Understanding how the chordate body plan originated and evolved is still controversial. The discovery by Spemann and Mangold in 1924 of the vertebrate organizer and its inductive properties in patterning the AP and DV axis was followed by a long gap until the 1960s when scientists started characterizing the molecular events responsible for such inductions. However, the evolutionary origin of the organizer itself remained obscure until very recently; did it appear together with the origin and radiation of vertebrates, or was (...) it a chordate affair? A recent study by Yu and collaborators,1 which analyses the expression of several organizer‐specific genes in amphioxus together with recent phylogenetic data that reversed the position of invertebrate extant chordates (e.g. urochordates and cephalochordates), indicates that the organizer probably appeared in early chordates. It likely had separate signalling centres generating BMP and Wnt signalling gradients along the DV and AP axis. The organizer was then lost in the urochordate lineage, most probably as an adaptation to a rapid and determinate development. BioEssays 29:619–624, 2007. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Respecting privacy and patients’ satisfaction are amongst the main indicators of quality of care and one of the basic goals of health services. This study, carried out in 2007, aimed to investigate the extent to which patient privacy is observed and its correlation with patient satisfaction in three emergency departments of Tehran University of Medical Science, Iran. Questionnaire data were collected from a convenience sample of 360 patients admitted to emergency departments and analysed using SPSS software. The results indicated that, (...) according to 50.6% of the patients, the extent to which their privacy was respected was described as either ‘weak’ or ‘average’. Spearman’s coefficient indicated a significant correlation between respecting privacy and the patients’ satisfaction about the various aspects of privacy studied. Considering the levels of privacy observed together with the patients’ degree of satisfaction, it is imperative that clinical professionals address both aspects from conceptual and practical viewpoints. (shrink)

For generations following the first American Medical Association Code of Ethics in 1847, the relationship between doctors and advertising remained unambiguous—advertising was forbidden. In 1975, however, the Federal Trade Commission accused the profession of “restraint of trade” and legally persuaded doctors to permit advertising amongst their clan. As the 1970s witnessed the relentless burgeoning of healthcare expenditure, physicians accepted the blame for immuring themselves from the natural forces of economics. American physicians were bullied to embrace advertising under the delusion that (...) doctoring—like any trade—would become better and cheaper if incited by competition. Today most American physicians engage in some form of paid advertising, yet it is doubtful that physician advertising has either augmented the quality or diminished the cost of health care. Advertisement has eroded medical professionalism by denying doctors the right to enforce ethical boundaries between themselves and the “let the buyer beware” world of business. And more is at stake than professional status, for the doctor/patient relationship, the cornerstone of medicine, is endangered as physicians continue to cast forth the self interested lure of advertisement.To assume that for over 130 years physicians anathematised advertising for purely ethical reasons would be naive. Sociologist Paul Starr explains that in the early 19th century, no group “embraced the ways of the market as actively as did popularisers, alternative healers, and quacks”.1 Advertisement was perhaps the most successful implement of empirical medicine. So it is no surprise that professional licensed doctors in America grew up with a “distaste and discomfort for advertising”.2 Medical advertisements were especially potent in the self reliant Jacksonian era, which touted health as a do it yourself venture commodified into tonics and one time procedures. To distinguish themselves from the circus of healthcare providers, physicians not only instituted higher educational standards and licensure …. (shrink)

Study of concept of Brahman in Upanishads with special reference to the philosophy of Śāṇḍilya.

I address a family of objections I label the _So What?_ objection to robust non-naturalist realism (or, just non-naturalism). This objection concludes that non-naturalism fails to identify the _moral properties_ in virtue of failing to explain why non-natural properties would have all the features we expect _moral properties_ to have and can be extended to provide the conclusion that the non-naturalist is therefore immoral. I argue that _So What?_ is question-begging because it disallows non-naturalists their central theoretical claim: there are (...) ethical properties iff they are fundamental properties (and, in virtue of that, non-natural). I then diagnose the error anti-non-naturalists make explicitly: those who object to non-naturalism along the lines of _So What?_ either fail to understand precisely what the theory claims or fail to understand non-naturalist motivations for going in for that theory. (shrink)

In this rigorous investigation into the logic of truth Anil Gupta and Nuel Belnap explain how the concept of truth works in both ordinary and pathological..

In this paper, I criticize the pairing of irreducible thickness with the traditional view of evaluation which says evaluation is a matter of encoding good or bad in some way. To do this, I first explicate the determination view, which holds that irreducibly thick concepts are to thin concepts as determinates are to determinables. I then show that, even if the determination view did establish irreducible thickness, it would not have proven that the evaluative is well understood as being an (...) instance of the determination relation; in order to do that, the determination view needs to show how the evaluative fit a general analysis of the determination relation. However, when the determination view attempts to fill in the analysis, we get implausible results—so implausible, I claim, that we should see the results as a reductio to the view. To generalize the criticism to any view like the determination view, I show that the same results ensue when we model the evaluative on mereology. Finally, I diagnose the general failure by claiming that the evaluative domain, as conceived by the defender of irreducible thickness, just does not have the structure to secure the tight connection between thick and thin concepts while also carving up our conceptual economy in a plausible way. (shrink)

A method is given to determine whether or not the distribution functions describing the two spin measurements in the spin-s Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen experiment are compatible with the existence of distributions describing three spin measurements (not all of which can actually be performed). When applied to the spin-1/2 case the method gives the results of Wigner, or of Clauser, Holt, Horne, and Shimony, depending on whether or not the two-spin distributions are assumed to have the forms given by the quantum theory. Generalizations (...) of the conditions of Wigner or of Clauser et al. to the spin-1 case are explicitly calculated. The spin-3/2 case is examined in some simple geometries to show that an apparently monotonic trend toward local realism as s increases from1/2 to1 is, in fact, violated when s increases from1 to3/2. The analysis is based on a novel representation of the modulus squared of a rotation matrix element. The structure of that matrix element responsible for the restoration of local realism in the classical (large s) limit is identified, but a rigorous treatment of the classical limit is not attempted. The higher-spin results are significantly stronger than those given by Mermin's spin-s Bell inequality. (shrink)

Commentary on the Sāṅkhyakārikā of Īśvarakr̥ṣṇa, compendium of the Sāṅkhya school in Hindu philosophy.

Comprehensive work with Hindi and Sanskrit commentaries on fundamentals of Sankhya philosophy.

tic sequenzen-kalkul of Gentzen, into rules for PCc, the classical sequenzenkalkul. We shall limit ourselves here to sequenzen or turnstile statements of the form A„A„..., A„ I- B, where A„A„..., A„(n ~ 0), and B are wffs consisting of propositional variables, zero or more of the connectives '5', "v', ' ', ')', and '=', and zero or more parentheses. One can pass from PCi to PCc by amending the intelim rules for ' a result of long standing, or by amending (...) the intelim rules for either one of.. (shrink)

Background: Patients today interact with physicians, physician groups, and health plans, each of which may follow distinct ethical guidelines.Method: We systematically compared physician codes of ethics with ethics policies at physician group practices and health plans, using the 1998–99 policies of 38 organisations—18 medical associations , nine physician group practices , and 12 health plans —selected using random and stratified purposive sampling. A clinician and a social scientist independently abstracted each document, using a 397-item health care ethics taxonomy; a reconciled (...) abstraction form was used for analysis. This study focuses on ethics policies regarding professional obligation towards patients, resource allocation, and care for the vulnerable in society.Results: A majority in all three groups mention “fiduciary obligations” of one sort or another, but associations generally address physician/patient relations but not health plan obligations, while plans rarely endorse physicians’ obligations of advocacy, beneficence, and non-maleficence. Except for occasional mentions of cost effectiveness or efficiency, ethical considerations in resource allocation rarely arise in the ethics policies of all three organisational types. Very few associations, groups, or plans specifically endorse obligations to vulnerable populations.Conclusions: With some important exceptions, we found that the ethics policies of associations, groups, and plans are narrowly focused and often ignore important ethical concerns for society, such as resource allocation and care for vulnerable populations. More collaborative work is needed to build integrated sets of ethical standards that address the aims and responsibilities of the major stakeholders in health care delivery. (shrink)

In this paper, we defend Socratic studies as a research programme against several recent attacks, including at least one recently published in Polis. Critics have argued that the study of Socrates, based upon evidence mostly or entirely derived from some set of Plato’s dialogues, is sfounded upon faulty and indefensible historical or hermeneutical technique. We begin by identifying what we believe are the foundational principles of Socratic studies, as the field has been pursued in recent years, and we then show (...) how the research programme that derives from accepting these principles is not defeated by any of the most common recent criticisms of it. Specifically, we argue that challenges to sorting Plato’s dialogues by date, more general challenges to historicist interpretations of Plato’s dialogues, as well as recent literary criticisms of Socratic studies all fail to undermine the research programme. We conclude with some thoughts about how and why Socratic studies has proved itself a valuable and fruitful research programme. (shrink)

Questions about the metaphysics of causation may be usefully divided as follows. First, there are questions about the nature of the causal relata, including (1.1) whether they are in spacetime immanence), (1.2) how fine grained they are individuation), and (1.3) how many there are adicity). Second, there are questions about the metaphysics of the causal relation, including (2.1) what is the difference between causally related and causally unrelated sequences connection), (2.2) what is the difference between sequences related as cause to (...) effect, and those related as effect to cause or as joint effects of a common cause direction), and (2.3) what is the difference between sequences involving the cause, and those involving mere conditions selection). (shrink)

On the life, philosopy, and mythological interpretations of Śukadeva as portrayed in Puranas; a study.

Contribution of Rāhula Sāṅkr̥tyāyana, 1893-1963, Hindi to Buddhist philosophy and literature; includes description of his travel to various places.

Some statistical questions that arise in studies of Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen correlations are given precise and complete answers for a very simple but artificial set of pair distributions. Some recent results and conjectures about hidden variable representations of the more complex distributions that describe the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen experiment are examined in the light of the behavior of the simple model.

An attempt is made to introduce the concept of magnetic moment and magnetic induction directly from observed mechanical interactions between magnets, without bringing in the idealized notion of isolated magnetic poles.

Study on the philosophy of semantics in Tantric texts and Sanskrit grammar.

Mesodermal cell differentiation begins in response to an inductive interaction early in frog development. In parallel with the recent finding that certain peptide growth factors can induce mesoderm, early cellular and genetic responses to the induction have been discovered. I review here recent work on these responses, work that aims to understand how cells respond to inducers to form the complex pattern of the vertebrate mesoderm.

This makes his book especially valuable." -- Yuri Gurevich, Professor of Computer Science, University of Michigan Computability and complexity theory should be of central concern to practitioners as well as theorists.