In heart, the propagation of electrical activity is mediated by intercellular channels, referred to as junctional channels, aggregated into gap junctions and localised between myocytes. These channels consist of structurally related transmembrane proteins, the connexins, three of which (CX43, CX40 and CX45) have been shown to be associated with the myocytes of mammalian heart; a fourth, CX37, was detected exclusively in endothelial cells. In this paper, we review the recent data dealing with the topographical heterogeneity of expression of these connexins (...) in the different cardiac tissues and the unique conductance properties of the channels they form, and attempt to assess the role played by each connexin and the consequences of their multiplicity in the propagation of action potentials. (shrink)

The field of emotion understanding is replete with measures, yet lacks an integrated conceptual organizing structure. To identify and organize skills associated with the recognition and knowledge of emotions, and to highlight the focus of emotion understanding as localized in the self, in specific others, and in generalized others, we introduce the conceptual framework of Emotion Understanding in Recognition and Knowledge Abilities (EUReKA). We then categorize 56 existing methods of emotion understanding within this framework to highlight current gaps and (...) future opportunities in assessing emotion understanding across the lifespan. We hope the EUReKA model provides a systematic and integrated framework for conceptualizing and measuring emotion understanding for future research. (shrink)

The study of alternatives to conventional industrial agricultural production has intensified in recent years. While many types of alternative production systems, and the motivations of individuals to participate in them, have been studied, there are significant gaps in the literature. One such dearth is research on those participating in self-provisioning activities. This study begins to fill the gap by looking at the self-provisioning activity of home gardening using data from the 2008 Ohio Survey of Food, Agriculture, and Environmental Issues. Discerning (...) who household gardeners are is important given the recent economic, cultural, and political climate of the United States. The results show that home gardening occurs throughout the state of Ohio at surprisingly high levels. Bivariate and multivariate analyses reveal several noteworthy associations between gardening and household characteristics, including spatial location, pro-environmental and economic hardship behaviors, and level of participation in localized food systems. (shrink)

This work is an attempt to restore volition as a respectable topic for scientific studies. Volition, traditionally conceived as the act of will, has been largely neglected in contemporary science and philosophy. I first develop a volitional theory of action by elaborating a unifying conception of volition, where volitions are construed as special kinds of mental action by which an agent consciously and actively bridge the gaps between deliberation, decision and intentional action. Then I argue that the major skeptical arguments (...) against volition are untenable. Volition can be a suitable object of empirical studies, and we can substantially demystify the notion of volition by exploring when and where volitions occur in the brain. On the basis of recent findings in psychology and neuroscience, I show how volitions can be localized in some regions of the brain. The classical notion of volition as action initiator, which is essential to the commonsense image of human agency that underlies our ordinary understanding of free will, moral responsibility and human dignity, can be preserved in face of the challenge from recent experimental studies in neuroscience. Contrary to a widely received misconception, I argue that volitions cannot be reduced to intentions. Furthermore, I show that a volitional theory of action can surpass its rivals, especially the causal approach, which is the dominant position in contemporary action theory, to provide a more plausible and richer account of human action and agency. (shrink)

In a recent publication, Wikramanayake and colleagues have implicated the canonical Wnt/β-catenin signaling pathway as a mediator of axial polarity and germ-layer specification in embryos of the cnidarian Nematostella.1 In this anthozoan, β-catenin is localized in nuclei of blastomeres in one region of the 16- to 32-cell embryo whose descendants subsequently form the entoderm of the embryo. They claim that the pattern of nuclear localization is significant for two reasons: (1) when nuclear localization of β-catenin was inhibited, gastrulation does (...) not occur, and (2) when localization of β-catenin took place in all cells of the pregastrula embryo, the number of entodermal cells increases. Since the Wnt/β-catenin signaling pathway also plays a role in establishing axial polarity and specifying endoderm and mesoderm in a number of bilaterians,2-6 Wikramanayake et al. imply that this developmental mechanism is an evolutionary inheritance from a radially symmetrical ancestor. Some of the gaps in the current evidence, which must be filled to evaluate their interpretation, are discussed. BioEssays 26:474–478, 2004. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Hugh Mellor has proposed what appears to be a new solution to the problem of intrinsic change (Mellor 1998). Assuming endurantism and a B‐theoretic, nonpresentist view of time, facts are supposed to have only enduring things and atemporal properties (or relations) as constituents, but no times. The having of properties and relations is not relativised to times. Instead, the whole of a fact is conceived of as temporally localised. It will be argued that this interesting and novel proposal does not (...) succeed as an account of change in the intrinsic properties of things. The basic difficulty is that the view still leads into contradiction, since it makes it incomprehensible how one and the same thing can have both a property and some incompatible property. The having of these incompatible properties is treated as two facts. But to add that these facts have certain temporal locations is of no help for avoiding the contradiction. (shrink)

During the Asian and Pacific War, the Japanese government mobilized approximately 200,000 Asian women to military brothels to sexually serve Japanese soldiers. The majority of these victims were unmarried young women from Korea, Japan’s colony at that time. In the early 1990s, Korean feminist leaders helped more than 200 Korean survivors of Japanese military sexual slavery to come forward to tell the truth, which has further accelerated the redress movement for the women. One major issue in the redress movement and (...) research relating to the so-called “comfort women” issue is whether Japan’s colonization of Korea or gender hierarchy was a more fundamental cause of the Korean women’s suffering. Using an intersectional perspective, this article analyzes how colonial power, gender hierarchy, and class were inseparably tied together to make the victims’ lives miserable. By doing so, it shows that a one-sided emphasis on colonization or gender hierarchy will misrepresent the feminist political issue and misinterpret the “comfort women’s” experiences. (shrink)

In recent years, alternative teacher preparation programmes are globally emerging to address teacher quality in ‘hard-to-staff’ schools. These programmes commonly attract graduates from prestigious...

The purpose of this study is to examine whether corporate social responsibility activities perceived by consumers affect brand trust and corporate sustainability management. In other words, this study tried to examine whether the compatibility and authenticity of CSR influences brand trust, thereby affecting CSM including economic viability, environmental soundness, and social responsibility. To measure this, an empirical analysis was conducted on 479 consumers who had experience purchasing products from cosmetic companies that are carrying out CSR. As a result of the (...) analysis, it was found that the compatibility and authenticity of CSR have a positive effect on brand trust. Also, it was found that brand trust had a positive effect on social responsibility among the sub-concepts of CSM, but did not affect economic viability and environmental soundness. The results of this study are expected to provide strategic implications for social responsibility performance and brand trust building necessary for cosmetics companies to grow continuously. (shrink)

This paper explores the role of moral uncertainty in explaining the morally disruptive character of new technologies. We argue that existing accounts of technomoral change do not fully explain its disruptiveness. This explanatory gap can be bridged by examining the epistemic dimensions of technomoral change, focusing on moral uncertainty and inquiry. To develop this account, we examine three historical cases: the introduction of the early pregnancy test, the contraception pill, and brain death. The resulting account highlights what we call “differential (...) disruption” and provides a resource for fields such as technology assessment, ethics of technology, and responsible innovation. (shrink)

There is a growing literature studying the ‘non-traditional’ type of international schools. However, a less explored and under-theorised area is the changing dynamics of the global-local interactions in the way these international schools are being redefined and shaped by local processes, regimes of control, and mechanisms. Drawing on empirical evidence from sixteen ‘non-traditional’ international schools in urban China, our paper contributes to the literature in three ways. Theoretically, we developed the notion of ‘reining in the international’ to draw analytic attention (...) to the state power and social agency in controlling and directing the global flows of international schooling. Empirically, our paper provides concrete evidence to show the disjuncture occurring when the global/international is interrupted and transformed by local/national conditions. Third, we argue that in the case of China, the local has taken charge as the ‘content supplier and negotiator’ in the global-local confluence of forms adopted by international schools. (shrink)

We are living through an era of increased robotisation. Some authors have already begun to explore the impact of this robotisation on legal rules and practice. In doing so, many highlight potential liability gaps that might arise through robot misbehaviour. Although these gaps are interesting and socially significant, they do not exhaust the possible gaps that might be created by increased robotisation. In this article, I make the case for one of those alternative gaps: the retribution gap. This gap arises (...) from a mismatch between the human desire for retribution and the absence of appropriate subjects of retributive blame. I argue for the potential existence of this gap in an era of increased robotisation; suggest that it is much harder to plug this gap than it is to plug those thus far explored in the literature; and then highlight three important social implications of this gap. (shrink)

The explanatory gap . Consciousness is a mystery. No one has ever given an account, even a highly speculative, hypothetical, and incomplete account of how a physical thing could have phenomenal states. Suppose that consciousness is identical to a property of the brain, say activity in the pyramidal cells of layer 5 of the cortex involving reverberatory circuits from cortical layer 6 to the thalamus and back to layers 4 and 6,as Crick and Koch have suggested for visual consciousness. .) (...) Still, that identity itself calls out for explanation! Proponents of an explanatory gap disagree about whether the gap is permanent. Some say that we are like the scientifically naive person who is told that matter = energy, but does not have the concepts required to make sense of the idea. If we can acquire these concepts, the gap is closable. Others say the gap is uncloseable because of our cognitive limitations. Still others say that the gap is a consequence of the fundamental nature of consciousness. (shrink)

In a landmark essay, Andreas Matthias claimed that current developments in autonomous, artificially intelligent (AI) systems are creating a so-called responsibility gap, which is allegedly ever-widening and stands to undermine both the moral and legal frameworks of our society. But how severe is the threat posed by emerging technologies? In fact, a great number of authors have indicated that the fear is thoroughly instilled. The most pessimistic are calling for a drastic scaling-back or complete moratorium on AI systems, while the (...) optimists aim to show that the gap can be bridged nonetheless. Contrary to both camps, I argue against the prevailing assumption that there is a technology-based responsibility gap. I show how moral responsibility is a dynamic and flexible process, one that can effectively encompass emerging technological entities. (shrink)

Artificial intelligence increasingly executes tasks that previously only humans could do, such as drive a car, fight in war, or perform a medical operation. However, as the very best AI systems tend to be the least controllable and the least transparent, some scholars argued that humans can no longer be morally responsible for some of the AI-caused outcomes, which would then result in a responsibility gap. In this paper, I assume, for the sake of argument, that at least some of (...) the most sophisticated AI systems do indeed create responsibility gaps, and I ask whether we can bridge these gaps at will, viz. whether certain people could take responsibility for AI-caused harm simply by performing a certain speech act, just as people can give permission for something simply by performing the act of consent. So understood, taking responsibility would be a genuine normative power. I first discuss and reject the view of Champagne and Tonkens, who advocate a view of taking liability. According to this view, a military commander can and must, ahead of time, accept liability to blame and punishment for any harm caused by autonomous weapon systems under her command. I then defend my own proposal of taking answerability, viz. the view that people can makes themselves morally answerable for the harm caused by AI systems, not only ahead of time but also when harm has already been caused. (shrink)

This chapter defends Terence Horgan's claim that any genuinely physicalist position must distinguish itself from (what has been traditionally known as) emergentism. It argues that physicalism is necessarily reductive in character — it must either give a reductive account of apparently non‐physical entities, or a reductive explanation of why there are non‐physical entities. It contends that many recent ‘non‐reductive’ physicalists do not do this, and that because of this they cannot adequately distinguish their view from emergentism. The conclusion is that (...) this is the real challenge posed by Joseph Levine's ‘explanatory gap’ argument: if physicalists cannot close the explanatory gap in Levine's preferred way, they must find some other way to do it. Otherwise their view is indistinguishable from emergentism. (shrink)

We like to think of ourselves, our friends, and our families as decent people. We may not be saints, but we are still honest, relatively kind, and mostly trustworthy. Miller argues here that we are badly mistaken in thinking this. Hundreds of recent studies in psychology tell a different story: that we all have serious character flaws that prevent us from being as good as we think we are - and that we do not even recognize that these flaws exist. (...) But neither are most of us cruel or dishonest. Instead, Miller argues, we are a mixed bag. On the one hand, most of us in a group of bystanders will do nothing as someone cries out for help in an emergency. Yet it is also true that there will be many times when we will selflessly come to the aid of a complete stranger - and resist the urge to lie, cheat, or steal even if we could get away with it. Much depends on cues in our social environment. Miller uses this recent psychological literature to explain what the notion of "character" really means today, and how we can use this new understanding to develop a character better in sync with the kind of people we want to be. (shrink)

The Hedgehog, the Fox, and the Magister's Pox is a controversial discourse, rich with facts and observations gathered by one of the most erudite minds of our ...

Emphasizing the predictive success and practical utility of psychological science is an admirable goal but it will require a substantive shift in how we design research. Applied research often assumes that findings are transferable to all practices, insensitive to variation between implementations. We describe efforts to quantify and close this practice-to-practice gap in education research.

There are two main theoretical frameworks in statistical mechanics, one associated with Boltzmann and the other with Gibbs. Despite their well-known differences, there is a prevailing view that equilibrium values calculated in both frameworks coincide. We show that this is wrong. There are important cases in which the Boltzmannian and Gibbsian equilibrium concepts yield different outcomes. Furthermore, the conditions under which equilibriums exists are different for Gibbsian and Boltzmannian statistical mechanics. There are, however, special circumstances under which it is true (...) that the equilibrium values coincide. We prove a new theorem providing sufficient conditions for this to be the case. (shrink)

In his 1996 paper Neurophenomenology: A methodological remedy for the hard problem, Francisco Varela called for a union of Husserlian phenomenology and cognitive science. Varela''s call hasn''t gone unanswered, and recent years have seen the development of a small but growing literature intent on exploring the interface between phenomenology and cognitive science. But despite these developments, there is still some obscurity about what exactly neurophenomenology is. What are neurophenomenologists trying to do, and how are they trying to do it? To (...) what extent is neurophenomenology a distinctive and unified research programme? In this paper I attempt to shed some light on these questions. (shrink)

This study adds to the emergent stream of work examining the micro-level antecedents of pay dispersion by focusing on how business founders’ personal characteristics influence pay dispersion in their organizations. We leverage stakeholder theory and the motivated information processing perspective to predict pathways between founders’ self- versus other-oriented motivations, their perceptions of employee and shareholder salience, and pay dispersion in their organizations. We test our hypotheses on data from a two-wave survey of founders. We find that a high level of (...) motivation to benefit others on the part of a founder reduces the salience of shareholder concerns in decision-making, which in turn reduces pay dispersion. In contrast, a high level of motivation to benefit oneself heightens the salience of shareholder concerns in decision-making, increasing pay dispersion. Our results inform the debate on pay dispersion by elucidating the role played by founders’ self- versus other-oriented motivations and stakeholder salience perceptions. (shrink)

There is a growing realisation that the current upward trend in levels of disclosure of social, ethical and environmental performance by corporations and other organisations is not being accompanied by simultaneous greater levels of public trust. Low levels of confidence in the information communicated in public reporting is probably undermining the impetus for this disclosure. This article suggests that this credibility gap can be narrowed through the use of third party independent assurance. However, this is not an unqualified panacea. Much (...) verification and assurance practice itself has to date been of questionable robustness, reliability and consistency, and has been framed by financial assurance models that are inadequate for the broader, qualitative dimensions of social, ethical and environmental performance. The paper argues that there is need for a universal standard for the provision of assurance of social, ethical and environmental reporting, and indeed for the credibility of the assurance providers themselves. The new AA1000S Assurance Standard, developed by the Institute of Social and Ethical AccountAbility, offers an approach and a tool for addressing these gaps. (shrink)

This paper warns of two threats to moral responsibility that arise when accounting for omissions, given some plausible assumptions about how abilities are related to responsibility. The first problem threatens the legitimacy of our being responsible by expanding the preexisting tension that luck famously raises for moral responsibility. The second threat to moral responsibility challenges the legitimacy of our practices of holding responsible. Holding others responsible for their omissions requires us to bridge an epistemic gap that does not arise when (...) holding others responsible for their actions—one that we might often fail to cross. (shrink)

Background Researchers engaged in the study of the ethical, legal, and social implications (ELSI) of genetics and genomics are often publicly funded and intend their work to be in the public interest. These features of U.S. ELSI research create an imperative for these scholars to demonstrate the public utility of their work and the expectation that they engage in research that has potential to inform policy or practice outcomes. In support of the fulfillment of this “translational mandate,” the Center for (...) ELSI Resources and Analysis (CERA), funded by the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), aims to facilitate community-informed, ELSI research results synthesis and dissemination. However, little is known about how ELSI research scholars define the goals of translation and imagine the intended users of their research findings.Methodology We distributed a Qualtrics survey to ELSI scholars that aimed to determine: (1) researchers’ expectations for their research findings in relation to policy or practice outcomes, (2) the stakeholder groups researchers believe could benefit from their research findings, and (3) the methods researchers use to foster the uptake of their findings by those stakeholders.Results Most ELSI researchers surveyed thought there were stakeholders that could benefit from their research findings, including health care professionals, at-risk individuals, patients, and their family members, policy-makers, and researchers/scientists, and expected their research findings to inform the creation or revision of laws, policies, or practice guidelines. Most researchers planned to disseminate findings directly to relevant stakeholders, with fewer expecting dissemination support from research funders, universities, or other entities.Conclusion The broad range of research topics, disciplines, and set of potential end users represented in ELSI reseach complicate the work of a knowledge broker. Nonetheless, the CERA can play an important role in disseminating ELSI results to relevant stakeholders. Further research should explore outreach mechanisms. (shrink)

Many scientists and philosophers of science are troubled by the relative isolation of developmental from evolutionary biology. Reconciling the science of development with the science of heredity preoccupied a minority of biologists for much of the twentieth century, but these efforts were not corporately successful. Mainly in the past fifteen years, however, these previously dispersed integrating programmes have been themselves synthesized and so reinvigorated. Two of these more recent synthesizing endeavours are evolutionary developmental biology and developmental systems theory. While the (...) former is a bourgeoning and scientifically well-respected biological discipline, the same cannot be said of DST, which is virtually unknown among biologists. In this review, we provide overviews of DST and EDB, summarize their key tenets, examine how they relate to one another and to the study of epigenetics, and survey the impact that DST and EDB have had on biological theory and practice. (shrink)

Cerebral Visual Impairment is an umbrella term which includes abnormalities in visual acuity, or contrast sensitivity or colour; ocular motility; visual field and the conscious and unconscious filtering or processing of visual input. Children with CVI have specific needs and problems relating to their development from infancy to adulthood which can impact on their wellbeing. Recent research indicates the complexities of living with CVI but there remains limited information of the full impact of CVI on families’ everyday lives. The qualitative (...) interviews reported here explored families’ experiences to discover the impact of CVI on all aspects of everyday life. Parents and children were invited to participate in semi-structured interviews, either face to face, by phone or video call between January 2018 and February 2019. Topics covered everyday practicalities of living with CVI, focusing on challenges and what worked well at school and home. Interviews were audio-recorded and subject to thematic analysis to look for patterns across the data. Twenty families took part in interviews, with eight children/young people within those families contributing interviews of their own. Four themes were developed from the interviews: Assessment and understanding implications of CVI, Education, Family life, Psychological wellbeing and quality of life. The interviews provide valuable insights into the impact of living with CVI and highlight the need for more awareness of the condition among professionals in both health and education settings. (shrink)

This study examines the effect of integrating sustainability into corporate strategy on various aspects of shareholder value creation and financial performance in the British capital market. The employed method is based on the content analysis of corporate disclosures and a new technique for assessing the adoption of the corporate sustainability concept. Using extensive data of FTSE 350 firms covering the years 2006–2012, 65 companies were selected as meeting corporate sustainability criteria. For the above period, we find that these firms were (...) characterized by higher financial risk exposure, lower asset growth rates, lower BV/MV ratios, lower EVA ratios, and higher MVA ratios. Such relations were generally present among different size and industry groupings. The results support the thesis that firms that incorporate sustainability issues into their business operations are better able to leverage their resources toward stronger financial performance and shareholder value creation than other companies. The paper contributes to the literature by offering a more holistic approach to corporate sustainable performance measurement and shedding additional light on its relation to financial performance in the context of the recent global financial crisis and its direct aftermath. (shrink)

We argue that work on norms provides a way to move beyond debates between proponents of individualist and structuralist approaches to bias, oppression, and injustice. We briefly map out the geography of that debate before presenting Charlotte Witt’s view, showing how her position, and the normative ascriptivism at its heart, seamlessly connects individuals to the social reality they inhabit. We then describe recent empirical work on the psychology of norms and locate the notions of informal institutions and soft structures with (...) respect to it. Finally, we argue that the empirical resources enrich Witt’s ascriptivism, and that the resulting picture shows theorists need not, indeed should not, choose between either the individualist or structuralist camp. (shrink)