In the course of an immune response, antibodies undergo affinity maturation in order to increase their efficiency in neutralizing foreign invaders. Affinity maturation occurs by the introduction of multiple point mutations in the variable region gene that encodes the antigen binding site. This somatic hypermutation is restricted to immunoglobulin genes and occurs at very high rates. The precise molecular basis of this process remains obscure. However, recent studies using a variety of in vivo and in vitro systems have revealed important (...) regulatory regions, base motifs that are preferred targets of mutation and evidence that transcription may play an active role in hypermutation. BioEssays 20:227–234, 1998. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (shrink)

We report on the deliberations of an interdisciplinary group of experts in science, law, and philosophy who convened to discuss novel ethical and policy challenges in stem cell research. In this report we discuss the ethical and policy implications of safety concerns in the transition from basic laboratory research to clinical applications of cell-based therapies derived from stem cells. Although many features of this transition from lab to clinic are common to other therapies, three aspects of stem cell biology pose (...) unique challenges. First, tension regarding the use of human embryos may complicate the scientific development of safe and effective cell lines. Second, because human stem cells were not developed in the laboratory until 1998, few safety questions relating to human applications have been addressed in animal research. Third, preclinical and clinical testing of biologic agents, particularly those as inherently complex as mammalian cells, present formidable challenges, such as the need to develop suitable standardized assays and the difficulty of selecting appropriate patient populations for early phase trials. We recommend that scientists, policy makers, and the public discuss these issues responsibly, and further, that a national advisory committee to oversee human trials of cell therapies be established. **NB we did not reccommend a NAC, we think it might be appropriate**. (shrink)

If stem cell-based therapies are developed, we will likely confront a difficult problem of justice: for biological reasons alone, the new therapies might benefit only a limited range of patients. In fact, they might benefit primarily white Americans, thereby exacerbating long-standing differences in health and health care.

We report the identification of a recurrent, 520-kb 16p12.1 microdeletion associated with childhood developmental delay. The microdeletion was detected in 20 of 11,873 cases compared with 2 of 8,540 controls and replicated in a second series of 22 of 9,254 cases compared with 6 of 6,299 controls. Most deletions were inherited, with carrier parents likely to manifest neuropsychiatric phenotypes compared to non-carrier parents. Probands were more likely to carry an additional large copy-number variant when compared to matched controls. The clinical (...) features of individuals with two mutations were distinct from and/or more severe than those of individuals carrying only the co-occurring mutation. Our data support a two-hit model in which the 16p12.1 microdeletion both predisposes to neuropsychiatric phenotypes as a single event and exacerbates neurodevelopmental phenotypes in association with other large deletions or duplications. Analysis of other microdeletions with variable expressivity indicates that this two-hit model might be more generally applicable to neuropsychiatric disease. © 2010 Nature America, Inc. All rights reserved. (shrink)

In this chapter I problematize Beauvoir's analogical analyses in The Second Sex, arguing that her utilization of the race/gender analogy omits the experiences and oppressions of Black women. Furthermore, taking into account select secondary literature that emphasizes these issues, I argue that several of Beauvoir's white feminist defenders and critics share in common their non‐engagement with Black feminist literature on Beauvoir. Put another way, Black feminists who explicitly take up Beauvoir in their writings have remained largely unacknowledged in the secondary (...) literature on Beauvoir by white feminists. As a corrective to this erasure, I highlight the scholarly contributions of Black feminists including Loraine Hansberry, Chikwenye Ogunyemi, Deborah King, Oyeronke Oyewumi, and bell hooks. (shrink)

The United States considers educating all students to a threshold of adequate outcomes to be a central goal of educational justice. The No Child Left Behind Act introduced evidence-based policy and accountability protocols to ensure that all students receive an education that enables them to meet adequacy standards. Unfortunately, evidence-based policy has been less effective than expected. This article pinpoints under-examined methodological problems and suggests a more effective way to incorporate educational research findings into local evidence-based policy decisions. It identifies (...) some things educators need to know and do to determine whether available interventions can play the right casual role in their setting to produce desired effects. It examines the value and limits of educational research, especially randomized controlled trials, for this task. (shrink)

Educational Neuroscience provides an overview of a wide range of recent initiatives in educational neuroscience implicating and pertaining to mind, brain, and education. Contributions from top researchers in the field examine a variety of concerns, issues, and directions pertaining and relating to educational neuroscience and mind, brain, and education more generally, focusing on three main areas: motivations, aims, and prospects theories, methods, and collaborations challenges, results, and implications Chapters promote interdisciplinary perspectives and further establishment of theoretical and empirical bases for (...) research and scholarship bridging Education and the Neurosciences. Though not exhaustive, these chapters identify various parties, agencies, organizations, and initiatives involved in facilitating and furthering development in the field, providing a compendium of on-going efforts to help establish theories, models, methods, ethics, and common language. (shrink)

A growing body of research suggests that students achieve learning outcomes at higher rates when instructors use active-learning methods rather than standard modes of instruction. To investigate how one such method might be used to teach philosophy, we observed two classes that employed Reacting to the Past, an educational role-immersion game. We chose to investigate Reacting because role-immersion games are considered a particularly effective active-learning strategy. Professors who have used Reacting to teach history, interdisciplinary humanities, and political theory agree that (...) it engages students and teaches general skills like collaboration and communication. We investigated whether it can be effective for teaching philosophical content and skills like analyzing, evaluating, crafting, and communicating arguments in addition to bringing the more general benefits of active learning to philosophy classrooms. Overall, we find Reacting to be a useful tool for achieving these ends. While we do not argue that Reacting is uniquely useful for teaching philosophy, we conclude that it is worthy of consideration by philosophers interested in creative active-learning strategies, especially given that it offers a prepackaged set of flexible, user-friendly tools for motivating and engaging students. (shrink)

Evidence-based practice in education involves basing decisions about what to do on evidence about the relative effectiveness of available interventions (e.g. programmes, products, practices). This article considers two influential critiques of evidence-based education (EBE) pertaining to its treatment of values. The ‘general critique’ condemns EBE for excluding values from decisions about what to do in education. The ‘specific critique’ condemns EBE for relying on a deterministic view of causality in education which disregards the complex, value-laden nature of educational contexts. I (...) argue that virtually all versions of EBE escape the general critique, including the dominant intervention-centred approach that relies on experimental research to discover ‘what works’, because the predictions EBE aims to support are only one premise in a broader normative argument. Further, intervention-centred EBE can avoid much of the specific values-based critique because it is consistent with a probabilistic, rather than deterministic, understanding of causality. However, I argue that only a context-centred approach to EBE that relies on evidence about the specific target setting from local sources in addition to evidence from theory and mixed methods research can fully address the specific critique by accommodating critics’ descriptive claims about the nature of educational contexts. (shrink)

Building upon Thornton's (1991) work on teachers as “curricular-instructional gatekeepers,” the author explores what guided the curricular decision-making for one novice teacher concerning controversial issues that center on race, social class, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) issues. Qualitative case study revealed context, student demographics, and teacher positionality as influencing this teacher's choices regarding these themes in her curriculum. Findings indicated that this teacher was willing and able to challenge racist views in her classroom when she was a student (...) teacher and her students more closely mirrored her own race and social class. When she was a full-time teacher of students who were of a different racial and class background, she was unable to similarly challenge their homophobic beliefs. Implications for teacher education are discussed. (shrink)

It is only fair to hold someone accountable for outcomes over which they have sufficient control. The evidence-based approach to education (“evidence-based education,” or EBE) promises to give educators sufficient control over their students’ outcomes by providing access to interventions that are effective according to scientific research. I argue that EBE fails to secure sufficient control because the research on which it relies doesn't establish that interventions are generally effective. If they are to be fair, accountability practices must reflect the (...) limited control educators have, even when using evidence-based interventions that have improved outcomes in other settings. I glean relevant insights by considering accountability for medical practitioners within the context of evidence-based medicine (EBM). (shrink)

FOREWORD. Gilbert Gottlieb and the Developmental Point of View. I. INTRODUCTION. 1. Developmental Systems, Nature-Nurture, and the Role of Genes in Behavior and Development: On the Legacy of Gilbert Gottlieb. 2. Normally Occurring Environmental and Behavioral Influences on Gene Activity: From Central Dogma to Probabilistic Epigenesis. II. THEORETICAL FOUNDATIONS FOR THE DEVELOPMENTAL STUDY OF BEHAVIOR AND GENETICS. 3. Historical and Philosophical Perspectives on Behavioral Genetics and Developmental Science. 4. Development and Evolution Revisited. 5. Probabilistic Epigenesis and Modern Behavioral and Neural (...) Genetics. 6. The Roles of Environment, Experience, and Learning in Behavioral Development. 7. Contemporary Ideas in Physics and Biology in Gottlieb’s Psychology. III. EMPIRICAL STUDIES OF BEHAVIORAL DEVELOPMENT AND GENETICS. 8. Behavioral Development during the Mother-Young Interaction in Placental Mammals: The Development of Behavior in the Relationship with the Mother. 9. Amniotic Fluid as an Extended Milieu Interieur. 10. Developmental Effects of Selective Breeding for an Infant Trait. 11. Emergence and Constraint in Novel Behavioral Adaptations. 12. Nonhuman Primate Research Contributions to Understanding Genetic and Environmental Influences on Phenotypic Outcomes across Development. 13. Interactive Contributions of Genes and Early Experience to Behavioural Development: Sensitive Periods and Lateralized Brain and Behaviour. 14. Trans-Generational Epigenetic Inheritance. 15. The Significance of Non-Replication of Gene-Phenotype Associations. 16. Canalization and Malleability Reconsidered: The Developmental Basis of Phenotypic Stability and Variability. IV. APPLICATIONS TO DEVELOPMENT. 17. Gene-Parenting Interplay in the Development of Infant Emotionality. 18. Genetic Research in Psychiatry and Psychology: A Critical Overview. 19. On the Limits of Standard Quantitative Genetic Modeling of Inter-Individual Variation: Extensions, Ergodic Conditions and a New Genetic Factor Model of Intra-Individual Variation. 20. Songs My Mother Taught Me: Gene-Environment Interactions, Brain Development and the Auditory System: Thoughts on Non-Kin Rejection, Part II. 21. Applications of Developmental Systems Theory to Benefit Human Development: On the Contributions of Gilbert Gottlieb to Individuals, Families, and Communities. (shrink)

In this thesis I argue that Adam Smith is committed to moral egalitarianism, which extends to his theory of political economy. While Smith’s work is often used to justify economic inequality in society, I show that his political theory is best understood as a kind of relational egalitarianism. Using Elizabeth Anderson’s Democratic Equality as a model, I examine Smith’s commitment to equality in the space of social relationships. In particular, I argue that Smith’s focus on eliminating inequalities that cause oppression (...) in society in conjunction with his efforts to design a political and economic system that will yield social conditions of freedom for individuals make him a relational egalitarian. (shrink)

_Educational Neuroscience_ provides an overview of the wide range of recent initiatives in educational neuroscience, examining a variety of methodological concerns, issues, and directions. Encourages interdisciplinary perspectives in educational neuroscience Contributions from leading researchers examine key issues relating to educational neuroscience and mind, brain, and education more generally Promotes a theoretical and empirical base for the subject area Explores a range of methods available to researchers Identifies agencies, organizations, and associations facilitating development in the field Reveals a variety of on-going (...) efforts to establish theories, models, methods, ethics, and a common language. (shrink)

Nearly $2 trillion is spent annually in the U.S. treating chronic illness — yet accessibility to quality health care services in rural communities for the chronically ill and dying remains problematic. Unique barriers present special challenges to a meaningful discussion of and subsequent strategies for addressing these issues in the context of increasingly scarce resources.

The Institute of Medicine reporting on the quality of health care in America recommends six aims for achieving the health care system we could have. Together with the Institute for Healthcare Improvement Triple Aim initiative, a framework has emerged to challenge providers, educators, and policymakers to remake the health care system according to specific objectives: to provide care that is safe, effective, patient-centered, timely, efficient, and equitable to more people at a price we can afford. Complicating this mission of better (...) prevention and better care at a lower cost is a daunting demographic: January of 2011 marked the month and year that the first of the baby boomers turned 65. The U.S. Census Bureau in May 2010 projected the number of Americans of this age and over to reach 88 million by 2050, more than double the current figure of 40.2 million. Parekh and Barton forecast in stark detail what it will be like to address these burgeoning numbers of older Americans with comorbidities, including the fact that over 20% of the population currently experiences at least two chronic medical conditions. (shrink)

‘What does the brain have to do with learning?’Prima facie, this may seem like a strange thing for anyone to say, especially educational scholars, researchers, practitioners, and policy makers. There are, however, valid objections to injecting various and sundry neuroscientific considerations piecemeal into the vast field of education. These objections exist in a variety of dimensions. After providing a working definition for educational neuroscience, identifying the ‘mindbrain’ as the proper object of study thereof, I discuss, dispel or dismiss some of (...) these objections prior to presenting my motivations, aims, and prospects for this new area of educational research. I then briefly outline a positive case for educational neuroscience in terms of theories, methods, and collaborations, and conclude with a brief discussion of some challenges, results, and implications thereof. Naturally, the following considerations are but my own, some of which may be shared to some extent by others working in this area, as the case may be. (shrink)

This qualitative study examines the discourses that 25 preservice secondary social studies teachers create surrounding whether to include themes of sexual violence in the formal curriculum. As part of their first methods course, the participants read Harriet Jacobs's 1861 memoir Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl and planned a unit using it as the central text. Using discourse analysis and feminist poststructural theory, the author finds that no singular discourse prevails but that the participants struggled with whether to (...) include or exclude historical accounts of sexual violence in the formal curriculum. Implications for researchers, teacher educators, and teachers are discussed. (shrink)

This chapter presents emotion as a function of brain‐body interaction, as a vital part of a multi‐tiered phylogenetic set of neural mechanisms, evoked by both instinctive processes and learned appraisal systems, and argues to establish the primacy of emotion in relation to cognition. Primarily based on Damasio's somatic marker hypothesis, but also incorporating elements of Lazarus' appraisal theory, this paper presents a neuropedagogical model of emotion, the somatic appraisal model of affect. SAMA identifies quintessential components, facets, and functions of affect (...) necessary to provide a new domain, namely educational neuroscience, with a basis on which to build a dynamic model of affect serving to critique traditional cognitivist‐oriented curricula and instruction, and to inform an alternative: neuropedagogy. (shrink)

The term intersectionality, which is generally attributed to Kimberlé Crenshaw, began as a metaphorical and conceptual tool used to highlight the inability of a single-axis framework to capture the lived experiences of black women. Whilst many disciplines have used the ‘tools’ of intersectionality before 1989, modern day usage of the term is usually associated with Crenshaw’s specific approach. The development of Crenshaw’s intersectionality, originated from the failure of both feminist and anti-racist discourse; to represent and capture the specificity of the (...) discrimination faced by black women. This failure resulted from an inability to identify the multiple grounds which constitute an... (shrink)

An evaluation of mental capacity is critical to a clinician's judgment about whether or not persons can make medical treatment decisions on their own behalf, and uncertainty about their ability to meaningfully participate in that process is one of the more common reasons an ethics consult is requested. The care of decisionally incapable patients—particularly those who lack advance care documents and no living relative who can speak for them—presents a quandary to healthcare personnel attempting to plan care in their best (...) interest, especially when options are multiple but none are ideal. These situations can be further complicated if involving a patient with a dual diagnosis of mental retardation and mental illness living in a community group home. (shrink)

This chapter presents emotion as a function of brain-body interaction, as a vital part of a multi-tiered phylogenetic set of neural mechanisms, evoked by both instinctive processes and learned appraisal systems, and argues to establish the primacy of emotion in relation to cognition. Primarily based on Damasio's somatic marker hypothesis, but also incorporating elements of Lazarus' appraisal theory, this paper presents a neuropedagogical model of emotion, the somatic appraisal model of affect (SAMA). SAMA identifies quintessential components, facets, and functions of (...) affect necessary to provide a new domain, namely educational neuroscience, with a basis on which to build a dynamic model of affect serving to critique traditional cognitivist-oriented curricula and instruction, and to inform an alternative: neuropedagogy. (shrink)

Planning problems arise in law when an individual (or corporation)wants to perform a sequence of actions that raises legal issues. Manylawyers make their living planning transactions, and a system thathelped them to solve these problems would be in demand.The designer of such a system in a common-law domain must addressseveral difficult issues, including the open-textured nature of legal rules,the relationship between legal rules and cases, the adversarial nature ofthe domain, and the role of argument. In addition, the system's design isconstrained (...) by the fact that the intended users are lawyers, and its operation and output must be convenient for lawyers to use.In this article, I describe a system called CHIRON that I have developed to explore solutions to these issues. This system develops simple plans from representations of statutes and cases in the domain of United States personal income tax planning. (shrink)

Bertrand Russell was perhaps the last great philosopher to take an active interest in economics. After a brief, youthful engagement with the economics of socialism in 1889, Russell wrote on economic questions in three separate periods up to 1918, and in each case there was a clear political motivation. The first, in 1895–96, arose from his investigation of Marxism as a creed and of German social democracy as its principal contemporary political expression. The second, in 1903–04, was provoked by his (...) intervention on the free trade side of the tariff controversy. Finally, in 1915–18, Russell's commitment to Guild Socialism and to war resistance led him to some profound, if rather speculative, reflections on the economics of libertarian socialism. In this paper I discuss each of these three phases in Russell's economic thought and conclude that he never went far enough in his opposition to neo-classical theory in general, or to its utilitarian foundations in particular. (shrink)

In the absence of a well articulated conceptual framework for nursing ethics, this article argues for a theory of applied ethics - casuistics - used within a clinical reasoning model, to analyse the complicated issues presented in three cases involving adolescents receiving treatment for abuse through a rural alternative learning centre. The clinical nurse specialist, as an independent practitioner within the community, is presented with many ethical challenges arising from cultural diversity. The inherent independent nature of such practice environments combined (...) with the pluralism which exists in today's multicultural society demands that professional nurses working in these circumstances develop and utilize an ethical framework for the analysis of patient care in situations that involve moral conflict. (shrink)

The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 11, Issue 7, Page 60-61, July 2011.

As medical professionals, we outline the science underlying disorders or differences of sexual development (DSD), discuss the nuances of sex and gender and how terminology can differ based on medical vs. non-medical context, briefly review the evidence of the ergogenic effects of hyperandrogenism, and discuss the medical complications with the hormonal contraceptive use currently dictated by World Athletics to allow DSD athletes to compete in the female category.

This paper reports on a micro-ethnography of social interaction in an urban plaza in Colombia, focusing on the plaza’s role as an arena for the acquisition of interaction skills. We investigate how children of different ages initiate and sustain interactions with same-age and older peers and the efforts they make to be recognized and ‘visible’. We interpret our data in light of three theories of socialization: Corsaro’s conception of childhood as “interpretive reproduction”, Vygotsky’s model of the “zone of proximal development”, (...) and the “structural approach” to social cognition and development. While a social form like the plaza, which is collectively enacted by members of all age groups of the local community, provides children with an extraordinarily rich array of opportunities to develop social communication skills by interacting with older and younger peers, our analysis also demonstrates that children, as they are building zones of proximal development for themselves, play a central role in assembling, integrating, and sustaining the neighborhood as a face-to-face society. In this fashion, the paper illustrates how the micro-analysis of social interaction can contribute to the analysis of social ‘macro’ forms. (shrink)

We shall argue that there is adequate moral justification for capital punishment with linkage, that is, with linkage to keeping non-murderers from dying. We present the argument with two aims in mind. The first is to question the conventional wisdom, seldom challenged even by proponents of capital punishment, that being an abolitionist is closely connected to having a civilized respect for human life. This conventional wisdom, we hope to show, is somewhat off the mark. To this end we exhibit structural (...) similarities between so-called lifeboat dilemmas and the public's relationship to a murderer. In a lifeboat dilemma one must choose between saving this life or that, since the lifeboat will not hold both persons. Now if this life were an innocent's and that one a murderer's, a choice to save the latter would not be met with accusations of callousness towards human life. We hope to project everyone's intuitions about this case onto the more baffling case of a society's relationship to the murderers and dying innocents in its midst. (shrink)

As the health care system transitions to a precision medicine approach that tailors clinical care to the genetic profile of the individual patient, there is a potential tension between the clinical uptake of new technologies by providers and the legal system's expectation of the standard of care in applying such technologies. We examine this tension by comparing the type of evidence that physicians and courts are likely to rely on in determining a duty to recommend pharmacogenetic testing of patients prescribed (...) the oral anti-coagulant drug warfarin. There is a large body of inconsistent evidence and factors for and against such testing, but physicians and courts are likely to weigh this evidence differently. The potential implications for medical malpractice risk are evaluated and discussed. (shrink)