This article devoted to study of the issues of formation and functioning of national political elites in the context of globalization processes. According to the author, processes of globalization, socio-political, public-legal, and financial-economic development in national societies and States led to the formation of the national political elites in a single global governing elite in the face of the global Manager class, which, in turn, forms the main approaches, requirements and principles that underlie the formation and functioning of national political (...) elites. However, all this leads to the fact that global and national management of the elite are unable on the one hand, to quickly solve global problems facing humanity, and on the other hand, to ensure the progressive development of humanity as a whole, resulting in the creation and development of a revolutionary situation in the national and international scale. The only alternative to the existing trends of the formation and development of national political elites in anti-state and anti-social manner, which inevitably can lead humankind to destruction or self-destruction, is the growing activity of civil society to the state of leveling of power and influence of the global ruling elite in the face of the global Manager class. In the present work, a number of scientific methods of research were used, in particular: comparison; hermeneutic analysis; socio-phenomenological approach. (shrink)

The Hiero is an account in Socratic conversational form of a meeting between Simonides the poet and Hiero the tyrant of Syracuse; it was written by Xenophon of Athens in the fourth century b.c., but is set in the fifth, when the historical Simonides and Hiero lived and met. The subject they are portrayed discussing is the relative happiness of the tyrant and private individual. Plato also makes this a topic of discussion in his Republic. However, whereas Plato writes a (...) regular Socratic dialogue, Xenophon does not, for though he represents his characters using Socratic conversation, Socrates himself does not appear; the characteros of the Hiero are Simonides and Hiero, poet and tyrant. This is the problem of the Hiero. It requires explanation. The action of the Hiero is initiated by Simonides and begins in the following way: Simonides the poet once came to the court of Hiero the tyrant. When they were both at leisure, Simonides said, ‘Would you be willing to tell me, Hiero, something you are likely to know better than I?’ And Hiero said, ‘What is it that I should know better than you, who are such a wise man?’ He replied, ‘I know that you were once a private individual and are now a tyrant. Since you have experienced both conditions, you are likely to know better than I how tyrannical life differs from private life in respect of men's pleasures and griefs’ . The identification of Simonides as a wise man who nevertheless seeks wisdom from others establishes his Socratic nature from the start. (shrink)

Case-based, multidisciplinary seminars provided a vehicle for clinicians, philosophers and students to debate current problems in medical ethics in a manner which ensured maximum learning and interest for all participants. Prior training in philosophical medical ethics was an essential prerequisite, giving students the knowledge and skills to take part in the discussions at an appropriate level of sophistication.

The Millennium Development Goal (MDG) 5 A states that the maternal mortality ratio has to be reduced to three-quarters between 1990 and 2015. The target for India is a maternal mortality ratio of 109/100,000 live births. The Janani Suraksha Yojna (JSY) (Maternal Protection Scheme) is a centrally sponsored conditional cash transfer scheme to promote institutional deliveries and thus ensure safe delivery and reduce maternal mortality. The JSY scheme and its various evaluations were reviewed. The Tannahill’s ethical framework was applied to (...) the JSY and analyzed. Evaluations have shown that the JSY has significantly increased institutional deliveries. The public health system is not fully geared up for delivering good quality maternal health services. Thus encouraging women to go to them violates the principle of doing good. There are several barriers for availing the scheme. Procuring the certificates to meet eligibility can be difficult. The women do not have power over the cash incentive. There are large inequities in access to the JSY scheme based on socioeconomic status, caste and education. The accountability mechanisms for the scheme are weak at the grassroots level. Without an overall improvement in health system and awareness among women, the JSY cannot be said to empower the women in a sustainable way. In order, that the increases in institutional deliveries due to JSY are more than just a Hawthorne effect, which is a change in behavior just due to the fact that the population is being closely observed and intervened, there is a need to bridge the ethical gaps in the program to make it an empowering, sustainable, accountable and just one. (shrink)

The difficulty of the task that the authors of this book have posed themselves is due in the first instance to the fact that this period has been very little studied in the history of philosophy. In applying the term "early Russian philosophy" to the set of ideas, images, and conceptions of a philosophical order contained in the cultural texts of the tenth through the seventeenth centuries, M.N. Gromov and N.S. Kozlov see it not simply as a specific stage in (...) the development of Russian philosophy but as a "very particular phenomenon that is qualitatively unique and requires special study" . Thus the authors declare their own position in the far from finished debate about the specificity of Russian philosophy and the distinctive features of its historical development. They rely not only on the vast treasury of early Russian texts that have come down to us but also on the scholarship of historians of literature, language, painting, architecture, folklore, and other areas of culture. Of course, the book also gives careful consideration to the few studies that have been devoted to the historical-philosophical analysis of early Russian culture, from the works of the Archimandrite Gavriil to the most recent works by Soviet and foreign authors published in decades just past. (shrink)

Social cognition can be based on two contrary axioms that answer the question of whether the society can provide for the universal survival of all of its members. Negative answer (relativist model of society) is more productive methodologically. The key notion here is the technosocial formula of society, the physical meaning of which is that the society as an aggregate of people needs bigger vital space than it can create. The growth of man in nature was the result not only (...) of the supplanting of other species but also of the intraspecific struggle which became the main factor of the development process. The criterion of social progress is reduced in the end to only one index – the ability of society’s survival and it doesn’t have any absolute value in space and time. (shrink)

The end of the nineteenth century and the whole of the twentieth may justifiably be called a time of great discoveries in the micro-, macro-, and megaworlds. All bearing witness to the dynamic life of the universe, these discoveries have resulted primarily from progress in the instruments of research, leading to the discovery of many new elementary particles, new forms of interaction, fields, and astrophysical objects — quasars, pulsars, sources of X-ray emissions, and others. An understanding of the essence of (...) the processes involved in these objects and phenomena, however, comes up against certain difficulties , the overcoming of which is to be sought primarily along the lines of further improvement of the tools of research and processing of the information acquired, the application of existing theories and the development of new ones in physics and astrophysics, and the utilization of the achievements of the science of the most general laws of the motion and development of nature, society, and thought, i.e., dialectical materialism, as the general methodology of acquisition of scientific knowledge. (shrink)

The topic of consent in paediatrics is made more difficult, and at the same time more interesting, by the complexity of the issues involved and the consequent diversity of viewpoints. In a teaching session for senior medical students on consent in paediatrics it proved necessary to reinstate previous learning from a range of disciplines. Philosophical medical ethics, developmental psychology, communication skills and the appropriate legal definitions all contributed to a proper understanding of the cases presented. The two most important additional (...) components appeared to be a) a basic knowledge of cognitive development and how to apply it, and b) an awareness of the need to balance an individual child's rights or best interests, with those of the family unit, as well as the wider society. (shrink)

The use of dialogue in Xenophon's Hellenica is a phenomenon that needs explanation. Among previous historians, Herodotus had used it frequently but Thucydides hardly at all. In Xenophon's own time, Ctesias had used it but not the author of the Hellenica Oxyrhynchia nor Ephorus to any great extent, as far as we can tell. Theopompus had plagiarized one of the Hellenica dialogues as well as adding others of his own. Generally, dialogue occurred less frequently in history writing than the set (...) speech. Yet there have been no serious studies of dialogue in the Hellenica, and where opinions are expressed they often vary. Sordi considered that the purpose of dialogue was decorative and agreed with the estimates of ancient critics about the liveliness of the conversations. Breitenbach also thought they had literary merit but suggested that their purpose was moral and didactic. Henry agreed that their purpose was didactic but thought them flat and lifeless and lacking in literary merit. Bruce thought their purpose was to illustrate personality. These differences of opinion should be settled. Moreover, Sordi's view that the content, style and purpose of dialogue is quite different from that of the set speech, and that this reflects a difference of genre within the Hellenica, dialogue being typical of memoir and the set speech of ‘serious’ history, cannot go unchallenged. Herodotus used dialogue in what was clearly not memoir. Further, there has been no serious attempt to place dialogue in the Hellenica in the tradition of dialogue writing in history or to examine its relationship to dramatic dialogue or the philosophical dialogue. This needs to be attempted. Such are the aims of this paper. (shrink)

This paper presents findings from a longitudinal study of patient refusals (as reported by graduating medical students) to take part in the teaching function of public hospitals. Results from a smaller study of non-patients' attitudes are also reported. Findings are discussed in terms of patients' rights, issues of personal privacy, medical education, and the public good.

Neither the chronology nor the interpretation of the history of the years 375 to 371 BC is yet settled. The date of the peace that followed the Athenian naval victory over Sparta at Alyzeia in Scirophorion 375 is put variously in the second half of 375 or 374 or even in spring 374. The status of the Boeotian cities at the time of the peace as well as the role of the King and the participation of Thebes are controversial, and (...) this affects the interpretation of the peace itself. (shrink)

Let X be a separable Banach space and Q be a coanalytic subset of . We prove that the set of sequences in X which are weakly convergent to some eX and is a coanalytic subset of . The proof applies methods of effective descriptive set theory to Banach space theory. Using Silver’s Theorem [J. Silver, Every analytic set is Ramsey, J. Symbolic Logic 35 60–64], this result leads to the following dichotomy theorem: if X is a Banach space, is (...) a regular method of summability and is a bounded sequence in X, then there exists a subsequence iL such that either there exists eX such that every subsequence iH of iL is weakly summable w.r.t. to e and QiH,e); or for every subsequence iH of iL and every eX with QiH,e)the sequence iH is not weakly summable to e w.r.t. . This is a version for weak convergence of an Erdös–Magidor result, see [P. Erdös, M. Magidor, A note on Regular Methods of Summability, Proc. Amer. Math. Soc. 59 232–234]. Both theorems obtain some considerable generalizations. (shrink)

Although quantum theory is applicable, in principle, to both the microscopic and macroscopic realms, the strategy of practically applying quantum theory by retaining a classical conception of the macroscopic world has had tremendous success. This has nevertheless rendered the task of interpretation daunting. We argue the need for recognizing and solving the ‘observation problem', namely constructing a ‘quantum-compatible’ view of the properties and states of macroscopic objects in everyday thinking to realistically interpret quantum theory consistently at both the microscopic and (...) macroscopic levels. Toward a solution to this problem, we point out a category of properties called ‘relational properties’ that we regularly associate with everyday objects. We see them as being potentially quantum-compatible. Some possible physical implications are discussed. We conclude by touching upon the nexus between the relational property view within quantum physics and some neurobiological issues underlying cognition. (shrink)

In other words, classically, probabilities add; quantum mechanically, the probability amplitudes add, leading to the presence of the extra product terms in the quantum case. What this means is that in quantum theory, even though always only one of the various outcomes is obtained in any given observation, some aspect of the non -occurring events, represented by the corresponding complex-valued quantum amplitudes, plays a role in determining the overall probabilities. Indeed, the observed quantum interference effects are correctly captured by the (...) quantum statistical description only because of the presence of these product terms. Therefore, in a realistic construal of quantum theory, if we treat the superposed Ψ function as representing the real state of an individual quantum system, these quantum amplitudes need to be given an ontological status. (shrink)

In this paper we focus our attention on tableau methods for propositional interval temporal logics. These logics provide a natural framework for representing and reasoning about temporal properties in several areas of computer science. However, while various tableau methods have been developed for linear and branching time point-based temporal logics, not much work has been done on tableau methods for interval-based ones. We develop a general tableau method for Venema's \cdt\ logic interpreted over partial orders (\nsbcdt\ for short). It combines (...) features of the classical tableau method for first-order logic with those of explicit tableau methods for modal logics with constraint label management, and it can be easily tailored to most propositional interval temporal logics proposed in the literature. We prove its soundness and completeness, and we show how it has been implemented. (shrink)

We make use of natural induction to propose, following John Ju Sakurai, a generalization of Bell's inequality for two spin s=n/2(n=1,2,...) particle systems in a singlet state. We have found that for any finite integer or half-integer spin Bell's inequality is violated when the terms in the inequality are calculated from a quantum mechanical point of view. In the final expression for this inequality the two members therein are expressed in terms of a single parameter θ. Violation occurs for θ (...) in some interval of the form (α,π/2) where α parameter becomes closer and closer to π/2, as the spin grows, that is, the greater the spin number the size of the interval in which violation occurs diminishes to zero. Bell's inequality is a relationship among observables that discriminates between Einstein's locality principle and the non-local point of view of orthodox quantum mechanics. So our conclusion may also be stated by saying that for large spin numbers the non-local and local points of view agree. (shrink)

The concept of human gene therapy came on the heels of fundamental discoveries on the nature and working of the gene. However, realistic prospects to correct the underlying cause of recessive genetic disorders through the transfer of wild‐type alleles of defective genes had to wait for the arrival of recombinant DNA technology. These techniques permitted the isolation and insertion of genes into the first recombinant delivery systems. The realization that viruses are natural gene carriers provided inspiration for gene therapy and, (...) as engineered vectors, viruses became prominent gene delivery vehicles. Nonetheless, when put in the context of human and non‐human primate studies, all vectors fell short of success regardless of their viral or non‐viral origin. Recognition of issues such as inefficient gene transfer and short‐lived or scant expression in the relevant cell type(s) prompted researchers to refine and develop several gene delivery systems, in particular those based on retroviruses, adeno‐associated viruses and adenoviruses. Concomitantly, available technology was deployed to tackle disorders that require few genetically corrected cells to attain therapy. BioEssays 27: 506–517, 2005. © 2005 Wiley periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

The cytoskeleton has a central role in eukaryotic biology, enabling cells to organize internally, polarize, and translocate. Studying cytoskeletal machinery across the tree of life can identify common elements, illuminate fundamental mechanisms, and provide insight into processes specific to less‐characterized organisms. Red algae represent an ancient lineage that is diverse, ecologically significant, and biomedically relevant. Recent genomic analysis shows that red algae have a surprising paucity of cytoskeletal elements, particularly molecular motors. Here, we review the genomic and cell biological evidence (...) and propose testable models of how red algal cells might perform processes including cell motility, cytokinesis, intracellular transport, and secretion, given their reduced cytoskeletons. In addition to enhancing understanding of red algae and lineages that evolved from red algal endosymbioses (e.g., apicomplexan parasites), these ideas may also provide insight into cytoskeletal processes in animal cells. (shrink)

Language and law : language use in professional legal parlance.