© 2015, Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.Genetic studies have identified single nucleotide polymorphisms associated with the risk of prostate cancer. It remains unclear whether such genetic variants are associated with disease aggressiveness. The NCI-SPORE Genetics Working Group retrospectively collected clinicopathologic information and genotype data for 36 SNPs which at the time had been validated to be associated with PC risk from 25,674 cases with PC. Cases were grouped according to race, Gleason score and aggressiveness. Statistical analyses were used to compare the (...) frequency of the SNPs between different disease cohorts. After adjusting for multiple testing, only PC-risk SNP rs2735839 was significantly and inversely associated with aggressive and high-grade disease in European men. Similar associations with aggressive and high-grade disease were documented in African-American subjects. The G allele of rs2735839 was associated with disease aggressiveness even at low PSA levels in both European and African-American men. Our results provide further support that a PC-risk SNP rs2735839 near the KLK3 gene on chromosome 19q13 may be associated with aggressive and high-grade PC. Future prospectively designed, case-case GWAS are needed to identify additional SNPs associated with PC aggressiveness. (shrink)

Here is Lukcs among his friends, lovers, and peers in those important years before 1918, when he converted to Communism and Marxism at the age of thirty-nine.

Several decision rules, including the minimax regret rule, have been posited to suggest optimizing strategies for an individual when neither objective nor subjective probabilities can be associated to the various states of the world. These all share the shortcoming of focusing only on extreme outcomes. This paper suggests an alternative approach of ‘tempered regrets’ which may more closely replicate the decision process of individuals in those situations in which avoiding the worst outcome tempers the loss from not achieving the best (...) outcome. The assumption of total ignorance of the probabilities associated with the various states is maintained. Applications and illustrations from standard neoclassical theory are discussed. (shrink)

For much of the 20th century, dance writers and critics regularly bemoaned a shortage of male dancers. As one writer put it, the average American father would rather see his son dead than performing on stage in tights. This article looks at commentary about male dancing as a means of understanding popular conceptions of effeminacy. It addresses the way discourses about sport, physical prowess and hard bodies have been appropriated in attempts to validate the manliness of male dancers. Drawing on (...) works by dance educators, critics and dancers, such as Gene Kelly and American modern dancer Ted Shawn, the article looks at gendered notions of the body and movement and the way these have been shaped by the late 19th-century conflation of effeminacy and homosexuality. The athleticism and muscularity of male dancers were to have brought them mainstream respect; that they have yet to do so at all but elite levels reminds us that even the hardest bodies must be read through the limitations of the discursive contexts in which they move. (shrink)

Two aspects of mothering—using drugs during pregnancy and giving up the rearing of one's children—are the focus of this analysis of 58 addicted Chicana mothers who spent their adolescent years in barrio gangs. From a traditional stance, such women were doubly deviant, since they violated gender-role prescriptions by joining a barrio gang and by becoming involved in heroin and street life. Half of these women added to this deviance by using heroin during pregnancy, and 40 percent relinquished at least one (...) of their children. This article explores what distinguishes these classically “bad mothers” from addicts who maintain some degree of conventionality in their mothering. We found that Mexican gender-role traditionalism is not the only influence on these women. Many came from cholo or underclass families with a tradition of street involvement. In addition, their involvement in gang and heroin worlds may influence their behavior as mothers. We found that women who used drugs during pregnancy were more likely than abstainers to be cholas and to reject traditional gender-role values. However, those who gave up their children were more likely than those who kept their children to be from traditional families. We discuss the implications of these findings for research on deviance and the underclass among Hispanic women. (shrink)

Originally published in 1967.This book illustrates how, during the nineteenth century, the idea grew up that the provision of universal education was one of the functions of the state.

A thorough account of the philosophy of mathematics. In a cogent account the author argues against the view that mathematics is solely logic.

This book explores the ethical implications of managing uncertainty in clinical decision-making during the COVID-19 pandemic. It develops an ethics of clinical uncertainty that brings together insights from the clinical and biomedical ethical literatures. The book sets out to recognize the central role uncertainty plays in clinical decision-making and to acknowledge the different levels, kinds, and dimensions of clinical uncertainty. It also aims to aid clinicians and patients in managing clinical uncertainty, and to recognize the ethical duty they have to (...) manage clinical uncertainty. The book addresses four ethical duties related to clinical uncertainty: (1) the duty to advance the welfare of those in clinical medicine, (2) to respect the rights of those in clinical medicine, (3) to promote just access to health care, and (4) to care for one another in clinical medicine. These duties took on select urgency during the COVID-19 pandemic because clinical risk assessments about COVID-19 were limited, we were asked to give informed consent in the context of limited and changing knowledge, the pandemic unearthed myriad problems about the distribution of health care, and the pandemic raised questions about how we care for each other in medicine. An Ethics of Clinical Uncertainty will appeal to scholars, advanced students, and medical professionals working in philosophy of medicine, biomedical ethics, clinical medicine, nursing, public health care, and gerontology. (shrink)

Aristotle’s notoriously difficult Metaphysics Ζ, which investigates substance, has been the subject of intense debate in the past twenty years. Myles Burnyeat’s Map of Metaphysics Zeta is a ground-breaking intervention in that discussion. Burnyeat examines the overall shape of Ζ, particularly the signposts that structure the argument and link it to the larger project of First Philosophy in Metaphysics, as well as to the Organon. On his approach, to understand what Ζ says, we must first attend to how the issues (...) are addressed and why they are addressed in that way. The result is a book that challenges cherished assumptions and forces the rethinking of Ζ from several new perspectives. (shrink)

This article draws on ethnographic field data collected during an investigation of the informed consent process and AIDS clinical trials. It describes the involvement of care providers (physicians, nurse practitioners, physician assistants) during the enlistment, or recruitment, phase of the informed consent process. It shows that sometimes care providers are involved in the receipt, evaluation and distribution of information on clinical trials through their interactions with research professionals and patients. It suggests that the involvement of care providers has the potential (...) to influence the informed consent process. Some of the ethical and practice considerations of this are discussed. (shrink)

Segundo de uma série de três artigos que visam a analisar a utilização do discurso alegórico – em sua vertente alegórica e hermenêutica – em três obras de José Saramago: Memorial do convento, Manual de pintura e caligrafia e O evangelho segundo Jesus Cristo. Neste segundo ensaio, enfocaremos a visão clássica sobre alegoria e metáfora, destacando as três qualidades básicas para a “boa mímeses” – a brevidade, a clareza e a verossimilhança – e os fines da alegoria retórica, os quais (...) eram determinados em função da maior ou da menor clareza existente entre sentido literal e figurado. Analisaremos ainda as diferenças estabelecidas pela Retórica clássica entre tota allegoria, permixta apertis allegoria e mala affectatio, considerando ainda como o Maneirismo e o Barroco, inverteram esses valores e de que modo o Memorial do Convento e o Manual de Pintura e Caligrafia, de José Saramago, resgatam a concepção barroca da alegoria construtiva ou retórica. (shrink)

An exploration of the limitations of the language of "mental health" in the light of suicide epidemics at universities, and a sketch of the existentialist understanding of death as alternative.

Drawing on field data gathered from 1994 to 1996, this article considers tensions in the development of community networks and highlights the decisions that shape particular types of networks. Four key decision points include interface choice, content, interaction, and outreach. Discourse about decision making is often dichotomized around civic and consumer social currents. Civic currents demand text-only interfaces, exclusively non- profit content, full electronic interaction capabilities for everyone, and deep outreach efforts. In contrast, consumer currents push graphical interfaces, the inclusion (...) of profit-making content, limited interaction options, and meso to shallow outreach. While considering the influences of these currents, the article problematizes the dichotomy and considers more specific social influences on decision making. It also suggests specific network decisions that may contribute to greater communications equity. (shrink)

The Western cultural consensus based on the ideas of free markets and individualism has led many social scientists to consider poverty as a personal experience, a deprivation of material things, and a failure of just distribution. Mary Douglas and Steven Ney find this dominant tradition of social thought about poverty and well-being to be full of contradictions. They argue that the root cause is the impoverished idea of the human person inherited through two centuries of intellectual history, and that (...) two principles, the idea of the solipsist self and the idea of objectivity, cause most of the contradictions. Douglas and Ney state that Economic Man, from its semitechnical niche in eighteenth-century economic theory, has taken over the realms of psychology, consumption, public assistance, political science, and philosophy. They say that by distorting the statistical data presented for policy analysis, the ideas of the solipsist self and objectivity indeed often protect a political bias. The authors propose to correct this by revising the current model of the person. Taking cultural bias into account and giving full play to political dissent, they restore the "persons" who have been missing from the social science debates. Drawing from anthropology, economics, political science, and sociology, the authors set forth a fundamental critique of the social sciences. Their book will find a wide audience among social scientists and will also interest anyone engaged in current discussions of poverty. This book is a copublication with the Russell Sage Foundation. (shrink)