Cilia are unique eukaryotic organelles and exhibit remarkable conservation across evolution. Nevertheless, very different types of configurations are encountered, raising the question of their evolution. Cilia are constructed by intraflagellar transport (IFT), the movement of large protein complexes or trains that deliver cilia components to the distal tip for assembly. Recent data revealed that IFT trains are restricted to some but not all nine doublet microtubules in the protist Trypanosoma brucei. Here, we propose that restricted positioning of IFT trains could (...) offer potent options for cilia to evolve towards more complex (addition of new structural elements like in spermatozoa) or simpler configuration (loss of some elements like in primary cilia), and therefore be a driver of cilia diversification. We present two hypotheses to explain how IFT trains could be restricted to some doublets, either by a triage process taking place at the basal body level or by the development of molecular differences between ciliary microtubules. (shrink)

On July 2021, the UK High Court of Justice heard the Case CO/2066/2020 on the application of Heidi Crowter who lives with Down’s syndrome, and Máire Lea-Wilson whose son Aidan has Down’s syndrome. Crowter and Lea-Wilson, with the support of the disability rights campaign, ‘Don’t Screen Us Out’, have been taking legal action against the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (the UK Government) for a review of the 1967 Abortion Act: the removal of section 1(1)(d) making termination (...) of pregnancy lawful for ‘severe’ fetal indications detected after 24 weeks' gestation. On 23 September 2021, the High Court dismissed the claim. This action came at a time when non-invasive prenatal testing (NIPT) was introduced into the NHS England Fetal Anomaly Screening Programme for the trisomies 21, 13 and 18. The implementation of NIPT has been heavily criticised, in particular by ‘Don’t Screen Us Out’ campaigners, for increasing fetal selection and discrimination of people living with disabilities. The case of Crowter and Lea-Wilson echoes debates in other European countries such as in France and Germany, where the introduction of NIPT in the public healthcare system has provoked equally vehement public reactions and discussions. The comparison between these three countries allows contextualising the public discourses around NIPT and the ground for termination of pregnancy in relation to different socio-cultural and political contexts. We examine how each country, and particularly England, deals with the conflict between the principles of promoting the rights of people living with disabilities and preserving women’s reproductive autonomy. (shrink)

In this paper we aim to examine a novel view on distributive justice, i.e. limitarianism, which claims that it is morally impermissible to be rich. Our main goal is to assess the two arguments provided by Ingrid Robeyns in favour of limitarianism, namely the democratic argument and the argument from unmet urgent needs and the two distinct limitarian views which these arguments give rise to. We claim that strong limitarianism, which is supported by the democratic argument, should be rejected as (...) it fails to fully instantiate the value of political equality, while having some other unattractive implications as well. By contrast, we argue that weak limitarianism, which is supported by the argument from unmet urgent needs, should be endorsed, albeit in a qualified version which also takes responsibility constraints into consideration. (shrink)

Like other health care practices, the increasing complexity in dentistry signals the need for a reconceptualisation of dentist professional learning. Professional dental bodies, at large, still privilege formal continuing professional development (CPD) provisions focusing on off-the-job activities despite growing evidence that much invaluable learning occurs through and at work. In exploring the two common dentist CPD approaches, this article critiques the narrow conceptions of learning inscribed in these frameworks, which are individualistic and acquisition oriented. Drawing on a vignette of dentists’ (...) professional practice at work, this paper argues for a shift in discussion from an emphasis on which CPD models work best to what counts as professional learning for dentists. To flesh out these arguments, the paper proposes using an innovative conceptual approach through the lens of ‘complexity thinking’ and the concept of ‘co-present group’. Through this lens, the reframing of thinking brings out two key features of learning: Emergent learning cannot be specified in advance and much significant learning is typically beyond an individual’s learning. Given the learning potentials of group practice and group learning, the paper concludes with suggestions to support dentists’ lifelong learning at work. (shrink)

This study examines Proust's exploitation of classification systems as a means to subvert the notion of a fixed identity, laying bare Proust's radical challenges to the social order and its rigid systems of control. It draws on Judith Butler's theories of performativity to illustrate Proust's precocious portrayal of identity in the entirety of À la Recherche du Temps Perdu as an elusive, unattainable idea that characters pursue yet fail to establish. Soldin contends that Proust does not merely deride characters' behavior, (...) but interrogates their motivations and tendencies, exposing and undermining the social systems that govern human performance and restrict our notion of identity. (shrink)

Une centaine de fragments inédits attribués au plus célèbre représentant de l'Ecole cynique sommeillait depuis près de 2 500 ans sous le doux soleil d'Orient. La voix de Diogène de Sinope, le philosophe-chien, l'homme au tonneau qui embrasse les statues l'hiver, retraverse les âges. Au terme d'une véritable chasse au trésor remontant jusqu'aux penseurs arabes du Xe siècle, Adeline Baldacchino propose pour la première fois en langue française ces nouveaux fragments. On y retrouve avec délice le Diogène insolent dont (...) les paraboles sont si riches d'enseignements. Maître de l'invective, il témoigne de son amour de la vie, de son intransigeance et de sa résistance au pouvoir. Une occasion unique de redécouvrir l'esprit cynique, sa force critique, sa passion pour la liberté et son invraisemblable modernité. (shrink)

Visual processing is thought to function in a coarse-to-fine manner. Low spatial frequencies, conveying coarse information, would be processed early to generate predictions. These LSF-based predictions would facilitate the further integration of high spatial frequencies, conveying fine details. The predictive role of LSF might be crucial in automatic face processing, where high performance could be explained by an accurate selection of clues in early processing. In the present study, we used a visual Mismatch Negativity paradigm by presenting an unfiltered face (...) as standard stimulus, and the same face filtered in LSF or HSF as deviant, to investigate the predictive role of LSF vs. HSF during automatic face processing. If LSF are critical for predictions, we hypothesize that LSF deviants would elicit less prediction error than HSF deviants. Results show that both LSF and HSF deviants elicited a mismatch response compared with their equivalent in an equiprobable sequence. However, in line with our hypothesis, LSF deviants evoke significantly reduced mismatch responses compared to HSF deviants, particularly at later stages. The difference in mismatch between HSF and LSF conditions involves posterior areas and right fusiform gyrus. Overall, our findings suggest a predictive role of LSF during automatic face processing and a critical involvement of HSF in the fusiform during the conscious detection of changes in faces. (shrink)

Une des premières questions du public concernant les Amazones lors de conférences est la suivante : « Mais ces guerrières ont-elles vraiment existé? ». À cette interrogation, j’ai pris l’habitude de répondre qu’il n’y a pas de fumée sans feu, que je ne crois pas (après six années de recherches sur la question) qu’un peuple nommé Amazone, vivant en non-mixité, ait existé en Turquie. Cependant, je suis convaincu.e de l’existence de femmes guerrières peuplant les alentours du monde grec et que...

Today parenthood is becoming a competence. This accentuates parental responsibility. Expertise and consultancy are developing in various scientific fields. It produces parenting standards used by public authorities to conceive services and programs for parents categorized as vulnerable. At the level of the law, persons with learning disabilities are considered vulnerable at the discretion of the judge, and therefore more or less able to protect themselves and defend their interests. However, they may have to protect a child and defend his or (...) her interests, since they have the freedom to become parents. This freedom, which has long been restricted, is now considered possible. Then, services have now to take into account the parenthood of people with learning disabilities. This short report is based on a qualitative study with twelve professionals accompanying these parents or future parents. The author analyzes the tensions and challenges to which professionals are exposed and how they build their expertise. In view of the results and their interest in the professional fields concerned, she envisages innovation perspectives aimed at optimising existing services and programs. (shrink)

Many important criticisms to the possibility of global justice are advanced following one or another operationalization of the Rawlsian concept of a basic structure. The purpose of this paper is twofold: i) to show that the existence of a global basic structure is irrelevant from the standpoint of justice; ii) to set the stage for a cosmopolitan theory of global justice that employs satisficing sufficientarianism as a distributive principle. One of the main contentions is that the institutional-interactional cut in the (...) recent literature should be transcended. That is, the site of justice should be extended to incorporate both the efficiency of discharging one’s duties through a just institutional scheme and the moral value of promoting a good state of affairs through one’s own efforts. In order to avoid the overdemandingness objection, however, the selected principles of justice ought to belong to the sufficientarian family. Towards the end of the paper I sketch one such theory, satisficing sufficientarianism. (shrink)

The theoretical rationale was the author’s Functional Model of Health, where health is construed as a function of creative coping with stress. Participants in the study were 141 patients with blood cancer treated with bone marrow transplantation at the Hematology Clinic, Jagiellonian University Collegium Medicum. Besides a standardized interview the following instruments were used: STAI by Spielberger, CISS and CHIP by Endler and Parker, and SOC-29 by Antonovsky. Health status was operationalized using 10-point self-rating scales to assess the patients’ perceived (...) health and sense of calmness, while their objective health was rated by a medical expert - hematologist. In the statistical analyses significant correlations were found between stress level and the patients’ subjective health. The following variables predicted stress intensity: anxious personality, distraction coping strategy, female sex, and sense of meaningfulness. Subjective health predictors of leukemia patients are: objective health, level of stress, by the patient’s sense of meaningfulness and focusing on negative emotions. To promote patients’ health moreover, their sense of meaningfulness in life and in being active should be supported and enhanced. (shrink)

Unlike other kinds of theories of justice, reparatory justice can only be negatively defined, in non-ideal contexts in which initial wrongs had already been committed. For one, what counts and what does not count as wrongdoing or as an unjust state of affairs resulted from that wrongdoing depends on the normative framework upon which a theorist relies. Furthermore, the measures undertaken for alleviating historical injustices can be assessed only from the vantage point of other, independent normative considerations. In the present (...) paper I argue that this lack of substance is a feature that, far from being problematic, is what makes reparatory justice attractive. The specific example that I put forward is that of a reparatory justice account which seeks to instantiate the desiderata of a sufficientarian theory of justice. At first, distributive justice fills the content of reparatory justice, specifying up to what level reparations in-kind or compensatory measure should go. Afterwards, reparatory justice clarifies and provides epistemic inputs for distributive justice. Reparatory justice thus becomes an epistemic source for distributive justice, in that it provides the means for assessing whether someone’s level of well-being can be traced to her choice or to a wider, historically-sensitive operationalization of her “circumstances”. (shrink)

In this article I defend the capability approach by focusing on its built-in gender-sensitivity and on its concern with comprehensive outcomes and informationally-rich evaluation of well-being, two elements of Sen's work that are too rarely put together. I then try to show what the capability approach would have to gain by focusing on trans-positional objectivity (as Elizabeth Anderson does) and by leaving behind the narrow confines of states in favor of a more cosmopolitan stance. These preliminary discussions are followed by (...) two more precise applications. At first, I show how a gender-sensitive capability approach that respects the criteria of trans-positional objectivity and cosmopolitanism can enhance the agency of women inhabiting third-world societies. I turn next to show how mainstream feminism can insulate itself against criticisms such as bell hooks' by switching to trans-positional objectivity in public reasoning. (shrink)

In the present chapter I try to determine to what extent the public policies adopted by Romanian governments following the fall of the communist regime contributed to alleviating the most egregious past injustice, the Holocaust. The measures taken for memorializing the Holocaust will be analysed through the lens of a mixed reparatory justice – relational egalitarian account. Employing such a framework entails a focus on symbolic reparations, meant to promote civic trust, social solidarity, and encourage the restoration of social and (...) cultural capital in societies affected by historical injustices. Such symbolic reparations can include public atonement, changing street names, establishing memorials, funding museums, including Holocaust study in the national curriculum, setting national days for the commemoration of the Holocaust, etc. The need for symbolic reparation has become increasingly clearer in the literature on Holocaust memorialization, and the present paper intends to go a step further, by providing researchers with a theoretical approach that can be used to make better sense of the effects of measures taken as part of the process of Holocaust remembrance. In the chapter I also address the issue of determining who the duty-bearers should be. I argue that there could be several indicators for reparatory justice, including in this case compensation programs and the establishment of institutions that would allow dialogue between descendants of the victims and descendants of the perpetrators, a sine qua non condition for restoring social trust in communities marked by violations of human rights, especially of such a scale as the Holocaust. (shrink)

In this paper I make a contribution to three distinct, but deeply interwoven subjects. Firstly, I argue that, at the level of ideal theory, the distribution of educational goods should follow a sufficientarian pattern and that the evaluative space of children’s advantage should be inspired by the capability approach. Secondly, the paper is delving into the more policy-oriented debates on the desirability of school choice. I argue that, given the non-ideal circumstances in which decision makers have to act, giving parents (...) the opportunity to choose the school for their children is a sine qua non condition for even approaching the ideals of sufficientarian justice. Lastly, I move the discussion on more empirical grounds, advancing a criticism of the Romanian educational legislation. I argue that the sufficiency-constrained school choice system that I envision could solve some of the problems that the Romanian educational system faces today. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Creating the Conditions for Intergenerational Justice: Social Capital and ComplianceAdelin-Costin DumitruIntroductionSuppose philosophers succeeded in putting forward two equally desirable theories of intergenerational justice. Both of them fare extremely well in regard to either a case-implication critique or a prior-principle strategy of argumentation (with the former requiring us to check the implications of a principle in counterfactual cases, and the latter testing the compatibility of a principle with certain more (...) fundamental values, according to Sen [197]). How are we to decide between them? To the extent that we believe that one of the purposes of political philosophy is to issue achievable and desirable recommendations (Stemplowska 319) or to be action-guiding (Swift 363), we might compare the two by applying a feasibility criterion. Such a criterion indicates that a state of affairs could be realized “if we were to summon sufficient practical will and direct our (individual or collective) efforts in the right direction” (Gheaus 450). In our case, the decision is a relatively easy one: both theories pass a threshold of acceptability and thus we would be morally justified in attempting to bring them about. Furthermore, by stipulation, world A in which theory x were implemented would be equally desirable as world B, in which theory y were implemented. The only distinction would be one concerning their feasibility.Nonetheless, this scenario is usually not one that is available to us. If theories differ based on their desirability as well as their feasibility, how are we to choose? One option would be to choose that moral theory which best satisfies the criteria mentioned by Buchanan, of moral accessibility, feasibility, and accessibility (Justice, Legitimacy). However, feasibility entails not only a static conception of duties, but a dynamic one, in which we postulate that agents have “duties that do not focus merely on what can be done in given [End Page 20] circumstances, but also on how to change circumstances so that new things can be done” (Gilabert and Lawford-Smith 812). In the present article, I argue that taking the idea of dynamic duties seriously requires that we redirect our efforts and resources toward those actions that would maximize the probability of achieving a successful transition from a non-ideal to an ideal state of the world. The argument is that, in the specific context of intergenerational justice, we ought to pay more attention to the matter of social capital extant in a society, if we want to achieve the ends of an intergenerational theory of justice. The concept of social capital puts under the same umbrella distinct features of social life such as networks and civic engagement, the role of reciprocity and trust in building institutions, and the effects that informal rules and institutions have on formal ones (Ostrom and Ahn, “Social Science Perspective” 4). Intuitively, these aspects are relevant for an account of intergenerational justice. The particular way in which they are relevant will be detailed later in this article.The claim that I defend is that the higher the level of social capital in a community, the more probable it will be that individuals are willing to redistribute resources to future generations. The underlying assumption that holds throughout the article is that public justification is important in construing a defense of a conception of justice. I proceed as follows. In the first section, I present an account of social capital. In the second section, I present the literature connecting social capital to political philosophy. In the third section, I argue why developing social capital is a worthwhile goal to pursue if we want to achieve intergenerational justice. The fourth section presents a series of measures that can increase the level of social capital. The fifth section responds to a series of potential objections that could be raised and concludes the paper.The Many Faces of Social CapitalMuch of the intellectual history of the twentieth century was dedicated to institutions and their function in shaping the social, economic, cultural, and political order. In a comprehensive definition put forward by March and Olsen, institutions represent “routines, procedures, conventions, roles, strategies, organizational forms, technologies..., beliefs, paradigms, codes, cultures and knowledge that surround, support, elaborate, and... (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that universities ought to account for the diverse conceptions of the good employed by their students. The complex nature of the good of education, which has both instrumental and intrinsic aspects, means that the modern university should be impartial between students who consume this good for itself or as a means towards more fulfilling goals. The discussion on the intrinsic nature of education follows the line of the Humboldtian perspective. The instrumental benefits considered are the (...) better democratic outcomes reached by having an educated population, the autonomy-facilitating character of higher education and the improvement of marketable skills. I put forward the view that achieving a balance between satisfying the needs of students valuing education intrinsically and those of students valuing it instrumentally is a strategy that should be employed by universities if they aim at regaining their imperiled legitimacy. (shrink)

Publication date: 30 November 2016 Source: Author: Remi Chukwudi Okeke, Adeline N. Idike This study raises some fundamental issues in the relationship between public debt and sustainable national development in Nigeria. The work is significant in highlighting the position of public debt in the subject area of public administration. The study finds a very weak linkage between public debt and sustainable national development in the Nigerian state. The theoretical framework of the investigation is the bureaucratic theory. The work finds (...) that the bureaucracy is as guilty as the politician in the country, in the transmutation of public debt into a brand of national bazaar. It is finally recommended in the paper that taxation-increases be adopted as alternative to public debt, in ensuring that the current generation of the country’s citizens, in meeting their immediate needs do not invariably endanger the capacity of future generations in the same regards. (shrink)

Houston, Texas, is a major U.S. city with, like many, a growing aging population. The purpose of this study and ultimate book chapter is to explore the views and perceptions of long-term care (LTC) residents, family members and health care providers. Individuals primarily in independent living and group residential settings were interviewed and studied. Questions emphasized the concepts of personal autonomy, dignity, quality and location of care and decision making. Although a small sample of participants were involved, consistency was noted. (...) Keeping the elderly in caring and loving home situations (theirs or family) was most preferred. Personal choice and independence were emphasized by residents, but family members needed to act as advocates. We also noted that the legal system emphasizes family control over individual decision making as competency declines with aging. Optimal personal decision making in the residents' best interest also became more difficult with loss of individual mental capacity. (shrink)

In this article I investigate the nature of the moral duties that citizens of a legitimate state have towards emigrants. A large part of the literature dedicated to the normative study of the migration phenomenon focuses on two major topics: the brain drain phenomenon and the legitimacy of restricting immigrations. If the first of these concerns the moral obligations that individuals have towards a state and their co-nationals, the second regards the policies that a state can justifiably adopt in order (...) to manage migration flows. With the exception of temporary labor migration, less discussed in the literature are the moral duties that we have towards those citizens who chose to emigrate. My answer is that a state has neither more, nor less responsibilities towards its emigrants than it has towards the other citizens. However, the particular way that it can discharge those duties have to pay attention to each citizen’s particular situation, so that public policies dealing specifi cally with the emigrants are required. If we embrace a sufficientarian position, we could see how public policies have to be forged in order to be morally justifiable. I compare in the article two potential ways in which a state could try to discharge its moral duties towards emigrants. The first consists in promoting policies that focus on reverse migration. The second is based on cooperating with host societies and ensuring that emigrants’ rights and well-being are protected to the fullest degree. I argue that the second proposal is the one that can be morally defended, and is in line with moral defenses of reformed temporary labor migration programs which would take into account the rights and legitimate interests of migrants (Baubock and Ruhs: 2022). (shrink)

An important branch of neo-republicanism holds that freedom as non-domination is the supreme ideal that should be pursued in a polity. In this paper I set out to better specify what neo-republicanism has to say about education. I propose a series of reforms that ought to track the common avowable interests of children, focusing on two important dimensions: i) establishing a proper institutional framework through which children can effectively influence decisions that will in turn affect them; and ii) how the (...) civic education curricula should be modified so that the institutional framework will be upheld by virtuous future citizens. I then turn to showing how we can employ the neo-republican framework in order to criticise certain lacunae of educational systems and to improve upon these in a manner that would be in line with the desideratum of freedom as non-domination. The particular example that I focus on is that of Romania, a country whose educational legislation contains some minimal stipulations regarding civic education and pupils’ involvement in the decision-making process. Nonetheless, such stipulations either do not go far enough or are indeterminate, which might make them susceptible to implementation in a way that would be detrimental to the pupils’ common avowable interests. (shrink)

When it comes to specifying the moral duties we bear towards future generations, most political philosophers position themselves on what could be regarded as a safe ground. A variant of the Lockean proviso is commonplace in the literature on intergenerational justice, taking the form of an obligation to bestow upon future people a minimum of goods necessary for reaching a certain threshold of well-being (Meyer, 2017). Furthermore, even this minimum is often frowned upon, given the non-identity problem and the challenges (...) this presents to the topic of justice between generations. Additional issues are raised at the level of non-ideal theory, the most significant being the problem of non-compliance (Gosseries and Meyer, 2009).In this paper I intend to probe the limits of “practical political possibility” (Rawls 1999), by inquiring whether embracing the sufficiency view (Frankfurt, 1987; Crisp, 2003; Benbaji, 2005) as a distributive pattern and capabilities as a metric can lead to more burdensome obligations for present generations. More specifically, I try to show that we have a duty to invest in research that aims at prolonging the lifespan of humans (the idea can already be found in the sufficientarian literature, for instance in Farrelly, 2007). Moreover, given the Earth’s limited resources, we ought to encourage the terraforming of other planets in order to make them inhabitable for (future) people.I argue that these two seemingly far-fetched projects are in fact worthwhile goals to pursue on the one hand, and moral obligations on the other hand. Nonetheless, they are not the only ones we ought to take on; for instance, we must simultaneously pursue them and try to improve the prospects of those who fall under a sufficiency threshold here and now. That is, specifying these (prima facie) duties towards future generations is connected with stronger obligations towards the current generation.Towards the end of the paper I engage in a discussion regarding the role of the feasibility constraint in a theory of justice, as rationales pertaining to feasibility are perhaps going to be the most recurrent criticisms raised against my proposal. To that end, I defend limitarian policies, which aim at setting an upper limit to how much money individuals are allowed to possess (Robeyns, 2017; Volacu and Dumitru, 2019). (shrink)

This issue of Itinera collects a selection of the papers presented by the participants of the International Conference "Aesthetics of Emotions. Arts and Cognitive Science" held in October 2016 at the University of Milan. The focus of the conference, on the link between arts, emotions and cognitive sciences, is richly reflected in the themes addressed by the essays, which attempt to put into interdisciplinary dialogue "classical" perspectives of the history of aesthetics with more contemporary perspectives inspired by experimental sciences, in (...) particular psychology, cognitive sciences and the theory of emotions. (shrink)

Les recherches sur les mobilités et les migrations dans l’Antiquité romaine constituent un champ particulièrement dynamique depuis une trentaine d’années. Contrairement à ce qu’il en est pour d’autres périodes historiques, l’approche de ces phénomènes par le prisme du genre demeure en revanche limitée et se concentre sur les pratiques et les identités des femmes en contexte de circulation. Après un bref bilan historiographique, cet article propose une réflexion méthodologique sur les apports et les limites des sources à disposition pour faire (...) l’histoire de ces circulations féminines à la période romaine, en centrant le regard sur le corpus épigraphique. Sont au centre de la réflexion les inscriptions (essentiellement de nature funéraire) de la ville de Rome (fin de la République – Haut-Empire) où sont évoquées des femmes qui ont connu des épisodes de mobilité et sans doute une immigration durable, voire définitive, depuis les provinces de l’empire vers l’Vrbs. (shrink)