The value of any kind of data is greatly enhanced when it exists in a form that allows it to be integrated with other data. One approach to integration is through the annotation of multiple bodies of data using common controlled vocabularies or ‘ontologies’. Unfortunately, the very success of this approach has led to a proliferation of ontologies which itself creates obstacles to integration. The Open Biomedical Ontologies (OBO) consortium has set in train a strategy to overcome this problem. Existing (...) OBO ontologies, including the Gene Ontology, are undergoing a process of coordinated reform and new ontologies being created on the basis of an evolving set of shared principles governing ontology development. The result is an expanding family of ontologies designed to be interoperable, logically well-formed, and to incorporate accurate representations of biological reality. We describe the OBO Foundry initiative, and provide guidelines for those who might wish to become involved. (shrink)

Whereas the Mediterranean has not submitted easily to strong theories, still it has inspired a certain kind of theorizing from the ground. The setting of the Mediterranean viewed from the land's edge gave the world theoria, which Greek etymology and usage associates with looking onto a scene with amazement, viewing drama, being sent as an emissary to consult the oracle, or traveling for the purposes of sightseeing. The present essay explores some connections between the Mediterranean and theoria. Following a brief (...) survey of how theoria functioned in antiquity, it studies the case of 20th-century Greek poet Angelos Sikelianos and American director and choreographer Eva Palmer - husband and wife - who sought to revive ancient ideas of theoria. They organized revivals of the Delphic Festivals in 1927 and 1930 as a prelude to re-establishing Delphi as a world center for people with a vision for the world. Their work rivaled that of the Olympic Revivals, except that the Delphic Revival was linked to a particular Mediterranean site and pursued the course of art, music, social thought, and especially tragedy together with athletics. A spectacular, imaginative, ambitious, but stillborn effort, it gives evidence of both the potential and limits of Mediterranean theoria. (shrink)

Whereas the Mediterranean has not submitted easily to strong theories, still it has inspired a certain kind of theorizing from the ground. The setting of the Mediterranean viewed from the land's edge gave the world theoria, which Greek etymology and usage associates with looking onto a scene with amazement, viewing drama, being sent as an emissary to consult the oracle, or traveling for the purposes of sightseeing. The present essay explores some connections between the Mediterranean and theoria. Following a brief (...) survey of how theoria functioned in antiquity, it studies the case of 20th-century Greek poet Angelos Sikelianos and American director and choreographer Eva Palmer - husband and wife - who sought to revive ancient ideas of theoria. They organized revivals of the Delphic Festivals in 1927 and 1930 as a prelude to re-establishing Delphi as a world center for people with a vision for the world. Their work rivaled that of the Olympic Revivals, except that the Delphic Revival was linked to a particular Mediterranean site and pursued the course of art, music, social thought, and especially tragedy together with athletics. A spectacular, imaginative, ambitious, but stillborn effort, it gives evidence of both the potential and limits of Mediterranean theoria. (shrink)

This article builds on a developing interdisciplinary discussion of home. It studies two 20th-century texts in counterpoint: political philosopher Agnes Heller's essay, `Where Are We at Home,' and novelist Melpo Axioti's My Home, a nostalgic recollection of life on Mykonos. Heller contrasts the elusive, self-appointed geography of postmodern living with a traditional view of primordial dwelling, a non-transient way of dwelling that gave to Earth a commitment stretching from ancestral past to a distant future. That experience is all but lost (...) today, Heller muses as she surveys the horizon for space-bound alternatives to today's geographic promiscuity. The closing paragraph of her essay, which settles inconclusively on a Mediterranean landscape, opens a portal to My Home, the work of another political exile deprived of nationality and citizenship during the Cold War. Axioti's postmodern novel juxtaposes native stories of a transient life on Mykonos with the modern developer's efforts to discover firm foundations for building and an exile's wish to recover solid memories of home. Between those perspectives, Mykonos comes alive as a different type of home, in which obligation forms a bridge between presence and absence. The article closes by inquiring whether a thoughtful look at fragile Mediterranean worlds might reintroduce the idea of obligation to postmodern conceptions of home. (shrink)

This paper critically examines the volitional normative model of disease and its underlying nanotechnologic vision of medicine both defended by Robert Freitas. Having provided an account of this vision, we explicate the highlight of the model, which is a concept of disease based on individual values and preferences. The model’s normative positions are then critiqued based on our argument that the epistemic basis of Freitas’s vision of nanotechnologic medicine and, by extension, of his volitional normative model of disease is scientifically (...) flawed. An ethical and social critique of the model is then conducted on the basis of the model’s implicit ethical underpinnings. We argue that Freitas fails to justify the normativity of his model by not addressing the ethical issues that permeate it, one of which is the question of responsibility regarding the development of medical nanotechnology and the practice of new forms of medicine such as the one he envisions. We conclude that, due to its radically individualistic position, the model implies an unjustified view of nanoethics and relegates this field of ethics to the periphery of discussions of nanomedicine. (shrink)

In our scientific reconnaissance we have repeatedly turned to the analysis of social and spiritual origins, features of the doctrine of religious association of the charismatic orientation of the Orthodox origin of the Leontians, the personality of Leontius, the activities of his followers. Again, the small work of the Archpriest of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate, Vasily Ostapchuk, entitled "The Life and Activity of Father Leonti", published in 500 in Rivne in 2006, forced us to turn to (...) the figure of Leonti, his teachings and activities. (shrink)