There is little empirical evidence showing a direct link between a capacity for statistical learning (SL) and proficiency with natural language. Moreover, discussion of the role of SL in language acquisition has seldom focused on literacy development. Our study addressed these issues by investigating the relationship between SL and reading ability in typically developing children and healthy adults. We tested SL using visually presented stimuli within a triplet learning paradigm and examined reading ability by administering the Wide Range Achievement Test (...) (WRAT-4; Wilkinson & Robertson, 2006). A total of 38 typically developing children (mean age of 9;5 years, range 6;4–12;5) and 37 healthy adults (mean age of 21 years, range 18–34) were assessed. In children, SL was significantly related to reading ability. Importantly, this relationship was independent of grade and also age. The adult data, too, revealed that SL was significantly related to reading ability. A regression analysis of the combined child and adult data revealed that SL accounted for a unique amount of variance in reading ability, after age and attention had been taken into consideration. For the first time, this study provides empirical evidence that a capacity for more effective SL is related to higher reading ability in the general population. (shrink)

The origin of the notochord is one of the key remaining mysteries of our evolutionary ancestry. Here, we present a multi‐level comparison of the chordate notochord to the axochord, a paired axial muscle spanning the ventral midline of annelid worms and other invertebrates. At the cellular level, comparative molecular profiling in the marine annelids P. dumerilii and C. teleta reveals expression of similar, specific gene sets in presumptive axochordal and notochordal cells. These cells also occupy corresponding positions in a conserved (...) anatomical topology and undergo similar morphogenetic movements. At the organ level, a detailed comparison of bilaterian musculatures reveals that most phyla form axochord‐like muscles, suggesting that such a muscle was already present in urbilaterian ancestors. Integrating comparative evidence at the cell and organ level, we propose that the notochord evolved by modification of a ventromedian muscle followed by the assembly of an axial complex supporting swimming in vertebrate ancestors. (shrink)

The scope of the issues -- The moral relationship between leaders and followers -- The morality of leaders : motives and deeds -- Puzzles and perils of transformational leadership.

Créée par Éric Rochant, Le Bureau des légendes (Canal +, 2015-2020) explore le monde du renseignement en décrivant le travail du service des agents clandestins de la DGSE. Face aux incertitudes et aux complexités géopolitiques du monde contemporain, elle fait le choix d’une immersion au cœur du « renseignement humain ». Cet article envisage l’hypothèse selon laquelle une telle fiction permet de restaurer la confiance des spectateurs vis-à-vis de la capacité d’une démocratie à lutter contre ce qui la menace. En (...) plongeant son spectateur dans les coulisses du renseignement, en le familiarisant avec des personnages complexes, la série questionne la légitimité de la confiance qu’il est possible d’accorder à un service de renseignement. La faillibilité des agents, mise en scène de façon détaillée, réfléchie par la série elle-même, rassure parce qu’elle permet de comprendre et de partager une forme de vie spécifique qui est celle de l’action secrète. L’espionnage, le contre-espionnage et le contre-terrorisme apparaissent alors comme des pratiques reposant en dernier ressort, non pas sur une maîtrise absolue, mais sur la décision de faire confiance ou au contraire de se méfier. Mobilisant les recherches de la sociologie contemporaine à propos de la confiance (Giddens, 1994 et Luhmann 2006), il s’agit de décrire Le Bureau des légendes comme une fiction projetant sur nos écrans, la possibilité d’une restauration de la confiance ou pour le dire à la manière de Stanley Cavell, une issue possible au scepticisme. (shrink)

Most studies on verticality’s embodiment showed that up positions were related to positive emotions whereas down positions were related to negative ones. Research on motion perception found that a parabolic motion both induced animation attribution and implied negative feelings. We hypothesized that seeing a parabolic downward motion will increase both the memorization for words and the execution’s speed of a serial subtraction compared to a parabolic upward motion. Results showed that the downward motion had enhancing effects both on the serial (...) subtraction and on the number of recalled words, independently of their valence. These findings are interpreted as marking processes related to an adaptive behavior in response to a negative stimulus. (shrink)

In quantum statistical mechanics, equilibrium states have been shown to be the typical states for a system that is entangled with its environment, suggesting a possible identification between thermodynamic and von Neumann entropies. In this paper, we investigate how the relaxation toward equilibrium is made possible through interactions that do not lead to significant exchange of energy, and argue for the validity of the second law of thermodynamics at the microscopic scale.

Understanding the nature of science has long been a desired outcome of science education, despite ongoing disagreements about the content, structure, and focus of NOS expectations. Addressing the concern that teachers likely focus only on student learning expectations appearing in standards documents, this study examines the current state of NOS in science education standards documents from nine diverse countries to determine the overt NOS learning expectations that appeared, NOS statements provided near those learning expectations, but not identified as learning outcomes, (...) and NOS statements found in ancillary text. Findings indicate that NOS ideas rarely occur as expectations for student learning and are far more commonly found in ancillary material. Moreover, consensus was not apparent in the overt learning outcomes for students. Given the well-documented poor state of NOS instruction and the consistent lack of NOS appearing in published curriculum materials, the NOS standards appearing in nearly all documents analyzed are unlikely to provide sufficient conceptual or pedagogical support for NOS to be accurately interpreted or translated into meaningful experiences for students. (shrink)

The frontispiece of Hobbes's Leviathan is justly renowned as a powerful visual advertisement for his political philosophy. Consequently, its rich imagery has been the subject of extensive scholarly commentary. Surprisingly, then, its gendered dimensions have received relatively limited attention. This essay explores this neglected facet of the frontispiece. I argue that the image initially appears to present a hypermasculine sovereign. However, upon closer inspection, and considered alongside Hobbes's economic theory, it yields to a reading of the sovereign as an ambiguously (...) gendered figure. Reading the frontispiece through the prism of gender and the economy reveals not a static image of unwavering male power but rather one of an equivocally-sexed creature teeming with life, contradictions, and complexities worthy of continued examination. (shrink)

The business and human rights movement shares several goals with the Benefit Corporation movement: corporations respecting human rights; maintaining a “wide aperture” so that all impacts of a company on people and communities are addressed; and creating rigorous standards of conduct and means of accountability. This paper argues that nonetheless the movements are traveling along parallel tracks and thus missing an opportunity for mutual learning that can improve their effectiveness. The BHR movement can look to B Corps for concrete examples (...) of viable companies that value human rights intrinsically and not just where there is a “business case” to do so. The B Impact Assessment, the B Corp certification tool, can better ensure that B Corps are in fact respecting human rights by adopting BHR standards. And both movements must give greater consideration to the potential contradiction between unlimited scaling—a key goal of B Corps—and the ability of large multinational corporations to respect human rights. (shrink)

Many commentators have contrasted the way that sociability is theorized in the writings of Mary Astell and Damaris Masham, emphasizing the extent to which Masham is more interested in embodied, worldly existence. I argue, by contrast, that Astell's own interest in imagining a constitutively relational individual emerges once we pay attention to her use of religious texts and tropes. To explore the relevance of Astell's Christianity, I emphasize both how Astell's Christianity shapes her view of the individual's relation to society (...) and how Masham's contrasting views can be analyzed through the lens of her charge that Astell is an “enthusiast.” In late seventeenth-century England, “enthusiasm” was a term of abuse that, commentators have recently argued, could function polemically to dismiss those deemed either excessively social or antisocial. By accusing Astell of enthusiasm, I claim, Masham seeks to marginalize the relational self that Astell imagines and to promote a more instrumental view of social ties. I suggest some aspects of Astell's thought that may have struck contemporaries as “enthusiastic” and contrast her vision of the self with Masham's more hedonistic subject. I conclude that, although each woman differently configures the relation between self and society, they share a desire to imagine autonomy within a relational framework. (shrink)

For the successful achievement of evidence-based practice, clinicians, managers and purchasers need evidence on whether a particular intervention works and ways to judge the appropriateness of the outcome criteria and measures used. Guidance is needed on what outcome measure to use, especially within routine clinical care settings. Beginning with a re-clarification of the difference between a health status and an outcome measure, the paper presents an evaluative checklist for use by clinical audit and research staff to review outcome measures for (...) use in routine care settings. Central features include the user-centredness of the measure, its psychometric properties, feasibility of use and utility. The applicability of the checklist is illustrated for outcome measurement in diabetes and stroke care. A modified form of the checklist is proposed for use by the busy clinician as an aid to the critical review of research papers within the context of evidence-based practice and to aid health care practitioners' choice of which outcome measure(s) to use within routine clinical care. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to examine how any domain of Meinongian objects can be structured by a special kind of mereology. The basic definition of this mereology is the following: an object is part of another iff every characteristic property of the former is also a characteristic property of the latter. I will show that this kind of mereology ends up being very powerful for dealing with Meinongian objects. Mereological sums and products are not restricted in any way (...) in a domain of Meinongian objects: there is a sum and a product for any pair of Meinongian objects. With the mereological operations of sum, product and complement, and two special Meinongian objects, we can define a full boolean algebra on Meinongian objects. Moreover, this kind of mereology is atomic and extensional: an atom is a Meinongian object having just one characteristic property and two objects are identical iff the same atoms are parts of both of them. A Meinongian object can finally be defined in mereological terms as the sum of the atoms of its characteristic properties. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that a greater understanding of the part of ethics in leadership will improve leadership studies. Debates over thedefinition of leadership are really debates over what researchers think constitutes good leadership. The ultimate question is not “What is leadership?” but “What is good leadership?” The word good is refers to both ethics and competence. Research into leadership ethics would explore the ethical issues of current leadership research, serve as a critical study of the field, analyze and (...) expand normative theories of leadership, and develop new theories, research questions and ways of thinking about leadership. (shrink)

In a first part, I defend that formal semantics can be used as a guide to ontological commitment. Thus, if one endorses an ontological view \(O\) and wants to interpret a formal language \(L\) , a thorough understanding of the relation between semantics and ontology will help us to construct a semantics for \(L\) in such a way that its ontological commitment will be in perfect accordance with \(O\) . Basically, that is what I call constructing formal semantics from an (...) ontological perspective. In the rest of the paper, I develop rigorously and put into practice such a method, especially concerning the interpretation of second-order quantification. I will define the notion of ontological framework: it is a set-theoretical structure from which one can construct semantics whose ontological commitments correspond exactly to a given ontological view. I will define five ontological frameworks corresponding respectively to: (i) predicate nominalism, (ii) resemblance nominalism, (iii) armstrongian realism, (iv) platonic realism, and (v) tropism. From those different frameworks, I will construct different semantics for first-order and second-order languages. Notably I will present different kinds of nominalist semantics for second-order languages, showing thus that we can perfectly quantify over properties and relations while being ontologically committed only to individuals. I will show in what extent those semantics differ from each other; it will make clear how the disagreements between the ontological views extend from ontology to logic, and thus why endorsing an ontological view should have an impact on the kind of logic one should use. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that a greater understanding of the part of ethics in leadership will improve leadership studies. Debates over the definition of leadership are really debates over what researchers think constitutes good leadership. The ultimate question is not "What is leadership?" but "What is good leadership?" The word good is refers to both ethics and competence. Research into leadership ethics would explore the ethical issues of current leadership research, serve as a critical study of the field, analyze (...) and expand normative theories of leadership, and develop new theories, research questions and ways of thinking about leadership. (shrink)

This paper discusses a deterministic model of the spread of an infectious disease in a closed population that was proposed byKermack &McKendrick . The mathematical assumptions on which the model is based are listed and criticized. The ‘threshold theorem’ according to which an epidemic develops if, and only if, the initial population density exceeds a certain value determined by the parameters of the model, is discussed. It is shown that the theorem is not true. A weaker result is stated and (...) proved.A new simplified version of the model is discussed. In this model it is assumed that an infected individual becomes infectious after a constant time and that it will removed after a constant time. Numerical simulations of this model show that the form of the fluctuations in the number of diseased individuals depends on the values of the parameters. The number of infectious individuals may oscillate up and down under certain circumstances. Necessary conditions for the number of infectious individuals to rise above previous levels are stated and proved. (shrink)

In today's business world, ethics is not simply a peripheral concern of executive boards or a set of supposed constraints on free enterprise. Ethics stands at the very core of our working lives and of society as a whole, defining the public image of the business community and the ways in which individual companies and people behave. What people do at work--and how they think about work--determines their attitudes and aspirations, affecting and even structuring their personal lives and habits. Working (...) from this premise, Honest Work: A Business Ethics Reader provides a practical overview of business ethics that concentrates on the ethical problems and dilemmas students are most likely to face in their prospective work environments. Classic and recent articles and cases cover a broad spectrum of issues and concerns--from private ethical dilemmas to larger considerations of corporate values--and propose guidelines for thinking about the business world in a moral context. Each reading and case is followed by lively questions for discussion. Offering a welcome alternative to the impersonal tone of most business ethics texts, the editors address students in an appealing and conversational manner. They provide engaging chapter introductions that include personal narratives and also present the ideas of great philosophers in a unique way--as emails. Ideal for introductory undergraduate and MBA courses in business ethics, Honest Work: A Business Ethics Reader can be read as a coherent narrative but also offers instructors great flexibility, as its various chapters, readings, and cases can be pursued in almost any order. A Companion Website featuring chapter objectives and summaries, study questions, self-tests, and off-site links of interest will soon be available. An Instructor's Manual with Test Bank is available to adopters. (shrink)

Despite his producing voluminous writings beyond Utopia, scholarly consensus seems to be that if we want to understand the political thought of Thomas More, we must turn to this ‘little book’. This approach, however, has yielded little consensus about how to categorise More as a political thinker, as Utopia is notoriously and intentionally enigmatic. This article attempts to generate a portrait of More as a political thinker by going beyond an investigation of Utopia alone and taking into consideration those texts (...) often overlooked or rejected by scholars, primarily his polemical and religious writings. Doing so provides an outline of More as a thinker concerned with themes of natural and artificial inequality, popular authority and representation and, at the least, justifies the exercise of reading More’s work beyond Utopia. (shrink)

This study examines how authentic leadership influences team performance via the mediating mechanism of team reflexivity. Adopting a self-regulatory perspective, we propose that authentic leadership will predict the specific team regulatory process of reflexivity, which in turn will be associated with two outcomes of team performance, effectiveness and productivity. Using survey data from 53 teams in three organizations in the United Kingdom and Greece and controlling for collective trust, we found support for our stated hypotheses with the results indicating a (...) significant fully mediated relationship. As predicted the self-regulatory behaviors inherent in the process of authentic leadership served to collectively shape team behavior, manifesting in the process of team reflexivity, which, in turn, positively predicted team performance. We conclude with a discussion of how this study extends theoretical understanding of authentic leadership in relation to teamwork and delineate several practical implications for leaders and organizations. (shrink)

Bd. 1. Elementa philosophiae instrumentalis, seu institutionum philosophiae eclecticae, tomus primus -- Bd. 2. Elementa philosophiae theoreticae seu institutionum philosophiae eclecticae, tomus secundus -- Bd. 3. Elementa philosophiae practicae -- Bd. 4. Introductio ad historiam philosophiae ebraeorum. Accedit dissertatio de haeresi Valentiniana -- Bd. 5. Analecta historiae philosophicae -- Bd. 6. Institutiones theologiae moralis variis observationibus illustratae -- Bd. 7. Institutiones theologiae dogmaticae variis observationibus illustratae (<2> v.) -- Bd. 8. Isagoge historico-theologica ad theologiam universam singulasque eius partes, novis supplementis (...) auctior. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Work in business ethics texts Work from the 1950s through the 1980s The state of work in the 1990s Today's problem of work and life Business ethics and work in the twenty‐first century.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 41.4 (2003) 553-554 [Access article in PDF] Ruby Blondell. The Play of Character in Plato's Dialogues. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Pp. xi + 452. Cloth, $75.00. Plato's dialogues were written before audiences distinguished philosophy from literature. Recently scholars have argued that the dialogues should be read as philosophy that is literature, and no one makes the case better than Blondell does (...) in this splendid work. Her argument compels by focusing on character in the relevant senses: as the dramatis personae of the dialogues, as that which individuates them and prompts them to act in ways that affect their very souls, and as "the effects of literary characterization on the moral character of the audience" (2). Character connects the dialogues as "literature," "philosophy," and paideia.In Plato's careful delineation of the characters of his dramatis personae, Blondell finds a tension between the existence of human particularity and the search for generic types. Socrates is a prime example of the dialectical movement between particularity and its attempted transcendence. Plato's choice to write dialogues is also "an assertion of human plurality" (49) that exhibits the pathos of trying to transcend human experience. "Dramatic form... becomes a medium for exploring the limits of transcendence, and the multiple tensions—between ideal and particular, mind and body, original and image, one and many, being and becoming, divine and human, deduction and persuasion, reason and emotion—which pervade the works of Plato" (50). Blondell's discussions of how dramatic form serves epistemological and pedagogical aims in Hippias Minor, Republic, Theaetetus, Sophist, and Statesman are so rich in insight and nuance that one hesitates to suggest they could be improved upon. Still, greater emphasis on the historical and cultural contexts shared by characters, author, and audience might add to our understanding of Plato's preoccupation with these specific philosophical tensions as well as his choice to address them through dramatic form.Blondell's discussion of Theaetetus is especially good in showing how "abstract epistemological issues... play themselves out in the world of specific, particularized human beings.... [I]t is this personal dimension of epistemology—the fact that we are particular, embodied individuals—that generates most of the problems in this dialogue (especially the reliability and subjectivity of sense perception)" (252). That philosophy, epistemology, and pedagogy come to be identified with Socrates also generates problems. Can there be philosophy without Socrates? To become a philosopher, must one resemble Socrates? If philosophy cannot go on without Socrates, how can it realize its aim of transcending human particularity? If philosophy can go on without him, will its practice and pedagogy nonetheless require dialectical discussion among embodied inquirers?No character in the dialogues appears a more likely successor to Socrates than Theaetetus. He resembles Socrates in appearance and character, and Blondell notes that repeated references to the younger man's gentleness and courage, and to his training in geometry, recall nothing so much as the guardians of the Republic. Theaetetus is the right kind of interlocutor, and one that allows Plato to portray—and defend—the elenchic Socrates, who merges with the "productive" Socrates in this dialogue. Before meeting Socrates, Theaetetus's attempts at philosophy were unsuccessful because he needed someone like himself to help him realize his philosophical potential. Socrates offers himself as [End Page 553] an intellectual midwife, yet Blondell observes that, his protestations to the contrary notwithstanding, he sometimes assumes the position and privileges of a father, and at other times is identified with philosophy as the object of desire. As an intellectual parent, Socrates demonstrates his superiority to Theodorus as the orphan's guardian. That Theodorus was Protagoras's pupil suggests one line of descent for Theaetetus: Protagoras—Theodorus—Theaetetus. Socrates' invocation of Parmenides suggests another: Parmenides—Socrates—Theaetetus. Different lines of descent bring different kinds of pedagogy: passive transference from Sophist to pupil versus active learning through dialectical discussion.But there is more to being a philosopher than what is found in Socrates or Theaetetus, for the ideal philosopher as Socrates describes him lacks... (shrink)

The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) "Policy for the Management of Terminally Ill Patients Who May Become Organ Donors after Death" proposes to take organs from certain patients as soon as possible after expected cardiopulmonary death. This policy requires clear understanding of the descriptive state of the donor's critical cardiopulmonary and neurologic functional capacity at the time interventions to sustain or harvest organs are undertaken. It also requires strong consensus about the moral and legal status of the donor during (...) dying and confirmation of death. There has been no need for the clarity and precision that this policy relies upon, and thus the needed research and conceptual work has not previously been generated. The empiric base and societal consensus are both too frail to provide justification for this policy at this time. (shrink)

Children’s reasoning on food properties and health relationships can contribute to healthier food choices. Food properties can either be positive (“gives strength”) or negative (“gives nausea”). One of the main challenges in public health is to foster children’s dietary variety, which contributes to a normal and healthy development. To face this challenge, it is essential to investigate how children generalize these positive and negative properties to other foods, including familiar and unfamiliar ones. In the present experiment, we hypothesized that children (...) might rely on cues of food processing (e.g., signs of human intervention such as slicing) to convey information about item edibility. Furthermore, capitalizing on previous results showing that food rejections (i.e., food neophobia and picky eating) are a significant source of inter-individual variability to children’s inferences in the food domain, we followed an individual approach. We expected that children would generalize the positive properties to familiar foods and, in contrast, that they would generalize more often the negative properties to unfamiliar foods. However, we expected that children would generalize more positive and less negative properties to unfamiliar sliced foods than to whole unfamiliar foods. Finally, we expected that children displaying higher levels of food rejections would generalize more negative properties than children displaying lower levels of food rejections. One-hundred and twenty-six children, aged 3–6 years, performed an induction task in which they had to generalize positive or negative health-related properties to familiar or unfamiliar foods, whole or sliced. We measured children’s probability of generalization for positive and negative properties. The children’s food rejection score was assessed on a standardized scale. Results indicated that children evaluated positively familiar foods (regardless of processing), whereas they tend to view unfamiliar food negatively. In contrast, children were at chance for processed unfamiliar foods. Furthermore, children displaying higher levels of food rejections were more likely to generalize the negative properties to all kinds of foods than children displaying lower levels of food rejections. These findings entitle us to hypothesize that knowledge-based food education programs should take into account the valence of the properties taught to children, as well as the state of processing of the food presented. Furthermore, one should take children’s interindividual differences into account because they influence how the knowledge gained through these programs may be generalized. (shrink)

Establishing healthy dietary habits in childhood is crucial in preventing long-term repercussions, as a lack of dietary variety in childhood leads to enduring impacts on both physical and cognitive health. Poor conceptual knowledge about food has recently been shown to be a driving factor of food rejection. The majority of studies that have investigated the development of food knowledge along with food rejection have mainly focused on one subtype of conceptual knowledge about food, namely taxonomic categories. However, taxonomic categorization is (...) not the only way to understand the food domain. We also heavily rely on other conceptual structures, namely thematic associations, in which objects are grouped because they share spatial-temporal properties or exhibit a complementary relationship. We rely on such thematic associations between food items, which may not fall into the same taxon, to determine the acceptability of food combinations. However, the development of children's ability to master these relations has not been systematically investigated, nor alongside the phenomenon of food rejection. The present research aims to fill this gap by investigating the development of conceptual food knowledge and the putative relationship between children's food rejection and both thematic and taxonomic food knowledge. A proportional analogy task, with a choice between taxonomic and thematic food associates, was conducted on children between 3 and 7-years-old. The children were systematically presented with either a thematic or taxonomic food base pair and then asked to extend the example type of relation to select the respective thematic or taxonomic match to the target. Our results revealed, for the first time, that increased levels of food rejection were significantly predictive of poorer food identification and decreased thematic understanding. These findings entitle us to hypothesize that knowledge-based food education programs to foster dietary variety in young children, should not only aim to improve taxonomic understanding of food, but also thematic relations. (shrink)