To further comprehend how synthesis and assembly of myofibrillar components is regulated, several laboratories have undertaken genetic studies of muscle development in Drosophila melanogaster. This small fly lends itself well to classical and molecular genetic approaches, and possesses a set of muscle fibers, termed indirect flight muscles (IFM), which is particularly advantageous for such investigations. Structural and functional analyses of cloned Drosophila contractile protein genes have revealed that protein isoforms can be specified either by multigene families or by differentially splicing (...) primary transcripts of a single gene. Characterization of mutations which disrupt flight muscle development has so far revealed that profound abnormalities are caused by defective alleles of actin, tropomyosin, and myosin heavy‐chain genes. Muscle defects associated with particular alleles can be alleviated by integration of corresponding wild‐type gene copies into germ‐line chromosomes. Strategies for further applying genetic techniques to investigations of Drosophila muscle development are discussed. (shrink)

What does it mean to say that a particular war is just or unjust, that terrorism is always wrong, or that torture can sometimes be morally justified? What are the moral bases for the possession or use of nuclear weapons, intervening in other nations' civil wars, or being a bystander to genocide? Such questions take us to the heart of what is morally right and wrong behaviour in our world. Global Violence: Ethical and Political Issues provides readers with the analytical (...) tools to better understand the suppositions that underlie the debates about such questions, as well as equipping them to advance their own reasoned and informed moral analyses of these topics. The book engages different normative approaches from the fields of ethics, international relations and political philosophy and uses them to examine a set of case studies on the subjects of inter-state and civil war, nuclear weapons, terrorism, torture and genocide. (shrink)

Human rights law does not appear to enjoy as high a level of compliance as the laws of war, yet is institutionalized to a greater degree. This Article argues that the reason for this difference is related to the strategic structure of international law. The laws of war are governed by a regime of reciprocity, which can produce selfenforcing patterns of behavior, whereas the human rights regime attempts to produce public goods and is thus subject to collective action problems. The (...) more elaborate human rights institutions are designed to overcome these problems but fall prey to second-order collective action problems. The simple laws of war institutions have been successful because they can exploit the logic of reciprocity. The Article also suggests that limits on military reprisals are in tension with self-enforcement of the laws of war. The U.S. conflict with Al Qaeda is discussed. (shrink)

The paper addresses the question whether ‘self-mediated risk’ – risk whose coming-to-fruition depends on future volitional conduct by the actor himself – bears on the wrongfulness of an actor's present conduct. Moral philosophers have long been divided on this question. ‘Actualists’ take the view that an actor's present moral obligations do, in fact, depend on what he or she actually is likely to do in the future. In contrast, ‘possibilists’ take the view that an actor's present obligations depend only on (...) what he or she will have the capacity to do in the future. This paper argues that actualism better captures the morality that underlies the criminal law. The paper also explores actualism's implications for criminal law. Among these is the implication that the locus of moral fault in criminal cases sometimes is temporally removed from the conduct that triggers the assignment of blame. (shrink)

The American Urological Association (AUA) and American College of Surgeons (ACS) codes of professionalism require surgeons to disclose the specific roles and responsibilities of trainees to patients during the informed consent process. The objective of this study is to analyze how these requirements are met by urology training programs. An anonymous electronic survey was distributed to the program directors (PDs) of the 143 Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education urology residency programs in the United States in 2021. Information was collected (...) regarding program demographics, aspects of the program’s consent process, and the disclosure to patients of the role and participation of residents in their surgery. There were 49 responses to the survey (34.3% response rate). Nearly 70 percent of PDs reported that attending physicians lead the consent process. The topics covered during consent discussion include possible complications (25%), expected recovery time (23%), length of the surgery (22%), the people involved (18%), and their specific roles (7%). Many PDs do not explicitly discuss trainee involvement (48.8%) or when a resident is to perform the majority of the case (87.8%). The majority of PDs (78.8%) communicate medical student involvement, but 73.2 percent reported having a patient decline participation of a trainee after describing their role. Despite the AUA and ACS codes of professionalism, many urologists do not disclose resident involvement in surgery to patients. Further discussions are needed to explore how to better balance resident education and patient autonomy. (shrink)

Although much legal scholarship discusses the meaning of the religion clauses of the U.S. Constitution, very few articles analyze the ways in which state regulation affects actors' incentives to engage in religious behavior. Yet the question of how a law influences religious behavior is important for determining whether various laws are desirable, and whether they violate constitutional constraints. This article draws on recent economic models of religious organization to analyze the ways in which laws affect the behavior of religious groups. (...) Religious groups produce collective goods for their members, and the effect of laws can be analyzed by examining how they modify the payoffs members receive for cooperating or free riding. The article examines the use of laws to establish religious groups, to subsidize them with cash or tax benefits, to provide accommodations for them, to provide symbolic support for them, to provide secular substitutes for the collective goods they produce, and to regulate disputes between members. The article also briefly discusses the constitutional implications of the analysis. (shrink)

We are encouraged by the attention paid to fundamental aspects relating to the interpersonal functions of emotion. In continuing this discussion, we consider two arguments used to distinguish social referencing and social appraisal, namely the role of ostension and the absence of prior appraisals of the individual. We contend that neither element is essential to social referencing.

In 1864 - two years before the publication of The Communist Manifesto and 21 years before the publication of Das Kapital - Karl Marx published an essay titled Peuchet on Suicide. The essay was originally presented as a translation of excerpts from the memoirs of Jacques Peuchet, a leading French police administrator, economist and statistician. Plaut and Anderson reveal that Marx's Peuchet on Suicide is not a straightforward translation, but is an edited version in which Marx adds passages of his (...) own, altering the emphasis of the text from a moral and psychological focus to a profoundly social one. Thus, the essay very strongly reflects Marx's own position on this controversial subject. Sociologist Kevin Anderson provides an extensive introduction situating the essay in the context of Marx's work, especially that on gender; Plaut's essay focuses on the psychological aspects of the work, in particular contrasting Marx's thoughts on suicide with those of Freud and Durkheim. (shrink)

Climate change and justice are so closely associated that many people take it for granted that a global climate treaty should--indeed, must--directly address both issues together. But, in fact, this would be a serious mistake, one that, by dooming effective international limits on greenhouse gases, would actually make the world's poor and developing nations far worse off. This is the provocative and original argument of Climate Change Justice. Eric Posner and David Weisbach strongly favor both a climate change agreement (...) and efforts to improve economic justice. But they make a powerful case that the best--and possibly only--way to get an effective climate treaty is to exclude measures designed to redistribute wealth or address historical wrongs against underdeveloped countries. In clear language, Climate Change Justice proposes four basic principles for designing the only kind of climate treaty that will work--a forward-looking agreement that requires every country to make greenhouse--gas reductions but still makes every country better off in its own view. This kind of treaty has the best chance of actually controlling climate change and improving the welfare of people around the world. (shrink)

The cost of health care, its growing share of the gross domestic product, and dire predictions about the future are a major political and economic issue in the U.S. The American legal system is commonly viewed as a significant part of the problem, particularly by those who believe that medical providers engage in defensive medicine in an effort to avoid malpractice litigation. Yet scholars and commentators in the U.S. have shown relatively little interest in how other nations manage legal conflict (...) over health care and whether they might learn something from abroad about the relationship between malpractice litigation and the health care system more generally.To that end, this article analyzes the Japanese health care experience, specifically the management of what are variously called adverse outcomes, medical accidents, and medical malpractice. How frequently do Japanese patients sue their doctors? Are medical malpractice litigation rates in Japan rising? If so, what is being done to control the increase and its impact on medical care? How well is Japan doing when it comes to balancing the needs of patients who believe they are victims of medical negligence with those of providers who think they are being unfairly accused? These are the questions, about Japan, that need to be asked by those interested in the nexus of law and health care in the U.S. (shrink)

Sexually reproducing metazoans establish a cell lineage during development that is ultimately dedicated to gamete production. Work in a variety of animals suggests that a group of conserved molecular determinants act in this germ line maintenance and function. The most universal of these genes are Vasa and Vasa‐like DEAD‐box RNA helicase genes. However, recent evidence indicates that Vasa genes also function in other cell types, distinct from the germ line. Here we evaluate our current understanding of Vasa function and its (...) regulation during development, addressing Vasa's emerging role in multipotent cells. We also explore the evolutionary diversification of the N‐terminal domain of this gene and how this impacts the association of Vasa with nuage‐like perinuclear structures. (shrink)

The mutations that cause many forms of inherited retinal degenerations have been identified, yet the mechanisms by which these mutations lead to death of photoreceptor cells of the retina are not completely understood. Investigations of the pathways from mutation to retinal degeneration have focused on spontaneous and engineered animal models of disease. Based on the studies performed to date, four major categories of degeneration mechanism can be identified. These include disruption of photoreceptor outer segment morphogenesis, metabolic overload, dysfunction of retinal (...) pigment epithelial cells, and chronic activation of phototransduction. Future investigations will likely identify additional mechanisms of photoreceptor damage. This review will summarize what has been learned from studying animal models of non-syndromic inherited retinal degenerations. BioEssays 23:605–618, 2001. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (shrink)

Justice, Sustainability, and Security not only enhances our knowledge of these issues, but it teases out our moral dimensions and offer prescriptions for how governments and global actors might craft their policies to better consider their effects on the global human condition.

The “reward” systems described by Rolls are systems for drive-reinforced associations of contact and distant stimuli and not for emotional behaviours. The neural systems delineated may be associated with distinct categories of “affect,” namely “hedonic feelings,” “moods,” and “emotions.” Awareness of these affects requires external perceptual as well as internal feedback. Levels of feedback in evolution and development suggest sensory qualia may not require language.

In most U.S. jurisdictions, clinicians providing informal “curbside” consults are protected from medical malpractice liability due to the absence of a doctor-patient relationship. A recent Minnesota Supreme Court case, Warren v. Dinter, offers the opportunity to reassess whether the majority rule is truly serving the best interests of patients.

Social referencing informs and regulates one’s relation with the environment as a function of the perceived appraisals of social partners. Increased emphasis on relational and social contexts in the study of emotion makes this interpersonal process particularly relevant to the field. However, theoretical conceptualizations and empirical operationalizations of social referencing are disjointed across domains and populations of study. This article seeks to unite and refine the study of this construct by providing a clear and comprehensive definition of social referencing. Our (...) perspective presents social referencing and social appraisal as coterminous processes and emphasizes the importance of a relational and interpersonal approach to the study of emotion. We conclude by outlining possible lines of research on this construct. (shrink)

To date, emotion research has primarily focused on the experience and display of the emoter. However, of equal, if not more, importance is how such displays impact and guide the behavior of an observer. We incorporate a functionalist framework of emotion to examine the development of differential responding to discrete emotion, theorize on what may facilitate its development, and hypothesize the functions that may underlie such behavioral responses. Although our review is focused primarily on development, the theoretical and methodological ideas (...) laid out are relevant for researchers of emotion at all ages. (shrink)

Cost-benefit analysis is a widely used governmental evaluation tool, though academics remain skeptical. This volume gathers prominent contributors from law, economics, and philosophy for discussion of cost-benefit analysis, specifically its moral foundations, applications and limitations. This new scholarly debate includes not only economists, but also contributors from philosophy, cognitive psychology, legal studies, and public policy who can further illuminate the justification and moral implications of this method and specify alternative measures. These articles originally appeared in the Journal of Legal Studies. (...) Contributors: - Matthew D. Adler - Gary S. Becker - John Broome - Robert H. Frank - Robert W. Hahn - Lewis A. Kornhauser - Martha C. Nussbaum - Eric A. Posner - Richard A. Posner - Henry S. Richardson - Amartya Sen - Cass R. Sunstein - W. Kip Viscusi. (shrink)

Despite the bad press, Plato has a valid argument for immortality from three premises: (1) if the natural evil of a thing cannot destroy it, then it is indestructible; (2) the natural evil of the soul is vice; and (3) vice cannot destroy the soul. These premises are contestable, of course, but Plato has some good reasons for advancing them.

With The Perils of Global Legalism, Eric A. Posner explains that such views demonstrate a dangerously naive tendency toward legalism—an idealistic belief that ...

New communication technologies such as the microcomputer, videotex/teletext systems, the videocassette recorder, and satellite receiving dishes have been available to farmers since the early 1980s. This longitudinal study examines ethical issues associated with the impact that differential patterns of adoption and use of these technologies have had on inequalities among farmers from 1982 to 1989. The results demonstrate a strong adoption and use bias toward larger scale farmers who already have well-developed skills for handling information. This bias is especially strong (...) for microcomputer and videotex/teletext systems, and it isincreasing over time. Although the same farmers are not adopting all communication innovations, there is a strong tendency toward the already information-rich making the most use of the innovations they adopt. The article concludes with several recommendations that would help minimize some of these information inequalities. (shrink)

For over 700 years scholastic theologians of varying degrees of allegiance to the text(s) of Thomas Aquinas have discoursed on the mystery of Christ's being (esse): Did Christ have one or two acts of existence? Yet despite this frequent and recurring quaestio, nevertheless only a handful of scholastic commentators pause to note that this is not simply a debate between rival scholastic ‘schools’ in regard to a theological mystery, but that in fact there is an inconsistency within the Angelic doctor's (...) own texts. And while in more recent scholarship this discrepancy has not only been noticed but explicated in various ways, nevertheless it is the contention of this paper that a satisfactory exposition of the meaning of esse secundarium has not yet been achieved. Consequently, I propose in this paper that esse secundarium is the created, substantial, but absolutely supernatural participation of the human nature of Jesus in the uncreated communication of the divine esse of the Word and provide a robust textual defense of this interpretation. (shrink)

Attempts to explain emotion typically emphasize the interaction of evolutionary and socialization processes. However, in describing this interplay the role of the person is typically underemphasized or unaccounted for. This paper lays out empirical and theoretical rationale for considering the person as a major contributor to emotion generation and development.

Armed reprisals are the limited use of military force in response to unlawful actions perpetrated against states. Historically, reprisals provided a military remedy for states that had been wronged by another state without having to resort to all-out war in order to counter or deter such wrongful actions. While reprisals are broadly believed to have been outlawed by the UN Charter, states continue to routinely undertake such self-help measures. As part of the roundtable, “The Ethics of Limited Strikes,” this essay (...) examines the doctrine of armed reprisals in light of recent instances of states using force “short of war” in this manner. We argue that the ban on reprisals has been largely ignored by states, and that recent attempts to apply the laws of armed conflict to the cyber domain are further weakening this prohibition. We conclude that this is a potentially dangerous development that lowers the bar for resorting to military force, risking escalation and thereby further destabilizing the international system. (shrink)