The apolipoprotein E gene plays an important role in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer's disease , and amyloid plaque comprised mostly of the amyloid-beta peptide ) is one of the major hallmarks of AD. However, the relationship between these two important molecules is poorly understood. We examined how A treatment affects APOE expression in cultured cells and tested the role of the transcription factor NF-B in APOE gene regulation. To delineate NF-B's role, we have characterized a 1098 nucleotide segment containing the (...) 5'-flanking region of the human APOE gene . Sequence analysis of this region suggests the presence of two potential NF-B elements. To demonstrate promoter activity, the region was cloned upstream of a promoterless luciferase gene. This segment was able to drive expression of luciferase in transient transfections of human fetal glial cells. Promoter activity was stimulated twofold by A treatment. Pretreatment with double-stranded DNA decoy oligonucleotides against NF-B reduced A stimulation. Deletion and mutagenetic analyses demonstrated that the distal NF-B element was functional and showed a strong DNA-protein complex band in gel shift analysis, similar to that from control NF-B consensus element. An anti-inflammatory and anti-NF-B drug, sodium salicylate, significantly blocked A-induced APOE promoter function. Our data provide evidence that upregulation of APOE by A in astroglial cells is mediated by an NF-B-element present in the 5'-flanking region of the APOE gene. (shrink)

A Pali Grammar. William Geiger. Translated into English by Batakrishna Ghosh, revised and edited by K. R. Norman. Pali Text Society, Oxford 1994. xxix, 220 pp. Hardback £12.95, paperback £6.75.

Dhammapada. Ed. O. von Hinüber and K.R. Norman. Pali Text Society, Oxford 1994. xv, 148 pp. £10.95.

Index to the Digha-nikaya. Compiled by M. Yamazaki, Y. Ousaka, K. R. Norman and M. Cone. Pali Text Society, Oxford 1997. vii, 357 pp. £19.75. ISBN 0 86013 355 9.

Computer simulations show that an unstructured neural-network model [Shultz, T. R., & Bale, A. C. (2001). Infancy, 2, 501–536] covers the essential features␣of infant learning of simple grammars in an artificial language [Marcus, G. F., Vijayan, S., Bandi Rao, S., & Vishton, P. M. (1999). Science, 283, 77–80], and generalizes to examples both outside and inside of the range of training sentences. Knowledge-representation analyses confirm that these networks discover that duplicate words in the sentences are nearly identical and that they (...) use this near-identity relation to distinguish sentences that are consistent or inconsistent with a familiar grammar. Recent simulations that were claimed to show that this model did not really learn these grammars [Vilcu, M., & Hadley, R. F. (2005). Minds and Machines, 15, 359–382] confounded syntactic types with speech sounds and did not perform standard statistical tests of results. (shrink)

Ḍırār b. ʿAmr ve ʿAbdullāh b. Yezīd el-Fezārī, dönemlerinin önde gelen kelâmcıları arası yer almışlardır. Onlara dair bilgilerimiz çok uzun bir süre sadece makâlât ve tarih kitaplarındaki anlatımlara dayanıyordu. Yakın tarihimizde bu eksikliği gideren gelişmeler oldu. Ḍırār’ın günümüze intikal eden ilk ve tek eseri olan Kitābu’t-Taḥrīş, 2014 yılında neşredildi. Bu eser, doğrudan kelâm alanıyla ilgili olmasa da mezheplerin dağılımı ve fikirleri hakkında bilgiler ihtiva eden en eski Muʿtezilî kaynaklar arasında yer almaktadır. Ḍırār bu kitabında farklı dinî grupların rivâyetleri birbirlerine karşı (...) nasıl kullanıp suistimal ettiklerini konu edinmiştir. Eserin özelliği sadece ihtiva ettiği rivâyetlerde değil, meseleyi ele alış ve anlatım tarzında da bulunuyor. Ḍırār bu çalışmasıyla sonraki nesilleri birçok yönden etkilemiştir. ʿAbdullāh b. Yezīd el-Fezārī, eserlerinin günümüze ulaşması bakımından daha şanslıdır. Bir proje kapsamında 2014 yılından itibaren onun tam on bir eseri yayımlanmıştır. Bunlar arasında kelâm ilmine hasredilmiş birçok neşir yer almaktadır. Böylece çağdaş İslâm araştırmacıları ʿAbdullāh’ın fikirlerini az sayıdaki makâlât referanslarından bağımsız olarak doğrudan kendi kaleminden öğrenme imkanı elde etmiş oldular. Bunun ötesinde bu çalışmalar erken dönem kelâm ilminin en eski kaynakları arasına girmiştir. Bu yayımlar arasında özellikle Kitābu’r-Rudūd dikkat çekmektedir. Sebebi ise Kitābu’t-Taḥrīş ile olan benzerliğinden dolayıdır. Neredeyse her iki kitabın tamamı birbirinin aynısıdır ve karşılıklı atıflar içermemektedirler. Bu tür bir yazım faaliyeti günümüzde tereddütsüz intihal olarak adlandırılırdı. İki mütekellim arasında kronolojik farklar olmadığından kimin kimden etkilendiğini söylemek ilk aşamada zordur. Ḍırār ve ʿAbdullāh’ın birbirlerinden haberdar oldukları anlaşılıyor: İkisi de Kûfe’de yaşamış, Abbâsî halifesi Hārūn er-Reşīd döneminde (786-809) Bağdat’a geçmişler ve orada Hişām b. el-Ḥakem’le (ö. 179/795) imâmete dair Yaḥyā b. Ḫālid el-Bermekī’nin (ö. 190/805) rehberlik ettiği aynı münazara ortamında bulunmuşlardır. Eserlerin özgünlüğü ve etkisi hasebiyle bu çağdaş hemşehrilerden kimin kime kaynaklık etmiş olabileceği sorusu merak uyandırıyor. İkisinin de hem rivâyetleri merkeze alan bir eser vermek için hem bu tür bir telifin fikir babası olmasına delalet eden gerekçeleri var. Bu makalede, öncelikle ikisinin biyografik benzerlikleri takdim edilmiş, akabinde iki eser arasında mukayeselere yer verilmiştir. Kıyaslama, eserlerin hayat öyküleriyle uyumlulukları ve eserlerin tertip ve düzeni üzerinden yapılmıştır. Yöntem olarak aralarındaki paralelliklerden çok farklılıklara odaklanılmıştır. Son olarak ikisinin dayandığı ortak bir kaynağın varlığı sorgulanmıştır. Bu emârelerden hareketle kimin kime öncülük etmiş olabileceğine açıklık getirilmek amaçlanmıştır. (shrink)

At the University of Newcastle, health law and ethics is taught and assessed in each year of the five-year curriculum. However, the critical question for assessment remains: 'Does teaching ethics have a measurable effect on the clinical activity of medical students who have had such courses?' Those responsible for teaching confront this question each year they sit down to construct their assessment tools. Should they assess what the student knows? Should they assess the student's moral reasoning, that is, what decisions (...) the student makes, and, how these decisions are justified, or should they assess what the student actually does when dealing with patients in the clinical setting, and how he or she does it? From 1982 to 1991, assessment at Newcastle was primarily aimed at determining the quality of the students' ethics knowledge base. This paper describes the strengths and limitations of a purely knowledge-based method of evaluation and why in 1992, we are now attempting to redefine and assess, what we call 'clinical ethical competence' in terms of how students actually apply this knowledge base in a controlled clinical context. (shrink)

Journal of the Pali Text Society, Volume XXVII. Edited by O. von Hinüber and R.F. Gombrich. Pali Text Society, Oxford 2002. 183 pp. £18.75. ISBN 0 86013 407 5.

Journal of the Pali Text Society, Volume XXV. Ed. by O. von Hinuber & R. F. Gombrich. Oxford 1999. £17.25. ISBN 0 86013 372 9.

Poems of Early Buddhist Nuns. Translations of the Therigatha by Mrs C. A. F. Rhys Davids. Pali Text Society, Oxford 1989. xvi, 233 pp. £4.95.

Journal of the Pali Text Society. Volumes XXII-XXIV. Ed. O. von Hinüber ad R. F. Gombrich. Pali Text Society, Oxford 1996, 1997, 1998. £17.25 each. ISBN 086013 333 8; 0 86013 356 7; 0 86913 364 8.

The Sutra of Golden Light. Translated by R. E. Emmerick. Second revised edition, Pali Text Society, Oxford 1990. xvi, 116 pp. £10.00.

This paper considers the relevance of the Duhem-Quine thesis in economics. In the introductory discussion which follows, the meaning of the thesis and a brief history of its development are detailed. The purpose of the paper is to discuss the effects of the thesis in four specific and diverse theories in economics, and to illustrate the dependence of testing the theories on a set of auxiliary hypotheses. A general taxonomy of auxiliary hypotheses is provided to demonstrate the confounding of auxiliary (...) hypotheses with the testing of economic theory. (shrink)

A crucial debate currently raging in the fields of cognitive and social science centers around general and specific approaches to understanding the actions of others. When we understand the actions of another person, do we do so on the basis of a general theory of psychology, or on the basis of an effort to place ourselves in the particular position of that specific person? Hans Herbert Kögler and Karsten R. Stueber's Empathy and Agency addresses this other issues vital to current (...) social science in an advanced and diverse analysis of the foundations of social-scientific methodology based on recent cognitive psychology. The book serves as both an introduction to the debate for non-academic audiences and as a catalyst for further discussion for serious theorists. Empathy and Agency provides a solid foundation of the fundamental issues in social and cognitive science, but also presents the most influential paradigms in the field at this time. (shrink)

In this paper Popper formulates and discusses a new aspect of the theory of mind. This theory is partly based on his earlier developed interactionistic theory. It takes as its point of departure the observation that mind and physical forces have several properties in common, at least the following six: both are located, unextended, incorporeal, capable of acting on bodies, dependent upon body, capable of being influenced by bodies. Other properties such as intensity and extension in time may be added. (...) It is argued that a fuller understanding of the nature of forces is essential for the analysis of the mind-brain problem. The relative autonomy and indeterministic nature of mind is stressed. Indeterminism is treated in relation to a theorem of Hadamard. The computer theory of mind and the Turing test are criticized. Finally the evolution of mind is discussed. (shrink)

Catalogue of the Hugh Nevill Collection of Sinhalese Manuscripts in the British Library. K. D. Somadasa. Pali Text Society and the British Library. Vol. 1, 1987. xi, 440 pp. £22.00. Vol. 2, 1989. vii, 316 pp. £24.95.

Journal of the Pali Text Society, Volume XXVI. Edited by O. von Hinüber and R.F. Gombrich. Pali Text Society, Oxford 2000. 234 pp. £15.00. ISBN 0 86013 391 5.

I first met Parmenides – together with Xenophanes, Heraclitus, and the other great Presocratics – in a German translation by Wilhelm Nestle, famous as the editor of the later editions of Zeller's magnum opus. I was 15 or 16 years old, and I was overwhelmed by the meeting. The verses that I liked best were Parmenides' story of Selene's love for radiant Helios . But I did not like it that the translation made the moon male and the sun female (...) , and it occurred to me to give the couplet in German a title like ‘Moongoddess and Sungod’, or perhaps ‘Selene and Helios’, in order to rectify the genders. So I began fiddling about with the translations. The volume, which I still possess, shows many traces of this. (shrink)

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