Comparative genomics has proven a fruitful approach to acquire many functional and evolutionary insights into core cellular processes. Here it is argued that in order to perform accurate and interesting comparative genomics, one first and foremost has to be able to recognize, postulate, and revise different evolutionary scenarios. After all, these studies lack a simple protocol, due to different proteins having different evolutionary dynamics and demanding different approaches. The authors here discuss this challenge from a practical (what are the observations?) (...) and conceptual (how do these indicate a specific evolutionary scenario?) viewpoint, with the aim to guide investigators who want to analyze the evolution of their protein(s) of interest. By sharing how the authors draft, test, and update such a scenario and how it directs their investigations, the authors hope to illuminate how to execute molecular evolution studies and how to interpret them. Also see the video abstract here https://youtu.be/VCt3l2pbdbQ. (shrink)

A. To Be Is to Be Related. In opposition to a nineteenth century version of atomistic individualism and eighteenth century romanticism, such idealists as T. H. Green, F. H. Bradley, Bernard Bosanquet, and Josiah Royce have contended that individual freedom rises only within an organic whole of some sort. For them the question of human freedom has to do not so much with the issue of the individual vs. society as with the kind of individuals that arise out of the (...) community. Individuals enjoy freedom, not despite the social organism, but in and through it. The idealistic doctrine of “internal relations” is carried into philosophical psychology as well as into social and political philosophy. To be is to be related—that is the idealistic answer to atomistic individualism and ethical egoism. (shrink)

No tragic poet uses the phrase μxs22EFνος πνxs22EFουσαν, except Aeschylus, who employs it in describing the Erinyes, not a Greek maiden. Similarly Homer of his ‘Mut-schnaubende’ heroes and of the savage steeds of Diomed. Hence, in the Sophoclean passage, some scribe may have mistaken the familiar ΜΕΝΟCΠΝΕΟΤCΑΝ for the more unusual ΜΕΝΕΙCΙCΤΝΟΤCΑΝ. Initial C attached itself to the preceding word, and ΤΝΟΤCΑΝ became ΠΝΟΤCΑΝ, which was promptly changed to πνxs22EFουσαν.

Decision making and choices are frequent themes in medical ethics. Game theory is based upon modelled decision making. Game theory, and associated logic traps, may have relevance to the clinical practice of medicine and medical ethics. The “prisoner’s dilemma” is one logic trap from game theory in which “rational” decision making on the part of participating individuals can lead to “suboptimal” situations. An example of such a situation involving brain death is presented and discussed from the perspective of the prisoner’s (...) dilemma. (shrink)

What are physical quantities, and in particular, what makes them quantitative? This book presents an original answer to this question through the novel position of substantival structuralism, arguing that quantitativeness is an irreducible feature of attributes, and quantitative attributes are best understood as substantival structured spaces.

The aim of this study is to describe how hermeneutic photography and one application of hermeneutic photography in particular, namely the photo-instrument, can be used as a health care intervention that fosters meaning (re-)construction of mental illness experiences. Studies into the ways how patients construct meaning in illness narratives indicate that aesthetic expressions of experiences may play an important role in meaning making and sharing. The study is part of a larger research project devoted to understanding the photostories that result (...) from groups of psychiatric patients using the photo-instrument. Within a focused ethnography approach we employed a qualitative design of a single case study. Text analysis of photostories was combined with observational data. Data were analyzed using hermeneutic theory. Participant observations were used for triangulation and complementarity. The interaction and collaboration between health care professionals and patients in the context of a photo group emerged as core concept that underlies the photo-instrument. The interaction triggered a reframing of meaning in the patient’s illness narrative that offered new perspectives on positive identity growth. The role of visualizing meaning in images was found to lend a dynamic power to the process and triggered a dialectic between real life circumstances and imagination played out in the context of situated action. The findings suggest that a positive reframing of meaning in illness narratives is facilitated by the photo-instrument. (shrink)

Manuscript Add. 3965, section 13, folios 541r–542r and 545r–546r is in the Portsmouth Collection of manuscripts and housed in the University Library, Cambridge. These drafts contain a careful account, in Newton's hand, of his views on place, time, and God. They are part of a large number of drafts relating to the three official editions of the Principia published in Newton's lifetime.

It may seem strange, in view of the spate of recent literature on the subject, that yet another article should be forthcoming on what is certainly the most familiar, as well as the most vexed, of all Platonic passages. But it is precisely this spate of literature that has impelled me to write. The time seems to have come for an article which, rather than seeking desperately for something new, sets out instead to reaffirm those facts and conclusions that even (...) the most resolutely original of scholars could hardly venture to dispute. This article will therefore be based, not on any of the numerous modern interpretations, but on what Plato himself actually wrote. It will contain a number of tentative suggestions which, to the best of my knowledge, have not been made before. They can, and probably will, be rejected. But its primary purpose remains to restate, whenever possible in Plato's own words, a number of important facts that are at once so simple and so obvious that they seem repeatedly, and especially in recent years, to have been quite forgotten. (shrink)

The 2010 Nagoya Protocol is an international framework for access and benefit sharing (ABS) of the use of genetic and biological resources, with particular focus on indigenous communities. This is especially important in Africa, where local communities have a close reliance on environmental resources and ecosystems. However, national legislation and policies commonly lag behind international agreements, and this poses challenges for legal compliance as well as practical applications. This study reviews the academic literature on the Nagoya Protocol and ABS applications, (...) and then considers the implications of this analysis for research in Africa. Results show that there is uneven engagement with the principles of the Nagoya Protocol across different academic disciplines; local communities are sometimes sidelined in these studies; and only 8% of researchers in the literature analysed are located in Africa. Future developments should focus on ensuring national compliance with the Nagoya Protocol, and that researchers and industry work in partnership with local African communities on ABS issues. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Der Islam Jahrgang: 93 Heft: 1 Seiten: 262-264.