In this consensus report by a diverse group of academics who conduct and/or are concerned about social and behavioral genomics (SBG) research, the authors recount the often‐ugly history of scientific attempts to understand the genetic contributions to human behaviors and social outcomes. They then describe what the current science—including genomewide association studies and polygenic indexes—can and cannot tell us, as well as its risks and potential benefits. They conclude with a discussion of responsible behavior in the context of SBG research. (...) SBG research that compares individuals within a group according to a “sensitive” phenotype requires extra attention to responsible conduct and to responsible communication about the research and its findings. SBG research (1) on sensitive phenotypes that (2) compares two or more groups defined by (a) race, (b) ethnicity, or (c) genetic ancestry (where genetic ancestry could easily be misunderstood as race or ethnicity) requires a compelling justification to be conducted, funded, or published. All authors agree that this justification at least requires a convincing argument that a study's design could yield scientifically valid results; some authors would additionally require the study to have a socially favorable risk‐benefit profile. (shrink)

Background: There is a growing interest in using cognitive behavioural therapy with people who have Asperger Syndrome and comorbid mental health problems. Aims: To examine whether modified group CBT for clinically significant anxiety in an AS population is feasible and likely to be efficacious. Method: Using a randomised assessor-blind trial, 52 individuals with AS were randomised into a treatment arm or a waiting-list control arm. After 24 weeks, those in the waiting-list control arm received treatment, while those initially randomised to (...) treatment were followed-up for 24 weeks. Results: The conversion rate for this trial was high, while attrition was 13%. After 24 weeks, there was no significant difference between those randomised to the treatment arm compared to those randomised to the waiting-list control arm on the primary outcome measure, the Hamilton Rating Scale for Anxiety. Conclusions: Trials of psychological therapies with this population are feasible. Larger definitive trials are now needed. Declaration of Interest: None Trial Registration: ISRCTN 30265294, UKCRN 8370. (shrink)

Although considerable research indicates that mental energy is an important factor in many domains, including athletic performance (Cook & Davis, 2006), athletic mental energy (AME) has never been conceptualized and measured. Therefore, the aim of this study was to conceptualize and develop a reliable and valid instrument to assess athletic mental energy. In Study 1, a focus group interview established the initial framework of athletic mental energy. Study 2 used a survey to collect athletes’ experiences of athletic mental energy and (...) develop a scale draft titled “Athletic Mental Energy Scale (AMES).” In Study 3, we examined the psychometric properties and the underlying structure of AMES via item analysis, internal consistency, and exploratory factor analysis (EFA). In Study 4, we used confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to examine AMES’s factorial validity; and examined concurrent and discriminant validity by examining correlations with athletes’ life stress, positive state of mind, and burnout. In study 5, we examined the measurement invariance of the 6-factor, 18-item AMES with Taiwanese and Malaysian samples. Study 6 examined the predictive validity by comparing AMES scores of successful and unsuccessful martial artists. Across these phases, results showed a 6-factor, 18-item AMES had adequate content validity, factorial structure, nomological validity, discriminant validity, predictive validity, measurement invariance, and reliability. We suggest future studies may use AMES to examine its relationships with athletes’ cognition, affect, and performance. The application of AMES in sport psychology was also discussed. (shrink)

The larval arms of echinoid plutei are used for locomotion and feeding. They are composed of internal calcite skeletal rods covered by an ectoderm layer bearing a ciliary band. Skeletogenesis includes an autonomous molecular differentiation program in primary mesenchyme cells (PMCs), initiated when PMCs leave the vegetal plate for the blastocoel, and a patterning of the differentiated skeletal units that requires molecular cues from the overlaying ectoderm. The arms represent a larval feature that arose in the echinoid lineage during the (...) Paleozoic and offers a subject for the study of gene co-option in the evolution of novel larval features. We isolated new molecular markers in two closely related but differently developing species, Heliocidaris tuberculata and Heliocidaris erythrogramma. We report the expression of a larval arm-associated ectoderm gene tetraspanin, as well as two new PMC markers, advillin and carbonic anhydrase. Tetraspanin localizes to the animal half of blastula stage H. tuberculata and then undergoes a restriction into the putative oral ectoderm and future location of the postoral arms, where it continues to be expressed at the leading edge of both the postoral and anterolateral arms. In H. erythrogramma, its expression initiates in the animal half of blastulae and expands over the entire ectoderm from gastrulation onward. Advillin and carbonic anhydrase are upregulated in the PMCs postgastrulation and localized to the leading edge of the growing larval arms of H. tuberculata but do not exhibit coordinated expression in H. erythrogramma larvae. The tight spatiotemporal regulation of these genes in H. tuberculata along with other ontogenetic and phylogenetic evidence suggest that pluteus arms are novel larval organs, distinguishable from the processes of skeletogenesis per se. The dissociation of expression control in H. erythrogramma suggest that coordinate gene expression in H. tuberculata evolved as part of the evolution of pluteus arms, and is not required for larval or adult development. (shrink)

The origin of marine invertebrate larvae has been an area of controversy in developmental evolution for over a century. Here, we address the question of whether a pelagic “larval” or benthic “adult” morphology originated first in metazoan lineages by testing the hypothesis that particular gene co-option patterns will be associated with the origin of feeding, indirect developing larval forms. Empirical evidence bearing on this hypothesis is derivable from gene expression studies of the sea urchin larval gut of two closely related (...) but differently developing congenerics, Heliocidaris tuberculata (feeding indirect-developing larva) and H. erythrogramma (nonfeeding direct developer), given two subsidiary hypotheses. (1) If larval gut gene expression in H. tuberculata was co-opted from an ancestral adult expression pattern, then the gut expression pattern will remain in adult H. erythrogramma despite its direct development. (2) Genes expressed in the larval gut of H. tuberculata will not have a coordinated expression pattern in H. erythrogramma larvae due to loss of a functional gut. Five structural genes expressed in the invaginating archenteron of H. tuberculata during gastrulation exhibit substantially different expression patterns in H. erythrogramma with only one remaining endoderm specific. Expression of these genes in the adult of H. erythrogramma and larval gut of H. tuberculata, but not in H. erythrogramma larval endoderm, supports the hypothesis that they first played roles in the formation of adult structures and were subsequently recruited into larval ontogeny during the origin and evolution of feeding planktotrophic deuterostome larvae. (shrink)

Background:The Taiwan Nursing Accreditation Council has proposed eight core professional nursing qualities including ethical literacy. Consequently, nursing ethics education is a required course for student nurses. These courses are intended to improve the ethical literacy. Moral sensitivity is the cornerstone of ethical literacy, and learning moral sensitivity is the initial step towards developing ethical literacy.Objectives:To explore the effect of nursing ethics educational interventions based on multiple teaching strategies on student nurses moral sensitivity. Based on the visual, auditory and kinaesthetic model, (...) three strategies were developed for determining the programme components and corresponding learning styles.Research design:This was a quasi-experimental study.Participants:A total of 234 junior-college student nurses participated in this study. All participants were aged 18–19 years.Ethical considerations:The study protocol was approved by the institutional review boards of Kaohsiung Veterans General Hospital. Only the participants who signed an informed consent form took part in the study. The participants were permitted to withdraw from the study at any point if they wished to do so without affecting their academic score.Results:The scores of Modified Moral Sensitivity Questionnaire for Student Nurses were significantly improved after the intervention of integrating multiple teaching strategies. Significant relationships were observed between the satisfaction scores of two teaching strategies and moral sensitivity. The results indicated that using multiple teaching strategies is effective for promoting nursing ethics learning.Conclusion:This strategy was consistent with the student nurses’ preferred learning style and was used to correct their erroneous ethical conceptions, assisting in developing their ethical knowledge. (shrink)

At Moore’s time, the main-stream ethical theory is the doctrine that pleasure alone is good as an end as held by the hedonistic utilitarianism. Moore, however, asserts that good, not composed of any parts, is a simple notion and indefinable, and naturalistic ethical theories, in particular hedonistic utilitarianism, interpret intrinsic good as a property of a single natural object---pleasure, which is also the sole end of life, thus violates naturalistic fallacy. Moore seems to believe that there exist things other than (...) pleasure that are also intrinsically good and has searched for them. But Moore has not clearly stated what these things are, nor has he given any justification for why they are intrinsically good. This paper discusses Moore’s arguments and difficulties of utilitarianism. With the subjectivistic utilitarian theory of value, Unified Utilitarian Theory (UTT) discards the classification of value into intrinsic and instrumental and proves to be exempt of all theexisting difficulties with utilitarianism related to pleasure, including naturalistic fallacy, vagueness of pleasure and sole end of life, double counting, etc. (shrink)

Elephants show a rich social organization and display a number of unusual traits. In this paper, we analyse reports collected over a thirty-five year period, describing behaviour that has the potential to reveal signs of empathic understanding. These include coalition formation, the offering of protection and comfort to others, retrieving and 'babysitting' calves, aiding individuals that would otherwise have difficulty in moving, and removing foreign objects attached to others. These records demonstrate that an elephant is capable of diagnosing animacy and (...) goal directedness, and is able to understand the physical competence, emotional state and intentions of others, when they differ from its own. We argue that an empathic understanding of others is the simplest explanation of these abilities, and discuss reasons why elephants appear to show empathy more than other non-primate species. (shrink)

Elephants show a rich social organization and display a number of unusual traits. In this paper, we analyse reports collected over a thirty-five year period, describing behaviour that has the potential to reveal signs of empathic understanding. These include coalition formation, the offering of protection and comfort to others, retrieving and 'babysitting' calves, aiding individuals that would otherwise have difficulty in moving, and removing foreign objects attached to others. These records demonstrate that an elephant is capable of diagnosing animacy and (...) goal directedness, and is able to understand the physical competence, emotional state and intentions of others, when they differ from its own. We argue that an empathic understanding of others is the simplest explanation of these abilities, and discuss reasons why elephants appear to show empathy more than other non-primate species. (shrink)

High-spin states have been studied in Pr-135(59), populated through the Cd-116(Na-23,4n) reaction at 115 MeV, using the Gammasphere gamma-ray spectrometer. The negative-parity yrast band has been significantly extended to spin similar to 45 (h) over bar and excitation energy 21.5 MeV, showing evidence for several rotational alignments. The positive-parity yrast band of Ce-135(58), populated through the p4n channel of this reaction, was also populated to spin similar to 38 (h) over bar and excitation energy 18 MeV. Cranking calculations indicate that (...) these nuclei are soft with respect to the triaxiality parameter gamma and that several competing nuclear shapes occur at high spin. (shrink)

The ectoplasmic specialization (ES) is a testis‐specific, actin‐based hybrid anchoring and tight junction. It is confined to the interface between Sertoli cells at the blood–testis barrier, known as the basal ES, as well as between Sertoli cells and developing spermatids designated the apical ES. The ES shares features of adherens junctions, tight junctions and focal contacts. By adopting the best features of each junction type, this hybrid nature of ES facilitates the extensive junction‐restructuring events in the seminiferous epithelium during spermatogenesis. (...) For instance, the α6β1‐integrin–laminin 333 complex, which is usually limited to the cell–matrix interface in other epithelia to facilitate cell movement, is a putative apical ES constituent. Furthermore, JAM‐C and CAR, two tight junction integral membrane proteins, are also components of apical ES involving in spermatid orientation. We discuss herein the mechanisms that maintain the cross‐talk between ES and blood–testis barrier to facilitate cell movement and orientation in the seminiferous epithelium. BioEssays 29: 36–48, 2007. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Kierkegaard's work was a significant response to nineteenth‐century controversies about biblical hermeneutics. Kierkegaard attempted to resolve questions about meaning by focusing on the passions brought to bear on the text, and the passions that the text can evoke. His version of the hermeneutic circle was his conviction that the canonical form of the Bible has the power to evoke Christian pathos, when it is read with the appropriate self‐concern. The interaction of the canonical form and the apt subjectivity obviated the (...) need for any reconstructed authorial intentionality or historical context. (shrink)

This article shows how the legacy of Hans Christian Ørsted (1777-1851), and his discovery of electromagnetism in 1820, was reconfigured and used by the H.C. english abstracts Ørsted Committee from 1914 before and during the centenary of 1920. Combining Somsen’s (2008) concept of olympic internationalism with uses of the past, I suggest understanding the 1920-centenary as an instance of olympic commemoration [olympisk historiebrug]. I argue that central actors from the committee, e.g. Martin Knudsen (1871-1949) and Kirstine Meyer, née Bjerrum (1861-1941), (...) used Ørsted's nationality to substantiate Denmark’s cultural and scientific achievements. By comparison to pre-twentieth century biographies, I show how the committee re-described Ørsted, i.e. from a scientist [Naturforsker] to being a Danish scientist [dansk Naturforsker]. The committee was deeply concerned with proving the big contributions by the small nation of Denmark, and I show how this relates to cultural politics of the early twentieth century Denmark. (shrink)

BackgroundIn the Canadian Alliance for Healthy Hearts and Minds (CAHHM) cohort, participants underwent magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the brain, heart, and abdomen, that generated incidental findings (IFs). The approach to managing these unexpected results remain a complex issue. Our objectives were to describe the CAHHM policy for the management of IFs, to understand the impact of disclosing IFs to healthy research participants, and to reflect on the ethical obligations of researchers in future MRI studies.MethodsBetween 2013 and 2019, 8252 participants (...) (mean age 58 ± 9 years, 54% women) were recruited with a follow-up questionnaire administered to 909 participants (40% response rate) at 1-year. The CAHHM policy followed a restricted approach, whereby routine feedback on IFs was not provided. Only IFs of severe structural abnormalities were reported.ResultsSevere structural abnormalities occurred in 8.3% (95% confidence interval 7.7–8.9%) of participants, with the highest proportions found in the brain (4.2%) and abdomen (3.1%). The majority of participants (97%) informed of an IF reported no change in quality of life, with 3% of participants reporting that the knowledge of an IF negatively impacted their quality of life. Furthermore, 50% reported increased stress in learning about an IF, and in 95%, the discovery of an IF did not adversely impact his/her life insurance policy. Most participants (90%) would enrol in the study again and perceived the MRI scan to be beneficial, regardless of whether they were informed of IFs. While the implications of a restricted approach to IF management was perceived to be mostly positive, a degree of diagnostic misconception was present amongst participants, indicating the importance of a more thorough consent process to support participant autonomy.ConclusionThe management of IFs from research MRI scans remain a challenging issue, as participants may experience stress and a reduced quality of life when IFs are disclosed. The restricted approach to IF management in CAHHM demonstrated a fair fulfillment of the overarching ethical principles of respect for autonomy, concern for wellbeing, and justice. The approach outlined in the CAHHM policy may serve as a framework for future research studies.Clinical trial registrationhttps://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/nct02220582. (shrink)

With this issue we initiate the policy of expanding the scope of Tulane Studies in Philosophy to include, in addition to the work of members of the department, contributions from philosophers who have earned advanced degrees from Tulane and who are now teaching in other colleges and universities. The Editor THE LOGIC OF OUR LANGUAGE ROBERT L. ARRINGTON Wittgenstein wrote in the Tractatus that "logic is not a body of doctrine, but a mirror-image of the world. " 1 In line (...) with his suggestion that a proposition is a 'picture', Wittgenstein argued that propositions 'show' the logical structure of the real. He was insistent, however, that "the apparent logical form of a proposition need not be its real one. " 2 As a result of this we can misunderstand the structure of fact. Philosophical problems arise just when "the logic of our language is mis understood. " 3 It is common knowledge that much of this view of logic was rejected by Wittgenstein himself in the Philosophical Investi gations. There we are told that language has no ideal or sublime 4 logic which mirrors the structure of the extra-linguistic world. Consequently, inferences from the structure of language to the structure of that extra-linguistic world are invalid. Reality can be 'cut up' in any of a number of ways by language. Wittgenstein adopted a view of philosophy which would render that discipline a non-explanatory, non-critical study of the multiple ways in which language can be used. (shrink)

To revitalize nursing science, there is a need for a new approach to guide nurse scientists in addressing complex problems in health care. By applying theoretical concepts from a revolutionary philosopher of science, Paul K. Feyerabend, new nursing knowledge can be produced using creativity and pluralistic approaches. Feyerabend proposed that methods within and outside of science can produce knowledge. Despite the recognition of Feyerabendian philosophy within science, there is currently a lack of literature regarding the relevance of Feyerabendian philosophy for (...) nursing science. We aim to (a) describe and critique Feyerabendian concepts, (b) discuss the potential application of Feyerabendian philosophy for knowledge production within gerontological nursing and (c) describe theoretical possibilities for nurse scientists in using Feyerabendian philosophy to guide nursing knowledge development. We begin by introducing Feyerabend's life and his inspirations for his theoretical concepts, epistemological anarchism, theoretical pluralism and humanitarianism, and conclude by offering suggestions of how to apply Feyerabendian philosophy in nursing research. (shrink)

This anthology is the most ambitious, comprehensive, and authoritative English-language sourcebook of Korean civilization ever assembled. Encompassing social intellectual, religious, and literary traditions from ancient times through World War II, this collection reveals the grand corpus of thought, beliefs, and customs unique to the Korean people. Volume I features three major periods of Korean history: the Three Kingdoms and Unified Silla (57 B.C.-935), Koryo (918-1392), and Early Choson (1392-1600). Each section begins with a broad historical introduction to provide context and (...) perspective, and contains representative writings from the era, with commentary, background, and analysis. (shrink)