Mentoring Away the Glass Ceiling in Academia: A Cultured Critique describes how women of diverse backgrounds perceive their mentoring experiences or the lack of mentoring experiences in the academy. This book provides a space for envisioning strategies and practices to improve mentoring practices and the collegiate environment.

The sex‐determining genes of fungi reside at one or two specialised regions of the chromosome known as the mating type (MAT) loci. The genes are sufficient to determine haploid cell identity, enable compatible mating partners to attract each other, and prepare cells for sexual reproduction after fertilisation. How conserved are these genes in different fungal groups? New work1 seeks an answer to this question by identifying the sex‐determining regions of an early diverged fungus. These regions bear remarkable similarity to those (...) described in other fungi, but the sex proteins they encode belong to only a single class of transcription factor, the high mobility group (HMG), indicating that these are likely to be ancestral to other proteins recruited for fungal sex. BioEssays 30:711–714, 2008. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Current textbooks in formal semantics are all versions of, or introductions to, the same paradigm in semantic theory: Montague Grammar. Knowledge of Meaning is based on different assumptions and a different history. It provides the only introduction to truth- theoretic semantics for natural languages, fully integrating semantic theory into the modern Chomskyan program in linguistic theory and connecting linguistic semantics to research elsewhere in cognitive psychology and philosophy. As such, it better fits into a modern graduate or undergraduate program in (...) linguistics, cognitive science, or philosophy. Furthermore, since the technical tools it employs are much simpler to teach and to master, Knowledge of Meaning can be taught by someone who is not primarily a semanticist. Linguistic semantics cannot be studied as a stand-alone subject but only as part of cognitive psychology, the authors assert. It is the study of a particular human cognitive competence governing the meanings of words and phrases. Larson and Segal argue that speakers have unconscious knowledge of the semantic rules of their language, and they present concrete, empirically motivated proposals about a formal theory of this competence based on the work of Alfred Tarski and Donald Davidson. The theory is extended to a wide range of constructions occurring in natural language, including predicates, proper nouns, pronouns and demonstratives, quantifiers, definite descriptions, anaphoric expressions, clausal complements, and adverbs. Knowledge of Meaning gives equal weight to philosophical, empirical, and formal discussions. It addresses not only the empirical issues of linguistic semantics but also its fundamental conceptual questions, including the relation of truth to meaning and the methodology of semantic theorizing. Numerous exercises are included in the book. (shrink)

This collection of original essays on Yoga in honour of Professor Gerald James Larson provides fascinating new insights into the yoga traditions of India as a ...

The way language as a human faculty has evolved is a question that preoccupies researchers from a wide spread of disciplines. In this book, a team of writers has been brought together to examine the evolution of language from a variety of such standpoints, including language's genetic basis, the anthropological context of its appearance, its formal structure, its relation to systems of cognition and thought, as well as its possible evolutionary antecedents. The book includes Hauser, Chomsky, and Fitch's seminal and (...) provocative essay on the subject, 'The Faculty of Language,' and charts the progress of research in this active and highly controversial field since its publication in 2002. This timely volume will be welcomed by researchers and students in a number of disciplines, including linguistics, evolutionary biology, psychology, and cognitive science. (shrink)

Over the past decade AIDS research has turned toward the use of pharmacology in HIV prevention, including pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP): the use of HIV medication as a means of preventing HIV acquisition in those who do not have it. This paper explores the contradictory reasons offered in support of PrEP—to empower women, to provide another risk-reduction option for gay men—as the context for understanding the social meaning of the experimental trials that appear to show that PrEP works in gay men (...) and heterosexual couples but not single women. The PrEP debates reveal the different ideas about “demedicalization” in the earlier gay health and women’s health movements and highlight the relationship between health activism and critique of research ethics in the context of a global pharmaceutical market. (shrink)

The child protection system in France has gradually changed along the lines of the laws enacted in 2002 and 2007 that reasserted the importance of the role played by the parents. Far from condemning the family, it henceforth seeks to provide it with accompaniment so as to ensure the child’s future reintegration. Grounded in psychoanalytical group and family theories, the article investigates the psychic function of the institution and (with case studies to support it) discusses what has to be done (...) to make arrangements within the therapeutic framework for families to make progress and maintain ties despite the absence of direct relations. For it is only after a real period of separation that work on the young person’s psychic group experience will enable the family to move forward. (shrink)

This volume is a “state-of-the-art‘ assessment of comparative philosophy written by some of the leading practitioners of the field. While its primary focus is on gaining methodological clarity regarding the comparative enterprise of “interpreting across boundaries,‘ the book also contains new substantive essays on Indian, Chinese, Japanese, and European thought. The contributors are Roger T. Ames, William Theodore de Bary, Wing-tsit Chan, A. S. Cua, Eliot Deutsch, Charles Hartshorne, Daya Krishna, Gerald James Larson, Sengaku Mayeda, Hajime Nakamura, Raimundo Panikkar, (...) Karl H. Potter, Henry Rosemont, Jr., Ben-Ami Scharfstein, Ninian Smart, Fritz Staal, and Frederick J. Streng. Comparative or cross-cultural philosophy can be seen as a relative newcomer to the field of philosophy. It has its antecedents in the emergence of comparative studies in nineteenth-century European intellectual history, as well as in the sequence of East-West Philosophers’ Conferences at the University of Hawaii, which began in 1939. This book will prove to be of great significance in helping to define a field that is only now becoming fully self-conscious, methodologically and substantively, about its role and function in the larger enterprises of philosophy and comparative studies. (shrink)

The practice of placing men and women in the same hospital room (mixed gender rooms) has been prohibited in the UK National Health Service for over a decade. However, recent research demonstrates that the practice is common and increasing in a major New Zealand public hospital. Reports and complaints show that the practice also occurs in Australia. We argue that mixed gender rooms violate the fundamental human rights of personal security and dignity. The high rates of cognitive impairment, sensory impairment (...) and frailty in hospital wards exacerbates the risk for these violations and subsequent harm. We argue for the adoption of specific national policies prohibiting mixed gender rooms and public reporting of breaches. Importantly, these guidelines can be adopted without compromising the rights of gender minorities. In the long term, hospitals should be built with single occupancy rooms. (shrink)

The United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. A burgeoning human rights movement followed, yielding many treaties and new international institutions and shaping the constitutions and laws of many states. Yet human rights continue to be contested politically and legally and there is substantial philosophical and theoretical debate over their foundations and implications. In this volume, distinguished philosophers, political scientists, international lawyers, environmentalists and anthropologists discuss some of the most difficult questions of human rights (...) theory and practice: what do human rights require of the global economy? Does it make sense to secure them by force? What do they require in jus post bello contexts of transitional justice? Is global climate change a human rights issue? Is there a human right to democracy? Does the human rights movement constitute moral progress? For students of political philosophy, human rights, peace studies and international relations. (shrink)

In Global Justice: A Cosmopolitan Account Gillian Brock makes three important claims: that we have duties of justice to all human beings and not only those with whom we share a state; that our duties to those outside our states are of the same scope and normative weight as our duties to those with whom we share a state; and that the existing framework of international institutions affords us a number of straightforward and accessible means to act on our duties (...) to persons outside our states that we ought to pursue. These claims are important in themselves, but the real interest of Brock’s book lies with the argumentative strategy she uses in support of them. This strategy, which includes emphasizing the compellingness of specific institutional and policy prescriptions and distancing her arguments from debates about the structure and plausibility of Rawlsian internationalism, bears interesting fruit in a number of respects. However, it also raises difficult questions about the coherence of the distinction between cosmopolitanism and nationalism on which Brock relies, and about the value of institutionalist approaches to justice more generally. (shrink)

[P]layers line up in a long line and hold hands. The player at the front of the line is the ‘head’ and the player at the end of the line is the ‘tail’.… The game begins when the head begins to run wildly in any direction, making sharp turns and quick double-backs.… The force created by the twists and turns will often send the tail of the whip flying.… It may be best for the tail to hold on with both (...) hands to keep from flying off the end. Sometimes, however, the tail will go flying no matter how hard they hold on... Be prepared to get dirty if you play this game!--"Crack the Whip: Party Game CentralIf the evolution of American health policy is compared to the children’s game of Crack the Whip, then there is no question that the Medicaid program is the tail of the line. When those at the head of the line start to move. Medicaid receives whatever shocks and unintended consequences result, and when the line “begins to run wildly in any direction,” it receives them faster and harder than the players at the center.Shocks also come from other sources. When the economy slumps, an epidemic arises, or a path in another part of the system becomes a cul-de-sac, new twists and turns occur, with Medicaid absorbing much of the change. (shrink)

Recent events concerning Žižek at the Left Forum in New York have revealed much about the state of the Left. It appears that the Left is weaker than ever before and Žižek’s appeal to return to radical roots, yet also break some Leftist taboos, situates the liberal Left as anxious, insecure and reactionary. It also appears that Žižek is deliberately and steadily undertaking what many have accused him of failing to attain – of not going far enough. Here, Žižek is (...) breaking away from being the poster boy for the liberal Left and refining his commitment to communism through critiquing postmodern representations concerning tolerance, hyper-relativism and culturation. (shrink)

Although some psychoanalysts in the clinical field have criticised Žižek for corrupting Lacan’s teachings, through playing down the importance of the clinical, there is no doubt that Žižek’s scholarship and contribution to psychoanalysis displays mastery of Lacanian theory. Moreover, Žižek has applied this mastery to push theoretical ideas about the subject and social worlds, into public and intellectual debate. For Žižek, Lacan is a master from whom social knowledge as well as knowledge of the social is developed and critiqued. In (...) keeping with Žižek’s ontology, an examination of the intersection of belief with desire reveals the importance of a critical return to ideology that cannot be overlooked, particularly when examining how present social conditions structure an intersection of desire and belief. For Žižek, the contemporary subject believes now more than ever. Žižek positions modern social conditions together with the practices and organisations which maintain ideologies, as structuring the contours of belief. Capitalism, the supposed master of the 20th century, has presented as not so reliable. Might belief be the 21st century master, stepping in to support those ideological forces which intensify the scaffolding of a failing capitalist system? (shrink)

Cultural narratives shape how we think about the world, including how we decide when the end of life begins. Hospice care has become an integral part of the end‐of‐life care in the United States, but as it has grown, its policies and practices have also imposed cultural narratives, like those associated with the “six‐month rule” that the majority of the end of life takes place in the final six months of life. This idea is embedded in policies for a range (...) of care practices and reimbursement processes, even though six months is not always a meaningful marker. In the case of people living with advanced dementia, six months is both too early in the trajectory to facilitate conversations and too late in the trajectory to ensure decision‐making capacity. This essay encourages scholars and policy‐makers to consider how cultural narratives may limit what they think is possible in care for people living with dementia. (shrink)

Breastfeeding remains an understudied topic in research and theorizing about reproductive experience and women's bodies. This article reports on women's experiences of breastfeeding in public as revealed through in-depth interviews with 51 women. The current construction of the good maternal body requires women to carefully manage the performance of breastfeeding in specific ways and with particular attention to the dominant notion of a sexualized rather than nurturing breast. Women accommodate to, and resist, the perceived boundaries of the good maternal body (...) through their breastfeeding behaviors. (shrink)

Chronic poverty comes in a variety of forms. It is multi-dimensional in its causes and multi-dimensional in its impacts . Although poverty "has an irreducible economic connotation," this connotation "does not necessarily imply the primacy of economic factors" . For example, violent conflict, access to land, and social relations of power are among the most important factors in food security . Integration into global economic markets is as likely to be a source of immiseration and impoverishment as it is a (...) solution . Access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation are significantly impacted by displacement and violent conflict and its aftermath; displacement and violent conflict often have an ethnic dimension. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Character of Claus Christmas Crowd Civic Claus Symbol of Supremacy? Common Claus.