A line of research is emerging investigating the private sector impacts and dependencies on critical biodiversity and ecosystem services, and related business risks and opportunities. While the ecosystem services narrative is being forwarded globally as a key paradigm for promoting business sustainability, there is scarce knowledge of how these issues are considered at managerial level. This study thus investigates managerial views of corporate sustainability after the ecosystem services concept. We analyse interviews conducted with 20 managers from domestic and international forestry (...) companies operating with a plantation-based business model in China. Content analysis was employed to analyse the data, with a focus on four key areas: interviewee familiarity with the ecosystem services concept; their views of corporate dependencies and impacts on ecosystem services; related business risks and opportunities; and viability of existing instruments and practices that can be employed in detecting and addressing business impacts and dependencies on ecosystem services. Through an inductive approach to the empirical findings, we refined a framework that holds operational value for developing company response strategies to ecosystem services impact/dependence assessment, ensuring that all issues are addressed comprehensively, and that related risks and opportunities are properly acknowledged. (shrink)

Depue & Morrone-Strupinsky's (D&M-S's) model of affiliation meets the criteria advanced for the definition of behavior systems and endophenotypes. We argue that its application in psychiatry could be useful for identifying a biological pathophysiology common to a variety of conditions that are currently classified in very different categories of psychiatric nosography, including autism, schizoid personality, primary psychopathy, and dismissing attachment.

This book is a collection of secondary essays on America's most important philosophic thinkers—statesmen, judges, writers, educators, and activists—from the colonial period to the present. Each essay is a comprehensive introduction to the thought of a noted American on the fundamental meaning of the American regime.

L'acüon educative repose sur un double fondement: d'une part, la nature et la vocation de l'etre humain, et d'autre part, la societe humaine ä bätir. L'homme a des traits specifiques qui exigent et en meme temps permettent son education: il est imparfait, inacheve (il ne sait pas tout, il ne se comporte pas for cement bien), il faut done l'amener ä s'ameliorer; il est perfectible e'est-a-dire qu'il peut devenir meilleur; il a la volonte de se depasser, de tendre vers l'ideal, (...) ideal qu'il n'atteint, bien sür, jamais; il est capable materiellement, intellectuellement (grace ä sa formation, ä son experience) d'agir sur autrui, de le mener vers cet ideal; enfln, il est conscient de devoir le faire, car l'homme ne peut et ne doit etre eduque que par l'homme. Et, second justificatif de Taction educative: la societe des hommes et les rapports devant exister entre eux. L'homme, par essence, Vit et est fait pour vivre en collectivite. Celle-ci doit etre harmonieuse, bien organisee, de preference sous forme d'Etat, pour le bonheur de tous les membres, lesquels doivent etre ä meme de concourir ä l'edification d'une societe egalitaire, toutes choses qui necessitent Taction educative. (shrink)

In this interview, Jean-Luc Marion recalls the intellectual world of Paris in 1970s, reflecting on how his engagement with the ubiquitous “death of God” question led to the sketches of God without Being first presented at this 1979 Colloquium, and discusses the criticism it provoked not only from Heideggerians but also from Thomists. He discusses the reception history of phenomenology in France the reasons for the particular power it gained among thinkers of his generation. Finally, he recounts how his (...) work has led from the 1979 Colloquium through the “Theological Turn” and up to his forthcoming D’ ailleurs, la révélation, which he briefly previews here. Marion closes with words on originality, criticism, and the particular challenges of the contemporary world that await philosophical thinking today. (shrink)

L'acüon educative repose sur un double fondement: d'une part, la nature et la vocation de l'etre humain, et d'autre part, la societe humaine ä bätir. L'homme a des traits specifiques qui exigent et en meme temps permettent son education: il est imparfait, inacheve (il ne sait pas tout, il ne se comporte pas for cement bien), il faut done l'amener ä s'ameliorer; il est perfectible e'est-a-dire qu'il peut devenir meilleur; il a la volonte de se depasser, de tendre vers l'ideal, (...) ideal qu'il n'atteint, bien sür, jamais; il est capable materiellement, intellectuellement (grace ä sa formation, ä son experience) d'agir sur autrui, de le mener vers cet ideal; enfln, il est conscient de devoir le faire, car l'homme ne peut et ne doit etre eduque que par l'homme. Et, second justificatif de Taction educative: la societe des hommes et les rapports devant exister entre eux. L'homme, par essence, Vit et est fait pour vivre en collectivite. Celle-ci doit etre harmonieuse, bien organisee, de preference sous forme d'Etat, pour le bonheur de tous les membres, lesquels doivent etre ä meme de concourir ä l'edification d'une societe egalitaire, toutes choses qui necessitent Taction educative. (shrink)

L'A. établit la biographie de Jean le Géomètre en se référant à ses poèmes et à ses épigrammes. Ces poèmes à Basile le Nothos apportent des éclaircissements sur sa carrière comme poète lauréat et sur ses attachements politiques. Il a notamment été renvoyé du service militaire juste après 985 à cause de son attachement à la faction de Basile le Nothos. Ces poèmes à Psenas prouvent indirectement qu'il a vécu au monastère de Kyros vers la fin de sa vie.

First Published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Rift Valley Fever is a vector-borne disease mainly transmitted by mosquito. To gain some quantitative insights into its dynamics, a deterministic model with mosquito, livestock, and human host is formulated as a system of nonlinear ordinary differential equations and analyzed. The disease threshold $$\mathcal{R}_0$$ is computed and used to investigate the local stability of the equilibria. A sensitivity analysis is performed and the most sensitive model parameters to the measure of initial disease transmission $$\mathcal{R}_0$$ and the endemic equilibrium are determined. (...) Both $$\mathcal{R}_0$$ and the disease prevalence in mosquitoes are more sensitive to the natural mosquito death rate, d m . The disease prevalence in livestock and humans are more sensitive to livestock and human recruitment rates, $$\Uppi_l$$ and $$\Uppi_h$$, respectively, suggesting isolation of livestock from humans is a viable preventive strategy during an outbreak. Numerical simulations support the analytical results in further exploring theoretically the long-term dynamics of the disease at the population level. (shrink)

Given its non-invasive nature, there is increasing interest in the use of transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation across basic, translational and clinical research. Contemporaneously, tVNS can be achieved by stimulating either the auricular branch or the cervical bundle of the vagus nerve, referred to as transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation and transcutaneous cervical VNS, respectively. In order to advance the field in a systematic manner, studies using these technologies need to adequately report sufficient methodological detail to enable comparison of results between (...) studies, replication of studies, as well as enhancing study participant safety. We systematically reviewed the existing tVNS literature to evaluate current reporting practices. Based on this review, and consensus among participating authors, we propose a set of minimal reporting items to guide future tVNS studies. The suggested items address specific technical aspects of the device and stimulation parameters. We also cover general recommendations including inclusion and exclusion criteria for participants, outcome parameters and the detailed reporting of side effects. Furthermore, we review strategies used to identify the optimal stimulation parameters for a given research setting and summarize ongoing developments in animal research with potential implications for the application of tVNS in humans. Finally, we discuss the potential of tVNS in future research as well as the associated challenges across several disciplines in research and clinical practice. (shrink)

Given its non-invasive nature, there is increasing interest in the use of transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation across basic, translational and clinical research. Contemporaneously, tVNS can be achieved by stimulating either the auricular branch or the cervical bundle of the vagus nerve, referred to as transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation and transcutaneous cervical VNS, respectively. In order to advance the field in a systematic manner, studies using these technologies need to adequately report sufficient methodological detail to enable comparison of results between (...) studies, replication of studies, as well as enhancing study participant safety. We systematically reviewed the existing tVNS literature to evaluate current reporting practices. Based on this review, and consensus among participating authors, we propose a set of minimal reporting items to guide future tVNS studies. The suggested items address specific technical aspects of the device and stimulation parameters. We also cover general recommendations including inclusion and exclusion criteria for participants, outcome parameters and the detailed reporting of side effects. Furthermore, we review strategies used to identify the optimal stimulation parameters for a given research setting and summarize ongoing developments in animal research with potential implications for the application of tVNS in humans. Finally, we discuss the potential of tVNS in future research as well as the associated challenges across several disciplines in research and clinical practice. (shrink)

IntroductionSymptoms of schizophrenia are closely related to aberrant language comprehension and production. Macroscopic brain changes seen in some patients with schizophrenia are suspected to relate to impaired language production, but this is yet to be reliably characterized. Since heterogeneity in language dysfunctions, as well as brain structure, is suspected in schizophrenia, we aimed to first seek patient subgroups with different neurobiological signatures and then quantify linguistic indices that capture the symptoms of “negative formal thought disorder”.MethodsAtlas-based cortical thickness values of 66 (...) patients with first-episode psychosis and 36 healthy controls were analyzed with hierarchical clustering algorithms to produce neuroanatomical subtypes. We then examined the generated subtypes and investigated the quantitative differences in MRS-based glutamate levels [in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex ] as well as in three aspects of language production features: fluency, syntactic complexity, and lexical cohesion.ResultsTwo neuroanatomical subtypes among patients were observed, one with near-normal cortical thickness patterns while the other with widespread cortical thinning. Compared to the subgroup of patients with relatively normal cortical thickness patterns, the subgroup with widespread cortical thinning was older, with higher glutamate concentration in dACC and produced speech with reduced mean length of T-units and lower repeats of content words, despite being equally fluent.ConclusionWe characterized a patient subgroup with thinner cortex in first-episode psychosis. This subgroup, identifiable through macroscopic changes, is also distinguishable in terms of neurochemistry and language behavior. This study supports the hypothesis that glutamate-mediated cortical thinning may contribute to a phenotype that is detectable using the tools of computational linguistics in schizophrenia. (shrink)

This volume has 41 chapters written to honor the 100th birthday of Mario Bunge. It celebrates the work of this influential Argentine/Canadian physicist and philosopher. Contributions show the value of Bunge’s science-informed philosophy and his systematic approach to philosophical problems. The chapters explore the exceptionally wide spectrum of Bunge’s contributions to: metaphysics, methodology and philosophy of science, philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of physics, philosophy of psychology, philosophy of social science, philosophy of biology, philosophy of technology, moral philosophy, social and political (...) philosophy, medical philosophy, and education. The contributors include scholars from 16 countries. Bunge combines ontological realism with epistemological fallibilism. He believes that science provides the best and most warranted knowledge of the natural and social world, and that such knowledge is the only sound basis for moral decision making and social and political reform. Bunge argues for the unity of knowledge. In his eyes, science and philosophy constitute a fruitful and necessary partnership. Readers will discover the wisdom of this approach and will gain insight into the utility of cross-disciplinary scholarship. This anthology will appeal to researchers, students, and teachers in philosophy of science, social science, and liberal education programmes. 1. Introduction Section I. An Academic Vocation Section II. Philosophy Section III. Physics and Philosophy of Physics Section IV. Cognitive Science and Philosophy of Mind Section V. Sociology and Social Theory Section VI. Ethics and Political Philosophy Section VII. Biology and Philosophy of Biology Section VIII. Mathematics Section IX. Education Section X. Varia Section XI. Bibliography. (shrink)

Cancers rely on multiple, heterogeneous processes at different scales, pertaining to many biomedical fields. Therefore, understanding cancer is necessarily an interdisciplinary task that requires placing specialised experimental and clinical research into a broader conceptual, theoretical, and methodological framework. Without such a framework, oncology will collect piecemeal results, with scant dialogue between the different scientific communities studying cancer. We argue that one important way forward in service of a more successful dialogue is through greater integration of applied sciences (experimental and clinical) (...) with conceptual and theoretical approaches, informed by philosophical methods. By way of illustration, we explore six central themes: (i) the role of mutations in cancer; (ii) the clonal evolution of cancer cells; (iii) the relationship between cancer and multicellularity; (iv) the tumour microenvironment; (v) the immune system; and (vi) stem cells. In each case, we examine open questions in the scientific literature through a philosophical methodology and show the benefit of such a synergy for the scientific and medical understanding of cancer. (shrink)

After several recent special issues, conceived and prepared successively by R. H. Robbins and E. M. Uhlenbeck (no. 153, ‘The Cultural Heritage: Languages in Peril”), Y. M. Coppens (no. 155, “From the Heavens to the Mind”), M. Matarasso (no. 158, “Shamans and Shamanism: On the Threshold of a New Millennium”), Diogenes turned to Julio Labastida, coordinator of the study of the social sciences at the National University of Mexico and contributing editor to Diogenes (he is in charge of the Spanish (...) edition), and asked him to gather together for the current issue a certain number of articles devoted to themes related to the five-hundredth anniversary of America's “discovery” and its entry into a unified world. (shrink)

Two strains of male mice have bred over fortygenerations, starting with the work of RobertCairns and his colleagues, one strain with ahigh level of intra-species aggression, theother a low level of aggression. Thehigh-aggression mice tend to establishdominance hierarchies and particularly fight inthe presence of female mice. Thelow-aggression mice tend, in groups of theirown, to have a high degree of low-intensity,peaceful social contact, and to be more timidin initiating action than the high-aggressionmice. Biochemical differences have beenobserved between the two strains, and (...) confirmedby the present data: the high-aggression micehave greater dopamine concentrations (in thecaudate nucleus and nucleus accumbens), lowerlevels of the stress hormone corticosterone,and higher levels of testosterone than thelow-aggression mice. The current experimentswere designed to answer questions about theflexibility of adaptive behaviors:specifically, what is the effect of early dailymaternal separation on adult stress response ineach strain? What are the behavioral andhormonal mechanisms by which, as has beenobserved, low-aggression mice achieve adominant status when brought into situationswhere they compete for territory withhigh-aggression mice? Finally, what are thesocial and neurochemical mechanisms by whichhigh-aggression mice can develop low-aggressionbehavior if brought out of isolation and intogroups?Maternal separation was found to lead todecreases in stress levels, as measured bycorticosterone, in the low-aggression but notthe high-aggression, mice – presumably becauseof the surplus of maternal care the pupsreceive on returning to the nest. When alow-aggression mouse became dominant and ahigh-aggression mouse became submissive, theirusual pattern of corticosterone andtestosterone levels was found to be reversed. The change to low-aggression behavior inhigh-aggression mice switching from anisolation condition to a group condition, wasmediated by a decrease in D 1 dopaminereceptor densities.These results, like the ones on which theybuild, argue for substantial developmentalinfluences in expressions of the genesinfluencing aggressive or cooperative behavior. In this approach to evolution, epigenesis istreated not as a set of traits and behaviorspredetermined by the genome, but as a set ofprobabilistic tendencies toward certain traitsand behaviors. (shrink)

Le rationalisme italien est une figure majeure de la pensée du 20e siècle, non seulement en Italie mais également en France. Pour bien comprendre ce courant de pensée, il faut voir le rationalisme comme une tentative double, touchant à la fois la science et la philosophie. D’une part, le rationalisme tente de saisir la dimension culturelle de la science, d’autres part, il vise à élaborer une conception nouvelle, plus ouverte, de la raison philosophique. L’ouvrage s’intéresse également à l’influence exercée par (...) la pensée italienne sur la pensée française contemporaine. Il montre également comment le rationalisme en Italie s’est ouvert à l’historicisme sans pour autant fragiliser la structure même de la raison. Des figures importantes de la pensée italienne sont abordées ici, comme celles de Giovanni Vailati, Antonio Banfi, Giulo Prezti, etc. (shrink)

This book assesses how Vatican II opened up the Catholic Church to encounter, dialogue, and engagement with other world religions. Opening with a contribution from the President of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, it next explores the impact, relevance, and promise of the Declaration Nostra Aetate before turning to consider how Vatican II in general has influenced interfaith dialogue and the intellectual and comparative study of world religions in the postconciliar decades, as well as the (...) contribution of particular past and present thinkers to the formation of current interreligious and comparative theological methods. Additionally, chapters consider interreligious dialogue vis-à-vis theological anthropology in conciliar documents; openness to the spiritual practices of other faith traditions as a way of encouraging positive interreligious encounter; the role of lay and new ecclesial movements in interreligious dialogue; and the development of Monastic Interreligious Dialogue. Finally, it includes a range of perspectives on the fruits and future of Vatican’s II’s opening to particular faiths such as Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism. (shrink)