We reviewed the output of research and innovation cooperation between Russia and the US, including publications and patents, in the four prospective areas of energy efficiency and renewable energy during 2007-2011. Joint US-Russia research groups appear to focus primarily on hydrogen energy (fuel cells), followed by solar photovoltaics. The upcoming areas of smart grid and biofuels were left out entirely both from research and innovation collaboration. Russian patents in green energy technologies registered in the US are very low in comparison (...) to those from Japan, Korea, and China. (shrink)

This book constitutes the strictly refereed post-workshop proceedings of the 11th International Workshop on Computer Science Logic, CSL '97, held as the 1997 Annual Conference of the European Association on Computer Science Logic, EACSL, in Aarhus, Denmark, in August 1997. The volume presents 26 revised full papers selected after two rounds of refereeing from initially 92 submissions; also included are four invited papers. The book addresses all current aspects of computer science logics and its applications and thus presents the state (...) of the art in the area. (shrink)

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) and its action-oriented offspring Corporate Citizenship (CC) currently trigger an intensifying debate on ethics, role and behavior of companies within civil society. For companies, CSR raises the question of what may be the "good reason(s)" for acting responsible towards its members, customers or society. In order to answer this question, we face the debate on CSR and its strategic engagement drivers on the levels of corporate culture, social innovation, and civil society. In this article, we provide (...) a conceptual framework based on the analytic distinction of legitimation and sensemaking. The conceptual framework developed in this article can serve as a basis to develop a company's CSR strategy. It provides measures and instruments to make complex CSR processes more visible and manageable. (shrink)

Die Frage nach dem Verhältnis von Leben und Geschichte ist brisant und ist immer wieder Gegenstand leidenschaftlicher Kontroversen. Beide Positionen zusammenzudenken scheint problematisch zu sein, sofern Geschichtsorientierung bedeutet, das Sich-Verändernde zu erfassen, Anthropologie und Ethnologie dagegen die >ewige.

There is a discrepancy between Stoffregen & Bardy's concept with experimental work on human self-motion perception. We suggest an alternative: (1) higher brain centers are informed by a given sensory cue in a direct and rapid way (direct perception), and (2) this information is then used to prime and shape a more complex mechanism that usually involves several cues and processing steps (inferential).

Die Kategorie des Heiligen schlieat - im Anschluss an Rudolf Otto - sowohl faszinierende als auch erschreckende Seiten des Numinosen ein. Mit der uberraschenden Wiederkehr der Religionen ins private und offentliche Leben, die sich vielfach in Konflikten ereignet und zunehmend durch religios motivierte Gewalt Bahn bricht, wird es immer wichtiger, sich dem Heiligen in den Religionen neu zu widmen. Der vorliegende Band diskutiert diese Kategorie deshalb in phanomenologischer und interkultureller Perspektive und zeigt auf, wie sie in religionswissenschaftlichen, theologischen und philosophischen (...) Kontexten anschlussfahig an aktuelle gesellschaftliche Debatten ist. Mit Beitragen von Roderich Barth, Gertrude Deninger-Polzer, Johann Figl, Wolfgang Gantke, Adelheid Herrmann-Pfandt, Manfred Hutter, Hans Kessler, Markus Luber, Jurgen Mohn, Thomas M. Schmidt, Perry Schmidt- Leukel, Michael Stausberg, Bernd Trocholepczy, Udo Tworuschka, Hans Waldenfels, Edmund Weber, Knut Wenzel, Hamid Reza Yousefi. (shrink)

Die Reihe "Philosophie und Politik" gibt der praktischen Politik Impulse aus der politischen Philosophie. Führende Politikerinnen und Politiker der deutschen Sozialdemokratie antworten auf die Anstöße aus philosophischer Sicht. Thomas M. Scanlon diskutiert in dem Band die Bedingungen, unter denen Gleichheit politisch relevant und ethisch begründet ist. Scanlon ist einer der profiliertesten zeitgenössischen Philosophen im Bereich der Ethik und der politischen Theorie. Er zählt zu den so genannten New Contractarians, also den Theoretikern, die mit und gegen John Rawls Gerechtigkeitstheorie zur (...) Renaissance des Vertragsargumentes in der politischen Philosophie beigetragen haben. Damit wurde eine Denkfigur wiederbelebt, die am Beginn der modernen europäischen Demokratie steht, die die Begründung politischer Ordnungen an individuelle Rationalität bindet und alle Bürger als gleiche und freie einbezieht. (shrink)

In organizational psychology the positive effects of democratically structured enterprises on their employees are well documented. However, the longstanding viability as well as economic success of democratic enterprises in a capitalistic market environment has long been contested. For instance, this has given rise to widespread endorsement of the “degeneration thesis” and the so-called “iron law of oligarchy”. By reviewing 77 qualitative studies that examined 83 democratic enterprises within the last 50 years, the present systematic review provides evidence that such enterprises (...) are able to economically survive and prosper. The majority of studied enterprises either resisted pressures toward degeneration or subsequently regenerated after undergoing degenerative processes. Only 9.5% fully degenerated in accordance with the degeneration thesis and the “iron law of oligarchy”, while 27.0% of the democratic enterprises showed diverse and mixed forms of degeneration tendencies, indicating that the notion of an “iron law” needs to be revised. Within the nine investigated cases of Mondragon not one single enterprise or group fully degenerated. Three cases showed degenerative tendencies, another three one degeneration tendencies and simultaneously regeneration, one case fully resisted degeneration tendencies and two cases regenerated. Further, this systematic review provides an overview of organizational and external conditions, non-/democratic or non-/participative practices and psychological phenomena that contribute to the degeneration, regeneration, or resistance to degeneration. The described examples of such practices may help practitioners to implement and maintain democratic structures and processes in contemporary organizations. (shrink)

The now classical idea that programmed cell death contributes to a plethora of developmental processes still has lost nothing of its impact. It is, therefore, important to establish effective three-dimensional reconstruction as well as simulation techniques to decipher the exact patterns and functions of such apoptotic events. The present study focuses on the question whether and how apoptosis promotes neurulation-associated processes in the spinal cord of Tupaia belangeri. Our 3D reconstructions demonstrate that at least two craniocaudal waves of apoptosis consecutively (...) pass through the dorsal spinal cord. The first wave appears to be involved in neural fold fusion and/or in selection processes among premigratory neural crest cells. The second one seems to assist in establishing the dorsal signaling center known as the roof plate. In the hindbrain, in contrast, apoptosis among premigratory neural crest cells progresses craniocaudally but discontinuously, in a segment-specific manner. Unlike apoptosis in the spinal cord, these segment-specific apoptotic events, however, precede later ones that seemingly support neural fold fusion and/or postfusion remodeling. Arguing with Whitehead that biological patterns and rhythms differ in that biological rhythms depend “upon the differences involved in each exhibition of the pattern” we show that 3D reconstruction and simulation techniques can contribute to distinguish between patterns and rhythms of apoptosis. By deciphering novel patterns and rhythms of developmental apoptosis, our reconstructions help to reconcile seemingly inconsistent earlier findings in chick and mouse embryos, and to create rules for computer simulations. (shrink)

What are the relationships between philosophy and the history of philosophy, the history of science and the philosophy of science? This selection of essays by Lorenz Krüger (1932-1994) presents exemplary studies on the philosophy of John Locke and Immanuel Kant, on the history of physics and on the scope and limitations of scientific explanation, and a realistic understanding of science and truth. In his treatment of leading currents in 20th century philosophy, Krüger presents new and original arguments for a deeper (...) understanding of the continuity and dynamics of the development of scientific theory. These result in significant consequences for the claim of the sciences that they understand reality in a rational manner. The case studies are complemented by fundamental thoughts on the relationship between philosophy, science, and their common history. (shrink)

These 13 essays by noted American and German scholars provide a focused discussion of many of the issues raised by the integration of philosophical and psychological theories of moral development. The essays pivot around two key contributions, by Lawrence Kohlberg and his associates and by JA1⁄4rgen Habermas. Kohlberg's major work was a description of the stages of development of moral understanding in children. This book contains the final formulation of his view of the end point of moral development (Stage 6). (...) Habermas's insightful response to that formulation, which seeks to fit Kohlberg's perceptions into the framework of a communicative ethics, is an important extension of his own moral theory. In three parts, the essays map out the relationship between philosophy and psychology in the study of the moral domain, explore the way the moral point of view is understood within Kohlberg's cognitive-developmental model, and discuss the place of moral development in terms of various models of personality and decision making. The contributors are Augusto Blasi, Dwight R. Boyd, Rainer Dobert, Wolfgang Edelstein, JA1⁄4rgen Habermas, Helen Haste, Monika Keller, Lawrence Kohlberg, Charles Levine, Mordecai Nisan, Gil G. Noam, Gertrud Nunner-Winkler, Bill Puka, Ernst Tugendhat, and Thomas E. Wren. Thomas E. Wren is Professor of Philosophy at Loyola University of Chicago. The Moral Domain is included in the series Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought, edited by Thomas McCarthy. (shrink)

Selected papers from the sections of the eighth international conference organized by the Society for Analytic Philosophy (GAP), Constance, Germany, September 17-20, 2012. The overall theme of the conference was "What may we believe? What ought we to do?", but the papers published here address a wide variety of questions from many fields of philosophy.

Peer review is a widely accepted instrument for raising the quality of science. Peer review limits the enormous unstructured influx of information and the sheer amount of dubious data, which in its absence would plunge science into chaos. In particular, peer review offers the benefit of eliminating papers that suffer from poor craftsmanship or methodological shortcomings, especially in the experimental sciences. However, we believe that peer review is not always appropriate for the evaluation of controversial hypothetical science. We argue that (...) the process of peer review can be prone to bias towards ideas that affirm the prior convictions of reviewers and against innovation and radical new ideas. Innovative hypotheses are thus highly vulnerable to being “filtered out” or made to accord with conventional wisdom by the peer review process. Consequently, having introduced peer review, the Elsevier journal Medical Hypotheses may be unable to continue its tradition as a radical journal allowing discussion of improbable or unconventional ideas. Hence we conclude by asking the publisher to consider re-introducing the system of editorial review to Medical Hypotheses. (shrink)

This volume offers the first English language collection of academic essays on the post-Holocaust thought of Jean Améry, a Jewish-Austrian-Belgian essayist, journalist and literary author. Comprehensive in scope and multi-disciplinary in orientation, contributors explore central aspects of Améry's philosophical and ethical position, including dignity, responsibility, resentment, and forgiveness.

In seinem Werk "Philosophie als Lebensform" vertritt Pierre Hadot (1922-2010) die These, dass die Philosophie bis zu Beginn der hochmittelalterlichen Scholastik nicht primar Wissenschaft mit Anspruch auf systematische Stimmigkeit und Objektivitat sei, sondern auf einen psychologisch-padagogischen Effekt fur die Lebenspraxis abziele: Die Philosophie der hellenistischen und romischen Epoche stellt sich als eine Lebensweise, eine Lebenskunst und eine Seinsweise dar. Es geht darum, das Sein des Menschen zu verwandeln und ihm zum Gluck zu verhelfen. Das fruhe Christentum sowie das mittelalterliche Monchtum (...) knupften daran an und verstanden das spirituelle Leben als philosophia, die durch die Praxis geistiger Ubungen in Christus den alten Menschen ablegt und den neuen anzieht (vgl. Eph 4,22-24). In der Mystik, die seit Dionysius Areopagita (ca. 500 n. Chr.) zu einem expliziten Inhalt des Denkens wird, spitzt sich dieses Spannungsverhaltnis zwischen Theorie und Praxis zu. Per definitionem ist Mystik eine uberwaltigende Erfahrung, die alle Affekte involviert. Aber genau diese Erfahrung wird schon in der vorchristlichen griechischen Philosophie zum Inhalt einer rationalen Reflexion. Dementsprechend oszilliert der Begriff einer theologia mystica zwischen unmittelbarem Erleben und systematischer Theorie. Mit Beitragen von Rolf Darge, Lioba Fau OSB, Paul D. Hellmeier OP, Johannes Herzgsell SJ, William J. Hoye, Johann Kreuzer, Isabelle Mandrella, Johannes Schaber OSB, Christian Schafer, Peter Sloterdijk, Wolfgang Speyer und Martin Thurner. (shrink)

Neuroscience is a multidisciplinary effort to understand the structures and functions of the brain and brain-mind relations. This effort results in an increasing amount of data, generated by sophisticated technologies. However, these data enhance our descriptive knowledge, rather than improve our understanding of brain functions. This is caused by methodological gaps both within and between subdisciplines constituting neuroscience, and the atomistic approach that limits the study of macro- and mesoscopic issues. Whole-brain measurement technologies do not resolve these issues, but rather (...) aggravate them by the complexity problem. The present article is devoted to methodological and epistemic problems that obstruct the development of human neuroscience. We neither discuss ontological questions nor review data, except when it is necessary to demonstrate a methodological issue. As regards intradisciplinary methodological problems, we concentrate on those within neurobiology and psychology. As regards interdisciplinary problems, we suggest that core disciplines of neuroscience can be integrated using systemic concepts that also entail human-environment relations. We emphasize the necessity of a meta-discussion that should entail a closer cooperation with philosophy as a discipline of systematic reflection. The atomistic reduction should be complemented by the explicit consideration of the embodiedness of the brain and the embeddedness of humans. The discussion is aimed at the development of an explicit methodology of integrative human neuroscience, which will not only link different fields and levels, but also help in understanding clinical phenomena. (shrink)

The progress of electronic health technologies and biobanks holds enormous promise for efficient research. Evidence shows that studies based on sharing and secondary use of data/samples have the potential to significantly advance medical knowledge. However, sharing of such resources for international collaboration is hampered by the lack of clarity about ethical and legal requirements for transfer of data and samples across international borders. Here, the International Clinical Trial Center Network reports the legal and ethical requirements governing data and sample exchange (...) across four continents. The most recurring requirement is ethical approval, whereas only in specific conditions approval of national health authorities is required. Informed consent is not required in all sharing situations. However, waiver of informed consent is only allowed in certain countries/regions and under certain circumstances. The current legal and ethical landscape appears to be very complex and under constant evolution. Regulations differ between countries/regions and are often incomplete, leading to uncertainty. With this work, ICN illuminates the unmet need for a single international collaborative framework to facilitate DSE. Harmonising requirements for global DSE will reduce inefficiency and waste in research. There are many challenges to realising this ambitious vision, including inconsistent terminology and definitions, and heterogeneous and dynamic legal constraints. Here, we identify areas of agreement and significant difference as a necessary first step towards facilitating international collaboration. We propose the establishment of a working group to continue the comparison across jurisdictions, create a standardised glossary and define a set of basic principles and fundamental requirements for DSE. (shrink)

Theories of the nature of time offered by anthropology, science, and religion are not only numerous but also very different. This groundbreaking book cuts through the confusion by introducing a provocative new tripolar model of time that integrates the human, natural, and religious dimensions of time into a single, harmonious whole. Wolfgang Achtner, Stefan Kunz, and Thomas Walter begin by exploring the structures of time in anthropological terms. They discuss time phenomenologically, showing how it can be experienced in (...) three distinct ways -- the mythic-cyclic, the rational-linear, and the mystic-holistic -- and they root these experiences in the findings of modern neuroscience and trace these three forms of the perception of time within various cultures of antiquity. The second part of the book looks at time as it has been described by some of sciences most profound theories, including classical mechanics, the special and general theories of relativity, quantum mechanics, thermodynamics, and chaos theory. The authors then bring religion into the equation by surveying how time is conceived in both the Hebrew Bible and the Christian New Testament. They distinguish time concepts in wisdom and apocalyptic literature from time concepts in prophetic literature, and they demonstrate the basic eschatological orientation of the Christian view of time. "Dimensions of Time culminates by tying together the various strands of the authors' multidisciplinary, tripolar model of time. Offering a fascinating application of their unique theory, Achtner, Kunz, and Walter show how the unhealthy acceleration of life in contemporary society needs to be balanced by a rediscovery ofthe mystical experience of time, leading to a greater, deeper sense of human fulfillment. (shrink)