The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 12, Issue 9, Page 26-28, September 2012.

In pathological conditions associated with persistent increases in hemodynamic workload (old myocardial infarction, high blood pressure, valvular heart disease), a number of signalling pathways are activated in the heart, all of which promote hypertrophic growth of the heart, characterised at the cellular level by increases in individual cardiac myocyte size. Some of these pathways are required for a successful adaptation to cardiac injury. Other pathways are maladaptive, however, as they lead to progressive contractile dysfunction and heart failure. The free radical (...) gas nitric oxide and natriuretic peptides, both of which are produced in the heart, have emerged as endogenous inhibitors of maladaptive hypertrophy signalling. Overall, it appears that cardiac hypertrophy is controlled by an interplay of pro‐ and antihypertrophic signalling networks. This delicate balance can tip towards adaptation or heart failure. In the future, patients living with cardiac disease may benefit from therapeutic strategies targeting maladaptive hypertrophy signalling pathways. BioEssays 26:608–615, 2004. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Ethical leadership research has primarily relied on social learning and social exchange theories. Although these theories have been generative, additional theoretical perspectives hold the potential to broaden scholars’ understanding of ethical leadership’s effects. In this paper, we examine moral typecasting theory and its unique implications for followers’ leader-directed citizenship behavior. Across two studies employing both survey-based and experimental methods, we offer support for three key predictions consistent with this theory. First, the effect of ethical leadership on leader-directed citizenship behavior is (...) curvilinear, with followers helping highly ethical and highly unethical leaders the least. Second, this effect only emerges in morally intense contexts. Third, this effect is mediated by the follower’s belief in the potential for prosocial impact. Our findings suggest that a follower’s belief that his or her leader is ethical has meaningful, often counterintuitive effects that are not predicted by dominant theories of ethical leadership. These results highlight the potential importance of moral typecasting theory to better understand the dynamics of ethical leadership. (shrink)

The complex chaotic dynamics and multistability of financial system are some important problems in micro- and macroeconomic fields. In this paper, we study the influence of two-delay feedback on the nonlinear dynamics behavior of financial system, considering the linear stability of equilibrium point under the condition of single delay and two delays. The system undergoes Hopf bifurcation near the equilibrium point. The stability and bifurcation directions of Hopf bifurcation are studied by using the normal form method and central manifold theory. (...) The theoretical results are verified by numerical simulation. Furthermore, one feature of the proposed financial chaotic system is that its multistability depends extremely on the memristor initial condition and the system parameters. It is shown that the nonlinear dynamics of financial chaotic system can be significantly changed by changing the values of time delays. (shrink)

Interest in and initiation of farm-to-school (FTS) programs have increased in recent years, spurred on by converging public concerns about child obesity trends and risks associated with industrialization and distancing in the modern food system. A civic agriculture framework that more specifically considers civic engagement and problem solving offers insights about variations in the development and prospects for FTS programs. Drawing on comparative case studies of two emerging FTS initiatives in Pennsylvania—one in a rural setting and one in an urban (...) setting—this article examines the role of internal and external “champions” in launching FTS programs and fostering civic engagement. Farm-to-school community stakeholders across the two cases framed FTS in broadly similar terms of (1) redressing poor food environments; (2) improving student nutrition, health and well-being; and (3) revitalizing rural community through support of local agriculture. However, specific concerns and emphases differed across the rural and urban cases, illustrating the significance of local context for such programs. The article concludes by discussing the importance of frame bridging and frame extension as strategies for expanding the FTS movement, and also ensuring programs that correspond to the specific circumstances and possibilities of their social and geographic settings. (shrink)

Hand function improvement in stroke survivors in the chronic stage usually plateaus by 6 months. Brain-computer interface (BCI)-guided robot-assisted training has been shown to be effective for facilitating upper-limb motor function recovery in chronic stroke. However, the underlying neuroplasticity change is not well understood. This study aimed to investigate the whole-brain neuroplasticity changes after 20-session BCI-guided robot hand training, and whether the changes could be maintained at the 6-month follow-up. Therefore, the clinical improvement and the neurological changes before, immediately after, (...) and 6 months after training were explored in 14 chronic stroke subjects. The upper-limb motor function was assessed by Action Research Arm Test (ARAT) and Fugl-Meyer Assessment for Upper-Limb (FMA), and the neurological changes were assessed using resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging. Repeated-measure ANOVAs indicated that long-term motor improvement was found by both FMA (F[2,26]= 6.367,p= 0.006) and ARAT (F[2,26]= 7.230,p= 0.003). Seed-based functional connectivity analysis exhibited that significantly modulated FC was observed between ipsilesional motor regions (primary motor cortex and supplementary motor area) and contralesional areas (supplementary motor area, premotor cortex, and superior parietal lobule), and the effects were sustained after 6 months. The fALFF analysis showed that local neuronal activities significantly increased in central, frontal and parietal regions, and the effects were also sustained after 6 months. Consistent results in FC and fALFF analyses demonstrated the increase of neural activities in sensorimotor and fronto-parietal regions, which were highly involved in the BCI-guided training.Clinical Trial Registration:This study has been registered atClinicalTrials.govwith clinical trial registration number NCT02323061. (shrink)

This handbook presents a comprehensive introduction to the core areas of philosophy of education combined with an up-to-date selection of the central themes. It includes 95 newly commissioned articles that focus on and advance key arguments; each essay incorporates essential background material serving to clarify the history and logic of the relevant topic, examining the status quo of the discipline with respect to the topic, and discussing the possible futures of the field. The book provides a state-of-the-art overview of philosophy (...) of education, covering a range of topics: Voices from the present and the past deals with 36 major figures that philosophers of education rely on; Schools of thought addresses 14 stances including Eastern, Indigenous, and African philosophies of education as well as religiously inspired philosophies of education such as Jewish and Islamic; Revisiting enduring educational debates scrutinizes 25 issues heavily debated in the past and the present, for example care and justice, democracy, and the curriculum; New areas and developments addresses 17 emerging issues that have garnered considerable attention like neuroscience, videogames, and radicalization. The collection is relevant for lecturers teaching undergraduate and graduate courses in philosophy of education as well as for colleagues in teacher training. Moreover, it helps junior researchers in philosophy of education to situate the problems they are addressing within the wider field of philosophy of education and offers a valuable update for experienced scholars dealing with issues in the sub-discipline. Combined with different conceptions of the purpose of philosophy, it discusses various aspects, using diverse perspectives to do so. Contributing Editors: Section 1: Voices from the Present and the Past: Nuraan Davids Section 2: Schools of Thought: Christiane Thompson and Joris Vlieghe Section 3: Revisiting Enduring Debates: Ann Chinnery, Naomi Hodgson, and Viktor Johansson Section 4: New Areas and Developments: Kai Horsthemke, Dirk Willem Postma, and Claudia Ruitenberg. (shrink)

Compared to our understanding of positive prediction error signals occurring due to unexpected reward outcomes, less is known about the neural circuitry in humans that drives negative prediction errors during omission of expected rewards. While classical learning theories such as Rescorla–Wagner or temporal difference learning suggest that both types of prediction errors result from a simple subtraction, there has been recent evidence suggesting that different brain regions provide input to dopamine neurons which contributes to specific components of this prediction error (...) computation. Here, we focus on the brain regions responding to negative prediction error signals, which has been well-established in animal studies to involve a distinct pathway through the lateral habenula. We examine the activity of this pathway in humans, using a conditioned inhibition paradigm with high-resolution functional MRI. First, participants learned to associate a sensory stimulus with reward delivery. Then, reward delivery was omitted whenever this stimulus was presented simultaneously with a different sensory stimulus, the conditioned inhibitor. Both reward presentation and the reward-predictive cue activated midbrain dopamine regions, insula and orbitofrontal cortex. While we found significant activity at an uncorrected threshold for the CI in the habenula, consistent with our predictions, it did not survive correction for multiple comparisons and awaits further replication. Additionally, the pallidum and putamen regions of the basal ganglia showed modulations of activity for the inhibitor that did not survive the corrected threshold. (shrink)

Biological evolution provides a creative fount of complex and subtle adaptations, often surprising the scientists who discover them. However, because evolution is an algorithmic process that transcends the substrate in which it occurs, evolution’s creativity is not limited to nature. Indeed, many researchers in the field of digital evolution have observed their evolving algorithms and organisms subverting their intentions, exposing unrecognized bugs in their code, producing unexpected adaptations, or exhibiting outcomes uncannily convergent with ones in nature. Such stories routinely reveal (...) creativity by evolution in these digital worlds, but they rarely fit into the standard scientific narrative. Instead they are often treated as mere obstacles to be overcome, rather than results that warrant study in their own right. The stories themselves are traded among researchers through oral tradition, but that mode of information transmission is inefficient and prone to error and outright loss. Moreover, the fact that these stories tend to be shared only among practitioners means that many natural scientists do not realize how interesting and lifelike digital organisms are and how natural their evolution can be. To our knowledge, no collection of such anecdotes has been published before. This paper is the crowd-sourced product of researchers in the fields of artificial life and evolutionary computation who have provided first-hand accounts of such cases. It thus serves as a written, fact-checked collection of scientifically important and even entertaining stories. In doing so we also present here substantial evidence that the existence and importance of evolutionary surprises extends beyond the natural world, and may indeed be a universal property of all complex evolving systems. (shrink)

Hitchcock advances a diachronic Dutch Book argument (DDB) for a 1/3 answer to the Sleeping Beauty problem. Bradley and Leitgeb argue that Hitchcock’s DDB argument fails. We demonstrate the following: (a) Bradley and Leitgeb’s criticism of Hitchcock is unconvincing; (b) nonetheless, there are serious reasons to worry about the success of Hitchcock’s argument; (c) however, it is possible to construct a new DDB for 1/3 about which such worries cannot be raised.

Het begrijpen van verschijnselen is een belangrijk doel van de wetenschap. Echter, onder wetenschappers en wetenschapsfilosofen bestaat traditioneel de neiging om het belang van wetenschappelijk begrijpen te bagatelliseren. Het wordt bijvoorbeeld omschreven als een psychologisch bijproduct van wetenschappelijke verklaringen. Typerend is de opmerking van de psycholoog Edward C. Tolman dat sommige wetenschappers verklaringen nodig hebben voor hun innerlijke gemoedsrust. Verklaringen zouden bij hen de ‘innerlijke spanningen’ wegnemen die ontstaan bij de confrontatie met onverklaarde verschijnselen . Begrijpen verwijst in deze interpretatie (...) enkel naar psychologische aspecten van wetenschappelijke verklaringen, die van persoon tot persoon kunnen verschillen. In combinatie met het traditionele beeld van de objectieve wetenschap, waarbij het resultaat van wetenschap niet afhankelijk mag zijn van dergelijke aspecten, leidt deze interpretatie tot de opvatting dat begrijpen niet moet worden gezien als een wezenlijk doel van de wetenschap. (shrink)

Die sekundäre Forschungsnutzung von Behandlungsdaten hat großes Potenzial, biomedizinisches Wissen zu erweitern und die Patientenversorgung zu verbessern. Gleichzeitig sind für eine bessere Ausschöpfung dieses Potenzials diverse Herausforderungen zu bewältigen. Dies gilt insbesondere in Deutschland, wo im Vergleich zu anderen Ländern, wie z.B. Dänemark oder Finnland, die sekundäre Forschungsnutzung von Behandlungsdaten unterentwickelt ist. Die Intensivierung der Nutzung der Daten aus Diagnose und Therapie von Patienten und die Entwicklung der dafür notwendigen Strukturen in Deutschland ist ethisch und politisch geboten: für die Verbesserung (...) der Gesundheitsversorgung durch neue Erkenntnisse, Therapien und Qualitätssicherung. Aus diesem Grund fordern die Autor:innen alle Akteure des Gesundheitssystems, von der Bundes- und den Landesregierungen über die Krankenkassen, Kliniken, Ärzt:innen und Patient:innen dazu auf, einen Beitrag dazu leisten, eine Kultur der sekundären Forschungsnutzung von Behandlungsdaten zu etablieren. Basierend auf den Ergebnissen eines dreijährigen Verbundprojekts beantworten die Autor:innen aus den Bereichen Medizin, Rechtswissenschaften, Ethik und Sozialwissenschaften die Frage was notwendig ist, damit in Deutschland die Daten von Patient:innen systematisch für medizinische Forschung und die Analyse der klinischen Versorgungsqualität verwendet werden können und wirklich auch verwendet werden. Sie nennen zehn zentrale Forderungen und legen eine Liste von 23 Empfehlungen mit konkreten Maßnahmen vor, welche von den genannten Akteuren umgesetzt werden sollten. (shrink)

It was C.H. Waddington's contention that the Neo-Darwinian Theory of Evolution ought to be amended by imbedding it in a broader theoretical framework which takes the role of the phenotype into account. Waddington's theory alleges the existence of two interlocking feedback circuits between environment and phenotype on the one hand and genotype and phenotype on the other. The resulting dynamical model of evolutionary change gives new meaning to the notion of progress in evolution. In this model natural selection acts directly (...) on the phenotype, thereby influencing the feedback relationships. Better tuning of the feedback relations, however, leads to progress in adaptability which in Waddington's theory replaces the cumbersome concept of progress in adaptation.This paper expounds Waddington's theory and places it into a broader philosophical perspective. (shrink)

Background Protecting a person’s right to privacy and confidentiality is important in healthcare services. As future health professionals, nursing students should bear the same responsibility as qualified health professionals in protecting patient privacy. Objectives To investigate nursing students’ practices of patient privacy protection and to identify factors associated with their practices. Research design A cross-sectional study design was adopted. A two-part survey was used to collect two types of data on nursing students: (1) personal characteristics, including demographics, clinical experience and (...) use of information and communication technology and social media and (2) practice of patient privacy protection, collected using the Patient Privacy Scale. Participants and research context: A total of 319 nursing students aged 18 or above, studying pre-registration nursing programmes and who had attended at least one block of clinical placement, were recruited from a university in Hong Kong. Ethical considerations The study received ethical approval from the Survey and Behavioural Research Ethics Committee of the Chinese University of Hong Kong. The participants were informed of the study aim and written consent was obtained before completing the survey. Findings: The mean total score on the Patient Privacy Scale was 119.7 out of 135. Nursing students who were regular users of Instagram and those who had never taken photographs with patients and hence did not need to obtain patient consent were associated with better practices of patient privacy protection (higher total scores on the Patient Privacy Scale). Conclusions The findings improve our understanding of nursing students’ practice of patient privacy protection and the associated factors. This will inform the development and revision of current strategies to enhance nursing students’ practice of patient privacy protection, especially their use of social media. (shrink)

RÉSUMÉ: Richard Rorty est souvent vu comme une sorte de clone américain de Derrida et considéré, en tant que tel, comme irresponsable à la fois au plan philosophique et au plan politique. Je soutiens que c’est là une caricature. Rorty propose à la fois une version unifiée, pénétrante et raisonnée du pragmatisme, et une métaphilosophie originale et stimulante, imprégnée de la tradition analytique et qui, tout en lui adressant un défi de taille, lui reste néanmoins tout à fait accessible. Tel (...) est mon propos principal. J’ai deux sous-thèmes: 1) que Rorty a été caricaturé par la gauche; et 2) qu’une position comme celle de Rorty et celle du marxisme analytique peuvent être compatibles. (shrink)

RésuméRichard Rorty est souvent vu comme une sorte de clone américain de Derrida et considéré, en tant que tel, comme irresponsable à la fois au plan philosophique et au plan politique. Je soutiens que c'est là une caricature. Rorty propose à la fois une version unifiée, pénétrante et raisonnée du pragmatisme, et une métaphilosophie originale et stimulante, imprégnée de la tradition analytique et qui, tout en lui adressant un défi de taille, lui reste néanmoins tout à fait accessible. Tel est (...) mon propos principal. J'ai deux sous-thèmes: 1) que Rorty a été caricaturé par la gauche; et 2) qu'une position comme celle de Rorty et celle du marxisme analytique peuvent être compatibles. (shrink)

Philosophy viewed as conceptual analysis has a useful but limited role. C. D. Broad, in two classical metaphilosophical articles , sought to give philosophy a more robust role by providing a rationale for both what be called Critical Philosophy and Speculative Philosophy. Broad's program and arguments are examined and it is concluded what he seeks for both Critical Philosophy and Speculative Philosophy is not viable. It will not serve to keep at bay the wolves of anti‐philosophy‐philosophy.

Read at the Sixty-sixth Annual Meeting of the Western Division of the American Philosophical Association at St. Louis, Missouri, May 3, 1968. Some of the crucial thinking in this paper has been much influenced by J. C. Thornton’s brilliant “Religious Belief and ‘Reductionism’,”Sophia, vol. V, No. 3 , and by his “Reductionism—A Reply to Dr. Mascall”,Sophia, vol. VI, No. 2.

A primary goal of research in the semantics/pragmatics interface is to investigate the division of labor between the truth-conditional component of the meaning of an expression and other factors of a more pragmatic nature. One favorite strategy, associated foremost with Grice (1967, 1989), is to keep to a rather austere semantics and to derive the overall meaning of an utterance by predictable additional inferences, called ``implicatures,'' which are seen as based on certain principles of rational and purposeful interaction. In this (...) chapter, I will explore a di¨erent way in which the truth-conditional component is complemented in context. Imagine that we have persuasive evidence that an expression a in context c expresses a proposition p. The straightforward way of capturing this in a semantic system is to attribute to a a context-dependent meaning that maps c to p in a systematic and adequate way. (shrink)

Spreds form a new protein family with an N‐terminal Enabled/VASP homology 1 domain (EVH1), a central c‐Kit binding domain (KBD) and a C‐terminal Sprouty‐related domain (SPR). They are able to inhibit the Ras–ERK signalling pathway after various mitogenic stimulations. In mice, Spred proteins are identified as regulators of bone morphogenesis, hematopoietic processes, allergen‐induced airway eosinophilia and hyperresponsiveness. They inhibit cell motility and metastasis and have a high potential as tumor markers and suppressors of carcinogenesis. Moreover, in vertebrates, XtSpreds help together (...) with XtSprouty proteins to coordinate gastrulation and mesoderm specification. Here, we give an overview of this new field and summarize the domain functions, binding partners, expression patterns and the cellular localizations, regulations and functions of Spred proteins and try to give perspectives for future scientific directions. BioEssays 29:897–907, 2007. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

This collection complements New Essays in Philosophical Theology by displaying the influence of the later Wittgenstein on contemporary philosophers of religion. The first two papers are Peter Winch's "Understanding a Primitive Society" and Norman Malcolm's "Anselm's Ontological Arguments". Distinguishing between interpretations of experience within a system of concepts and the reality expressed by the limiting concepts presupposed by such a system, Winch will not allow us to question the validity of the portrayal of reality as such and specifically attacks MacIntyre's (...) dismissal of magic. Neither Winch nor Malcolm leave room for changes in our conception of the reality expressed which might lead to radical reappraisal of the concepts used. Building on Malcolm, the editor declares theoretical speculation and scepticism to be incompatible with religious understanding. After a typically sterile debate between Atheist, Agnostic, Protestant and Catholic and a typically judicious paper by Kemp Smith on "Is Divine Existence Credible?" we come to the gem of the collection, W. H. Poteat's "Birth, Suicide and the Doctrine of Creation: An Exploration of Analogies." This and the next unravel ambiguities in our talk of the world. Then come R. F. Holland on "The Miraculous" and some vintage Collingwood on "The Devil". Phillips on moral and religious conceptions of duty and Poteat's analysis of "I Will Die" complete the series. Almost all of the essays have been previously published, but the editor has done a good job of gathering and arranging them in a meaningful sequence. Apart from Kemp Smith and Collingwood, the writers represent "Wittgensteinian Fideism" and the book suffers for lack of the criticism of this that Kai Nielsen or MacIntyre might have supplied. Its most suggestive passages are those in which linguistic and existentialist insights are married. But the marriage is still without metaphysical issue.—C. P. S. (shrink)

This collection complements New Essays in Philosophical Theology by displaying the influence of the later Wittgenstein on contemporary philosophers of religion. The first two papers are Peter Winch's "Understanding a Primitive Society" and Norman Malcolm's "Anselm's Ontological Arguments". Distinguishing between interpretations of experience within a system of concepts and the reality expressed by the limiting concepts presupposed by such a system, Winch will not allow us to question the validity of the portrayal of reality as such and specifically attacks MacIntyre's (...) dismissal of magic. Neither Winch nor Malcolm leave room for changes in our conception of the reality expressed which might lead to radical reappraisal of the concepts used. Building on Malcolm, the editor declares theoretical speculation and scepticism to be incompatible with religious understanding. After a typically sterile debate between Atheist, Agnostic, Protestant and Catholic and a typically judicious paper by Kemp Smith on "Is Divine Existence Credible?" we come to the gem of the collection, W. H. Poteat's "Birth, Suicide and the Doctrine of Creation: An Exploration of Analogies." This and the next unravel ambiguities in our talk of the world. Then come R. F. Holland on "The Miraculous" and some vintage Collingwood on "The Devil". Phillips on moral and religious conceptions of duty and Poteat's analysis of "I Will Die" complete the series. Almost all of the essays have been previously published, but the editor has done a good job of gathering and arranging them in a meaningful sequence. Apart from Kemp Smith and Collingwood, the writers represent "Wittgensteinian Fideism" and the book suffers for lack of the criticism of this that Kai Nielsen or MacIntyre might have supplied. Its most suggestive passages are those in which linguistic and existentialist insights are married. But the marriage is still without metaphysical issue.—C. P. S. (shrink)