Introduction: Although deep brain stimulation often improves levodopa-responsive gait symptoms, robust therapies for gait dysfunction from Parkinson's disease remain a major unmet need. Walking speed could represent a simple, integrated tool to assess DBS efficacy but is often not examined systematically or quantitatively during DBS programming. Here we investigate the reliability and functional significance of changes in gait by directional DBS in the subthalamic nucleus.Methods: Nineteen patients underwent unilateral subthalamic nucleus DBS surgery with an eight-contact directional lead in the most (...) severely affected hemisphere. They arrived off dopaminergic medications >12 h preoperatively and for device activation 1 month after surgery. We measured a comfortable walking speed using an instrumented walkway with DBS off and at each of 10 stimulation configurations at the midpoint of the therapeutic window. Repeated measures of ANOVA contrasted preoperative vs. maximum and minimum walking speeds across DBS configurations during device activation. Intraclass correlation coefficients examined walking speed reliability across the four trials within each DBS configuration. We also investigated whether changes in walking speed related to modification of step length vs. cadence with a one-sample t-test.Results: Mean comfortable walking speed improved significantly with DBS on vs. both DBS off and minimum speeds with DBS on. Pairwise comparisons showed no significant difference between DBS off and minimum comfortable walking speed with DBS on. Intraclass correlations were ≥0.949 within each condition. Changes in comfortable walk speed were conferred primarily by changes in step length.Conclusion: Acute assessment of walking speed is a reliable, clinically meaningful measure of gait function during DBS activation. Directional and circular unilateral subthalamic DBS in appropriate configurations elicit acute and clinically significant improvements in gait dysfunction related to PD. Next-generation directional DBS technologies have significant potential to enhance gait by individually tailoring stimulation parameters to optimize efficacy. (shrink)

There is widespread and growing concern among U.S. consumers about the treatment of farmed animals, and consumers are consequently paying attention to food product labels that indicate humane production practices. However, labels vary in their standards for animal welfare, and prior research suggests that consumers are confused by welfare-related labels: many shoppers cannot differentiate between labels that indicate changes in the way animals are raised and those that do not. We administered a survey to 1,000 American grocery shoppers to better (...) understand the extent to which consumers purchase and pay more for food with certain labels based on an assumption of welfare improvement. Results showed that 86% of shoppers reported purchasing at least one product with the following labels in the last year: “cage or crate-free”, “free-range”, “pasture-raised”, “natural”, “organic”, “no hormone”, “no antibiotic”, “no rBST”, “humane”, “vegetarian-fed”, “grass-fed”, “farm-raised”. Of those who purchased one of the aforementioned labels, 89% did so because they thought the label indicated higher-welfare production practices, and 79% consciously paid more for the product with the label because they thought that the label indicated better-than-standard animal welfare. However, many of these labels lack uniform standards for the production practices they represent, and some labels represent production practices that do not influence animal welfare, thus the degree of the animal welfare impact of a given label is highly variable. These results indicate that labels need to clearly and accurately specify their animal welfare benefits to improve the consumers’ ability to purchase products that align with their expectations. (shrink)

The presence of fetal cells has been associated with both positive and negative effects on maternal health. These paradoxical effects may be due to the fact that maternal and offspring fitness interests are aligned in certain domains and conflicting in others, which may have led to the evolution of fetal microchimeric phenotypes that can manipulate maternal tissues. We use cooperation and conflict theory to generate testable predictions about domains in which fetal microchimerism may enhance maternal health and those in which (...) it may be detrimental. This framework suggests that fetal cells may function both to contribute to maternal somatic maintenance (e.g. wound healing) and to manipulate maternal physiology to enhance resource transmission to offspring (e.g. enhancing milk production). In this review, we use an evolutionary framework to make testable predictions about the role of fetal microchimerism in lactation, thyroid function, autoimmune disease, cancer and maternal emotional, and psychological health.Also watch the Video Abstract. (shrink)

Is the United States "the land of equal opportunity" or is the playing field tilted in favor of those whose parents are wealthy, well educated, and white? If family background is important in getting ahead, why? And if the processes that transmit economic status from parent to child are unfair, could public policy address the problem? Unequal Chances provides new answers to these questions by leading economists, sociologists, biologists, behavioral geneticists, and philosophers.New estimates show that intergenerational inequality in the United (...) States is far greater than was previously thought. Moreover, while the inheritance of wealth and the better schooling typically enjoyed by the children of the well-to-do contribute to this process, these two standard explanations fail to explain the extent of intergenerational status transmission. The genetic inheritance of IQ is even less important. Instead, parent-offspring similarities in personality and behavior may play an important role. Race contributes to the process, and the intergenerational mobility patterns of African Americans and European Americans differ substantially.Following the editors' introduction are chapters by Greg Duncan, Ariel Kalil, Susan E. Mayer, Robin Tepper, and Monique R. Payne; Bhashkar Mazumder; David J. Harding, Christopher Jencks, Leonard M. Lopoo, and Susan E. Mayer; Anders Björklund, Markus Jäntti, and Gary Solon; Tom Hertz; John C. Loehlin; Melissa Osborne Groves; Marcus W. Feldman, Shuzhuo Li, Nan Li, Shripad Tuljapurkar, and Xiaoyi Jin; and Adam Swift. (shrink)

Directional deep brain stimulation contacts provide greater spatial flexibility for therapy than traditional ring-shaped electrodes, but little is known about longitudinal changes of impedance and orientation. We measured monopolar and bipolar impedance of DBS contacts in 31 patients who underwent unilateral subthalamic nucleus deep brain stimulation as part of a randomized study. At different follow-up visits, patients were assigned new stimulation configurations and impedance was measured. Additionally, we measured the orientation of the directional lead during surgery, immediately after surgery, and (...) 1 year later. Here we contrast impedances in directional versus ring contacts with respect to local anatomy, active stimulation contact, and over time. Directional contacts display larger impedances than ring contacts. Impedances generally increase slightly over the first year of therapy, save for a transient decrease immediately post-surgery under general anesthesia during pulse generator placement. Local impedances decrease at active stimulation sites, and contacts in closest proximity to internal capsule display higher impedances than other anatomic sites. DBS leads rotate slightly in the immediate postoperative period but otherwise remain stable over the following year. These data provide useful information for setting clinical stimulation parameters over time. (shrink)

This article presents a systematic review carried out around the development of technologies that have driven military communication, describing the evolution of communication equipment and protocols used throughout history. This work was carried out from the review of 80 articles related to the field of militarycommunications, from which the fundamentals of the different technologies, equipment and means of communication were extracted. It is concluded that technological progress has improved the speed of response in digital signals, has proposed.

The development of empirical research methods in both the social and the natural sciences has had a deep impact on the self-conception of philosophy. Jürgen Habermas aims to strike a balance between two ways of understanding the relationship between philosophy and the sciences: between a conception of philosophy as an Archimedean point from which to view the human condition and a conception of philosophy as a mere artefact of Western culturally embedded assumptions. Against the first, Habermas aims to integrate the (...) resources and methods of the social sciences into philosophy and to deny that philosophy can proceed outside of historical and social contexts. On his view, philosophical knowledge is produced communicatively, through socially embedded dialogue. Against the second, Habermas claims fundamental questions about the human condition cannot be answered by purely social or natural scientific approaches. His “postmetaphysical” methodology aims to integrate empirical resources into philosophy without losing sight of what is unique to philosophy: namely, its ability to step back from the empirical data in order to reconstruct in a systematic way underlying universal truths about us, our societies and our place in the world. (shrink)

For the millions of people who struggle with food and body issues, yoga and its practice of mindfulness can offer a surprisingly effective path to well-being. For Melissa Grabau, a psychotherapist who has battled her own eating disorders since she was a child, yoga contains the key ingredients to transforming our connection to food and to our bodies. The Yoga of Food invites you to explore contemplation prompts and meditations that will help you create a deeper appreciation of the (...) body's health and vitality. Sharing lessons and stories she's cultivated from years of clinical practice, Melissa provides a roadmap toward a healthier approach to nutrition and the human spirit. (shrink)

Building trust between academic medical centers and certain communities they depend on in the research process is hard, particularly when those communities consist of minoritized or historically marginalized populations. Some believe that engagement activities like the creation of advisory boards, town halls, or a research workforce that looks more like community members will establish or reestablish trust between academic medical centers and racialized communities. However, without systematic approaches to dismantle racism, those well‐intended actions become public performativity, and trust building will (...) fail. In this essay, we draw upon foundational ethical principles of trust, distrust, and trust building; apply the concept of bounded justice to performative trust acts; and center the works of Black and Indigenous feminist bioethicists to revisit some of the wisdom and valuable lessons they have contributed. Rebuilding trust is hard to do because people and institutions are often not honest about how hard it is and there is no simple box‐checking task that can disentangle our society's injustices, but there are steps to take in this direction. Individuals and institutions can recognize valuable relevant work that has already been written, partake in critical reflection, and then apply insights gained to take both small and sustainable steps toward transformational change and deeper trust. (shrink)

Since ancient Athens, democrats have taken pride in their power and inclination to change their laws, yet they have also sought to counter this capacity by creating immutable laws. In Democracy and Legal Change, Melissa Schwartzberg argues that modifying law is a fundamental and attractive democratic activity. Against those who would defend the use of 'entrenchment clauses' to protect key constitutional provisions from revision, Schwartzberg seeks to demonstrate historically the strategic and even unjust purposes unamendable laws have typically served, (...) and to highlight the regrettable consequences that entrenchment may have for democracies today. Drawing on historical evidence, classical political theory, and contemporary constitutional and democratic theory, Democracy and Legal Change reexamines the relationship between democracy and the rule of law from a new, and often surprising, set of vantage points. (shrink)

Political scientist Melissa Orlie asks what it means to live freely and responsibly when advantages are distributed disproportionately according to race, gender ...

This paper demonstrates that accounting for the moral harm of selecting for deafness is not as simple or obvious as the widespread negative response from the hearing community would suggest. The central questions addressed by the paper are whether our moral disquiet with regard to selecting for deafness can be adequately defended, and if so, what this might entail. The paper considers several different strategies for accounting for the supposed moral harm of selecting for deafness and concludes that the deaf (...) case cannot be treated in isolation. Accounting for the moral harm of selecting for deafness necessarily entails moral implications for other cases of procreation and procreative decision-making, including unassisted coital reproduction. The lesson to be learned from the deaf case is that we need norms that govern not just the use of reproductive technology, but procreation and procreative decision-making in all of its various forms. (shrink)

Competition among scientists for funding, positions and prestige, among other things, is often seen as a salutary driving force in U.S. science. Its effects on scientists, their work and their relationships are seldom considered. Focus-group discussions with 51 mid- and early-career scientists, on which this study is based, reveal a dark side of competition in science. According to these scientists, competition contributes to strategic game-playing in science, a decline in free and open sharing of information and methods, sabotage of others’ (...) ability to use one’s work, interference with peer-review processes, deformation of relationships, and careless or questionable research conduct. When competition is pervasive, such effects may jeopardize the progress, efficiency and integrity of science. (shrink)

This paper presents experimental data relevant to understanding the modal free choice effect (Kamp, 1973) when there are more than two disjuncts under the relevant modal operator. The results suggest that speakers' willingness to draw free choice inferences is correlated with whether the embedded disjuncts are *modally separable*, in a sense brought into focus by considering cases within which the relevant propositions fail to be pairwise redundant but are redundant as a set.

Abstract It is common practice to regard participants in assisted and collaborative reproduction (gamete donors, embryologists, fertility doctors, etc.) as simply providing a desired biological product or medical service. These agents are not procreators in the ordinary sense, nor do they stand in any kind of meaningful parental relation to the resulting offspring. This paper challenges the common view by defending a principle of procreative responsibility and then demonstrating that this standard applies as much to those who provide reproductive assistance (...) in the form of medical services or gametes, as it does to coital reproducers or intending parents. Drawing on vocabulary from the common law tradition, I suggest that it may be helpful to refer to the various participants in assisted and collaborative reproduction (ACR) as accessories to procreation. Referring to the participants in ACR as accessories to procreation highlights the fact that these agents are not just providing medical services or products. They are participating in a supply chain designed to bring about new persons. I conclude by arguing that regulative standards in the fertility industry should be structured such that they permit, facilitate, and encourage agents to satisfy the requirements of procreative responsibility. Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-16 DOI 10.1007/s10677-011-9330-7 Authors Melissa Seymour Fahmy, Department of Philosophy, University of Georgia, 107 Peabody Hall, Athens, GA 30602, USA Journal Ethical Theory and Moral Practice Online ISSN 1572-8447 Print ISSN 1386-2820. (shrink)

Le philosophe américain Arthur Danto (1924-2013) est connu pour sa contribution majeure à la philosophie de l’art. Doté d’un indéniable talent pour la vulgarisation et l’examen des problèmes complexes, il a su contribuer au dialogue culturel entre l’Amérique et l’Europe. Si la valeur de sa contribution sur les arts visuels est établie, d’autres aspects de sa pensée demeurent peu explorés, notamment sur les liens entre littérature et philosophie et les considérations stylistiques liées à l’écriture philosophique. Pourtant, il accordait très tôt (...) à la littérature une place centrale dans ses travaux sur Sartre (qui était à la fois philosophe et auteur) et Nietzsche, qui ont toujours prêché pour une réconciliation entre art et philosophie : c’est donc à dire que ce sujet lui a fourni matière à réflexion. (shrink)

In the Doctrine of Virtue Kant stipulates that ‘Love is a matter of feeling, not of willing . . . so a duty to love is an absurdity.’ Nonetheless, in the same work Kant claims that we have duties of love to other human beings. According to Kant, the kind of love which is commanded by duty is practical love. This paper defends the view that the duty of practical love articulated in the Doctrine of Virtue is distinct from the (...) duty of beneficence and best understood as a duty of self-transformation, which agents observe by cultivating a benevolent disposition and practical beneficent desires. (shrink)

Abstract In the Critique of the Power of Judgment, Kant refers to the pleasure that we feel when judging that an object is beautiful as the pleasure of "mere reflection". Yet Kant never makes explicit what exactly is the relationship between the activity of "mere reflection" and the feeling of pleasure. I discuss several contemporary accounts of the pleasure of taste and argue that none of them is fully accurate, since, in each case, they leave open the possibility that one (...) can reflect without having a feeling of pleasure, and hence allow a possible skepticism of taste. I then present my own account, which can better explain why Kant thinks that when one reflects one must also have a feeling of pleasure. My view, which emphasizes the role of attention in Kant, depicts well what we do when we judge something to be beautiful. It can also suggest a way to explain the relation between judgments of taste and moral feeling, and begin to show how the faculty of feeling fills a gap in the system of our cognitive faculties. (shrink)

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

"This edition of Eco-Republic is published by arrangement with Peter Lang Ltd; first published in 2011 by Peter Lang Ltd"--T.p. verso.

For nearly thirty years, Melissa Ann Pinney has been photographing girls and women, from infancy to old age, to portray how feminine identity is constructed, taught, and communicated. Pinney’s work depicts not only the rites of American womanhood, but also the informal passages of girlhood and adolescence. With each view—from solitary subjects in pensive moments to complex family and social situations—the audience gains a richer understanding of the connections between a daughter and her parents, grandparents, and the larger world (...) of friends and society. The pictures also reflect the ways in which a girl’s world in 2010 differs from the world Pinney knew growing up in the 1960s, and the ways in which the making of a person can transcend time and place. Girl Ascending is a sequel to Pinney’s widely praised first book, Regarding Emma: Photographs of American Women and Girls. Of that previous book Janina Ciezaldo wrote in Aperture, “Pinney brings compositional integrity, knowledge of color, and a Midwestern richness of light to her inquiries.” This second volume is even more accomplished, mature, and stylistically consistent. As David Travis writes in his introduction, “Pinney has regained that sense of wonder, making her view of girls ascending into young women both believable and enchanting.” Pinney’s photographs are powerful and insightful. As social and artistic documents, they reveal the subtle and bold aspects of feminine identity as it is expressed in American places and spaces, both private and public. (shrink)

In this essay, I outline fundamental anthropological and moral principles related to human sexuality and gender identity and then apply these principles to analyze and evaluate the views of several authors who attempt to carve out a “middle way” between liberal and traditionalist approaches to these issues. In doing so, I engage especially with the claim that gender dysphoria, rather than being a psychological issue, is a type of biological intersex condition in which one’s “brain sex” is out of line (...) with one’s genital and chromosomal sex. I argue that understanding the human person as a unity of body and soul and recognizing human sexuality as ordered toward the human good of marriage understood as inseparably unitive and procreative reveals the flaws in this position and helps to show why hormonal or surgical gender reassignment therapy is not a medically or ethically appropriate response to gender dysphoria. I also offer an alternative characterization of gender dysphoria and suggestions for responding with true compassion to those who suffer from it. (shrink)

Within the growing developmental literature on children's testimonial learning, the emphasis placed on children's evaluations of testimonial evidence has shielded from view some of the more collaborative dimensions of testimonial learning. Drawing on recent philosophical work on testimony and interpersonal trust, we argue for an alternative way of conceptualizing the social nature of testimonial learning. On this alternative, some testimonial learning is the result of a jointly collaborative epistemic activity, an activity that aims at the epistemic goal of true belief, (...) but that does so by means of an irreducibly social process. (shrink)

The application of artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies in healthcare have immense potential to improve the care of patients. While there are some emerging practices surro...

This paper identifies brand age as an important factor in consumers’ brand evaluations following unethical firm behavior. In two experiments, we assess the effect of brand age on three types of brand evaluations: perceived quality, brand credibility, and behavioral intentions following a brand crisis. The findings suggest that disclosing an older brand’s age can not only improve consumers’ brand evaluations in general, but can also provide a buffering effect when the firm is involved in unethical behavior. Moreover, the relationship between (...) brand age and consumers’ post-crisis intentions is mediated by perceived brand credibility. By exploring consumers’ attitudes following the most common firm response strategies, this research also identifies a boundary condition of the mitigating effect of brand age. Several significant implications for practitioners are discussed. (shrink)

Can ordinary citizens in a democracy evaluate the claims of scientific experts? While a definitive answer must be case by case, some scholars have offered sharply opposed general answers: a skeptical versus an optimistic. The article addresses this basic conflict, arguing that a satisfactory answer requires a first-order engagement in judging the claims of experts which both skeptics and optimists rule out in taking the issue to be one of second-order assessments only. Having argued that such first-order judgments are necessary, (...) it then considers how they are possible, outlining a range of practices and virtues that can inform their success and likelihood, and drawing throughout on ancient Greek insights as well as contemporary social psychology and sociology of knowledge. In conclusion the ethics of democratic judgment so developed is applied to the dramatic conviction of the members of an Italian scientific risk commission in L'Aquila. (shrink)

This essay seeks a philosophical understanding of the nature of kairos that, in turn, discloses the nature of philosophizing. This essay claims that the kairos of philosophy is dialogue, and that dialogue is kairological in two ways: (1) Dialogue is not just a phenomenon that occurs in chronological time but, rather, imposes its own time in order to see how life (or being) itself is disclosed to us; (2) dialogue is kairological because it denotes a moment in which we are (...) pushed into the open, which demands our receptivity and response. Section I explains kairos as “circumstance” in Aristotle, as a required point of view in Heidegger, and as related to the beginning of creation in Schelling. Section II understands dialogue, as the kairos of philosophy, as a crisis—a breaking away from an ordinary understanding of and experience in the world. This destabilizing experience resonates with the untimeliness of philosophizing. (shrink)

There can be no doubt that Kant thought we should be reflective: we ought to care to make up our own minds about how things are and what is worth doing. Philosophical objections to the Kantian reflective ideal have centred on concerns about the excessive control that the reflective person is supposed to exert over her own mental life, and Kantians who feel the force of these objections have recently drawn attention to Kant’s conception of moral virtue as it is (...) developed in his later work, chiefly the Metaphysics of Morals. Melissa Merritt’s book is a distinctive contribution to this recent turn to virtue in Kant scholarship. Merritt argues that we need a clearer, and textually more comprehensive, account of what reflection is, in order not only to understand Kant’s account of virtue, but also to appreciate how it effectively rebuts long-standing objections to the Kantian reflective ideal. (shrink)

Mélissa Thériault,Dominique Sirois-Rouleau | : Bien connu pour ses prises de positions tranchées et polémiques sur le fonctionnement des institutions culturelles et des milieux artistiques, le philosophe français Yves Michaud est aussi un observateur assidu des nouvelles tendances de consommation. L’objectif de cette étude critique est d’ouvrir une discussion critique qui s’impose sur certaines affirmations dont le caractère polémique est aussi manifeste que fertile : la notion de vaporisation de l’art, le statut « orphelin » du design et son rapprochement (...) avec l’art et le luxe et, finalement, la question de l’authenticité. Nous discuterons chacun de ces éléments afin de répondre aux zones grises de l’analyse présentée dans l’essai de Michaud. Nous conclurons par une discussion sur la possibilité même de considérer l’art comme un luxe en montrant dans quelle mesure la conception du luxe telle que défendue par Michaud correspond en fait à un concept bien différent. | : Well known for his controversial positions on the functioning of cultural institutions and artistic communities, French philosopher Yves Michaud is also a fine observer of new consumer trends. The aim of this study is to open a critical discussion on polemic statements made by Michaud in Le nouveau luxe. Expérience, arrogances, authenticité : the notion of vaporization of the art, the “orphan” status of design and the connexion between art and luxury and, finally, authenticity. We discuss each of these elements to clarify the gray areas of the analysis presented by Michaud. We conclude with a discussion on the relevance to consider art as a luxury by showing how design, as understood by Michaud, matches a very different concept. (shrink)