This is a biography of the works of Richard Price, 1723-1791, one of the leading radical intellectuals of the late-18th century. By profession a dissenting minister, he was also a mathematician, a political pamphleteer, particularly on the American and French Revolutions, and a moral philosopher.

Context: Constructivist teachers who find themselves working within an educational system that adopts a realist epistemology, may find themselves at odds with their own beliefs when they catch themselves paying closer attention to the knowledge authorities intend them to teach rather than the knowledge being constructed by their learners. Method: In the preliminary analysis of the mathematical learning of six low-performing Year 7 boys in a Maltese secondary school, whom one of us taught during the scholastic year 2014-15, we constructed (...) a conceptual framework which would help us analyze the extent to which he managed to be sensitive to constructivism in a typical classroom setting. We describe the development of the framework M-N-L as a viable analytical tool to search for significant moments in the lessons in which the teacher appeared to engage in what we define as “constructivist teaching” during mathematics lessons. The development of M-N-L is part of a research program investigating the way low-performing students make mathematical sense of new notation with the help of the software Grid Algebra. Results: M-N-L was found to be an effective instrument which helped to determine the extent to which the teacher was sensitive to his own constructivist beliefs while trying to negotiate a balance between the mathematical concepts he was expected to teach and the conceptual constructions of his students. Implications: One major implication is that it is indeed possible for mathematics teachers to be sensitive to the individual constructions of their learners without losing sight of the concepts that society, represented by curriculum planners, deems necessary for students to learn. The other is that researchers in the field of education may find M-N-L a helpful tool to analyze CT during typical didactical situations established in classroom settings. (shrink)

Early versions of satellite and radiosonde datasets suggested that the tropical surface had warmed more than the troposphere, while climate models consistently showed tropospheric amplification of surface warming in response to human-caused increases in greenhouse gases. We revisit such comparisons here using new observational estimates of surface and tropospheric temperature changes. We find that there is no longer a serious discrepancy between modeled and observed trends in the tropics. Our results contradict a recent claim that all simulated temperature trends in (...) the tropical troposphere are inconsistent with observations. This claim was based on the use of older radiosonde and satellite datasets and on two methodological errors: the neglect of observational trend uncertainties introduced by interannual climate variability and application of an inappropriate statistical “consistency test”.This emerging reconciliation of models and observations has two primary explanations. First, because of changes in the treatment of buoy and satellite information, new surface temperature datasets yield slightly reduced tropical warming relative to earlier versions. Second, recently developed satellite and radiosonde datasets now show larger warming of the tropical lower troposphere. In the case of a new satellite dataset from remote sensing systems, enhancedRSS warming is due to an improved procedure of adjusting for inter-satellite biases. When the RSS-derived tropospheric temperature trend is compared with four different observed estimates of surface temperature change, the surface warming is invariably amplified in the tropical troposphere, consistent with model results. Even if we use data from a second satellite dataset with smaller tropospheric warming than in remote sensing systems RSS, observed tropical lapse rates are not significantly different from those in all model simulations.Our results contradict a recent claim that all simulated temperature trends in the tropical troposphere and in tropical lapse rates are inconsistent with observations. This claim was based on the use of older radiosonde and satellite datasets and on two methodological errors: the neglect of observational trend uncertainties introduced by interannual climate variability and application of an inappropriate statistical “consistency test”. (shrink)

OBJECTIVES: To study the resuscitation preferences, choice of decision-maker, views on the seeking of patients' wishes and determinants of these of elderly hospital in-patients. DESIGN: Questionnaire administered on admission and prior to discharge. SETTING: Two acute geriatric medicine units (Southampton and Poole). PARTICIPANTS: Two hundred and fourteen consecutive consenting mentally competent patients admitted to hospital as emergencies. RESULTS: Resuscitation was wanted by 60%, particularly married and functionally independent patients and those who had not already considered it. Not wanted resuscitation was (...) associated with lack of social contacts. Sixty-seven per cent welcomed enquiry about their preferences and 78% wanted participation in decision, 43% as sole decision-maker. Wishing to choose oneself was associated with not wanting resuscitation, prior knowledge of it, and lack of a spouse. Patients' opinions remained stable during their admission. CONCLUSIONS: Discussion of resuscitation is practical on hospital admission without causing distress and the views expressed endure through the period of hospitalisation. Elderly patients' attitudes depend partly on personal health and social circumstances. This may assist doctors when patients are unable to participate themselves. (shrink)

It is often asserted that even our own past is a foreign country: the ideas of past thinkers are, in some ways, alien to us today. For the European historian of non- European philosophy, not only is the past held to be a different country, but it is also the past ofadifferentcountry. This is both convenient and problematic all at once. The historian of non- European philosophy faces a double separation from his/her subject matter; she is both a foreigner and (...) an alien. In this paper, I approach questions of how this historian should orientate herself towards her subject, and why she should care about it at all. (shrink)

This article evaluates the effect of different human resource management (HRM) practices on organizations’ environmental performance. We develop a model to evaluate the influence of a broad range of HRM practices, including environmental performance criteria in managers’ performance evaluations and two types of internal corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices: socially responsible employee benefits and corporate volunteering practices. To this end, we analyze a sample of 142 manufacturing companies that have completed B Lab’s Impact Assessment process to certify their environmental performance. (...) The results show that including environmental criteria in a higher proportion of managers’ performance evaluations directly impacts organizations’ environmental performance and strengthens the positive effect of other environmental management practices. The findings also demonstrate the direct effects of both types of CSR practices on an organization’s environmental performance. Our study advances recent work on Green HRM and CSR by identifying the specific HRM practices that allow organizations to move from being part of the world’s environmental problem to being part of the solution. (shrink)

Ambitious targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture have been set by both national governments and their respective livestock sectors. We hypothesize that farmer self-identity influences their assessment of climate change and their willingness to implement measures which address the issue. Perceptions of climate change were determined from 286 beef/sheep farmers and evaluated using principal component analysis. The analysis elicits two components which evaluate identity, and two components which evaluate behavioral capacity to adopt mitigation and adaptation measures. Subsequent Cluster (...) Analyses reveal four farmer types based on the PCA scores. ‘The Productivist’ and ‘The Countryside Steward’ portray low levels of awareness of climate change, but differ in their motivation to adopt pro-environmental behavior. Conversely, both ‘The Environmentalist’ and ‘The Dejected’ score higher in their awareness of the issue. In addition, ‘The Dejected’ holds a high sense of perceived risk; however, their awareness is not conflated with an explicit understanding of agricultural GHG sources. With the exception of ‘The Environmentalist’, there is an evident disconnect between perceptions of agricultural emission sources and their contribution towards GHG emissions amongst all types. If such linkages are not conceptualized, it is unlikely that behavioral capacities will be realized. Effective communication channels which encourage action should target farmers based on the groupings depicted. Therefore, understanding farmer types through the constructs used in this study can facilitate effective and tailored policy development and implementation. (shrink)

The aim of this exploratory study was to examine client demographics and expectations, reasons for use, sensations during treatment, and perceived outcomes of Pranic Healing, an energy healing system lacking in scientific documentation but whose use in the general population is becoming more widespread internationally. This study consisted of a cross-sectional survey of adults (18+ years of age) receiving care from 12 Pranic Healing practices in four different states in the U.S. (N = 179) completing online questionnaires. Closed-ended response sets (...) were analyzed descriptively, while qualitative data were analyzed using content analysis. Reasons to use the therapy included physical, mental/emotional, and metaphysical issues, dissatisfaction with conventional care, and overall well-being. Expectations of care included enhanced abilities, cure or relief, or unsure. Respondents were more likely to cite a specific problem from which they needed alleviation than to cite overall health or wellness as their goal. Sensations experienced were reported to be of a relaxing nature and not, as was hypothesized, of an energizing nature. Results show that those who use Pranic Healing fit the sociodemographic profile of CAM (complementary and alternative medicine) users in the United States, that their reasons for use are not homogeneous, and that preliminary descriptive data from a selective subsample of respondents indicated that some respondents are experiencing positive outcomes attributed to this modality. (shrink)

Nanomedicine is yielding new and improved treatments and diagnostics for a range of diseases and disorders. Nanomedicine applications incorporate materials and components with nanoscale dimensions where novel physiochemical properties emerge as a result of size-dependent phenomena and high surface-to-mass ratio. Nanotherapeutics and in vivo nanodiagnostics are a subset of nanomedicine products that enter the human body. These include drugs, biological products, implantable medical devices, and combination products that are designed to function in the body in ways unachievable at larger scales. (...) Nanotherapeutics andin vivonanodiagnostics incorporate materials that are engineered at the nanoscale to express novel properties that are medicinally useful. These nanomedicine applications can also contain nanomaterials that are biologically active, producing interactions that depend on biological triggers. Examples include nanoscale formulations of insoluble drugs to improve bioavailability and pharmacokinetics, drugs encapsulated in hollow nanoparticles with the ability to target and cross cellular and tissue membranes and to release their payload at a specific time or location, imaging agents that demonstrate novel optical properties to aid in locating micrometastases, and antimicrobial and drug-eluting components or coatings of implantable medical devices such as stents. (shrink)

Some argue the common practice of inferring multiple processes or systems from a dissociation is flawed. One proposed solution is state-trace analysis, which involves plotting, across two or more conditions of interest, performance measured by either two dependent variables, or two conditions of the same dependent measure. The resulting analysis is considered to provide evidence that either a single process underlies performance or there is evidence for more than one process. This article reports simulations using the simple recurrent network in (...) which changes to the learning rate produced state-trace plots with multiple functions. We also report simulations using a single-layer error-correcting network that generate plots with a single function. We argue that the presence of different functions on a state-trace plot does not necessarily support a dual-system account, at least as typically defined ; it can also indicate variation in a single parameter within theories generally considered to be single-system accounts. (shrink)

Survivors of childhood brain tumors face many obstacles to living independently as adults. Causes for lack of independence are multifactorial and generally are investigated in terms of physical, cognitive, and psychosocial treatment–related sequelae. Little is known, however, about the role of expectation for survivors’ function. From a mixed–methods study including qualitative interviews and quantitative measures from 40 caregiver–survivor dyads, we compared the data within and across dyads, identifying four distinct narrative profiles: (A) convergent expectations about an optimistic future, (B) convergent (...) expectations about a less optimistic future, (C) non–convergent expectations about a less optimistic future, and (D) non–convergent expectations about an unclear future. Dyads both do well and/or struggle in systematically different manners in each profile. These profiles may inform the design of interventions to be tested in future research and help clinicians to assist families in defining, (re–)negotiating, and reaching their expectations of function and independence. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:THE LOVE WHICH LOVE'S KNOWLEDGE KNOWS NOT: NUSSBAUM'S EVASION OF CHRISTIANITY L. GREGORY JONES Loyola College Baltimore, Maryland WITH THE PUBLICATION in 1986 of The Fragilty of Goodness, Martha Nussbaum established herelf as a central figure on the intellectual stage.1 The book is elegantly written and eloquently argued, one of those rare books whose depth of insight is coupled with an ease of expression. Equally at home in (...) the scholarship of both classical antiquity and contemporary philosophy, The Fragility of Goodness stimulated conversations and arguments among a wide range of scholars. At the same time, however, there were hints that Nussbaum's philosophical insights and classical acumen did not extend to a knowledge of Christian texts, much less a willingness to engage with them. For example, in a note to the Introduction of the book, Nussbaum observes : When we do not try to see [the Greeks] through the lens of Christian beliefs we can not only see them more truly; we can also see how true they are to us-that is, to a continuous historical tradition of human ethical experience that has not been either displaced or altered by the supremacy of Christian (and Kantian) teaching. (FG, p. 15) As such a quotation indicates, Nussbaum vastly oversimplifies 1 Martha C. Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986). 554 pp., $19.95pb. Further citations to this work will be made parenthetically in the text with the abbreviation FG. 323 324 L. GREGORY JONES Christian theology and/or Christian teaching, not only in relation to " the Greeks " but also about such questions as vulnerability, tragedy, and friendship. That this is the case becomes more explicit in her recent book Love's Knowledge, a collection of essays about the relationship between philosophy and literature.2 Here it becomes clear that Nussbaum's project attempts to retrieve an Aristotelian ethics that would displace not only Kantian or Utilitarian ethics but also Christian ethics. But whereas Nussbaum explicitly criticizes Kantian and Utilitarian positions on both methodological and substantive grounds, she evades engagement with Christian thought. In order to understand how and why this is the case, it is necessary first to explicate in greater detail her Aristotelian position as it develops in The Fragility of Goodness and then Love's Knowledge. In The Fragility of Goodness Nussbaum addresses three central issues : ( 1) the role in " the human good life " of activities and relationships that are, in their nature, especially vulnerable to reversal; (2) the relationship among such components as friendship, love, and political activity in a good life; and (3) the relationship between self-sufficiency and the more ungovernable parts of the human being's internal makeup (see FG, pp. 6-7). Nussbaum proceeds to explore these issues through analyses of diverse Greek tragedies as well as some of the central texts of both Plato and Aristotle. Her approach, she indicates in that book, is Aristotelian; she thinks that Aristotle's central question, "How should a human being live?", should be the central question that frames any ethical inquiry-as opposed, say, to the questions put by Kant or Mill that focus on what one should do. Moreover, she contends that an Aristotelian approach engages the intuitions and beliefs of an interlocutor or reader in a " reflective dialogue " with a 2 Martha C. Nussbaum, Love's Knowledge: Essays on Philosophy and Literature (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 432 pp., $42.50. Further citations to this work will be made parenthetically in the text with the abbreviation LK. NUSSBAUM'S EVASION OF CHRISTIANITY 325 series of complex ethical conceptions presented for exploration (FG, p. 10). But it is not only her approach that is Aristotelian; so also is the substance of her ethical position. Nussbaum prefers a commitment to the complexities of particularity (which she considers characteristic of the tragedians and Aristotle) to the quest for self-sufficiency (a nuanced version of which she finds in Plato). Likewise, she describes Aristotle and the tragedians as appreciative of the ethical, and indeed rational, significance of the emotions and prefers this to Plato's ostensible rationalism. Thus Nussbaum's perspective in The... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals. By IRIS MURDOCH. Harmondsworth: Allen Lane; New York: Viking, 1992. $35.00. Dame Iris Murdoch is familiar to most people as a witty and en· gaging novelist whose twenty-four hooks of fiction can he read on a variety of levels. They are wonderful stories, hut the philosophically acute reader will also enjoy Murdoch's judgments, polemics, and inhouse jokes about philosophers and philosophical (...) views. Comparatively few people are aware of Murdoch's previous scholarly studies: Sartre, Romantic Rationalist, The Sovereignty of the Good, The Fire and the Sun; and Acastos. Even so, those familiar with these hooks will recognize the profound impact she has had on debates within moral philosophy. She has been at the forefront of the move· ment that has rehabilitated the central importance of such notions as goodness, the Good, virtue, and the moral life as a journey. So it is not surprising that Murdoch has returned to the genre of philosophical argument to advance her views on the relationship between metaphysics and morals. But it is surprising that her argument exhibits neither the clarity of thought characteristic of the analytic philosophy in which she was trained nor the dramatic narrative of her novels. Indeed the hook reads like a collage of lecture notes, complete with extensive quotations from other people's thoughts with minimal com· mentary. Further, the chapter titles (e.g., " Fact and Value," " Schopenhauer," " Consciousness and Thought-I," " Derrida and Struc· turalism," " Consciousness and Thought-II," "Notes on Will and Duty," " Axioms, Duties, Eros," " Void ") shed little light on the overall structure or argument of the hook. One cannot help hut have the impression that Murdoch spent less time crafting the argument of this hook than she does in crafting the story line and characters of her novels. This is not to say, of course, that there is not much to he learned from Murdoch's perspective. She is remarkably erudite, and her discussion of various themes, figures, and issues often yields fascinating insights. But the whole is considerably less than the sum of its often interesting parts. I have already suggested that this is partly because of the structure and style in which the hook is written. But the hook 687 688 BOOK REVIEWS is also disappointing, and perhaps more determinatively, because of the overall perspective she seeks to deploy and defend. Readers of Murdoch's work have heretofore often wondered about the relationship between her avowed Platonism and her interest in Christianity. Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals has the virtue of clarifying that relationship, hut the result is unpersuasive. At the heart of Murdoch's Platonism is her recasting of the allegory of the cave from The Republic. The moral life is an arduous struggle to ascend from the cave (represented, as in her earlier works, by " the fat, relentless ego ") by a dispossession of the self so that we can apprehend a little less imperfectly the perfect form of the Good. As Murdoch puts it, Plato assumes the internal relation of value, truth, cogmtion. Virtue (as compassion, humility, courage) involves a desire for and achievement of truth instead of falsehood, reality instead of appearance. Goodness involves truth.seeking knowledge and ipso facto a discipline of desire. ' Getting things right ', as in meticulous grammar or mathematics, is truth-seeking as virtue. Learning anything properly demands (virtuous ) attention. Here the idea of truth plays a crucial role (as it does also in Kant) and reality emerges as the object of truthful vision, and virtuous action as the product of such vision. This is a picture of the omnipresence of morality and evaluation in human life (p. 39). Such a depiction ought to resonate quite deeply with Christians, something not lost on Murdoch when she writes a few pages earlier: "There are innumerable points at which we have to detach ourselves, to change our orientation, to redirect our desire and refresh and purify our energy, to keep on looking in the right direction: to attend upon the grace that comes through faith " (p. 25). But Murdoch's "grace" and her "truth-seeking as virtue," among other themes, involve something quite different from what Christians... (shrink)

Open peer commentary on the article “Negotiating Between Learner and Mathematics: A Conceptual Framework to Analyze Teacher Sensitivity Toward Constructivism in a Mathematics Classroom” by Philip Borg, Dave Hewitt & Ian Jones. Upshot: My commentary has two general goals. First, I investigate how basic principles of radical constructivism might be used in constructing models of mathematics teaching. Toward that end, I found that I was not in complete intersubjective agreement with Borg et al.’s use of some basic terms. Second, (...) I explore what mathematics teaching might look like in what is construed as constructivist mathematics teaching. Toward that end, I comment on Borg et al.’s use of “negotiation” and explain how a constructivist teacher can establish experiential models of students’ mathematics. (shrink)

BackgroundThe ARRIVE (Animal Research: Reporting of In Vivo Experiments) guidelines are widely endorsed but compliance is limited. We sought to determine whether journal-requested completion of an ARRIVE checklist improves full compliance with the guidelines.MethodsIn a randomised controlled trial, manuscripts reporting in vivo animal research submitted to PLOS ONE (March–June 2015) were randomly allocated to either requested completion of an ARRIVE checklist or current standard practice. Authors, academic editors, and peer reviewers were blinded to group allocation. Trained reviewers performed outcome adjudication (...) in duplicate by assessing manuscripts against an operationalised version of the ARRIVE guidelines that consists 108 items. Our primary outcome was the between-group differences in the proportion of manuscripts meeting all ARRIVE guideline checklist subitems.ResultsWe randomised 1689 manuscripts (control: n = 844, intervention: n = 845), of which 1269 were sent for peer review and 762 (control: n = 340; intervention: n = 332) accepted for publication. No manuscript in either group achieved full compliance with the ARRIVE checklist. Details of animal husbandry (ARRIVE subitem 9b) was the only subitem to show improvements in reporting, with the proportion of compliant manuscripts rising from 52.1 to 74.1% (X2 = 34.0, df = 1, p = 2.1 × 10−7) in the control and intervention groups, respectively.ConclusionsThese results suggest that altering the editorial process to include requests for a completed ARRIVE checklist is not enough to improve compliance with the ARRIVE guidelines. Other approaches, such as more stringent editorial policies or a targeted approach on key quality items, may promote improvements in reporting. (shrink)

We provide a short proof that if κ is a regular cardinal with κ ≤ c, then $\left( \matrix \kappa \\ \omega\endmatrix \right)\rightarrow \left( \matrix\format\c\kern.8em&\c\\ \kappa & \alpha \\ \omega & \omega \endmatrix \right)^{1,1}$ for any ordinal α < min {p, κ}. In particular, $\left( \matrix \germ{p} \\ \omega \endmatrix \right)\rightarrow \left( \matrix\format\c\kern.8em&\c\\ \germ{p} & \alpha \\ \omega & \omega \endmatrix \right)^{1,1}$ for any ordinal α < p. This generalizes an unpublished results of E. Szemerédi that Martin's axiom implies that (...) $\left( \matrix \germ{c} \\ \omega \endmatrix \right)\rightarrow \left( \matrix\format\c\kern.8em&\c\\ \germ{c} & \kappa \\ \omega & \omega \endmatrix \right)^{1,1}$ for any cardinal κ with κ < c. (shrink)

In this essay I show that Structuralism, in order to combat the impression that it is “untenable and outmoded,” needs to be attached to a phenomenology of transcendental intersubjectivity. My argument for this conclusion is: 1) that Peter Caws is right in arguing that Structuralism needs a notion of the transcendental subject because its objects, qua intentional, presuppose such a subject; 2) the objects withwhich Structuralism is concemed are objects in the sense that Husserl speaks of objects ofthe spiritual world; (...) and, 3) the spiritual world, indeed the world in general, is constituted intersubjectively. Therefore, Structuralism needs a notion of transcendental intersubjectivity.Dans cet essai, je démontre que le structuralisme doit être rattaché à une phénoménologie de l’intersubjectivité transcendantale afin d’éviter l’impression qu’il donne d’être «intenable et démodé». J’appuie cette conclusion à l’aide des arguments suivants: 1) Peter Caws a raison d’arguer que le structuralisme a besoin d’une notion de sujet transcendantal parce que ses objets, en tant qu’intentionnels, présupposent un tel sujet; 2) les objets dont s’occupe le structuralisme sont des objets au sens oú Husserl parle d’objets du monde spirituel; et 3) le monde spirituel, enfait le monde en général, est constitué de façon intersubjective. Ainsi, le structuralisme requiert une notion d’intersubjectivité transcendantale. (shrink)

Three studies were conducted to explore the psychological determinants of COVID-deterrent behaviors. In Study 1, using data collected and analyzed both before and after the release of COVID-19 vaccines, mask-wearing, other preventative behaviors like social distancing, and vaccination intentions were positively related to assessments of the Coronavirus Behavioral Health Mindset ; belief in the credibility of science; progressive political orientation; less use of repressive and more use of sensitization coping; and the attribution of COVID-19 safety to effort rather than ability, (...) powerful forces, fate, or luck. In Study 2, favorable COVID-19 vaccination intentions were related to greater willingness to work, lower emotional distress, and greater customer experience mindset. Study 3 examined the personality and motives of individuals who volunteered to help deliver COVID-19 inoculations to the local community. The vaccine-giving volunteers, especially those with prosocial motives, had high CVBHM scores, belief in the credibility of science, low use of repressive coping, greater attribution of COVID-19 protection to effort, low likelihood of voting conservative, were older, and had more education than others. The majority of public health volunteers expressed prosocial motives to help people or join a cause, but many expressed the personal motives of getting the COVID-19 vaccination for themselves, conveying a public image of compassion, or structuring time. Based on the three research studies, a COVID-19 Mindset Hierarchy model is proposed to integrate the results. (shrink)

Herodotus has often been considered the Father of Ethnography no less than the Father of History. It comes as a paradox, then, that he has been taxed with confusion in his use of two terms that recur over and over in his discussion of peoples, ἕθνος and γνος. Here is the formulation of Raymond Weil:Hérodote definit mal l‘ethnos’. C'est pour lui tantôot une subdivision du ‘génos’, tantôt au contraire un ensemble de ‘géné’. Ainsi 1' ‘ethnos’ des Médes, comme celui des (...) Scythes, groupe plusieurs γνεα. Mais cet ‘ethnos’ scythe porte aussi le nom de ‘génos’, et comprend des ἕθνεα. Les Athéniens sont un ‘ethnos’ hellénique qui fait partie du ‘génos’ ionien, les Lacédémoniens un ‘ethnos’ pélasgique à rattacher au ‘génos’ dorien. (shrink)

Herodotus has often been considered the Father of Ethnography no less than the Father of History. It comes as a paradox, then, that he has been taxed with confusion in his use of two terms that recur over and over in his discussion of peoples, θνος and γνος. Here is the formulation of Raymond Weil: Hérodote definit mal l‘ethnos’. C'est pour lui tantôot une subdivision du ‘génos’, tantôt au contraire un ensemble de ‘géné’. Ainsi 1' ‘ethnos’ des Médes, comme celui (...) des Scythes, groupe plusieurs γνεα. Mais cet ‘ethnos’ scythe porte aussi le nom de ‘génos’, et comprend des θνεα. Les Athéniens sont un ‘ethnos’ hellénique qui fait partie du ‘génos’ ionien, les Lacédémoniens un ‘ethnos’ pélasgique à rattacher au ‘génos’ dorien. (shrink)

Objectives To investigate empirically the motivations for not consenting to DNA biobanking in a Swedish population-based study and to discuss the implications. Design Structured questionnaires and semistructured interviews. Setting A longitudinal epidemiological project (PART) ongoing since 1998 in Stockholm, Sweden. The DNA-collection wave took place during 2006–7. Participants 903 individuals completed the questionnaire (participation rate 36%) and 23 were interviewed. All individuals had participated in both non-genetic waves of the project, but refused to contribute saliva samples during the DNA-collection wave. (...) Main outcome measures Motivations behind refusing to consent to DNA biobanking, with subsequent focus on participants' explanations regarding this unwillingness. Results Public refusal to consent to DNA biobanking, as revealed by the questionnaire, was mainly explained by a lack of personal relevance of DNA contribution and feelings of discomfort related to the DNA being used for purposes other than the respective study. Interviews of individuals representing the second motivation, revealed a significant mistrust of DNA biobank studies. The underlying beliefs and attitudes were associated with concerns about integrity, privacy, suspiciousness and insecurity. However, most interviewees were supportive of genetic research per se and interpreted their mistrust in the light of distressing environmental influences. Conclusion The results suggest a need for guidelines on benefit sharing, as well as trustworthy and stable measures to maintain privacy, as a means for increasing personal relevance and trust among potential participants in genetic research. Measures taken from biobanks seem insufficient in maintaining and increasing trust, suggesting that broader societal measures should be taken. (shrink)

Recently, a class of $\mathcal{P}\mathcal{T}$ -invariant scalar quantum field theories described by the non-Hermitian Lagrangian $\mathcal{L}$ = $ \frac{1}{2} $ (∂ϕ) 2 +gϕ 2 (iϕ)ε was studied. It was found that there are two regions of ε. For ε<0 the $\mathcal{P}\mathcal{T}$ -invariance of the Lagrangian is spontaneously broken, and as a consequence, all but the lowest-lying energy levels are complex. For ε≥0 the $\mathcal{P}\mathcal{T}$ -invariance of the Lagrangian is unbroken, and the entire energy spectrum is real and positive. The subtle (...) transition at ε=0 is not well understood. In this paper we initiate an investigation of this transition by carrying out a detailed numerical study of the effective potential V eff (ϕc) in zero-dimensional spacetime. Although this numerical work reveals some differences between the ε<0 and the ε>0 regimes, we cannot yet see convincing evidence of the transition at ε=0 in the structure of the effective potential for $\mathcal{P}\mathcal{T}$ -symmetric quantum field theories. (shrink)