Luce and Narens (Journal of Mathematical Psychology, 29:1–72, 1985) showed that rank-dependent utility (RDU) is the most general interval scale utility model for binary lotteries. It can be easily established that this result cannot be generalized to lotteries with more than two outcomes. This article suggests several additional conditions to ensure RDU as the only utility model with the desired property of interval scalability in the general case. The related axiomatizations of some special cases of RDU of independent interest (the (...) quantile utility, expected utility, and Yaari’s dual expected utility) are also given. (shrink)

Mikhail Bulgakov's novel The Master and Margarita was written between 1929 and 1940. Although delayed for a quarter of a century, it quickly found a stable place in our life as soon as it was published [for the first publication of the novel see: Moskva, 1966, no. 11; 1967, no. 1]. It is usually classified as a satirical philosophical novel. The satirical element puts it in the same family as such well-known works of the end of the '20s as (...) the novels of I. Il'f and E. Petrov, Twelve Chairs [Dvenadtsat' stul'ev] and The Golden Calf [Zolotoi telenok], but its emphatically philosophical orientation makes it all but a unique phenomenon in the history of Soviet literature. The novel's philosophical aspects have already been examined in a number of essays. Thus, for example, N. P. Utekhin analyzes the reflection of certain general philosophical categories in the novel. G. Chernikova and I. L. Galinskaia have endeavored to determine the concrete literary sources of the novel's philosophy [Chernikova 1971, pp. 213-219; Galinskaia 1986]. (shrink)

The article discusses Alexander Bogdanov’s path from his early philosophic work, formed under the influence of Ernst Mach, Richard Avenarius, and Wilhelm Ostwald and dubbed by him “empiriomonism,”...

Members of the family of the Green Fluorescent Protein (GFP) are the only known type of natural pigments that are essentially encoded by a single gene, since both the substrate for pigment biosynthesis and the necessary catalytic moieties are provided within a single polypeptide chain. In sharp contrast to the state of knowledge just three years ago when GFP was the only known protein of its kind, a whole family of related proteins, exhibiting striking diversity of features have now been (...) identified. This provides new possibilities for a variety of studies ranging from applied biotechnology to evolutionary ecology. BioEssays 24:953–959, 2002. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

In the mammalian central nervous system (CNS), each neuron receives signals from other neurons through numerous synapses located on its cell body and dendrites. Molecules involved in the postsynaptic signaling pathways need to be targeted to the appropriate subcellular domains at the right time during both synaptogenesis and the maintenance of synaptic functions. The presence of messenger RNAs (mRNAs) in dendrites offers a mechanism for synthesizing the appropriate molecules at the right place in response to local extracellular stimuli. Several dendritic (...) mRNAs have been identified, and the mechanisms controlling their localization are beginning to be understood. In many cell types, controls on mRNA stability play an important role in the regulation of gene expression, but it is unclear to what extent this type of control operates in dendrites. The regulation of protein synthesis and the control of mRNA stability in dendrites could have important implications for neuronal function. BioEssays 20:70–78, 1998. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (shrink)

Although the Bcl‐2 family members and p53 are involved in the regulation of apoptosis, the status of apoptotic machinery (eg caspases) plays a major role in determining the mode and timing of cell death. If the apoptotic machinery is lost, inhibited, or intrinsically inactivated, the “death stars”, Bcl‐2 and p53, may become irrelevant to cell death. In this light, high levels of Bcl‐2 may indicate that downstream apoptotic pathways are still functional. This explains why Bcl‐2 overexpression can be a marker (...) of chemosensitivity and favorable prognosis in certain cancers and why retention of wild‐type p53 may manifest inactivation of caspases in aggressive cancers. BioEssays 23:947–953, 2001. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (shrink)

The article provides a consecutive bibliographic account of the most salient trends and tendencies in research in the history of philosophy in Russia over the course of the last 20–25 years. We emphasise the dynamics of the research field, which is directly related to the changes that have taken place in Russian society. The afterword contains a general periodization of research in field of the history of philosophy in Russia and describes the basic characteristics of every period under consideration.

Philosophy and the young child: the very combination of these words in the title of a book may occasion the reader's surprise, especially when he finds that the book concerns predominantly 4-6 year-olds. But children's philosophizing, the subject of the present essay, is deemed by some authors to be a common and quite natural phenomenon. At the same time, it is extremely difficult to extract this common phenomenon from the shell of the commonplace in which it is enveloped, and to (...) perceive in the flux of a child's perception and awareness of the world that aspect of it which is philosophical thinking. G. B. Matthews' book Philosophy and the Young Child is in our opinion an interesting attempt to deal with this far from simple problem. (shrink)

This article aims to present regret, an emotion to which sociologists so far have paid little attention, as having great sociological significance. First, it reviews recent research in social psychology and economics which cast anticipated regret as playing a major role in human decision-making. Second, it suggests a regret-based interpretation of the sunk-cost fallacy. Such an interpretation points to the need of a specifically sociological perspective on regret, calling attention to the cultural and institutional framings of regret-arousing events. The article (...) further argues that secular changes in the types of regret imposed on individuals are paralleled by the spread of various forms of coping with it and that anticipated regret is responsible for both commitment to a chosen life-course and for sudden changes in it. The article ends with discussing the relationship between instrumental and moral regret, as well as the general implications of regret as a phenomenon for sociological understanding of rationality and human action. (shrink)

One of the most persistent and popular bourgeois myths about Spinoza is that of his unwillingness to participate in any kind of political struggle whatever. This myth is sustained particularly by those non-Marxist historians of philosophy who contend that the essence of Spinozism is the development of a new form of religiosity, free of the limitations of any national religion. Such a conception of the Dutch thinker is partially based on facts related by his first biographers, particularly Lucas. As we (...) know, Lucas, in his Life of Benedict Spinoza, written in French between 1678 and 1688, writes that the philosopher's father, Michael de Spinoza, lacking funds and being unable to establish his son in commerce, chose for him the career of a rabbi, and with this in mind placed the young Spinoza in the Amsterdam kheder, where he gained an excellent knowledge of classical Hebrew and studied to perfection the Old Testament and the considerably more voluminous Talmud. Even during his period of instruction, Spinoza, having found many contradictions in the Bible and Talmud, placed the rabbis who were his teachers in untenable positions and this subsequently led to a conflict between him and the leadership of the Amsterdam Jewish community. This report by Spinoza's first biographer suggests the idea that the young Spinoza had crystallized his ideas as early as his stay in the kheder. This we find stated in many of the non-Marxist studies devoted to him. Soviet writings on Spinoza also usually repeat Lucas' view entirely without criticism . However, certain foreign researches of recent decades, which have given consideration to documents and firsthand reports published in 1932 by the Dutch researcher Vaz Dias and, more recently, certain other documents have necessitated considerable corrections in the biographies both by Lucas and Colerus. In these works — of which the book by the French researcher Madeleine Francés, Spinoza dans les pays Neerlandais de la seconde moitié du XVII siècle, Vol. I, Paris, 1937, and that of the American researcher, Lewis Feuer, Spinoza and the Rise of Liberalism, Boston, 1958, are particularly worthy of mention — serious attempts are made to demonstrate the social roots and essence of Spinozism. The biographical data presented in these works contribute to a clarification of the real reasons for the conflict between the young Spinoza and the leadership of the Jewish community of Amsterdam. According to these writers, Spinoza's father was a wealthy man and, in all probability, did not intend to make a rabbi of his son. There can be no question that the young Spinoza attended the elementary classes of the Jewish school, but his name is not found in the lists of students in its higher grades, from which future rabbis emerged. Beginning approximately at the age of thirteen, Bento helped his father in his commercial and financial operations. However, after his father's death, Baruch himself took charge of these matters during the period 1654-1656 and, as these documents suggest, demonstrated considerable skill in commercial and financial affairs. However, the activities of merchant and financier did not appeal to the young man. The discrepancy between his intellectual interests and the nature of his occupation proved so irreconcilable that the future philosopher, who had established numerous scholarly and personal ties outside the Jewish community, drifted farther and farther both from his business and the community, until finally he was excommunicated, and broke with the community. (shrink)

The breadth and ambiguity of philosophical concepts opens the door to the most diverse interpretations of these concepts and their manifold relations. Often the ideological use of philosophical concepts and ideas descends to the level of everyday meanings in which vagueness and even primitivism become a regular phenomenon of spiritual everyday life. The basic task of professional philosophers is to define clearly the subject of their science. This task is, of course, very difficult, as is evident from the multitude of (...) different definitions of philosophy that have been offered by its many creators and, especially, by its lovers. Without claiming complete originality, the author of this article offers his understanding of this extremely important question. Further, the author considers it an elementary point to seek the answer in the two-thousand-year history of philosophy, which has developed its defining concepts and terms. On the other hand, a reliance on the principal facts of contemporary scientific knowledge of human evolution and our civilization is no less widespread. Thus, a retrospective view of the subject of philosophy through its history coincides with a prospective approach. (shrink)

Many pigmented heterokonts are able to synthesize elements of their cell walls (the frustules) of dense biogenic silica. These include diatom algae, which occupy a significant place in the biosphere. The siliceous frustules of diatoms have species‐specific patterns of surface structures between 10 and a few hundred nanometers. The present review considers possible mechanisms of uptake of silicic acid from the aquatic environment, its transport across the plasmalemma, and intracellular transport and deposition of silica inside the specialized Silica Deposition Vesicle (...) (SDV) where elements of the new frustule are formed. It is proposed that a complex of silicic acid with positively charged proteins silaffins and polypropylamines remains a homogeneous solution during the intracellular transport to SDV, where biogenic silica precipitates. The high density of the deposited biogenic silica may be due to removal of water from the SDV by aquaporins followed by syneresis—a process during which pore water is expelled from the network of the contracting gel. The pattern of aquaporins in the silicalemma, the membrane embracing the SDV, can determine the pattern of species‐specific siliceous nanostructures. BioEssays 30:328–337, 2008. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Издание сдержит: Специфика изучения научного и философского наследия Е. И. Рериха и Н. К. Рериха. Духовная революция в России и космическое мышление; Дух как объективная реальность и познавательная сила и др.

The morbidity of tick‐borne encephalitis (TBE) varies yearly by as much as 10‐fold among the people of Western Siberia. This long‐term variation is dependent on many factors such as the density of the tick populations, the prevalence of TBE virus (TBEV) among sub‐adult ticks, the yearly virulence of the TBEV, and prophylactic measures. Here we highlight the role of small mammal hosts in the circulation of TBEV through the ecosystem. Refining classical models of non‐viremic horizontal transmission, we emphasize the recently (...) understood fact that the physiological and immunological status of the small mammal hosts affects the tick and virus‐host interactions. In addition to its theoretical interest, our approach may lead to some practical improvements in the precision of epidemiological forecasts and perhaps in forestalling the severity of outbreaks of TBE, or, at least, in forewarning medical authorities and the general public of impending TBE outbreaks. (shrink)

The Aleksanteri Institute of the University of Helsinki organized in 25–26 of September 2009 a special symposium Northern Lights — Facets of Enlightenment Culture with the aim to discuss form of Enlightenment thought in Sweden/Finland and Russia. The symposium, which was opened by Prof. Emeritus Matti Klinge, a renowned historian of 18th- and 19th-century Finland, had four participants from Russia, five from Finland and one from Germany; thus, it was yet a quite small event, but we hope that with it (...) the foundations of a fruitful co-operation, with annual symposia on questions of Enlightenment culture, will be laid. Of the speakers, Prof. Tatiana Artemyeva, Dr. Oili Pulkkinen and Prof. Vesa Oittinen focused on more general problems of study of Enlightenment ideas, while the other contributions dealt with different ―case studies‖ either in Sweden/Finland (Dr. Kimmo Sarje, Dr. Johan Sten), Russia (Prof. Mikhail Mikeshin, Dr. Johannes Remy, Dr. Larisa Agamalian), in France (Dr. Alla Zlatopolskaya) or Germany (Dr. Carola Häntsch). (shrink)

For over a century, Haeckel's Gastraea theory remained a dominant theory to explain the origin of multicellular animals. According to this theory, the animal ancestor was a blastula‐like colony of uniform cells that gradually evolved cell differentiation. Today, however, genes that typically control metazoan development, cell differentiation, cell‐to‐cell adhesion, and cell‐to‐matrix adhesion are found in various unicellular relatives of the Metazoa, which suggests the origin of the genetic programs of cell differentiation and adhesion in the root of the Opisthokonta. Multicellular (...) stages occurring in the complex life cycles of opisthokont protists (mesomycetozoeans and choanoflagellates) never resemble a blastula. Here, we discuss a more realistic scenario of transition to multicellularity through integration of pre‐existing transient cell types into the body of an early metazoon, which possessed a complex life cycle with a differentiated sedentary filter‐feeding trophic stage and a non‐feeding blastula‐like larva, the synzoospore. Choanoflagellates are considered as forms with secondarily simplified life cycles. (shrink)

The technical literature actively discusses ideas for creating digital twins to solve a wide range of problems that arise for enterprises of various kinds. Advances in the areas of information technology and the development of the necessary software really make it possible to obtain important new results through the creation of digital twins. This paper proposes the concept of building a network of digital twins, used to solve a number of actual problems in complex telecommunication systems. Two applications are considered (...) examples of such tasks. The first application is the organization of information feedback for enterprises involved in the life cycle of a telecommunication network: “elaboration of modernization principles, development of equipment, design, construction, and operation.” The second application is monitoring traffic, including its atypical behavior, in order to avoid the recurrence of erroneous actions in case of emergency situations. Another important feature of the digital twin network is that it will become an effective tool for conducting interdisciplinary research. (shrink)

kn. 1. Ot vozniknovenii︠a︡ marksistskoĭ filosofii do ee razvitii︠a︡ v 50-kh-60 godakh XIX veka.--kn. 2. Razvitie marksistskoĭ filosofii vo vtoroĭ polovine XIX veka.