Un’originale interpretazione di Lettera a una professoressa che, a mezzo secolo dalla sua uscita, si presta a una rilettura in chiave sociologica. Concetti come “capitale culturale”, “ideologia delle doti”, “violenza simbolica”, “habitus”, “codici linguistici”, ne costituiscono di fatto la cornice teorica.Depurando il priore di Barbiana dalle incrostazioni ideologiche che si sono andate sommando nel tempo, fino a falsarlo sublimandolo in una icona buona per tutti gli utilizzi, anche politici, sottolineandone l’eccezionale statura ma anche i, sia pur pochi, limiti, se ne (...) ottiene una rappresentazione più vicina alla realtà, inquadrata nell’ambito della Chiesa fiorentina del suo tempo. (shrink)

Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR)‐based “active genetic” elements developed in 2015 bypassed the fundamental rules of traditional genetics. Inherited in a super‐Mendelian fashion, such selfish genetic entities offered a variety of potential applications including: gene‐drives to disseminate gene cassettes carrying desired traits throughout insect populations to control disease vectors or pest species, allelic drives biasing inheritance of preferred allelic variants, neutralizing genetic elements to delete and replace or to halt the spread of gene‐drives, split‐drives with the core constituent (...) Cas9 endonuclease and guide RNA (gRNA) components inserted at separate genomic locations to accelerate assembly of complex arrays of genetic traits or to gain genetic entry into novel organisms (vertebrates, plants, bacteria), and interhomolog based copying systems in somatic cells to develop tools for treating inherited or infectious diseases. Here, we summarize the substantial advances that have been made on all of these fronts and look forward to the next phase of this rapidly expanding and impactful field. (shrink)

On December 18, 2014, a yellow female fly quietly emerged from her pupal case. What made her unique was that she had only one parent carrying a mutant allele of this classic recessive locus. Then, one generation later, after mating with a wild‐type male, all her offspring displayed the same recessive yellow phenotype. Further analysis of other such yellow females revealed that the construct causing the mutation was converting the opposing chromosome with 95% efficiency. These simple results, seen also in (...) mosquitoes and yeast, open the door to a new era of genetics wherein the laws of traditional Mendelian inheritance can be bypassed for a broad variety of purposes. Here, we consider the implications of this fundamentally new form of “active genetics,” its applications for gene drives, reversal and amplification strategies, its potential for contributing to cell and gene therapy strategies, and ethical/biosafety considerations associated with such active genetic elements. (shrink)

IntroductionParkinson’s disease patients have a significantly higher risk of developing dementia in later disease stages, leading to severe impairments in quality of life and self-functioning. Questions remain on how deep brain stimulation affects cognition, and whether we can individualize therapy and reduce the risk for adverse cognitive effects. Our aim in this systematic review is to assess the current knowledge in the field and determine if the findings could influence clinical practice.MethodsWe have conducted a systematic review according to PRISMA guidelines (...) through MEDLINE and Embase databases, with studies being selected for inclusion via a set inclusion and exclusion criteria.ResultsSixty-seven studies were included in this systematic review according to the selected criteria. This includes 6 meta-analyses, 18 randomized controlled trials, 17 controlled clinical trials, and 26 observational studies with no control arms. The total number of PD patients encompassed in the studies cited in this review is 3677, not including the meta-analyses.ConclusionCognitive function in PD patients can deteriorate, in most cases mildly, but still impactful to the quality of life. The strongest evidence is present for deterioration in verbal fluency, while inconclusive evidence is still present for executive function, memory, attention and processing speed. Global cognition does not appear to be significantly impacted by DBS, especially if cognitive screening is performed prior to the procedure, as lower baseline cognitive function is connected to poor outcomes. Further randomized controlled studies are required to increase the level of evidence, especially in the case of globus pallidus internus DBS, pedunculopontine nucleus DBS, and the ventral intermediate nucleus of thalamus DBS, and more long-term studies are required for all respective targets. (shrink)

Starting from macroscopic and microscopic facts of cerebellar histology, we propose a new functional interpretation that may elucidate the role of the cerebellum in movement control. The idea is that the cerebellum is a large collection of individual lines (Eccles's : Eccles et al. 1967a) that respond specifically to certain sequences of events in the input and in turn produce sequences of signals in the output. We believe that the sequence-in/sequence-out mode of operation is as typical for the cerebellar cortex (...) as the transformation of sets into sets of active neurons is typical for the cerebral cortex, and that both the histological differences between the two and their reciprocal functional interactions become understandable in the light of this dichotomy. The response of Purkinje cells to sequences of stimuli in the mossy fiber system was shown experimentally by Heck on surviving slices of rat and guinea pig cerebellum. Sequential activation of a row of eleven stimulating electrodes in the granular layer, imitating a of the stimuli along the folium, produces a powerful volley in the parallel fibers that strongly excites Purkinje cells, as evidenced by intracellular recording. The volley, or has maximal amplitude when the stimulus moves toward the recording site at the speed of conduction in parallel fibers, and much smaller amplitudes for lower or higher The succession of stimuli has no effect when they in the opposite direction. Synchronous activation of the stimulus electrodes also had hardly any effect. We believe that the sequences of mossy fiber activation that normally produce this effect in the intact cerebellum are a combination of motor planning relayed to the cerebellum by the cerebral cortex, and information about ongoing movement, reaching the cerebellum from the spinal cord. The output elicited by the specific sequence to which a is tuned may well be a succession of well timed inhibitory volleys the motor sequences so as to adapt them to the complicated requirements of the physics of a multijointed system. (shrink)

This translation of Carlo Michelstaedter’s _Persuasion and Rhetoric_ brings the powerful and original work of a seminal cultural figure to English-language readers for the first time. Ostensibly a commentary on Plato’s and Aristotle’s relation to the pre-Socratic philosophers, Michelstaedter’s deeply personal book is an extraordinary rhetorical feat that reflects the author’s struggle to make sense of modern life. This edition includes an introduction discussing his life and work, an extensive bibliography, notes to introduce each chapter, and critical notes illuminating the (...) text. Within hours of completing _Persuasion and Rhetoric, _his doctoral thesis, 23-year-old Michelstaedter shot himself to death. The text he left behind has proved to be one of the most trenchant and influential studies in modern rhetoric, a work that develops Nietzschean themes and anticipates the conclusions of, among others, Martin Heidegger. Publication of the book in English is an event of great magnitude for students of Italian philosophy, rhetoric, and literature as well as the culture of Mitteleuropa. (shrink)

The development of AAC technologies is of critical importance to the many people who are unable to speak intelligibly due to a communication disorder, and to their many everyday interlocutors. Advances in digital technologies have revolutionized AAC, leading to devices that can “speak for” such individuals as aptly as it is illustrated in the case of the world famous physicist, Stephen Hawking. However, given their dependence on prefabricated language, current AAC devices are very limited in their ability to mediate everyday (...) interactions. We argue here that the limits of AAC are firstly theoretical — grounded in prosthetic models that imagine AAC devices as replacements for damaged body parts and in transmission models of language production as communication. In contrast, our multidisciplinary team aims to design pseudo-intelligent mediators of communication by blending strengths of human mediators with features of current AAC technologies. To inform the design process, we report here our initial situated studies focusing on the distributed nature of everyday communicative activities conducted with potential AAC/PIM users. Our analysis focuses on the discursive alignments of these participants and their interlocutors, attending especially to the various ways their personal aides function as human mediators. Specifically, we focus on mapping the communicative activity around each of these differently-abled individuals as they navigated a university campus. We profile the everyday interactional patterns within functional systems and across settings, and present close discourse analysis of one interaction to highlight the diverse roles personal aides adopted in mediating communication. Finally, we argue that attending to differently “abled” bodies as they move through everyday communicative environments pushes CHAT to more fully theorize physicality, individual mobilities, and the roles of bodies in the laminated assemblage of functional systems. (shrink)

This essay concerns Constant’s classic text The Liberty of the Ancients Compared with that of the Moderns. Although this is a frequently quoted text, what makes reading it still something of an effort is that it contains a baffling shift from the complete exaltation of modern liberty in its first part to the recognition of the significance of political participation in safeguarding modern liberty in its final part. The text is also replete with additional treasures, including Constant’s famous distinction between (...) the liberty of the ancients and that of the moderns and his turn to the basic human capacity of self-development to support his stubborn insistence on the irreducibility of political participation. With regard to the aforementioned shift in the 1819 text, some have argued that in order to reveal the richness of the text we must be aware that its two parts were written under different historical circumstances. Accepting this claim, I argue that the basic tone of the text is Constant’s attempt to combine modern liberty and political participation and that deciphering the argumentative thrust inherent in the text helps reveal its richness. I focus on the centrality of the representative system, which, I argue, plays an important role in Constant’s endeavour to unify the liberty of the moderns and political liberty throughout the text. To see how he defends both the enjoyment of individual interests and the practice of political liberty, it is necessary to recognize the nature of representative assemblies in Constant’s constitutionalism and to characterize his appeal to self-development as a justification of the practice of political liberty. (shrink)

Although our idea of sequential input being a key to cerebellar function was taken seriously by most commentators, there were also objections, based in part on experimental evidence that seems to contradict our intuitions and in part on commentators' preferences for different schemes. Several were suspicious of experiments (performed on slices of cerebellar tissue) that may have severed some of the synaptic connections, particularly the inhibitory ones. It is our feeling that a modi-fication of our theory that could satisfy most (...) critics would not have to be very radical. (shrink)

Este artículo pretende ilustrar la esencia metaética del gnosticismo. En concreto, el rasgo clave del gnosticismo se identifica con la creencia en la ecuación de finitud y mal, es decir, con la definición del mal como "ausencia de bien" (en lugar de "privación de bien"). El ensayo también pretende mostrar cómo esta concepción del mal subyace a una serie de posturas filosóficas y políticas contemporáneas, centrándose en particular en la esencia gnóstica del transhumanismo. En conclusión, se intenta exponer el carácter (...) contradictorio de este gnosticismo "moderno", frente a la coherencia metaética de la escatología cristiana clásica. (shrink)

How does a Muslim jurist think the law and how, accordingly, he judges a fact? Using Alice in Wonderland as hermeneutical device to explore the logic of fiqh, this article identifies a divergence between Western and Islamic legal thinking in the application of abduction as key form of inference in the law of Islam. In particular, looking at the fact/law relation in symbolic terms, the article highlights how, while a dichotomy between fact and law characterizes Western legal thinking, fiqh upholds (...) a connection between the “real” and the “right”, where the effort in understanding sharī‘ah postulates the actualization of the “rule” in God’s creation. Thus, if sharī‘ahpre-scribes the Law, not only is the rule discovered through the sources, but the right has to be justified through a verdict de-scribing the fact, for the law to be validly stated for the given situation. In this sense, abduction as explanatory “hypothesis” and “inference to the best explanation” of sharī‘ah provides an account for the probabilistic nature of fiqh, its ramification through verdicts, as well as for the epistemic and narrative function of the tradition as core aspects of the logic of Islamic law. At the same time, doubts can be raised about the compatibility between this logic and the deductive logic of modern state law, as a sub-product of Western legal thinking. (shrink)

We make some beginning observations about the category Eq of equivalence relations on the set of natural numbers, where a morphism between two equivalence relations R and S is a mapping from the set of R-equivalence classes to that of S-equivalence classes, which is induced by a computable function. We also consider some full subcategories of Eq, such as the category Eq(Σ01) of computably enumerable equivalence relations (called ceers), the category Eq(Π01) of co-computably enumerable equivalence relations, and the category Eq(Dark*) (...) whose objects are the so-called dark ceers plus the ceers with finitely many equivalence classes. Although in all these categories the monomorphisms coincide with the injective morphisms, we show that in Eq(Σ01) the epimorphisms coincide with the onto morphisms, but in Eq(Π01) there are epimorphisms that are not onto. Moreover, Eq, Eq(Σ01), and Eq(Dark*) are closed under finite products, binary coproducts, and coequalizers, but we give an example of two morphisms in Eq(Π01) whose coequalizer in Eq is not an object of Eq(Π01). (shrink)

A poco più di cinque anni dal Colloquio, vengono adesso pubblicati gli Atti. Questi 5 anni hanno segnato un'ulteriore cammino per la ‘questione’ di Santa Maria Antiqua e tra i fatti positivi segnalo subito il restauro della cappella dei Santi Medici, a maggior ragione perché è l'unico ambiente cui non ha rivolto l'attenzione nessuno dei saggi del libro che qui presentiamo. Anche la storiografia ha segnato ulteriori tappe, in primis con il saggio di Beat Brenk, apparso negli Atti spoletini del (...) 2003, con un approfondimento talora sostanziale di quanto esposto in prima battuta in questo volume, ma anche con il saggio di Maria Andaloro sulle icone romane dove offre un secondo caso di quanto la studiosa chiama «l'approfondimento delle individualità materiche e delle specificità esecutive» dei dipinti. (shrink)

This note addresses the issue as to which ceers can be realized by word problems of computably enumerable (or, simply, c.e.) structures (such as c.e. semigroups, groups, and rings), where being realized means to fall in the same reducibility degree (under the notion of reducibility for equivalence relations usually called “computable reducibility”), or in the same isomorphism type (with the isomorphism induced by a computable function), or in the same strong isomorphism type (with the isomorphism induced by a computable permutation (...) of the natural numbers). We observe, e.g., that every ceer is isomorphic to the word problem of some c.e. semigroup, but (answering a question of Gao and Gerdes) not every ceer is in the same reducibility degree of the word problem of some finitely presented semigroup, nor is it in the same reducibility degree of some non‐periodic semigroup. We also show that the ceer provided by provable equivalence of Peano Arithmetic is in the same strong isomorphism type as the word problem of some non‐commutative and non‐Boolean c.e. ring. (shrink)

Traditional just war doctrine holds that political leaders are morally responsible for the decision to initiate war, while individual soldiers should be judged solely by their conduct in war. According to this view, soldiers fighting in an unjust war of aggression and soldiers on the opposing side seeking to defend their country are morally equal as long as each obeys the rules of combat. Revisionist scholars, however, maintain that soldiers who fight for an unjust cause bear at least some responsibility (...) for advancing an immoral end, even if they otherwise fight ethically. This article examines the attitudes of the American public regarding the moral equality of combatants. Utilizing an original survey experiment, we find that the public's moral reasoning is generally more consistent with that of the revisionists than with traditional just war theory. Americans in our study judged soldiers who participate in unjust wars as less ethical than soldiers in just wars, even when their battlefield conduct is identical, and a large proportion supported harsh punishments for soldiers simply for participating in unjust wars. We also find, however, that much of the American public is willing to extend the moral license of just cause significantly further than revisionist scholars advocate: half of the Americans in our survey were willing to allow an unambiguous war crime—a massacre of innocent women and children—to go unpunished when the act was committed by soldiers fighting for a just cause. Our findings suggest that incorporation of revisionist principles into the laws of war would reinforce dangerous moral intuitions encouraging the killing of civilians. (shrink)

The concept of will to power is one of the most important Nietzsche’s theories, that deals with the capacity of a person to face death and the thought of his own sacrifice without any fear, in order to obtain one’s self-overcoming. The so called will to wreck is the most powerful objectification of will to power, and it is deep-rooted in European society, especially German popular ideology. Actually, it is possible to find this conception of will to wreck in connection (...) with will to power in Nibelungenlied, the greatest Nordic poem of 13th century, and, years and years later, in Nazi ideology (and of course Nietzsche himself), as a proof of the temporal continuity of this particular philosophy. A philosophy which is probably part of our psychology, and which is not likely to be easily forgotten though its terrible, destructive power. (shrink)

In their contributions to the symposium “Just War and Unjust Soldiers,” Michael Walzer, Jeff McMahan, and Robert O. Keohane add greatly to our understanding of how best to study and apply just war doctrine to real-world conflicts. We argue, however, that they underestimate both the degree to which the American public seeks revenge, rather than just reciprocity, and the extent of popular acceptance of violations of noncombatant immunity by soldiers perceived to be fighting for a just cause. We call on (...) empirical political scientists, lawyers, psychologists, and historians to engage with moral philosophers and political theorists in debates about the influence of just war theory and the laws of armed conflict. (shrink)

When more scientists describe independently the same species under different valid Latin names, a case of synonymy occurs. In such a case, the international nomenclature rules stipulate that the first name to appear on a peer-reviewed publication has priority over the others. Based on a recent episode involving priority determination between two competing names of the same fungal plant pathogen, this letter wishes to open a discussion on the ethics of scientific publications and points out the necessity of a correct (...) management of the information provided through personal communications, whose traceability would prevent their fraudulent or accidental manipulation. (shrink)

El propósito del presente escrito es hacer un análisis de algunas defensas universalistas sobre el segundo argumento de Z13 el cual niega que el universal pueda ser forma y, de esta manera, que pueda ser substancia primera. El análisis tiene dos momentos: en el primero se sostiene que, basado en la evidencia textual de Z, hay una premisa falsa y esto conduce a que la estructura general de uno de los principales argumentos universalistas sea inconsistente. El segundo momento del análisis (...) consiste en mostrar una serie de distinciones importantes no trazadas del segundo argumento que conducen, nuevamente, a que el argumento universalista no sea consistente. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Klio Jahrgang: 98 Heft: 2 Seiten: 727-729.

In their article “Just War and Unjust Soldiers: American Public Opinion on the Moral Equality of Combatants,” Scott Sagan and Benjamin Valentino have revealed a wealth of information about the views of contemporary Americans on the ethics of war. Virtually all they have discovered is surprising and much of it is alarming. My commentary in this symposium seeks mainly to extract a bit more from their data and to draw a few further inferences. Among the striking features of Sagan (...) and Valentino's data are that the views of Americans tend to cluster at the extreme ends of the spectrum of possible views about the ethics of war, that an apparent sympathy for pacifism coexists with harshly punitive views about the treatment of soldiers, and that few of those surveyed appear to have given any thought to the implications of the views they expressed for what it might be permissible for enemies of the United States to do to captured American soldiers. The commentary concludes by arguing that Sagan and Valentino's findings do not, as they argue, support the fear that is sometimes expressed that a wider acceptance of revisionist just war theory, and in particular its incorporation into the law, would make the practice of war even more barbarous than it already is. (shrink)

This edition faithfully reprints the full text of the classic translation by W.K. Marriott with the translator's introduction. It also includes two additional pieces by Machiavelli. The first provides a fascinating description of the methods of murder adopted by Duke Valentino, and the second is a writing on the life of Castruccio Castracani of Lucca.****** Machiavelli's The Prince is the ultimate guide to power politics and is still considered essential reading for politicians, statesmen and leaders five hundred years after (...) it was written. Shocking in its candor and honesty and disturbing because of its continued relevance to current politics, this is a classic that has truly stood the test of time. (shrink)

The findings reported in the article “Just War and Unjust Soldiers: American Public Opinion on the Moral Equality of Combatants,” by Scott Sagan and Benjamin Valentino, are indeed disturbing, but I am not convinced that they tell us all we need to know about public attitudes. Different questions, those that invite respondents to reflect on the reciprocal nature of practical morality, might reveal very different views of justified and unjustified conduct in war. I believe that these views, regarding, for (...) example, the treatment of prisoners of war, would probably support the idea of the moral equality of soldiers on the battlefield. (shrink)