The authors explore the changing dynamics of gendered familial caregiving in urban China within the context of economic reforms and the continued cultural influence of xiao. Data collected in China through interviews with 110 familial caregivers were used to examine cultural and structural influences on the caregiving behavior of adult children. Results from multiple regression analyses provide evidence of a gendered division of parental care tasks, a decline in the patrilocal tradition of caregiving, and a strong social pressure that influences (...) caregiving behavior. Structural factors linked to caregiving performance included family size, lack of pensions for elders, and caregivers’ employment status and income. Findings portend deleterious effects for the women who are now caregivers as they are likely to live longer but be more financially dependent and have fewer children available to help them. (shrink)

We give a comparison inequality that allows one to estimate the tail probabilities of sums of independent Banach space valued random variables in terms of those of independent identically distributed random variables. More precisely, let X1, . . . , Xn be independent Banach-valued random variables. Let I be a random variable independent of X1, . . . , Xn and uniformly distributed over {1, . . . , n}. Put ˜.

This discussion paper considers how seldom recognised theories influence clinical ethics committees. A companion paper examined four major theories in social science: positivism, interpretivism, critical theory and functionalism, which can encourage legalistic ethics theories or practical living bioethics, which aims for theory–practice congruence. This paper develops the legalistic or living bioethics themes by relating the four theories to clinical ethics committee members’ reported aims and practices and approaches towards efficiency, power, intimidation, justice, equality and children’s interests and rights. Different approaches (...) to framing ethical questions are also considered. Being aware of the four theories’ influence can help when seeking to understand and possibly change clinical ethics committee routines. The paper is not a research report but is informed by a recent study in two London paediatric cardiac units. Forty-five practitioners and related experts were interviewed, including eight members of ethics committees, about the work of informing, preparing and supporting families during the extended process of consent to children’s elective heart surgery. The mosaic of multidisciplinary teamwork is reported in a series of papers about each profession, including this one on bioethics and law and clinical ethics committees’ influence on clinical practice. The qualitative social research was funded by the British Heart Foundation, in order that more may be known about the perioperative views and needs of all concerned. Questions included how disputes can be avoided, how high ethical standards and respectful cooperation between staff and families can be encouraged, and how minors’ consent or refusal may be respected, with the support of clinical ethics committees. (shrink)

At extreme altitude (>5,000 – 5,500 m), sustained hypoxia threatens human function and survival, and is associated with marked involuntary weight loss (cachexia). This seems to be a coordinated response: appetite and protein synthesis are suppressed, and muscle catabolism promoted. We hypothesise that, rather than simply being pathophysiological dysregulation, this cachexia is protective. Ketone bodies, synthesised during relative starvation, protect tissues such as the brain from reduced oxygen availability by mechanisms including the reduced generation of reactive oxygen species, improved mitochondrial (...) efficiency and activation of the ATP‐sensitive potassium (KATP) channel. Amino acids released from skeletal muscle also protect cells from hypoxia, and may interact synergistically with ketones to offer added protection. We thus propose that weight loss in hypoxia is an adaptive response: the amino acids and ketone bodies made available act not only as metabolic substrates, but as metabolic modulators, protecting cells from the hypoxic challenge.Also watch the Video Abstract. (shrink)

Lists of species underpin many fields of human endeavour, but there are currently no universally accepted principles for deciding which biological species should be accepted when there are alternative taxonomic treatments (and, by extension, which scientific names should be applied to those species). As improvements in information technology make it easier to communicate, access, and aggregate biodiversity information, there is a need for a framework that helps taxonomists and the users of taxonomy decide which taxa and names should be used (...) by society whilst continuing to encourage taxonomic research that leads to new species discoveries, new knowledge of species relationships, and the refinement of existing species concepts. Here, we present 10 principles that can underpin such a governance framework, namely (i) the species list must be based on science and free from nontaxonomic considerations and interference, (ii) governance of the species list must aim for community support and use, (iii) all decisions about list composition must be transparent, (iv) the governance of validated lists of species is separate from the governance of the names of taxa, (v) governance of lists of accepted species must not constrain academic freedom, (vi) the set of criteria considered sufficient to recognise species boundaries may appropriately vary between different taxonomic groups but should be consistent when possible, (vii) a global list must balance conflicting needs for currency and stability by having archived versions, (viii) contributors need appropriate recognition, (ix) list content should be traceable, and (x) a global listing process needs both to encompass global diversity and to accommodate local knowledge of that diversity. We conclude by outlining issues that must be resolved if such a system of taxonomic list governance and a unified list of accepted scientific names generated are to be universally adopted. (shrink)

Background This analysis is about practical living bioethics and how law, ethics and sociology understand and respect children’s consent to, or refusal of, elective heart surgery. Analysis of underlying theories and influences will contrast legalistic bioethics with living bioethics. In-depth philosophical analysis compares social science traditions of positivism, interpretivism, critical theory and functionalism and applies them to bioethics and childhood, to examine how living bioethics may be encouraged or discouraged. Illustrative examples are drawn from research interviews and observations in two (...) London paediatric cardiac units. This paper is one of a series on how the multidisciplinary cardiac team members all contribute to the complex mosaic of care when preparing and supporting families’ informed consent to surgery. Results The living bioethics of justice, care and respect for children and their consent depends on theories and practices, contexts and relationships. These can all be undermined by unseen influences: the history of adult-centric ethics; developmental psychology theories; legal and financial pressures that require consent to be defined as an adult contract; management systems and daily routines in healthcare that can intimidate families and staff; social inequalities. Mainstream theories in the clinical ethics literature markedly differ from the living bioethics in clinical practices. Conclusion We aim to contribute to raising standards of respectful paediatric bioethics and to showing the relevance of virtue and feminist ethics, childhood studies and children’s rights. (shrink)

Uncoupling proteins (UCPs) regulate mitochondrial function, and thus cellular metabolism. Angiotensin‐converting enzyme (ACE) is the central component of endocrine and local tissue renin–angiotensin systems (RAS), which also regulate diverse aspects of whole‐body metabolism and mitochondrial function (partly through altering mitochondrial UCP expression). We show that ACE expression also appears to be regulated by mitochondrial UCPs. In genetic analysis of two unrelated populations (healthy young UK men and Scandinavian diabetic patients) serum ACE (sACE) activity was significantly higher amongst UCP3‐55C (rather than (...) T) and UCP2 I (rather than D) allele carriers. RNA interference against UCP2 in human umbilical vein endothelial cells reduced UCP2 mRNA sixfold (P < 0·01) whilst increasing ACE expression within a physiological range (<1·8‐fold at 48 h; P < 0·01). Our findings suggest novel hypotheses. Firstly, cellular feedback regulation may occur between UCPs and ACE. Secondly, cellular UCP regulation of sACE suggests a novel means of crosstalk between (and mutual regulation of) cellular and endocrine metabolism. This might partly explain the reduced risk of developing diabetes and metabolic syndrome with RAS antagonists and offer insight into the origins of cardiovascular disease in which UCPs and ACE both play a role. (shrink)

The late I. J. (“Jack”) Good, a British mathematician, played a significant role at Bletchley Park in breaking the German Enigma code and therefore contributed mightily to the allied victory in World War II. Though not a Christian believer, Good’s approach to epistemological issues and his understanding of probability offer valuable insights to those engaged in a serious Christian apologetic. Moreover, Good’s relationship with Marcello Truzzi, critic of naïve thinking in parapsychology and the occult and who directly influenced skeptic Carl (...) Sagan, makes Good of more than passing philosophical interest. (shrink)

Each of the five volumes in the Stone Art Theory Institutes series—and the seminars on which they are based—brings together a range of scholars who are not always directly familiar with one another’s work. The outcome of each of these convergences is an extensive and “unpredictable conversation” on knotty and provocative issues about art. This fourth volume in the series, _Beyond the Aesthetic and the Anti-Aesthetic_, focuses on questions revolving around the concepts of the aesthetic, the anti-aesthetic, and the political. (...) The book is about the fact that now, almost thirty years after Hal Foster defined the anti-aesthetic, there is still no viable alternative to the dichotomy between aesthetics and anti- or non-aesthetic art. The impasse is made more difficult by the proliferation of identity politics, and it is made less negotiable by the hegemony of anti-aesthetics in academic discourse on art. The central question of this book is whether artists and academicians are free of this choice in practice, in pedagogy, and in theory. The contributors are Stéphanie Benzaquen, J. M. Bern­stein, Karen Busk-Jepsen, Luis Camnitzer, Diarmuid Costello, Joana Cunha Leal, Angela Dimitrakaki, Alexander Dumbadze, T. Brandon Evans, Geng Youzhuang, Boris Groys, Beáta Hock, Gordon Hughes, Michael Kelly, Grant Kester, Meredith Kooi, Cary Levine, Sunil Manghani, William Mazzarella, Justin McKeown, Andrew McNamara, Eve Meltzer, Nadja Millner-Larsen, Maria Filomena Molder, Carrie Noland, Gary Peters, Aaron Richmond, Lauren Ross, Toni Ross, Eva Schürmann, Gregory Sholette, Noah Simblist, Jon Simons, Robert Storr, Martin Sundberg, Timotheus Vermeulen, and Rebecca Zorach. (shrink)

Originally published in 1967, this Companion is designed to help readers of the Qur’an by giving them necessary background information. An account is given of ideas peculiar to the Qur’an, and the main variant interpretations are noted. A full index of Qur’anic proper names and an index of words commented on has been provided. Based on A J Arberry’s translation, this Companion can be used with other translations, or indeed with the original text, since the verses are numbered.

ABSTRACT The UK Supreme Court ruling of Montgomery v Lanarkshire clarified that in obtaining informed consent to treatment, practitioners are under a duty to inform patients of material risks. Traditionally such risk has pertained to the clinical risks inherent to treatment. In examining empirical and judicial evidence, this paper makes the case for disclosure of potent financial interests; with potency relating to those interests likely to have greatest influence over practice. The paper explores how financial interests may detrimentally influence (...) practice patterns and how non-disclosure of such interests may be linked to the erosion of patient trust and subsequent disinclination to consent to treatment. Judicial notions of material risk are explored, and the conclusion reached that they offer a broader interpretation of disclosable risk compared to current UK GMC guidance. It is anticipated that empirical evidence could be used by the courts in determining questions of both materiality and causation in cases of negligent non-disclosure of potent financial interests. The paper concludes that there is sufficient reason to surmise that a test case could successfully apply the principles identified therein to establish the materiality of conflict of interest in informed consent to medical treatment. (shrink)

Surely one of the most interesting problems in the study of mind concerns the nature of sentience. How is it that there are sensations, rather than merely sensings? What is it like to be a bat -- or why is it like anything at all? Why aren't we automata or responding but unfeeling Zombies? How does neural activity give rise to subjective experience? As Leibniz put the problem : _It must be confessed, however, that Perception_ [consciousness?]_, and that which depends (...) upon it, are_ _inexplicable by mechanical means, that is to say, by figures and motions. Supposing that there were a_ _machine whose structure produced thought, sensation, and perceptions, we could conceive of it as increased_ _in its interior size with the same proportions until one was able to enter into its interior, as he would into a_ _mill. Now, on going into it he would find only pieces working upon one another, but never would he find_ _anything to explain Perception._ [Montgomery trans.]. (shrink)

This exploratory study assessed the use of functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) to examine hemodynamic response patterns during sentence processing. Four groups of participants: monolingual English children, bilingual Chinese-English children, bilingual Chinese-English adults and monolingual English adults were given an agent selection syntactic processing task. Bilingual child participants were classified as simultaneous or sequential bilinguals to examine the impact of first language, age of second-language acquisition (AoL2A), and the length of second language experience on behavioral performance and cortical activation. Participants (...) were asked to select the agent of four types of sentences: subject-verb-object (SVO), passive (PAS), subject-extracted relative clause (SR), and object-extracted relative clause (OR) adopted from the “Whatdunit” task by Montgomery et al. (2016). Semantic cues were removed by using inanimate nouns for agents and patients, which constrained participants to make decisions based on syntactic knowledge. Behavioral results showed greater accuracy for canonical SVO and SR sentence types than for noncanonical OR and PAS sentence types, which aligns with prior studies. Neuroimaging results revealed greater hemodynamic responses to relative clauses (i.e., SR and OR sentences) than to simple sentences (SVO and PAS), especially for Chinese-English bilinguals suggesting first-language transfer influencing sentence processing in English. The effects AoL2A and the length of second language experience showed no significant differences between simultaneous and sequential bilinguals or between bilingual adults and children for identifying the correct agent in each sentence. However, neuroimaging results demonstrated greater hemodynamic responses in right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and left inferior parietal lobule (IPL) in simultaneous bilinguals compared to sequential bilinguals and greater hemodynamic responses in left and right DLPFC and left IPL among bilingual adults. Different behavioral and neural hemodynamic response patterns afford new insights into the effects of syntactic knowledge on sentence processing. (shrink)

Reviews of the papers mentioned in the title.

Interdisciplinary perspectives on the feature of conscious life that scaffolds every act of cognition: subjective time. Our awareness of time and temporal properties is a constant feature of conscious life. Subjective temporality structures and guides every aspect of behavior and cognition, distinguishing memory, perception, and anticipation. This milestone volume brings together research on temporality from leading scholars in philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience, defining a new field of interdisciplinary research. The book's thirty chapters include selections from classic texts by William James (...) and Edmund Husserl and new essays setting them in historical context; contemporary philosophical accounts of lived time; and current empirical studies of psychological time. These last chapters, the larger part of the book, cover such topics as the basic psychophysics of psychological time, its neural foundations, its interaction with the body, and its distortion in illness and altered states of consciousness. Contributors Melissa J. Allman, Holly Andersen, Valtteri Arstila, Yan Bao, Dean V. Buonomano, Niko A. Busch, Barry Dainton, Sylvie Droit-Volet, Christine M. Falter, Thomas Fraps, Shaun Gallagher, Alex O. Holcombe, Edmund Husserl, William James, Piotr Jaśkowski, Jeremie Jozefowiez, Ryota Kanai, Allison N. Kurti, Dan Lloyd, Armando Machado, Matthew S. Matell, Warren H. Meck, James Mensch, Bruno Mölder, Catharine Montgomery, Konstantinos Moutoussis, Peter Naish, Valdas Noreika, Sukhvinder S. Obhi, Ruth Ogden, Alan o'Donoghue, Georgios Papadelis, Ian B. Phillips, Ernst Pöppel, John E. R. Staddon, Dale N. Swanton, Rufin VanRullen, Argiro Vatakis, Till M. Wagner, John Wearden, Marc Wittmann, Agnieszka Wykowska, Kielan Yarrow, Bin Yin, Dan Zahavi. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:INTELLIGO UT CREDAM: ST. AUGUSTINE'S CONFESSIONS* BAPTISM INTO the Catholic Church ended Augustine's Odyssey through the intellectual and spiritual seas of late antiquity. His Confessi.ons tells us how he joined the Manicheans, became attached to astrology, imbibed Aristotle, was attracted to the Academy, learned Epicureanism, discovered the Platonists, and finally came home to Christianity.1 From the first moment he read Cicero, then, Augustine became a seeker of wisdom; few (...) of humanity's questions and concerns failed to move him. His initial conversion to Manicheanism, indeed, was prompted by its alleged ability to give a satisfactory response to the questions raised by human experience. In the same way, his initial aversion to Christianity in part arose from its alleged inability to provide such an account. Still, the nature of Augustine's ultimate conversion to Christianity is not entirely clear. He certainly indicates that a properly tutored biblical faith is the only solution to those questions and concerns which so vexed him: " credo ut intelligam," as Anselm formulated Augustine's understanding. But what is the role of philosophical reflection in this? Does reason work only within the context of faith? Is it merely the scullery maid for explicating the understanding of divine revelation? Or does Augustine say or at least show that unaided human reason has another sphere of operation? Can human reason understand *Earlier versions of this paper were read at the Twentieth International Medieval Congress, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, Michigan, May 11, 1985, and at the University of Dallas Augustine Colloquium, November 22, 1985. I am grateful to Dr. Michael Platt for his helpful comments and suggestions. 1 All references to the Confessions are from J. Gibb and W. Montgomery, The Confessions of Augustine (Cambridge, 1927)..JAMES LEHRBERGER, O. CIST. anything about God, human beings, and the universe before the advent of faith? While Augustinian scholarship has tended to stress the way in which philosophical thought. especially Neo-Platonism, operates within Christian faith, I hope to show that Augustine conceives the " faith and reason " relation in broader terms.2 More specifically, in this paper I hope to show that the Confessions presents reason itself, without revelation, as capable of assaying the possibility of any religious claim to 2 The problem of "faith and reason," or " authority and philosophy," in Augustine's thought has a history of critical analysis reaching back to the last century. The early discussions of this question have been traced by Sister Mary Patricia Garvey, in Saint Augustine: Christian or N ea-Platonist (Milwaukee, 1939), pp. 3-40, and more briefly by J. O'Meara, in St. A.ugustine, A.gainst the Academics, "Ancient Christian Writers," XU (Baltimore, 1950), pp. 19-22. The more recent discussions have failed to produce any consensus. H. A. Wolfson, in The Philosophy of the Church Fathers, I (Cambridge, 1956), pp. 127-140, sees Augustine as illustrating the patristic "double faith" against Manichean credulity. R. Cushman, in "Faith and Reason in the Thought of St. Augustine," Church History, 19, 1950), 271-294, awards the primacy to faith on the basis of the perversity of the will. P. Courcelle, in Recherches sur les Confessions de Saint Augustin (Paris, 1950), pp. 251-255, understands Augustine to progress from Neo-Platonism to Christianity without abandoning the former. R. Holte, in Beatitude et Sagesse: Saint Augustin et le probleme de la fin de l'homme dans la philosophie ancienne (Paris, 1962), pp. 373-386, considers the cooperation of reason and authority in Augustine's use of Christianity to confront the philosophic problems of his age. J. O'Meara, in The Young Augustine (New York, 1965), pp. 196197, admits a clarification in Augustine's thought but no basic change in his understanding of the primacy of faith over reason. R. O'Connell, in Saint Augusti.ne's Confessions: the Odyssey of a Soul (Cambridge, 1969), insists on a strong Neo-Platonic influence on Augustine's understanding of the human being as the " fallen soul." A. H. Armstrong, in " St. Augustine and Christian Platonism," Plotinian and Christian Studies (London, 1979), Ch. XI, 1-66, argues that the designation "Christian Platonist" is insufficient to characterize Augustine; the way in which Augustine takes up and transforms... (shrink)