Several protective cellular mechanisms protect against the accumulation of reactive oxygen species (ROS) and the concomitant oxidative stress. Therefore, any reduction in glucose or fatty acid flux into cells leading to a decrease in the production of reducing equivalents would also lead to a decreased ROS production and protect cells against oxidative stress. In the presence of insulin, FOXO proteins are localized from the nucleus to the cytoplasm and degraded. An increase in cellular glucose uptake will lead to increased production (...) of ROS. This in turn activates the stress‐responsive Jun‐N‐terminal kinase (JNK), which promotes nuclear translocation of FOXO proteins, upregulating some important target genes including stress resistance. Consequently, insulin resistance should result in decreased cellular ROS production. For this reason, insulin resistance could be a physiological mechanism activated at the cellular level in response to conditions stimulating ROS production and leading to the prevention of oxidative stress, and extension of life. Concerning the whole organism, however, IR is a maladaptive process in the long term causing a diabetic state. BioEssays 29:811–818, 2007. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

We show in this paper that the AGM postulates are too weak to ensure the rational preservation of conditional beliefs during belief revision, thus permitting improper responses to sequences of observations. We remedy this weakness by proposing four additional postulates, which are sound relative to a qualitative version of probabilistic conditioning. Contrary to the AGM framework, the proposed postulates characterize belief revision as a process which may depend on elements of an epistemic state that are not necessarily captured by a (...) belief set. We also show that a simple modification to the AGM framework can allow belief revision to be a function of epistemic states. We establish a model-based representation theorem which characterizes the proposed postulates and constrains, in turn, the way in which entrenchment orderings may be transformed under iterated belief revision. (shrink)

203 surveys were considered complete and were included in the analysis. Written consent was not used by nearly 40% of the researchers.

There is a consensus in the contemporary literature that mindfulness is a kind of attention. From here the literature divides into two opposing camps:the ‘Quietists’ and the ‘Cognitivists’. For the...

Given that health systems research involves different aims, approaches, and methodologies as compared to more traditional clinical trials, the ethical issues present in HSR may be unique or particularly nuanced. This article outlines eight pertinent ethical issues that are particularly salient in HSR and argues that the ethical review process should be better tailored to ensure more efficient and appropriate oversight of HSR with adequate human protections, especially in low- and middle-income countries. The eight ethical areas we discuss include the (...) nature of intervention, types of research subjects, units of intervention and observation, informed consent, controls and comparisons, risk assessment, inclusion of vulnerable groups, and benefits of research. HSR involving human participants is necessary to ensure health systems strengthening and quality of care and to guide public policy intelligently. Health systems researchers must carefully define their intent and goals and openly clarify the values that may influence the premises and design of protocols. As new types of population-level research activities become more commonplace, it is critical that institutional review board and research ethics committee review processes evolve to evaluate these research protocols in ways that address the nuanced features of these studies. (shrink)

Recent work has shown that the input-output behavior of some common machine learning classifiers can be captured in symbolic form, allowing one to reason about the behavior of these classifiers using symbolic techniques. This includes explaining decisions, measuring robustness, and proving formal properties of machine learning classifiers by reasoning about the corresponding symbolic classifiers. In this work, we present a theory for unveiling the _reasons_ behind the decisions made by Boolean classifiers and study some of its theoretical and practical implications. (...) At the core of our theory is the notion of a _complete reason,_ which can be viewed as a necessary and sufficient condition for why a decision was made. We show how the complete reason can be used for computing notions such as sufficient reasons (also known as PI-explanations and abductive explanations), how it can be used for determining decision and classifier bias and how it can be used for evaluating counterfactual statements such as “a decision will stick even if...because....” We present a linear-time algorithm for computing the complete reasoning behind a decision, assuming the classifier is represented by a Boolean circuit of appropriate form. We then show how the computed complete reason can be used to answer many queries about a decision in linear or polynomial time. We finally conclude with a case study that illustrates the various notions and techniques we introduced. (shrink)

The Covid-19 pandemic has created a ‘perfect crisis’ that combined health, ecological and economic crises, resulting in the death of millions of people and the unemployment of others. While states took extraordinary measures to manage the crisis, social scientists tried to make sense of this situation. Early in the pandemic, Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben controversially claimed that states were instrumentalizing the disease to proclaim, “an authentic state of exception”. This study contributes to the criticisms of Agamben through a critical rereading (...) of German legal theorist, Carl Schmitt. The main argument is that Agamben’s approach to the pandemic is too strongly social constructivist, over-philosophical, over-political and a-historical due to his general philosopho-political project. Agamben’s decisionist and over-political approach is derived from his use of Schmitt’s problematic concept of the “state of exception”. However, Agamben’s use is even more problematic because he uses it to analyze various political developments ahistorically, which obliviates the concept’s analytical consistency. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In recent years there has been intense debate regarding the level of medical care provided to ‘standard care’ control groups in clinical trials in developing countries, particularly when the research sponsors come from wealthier countries. The debate revolves around the issue of how to define a standard of medical care in a country in which many people are not receiving the best methods of medical care available in other settings. In this paper, we argue that additional dimensions of the (...) standard of care have been hitherto neglected, namely, the structure and efficiency of the national health system. The health system affects locally available medical care in two important ways: first, the system may be structured to provide different levels of care at different sites with referral mechanisms to direct patients to the appropriate level of care. Second, inefficiencies in this system may influence what care is available in a particular locale. As a result of these two factors locally available care cannot be equated with a national ‘standard’. A reasonable approach is to define the national standard of care as the level of care that ought to be delivered under conditions of appropriate and efficient referral in a national system. This standard is the minimum level of care that ought to be provided to a control group. There may be additional moral arguments for higher levels of care in some circumstances. This health system analysis may be helpful to researchers and ethics committees in designing and reviewing research involving standard care control groups in developing country research. (shrink)

Abstract:This is a phenomenological study of mindfulness, a term commonly used to translate the Pāli term sati, and the practice that can lead to its establishment. It first attempts to account for mindfulness as a way of being-in-the-world. It then uses this description as a contrast to present an alternative and more satisfactory account. According to the alternative account, the practice of cultivating mindfulness is the practice of switching one's mode of being from being-in-the-world to 'nature-naturing'. From a different perspective, (...) this is the practice of tuning-out of our projects (the kind of possibility that is constitutive of being-in-the-world) and tuning-in to 'thingly possibilities' (the kind of possibility that is constitutive of nature-naturing). Mindfulness, the potential fruit of this practice, is the feeling of being tuned-in to naturenaturing and thingly possibilities. The study concludes with a description of how mindfulness gives rise to wisdom, the understanding of things as they are. (shrink)

The modern era has witnessed an extraordinary and unprecedented growth in our empirical knowledge regarding the human body. This raises the question: what, if anything, can phenomenology teach us about the body that the empirical sciences cannot? Whereas common sense and empirical sciences begin from the body as straightforwardly and obviously given and go on from there to think about what this thing is, what it is made up of, and how it originated, phenomenology steps back from the straightforward fact (...) in order to ask: what is the structure of the body as an appearance? This chapter considers how some of the main figures in phenomenology have tried to answer this question. The body is not explicitly discussed in what might be thought of as the two foundational works of phenomenology: Husserl’s Logical Investigations and Heidegger’s Being and Time. Nevertheless, these works set the stage for the subsequent phenomenology of the body by describing the phenomena of multidimensionality and horizontality. Our first task will be to sketch out how these phenomena were described in the foundational works. This sets up our exposition of the body as a multidimensional phenomenon. We consider Husserl’s treatment of the body in Ideas II. We also examine how the Husserlian insights were taken up and developed by Jean-Paul Sartre and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. In conclusion we raise some critical questions regarding a phenomenological focus on the body and its multidimensionality. (shrink)

Özgür istemeyi bir illüzyona dönüştüren deterministik öğelere sahip olan bir ideoloji içerisinde insan varoluşunun anlamsız ve saçma bir nitelik arz edeceğini düşünen Dostoyevski, Yeraltından Notlar’da kurguladığı yeraltı adamı karakteri aracılığıyla, doğa yasalarını temel alan ve Çernişevski gibi materyalist düşünürler tarafından savunulan toplumsal mühendislik fikrinin hiçbir şekilde uygulamaya konulmayacağını göstermek ister. Bunu gerçekleştirmek için dolaylı bir yol izleyen ve yeraltı adamı aracılığıyla determinist bir ideolojinin penceresinden dünyaya bakan bir karakter yaratan Dostoyevski, bu karakterin bakışından hareketle tüm insani edimlerin zorunlu bir nedensellik (...) tarafından belirlendiğini idrak eden bilincin verdiği irrasyonel, çelişkili ve bir anlamda saçma tepkileri gün yüzüne çıkarır. Karşıt olduğu öğretinin perspektifinden bir anlatı ortaya koyan Dostoyevski böylece materyalist bir determinizm ileri süren ideolojiyi adeta içeriden çürütmeye çalışır. Bu makalenin amacı Dostoyevski’nin Yeraltından Notlar’ını takip ederek, istemelerini, arzularını ve seçimlerini özgürce hayata geçiremeyeceğinin bilincine varan yeraltı adamının düştüğü çelişkili varoluşu irdelemek ve böylece determinist öğretilerin kabul edilmesi güç olan pratik sonuçlarını anlaşılır kılmaktır. (shrink)

Turkey; politics and government; foreign economic relations; globalization.

We address in this paper the problem of counting the models of a propositional theory under incremental changes to its literals. Specifcally, we show that if a propositional theory Δ is in a special form that we call smooth, deterministic, decomposable negation normal form, then for any consistent set of literals S, we can simultaneously count the models of Δ ∪ S and the models of every theory Δ ∪ T where T results from adding, removing or flipping a literal (...) in S. We present two results relating to the time and space complexity of compiling propositional theories into sd-DNNF. First, we show that if a conjunctive normal form has a bounded treewidth, then it can be compiled into an sd-DNNF in time and space which are linear in its size. Second, we show that sd-DNNF is a strictly more space efficient representation than Free Binary Decision Diagrams. Finally, we discuss some applications of the counting results to truth maintenance systems, belief revision, and model-based diagnosis. (shrink)

Ways of Being Free: Introduction -- War Is Everything's Father: History and Death as Causes of Existential Angst -- Introduction: Causes of Existential Angst -- Change and Changelessness in Midnight's Children -- The Road of Existential Struggle in The Famished Road -- History and the "Nervous Condition" in The English Patient -- Death as a Drive to Meaningful Existence in Midnight's Children -- Becoming Dead-to-the-World in The English Patient -- Ideological Re-appropriation through Death in The Famished Road -- Authenticity -- (...) Authenticity: Introduction -- From Self-Sufficiency to Inoperative Community in The English Patient -- Revolution Revisited in The Famished Road -- From Communalism to the Comic Absurd in Midnight's Children. (shrink)

The philosophy of religion and theology are related to the culture in which they have developed. These disciplines provide a source of values and vision to the cultures of which they are part, while at the same time they are delimited and defined by their cultures. This book compares the ideas of two contemporary philosophers, John Hick and Seyyed Hossein Nasr, on the issues of religion, religions, the concept of the ultimate reality, and the notion of sacred knowledge. On a (...) broader level, it compares two world-views: the one formed by Western Christian culture, which is religious in intention but secular in essence; the other Islamic, formed through the assimilation of traditional wisdom, which is turned against the norms of secular culture and is thus religious both in intention and essence. (shrink)

Given that health systems research involves different aims, approaches, and methodologies as compared to more traditional clinical trials, the ethical issues present in HSR may be unique or particularly nuanced. This article outlines eight pertinent ethical issues that are particularly salient in HSR and argues that the ethical review process should be better tailored to ensure more efficient and appropriate oversight of HSR with adequate human protections, especially in low- and middle-income countries. The eight ethical areas we discuss include the (...) nature of intervention, types of research subjects, units of intervention and observation, informed consent, controls and comparisons, risk assessment, inclusion of vulnerable groups, and benefits of research. HSR involving human participants is necessary to ensure health systems strengthening and quality of care and to guide public policy intelligently. Health systems researchers must carefully define their intent and goals and openly clarify the values that may influence the premises and design of protocols. As new types of population-level research activities become more commonplace, it is critical that institutional review board and research ethics committee review processes evolve to evaluate these research protocols in ways that address the nuanced features of these studies. (shrink)

This article draws attention to the limited amount of scholarship on what constitutes fairness and equity in resource allocation to health research by individual funders. It identifies three key decisions of ethical significance about resource allocation that research funders make regularly and calls for prioritizing scholarship on those topics – namely, how health resources should be fairly apportioned amongst public health and health care delivery versus health research, how health research resources should be fairly allocated between health problems experienced domestically (...) versus other health problems typically experienced by disadvantaged populations outside the funder's country, and how domestic and non-domestic health research funding should be further apportioned to different areas, e.g. types of research and recipients. These three topics should be priorities for bioethics research because their outcomes have a substantial bearing on the achievement of health justice. The proposed agenda aims to move discussion on the ethics of health research funding beyond its current focus on the mismatch between worldwide basic and clinical research investment and the global burden of disease. Individual funders’ decision-making on whether and to what extent to allocate resources to non-domestic health research, health systems research, research on the social determinants of health, capacity development, and recipients in certain countries should also be the focus of ethical scrutiny. (shrink)

This work develops a phenomenological account of mindfulness, and related phenomena. It is divided into two main parts. The aim of part one is to articulate a pre-phenomenological sketch of mindfulness by drawing on passages from some of the classic works of Western literature and everyday life, through an interpretation of the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta and by the means of a critical analysis of the contemporary attempts to account for these phenomena. Part two adds further detail to the sketch by entering (...) a dialogue with the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl. A key distinctions made here is between the transcendental horizon and the open horizon. This difference allows cultivating mindfulness to be defined as the practice of tuning-out of the transcendental horizon and tuning-in to the open horizon. Mindfulness—the potential fruit of tuning-in-tuning-out—is defined as the feeling of being tuned-in to the open horizon.A key findings of this research is that tuning-in-tuning-out is a difference practice than the phenomenological epoché; whereas the latter discloses the transcendental horizon, the former discloses the open horizon—on which the transcendental horizon is dependent. These findings open up the possibility of a phenomenological description of certain phenomena that are closely related to mindfulness. Some of these phenomena are: Mindful attention, which is defined as the function of foregrounding a sub-horizon within the open horizon and the pushing of the other sub-horizons into the background. Concentration : the narrowing down of the open horizon to one of its sub-horizons. Insight : the activity of isolating a sub-horizon, discerning its thingly possibilities, zooming out, isolating a second sub-horizon and discerning its thingly possibilities, and then contrasting the two in such a way that their difference becomes vividly present. (shrink)

خلصت هذه الدراسة إلى دحض الادعاء بوجود فجوة تاريخية في تطور علم الاقتصاد، حيث تمكن الرواد الأوائل من الاقتصاديين المسلمين من وضع العديد من الأسس الفكرية لعلم الاقتصاد. تسلط هذه الدراسة الضوء على الفترة الزمنية التي تم تجاهلها قصداً أو جهلا لتكشف عن الجذور التاريخية لعلم الاقتصاد الإسلامي وتكشف عن الحلقة المفقودة في تطور علم الاقتصاد منذ القرن الهجري الأول إلى القرن الهجري الخامس، حيث سعت هذه الدراسة إلى نقض ادعاء الريادة الغربية لعلم الاقتصاد من خلال ما عرضته من إسهامات (...) للمفكرين المسلمين الذين سبقوا الاقتصاديين الغربيين بعدة قرون. لقد قام الاقتصاديون المسلمون بتدشين عدد من قواعد علم الاقتصاد، واستخدموا أساليب التحليل الاقتصادي في رصد بعض الظواهر الاقتصادية، وقد قاموا بتسليم إنجازاتهم هذه للبشرية من خلال الصروح العلمية في الأندلس. كذلك لا يزعم مُعدُّ هذه الدراسة أنّ العلماء المسلمين تناولوا جميع القضايا الاقتصادية ولا يدعي بانّهم وضعوا قواعد علم الاقتصاد جملة ولم يغفلوا عن شاردة أو واردة، بل يعترف بأنّ علماء المسلمين الاقتصاديين لم يتناولوا كثيرا من القضايا الاقتصادية المحدثة كالائتمان، والمشتقات المالية، والنقود الالكترونية وما شاكل من المستجدات. لكنه يؤكد إسهام العلماء المسلمين في تطوير الفكر الاقتصادي. (shrink)