The mathematical works of the French philosopher Charles de Bovelles have received little attention from historians of scientific thought. At the University of Paris, Bovelles studied under Jacques Lefèvre d'Étaples, sharing with him a high regard for the Christian Neoplatonic philosophy of Nicholas of Cusa. One aspect of Cusanus's philosophy was particularly favoured by Lefèvre and Bovelles: the use of geometrical symbolism to provide mathematical guidance to the divine. While Lefèvre was preparing an edition of Cusanus's works , Bovelles (...) wrote a treatise of his own, in which the geometry of the five polyhedra was used to provide an approach to the mystery of the Trinity. Seen in the context of Renaissance syncretism of Platonism and Christianity, Bovelles's treatise adds a theological layer of interpretation to the literal meaning of the polyhedral physics described by Plato in the Timaeus. In so doing, it contributes to the discussion of a problem that was later to concern several Renaissance philosophers and cosmologists, including, at the end of the century, Johannes Kepler. (shrink)

In a clear account of the mature theology of Thomas Aquinas the author, a theologian himself, reveals the evangelical, pastoral and theocentric character of Aquinas's pre-modern theology.

The conference entitled ‘Best Practices in Clinical Ethics Consultation and Decision-Making’, held in London 8–9 July 2010, was the first of its kind dedicated to identifying best practices in clinical ethics consultation and decision-making. Academics, health and social care professionals, clinical ethics committee members, lawyers, service users and carers from the UK, USA, Europe, Canada, Australia and Asia attended lectures, workshops, parallel paper sessions and clinical ethics case discussions across adult, maternity, children's, older persons, mental health and learning disabilities settings. (...) Seventy-eight best-practice points impacting on the quality of clinical ethics consultations and subsequent decisions were identified and grouped into eight themes: who tells the story; how the story is told; how the analysis, discussion and subsequent decisions are made; how values are weighted and balanced against one another; who decides; how the decision is made; how group dynamics and conflict are handled; how decisions are recorded. (shrink)

In two pre-registered online studies during the COVID-19 pandemic and the early 2020 lockdown (one of which with a UK representative sample) we elicit risk-tolerance for 1,254 UK residents using four of the most widely applied risk-taking tasks in behavioral economics and psychology. Specifically, participants completed the incentive-compatible Balloon Analog Risk Task (BART) and the Binswanger-Eckel-Grossman (BEG) multiple lotteries task, as well as the Domain-Specific Risk-Taking Task (DOSPERT) and the self-reported questions for risk-taking used in the German Socio-economic Panel (SOEP) (...) study. In addition, participants in the UK representative sample answered a range of questions about COVID-19-related risky behaviors selected from the UCL COVID-19 Social Survey and the ICL-YouGov survey on COVID-19 behaviors. Consistently with pre-COVID-19 times, we find that risk tolerance during the UK lockdown (i) was higher in men than in women and (ii) decreased with age. Undocumented in pre-COVID-19 times, we find some evidence for healthier participants displaying significantly higher risk-tolerance for self-reported risk measures. We find no systematic nor robust patterns of association between the COVID-19 risky behaviors and the four risk-taking tasks in our study. Moreover, we find no evidence in support of the so-called “risk compensation” hypothesis. If anything, it appears that participants who took greater risk in real-life COVID-19-relevant risky behaviors (e.g., isolating or taking precautions) also exhibited higher risk-tolerance in our experimental and self-reported risk-taking measures. (shrink)

Many public debates become polarized, degenerating into a pattern of mutual suspicion and name-calling that preclude communication or compromise. The debate over animal research has typically followed this path. To understand how polarization might be avoided, we examine the factors that helped prevent it in one local controversy: Cambridge, Massachusetts in the late 1980s. These factors include the personal style of the leader of the main animal protection group, the financing for the group, the group's ability to win a symbolic (...) victory in the form of a relatively toothless city ordinance, and, especially, the relative avoidance by both sides of rigid ideological posturing in favor of "casuistic" argumentation about specific cases and policies. (shrink)

Translation of "Von der Armut am Geiste; ein Dialog des jungen Lukács," by Ágnes Heller. This translation originally appeared in The Philosophical Forum, Spring-Summer 1972.

An increasing number of studies indicate that changes in cytosolic free Ca2+ ([Ca2+]c) mediate specific types of signal transduction in plant cells. Modulation of [Ca2+]c is likely to be achieved through changes in the activity of Ca2+ channels, which catalyse passive influx of Ca2+ to the cytosol from extracellular and intracellular compartments. Voltage‐sensitive Ca2+ channels have been detected in the plasma membranes of algae, where they control membrane electrical properties and cell turgor. These channels are sensitive to 1,4‐dihydropyridines, which in (...) animal cells specifically affect one class of voltage‐regulated plasma membrane Ca2+ channel. Ca2+‐permeable channels with different pharmacological properties have been found in the plasma membrane of higher plants. Recent evidence suggests the existence of two discrete classes of Ca2+ channel co‐resident in the vacuolar membrane (tonoplast) of higher plants. The first is gated by inositol 1,4,5‐trisphosphate, and bears a number of similarities to its animal counterpart which is located in the endoplasmic reticulum (ER). The second tonoplast Ca2+ channel is voltage‐operated. However, the specific roles of these tonoplast channels in signal transduction have yet to be elucidated. (shrink)

A widely accepted tenet of evolutionary biology is that spontaneous mutations occur randomly with regard to their fitness effect. However, since the mutation rate varies along a genome and this variation can be subject to selection, organisms might evolve lower mutation rates at loci where mutations are most deleterious or increased rates where mutations are most needed. In fact, mechanisms of targeted hypermutation are known in organisms ranging from bacteria to humans. Here we review the main forces driving the evolution (...) of local mutation rates and identify the main limiting factors. Both targeted hyper‐ and hypomutation can evolve, although the former is restricted to loci under very frequent positive selection and the latter is severely limited by genetic drift. Nevertheless, we show how an association of repair with transcription or chromatin‐associated proteins could overcome the drift limit and lead to non‐random hypomutation along the genome in most organisms.Editor's suggested further reading in BioEssays Stress‐induced mutation via DNA breaks in Escherichia coli: A molecular mechanism with implications for evolution and medicine Abstract. (shrink)