Heterotrimeric G proteins, consisting of α, β, and γ subunits, couple ligand-bound seven transmembrane domain receptors to the regulation of effector proteins and production of intracellular second messengers. G protein signaling mediates the perception of environmental cues in all higher eukaryotic organisms, including yeast, Dictyostelium, plants, and animals. The nematode Caenorhabditis elegans is the first animal to have complete descriptions of its cellular anatomy, cell lineage, neuronal wiring diagram, and genomic sequence. In a recent paper, Jansen et al.(1) used sequence (...) searches of the C. elegans genome database to identify all heterotrimeric G protein genes (20 Gα, 2 Gβ, 2 Gγ). C. elegans encodes one ortholog of each of the four Gα classes found in metazoans and 16 new Gα genes. The orthologous genes are widely expressed, whereas 14 of the divergent Gα genes are almost exclusively expressed in sensory neurons where they may regulate perception and chemotaxis.BioEssays 21:713–717, 1999. © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (shrink)

This edition of George Berkeley's Philosophical Commentaries, first published in 1989, provides an accurate transcription of Berkeley's manuscript, and introduction to set it in perspective, extensive notes to aid in interpreting it, and a full index to facilitate the use of it.

The authors describe the ethical considerations underlying the inclusion of mental health services into a prioritized health care system. The Oregon Health Plan is a process for defining and delivering basic health services to an entire state. As the plan was developed, the mental health community needed to decide whether or not to participate in the process and, if so, how. Lengthy discussions among mental health consumers, family members, and providers led to a strategy that emphasized the integration of mental (...) health and chemical dependency services into a comprehensive and universal health care program. This approach appears to have achieved relative parity for mental health. (shrink)

There is a well-worn image and phrase for libertarianism: "atomized individualism." This hobgoblin has spread so thoroughly that even some libertarians think their philosophy unreservedly supports private persons, whatever the situation, whatever their behavior. Smith's Self-Interest and Social Order in Classical Liberalism, corrects this misrepresentation with careful intellectual surveys of Hume, Smith, Hobbes, Butler, Mandeville, and Hutcheson and their respective contributions to political philosophy.

Only 27 percent of Americans in a 1995 Harris poll said they had read or heard “quite a lot” about genetic tests. Nonetheless, 68 percent said they would be either “very likely” or “somewhat likely” to undergo genetic testing even for diseases “for which there is presently no cure or treatment.” Perhaps most astonishing, 56 percent found it either “very” or “somewhat acceptable” to develop a government computerized DNA bank with samples taken from all newborns, and their names attached to (...) the samples. This does not necessarily mean the public is unconcerned about genetic privacy. More likely it means that the public is still uninformed about the risks associated with genetic testing, and has not thought at all about the risks involved in storing identifiable DNA samples.A central question presented by genetic screening and testing is whether the genetic information so obtained is different in kind from other medical information, and, if so, whether this means that it should receive special legal protection. (shrink)

G. W. F. Hegel (1770–1831), the influential German philosopher, believed that human history was advancing spiritually and morally according to God’s purpose. At the beginning of this masterwork, Hegel writes: “What the history of Philosophy shows us is a succession of noble minds, a gallery of heroes of thought, who, by the power of Reason, have penetrated into the being of things, of nature and of spirit, into the Being of God, and have won for us by their labours the (...) highest treasure, the treasure of reasoned knowledge.” In his introduction to this Bison Book edition, Frederick C. Beiser notes the complex and controversial history of Hegel’s text. He makes a case that this English-language translation by E. S. Haldane and Frances H. Simson is still the most reliable one. (shrink)

A tachyon or a superluminal wave group appears as a spacelike structure through a region in the reference frame in which it is at rest. Such a structure can arise from residue left (a) by a particle or wave group traveling at fundamental speed c or less, or (b) in the creation or separation of particles. Thus, Maund's argument does not prove that tachyons cannot exist. Creation may include lepton-quark production as well as particle-antiparticle production.

The picture which one naturally presents of the situation is that which would arise before an observer placed outside the earth, who could watch the light wave starting from the central mirror and pursuing the distant mirror, catching up with it at some distance beyond the point at which it was when the light wave started. In this case the observer is able to locate the points at which the parts of the apparatus were at different moments and to measure (...) the distances between. We could simulate this situation on the earth by assuming an enclosed square car, from some point in which two balls were shot out in directions at right angles to each other to the walls of the car, bounding back to the point at which they started. We will assume that the balls move with uniform velocity going and coming, and we will assume that the car is moving. An observer outside the car who marked the point on the rail directly over the starting point and the points reached by the balls when they struck the sides of the car, and then measured the distances which the balls travelled, would find that the ball which travelled with the car covered a greater distance than that traversed by the ball which went at right angles to the direction of the train, and yet the balls would return to the starting point at the same moment, provided they travelled over both their paths at the same velocity during their entire trajects, i.e., the same velocity measured within the car. The observer would be at no difficulty to explain this, for he would see that the velocity in the direction of its motion of the car had to be added to that of balls within the car. That is not the case of the light wave. The velocity of a moving shining body is not added to that of the light wave. The wave motion being set up in ether travels with its own uniform velocity of approximately 300,000 kilometers a second. The light waves then, from the standpoint of the observer outside the earth, traverse through the stagnant ether different distances at a uniform velocity and yet the ether waves exhibit on their return none of the evidence which they should exhibit in the interferometer. (shrink)

G. H. Mead left the following heretofore unpublished material in his desk at the University of Chicago, and it was first discovered by Charles W. Morris in the Summer of 1931. Mr. Morris, who was one of Mead's students in the 1920's, had been teaching at Rice University, but was appointed as a full-time staff member in the department of philosophy at Chicago in 1931; he was given the same office that Mead had occupied for many years prior to his (...) death in April of that year. Due to severely strained relations between the then newly appointed president of the University of Chicago, Robert Maynard Hutchins, and the regular staff members in the philosophy department, several of the latter left Chicago and were employed elsewhere in the fall of 1931. Consequently it seemed appropriate that Mr. Morris and some of Mead's other students should deal with the many unpublished typewritten conjectures that Mead left in his office. The entire book, The Philosophy of the Act, is a collection of items found by Mr. Morris, and the following material is from the same source. It came to my hands twenty-seven years ago because I was one of the collaborators in editing The Philosophy of the Act. If there is a slight over-lapping of the following material and subjects discussed in The Philosophy of the Act, it is for the sake of continuity and clarity. I have corrected the material for spelling and punctuation, and I have tried to give it a systematic arrangement. (shrink)