ABSTRACT Rosalind Franklin is best known for her informative X-ray diffraction patterns of DNA that provided vital clues for James Watson and Francis Crick's double-stranded helical model. Her scientific career did not end when she left the DNA work at King's College, however. In 1953 Franklin moved to J. D. Bernal's crystallography laboratory at Birkbeck College, where she shifted her focus to the three-dimensional structure of viruses, obtaining diffraction patterns of Tobacco mosaic virus (TMV) of unprecedented detail and clarity. (...) During the next five years, while making significant headway on the structural determination of TMV, Franklin maintained an active correspondence with both Watson and Crick, who were also studying aspects of virus structure. Developments in TMV research during the 1950s illustrate the connections in the emerging field of molecular biology between structural studies of nucleic acids and of proteins and viruses. They also reveal how the protagonists of the “race for the double helix” continued to interact personally and professionally during the years when Watson and Crick's model for the double-helical structure of DNA was debated and confirmed. (shrink)

Mr. Bartley's remark that Goodman's puzzle is “an interesting variant of the possibility... that the next instance may be different” rather badly misrepresents matters. One might say that the “new riddle” arises just because no matter what the nature of the next instance, it will be as much like all previously examined cases as any other instance. Suppose “Hester” is the name of the first emerald examined after time t. If Hester is green, then Hester is like previously examined emeralds (...) with respect to their green-ness. But should Hester be blue, then Hester has its grue-ness in common with previously examined emeralds. The difficulty here is that likenesses abound; the evidence presents us with more likenesses than we could consistently expect of or project to subsequent cases. And the question that Goodman's puzzle poses is, by what criteria do we select one from among all of these likenesses to project to subsequent cases? (shrink)

Here I propose to undertake a brief survey of the statements of the argument given by these proponents, formulating and qualifying as I go what seems to me a sound version of it, capable of withstanding both Ayer's criticism and others that I have developed. There must be additional ways in which the same or similar points can be expressed. Another review of Kant, Paton, Taylor, and Kenner would no doubt produce a somewhat different result. All that is claimed here (...) is that the argument advanced in this paper is sound and that it was suggested by certain statements of theirs. (shrink)

Against the oft-repeated claim that Heideggerian authenticity calls for a resoluteness that is either indifferent or inimical to normative rationality, Steven Crowell has recently argued that the phenomenon of conscience in _Sein und Zeit_ is specifically intended to ground normative rationality in the existential ontological account of Dasein so that Heidegger puts forward not a rejection of the life of reason but a more fundamental account of its condition of possibility in terms of self-responsibility. In what follows, I wish to (...) take up the issue of an existential grounding of rational life and its implications for the phenomenological reduction in relation to the work of Husserl by showing that he too is concerned with a self-responsible contextualizing of the life of reason even at the level of individual human existence. In this way, Husserl, like Heidegger, can be read as framing the phenomenological reduction in terms of the subject's concern for self-justification. However, this 'framing' cannot be seen as a motivation to reduction but only as an 'after-the-fact' explanation of its import. But I will suggest, in conclusion, that the problem of the motivation to reduction is perhaps as much of a problem for Heidegger as it is for Husserl. (shrink)

Taber and Lodge offer a powerful case for the prevalence of directional reasoning that aims not at truth, but at the vindication of prior opinions. Taber and Lodge's results have far-reaching implications for empirical scholarship and normative theory; indeed, the very citizens often seen as performing “best” on tests of political knowledge, sophistication, and ideological constraint appear to be the ones who are the most susceptible to directional reasoning. However, Taber and Lodge's study, while internally beyond reproach, may substantially overstate (...) the presence of motivated reasoning in political settings. That said, focusing on the accuracy motivation has the potential to bring together two models of opinion formation that many treat as competitors, and to offer a basis for assessing citizen competence. (shrink)

Rosenau writes that the history of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is the story of convergence around political entities in order to preserve individual values in the context of collective needs and wants; but today the process of community building has been reversed.

Subsequent to the end of the Cold War, analysts groped for an understanding of the overall structures of world politics that marked the emergence of a new epoch. As a result, the concept of empire became a major preoccupation, with the economic and military power of the United States considered sufficient for regarding it as an empire. Due to the proliferation of new microelectronic technologies and for a variety of other specified reasons, however, the constraints inherent in the new epoch (...) make it seem highly unlikely that the U.S. or any other country can ever achieve the status of an empire. In effect, the substantial shrinkage of time and distance in the current period has led to the replacement of the age of the nation-state that originated with the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 with the age of the networked individual. It is an age that has developed on a global scale and that has brought an end to the history of empires. (shrink)

This article discusses the representation of AIDS in Guibert's posthumously published novel Le Paradis. The novel is situated in relation to Guibert's better known previous AIDS writings. The article proposes that Guibert's AIDS works fall in to three related categories: writings about other peoples' AIDS; autobiographical writings about AIDS, and, in the third, terminal stage in which Le Paradis fits, writing AIDS. As such the article suggests that Le Paradis manages to reflect and communicate some of the trauma of living (...) with AIDS by specifically trying not to write about it. The article raises issues related to constructions of sexualized and AIDS identities in fiction, and presents the novel as a form which represents a loss of self. The novel, it is argued, becomes a self-mourning for a healthy past which is memorialized in a fictional present, itself always-already haunted by the nostalgia for a lost future. (shrink)

It is said there are only two things in life that are certain: death and taxes … maybe only taxes.

No overarching hypotheses tie the basic mechanisms of mitochondrial reactive oxygen species (ROS) production to activity dependent synapse pruning—a fundamental biological process in health and disease. Neuronal activity divergently regulates mitochondrial ROS: activity decreases whereas inactivity increases their production, respectively. Placing mitochondrial ROS as innate synaptic activity sentinels informs the novel hypothesis that: (1) at an inactive synapse, increased mitochondrial ROS production initiates intrinsic apoptosis dependent pruning; and (2) at an active synapse, decreased mitochondrial ROS production masks intrinsic apoptosis dependent (...) pruning. Immature antioxidant defense may enable the developing brain to harness mitochondrial ROS to prune weak synapses. Beyond development, endogenous antioxidant defense constrains mitochondrial (ROS) to mask pruning. Unwanted age‐related synapse loss may arise when mitochondrial ROS aberrantly recapitulate developmental pruning. Placing mitochondrial ROS with their hands on the shears is beneficial in early but deleterious in later life. (shrink)

In this paper we offer a new argument for the existence of God. We contend that the laws of logic are metaphysically dependent on the existence of God, understood as a necessarily existent, personal, spiritual being; thus anyone who grants that there are laws of logic should also accept that there is a God. We argue that if our most natural intuitions about them are correct, and if they are to play the role in our intellectual activities that we take (...) them to play, then the laws of logic are best construed as necessarily existent thoughts -- more specifically, as divine thoughts about divine thoughts. We conclude by highlighting some implications for both theistic arguments and antitheistic arguments. (shrink)

In Paradox in Christian Theology I argued that the Christian doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation are paradoxical—that is, they appear to involve implicit contradictions—yet Christians can still be rational in affirming and believing those doctrines. Dale Tuggy has characterized my theory of theological paradox as a form of “positive mysterianism” and argues that the theory “faces steep epistemic problems, and is at best a temporarily reasonable but ultimately unsustainable stance.” After summarizing my proposed model for the rational affirmation (...) of theological paradox and considering whether my proposal is indeed a form of “positive mysterianism” as Tuggy defines the term, I address the two main criticisms raised in Tuggy’s paper: first, that the doctrine of divine incomprehensibility cannot bear the weight required by my defense of paradox; and second, that my proposed model is afflicted with epistemic instability. I conclude that Tuggy has failed to show that a mysterian stance with respect to paradoxical Christian doctrines is in principle unreasonable, unnatural, or unsustainable. (shrink)

Highly creative and interactive, this apologetics resource helps readers identify and evaluate 21 different worldviews through engaging yes-or-no questions and easy-to-understand descriptions. Appendices include answers to common questions and suggestions for further reading.

A central question in the Japanese high vowel devoicing literature concerns whether vowels are devoiced through a categorical process or via gradient reduction. Examining how vowel height and consonantal voicing condition phrase-internal CV duration in a corpus of spontaneous Tokyo Japanese, it was found that CVs containing high vowels are substantially shorter before voiceless consonants, whilst non-high vowels do not exhibit comparable shortening. This quantitative difference between CV durations suggests a controlled temporal compression of the CV, consistent with views that (...) Japanese vowel devoicing is produced through a categorical process targeting high vowels preceding voiceless consonants, and supports previous observations made of elicited productions. (shrink)

Some advocates of the doctrine of meticulous (“risk-free”) divine providence, in response to the charge that such a strong view of divine providence makes God the “author of evil,” have appealed to an authorial model according to which the relationship of God to his creation is analogous to that of a human author and his or her literary creation. This response appears vulnerable to the objection that there is a critical _disanalogy_ between the two kinds of authorship: in the case (...) of divine authorship, unlike that of human authorship, the story is _intentionally actualized_, and thus the divine author is morally culpable for the evils written into that story. Call this the “actuality objection.” In this paper, I develop a four-case defense of the authorial model that aims to neutralize the actuality objection. I also respond to five objections to the authorial model and my defense of it. (shrink)