Australia is thought of as the home of marsupials, but South America has 60 or so species of these interesting mammals. The genome of one of these, the South American grey short-tailed opossum, Monodelphis domestica, has just been sequenced and published in June.1 The high quality 6× coverage is the first marsupial genome completed, pipping the 2× coverage of the Australian tammar wallaby at the post by half a year. The opossum genome has an unusual structure with fewer chromosomes than (...) the human genome (9 pairs versus 23 pairs) but a longer total length (3.4 billion versus 3 billion bases). The opossum autosomes, like those of all marsupials, are extremely large but, in contrast, the X chromosome is only 76 Mb long. The opossum genome has turned up several surprises and provided critical new information on the evolution of mammalian genomes2-6. BioEssays 29:1073–1076, 2007. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Current United States guidelines for neonatal resuscitation note that there is no mandate to resuscitate infants in all situations. For example, the fetus that at the time of delivery is determined to be so premature as to be non-viable need not be aggressively resuscitated. The hypothetical case of an extremely premature infant was presented to neonatologists from the United States and four other European countries at a September 2006 international meeting sponsored by the World Health Organization Collaborating Center in Reproductive (...) Health of Atlanta (currently, the Global Collaborating Center in Reproductive Health). Responses to the case varied by country, due to differences in legal, ethical and related practice parameters, rather than differences in medical technology, as similar medical technology was available within each country. Variations in approach seemed to stem from physicians’ perceptions of their ability to remove the neonate from life support if this appeared non-beneficial. There appears to be a desire for greater convergence in practice options and more open discussion regarding the practical problems underlying the variability. Specifically, the conference attendees identified four areas that need to be addressed: (1) lack of international consensus guidelines in viability and therapeutic options, (2) lack of bodies capable of generating these guidelines, (3) variation in laws between countries, and (4) the frequent failure of physicians and families to confront death at the beginning of life. (shrink)

The present paper reports a study of conversational acts in dialogical interaction. Conversation in which the use of a vulgar term [à la bieb żobbi] in the Maltese language was used was recorded and analysed for the present purpose. The term is demonstrated to serve social psychological functions. We documented three modes governing its use in conversation, that is, (a) as a personality descriptor, (b) as a strategy for shutting down an alternative view, and (c) as a strategy for shifting (...) dialogue to more neutral and less threatening grounds for the subject. We further document a number of modalities that govern justifications for using the vulgar term in conversation. We argue that the use of vulgarity can serve to achieve semantic barriers in dialogue and that these apply to internal conversations as much as they do to dialogical engagement with another. We further argue that semantic barriers can be overcome in ways that shift conversation to less threatening grounds. (shrink)

Introduction : time, film, and the ethical vision of Emmanuel Levinas. American transcendence : Levinas and a short history of an American idea in film -- Frank Capra and James Stewart : time, transcendence, and the other -- The changing face of American redemption : Henry Fonda, Marilyn Monroe, Paul Newman, and Denzel Washington -- Sex, art, and Oedipus : The unbearable lightness of being -- Fellini and La dolce vita : documentary, decadence, and desire -- Antonioni and L'avventura (...) : transcendence, the body, and the feminine. (shrink)

marilyn fischer’s careful historiographical treatment of the ideas and life of Jane Addams deepens our understanding of Addams’s important work as a thinker and practitioner. The paper paints a picture of the ideological and sociological landscape of Addams’s world, paying close attention to the relationships Addams had with other prominent thinkers of the day, such as the African Americans W. E. B. Du Bois and Ida B. Wells-Barnett, as well as the pragmatist Josiah Royce. Fischer seems to have doubled (...) aims in the paper. On the one hand, she makes a set of claims that helps us understand Addams better as a historical thinker. On the other hand, the paper advances another set of claims about Addams’s relation to .. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 517 she does on these issues; this is hardly the case. And lastly she fails to discern that some feminist christology does not spring from a love for Jesus and what he has done through his cross and resurrection; rather, Jesus is merely used (and thus abused) to further a theological and political agenda. [Men obviously are not immune from this either.] Despite my disagreements with some (...) of Johnson's arguments and conclusions, and despite my disappointment at the way she addresses the feminist issues, I found this hook to he a basically reliable and clear summary of the christology of the last forty years. Whether it has all been true development, as Johnson maintains, is a debatable question. Nonetheless, this book does elaborate the contemporary issues and possible answers that confront christology today, and for this makes it a book well worth reading. Mother of God Community Washington. D.C. THOMAS WEINANDY, O.F.M. Cap. The Philosophical Theology of John Duns Scotus. By ALLAN B. WOLTER, O.F.M. Ed. Marilyn McCord Adams. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1990. Pp. ix+ 356. $47.50. Duns Scotus was a brilliant light that flashed a brief time across the medieval sky hut was destined ultimately to he outshone by other luminaries immediately preceding him (Aquinas) and following him (Ockham). Perhaps no individual in the past half century has done more to illuminate the Subtle Doctor's thought and times than Allan B. Wolter, O.F.M. Both his editing and his translating of primary sources as well as his detailed readings and expositions of Scotus's theories have put medieval scholars in his debt. The present volume is a collection of thirteen essays on particular aspects of Scotus's work, preceded by an introduction. Ten of the essays have been previously published in other sources ranging from.the late 1940s to the present. But as editor Marilyn McCord Adams points out in her forward, many of these can be found only with difficulty in often inaccessible journals and books. Thus the value of this single volume. The essays are grouped under three headings: metaphysics and epistemology, action theory and ethics, and philosophical theology. As is often true with any volume spanning a number of topics and years, the quality of exposition and analysis is uneven. Obviously, in a limited space, I cannot hope to treat all subjects in a volume as comprehensive 518 BOOK REVIEWS as Wolter's. Permit me, however, to begin by making some general comments and then to narrow my remarks to one particular issue. Wolter's introduction to the volume is as clear and concise an overview of Scotus's ideas as one is likely to find anywhere in the literature. In general, the essays in the first part of the book on matters meta· physical and epistemological are quite solid. Here we find explicated many of the concepts which have become identified with Scotus: the formal distinction, univocity of being, the common nature and the hraecceity that constitutes distinct individuals. Wolter does justice to the subtlety and brilliance of Scotus's thinking and allows readers both old and new to Scotus to acknowledge him as a metaphysician for the ages. The author is particularly adept at explicating with helpful analogies some of the Subtle Doctor's most difficult concepts. I benefitted from his thought-provoking comparison between the formal distinction and a spotlight on a stage which can illuminate different and distinguishable aspects of the same reality. The next section on action rtheory and ethics draws in part on Wolter's work which culminated in the 1986 publication of Duns Scotus on the Will and Morality. Wolter has been in the forefront of those who urge that Scotus's description of an innate affection for justice in the will is crucial in understanding the freedom Scotus thought proper to humans. What remains unclear to me is how this strand in Scotus's writing relates to others which clearly imply a libertarian view of free• dom emphasizing the will's utter self-determination. The problem I see is this: if the will truly is self-determining, then an innate affectio justitiae seems to... (shrink)

v. 1. Philosophie. Rechtsphilosophie -- v. 2-4. Volkenrecht -- v. 5-6. Rechtsgeschiedenis. Burgerlijk recht. Procesrecht. Octrooirecht. Studie.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Bonaventure's Reductio of the Nine Choirs of Angels:How Bonaventure Compressed Two Monumental Traditions into Nine Words and Nine Short PhrasesRandall B. Smith"There is probably no better illustration in medieval thought of how the genius of the symbolic imagination also involves deep speculative insight." So wrote Bernard McGinn of Bonaventure's Itinerarium mentis in deum in The Flowering of Mysticism: Men and Woman in the New Mysticism, 1200–1350.1 There is no (...) question that the Itinerarium is a book suffused with symbolic imagery; so much so, in fact, that it can sometimes seem to lapse into a confusing jumble.Certainly there are many sections of the Itinerarium that have baffled readers over the years, often because Bonaventure's use of imagery is so unique and creative and the truths he is attempting to enunciate are so far beyond our normal ways of thinking about God. But there is a short passage in chapter 4 of the Itinerarium that seems to defy interpretation precisely because of what one might describe as an almost austere terseness and brevity. The point Bonaventure wishes to make is one he communicates in little more than a list of nine words and nine short, parallel phrases.The passage I have in mind is this one in Itinerarium 4.4.When these things have been accomplished, and our spirit has been brought into conformity with the heavenly Jerusalem, it is ordered [End Page 583] hierarchically so that it can ascend upward. For no one enters into that city unless that city has first descended into the person's heart by means of grace, as John sees in his Apocalypse. It descends into the heart when our spirit has been made hierarchical by the reformation of the image, by means of the theological virtues, the enjoyment of the spiritual senses, and the ecstasy of rapture; for it has been purged, illumined and brought to perfection.In this way our spirit is adorned with nine orderly levels when within it the following are found in an appropriate order: announcing, dictating, leading, ordering, strengthening, commanding, receiving, revealing, and anointing. These correspond to the nine choirs of angels. The first three of the foregoing levels in the human mind relate to nature; the next three relate to work; and the final three relate to grace. When it has attained these, the soul, by entering into itself, enters into the heavenly Jerusalem where, as it considers the choirs of angels, it sees in them the God who dwells in them and who works in all their operations.Therefore, Bernard says to Pope Eugene that "God loves in the Seraphim as charity; knows in the Cherubim as truth; sits in the Thrones as justice; reigns in the Dominations as majesty; rules in the Principalities as a guiding principle; protects in the Powers as salvation; is at work in the Virtues as strength; reveals in the Archangels as light; assists in the Angels as kindness." From all this, God is seen as all in all when we contemplate God in our minds where God dwells through the gifts of the most generous charity.2Notice in the passage I have quoted above that Bonaventure says our spirit must be "brought into conformity with the heavenly Jerusalem," and that this requires it be "ordered hierarchically so that it can ascend upward." This serves as a transition into a rather odd pair of lists—one with nine words and the other with nine short, parallel phrases—that Bonaventure associates with the nine angelic choirs. These two lists of the nine choirs of angels do not, however, correspond exactly with one [End Page 584] another, for reasons I will explain below. And although these two lists of the nine ranks of angels in the angelic hierarchy take up just a few lines in Bonaventure's text, there is a lot of background information we will need to fill in to provide the necessary context to appreciate them. Indeed, as we will see, in this short passage, Bonaventure was able using the methods of the thirteenth-century sermo modernus style to reduce two monumental commentary traditions regarding the nine choirs of angels—one that... (shrink)

Published in 1982, Carol Gilligan's _In a Different Voice_ proposed a new model of moral reasoning based on care, arguing that it better described the moral life of women. ____An Ethic of Care__ is the first volume to bring together key contributions to the extensive debate engaging Gilligan's work. It provides the highlights of the often impassioned discussion of the ethic of care, drawing on the literature of the wide range of disciplines that have entered into the debate. _Contributors:_ Annette (...) Baier, Diana Baumrind, Lawrence A. Blum, Mary Brabeck, John Broughton, Owen Flanagan, Marilyn Friedman, Carol Gilligan, Catherine G. Greeno, Catherine Jackson, Linda K. Kerber, Mary Jeanne Larrabee, Zella Luria, Eleanor E. Maccoby, Linda Nicholson, Bill Puka, Carol B. Stack, Joan C. Tronto, Lawrence Walker, Gertrud Nunner-Winkler. (shrink)

Sometimes dictators are benevolent. Sometimes masters are kind and gentle to their slaves. John Adams was a pretty good "husband" to Abigail Adams. But it seems like there’s something very wrong with being a dictator or a master or a spouse with the power that John Adams had over Abigail Adams in late 18th Century America. A theory of domination tries to pinpoint what’s distinctive about dictatorship and mastery and traditional husbanding, and what is distinctively wrong with such—even the benevolent, (...) kind, gentle, and pretty good varieties. -/- There has been a lot of thinking about domination over the last twenty-five or so years. This is due largely to the efforts of republican political philosophers, who have used domination and its absence — nondomination — as the primary moving part in their conceptions of freedom. Even so, perhaps because domination has often appeared in a supporting role for the analysis of other concepts, conceptualizing domination itself is still a fairly nascent endeavor. -/- Accounts of domination need at least two movements. First, domination is a subset of a social phenomenon with—at least more or less—unobjectionable varieties. Maybe this social phenomenon is power; maybe it’s the capacity to interfere with choice; maybe something else. Whatever it is, it’s plausible to think it’s not always bad. Sometimes it’s perfectly alright to have power over someone else; sometimes there’s nothing wrong with the capacity to interfere with someone’s choices. (For example, if what you’d rather do is go after your neighbor with a meat-axe, it’s a good thing if someone is in a position to interfere with you, or if your choice situation can be worsened, so that charging next door, axe in hand, without having to worry about a lengthy prison sentence is not among your options.) The first task of a theory of domination is to specify exactly what this broader social phenomenon is. -/- Next we need to figure out what gives domination its negative moral valence, and thus sets it apart from that broader social phenomenon. Republicans usually say that what makes domination morally problematic is its arbitrariness. Frank Lovett claims that domination is instantiated in a social relationship between A and B only if A is permitted to exercise power over B arbitrarily (2010, 120). Philip Pettit, until recently, claimed that domination is a capacity for arbitrary interference. Marilyn Friedman calls it “arbitrary interference in someone’s choices…”(2008, 265). If that’s right, and arbitrariness is the difference maker between forms of social power that aren’t domination and those that are, we need a story about what arbitrariness is. -/- Such are the two essential tasks of conceptualizing domination. I offer here what I think are important course-corrections for recent attempts to complete them. In §1 I set out some desiderata for a useful conception of domination before sketching the elements of earlier attempts I think we can’t do without. §2 addresses the problem of “cheap domination”. This is the problem of identifying ordinary, innocuous human interactions with anything we call domination. I don’t think we should do this, but some of the most influential accounts of domination on offer nowadays — in particular, Lovett’s and Pettit’s — have this result. Instead, I contend that only certain forms of social power can underwrite domination, and try to provide a principled way of identifying what these forms are like. Finally, in §3, I address the nature of arbitrariness. (shrink)

Published in 1982, Carol Gilligan's _In a Different Voice_ proposed a new model of moral reasoning based on care, arguing that it better described the moral life of women. ____An Ethic of Care__ is the first volume to bring together key contributions to the extensive debate engaging Gilligan's work. It provides the highlights of the often impassioned discussion of the ethic of care, drawing on the literature of the wide range of disciplines that have entered into the debate. _Contributors:_ Annette (...) Baier, Diana Baumrind, Lawrence A. Blum, Mary Brabeck, John Broughton, Owen Flanagan, Marilyn Friedman, Carol Gilligan, Catherine G. Greeno, Catherine Jackson, Linda K. Kerber, Mary Jeanne Larrabee, Zella Luria, Eleanor E. Maccoby, Linda Nicholson, Bill Puka, Carol B. Stack, Joan C. Tronto, Lawrence Walker, Gertrud Nunner-Winkler. (shrink)