Marie-Hélène Desmeules | : Contre l’idée d’un temps fixe enveloppant notre expérience, les travaux de Paul Ricoeur nous permettent de penser que non seulement notre expérience du temps n’est pas si fixe qu’elle n’y paraît, mais qu’elle est en outre transformée par des refigurations découlant de nos médiations objectives. Ces médiations objectives ne se limitent pas à la narration, mais couvrent également l’amnistie, la prescription, la promesse, le pardon et les objets de notre monde familier. Chacune à leur (...) façon, les médiations examinées opèrent une synthèse du passé, du présent et du futur, au point de bouleverser le temps chronologique et successif du courant de la conscience. Ultimement, nous prendrons les réflexions de Paul Ricoeur comme ressources pour penser les implications éthiques des transformations de notre expérience du temps. Car chaque expérience du temps n’ouvre et ne ferme pas les mêmes possibilités, comme le rapport entre le pardon et l’homme capable devrait le montrer. | : Against the idea of a fixed time in which our experience would take place, Paul Ricoeur’s works allow us to think that our experience of time is not so fixed as it seems, and furthermore, that it is transformed by some refigurations which follow from an objective mediation. These objective mediation is not restricted to narrative, but also covers amnesty, prescription, promise, forgiveness and familiar things. Each examined mediation performs in its own way a synthesis of past, present and futur, to the point of changing the chronological and successive time of consciousness’ stream. We will also consider Ricoeur’s thoughts as a possibility to think ethical implications of transformations in our time experience. Every experience of time does not open and close the same ethical possibilities, as the connection between forgiveness and capable man should show it. (shrink)

Love's memories, love recalling itself in letters lost and found over an interval of forty years: Cixous's writer-narrator advances here far into a labyrinth of passions long ago delivered and yet still arriving through the mail, through letters and literature, in other words, the poetry of the post. As for the lovers' returning scenes, they have their addresses in Paris and in New York, but also in a lost oasis of the Egyptian desert during the Napoleonic wars, in Athens and (...) along the shores of a great lake centuries ago in the country of myth. The lovers are poets or soldiers, philosophers or students madly in love with poetry and poets. They are as well mermaids or panthers. Panthers? Yes, for it is the passion of the animal that drives all these lovers to bare themselves, and sometimes their claws, before the beloved. Misunderstandings are often, even inevitably the result. Seconded and witnessed by her passionate, truth-telling cats, Cixous's narrator-writer returns unerringly to moments of errancy inflicted on address and language, those errors and faults when love, perhaps, is listening only to itself, without subject or object, lover or beloved, just love itself, l'amour meme, l'amour m'aime, love loving me, in the letter box of memory. (shrink)

Il Poeta e la « Polis » – Colpa e responsabilità in Wystan H. Auden est un livre absolument singulier. Il ne faut pas se fier aux apparences d’un titre qui, pour tout lecteur de Platon, résonne de manière plaisamment familière. Il ne s’agit en rien d’un commentaire de l’exclusion des poètes hors de la cité, évoquée dans l’analyse de la tyrannie au livre VIII de La République. Phénomène inhabituel dans le champ de la réflexion politique, Paolo Carta s’intéresse, en (...) tant qu’historien de la pens.. (shrink)

L’apport de la phénoménologie allemande à l’éthique a souvent été réduit aux intentionnalités et aux vécus axiologiques et affectifs, tels qu’ils furent décrits par Husserl. Or, cet apport est limité du fait que Husserl définissait d’abord l’intentionnalité comme un rapport à un objet dont nous sommes conscients. Dans ce qui suit, nous proposons d’emprunter une autre voie pour penser l’apport de la phénoménologie à l’éthique, en étudiant la phénoménologie des actes sociaux que les phénoménologues munichois développèrent en réponse à la (...) phénoménologie husserlienne. Cette phénoménologie des actes sociaux permet de considérer, de juger et de critiquer, d’un point de vue éthique, les façons dont nous entrons en relation intentionnelle non pas avec des objets éthiques, mais avec autrui. Notre propos suivra principalement les idées développées par Reinach, Pfänder, Daubert et Scheler, et prendra pour fil directeur les actes d’adresser un impératif et une invitation à autrui. (shrink)

Although ethics consultation is offered as a clinical service in most hospitals in the United States, few valid and practical tools are available to evaluate, ensure, and improve ethics consultation quality. The quality of ethics consultation is important because poor quality ethics consultation can result in ethically inappropriate outcomes for patients, other stakeholders, or the health care system. To promote accountability for the quality of ethics consultation, we developed the Ethics Consultation Quality Assessment Tool. ECQAT enables raters to assess the (...) quality of ethics consultations based on the written record. Through rigorous development and preliminary testing, we identified key elements of a quality ethics consultation, established scoring criteria, developed training guidelines, and designed a holistic assessment process. This article describes the development of the ECQAT,.. (shrink)

The development and utility of genetically modified crops for smallholders around the world is controversial. Critical questions include what traits and crops are to be developed; how they can be adapted to smallholders’ ecological, social and economic contexts; which dissemination channels should be used to reach smallholders; and which policy environments will enable the greatest benefits for smallholders and the rural poor. A key question is how the voices of smallholders who have experience with or desire to use GM technologies (...) enter the larger debate. Africa has the greatest number of smallholders and poor with the least exposure to GM crops. Because of the well-established use of GM crops in South Africa by commercial farmers, we formed a community of practice involving smallholders, extension, researchers, non-profits and agribusiness in KwaZulu-Natal to examine the conditions under which GM crops are used by smallholders, how smallholders interact with GM technologies and what insights smallholders and other stakeholders can provide regarding these questions. One of the advantages of the CoP approach is that it brings stakeholders together in a non-hierarchical way that encourages new ways of thinking and new partnerships. Such interaction around a specific project can enhance the voice of smallholders in a variety of ways. In our project, smallholder participants have increased their knowledge and can make better decisions about GM technologies, which had been barriers for them. Notably, they have also improved their knowledge of maize production practices, accessed new practice networks, and met new researchers and resource providers. They are now being integrated into these networks in a way that should improve their livelihoods and make the wants and needs of smallholders better known. Such knowledge and experience has improved their voice in agriculture and rural development discussions. (shrink)

Cyclin-dependent kinase 5 has been implicated in Alzheimer's disease pathogenesis. Here, we demonstrate that overexpression of p25, an activator of cdk5, led to increased levels of BACE1 mRNA and protein in vitro and in vivo. A p25/cdk5 responsive region containing multiple sites for signal transducer and activator of transcription was identified in the BACE1 promoter. STAT3 interacts with the BACE1 promoter, and p25-overexpressing mice had elevated levels of pSTAT3 and BACE1, whereas cdk5-deficient mice had reduced levels. Furthermore, mice with a (...) targeted mutation in the STAT3 cdk5 responsive site had lower levels of BACE1. Increased BACE levels in p25 overexpressing mice correlated with enhanced amyloidogenic processing that could be reversed by a cdk5 inhibitor. These data demonstrate a pathway by which p25/cdk5 increases the amyloidogenic processing of APP through STAT3-mediated transcriptional control of BACE1 that could have implications for AD pathogenesis. (shrink)

Les principaux problèmes que Bultmann a posés au plan de l’exégèse historique des textes évangéliques étaient commandés par des positions théologiques et continuent pour ce motif à interroger les théologiens catholiques, qui parfois le rejettent dans le camp tantôt du scientisme tantôt du dogmatisme.Contre la théologie libérale des « vies de Jésus », il élève une double protestation, d’ordre christologique : il revendique le caractère historique de la foi chrétienne, et historique : il prend au sérieux la visée eschatologique de (...) la prédication de Jésus. Marquée en ses origines par un rationalisme dogmatique, l’exégèse historico-critique travaille à son tour la théologie, l’oblige à assumer sa propre historicité et à sortir ainsi de son propre positivisme dogmatique.Réservant – à juste titre – à la foi de dire le sens de la Croix, Bultmann semble séparer le fait et le sens et mettre l’historiographie et la théologie en rapport contradictoire de double vérité. Nous savons mieux aujourd’hui qu’il n’y a de faits qu’interprétés ; la foi atteint la vérité historique des faits, mais doit renoncer à demander de les établir « scientifiquement » à une historiographie censée « objectivement neutre ». En soutenant que le sens de la Croix relève d’une décision de foi, Bultmann nous rappelle utilement, ainsi que l’a reconnu R. Marlé, qu’on ne peut jamais évacuer le skandalon de la foi.The principal problems that Bultmann presented as regards the historical exegesis of evangelical texts were guided by theological positions and continued, for this reason, to question Catholic theologians, who sometimes put him in the camp of scientism and sometimes in that of dogmatism.Against the liberal theology of the “lives of Jesus”, he raised a double protest : of a christological nature and of a historical nature . Marked in its origins by dogmatic rationalism, historical-critical exegesis works in its turn on theology, obliges it to assume its own historicity and this to escape from its own dogmatic positivism.Allowing faith – and for good reason – to decide the meaning of the Cross, Bultmann seems to separate the fact and the meaning and to put historiography and theology in contradictory rapport of a double truth. We know better today that there are only interpreted facts ; faith attains the historical truth of facts, but must renounce the demand to establish them “scientifically” to a historiography believed to the “objectively neutral”. In holding that the meaning of the Cross depends on a decision of faith, Bultmann helpfully reminds us, as R. Marlé recognized, that one can never escape the skandalon of faith. (shrink)

The Planteome project provides a suite of reference and species-specific ontologies for plants and annotations to genes and phenotypes. Ontologies serve as common standards for semantic integration of a large and growing corpus of plant genomics, phenomics and genetics data. The reference ontologies include the Plant Ontology, Plant Trait Ontology, and the Plant Experimental Conditions Ontology developed by the Planteome project, along with the Gene Ontology, Chemical Entities of Biological Interest, Phenotype and Attribute Ontology, and others. The project also provides (...) access to species-specific Crop Ontologies developed by various plant breeding and research communities from around the world. We provide integrated data on plant traits, phenotypes, and gene function and expression from 95 plant taxa, annotated with reference ontology terms. (shrink)

Il y a comme un hiatus entre le titre et le sous-titre de ce livre. Le titre, Aux origines de l'action sociale, annonce une intention modeste ; en effet l'ouvrage, composé de touches successives, ne se présente pas comme une synthèse historique organisée. Par contre le sous-titre indique un projet précis et construit, un projet d'histoire : L'invention des services sociaux aux chemins de fer. Dans le texte tout se passe comme si les auteurs n'avaient pas voulu (pas su ?) (...) choisir entre .. (shrink)

The Search for the Legacy of the USPHS Syphilis Study at Tuskegee is a collection of essays from experts in a variety of fields seeking to redefine the legacy of the infamous Tuskegee Syphilis Study. The essayists place the legacy of the study within the evolution of racial and ethnic relations in the United States. Contributors include two leading historians on the study, two former United States Surgeons General, and other prominent scholars from a wide range of fields.