the ocean: degrowth, total responsibility, full cost allocation, ocean equity, and adaptive, place‐based co‐management. (shrink)

We study sincere-strategy preference-based approval voting , a system proposed by Brams and Sanver [1] and here adjusted so as to coerce admissibility of the votes , with respect to procedural control. In such control scenarios, an external agent seeks to change the outcome of an election via actions such as adding/deleting/partitioning either candidates or voters. SP-AV combines the voters' preference rankings with their approvals of candidates, where in elections with at least two candidates the voters' approval strategies are adjusted (...) – if needed – to approve of their most-preferred candidate and to disapprove of their least-preferred candidate. This rule coerces admissibility of the votes even in the presence of control actions, and hybridizes, in effect, approval with pluralitiy voting. We prove that this system is computationally resistant to 19 out of 22 types of constructive and destructive control. Thus, SP-AV has more resistances to control than is currently known for any other natural voting system with a polynomial-time winner problem. In particular, SP-AV is the second natural voting system with an easy winner-determination procedure that is known to have full resistance to constructive control, and unlike Copeland voting it in addition displays broad resistance to destructive control. (shrink)

We study sincere-strategy preference-based approval voting (SP-AV), a system proposed by Brams and Sanver [1] and here adjusted so as to coerce admissibility of the votes (rather than excluding inadmissible votes a priori), with respect to procedural control. In such control scenarios, an external agent seeks to change the outcome of an election via actions such as adding/deleting/partitioning either candidates or voters. SP-AV combines the voters' preference rankings with their approvals of candidates, where in elections with at least two candidates (...) the voters' approval strategies are adjusted – if needed – to approve of their most-preferred candidate and to disapprove of their least-preferred candidate. This rule coerces admissibility of the votes even in the presence of control actions, and hybridizes, in effect, approval with pluralitiy voting. We prove that this system is computationally resistant (i.e., the corresponding control problems are NP-hard) to 19 out of 22 types of constructive and destructive control. Thus, SP-AV has more resistances to control than is currently known for any other natural voting system with a polynomial-time winner problem. In particular, SP-AV is (after Copeland voting, see Faliszewski et al. [2, 3]) the second natural voting system with an easy winner-determination procedure that is known to have full resistance to constructive control, and unlike Copeland voting it in addition displays broad resistance to destructive control (© 2009 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim). (shrink)

Fatty acids (FAs) are well known to serve as substrates for reactions that provide cells with membranes and energy. In contrast to these metabolic reactions, the physiological importance of FAs themselves known as free FAs (FFAs) in cells remains obscure. Since accumulation of FFAs in cells is toxic, cells must develop mechanisms to detoxify FFAs. One such mechanism is to sequester free polyunsaturated FAs (PUFAs) into a droplet‐like structure assembled by Fas‐Associated Factor 1 (FAF1), a cytosolic protein. This sequestration limits (...) access of PUFAs to Fe2+, thereby preventing Fe2+‐catalyzed PUFA peroxidation. Consequently, assembly of the FAF1‐FFA complex is critical to protect cells from ferroptosis, a cell death pathway triggered by PUFA peroxidation. The observations that free PUFAs in cytosol are not randomly diffused but rather sequestered into a membraneless complex should open new directions to explore signaling pathways by which FFAs regulate cellular physiology. (shrink)

: This essay highlights how contemporary Muslim fundamentalists reduce Islam's rich and complex intellectual legacy to a set of authoritarian rules. The three branches of classical Islamic education-theology, jurisprudence, and ethics-are particularly targeted. The reductionist pattern applied to these areas is designed to eliminate both the scholarly space of inquiry and the room for individual reflection traditionally granted to its followers by Islamic religion. The essay ends with an analysis of the language used by Osama bin Laden in various (...) documents over the last ten years that show how he has abused Islam's jurisprudential tradition to confer on him a convenient likeness of legality. (shrink)

Environmental degradation is the most important complex of problems ever confronted by humanity. Humans are interfering with the world's ecosystems so severely that they are beginning to undermine the conditions for their own continued existence. They are polluting the air, the oceans and the land. They are rapidly exhausting the reserves of minerals and destroying the resources of the world on which civilization depends, while destroying other life forms on a massive scale. At the same time humans are increasingly (...) enclosing themselves in built environments which isolate them and fragment their lives, destroy their health and reduce them to either the dehumanized instruments of military-industrial complexes, or to abject poverty. The problem of the environment is also the problem of over-population, the disproportionate consumption of resources by Western nations and the starvation of those in the Third World who lose out in the struggle for the remainder. If present trends continue the total destruction of civilization is probable within a few hundred years - and the extinction of the human species is a real possibility. This situation also presents the greatest intellectual challenge of the era. It undermines the traditional idea of economic progress - the ultimate evaluative concept and the virtual telos of European civilization. It brings into question the economic, legal, political and ethical institutions of modern societies and the modes of thought on which they are based, including the natural and social sciences and the institutions supporting them. In doing so, it opens up the most fundamental questions about human existence: the nature of knowledge and value, of meaning and rationality, and of the significance of life itself. Confronting the environmental crisis requires a complete review of the way we think of ourselves and our place in the world. This book and its sequel, 'Beyond European Ciivlization: Marxism, Process Philosophy and the Environment', attempt this task. (shrink)

There are important studies that have directly focused on how, in times of conflict, it is possible for previously law abiding people to commit the most atrocious acts of cruelty and violence. The work of Erich Fromm, Hannah Arendt, Zygmunt Bauman and Ernest Becker have all contemplated the driving force of aggression and mass violence to further our understanding of how people are capable of engaging in extreme forms of cruelty and violence. This paper specifically addresses these issues by focusing (...) on C. P. Taylor’s play Good. This provocative play examines how a seemingly ‘good’ and intelligent university professor can gradually become caught up in the workings of the Third Reich. Taylor highlights the importance of appreciating how people can be steadily incorporated into an ideologically destructive system. I argue that the theatre is a powerful medium to explore these complex issues. The audience of Good find themselves confronted with the following question—‘What would you have done?’. (shrink)

İslam düşünce ekolleri olan mezheplerin tarihsel serüvenleri çok yönlü bir güzergâha sahiptir. Mezheplerin tarihsel gelişimlerini etkileyen farklı unsurlar bulunmaktadır. Bu bağlamda mezhep-siyaset ilişkisi bilindik bir öncül olarak öne çıkmaktadır. Bu araştırma, Büyük Selçukluların yıkılış sürecinden Moğol İstilasına kadarki sürede Eş‛arîliğin tarihsel gelişimini irdelemektedir. Bilindiği üzere Büyük Selçukluların kuruluş döneminde Horasan’dan uzaklaştırılan Eş‛arîler, yükselme devriyle tekrar bölgeye çağırıldılar. Sünnîliği merkeze alan siyasetin neticesinde Eş‛arîlik ön plana çıktı. Dolayısıyla Büyük Selçuklular ve Nizâmiye medreselerini merkeze alarak Eş‛arî düşüncenin ilerleyişini açıklamaya çalışmak yaygın bir (...) kabul olarak ortaya çıktı. Selçuklu devletinin yıkılışından sonra Horasan ve Mâverâünnehir coğrafyasındaki çatışmalarla artan kaos ve istikrarsızlık dönemi yaşandı. Ardından Gurlular ve Harizmşahlar Selçuklu bakiyesi bu toprakları da kontrol eden iki büyük güç olarak ortaya çıktılar. Eş‛arîlik geleneğinin hem Gur bölgesine hem de Harizm şehirlerine taşınması mezhep-siyaset bağının bir neticesiydi. Kerrâmîliğin yaygın olduğu Gur bölgesinde siyasetin etkisiyle Eş‛arîlik kendisine alan buldu. Mu‛tezilî ve Hanefî düşüncenin güçlü olduğu Harizm bölgesinde de benzer tecrübelerin sonucunda Eş‛arîlik temsil edilmeye başlandı. Bir yandan Kerrâmîlerle öte taraftan Mu‛tezilîlerle fikri çatışmaların yaşanması ise Eş‛arî geleneğine dinamizm kazandırdı. Bu süreçte Fahreddîn er-Râzî, Eş‛arîliğin temsilini yüklenerek ilim meclislerindeki münazaralara katıldı. Ayrıca idarecilerle olan diyalogları onun hareket alanını genişletti. The historical adventures of the sects, which are Islamic schools of thought, have a complex plane that includes different orientations rather than simple and one-way directions. Understanding and correctly interpreting this multi-layered factual dimension requires multiple perspectives, like the variable leg of the compass. As of their historical processes, sects determine their positions depending on political, economic, social, etc. This position draws a route according to its positive or negative relations with its interlocutors. Intellectual debates and works of rejection are the outward manifestations of the interlocutor. It is a common acceptance to try to explain the progress of Ash‛arī thought by centering on the Great Seljuks and Nizamiyyāh madrasahs. This research examines the historical development of Ash‛arism by focusing on the period after the collapse of the Great Seljuks. As it is known, in the Great Seljuk period, the relationship of Ash‛arism with the state did not have a linear progression, but with the support of the state, it had a position that paved the way for it. After the collapse of the Great Seljuks, political conflicts, wars, invasions and plunders increased in the region, causing a great chaos in the region. In this process, it is understood that the chaotic environment continues until the state authority is re-stored. (shrink)

Notions of complexity, non-linear dynamics and self-organization in the natural sciences seem to resonate with certain literary and social scientific traditions of thinking about cosmopolitan life in a sense that may be more than merely metaphorical. Just as science speaks of forms and patterns which come into being spontaneously, unpredictably and `from below', so too is there a resurgent interest in a `baroque' vision of modernity which foregrounds chance encounters and `underworld' associations. The parallels are still stronger if we take (...) a consider the life-world of embodied cosmopolitans as including not only other human beings and human artifacts, but also the many non-human life-forms that make themselves at home in our built environments, in our networks, and inside our own bodies. Contra theorists of risk society, fusion of complexity theory with cosmopolitan aesthetics raises the possibility of conceiving of runaway biological and technological events as both creative and destructive. (shrink)

This article addresses the power of human technologies to wreak destruction on a planetary scale, such as genetic manipulation and weapons of mass destruction. It proposes the need for a new ethic that would be planetary in scale. Its central aim would be to include the great historical and contemporary diversity of human cognitive and epistemological experience. An "ethic of complexity" can weave together the threads of our common heritage. Although humanity's evolutionary past has been shown to be (...) quite diverse, recent genetic and anthropological research has shown it also to be surprisingly unified. New images and metaphors are providing humanity with a vision that transcends familiar ethnic hatreds and so-called clashes of civilizations. The new planetary culture can be a shining example of unity-in-diversity, or unitas multiplex. It will be robustly diverse, intermixed to the core, and filled with awe at the rich lineages of our common past. (shrink)

The study considers the problem of ensuring electromagnetic compatibility of EMI-based functional destruction means with other radioelectronic equipment as part of a complex for countering unmanned aerial vehicles. To solve this problem, it is proposed to create a methodology that combines a set of diverse approaches and methods. This study focuses on the use of hollow and thin passive conductors, the use of a magnetodielectric in a reflection symmetric modal filter, the use of reflection symmetric structures for decomposing (...) the train of ultrashort pulses, and the use of a meander line as a protective means against USPs. The main results that are expected to be obtained using the proposed approaches and methods are outlined. (shrink)

The paper is devoted to the analysis and identification of new philosophical aspects of the problem of justification of modern mathematics according to which to the end of the 20th century the most exact of sciences had experienced new shocks associated with the crisis of excessive complexity of the mathematical theories. In the context of justification of mathematics philosophical conclusion consists in the fact that from a methodological point of view for general assessment of whether mathematics is developed or not (...) just the lack of crises is more negative phenomenon than its too long trouble-free state. Accomplished fact is that a computer can be regarded as one of the serious revolutionary technological inventions of the last century, which has had a huge influence on mathematics. In this development of progress of contemporary mathematics, more precisely, in its instrumental technologies the new philosophical problems are revealed - this is the role of computers and the new standards of mathematical thinking. In addition, with the development of contemporary mathematics and the emergence of increasingly complicated and long proofs, they lose their methodological advantage - the property of visibility and convincingness. Within the philosophy of mathematics this problem has not been discussed yet, possibly because the leading mathematicians haven’t expressed their opinions on the subject. After that, we can wait for a methodologically important period clarifying details, which can make the process itself foundations of mathematics philosophical consummation as the crisis complexity; in mathematics it is not a ‘systemic crisis‘ carrying the potential danger of the destruction of all mathematical knowledge. (shrink)

In Plasticity at the Dusk of Writing (Malabou 2010), Catherine Malabou looks back over her earlier intellectual trajectory and attempts to clarify the precise relationship between her own philosophical investigations and the crucial sources on which she has principally drawn, namely Hegelian dialectic, Heidegger’s ‘destruction’ of the history of ontology, and Derrida’s project of deconstruction. In this process, she also undertakes to take a step beyond the complex constellation of these three sources, arguing for a philosophy of plasticity (...) which can at once take up and transform the practices of dialectic, destruction, and deconstruction in what she describes as a ‘plastic reading’. (shrink)

Multisubunit protein complexes are essential for cellular function. Genetic analysis of essential processes requires special tools, among which temperature‐sensitive (Ts) mutants have historically been crucial. Many researchers assume that the effect of temperature on such mutants is to drive their proteolytic destruction. In fact, degradation‐mediated elimination of mutant proteins likely explains only a fraction of the phenotypes associated with Ts mutants. Here I discuss insights gained from analysis of Ts mutants in oligomeric proteins, with particular focus on the study (...) of septins, GTP‐binding subunits of cytoskeletal filaments whose structures and functions are the subject of current investigation in my and many other labs. I argue that the kinds of unbiased forward genetic approaches that generate Ts mutants provide information that is largely inaccessible to modern reverse genetic methodologies, and will continue to drive our understanding of higher‐order assembly by septins and other oligomeric proteins.Also watch the Video Abstract. (shrink)

I’m sick of being treated like a dumb Mum who doesn’t understand the science. As far as I’m concerned, my family’s health is just too important. … If the government can’t protect the safety of my family, then I will.Recent Greenpeace activism in Australia resulted in the destruction of a field trial of a line of wheat “designed” to improve human nutrition. This incident demonstrates that, while there is significant ongoing public and private investment in genetically modified crop research (...) and development in Australia, many people continue to oppose GM foods strongly. We noted with interest that Greenpeace described this activism with language that explicitly connected the actions to the gender.. (shrink)

‘There are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don’t know we don’t know.’ —Donald Rumsfeld, 2003, President George W. Bush’s Secretary of Defense, on the subject of the U.S. government’s failure to discover weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

In July 1997 the European Commission proposed a "Directive on the Legal protection of Service based on, or consisting of Conditional Access" (to various electronic systems).This paper considers the proposed Directive within the context of the European Union's failure to develop and maintain a coherent policy relating to satellite television broadcasts direct to the individual's home (DTH) within the nascent Single European Market (SEM), and the consequences of that policy failure for "ordinary" consumers who are highly unlikely to have a (...) full understanding of the complex technical, legal and economic environment in which they are making their purchase(s). (shrink)

The ideas used to view the world by academics, officials, and citizens affect what they see, the improvements they think are feasible, and the means they presume can be used to reform the world. Ideas seem to be ephemeral, but their results are the artifacts of the world: the cities, the monuments, the wars, the suffering, and all the activities of human beings as they go about their everyday world. Human conceptions can be emancipatory. They may include vistas of untapped (...) capabilities and enable individuals to improve their own and others' welfare. Or they may be conservative—closely guarding the achievements of the past and protecting the storehouse of acquired social knowledge from wanton destruction. Or worse .. (shrink)

This paper compares the heuristic potential of three metaphorical paired concepts used in the relevant literature to characterise global relationships between the anthroposphere and the ecosphere. Methodologically, the guiding question is whether and to what extent metaphorical theses can support an arrival at hypotheses which accurately reflect reality and possess explanatory force. The predator-prey model implies that the populations of two species in such a relationship in principle exhibit coupled oscillations, giving prey populations the possibility of periodic regeneration. For some (...) time, however, the most important indicators of human destruction of nature have been showing a relentless upward trend which appears to render the tumour-host metaphor more appropriate. Another fact which favours this analogy is that a tumour develops within its host and from its host's normal cells, in a similar way to the emergence of the anthroposphere from within the biosphere. But the parasite-host analogy also allows the formulation of fruitful hypotheses, since ecological parasitology is equally familiar with varieties of autoaggressive interaction and provides a means of focusing particularly on the adelphoparasitic hierarchy within the anthroposphere. (shrink)

The military-industrial complex, military operations, and wars are major contributors to exacerbating both climate change and biodiversity crises. However, their environmental impacts are often shadowed due to national security reasons. The current paper aims to go through the devastating impacts of military operations and wars on climate change and biodiversity loss and challenges that hinder the inclusion of military-related activities into environmental crisis mitigation efforts. The information blind spot induced by concerns about national security reasons jeopardizes the efforts to (...) involve the military-industrial complex and military operations in the global climate and biodiversity agendas. Besides that, many military-related challenges, such as specificity of operational requirements and lifecycles, dependence on fossil fuels, complex supply change, inadequate civilian technologies and innovations, and requirements of structural changes, can hinder emission reduction. Meanwhile, wars and conflicts not only threaten to drain all human and material resources available to tackle environmental problems but also inflict long-lasting destructions, pains, and trauma that can lead to hatred and distrust among nations and parties. With the rising hatred and distrust, global agreement and commitment to address climate change and biodiversity will hardly be achieved. Thus, promoting peace is the humanistic and planetary conscience. (shrink)

Many targets of the Wnt/β-catenin signaling pathway are regulated by TCF transcription factors, which play important roles in animal development, stem cell biology, and oncogenesis. TCFs can regulate Wnt targets through a “transcriptional switch,” repressing gene expression in unstimulated cells and promoting transcription upon Wnt signaling. However, it is not clear whether this switch mechanism is a general feature of Wnt gene regulation or limited to a subset of Wnt targets. Co-repressors of the TLE family are known to contribute to (...) the repression of Wnt targets in the absence of signaling, but how they are inactivated or displaced by Wnt signaling is poorly understood. In this mini-review, we discuss several recent reports that address the prevalence and molecular mechanisms of the Wnt transcription switch, including the finding of Wnt-dependent ubiquitination/inactivation of TLEs. Together, these findings highlight the growing complexity of the regulation of gene expression by the Wnt pathway. Wnt targets are regulated by a “switch” where TLE co-repressors are displaced from TCFs by β-catenin, leading to activation of transcription. Recent reports challenge this view and suggest that additional processes, including exchange of specific TCF proteins and Wnt-dependent ubiquitination of TLEs, play important roles in the Wnt transcriptional switch. (shrink)

The article is devoted to an objective assessment of the role of Sabina Spielrein – one of the Russian pioneers of psychoanalysis – in the forming of theoretical basis of analytical psychology. A bibliographic review precedes the main part, in order to show the prevailing bias towards the consideration of personal life and the subjective features of Spielrein’s creativity, and not her ideas. In the first part the author briefly considers Spielrein’s contribution to the empirical justification and further development of (...) the complex theory and shows how her ideas are related to Jung's representations on the phylogenesis and ontogenesis of the psyche as a result of complex building-up and about the psychogenesis of schizophrenia. In particular, it is noted that Spielrein is the first one who clearly formulate a hypothesis, according to which our psyche a priori does not constitute anything integral, but is a combination of many complexes. In the second part the author focuses on the concept of speciespsyche, which anticipates the concept of collective unconscious. He draws parallels between the ideas of Spielrein and Jung on the role of collective unconscious contents of the psyche in shaping the individual's current psychic experience. In particular, the author focuses on the idea that every experience is always both conscious and unconscious, and if it does not superimpose the entire history of similar experiences inherited from the ancestors then it does not reach the needed level of intensity. In the same part the author points out three factors that do not allow us to assert with complete confidence that the concept of species-psyche is the exclusive merit of Spielrein, even though she published her ideas before Jung. The third part gives an assessment of the contribution of Spielrein to the development of Jung’s and Freud’s views on the destruction. The author points out the two main sources of Spielrein’s reflection on the destruction nature. The first is the ideas of the Russian biologist I.I. Mechnikov concerning the instinct of normal death. The second is Jung's ideas about the ambivalent nature of the libido. The author also demonstrates the close connection between the notion of species-psyche and the concept of destruction. Then a distinction is made between the simple static instinct of self-preservation and the ambivalent dynamic instinct of preservation of the species. In addition, the author compares Spielrein’s and Jung’s views on the essence of the destruction with the views of Freud. For this purpose a distinction is made between the death instinct as a positive drive for transformation through the destruction and the death instinct as the drive to completely destruction or stop of all processes. Дается оценка роли С.Н. Шпильрейн в формировании теоретического базиса аналитической психологии. Демонстрируется значимость ее научного вклада в развитие представлений К.Г. Юнга о комплексе, фило- и онтогенезе психики, психогенезе шизофрении, коллективном бессознательном и деструкции. Особый акцент делается на последние два момента. Кроме того, выявляются некоторые различия в понимании сущности феномена деструкции С.Н. Шпильрейн, К.Г. Юнгом и З. Фрейдом. (shrink)

Dynamics concerns the process of change in variable conditions through time at any level of analysis. Various important issues or topics in stakeholder theory and practice involve consideration of change over time and thus unavoidably involve dynamics. While dynamics has received explicit recognition in stakeholder literature, dynamic analysis remains partly tacit and suffused through the literature. One reason is that dynamics remains difficult to model even in economics. This article provides a basic orientation to stakeholder dynamics as a key conceptual (...) and methodological issue for stakeholder thinking. This article identifies current literature concerning stakeholder dynamics and evaluates future directions in dynamic reasoning that would help build stakeholder theory and improve practice of stakeholder management. Notions of competition, influence strategies, change in stakeholder networks, mindsets, salience or values, learning, creative destruction, long-term sustainability, stakeholder reciprocity, sustainable development, and value creation all embed change and thus time dynamics. Static complexity and heterogeneity across units-of-analysis are not the same as dynamics but do also change over time. Dynamics concerns how change process influences consequences (later in time) in relationship to antecedents (earlier in time). Management copes with change process, as much as with complexity and variation in antecedents and consequences. (shrink)

It has long been believed that membrane proteins present in degradative compartments such as endolysosomes or vacuoles would be destined for destruction. Now however, it appears that mechanisms and machinery exist in simple eukaryotes such as yeast and more complex organisms such as mammals that can rescue potentially “doomed” membrane proteins by retrieving them from these “late” compartments and recycling them back to the Golgi complex. In yeast, a sorting nexin dimer containing Snx4p can recognize and retrieve (...) the Atg27p membrane protein while in mammals, the AP5 complex (with SPG11 and SPG15) directs the recycling of Golgi‐localized proteins along with the cation‐independent mannose 6‐phosphate receptor (CIMPR). Although the respective machinery is different, there is much commonality between yeast and mammals regarding the mechanisms of retrieval and the physiological importance of these late recycling pathways. (shrink)

The complex mechanisms by which nonlinear classical conservative systems undergo a transition from quasiperiodic to chaotic behavior are now fairly well understood. This transition is associated with a breakdown of quasi-constants of motion (KAM surfaces). There is growing evidence that similar mechanisms may govern the behavior of quantum systems. While K-type mixing behavior has not yet been found, there does appear to be a transition associated with the destruction of a quantum quasi-constant of motion (quantum KAM states) which (...) changes qualitatively the spectrum of quantum systems. (shrink)

The “destructive” appropriation of the Aristotelian concepts of δύναµις and ἐνέργεια played a central role in Martin Heidegger’s own reflection on the meaning of being. While this has been generally known for some time, it is only now that we can understand the full scope, complexity and evolving character of this appropriation. One reason is the fairly recent publication of notes and protocols for seminars Heidegger led on Aristotle as late as the 1940s and 1950s. Another is the existence of (...) student transcripts in the Special Collections Department of Stanford University for a number of unpublished seminars on Aristotle that Heidegger led during the 1920s. Considering all of this material enables us to see both the significance of Heidegger’s interpretation of the δύναµις/ἐνέργιεα pair as well as how this interpretation evolved along with his own “Kehre”: from a “pandynamic” conception of being to being as “Ereignis.”. (shrink)