Since the 1930s, scientists studying the neurological disease scrapie had assumed that the infectious agent was a virus. By the mid 1960s, however, several unconventional properties had arisen that were difficult to reconcile with the standard viral model. Evidence for nucleic acid within the pathogen was lacking, and some researchers considered the possibility that the infectious agent consisted solely of protein. In 1982, Stanley Prusiner coined the term `prion' to emphasize the agent's proteinaceous nature. This infectious protein hypothesis was denounced (...) by many scientists as `heretical'.This two-part essay asks why the concept of an infectious protein was considered controversial. Some biologists justified their evaluation of this hypothesis on the grounds that an infectious protein contradicted the `central dogma of molecular biology'. Others referred to vague theoretical constraints such as molecular biology's `theoretical structure' or `framework'. Examination of the objections raised by researchers reveals exactly what generalizations were being challenged by a protein model of infection.This two-part survey of scrapie and prion research reaches several conclusions: A theoretical framework is present in molecular biology, exerting its influence in hypothesis formation and evaluation; This framework consists of several related, yet separable, generalizations or `elements', including Francis Crick's Central Dogma and Sequence Hypothesis, plus notions concerning infection, replication, protein synthesis, and protein folding; The term `central dogma' has stretched beyond Crick's original 1958 definition to encompass at least two other `framework elements': replication and protein synthesis; and From the study of scrapie and related diseases, biological information has been delineated into at least two classes: sequential and what I call `conformational'.In Part I of this essay, a brief review of the central dogma was given, and the developments in scrapie research from 1965 to 1972 were traced. This section summarized many of the puzzling, non-virus-like properties of the scrapie agent. Alternative hypotheses to the viral explanation were presented, including early versions of a protein-only hypothesis. Part II of this essay will follow the developments in scrapie and prion research from the mid-1970s through 1991. The growing prominence of a protein-only model of infection will be countered by continued objections from many researchers to a pathogen devoid of nucleic acid. These objections will help illuminate those generalizations in molecular biology that were indeed challenged by a protein-only model of infection. (shrink)

The Archaeology of Bhakti II: Royal Bhakti, Local Bhakti. Edited by Emmanuel Francis and Charlotte Schmid. Collection Indologie, no. 132. Pondicherry: Institut Français de Pondichéry; Paris: École Française d’Extrême-Orient, 2016. Pp. x + 609, illus.

The developing infant can accomplish all important perceptual tasks that an adult can, albeit with less skill or precision. Through infant perception research, infant responses to experiences enable researchers to reveal perceptual competence, test hypotheses about processes, and infer neural mechanisms, and researchers are able to address age-old questions about perception and the origins of knowledge.In Development of Perception in Infancy: The Cradle of Knowledge Revisited, Martha E. Arterberry and Philip J. Kellman study the methods and data of scientific (...) research on infant perception, introducing and analyzing topics through philosophical, theoretical, and historical contexts. Infant perception research is placed in a philosophical context by addressing the abilities with which humans appear to be born, those that appear to emerge due to experience, and the interaction of the two. The theoretical perspective is informed by the ecological tradition, and from such a perspective the authors focus on the information available for perception, when it is used by the developing infant, the fit between infant capabilities and environmental demands, and the role of perceptual learning. Since the original publication of this book in 1998, Arterberry and Kellman address in addition the mechanisms of change, placing the basic capacities of infants at different ages and exploring what it is that infants do with this information. Significantly, the authors feature the perceptual underpinnings of social and cognitive development, and consider two examples of atypical development - congenital cataracts and Autism Spectrum Disorder. Professionals and students alike will find this book a critical resource to understanding perception, cognitive development, social development, infancy, and developmental cognitive neuroscience, as research on the origins of perception has changed forever our conceptions of how human mental life begins. (shrink)

Developmental research on infants' categorization of living and nonliving objects finds that very young children are equally skilled in grouping such objects. The lack of a specialization for one type of object over another may be due to knowledge of function and the time frame for acquiring such knowledge.

The “Perky effect” is the interference of visual imagery with vision. Studies of this effect show that visual imagery has more than symbolic properties, but these properties differ both spatially (including “pictorially”) and temporally from those of vision. We therefore reject both the literal picture-in-the-head view and the entirely symbolic view.

There is an abundant and growing feminist literature examining the implications of reproductive technologies that separate genetic, physiological, and social motherhood. The literature explains the development of these technologies in terms of the motivations of men, stressing the victimization of women by the medical and legal institutions and the commodification of these technologies. This article examines these technologies from a Marxist-Feminist perspective, locating their sources in the overall development of the forces of production; that is, in structural changes irreducible to (...) their microfoundations. In the process of changing the biological conditions of intergenerational social reproduction, these technologies have established the material basis for the structural separation between the mode of procreation and the mode of social and physical reproduction. These structural changes are generating new identities and forms of consciousness that clash with taken-for-granted ideas about motherhood. These differences are captured in feminist debates about the significance of these technologies. (shrink)

This paper contributes to the foundations of a theory of rational choice for artificial agents in dynamic environments. Our work is developed within a theoretical framework, originally due to Bratman, that models resource-bounded agents as operating against the background of some current set of intentions, which helps to frame their subsequent reasoning. In contrast to the standard theory of rational choice, where options are evaluated in isolation, we therefore provide an analysis of situations in which the options presented to an (...) agent are evaluated against a background context provided by the agent’s current plans—commitments to future activities, which may themselves be only partially specified. The interactions between the new options and the background context can complicate the task of evaluating the option, rendering it either more or less desirable in context than it would have been in isolation.  2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. (shrink)

Meditation is an umbrella term for a number of mental training practices designed to improve the monitoring and regulation of attention and emotion. Some forms of meditation are now being used for clinical intervention. To accompany the increased clinical interest in meditation, research investigating the neural basis of these practices is needed. A central hypothesis of contemplative neuroscience is that meditative states, which are unique on a phenomenological level, differ on a neurophysiological level. To identify the electrophysiological correlates of meditation (...) practice, the electrical brain activity of highly skilled meditators engaging in one of six meditation styles was recorded. A mind-wandering task served as a control. Lempel–Ziv complexity showed differences in nonlinear brain dynamics during meditation compared with mind wandering, suggesting that meditation, regardless of practice, affects neural complexity. In contrast, there were no differences in power spectra at six different frequency bands, likely due to the fact that participants engaged in different meditation practices. Finally, exploratory analyses suggest neurological differences among meditation practices. These findings highlight the importance of studying the electroencephalography correlates of different meditative practices. (shrink)

Following from life history and attachment theory, individuals are predicted to be sensitive to variation in environmental conditions such that risk and uncertainty are internalized by cognitive, affective, and psychobiological mechanisms. In turn, internalizing of environmental uncertainty is expected to be associated with attitudes toward risk behaviors and investments in education. Native American youth aged 10–19 years (n = 89) from reservation communities participated in a study examining this pathway. Measures included family environmental risk and uncertainty, present and future time (...) perspective, adolescent attachment, attitudes toward risk, investments in education, and salivary cortisol. Results support the idea that environmental risk and uncertainty are internalized during development. In addition, internalizing mechanisms significantly predicted attitudes toward risk and education: (1) lower scores on future time perspective and higher cortisol predicted higher scores on risk attitudes, and (2) higher scores on future time perspective and lower scores on problems with attachment predicted higher self-reported school performance. Gender differences were seen, with males anticipating a shorter lifespan than females, which predicted higher scores on risk attitudes and lower school performance. Implications for research on adolescent problem behavior and academic achievement are discussed. (shrink)

Robbins, Francis, and Rutledge documented the personality profile of Church of England clergymen and clergywomen prior to the ordination of the first women to the priesthood in 1994, drawing on Eysenck's three-dimensional model of personality. They found that the personality profiles of clergymen and clergywomen were indistinguishable. The present paper reports a comparable study conducted in 2004 among 182 clergywomen and 540 clergymen serving in similar parochial posts in order to examine whether the ordination of women to the priesthood (...) had impacted the overall personality profile of Anglican clergy. The data suggest that little change had taken place between the two cohorts of clergy studied. Once again clergywomen and clergymen appeared to be formed in the same image. (shrink)

This book explores the nature and implications of positive, creative, and loving mimesis and brings together the interdisciplinary fields of Girardian studies and creativity studies in new and original ways. Scientists, philosophers, psychologists, theologians and ancient thinkers are brought into thought provoking and insightful dialogue with Girardian conceptions of mimetic desire, scapegoating, and hominization.

Pickering et al. argue that judgments of competence should in part be based on the harm that could result from the decision. The centerpiece of their reasoning is that it is inconsistent...

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 381 Nature and Motion in the Middle.Ages. By FR. JAMES A. WEISHE,IPL. Edited by William E. Carroll. Studies in Philosophy and the History of Philosophy, v. 11. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of American Press, 1985. Pp. xii + 292. In this book the editor brings together some articles previously published by Fr. James Weisheipl which deal with various questions relating to Aristotle's natural philosophy along with (...) some medieval interpretations, mainly by St. Thomas Aquinas. The volume was not originally intended to be a posthumous offering, but Fr. James's untimely death has made it into one, and the editor provides a warm ' In Memoriam' at the end. During his fruitful scholarly career in medieval studies Weisheipl devoted much of his efforts to correcting what he took to be some basic modern misunderstandings of Aristotelian and medieval natural philosophy. A long-standing and still commonly held view has it that modern science became possible only after a total and unequivocal rejection of Aristotle's understanding of physical science. According to this theory, science as we now understand it appeared only in the seventeenth century. which is to say long after the close of the Middle Ages (pp. 261 ff.) and therefore, apart from purely historical interest, there remains nothing to be gained from a study of the medieval view of science. In the last century, however, Pierre Duhem argued that heretofore unrecognized linkages exist between modern science and the much earlier efforts by Aristotle and his medieval interpreters. Following Duhem's pioneering work, more recent scholarship has increased still further our knowledge of the relationship between early and modern science, with some (e.g. A. Maier) emphasizing elements of discontinuity and others (e.g. Weisheipl ) pointing out some long neglected but nonetheless philosophically sound and therefore still valuable insights of Aristotle and his medieval disciples. Weisheipl argues that the Aristotelian/medieval notion of nature is perfectly compatible with what he terms the physico-mathematical approach so profitably adopted by modern science. (ch. 11) He rejects the idea that the scientist, after the weleome advances of men like Galileo and Newton, is henceforward correct in replacing the earlier concept of nature with a purely mechanistic model of the universe. The more recent fruitful application of the physico-mathematieal method in science, far from requiring the rejection of Aristotle's concept of nature in favor of a nature-less mechanical model, finds a needed complimentarity with its inclusion as a sure foundation. Taking Aristotle's lead, Albert the Great, Aquinas, and others in fact, Weisheipl argues, were quite well aware of 38~ BOOK REVIEWS the more mathematically grounded method in studying nature. The work they did especially in astronomy, optics, and harmonics, W eisheipl points out, clearly reveals their belief in the heuristic power of mathematics. He readily admits that the earlier attempts to ' save the appearances ' with relatively primitive mathematical tools pale in comparison with the modern achievement, but he thinks the fundamental instinct so remarkably exploited by later scientists is already evident in earlier times. At the core of Weisheipl's exposition of Aristotelian/medieval science is the basic concept of nature, and the frequent failure of scholars to understand this concept conectly is, in his view, the major underlying reason for so much confusion. " For Aristotle..., v. (shrink)

Psychiatry is rapidly adopting digital phenotyping and artificial intelligence/machine learning tools to study mental illness based on tracking participants’ locations, online activity, phone and text message usage, heart rate, sleep, physical activity, and more. Existing ethical frameworks for return of individual research results (IRRs) are inadequate to guide researchers for when, if, and how to return this unprecedented number of potentially sensitive results about each participant’s real-world behavior. To address this gap, we convened an interdisciplinary expert working group, supported by (...) a National Institute of Mental Health grant. Building on established guidelines and the emerging norm of returning results in participant-centered research, we present a novel framework specific to the ethical, legal, and social implications of returning IRRs in digital phenotyping research. Our framework offers researchers, clinicians, and Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) urgently needed guidance, and the principles developed here in the context of psychiatry will be readily adaptable to other therapeutic areas. (shrink)