Brock Macdonald1, Evi Vakiani2, Rhonda K Yantiss3, Jun Lee4, Robert S Brown Jr5, Samuel H Sigal61Division of Gastroenterology, Department of Medicine, University of California-San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, 2Department of Pathology, Memorial Sloan–Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY, 3Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, New York Weill Cornell Medical College, New York, NY, 4Division of Nephrology, Department of Medicine, Weill Cornell Medical College, New York, NY, 5Division of Gastroenterology, Department of Medicine, Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York, (...) NY, 6Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, Department of Medicine, New York University, New York, NY, USA: The use of sirolimus as an alternative to calcineurin inhibitors for posttransplant immunosuppression is associated with a variety of inflammatory conditions. In this report, we describe the case of a 34-year-old man who developed abnormal liver tests 6 years after live-donor kidney transplantation and 5 years after initiation of sirolimus-based immunosuppression. Elevated aminotransferase levels persisted after withdrawal of potentially hepatotoxic medications, and serologic evaluation for viral hepatitis, autoimmune disease, and genetic disorders was unrevealing. Liver biopsy revealed prominent hepatocellular injury associated with a mixed inflammatory infiltrate and liver tests normalized within 2 weeks of discontinuation of sirolimus. In this report, we review previous reports of sirolimus hepatotoxicity and propose a unifying hypothesis for the various inflammatory conditions that have been attributed to sirolimus.Keywords: sirolimus, immunosuppression, transplant, inflammatory conditions, hepatotoxicity. (shrink)

1 Evidence-based policy requires researchers to provide the answers to ecological questions that are of interest to policy makers. To find out what those questions are in the UK, representatives from 28 organizations involved in policy, together with scientists from 10 academic institutions, were asked to generate a list of questions from their organizations. 2 During a 2-day workshop the initial list of 1003 questions generated from consulting at least 654 policy makers and academics was used as a basis for (...) generating a short list of 100 questions of significant policy relevance. Short-listing was decided on the basis of the preferences of the representatives from the policy-led organizations. 3 The areas covered included most major issues of environmental concern in the UK, including agriculture, marine fisheries, climate change, ecosystem function and land management. 4 The most striking outcome was the preference for general questions rather than narrow ones. The reason is that policy is driven by broad issues rather than specific ones. In contrast, scientists are frequently best equipped to answer specific questions. This means that it may be necessary to extract the underpinning specific question before researchers can proceed. 5 Synthesis and applications. Greater communication between policy makers and scientists is required in order to ensure that applied ecologists are dealing with issues in a way that can feed into policy. It is particularly important that applied ecologists emphasize the generic value of their work wherever possible. (shrink)

This volume brings together flux essays by an eminent scholar on the origins, development, and import of Kant's philosophy, chiefly in its metaphysical aspects. Four of these were separately published between 1924 and 1926, but until now have been difficult to obtain, despite great demand. Their appearance here will be welcomed. The thesis emerging from these studies is that the critical philosophy originates in metaphysical probings concerning the nature and presuppositions of being, and issues in doctrines which, despite psychological, epistemological, (...) and ethical presentation, are intended to have definite ontological import. --L. K. B. (shrink)

There is a great deal of interest in the relation between the status of women and fertility—by humanists, academics and policy-makers concerned with bringing about fertility declines. The three aspects of women's status most frequently linked to fertility are their education, employment and type of husband-wife interaction. Research to date has not given us a clear and consistent explanation of these relationships and has not confirmed causality. The effects of these three factors on fertility vary considerably across national boundaries and (...) even within different sectors of the same society. Some of the assumptions held by both researchers and policymakers must be re-thought in the interests of more useful future research and of sounder policy. (shrink)

A time-symmetric formulation of nonrelativistic quantum mechanics is developed by applying two consecutive boundary conditions onto solutions of a time- symmetrized wave equation. From known probabilities in ordinary quantum mechanics, a time-symmetric parameter P0 is then derived that properly weights the likelihood of any complete sequence of measurement outcomes on a quantum system. The results appear to match standard quantum mechanics, but do so without requiring a time-asymmetric collapse of the wavefunction upon measurement, thereby realigning quantum mechanics with an important (...) fundamental symmetry. (shrink)

Unique in all of literature, the Confessions combines frank and profound psychological insight into Augustine's formative years along with sophisticated and beguiling reflections on some of the most important issues in philosophy and theology. The essays contained in this volume, by some of the most distinguished recent and contemporary thinkers in the field, insightfully explore Augustinian themes not only with an eye to historical accuracy but also to gauge the philosophical acumen of Augustine's reflections.

A dry record, without argument, of conclusions reached on a wide variety of topics through fifty years of scholastic philosophizing.--L. K. B.

An attempt to clarify and establish systematically foundations for a "formal" science of axiology, relating it to the social sciences and humanities as mathematics is related to the natural sciences.--L. K. B.

A reprint of Freud's lectures of 1910. In his philosophically critical preface, Allers briefly but effectively points up logical and scientific weaknesses in Freud's theories, attributes their peculiar success to the appealing ambiguity of approach as between the scientific and the historical, then finds their chief merit in furthering the recognition of man's "historicity."--L. K. B.

Provider claims to conscientious objection have generated a great deal of heated debate in recent years. However, the conflicts that arise when providers make claims to the "conscience" are only a subset of the more fundamental challenges that arise in health care practice when patients and providers come into conflict. In this piece, the author provides an account of patient-provider conflict from within the moral tradition of St. Thomas Aquinas. He argues that the practice of health care providers should be (...) understood as a form of practical reasoning and that this practical reasoning must necessarily incorporate both "moral" and "professional" commitments. In order to understand how the practical reasoning of provider should account for the needs and commitments of the patient and vice versa, he explores the account of dependence provided by Alasdair MacIntyre in his book Dependent Rational Animals. MacIntyre argues that St. Thomas’ account of practical reasoning should be extended and adapted to account for the embodied vulnerability of all humans. In light of this insight, providers must view patients not only as the subjects of their moral reflection but also as fellow humans upon whom the provider depends for feedback on the effectiveness and relevance of her practical reasoning. The author argues that this account precludes responsive providers from adopting either moral or professional conclusions on the appropriateness of interventions outside the individual circumstances that arise in particular situations. The adoption of this orientation toward patients will neither eradicate provider-patient conflict nor compel providers to perform interventions to which they object. But this account does require that providers attend meaningfully to the suffering of patients and seek feedback on whether their intervention has effectively addressed that suffering. (shrink)

This textbook, oriented toward non-majors in philosophy, aims to provide an understanding not merely of forms of valid and invalid inference but also of the cognitive situation, of the methods of successful "problem-solving thought" and of the role of language therein. Great emphasis is thus placed on semiotics, which is integrated with the material from methodology and logic by considerations from general theory of knowledge. The whole presentation is marked by innovations, both pedagogical and theoretical. Most of the material of (...) the usual course in elementary formal logic is crowded into the last part. The author has attempted, with some success, to develop a reformed "traditional" approach to logic in the light of the recent technical advances in semiotic and symbolic logic, without reducing it to a narrow and fragmentary formal exposition of these sciences. --L. K. B. (shrink)

A collection of essays on various aspects of philosophy of science, written around the turn of the century by a perceptive historian of science and methodologist who, under the influence of Peirce, Mach and Peano, anticipated many basic doctrines of the later semantically oriented analytic philosophy. The short introduction discusses Vailati's viewpoint in connection with his chief contemporaries; a brief biography and bibliography are provided. --L. K. B.

A sympathetic exposition, carefully documented, of the meaning and function of aesthetic concepts in the Enneads. The Plotinian dialectic is compared to the artistic process. Aesthetic experience is found analogous to the mystical, and artistic intuition similar to ecstasy.--L.K.B.

A technical but lucid and relatively elementary discussion of the development of the physical concepts of space and time and the bearing of the parity hypothesis of Lee and Yang on the future course of this development.--L. K. B.

A revised edition of a work originally published in 1952, this book offers an entertaining exposé of various pseudoscientific fads and cults, from dowsing and flying saucers to flat earth theories and dianetics. It includes brief but responsible chapters on the theories of Wilhelm Reich, Count Korzybski, and J. B. Rhine.--L. K. B.

A collection of six unrelated articles by as many authors. First come three scholarly studies, dealing with causality in Aristotle, St. Augustine's metaphysics of created being, and St. Thomas as a commentator on Aristotle. The fourth is an exposition of Hegel's views on scepticism. Next comes a reconstruction, within the scholastic spirit, of "classical formal logic." The concluding and most interesting article is a bibliographical survey of recent works in the history of ancient philosophies. --L. K. B.

An examination of four types of logico-mathematical formalisms, conceived as attempts to avoid paradoxes, leads to the conclusion that there can be no general, formal criterion of nonsense. Crahay holds that formal systems must be treated as dynamic, as the not-fully-formalizable becoming formal, the "conceptual" becoming "notional." Though technically competent and based on a vast amount of material, the treatment is too diffuse and sketchy to be more than suggestive.--L. K. B.

In a critical study of the factor-analytical theory of knowledge of the psychologist C. E. Spearman, the author tries to show that many so-called discoveries of modern psychology are mere elementary and unconscious repetitions of the older but much clearer Thomistic concepts.--L. K. B.

This badly written book has many marks of quackery--it is jargonic, repetitious, sometimes weird. But there are a few traces of a kernel of significant critique of philosophical method from a viewpoint combining elements of extreme operationalism and psychoanalysis. Philosophy is viewed as an activity which could have considerable therapeutic value--i.e., lead to growth in "awareness," released creativity, and increased emotional and intellectual maturity--if it is conducted under the guidance of the author's precepts.--L. K. B.

By an epistemological analysis of empirical science, physical and biological, as contrasted with metaphysics, the author tries to focus on the philosophy of nature as an irreducible science intermediate between the empirical and the metaphysical. Like the former, its object is specifically mobile being; but like the latter, it aims to apprehend the intelligible essence. A clear summary of an undogmatic neoscholastic critique of natural science.--L. K. B.

Stone, J. Thoughts on supposed "Death of law".--Krishna Iyer, V. R. Jurisprudence and jurisconscience.--Sharma, G. S. Law and social change in India.--Sharma, S. D. The concept of justice in Manu.--Chand, H. Legal values for a developing country.--Ramarao, T. S. The new international law relating to the rights and duties of States.--Sinha, B. S. Custom and customary law in Indian jurisprudence.--Mazumdar, D. L. Techno-economic structure of our industrial society.--Subrahamanian, N. Law and social change.

Another beginners' text, emphasizing the problem of the relation between ordinary language and formal logic. From an exceedingly simplified introduction to semiotics, it moves through an analysis of conventions of ordinary English discourse to a presentation of an elementary non-standard symbolic propositional, class and modal logic. A matrix method is used throughout, facilitating the use of the same symbols for class and propositional relations. Chapters are included on probability, Mill's inductive methods, and logic and scientific method. Abundant, typically dull exercises (...) are provided.--L. K. B. (shrink)