A new high‐resolution structure of a pain‐sensing ion channel, TRPA1, provides a molecular scaffold to understand channel function. Unexpected structural features include a TRP‐domain helix similar to TRPV1, a novel ligand‐binding site, and an unusual C‐terminal coiled coil stabilized by inositol hexakisphosphate (IP6). TRP‐domain helices, which structurally act as a nexus for communication between the channel gates and its other domains, may thus be a feature conserved across the entire TRP family and, possibly, other allosterically‐gated channels. Similarly, the TRPA1 antagonist‐binding (...) site could also represent a druggable location in other ion channels. Combined with known TRPA1 functional properties, the structural role for IP6 leads us to propose that polyphosphate unbinding could act as a molecular kill switch for TRPA1 inactivation. Finally, although packing of the TRPA1 membrane‐proximal region hints at a mechanism for electrophile sensing, the details of how TRPA1 responds to noxious reactive electrophiles and temperature await future studies.Also watch the Video Abstract. (shrink)

The co-occurrence of stress-induced posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and obesity is common, particularly among military personnel but the link between these conditions is unclear. Individuals with comorbid PTSD and obesity manifest other physical and psychological problems, which significantly diminish their quality of life. Current understanding of the pathways connecting stress to PTSD and obesity is focused largely on behavioral mediators alone with little consideration of the biological regulatory mechanisms that underlie their co-occurrence. In this work, we leverage prior knowledge to (...) systematically highlight such bio-behavioral mechanisms and inform on the design of confirmatory pilot studies. We use natural language processing (NLP) to extract documented regulatory interactions involved in the metabolic response to stress and its impact on obesity and PTSD from over 8 million peer-reviewed papers. The resulting network describes the propagation of stress to PTSD and obesity through 34 metabolic mediators using 302 documented regulatory interactions supported by over 10,000 citations. Stress jointly affected both conditions through 21 distinct pathways involving only two intermediate metabolic mediators out of a total of 76 available paths through this network. Moreover, oxytocin (OXT), Neuropeptide-Y (NPY), and cortisol supported an almost direct propagation of stress to PTSD and obesity with different net effects. Although stress upregulated both NPY and cortisol, the downstream effects of both markers are reported to relieve PTSD severity but exacerbate obesity. The stress-mediated release of oxytocin, however, was found to concurrently downregulate the severity of both conditions. These findings highlight how a network-informed approach that leverages prior knowledge might be used effectively in identifying key mediators like OXT though experimental verification of signal transmission dynamics through each path will be needed to determine the actual likelihood and extent of each marker’s participation. (shrink)

The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 11, Issue 12, Page 57-59, December 2011.

Robbins, Francis, and Rutledge documented the personality profile of Church of England clergymen and clergywomen prior to the ordination of the first women to the priesthood in 1994, drawing on Eysenck's three-dimensional model of personality. They found that the personality profiles of clergymen and clergywomen were indistinguishable. The present paper reports a comparable study conducted in 2004 among 182 clergywomen and 540 clergymen serving in similar parochial posts in order to examine whether the ordination of women to the priesthood had (...) impacted the overall personality profile of Anglican clergy. The data suggest that little change had taken place between the two cohorts of clergy studied. Once again clergywomen and clergymen appeared to be formed in the same image. (shrink)

En 378 ap. J.-C., alors que les Romains s'accommodent bien de leur cohabitation avec les populations barbares d'Europe occidentale, y puisant la main-d'oeuvre de leur agriculture et de leur armée, les Goths viennent tout d'un coup, sans doute pour échapper aux Huns, s'amasser trop nombreux sur les rives du Danube. Débordés par la multitude des demandeurs d'asile, les Romains hésitent à entrouvrir leur frontière, et les Barbares, exaspérés, finissent par entrer en force. La situation dégénère, amorçant le phénomène qui mènera (...) à la chute de l'Empire romain. Mais ces événements aboutiront aussi à la création de l'Europe telle que nous la connaissons.In 378 BC, when the Romans will do well to cohabit with the barbarian peoples of Western Europe, including drawing on the labor of their agriculture and their armies, the Goths come suddenly probably to escape the Huns, too many gather on the banks of the Danube. Overwhelmed by the multitude of asylum seekers, the Romans are reluctant to loosen their border, and the Barbarians, exasperated, finally come into force. The situation escalates, initiating the phenomenon leading to the fall of the Roman Empire. But these events lead to the creation of Europe as we know it. (shrink)

This article interprets Agnès Varda’s Sans toit ni loi (Without roof or law) through the lens of Catherine Malabou’s concept of anarchy as the “non-governable”: order without command or origin. I elucidate key elements of Malabou’s anarchy in my analysis of Varda’s character Mona Bergeron, a rebellious girl who wanders free from structures of domination. I read Varda’s Mona as an emblem of sexual anarchy, with detailed reference to Malabou’s argument that the clitoris – a “little pebble” of concealed pleasure (...) – symbolically disrupts heteronormative governance. Turning to Varda’s filmmaking approach, I engage with Rebecca J. DeRoo’s view that Varda practiced “strategic naivety”, and that her ostensibly artless stance towards cinema history helped her navigate and survive in a male-dominated industry. DeRoo also underscores the influence of non-cinematic works, like Renaissance painting and vernacular photography, in Varda’s films. My article suggests that the intermedial role of photography and ancient myth – akin to a “little pebble” or “scruple” – punctuates both the montage and narrative of Sans toit ni loi. I propose that Varda’s film, with its camera tracking beside the walker and rendering silence, captures the transient freedom of her rebellious girl and discloses an anarchic order that temporarily collapses social hierarchies and governances, while also revelling in the caesura – the cuts or disappearances – that accompany this alternative formation. (shrink)

Monique Lanoix | : Over three decades ago, Carol Gilligan’s seminal book In a Different Voice provided feminist theorists with a powerful new approach to address the shortcomings of traditional moral theories. With a focus on concrete situations, an ethics of care can attend to the specifics of moral dilemmas that might otherwise be glossed over. As feminist reflection on moral and political philosophizing has progressed, another challenge has emerged. Recent feminist scholarship proposes non-ideal theories as preferable action-guiding theories. (...) In this paper, I examine Kittay’s call for a version of care ethics as a naturalized ethics that comes from lived experience, in order to draw out the salient characteristics of the caring agent. This allows me to show how Kittay’s key assertion that “we are all some mother’s child” resonates with Ricoeur’s framing of self-esteem, which is, in turn, anchored on a notion of solicitude. Secondly, I make the case that care ethics can benefit from Ricoeur’s little ethics as it helps buttress the goal of good caring practices. Finally, care ethics, with its emphasis on the universality of care needs, helps to strengthen the central role of solicitude for the political sphere. | : Il y a plus de trente ans, le livre fondateur de Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice, fournissait aux théoriciennes féministes une nouvelle approche permettant d’affiner la critique des théories morales traditionnelles, particulièrement en ce qui concerne leur universalisme. Focalisant sur les situations concrètes, l’éthique du care chez Gilligan permet de recentrer l’attention sur les spécificités d’un dilemme moral qui, autrement, risquent de rester dans l’ombre. La réflexion féministe en philosophie morale et politique a progressé depuis, s’attelant à de nouveaux défis. La recherche récente suggère qu’une théorie morale non idéale est préférable aux théories dites idéalistes. Dans cet article, j’examine l’éthique du care selon Eva Feder Kittay, soit à titre d’éthique naturalisée, afin de mettre en relief les caractéristiques saillantes de l’agent.e caring. Cela me permettra ensuite de montrer comment l’affirmation clé de Kittay selon laquelle « nous sommes tou.te.s l’enfant d’une mère » fait écho à la pensée ricoeurienne de l’estime de soi qui est, en retour, ancrée dans la notion de sollicitude. Deuxièmement, je soutiens que la « petite éthique » ricoeurienne peut enrichir les éthiques du care, précisément en ce qui a trait au telos du care. Ce faisant, les éthiques du care, qui placent l’accent sur l’universalité des besoins en cette matière, pourront mieux ancrer la sollicitude dans la sphère politique. (shrink)

Background In neonatal intensive care, a child's death is often preceded by a medical decision. Nurses, social workers and pastors, however, are often excluded from ethical case deliberation. If multiprofessional ethical case deliberations do take place, participants may not always know how to perform to the fullest. Setting A level-IIID neonatal intensive care unit of a paediatric teaching hospital in the Netherlands. Methods Structured multiprofessional medical ethical decision-making (MEDM) was implemented to help overcome problems experienced. Important features were: all professionals (...) who are directly involved with the patient contribute to MEDM; a five-step procedure is used: exploration, agreement on the ethical dilemma/investigation of solutions, analysis of solutions, decision-making, planning actions; meetings are chaired by an impartial ethicist. A 15-item questionnaire to survey staff perceptions on this intervention just before and 8 months after implementation was developed. Results Before and after response rates were 91/105 (87%) and 85/113 (75%). Factor analysis on the questionnaire suggested a four-factor structure: participants' role; structure of MEDM; content of ethical deliberation; and documentation of decisions/conclusions. Effect sizes were 1.67 (p<0.001), 0.69 (p<0.001) and 0.40 (p<0.01) for the first three factors respectively, but only 0.07 (p=0.65) for the fourth factor. Nurses' perceptions of improvement did not significantly exceed those of physicians. Conclusion Professionals involved in ethical case deliberation perceived that the process of decision-making had improved; they were more positive about the structure of meetings, their own role and, to some extent, the content of ethical deliberation. Documentation of decisions/conclusions requires further improvement. (shrink)

English summary: The author posits that Nietzsche developed thinking that embraced antinomical associations, a thinking that does not add up opposites, nor eliminates one or the other, but surpasses them. French text.French description: "On sait ce que j'exige du philosophe : de se placer par-delà le bien et le mal, - de placer au-dessous de lui l'illusion du jugement moral." Se situer par-delà bien et mal, ce n'est pas adopter une posture immorale ou amorale, c'est comprendre qu'au principe de toute (...) antinomie se trouve une croyance à des valeurs dont la valeur éternelle et sacrée est garantie par son opposition à des contraires tenus pour être absolument mauvais. Le but de ce livre est de montrer comment Nietzsche s'y prend pour refuser l'alternative "morale" du pour et du contre et guérir la pensée de ces oppositions populaires "sur lesquelles les métaphysiciens ont apposé leur sceau", par exemple historique / éternel, expliquer / interpréter, être /devenir, réalité /apparence, volonté de vie /volonté de vérité. Dans la mesure où les falsifications et les mensonges dont ces couples procèdent sont des mensonges utiles et des falsifications nécessaires et non pas des erreurs, il ne suffit pas d'en prendre conscience pour les rectifier, il faut inventer les moyens d'en sortir, multiplier les perspectives et penser dynamiquement en termes de forces, de devenirs, d'advenirs. Dépasser ou surmonter, laisser derrière soi ou au-dessous de soi : il n'y a pas qu'une seule façon de se situer "par-delà". Mais chacune est l'exploration d'un dangereux peut-être. (shrink)

Le Dictionnaire d'économie politique et diplomatique paraît entre 1784 et 1788 sous la direction de J. N. Démeunier (1751-1814), homme politique français et publiciste. Sur la base d'une définition qui inscrit les questions économiques nouvelles dans le champ de la réflexion sociale et politique classique, le Dictionnaire présente une conception globalisante de l'économique relativement innovante. Dans le cadre du présent volume III (Économie politique) des Anthologies de l'encyclopédie méthodique, nous avons privilégié l'ensemble des articles consacrés aux États-Unis et à la (...) Virginie, ce nouveau Monde où « la réflexion politique moderne est mise à l'épreuve, et transformée par l'économie politique ». Le modèle américain est tendu par Démeunier à « la partie la plus saine de l'Europe » comme « le miroir de son avenir », en particulier quand il célèbre la dimension exemplaire du nouveau code civil et criminel préparé pour la Virginie, ou encore les dispositions sur la tolérance religieuse. Enfin, nous avons fait suivre le choix d'articles tirés du Dictionnaire de Démeunier d'extraits de la traduction française de l'abbé Morellet des Observations sur la Virginie, ouvrage rédigé par Jefferson et auquel Démeunier a abondamment emprunté. Le lecteur appréciera derechef la hauteur et la nouveauté de vues de ce grand homme, héritier exemplaire des Lumières, préoccupé tout entier de réformes et de changements pour cette nouvelle société en train de se constituer. Cette anthologie paraît de façon posthume. C'est en effet le dernier ouvrage que préparait Paule-Monique VERNES, professeure émérite de philosophie moderne et politique à l'Université de Provence, quand elle est décédée soudainement le 15 janvier 2013. J. Boulad-Ayoub s'est occupée de compléter, avec l'aide de Christian Jobin, la présente publication laissée inachevée par la disparition de son éditrice. (shrink)

This volume presents an exploration of the intersection between the work of Michel Foucault and feminist theory, focusing on Foucault's theories of sex/body, identity/subject, and power/politics. Like the other books in this series, this volume seeks to bring a feminist perspective to bear on the interpretation of a major figure in the philosophical canon. In the case of Michel Foucault, however, this aim is somewhat ironic because Foucault sees his work as disrupting that very canon. Since feminists see their work (...) as similarly disruptive, Foucault and feminism would seem to find much common ground, but, as the contributors to this collection reveal, the matter is not so simple. Foucault, like many feminists, is centrally concerned with questions related to sexuality and the body. This concern has led both Foucault and feminists to challenge the founding concept of the modernist philosophical canon: the disembodied transcendental subject. For both Foucault and feminists, this subject must be deconstructed and a new concept of identity articulated. The exciting possibilities of a Foucaultian approach to issues of the subject and identity, especially as they relate to sex and the body, are detailed in several of the essays collected here. Despite these possibilities, however, Foucault's approach has raised serious questions about an equally crucial area of feminist thought-politics. Some feminist critics of Foucault have argued that his deconstruction of the concept "woman" also deconstructs the possibility of a feminist politics. Several essays explore the implications of this deconstruction for feminist politics and suggest that a Foucaultian feminist politics is not viable. Overall, this collection illustrates the range of interest Foucault's thought has generated among feminist thinkers and both the advantages and liabilities of his approach for the development of feminist theory and politics. Contributors are Nancy Fraser, Nancy Hartsock, Judith Butler, Ellen L. McCallum, Linda Alcoff, Honi Haber, Jana Sawicki, Jon Simons, Monique Deveaux, Moya Lloyd, Amy Allen, and Terry Aladjem. (shrink)

An outdated geography supplies the bond among the thirty‐one articles in Sur les traces des Cassini. In the seventeenth century, when the Italians Gian Domenico Cassini and his nephew Giacomo Filippo Maraldi were born in Perinaldo, north of Genoa, their birthplace belonged to the County of Nice. Hence the rationale of building a set of papers on astronomy in the south of France around Cassini I and his family, which for four generations ran the Royal Observatory in Paris.Over half the (...) articles concern the Cassinis, mostly Cassini I and his great‐great‐grandson and namesake Cassini IV. There was also a Cassini V, Henri de Cassini, who countered the family genius and stamina by preferring botany and dying early, of the same outbreak of cholera that took the life of Sadi Carnot, without having created Cassini VI. He had already entered the Academy of Sciences with a push from his father. “I dare to beg of you [Cassini IV wrote to his fellow academician A. M. Ampère] to consider whether this unique situation in the history of letters, [a family's] devotion to the sciences for five successive generations and 170 years, ought not add some weight to the scientific credentials of my son.” It is hard to refuse the children of important alumni.The portion of Traces dealing more directly with astronomy in the south of France gets off to a distant start. Pytheas of Marseilles, who lived about 350 b.c., sailed to the Orkneys and the Baltic and earned himself the reputation of a liar back home for his stories of midnight suns and frozen lakes. He measured the latitude of Marseilles, the obliquity of the ecliptic, and the size of the earth. Ptolemy praised him. Strabo did not: “Pytheas lied about everything and covered it up with his knowledge of astronomy and numbers.”No traces worth following up were laid down for just under two thousand years. Then, in 1580, Nicolas Fabri de Peiresc first saw the light of day. He lived in Italy for four years as a very young man, deepening his knowledge of astronomy and human nature and meeting the main future actors in the Galileo affair: Galileo himself, Bellarmine, and Matteo Barberini . At his center in Aix‐la‐Provence, Peiresc made many useful astronomical observations, some in collaboration with Pierre Gassendi. He died in harness, worrying about the change of the obliquity since the days of Pytheas.There follow articles on Provençal astronomers who determined longitude and latitude at sea, on neglected observers in Languedoc who assisted the cause of the Enlightenment, and on modern observatories in the south of France. The political circumstances after the defeat of 1870–1871 favored decentralization of astronomy away from the Paris Observatory. In Italy, too, recent political events—the unification of 1870—made a restructuring of astronomical institutions desirable and possible. But whereas France had too few observatories, Italy had too many. Georges Rayet and Pietro Tacchini, both astrophysicists, compared the circumstances in their countries and made mutually reinforcing proposals to their colleagues and governments. Their respective proposals, most of which were enacted, called for reassigning some Italian observatories to meteorological work, building new observatories in Besançon, Bordeaux, and Lyon, and refurbishing older ones at Marseilles and Toulouse. Once again, as in the days of Cassini I, Italy made a decisive contribution to the practice of astronomy in France.Sur les traces des Cassini mixes slight and weighty work, admits antiquarian and broader approaches, offers new documentation, displays pertinent illustrations, and does it all at a high level of scholarship. Since, because of its title, the book's primary audience probably will be people interested in the Cassinis, its fullest articles about them may usefully be mentioned here: Anna Cassini on Cassini's brief return to Italy, 1694–1696; Claude Teillet on the provincial life and poetry of Cassini IV; Christiane Demeulenaere‐Douyère on the Cassinis and the Académie des Sciences; Fabrizio Bonoli and Alessandro Braccesi on Cassini I's astronomical work in Bologna, with full bibliography; and Monique Pelletier on the Cassini map of France, on which she has written a book . Pytheas and Peiresc are the subjects of collaborative articles by Simone Arzano and Yvon Georgelin. (shrink)

Problem: Mitterer's critique of the central argumentations of radical constructivists has been mostly neglected until today. The paper presents and evaluates his criticism and, in the second part, outlines a format of constructivism that tries to draw appropriate consequences. Solution: In his critique Mitterer explains why the radical constructivism represented above all by Maturana, Varela, von Glasersfeld or Roth still remains in a dualistic format. In his view Neurobiology is used in their writings as the indisputable basis for deriving far-reaching (...) epistemological consequences. Therefore constructivism evades self-application. To overcome this serious critique a different approach to constructivist thinking is sketched that operates without using any biological or psychological theories, tries to avoid dualism, and elaborates Mitterer's basic argument that the description of an object and the object under description are the same. Benefits: The paper shows what constructivism can learn from a serious critique and how it can be rewritten in a non-dualistic way. (shrink)

Augustine of Hippo's The City of God is generally considered to be one of the key works of Late Antiquity. Written in response to allegations that Christianity had brought about the decline of Rome, Augustine here explores themes in history, political science, and Christian theology, and argues for the truth of Christianity over competing religions and philosophies. This Companion volume includes specially-commissioned essays by an international team of scholars that provide new insights into The City of God. Offering commentary on (...) each of this massive work's 22 books chapters, they sequentially and systematically explore The City of God as a whole. Collectively, these essays demonstrate the development and coherence of Augustine's argument. The volume will be an invaluable resource for students and scholars of ancient and contemporary theology, philosophy, cultural studies, and political theory. (shrink)

Cicero's praise of Caesar in thePro Marcelloof September 46b.c.e.has been much discussed for its sincerity or otherwise. Here I would like to point out some unobserved literary colour which may make some contribution to the argument, namely Cicero's subtle evocation of Hercules in describing the achievements of the victorious Caesar. Such an analogy is not unlikely in the context of Roman military image-making: Sulla in 78b.c.e.and Crassus and Pompey in 70b.c.e.had earlier encouraged connections with Hercules in analogous victorious contexts, and (...) similar comparisons are later made between the foreign conquests of Augustus and those of Hercules in both Virgil and Horace. (shrink)

ALBERT EINSTEIN’S CONNECTIONS WITH SPINOZA’S PHILOSOPHY The paper aims to analyze the influence of Baruch Spinoza’s philosophy on Albert Einstein’s work, in particular his physics. Einstein was a man of genius personality of contemporary physics, but we can see him as a prominent philosopher, too. He studied the philosophical works of Kant, Leibniz, Hume and other modern philosophers. But his most preferred thinker was Baruch Spinoza. Einstein knew very well Spinoza’s main book, Ethics. He accepted Spinoza’s concepts of human being (...) and the dignity of man in the history of the world. The concept of God proposed by the author of Ethics was very important for Einstein. Spinoza’s inspiring philosophy is present in Einstein’s vision of the universe and in his deterministic view on quantum mechanics. This problem is reflected in the paper too. Keywords: BARUCH SPINOZA, ALBERT EINSTEIN, CONTEMPORARY PHYSICS, UNIVERSE. (shrink)

Even though since 1965 the Great Cultural Revolution was basically an internal struggle in Mainland China, it coincided with a high tide of criticism toward Russian revisionism and therefore constituted a struggle for defining the ideological line of the Chinese Communist Party. As an internal struggle, the Great Cultural Revolution subjected all phases of cultural activity and personnel to a severe political grinding down so that a more uniform political consciousness of Maoism was generated as the guiding principle of the (...) nation; as an attempt to repudiate Russian revisionism and to assert the ideological identity of Maoism, the Great Cultural Revolution has helped in practice to provide a model of continuing revolution for a genuinely pursued Marxist society. In his long article, Chou Yang, who himself later became a target and victim of the Great Cultural Revolution, spelled out the latter message and hinted at the former possibility. What is even more significant is that he stressed repeatedly the importance of the role philosophy workers and social science workers must play in waging an ideological struggle against both Marxist revisionism and capitalism, on the one hand, and the importance of political leadership in the studies and works of philosophy and the social sciences, on the other. (shrink)

This book is a detailed study of how, according to Thomas Aquinas and his works, God’s Holy Spirit is continuously at work in and through human moral activity.

In examining Ennead VI 4[22], we find Plotinus in conflict with modern, i.e., Cartesian or Kantian, assumptions about the relation of soul and body and the identification of the self with the subject. Curiously, his images and exposition are more in tune with Twentieth Century notions such as wave and field. With these as keys, we are in a position to unlock the subtlety of Plotinus' analysis of the way soul and body are present together, with sensation structured through the (...) body and judgment coming from the soul. The problem of the self concerns not only the unity of the self in terms of body and soul, but also how the self is constituted in relation to other selves, both keeping its individuality and sharing its experiences at the same time. (shrink)

There are good reasons for envisioning a global discourse about God, premised necessarily agreed upon perfections considered to be by definition proper to God, and for thinking through the implications of our understanding of God for morality. Philosophically, it makes sense to hold that claims about omnipotence, omniscience, and other superlative perfections are indeed maximal, and define “God” wherever the terminology of divine persons is taken up. Religiously too, it makes sense to assert that a deity possessed of perfections is (...) not just the deity of one’s own tribe or religion, but also the deity of the whole world, whether acknowledged as such or not. This essay delves into the larger set of rich complexities by three moves. First, I look into a single extended historical case of the extension of the discourse about God beyond the Christian West, the discourse on God proffered by Western Jesuit missionaries in India from the sixteenth to twentieth centuries. Second, I place next to that Jesuit learning the instance of a famed Hindu theologian’s discourse on God, God’s perfections, and their moral implications. Third, I briefly step back and assess the dangers and fruitful prospects inherent in thinking about God and morality in an interreligious context. (shrink)

Joseph Bracken examines key writings of process-oriented philosophers like Alfred North Whitehead along with systems-oriented thinkers such as Ludwig von Bertalanffy to create a systems-oriented understanding of the God-world relation that serves as a complement to Pope Francis’s reflections on the environmental crisis.

En física, el infinito aparece vinculado al problema de lo continuo de las representaciones matemáticas usadas por las diversas teorías y, por lo tanto, a la posibilidad de la infinita divisibilidad y de la infinita extensión de la geometría del espaciotiempo y de los conceptos y magnitudes físicas mensurables. El modelo estándar de las partículas considera que las partículas elementales son «infinitamente» pequeñas, donde surgen cálculos con resultados infinitos para determinadas cantidades físicas y, para eliminarlos, se utilizan métodos de renormalización, (...) usados también en la cosmología clásica y en el modelo estándar cosmológico del Big Bang con la finalidad de domesticar los infinitos. La investigación en gravedad cuántica considera que el espacio no sea infinitamente divisible y los modelos de multiversos suponen tiempos y espacios infinitos para el Universo. Siendo nuestras teorías siempre limitadas y perfectibles, parece que no podemos probar, en física, que el Universo sea físicamente infinito. (shrink)