Listening to someone from some distance in a crowded room you may experience the following phenomenon: when looking at them speak, you may both hear and see where the source of the sounds is; but when your eyes are turned elsewhere, you may no longer be able to detect exactly where the voice must be coming from. With your eyes again fixed on the speaker, and the movement of her lips a clear sense of the source of the sound will (...) return. This ‘ventriloquist’ effect reflects the ways in which visual cognition can dominate auditory perception. And this phenomenological observation is one what you can verify or disconfirm in your own case just by the slightest reflection on what it is like for you to listen to someone with or without visual contact with them. (shrink)

In today's complex business world, the question of business ethics is increasingly gaining importance as managers and employees face numerous ethical dilemmas in their jobs. The ethical climate in the Turkish business environment is also at a critical stage, and the business community as a whole is troubled by ethical problems. This study attempts to determine the effect of individual, managerial and organizational factors on the ethical judgments of Turkish managers, and to evaluate the ethical perceptions of these managers. The (...) findings of this study reveal that the ethics score, the measure of ethical judgment, of Turkish managers differs significantly only with respect to gender and that female managers have higher ethics score than male managers. Other individual, managerial and organizational factors considered in this study do not have any significant effect on the ethical judgments of the managers. A comparative analysis between female and male managers in terms of their ranking of the eleven ethical business scenarios, ranking of the sixteen unethical acts, ranking of the factors influencing managers to engage in unethical practices, and ranking of the various parties to whom a company is socially responsible enables the researchers to enlighten the subject of business ethics in Turkey. (shrink)

A long-standing theme in discussion of perception and thought has been that our primary cognitive contact with individual objects and events in the world derives from our perceptual contact with them. When I look at a duck in front of me, I am not merely presented with the fact that there is at least one duck in the area, rather I seem to be presented withthisthing (as one might put it from my perspective) in front of me, which looks to (...) me to be a duck. Furthermore, such a perception would seem to put me in a position not merely to make the existential judgment that there is some duck or other present, but rather to make a singular, demonstrative judgment, that that is a duck. My grounds for an existential judgment in this case derives from my apprehension of the demonstrative thought and not vice versa. (shrink)

Trust among current and future patients is essential for the success of biobank research. The submission of an informed consent is an act of trust by a patient or a research subject, but a strict application of the rule of informed consent may not be sensitive to the multiplicity of patient interests at stake, and could thus be detrimental to trust. According to a recently proposed law on “genetic integrity” in Sweden, third parties will be prohibited from requesting or seeking (...) genetic information about an individual. Cumbersome restrictions on research may be lifted, thus creating a more favourable climate for medical research. (shrink)

Do we directly perceive physical objects? What is the significance of the qualification ‘directly’ here? Austin famously denied that there was a unique interpretation by which we could make sense of the traditional debate in the philosophy of perception. I look here at Thompson Clarke’s discussion of G. E. Moore and surface perception to answer Austin’s scepticism.

This paper is a critical review of Mitchell Green’s Self-Expression . The principal focus is on Green’s contention that all expression is at route, a form of signalling by an agent or by some mechanism of the organism which has been evolutionary selected for signalling. Starting from the idea that in some but not all expression an agent seeks to express his or her self, I question the centrality of communication to the idea of expression.

When we dream, it is often assumed, we are isolated from the external environment. It is also commonly believed that dreams can be, at times, accurate, convincing replicas of waking experience. Here I analyse some of the implications of this view for an enactive theory of conscious experience. If dreams are, as described by the received view, “inactive”, or “cranially envatted” whilst replicating the experience of being awake, this would be problematic for certain extended conscious mind theories. Focusing specifically on (...) Alva Noë’s enactive view, according to which the vehicles of perceptual experience extend beyond the brain, I argue that dreams are a quandary. Noë’s view is that dreaming is consistent with enactivism because even if dreams are inactive and shut off from the external environment, they are not “full-blown” perceptual consciousness, and also, there is some reason to reject the inactive claim. However, this view rests on an unjustified and reductive account of dreams which is not supported... (shrink)

This study presents an empirical investigation of the ethical perceptions of the future managers - Turkish university students majoring in the Business Administration and Industrial Engineering departments of selected public and private Turkish universities - with a special emphasis on gender. The perceptions of the university students pertaining to the business world, the behaviors of employees, and the factors leading to unethical behavior are analyzed. The statistically significant differences reveal that female students have more ethical perceptions about the Turkish business (...) climate, behavior of employees, and the ethicalness of the behavior of the employees in comparison with their male counterparts. (shrink)

This study examines the specificvalues held by consumers towards organic andconventionally produced meat, with particularreference to moral issues surrounding foodanimal production. A quota sample of 30 femalesfrom both a rural and an urban area of Scotland, were interviewed. Overall, there was lowcommitment towards the purchase of organicmeats and little concern for ethical issues.Price and product appearance were the primarymeat selection criteria, the latter being usedas a predictor of eating quality. Manyattitude-behavior anomalies were identified,mainly as a result of respondents' cognitivedissonance and (...) lack of understanding regardingmeat production criteria underpinning meatquality marks, e.g., Soil Association label.Responsibilities for ethical issues appeared tobe delegated by the consumer to the meatretailer or government. This raises issuesabout educating consumers and bringingconsumers closer to understanding meatproduction systems. A conceptual framework isproposed that illustrates the significance ofconsumer involvement in how meat-purchasingdecisions are approached in terms of theevaluation of tangible and or intangiblequality attributes. The results also point tothe need for further research into thoseaspects of quality that individuals tend toaddress at the level of the citizen,rather than at the point of purchase. (shrink)

Zuidema et al. illustrate how empirical AGL studies can benefit from computational models and techniques. Computational models can help clarifying theories, and thus in delineating research questions, but also in facilitating experimental design, stimulus generation, and data analysis. The authors show, with a series of examples, how computational modeling can be integrated with empirical AGL approaches, and how model selection techniques can indicate the most likely model to explain experimental outcomes.

In their environment, plants are continuously submitted to natural stimuli such as wind, rain, temperature changes, wounding, etc. These signals induce a cascade of events which lead to metabolic and morphogenetic responses. In this paper the different steps are described and discussed starting from the reception of the signal by a plant organ to the final morphogenetic response. In our laboratory two plants are studied: Bryonia dioica for which rubbing the internode results in reduced elongation and enhanced radial expansion and (...) Bidens pilosa for which the response occurs at distance, hence pricking the cotyledon of a plantlet induces the growth inhibition of both the hypocotyl and the axillary bud of the pricked cotyledon. Reception of the signal and transmission of the message. In Bryonia the signal is received by epidermal cells while in Bidens they are the cells adjacent to the midrib of the cotyledon which receive the mechanical signal. In both plants the message is transmitted via a wave of electric depolarization. This latter is composed of an action potential associated with a slow wave whose transmission rates are respectively 1cm s−1 and 1 mm s−1. Recent results have shown the involvement of Ca2+ in the triggering of the slow wave and the role of the H+ pump during the slow wave. Transient and fast biochemical responses. An entry of extraceilular Ca2+ into the cells and a transient increase in IP3 occur within seconds following the mechanical stimulus. At the same time, the membrane becomes more fluid, correlated with qualitative changes in phospholipids. The rapid increase in the concentration of peroxidated lipids may be correlated with ethylene biosynthesis which is stimulated after rubbing. Other parameters such as cytoplasmic pH, relative water content, hydric potential, membrane potential and modifications of K+, Mg2+-ATPase and Ca2+-ATPase activities, play a key role in the early responses induced by the traumatisms. Irreversible-biochemical responses. The mechanical stimulus performed on a Bryonia internode induces an acceleration of: i) enzymatic activities related to the lignification, ii) esterification of phenolic acids in the cell wall. Consequently the lignification process is accelerated. Storage of the information. After being received by the target cells the information can be stored during several days before being expressed. At the level of cotyledonary bud, the first message, previously stored, can be expressed or not by a second treatment. Bidens thus behaves as if it was able to “store” and to “retrieve” morphogenetic messages, using a sort of rudimentary memory. The nuclei of the bud cells of the pricked cotyledon show that these cells, initially in G2 phase, divide and then remain in the G1 phase. In Bryonia, calli derived from young stimulated internodes, keep thigmomorphogenetic characteristics during several weeks. In the last part of this paper the particularity of our plant model which permits a study of the transmission and storage of the message, is underlined. The links between the different steps induced by the stimulus are discussed. Special attention is devoted to second messengers and to the amplification of the message. (shrink)

In their environment, plants are continuously submitted to natural stimuli such as wind, rain, temperature changes, wounding, etc. These signals induce a cascade of events which lead to metabolic and morphogenetic responses.In this paper the different steps are described and discussed starting from the reception of the signal by a plant organ to the final morphogenetic response. In our laboratory two plants are studied: Bryonia dioica for which rubbing the internode results in reduced elongation and enhanced radial expansion and Bidens (...) pilosa for which the response occurs at distance, hence pricking the cotyledon of a plantlet induces the growth inhibition of both the hypocotyl and the axillary bud of the pricked cotyledon. (shrink)

An embedded automaton is introduced to monitor the whole glycolysis process in pancreatic β-cell and it is a hybridization of both non-deterministic finite automaton and push-down automaton. The set of irreversible and reversible reactions in the glycolysis process are related to non-deterministic finite automaton and push-down automaton respectively. The embedded automaton is used to observe the glucose metabolism with the states of acceptance and rejection. The acceptance state of the embedded automaton depicts the normal level of glycolysis and insulin secretion. (...) The rejection state of this machine shows inhibition of glycolysis which obstructs the secretion of insulin. The subsequent low level of insulin leads to the high blood glucose level also known as hyperglycemia. In this study, the designed machine can be used to regulate the process of glycolysis through a group of regulatory glycolytic enzymes for the treatment of Diabetes mellitus at molecular level. (shrink)

PURPOSE:To report the localization of a gene causing drusen and macular degeneration in a previously undescribed North American family. METHODS:Genetic mapping studies were performed using linkage analysis in a single family with drusen and atrophic macular degeneration. RESULTS:The clinical manifestations in this family ranged from fine macular drusen in asymptomatic middle-aged individuals to atrophic macular lesions in two children and two elderly patients. We mapped the gene to chromosome 6q14 between markers D6S2258 and D6S1644. CONCLUSIONS:In a family with autosomal dominant (...) drusen and atrophic macular degeneration, the gene maps to a 3.2-cM region on chromosome 6q14. This locus appears to be distinct from, but adjacent to, the loci for cone-rod dystrophy 7 (CORD7) and North Carolina macular dystrophy (MCDR1). Future identification of the gene responsible for the disease in this family will provide a better understanding of macular degeneration. (shrink)

Context: Josef Mitterer has become known for criticizing the main exponents of analytic and constructivist philosophy for their blind adoption of a dualistic epistemology based on an alleged ontological difference between world and words. Judith Butler, who has developed an influential model of (de)constructivist feminism and has been labeled a linguistic constructivist, has been criticized for sustaining exactly what, according to Mitterer, most modern philosophy fails to acknowledge: namely that there is no ontological difference between objective facts beyond language and (...) the discourse about these facts. Problem: In the scholarly discussion on non-dualism, two main questions have been raised: Where does Mitterer’s basic consensus, i.e., the starting-point description, come from? and: What does it mean, to say that further descriptions change their object? Method: Comparative analysis of the core concepts of Mitterer’s and Butler’s work in the context of the history of ideas. Results: Butler’s conception of a performative production of objectivity through discursive and non-discursive iterated practices can be interpreted as an illustration of Mitterer’s claim that descriptions change their object. The problem of where Mitterer’s starting-point descriptions come from can be solved by adopting Butler’s concept of culturally inherited practices. (shrink)