Epigenetic and transcriptional variability contribute to the vast diversity of cellular and organismal phenotypes and are key in human health and disease. In this review, we describe different types, sources, and determinants of epigenetic and transcriptional variability, enabling cells and organisms to adapt and evolve to a changing environment. We highlight the latest research and hypotheses on how chromatin structure and the epigenome influence gene expression variability. Further, we provide an overview of challenges in the analysis of biological variability. An (...) improved understanding of the molecular mechanisms underlying epigenetic and transcriptional variability, at both the intra- and inter-individual level, provides great opportunity for disease prevention, better therapeutic approaches, and personalized medicine. Epigenetic and transcriptional variability mediate phenotypic plasticity, enabling adaptation to changing environments. In this review, we describe the sources of inter- and intra-individual variability and discuss epigenetic regulators of gene expression variability, including DNA methylation and chromatin structure. Understanding these molecular mechanisms will improve therapeutic approaches and personalized medicine. (shrink)

Album photographique consacré au philosophe et écrivain français. Au total, 181 documents en noir et blanc assortis de commentaires assez brefs, répartis dans un ordre thématique (le professeur, l'écrivain, etc.) et en partie chronologique.

While discourse and deliberation cannot replace voting, bargaining, or compromise, Chambers argues, it is important to maintain a background moral conversation in which to anchor other activities.

Emerging from thought-provoking discussions and correspondence Simone Weil had with the Reverend Father Perrin, this classic collection of essays contains her most profound meditations on the relationship of human life to the realm of the transcendant.An enlightening introduction by Leslie Fiedler examines Weil's extraordinary roles as a philosophy teacher turned mystic. "One of the most neglected resources of our century ", Waiting for God will continue to influence spiritual and political thought for centuries to come.

"What is required if men and women are to feel at home in society and are to recover their vitality? Into wrestling with that question, Simone Weil put the very substance of her mind and temperament. The apparently solid edifices of our prepossessions fall down before her onslaught like ninepins, and she is as fertile and forthright in her positive suggestions . . . she can be relied upon to toss aside the superficial and to come to grips with (...) the essential and the profound." -- Time Literary Supplement. (shrink)

In the reported, experiment participants hit a ball to aim at the vertex of a Müller–Lyer configuration. This configuration either remained stable, changed its shaft length or the orientation of the tails during movement execution. A significant illusion bias was observed in all perturbation conditions, but not in the stationary condition. The illusion bias emerged for perturbations shortly after movement onset and for perturbations during execution, the latter of which allowed only a minimum of time for making adjustments . These (...) findings indicate that allocentric information is exploited for online control when people make rapid adjustments in response to a sudden change in the environment and not when people guide their limb movements to interact with a stable environment. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Diana Mutz's individual-level data show that participation and deliberation are often inversely related. This, according to Mutz, undermines many claims made by deliberative-democratic theory. However, a systemic approach to deliberative democracy challenges the significance of this finding. Although it is true that some citizens are political activists not open to hearing the other side and other citizens are less active but more open minded, both types of citizens make equally important and positive contributions to deliberative politics when it is (...) viewed as a system that deploys a division of labor. (shrink)

The volume of fake news in the digital media landscape is increasing, creating a new threat to organizations’ reputations. At the same time, individuals are more aware of the existence of fake news. It thus remains unclear how fake news affects evaluators’ reputation judgments. In this article, we draw on the distinction between first-order judgments (i.e., an individual evaluator’s reputation judgment) and second-order judgments (i.e., an individual evaluator’s belief about the reputation judgments of other evaluators). We integrate this distinction with (...) insights from communication research and social psychology to theorize how fake news affects reputation judgments and behavioral intentions. Through three experimental studies, we show that the negative effect of fake news is larger for second-order reputation judgments and that this effect is greater for organizations with a positive reputation. Furthermore, our results indicate that although fake news has a smaller effect on first-order judgments, the latter adapt to second-order judgments and thereby affect behavioral intentions. This article contributes, first, to the micro-cognitive perspective on reputation formation by taking the first step in developing a comprehensive understanding of the intricate impact of fake news on reputation and behavioral intentions. Second, this article contributes to our understanding of the role of a good prior reputation as a buffer or a burden. (shrink)

When people inhabit a city, they situate themselves and are situated through the intersections of infrastructure and technical systems, and the particular domains and modalities of occupation – settlement and work – that are configured by them. At the same time, people are also inhabited by the city, as a kind of possession, endowment, and series of conundrums. People figure themselves out through figuring arrangements of materials, of designing what is available to them in formats and positions that enable them (...) particular vantage points and ways of doing things. What it is possible for people to do with each other is largely a question of what it is that exists between them, and how this ‘between’ can be shaped as active points of reference, connection and anchorage. Infrastructure exerts a force – not simply in the materials and energies it avails, but also the way it attracts people, draws them in, coalesces and expends their capacities. If territory is a bundle of political technologies for measuring, administering and regulating the scope of what it is possible to do in the city, then other inventive political technologies are also at work in the making of urban life. (shrink)

Constitutional reform has been an important means to push populist authoritarian agendas in Hungary, Poland, Turkey and Venezuela. The embrace of constitutional means and rhetoric in pursuit of these agendas has led to the growing recognition of ‘populist constitutionalism’ as a contemporary political phenomenon. In all four examples mentioned above, democracy, popular sovereignty and direct plebiscitary appeal to the people is the rhetorical and justificatory framework for constitutional reform. This, I worry, gives democracy a bad name and reinforces the widespread (...) suspicion that citizens should not be directly involved in constitutional reform as popular participation can lead to dangerous majoritarianism and is easily manipulated by elite actors seeking to weaken constitutional checks and balances. But the problem, I argue, is not inherent in citizen’s participation in constitutional reform. In contrast to populist constitutionalism, I develop an idea of deliberative constitutionalism in which citizens can participate in constitution-making and reform without hijacking constitutionalism for majoritarian, nationalist or anti-pluralist ends. Deliberative constitutionalism as I understand it has four features: a Habermasian co-originality thesis that articulates the interdependence of democracy and liberalism mediated by a conception of discourse; a proceduralized idea of popular sovereignty that reduces the tension between appeal to the people and respect for pluralism; the centrality of the public sphere over the voting booth as the cradle of democracy; institutional innovations intended to include citizens in constitutional reform (including through referendums) but avoid majoritarian and populist pathologies. (shrink)

A distorted representation of one's own body is a diagnostic criterion and core psychopathology of both anorexia nervosa (AN) and bulimia nervosa (BN). Despite recent technical advances in research, it is still unknown whether this body image disturbance is characterized by body dissatisfaction and a low ideal weight and/or includes a distorted perception or processing of body size. In this article, we provide an update and meta-analysis of 42 articles summarizing measures and results for body size estimation (BSE) from 926 (...) individuals with AN, 536 individuals with BN and 1920 controls. We replicate findings that individuals with AN and BN overestimate their body size as compared to controls (ES= 0.63). Our meta-regression shows that metric methods (BSE by direct or indirect spatial measures) yield larger effect sizes than depictive methods (BSE by evaluating distorted pictures), and that effect sizes are larger for patients with BN than for patients with AN. To interpret these results, we suggest a revised theoretical framework for BSE that accounts for differences between depictive and metric BSE methods regarding the underlying body representations (conceptual vs. perceptual, implicit vs. explicit). We also discuss clinical implications and argue for the importance of multimethod approaches to investigate body image disturbance. (shrink)

In Intimations of Christianity Among the Ancient Greeks , Simone Weil discusses precursors to Christian religious ideas which can be found in ancient Greek mythology, literature and philosophy. She looks at evidence of "Christian" feelings in Greek literature, notably in Electra, Orestes, and Antigone , and in the Iliad , going on to examine God in Plato, and divine love in creation, as seen by the ancient Greeks.

Today’s exponential advancement of information and communication technologies is reconfiguring participatory urban development practices. The use of digital technology implies new forms of decentralised governance, collaborative knowledge production, and social activism. The digital transformation has the potential to overcome shortcomings in citizen participation, make participatory processes more deliberative, and enable collaborative approaches for making cities. While digital tools such as digital mapping, e‐participation platforms, location‐based games, and social media offer new opportunities for the various actors and may act as a (...) catalyst for renegotiating urban space and collective goods, digitalisation can also perpetuate or even attenuate existing inequalities and exclusion. This editorial introduces the thematic issue “Citizen Participation, Digital Agency, and Urban Development” which focuses on the trajectories and (dis)continuities of citizen participation through digitalisation and elaborates this with examples from Europe and Asia on how the digital transformation impacts, challenges, or reproduces hegemonic power relations in urban development. (shrink)

In this article we discuss what are the implications for improving the design of corporate ethics programs, if we focus on the moral motivation accounts offered by main ethical theories. Virtue ethics, deontological ethics and utilitarianism offer different criteria of judgment to face moral dilemmas: Aristotle's virtues of character, Kant's categorical imperative, and Mill's greatest happiness principle are, respectively, their criteria to answer the question "What is the right thing to do?" We look at ethical theories from a different perspective: (...) the question we ask is "Why should I do the right thing?" In other words, we deal with the problem of moral motivation, and we examine the different rationale the main ethical theories provide. We then point out the relation between moral motivation and the concept of rationality in the different approaches - is acting morally seen as an expression of rational behavior? Our analysis of moral motivation provides a useful framework to improve the understanding of the relationships between formal and informal elements of corporate ethics programs, emphasizing the importance of the latter, often overlooked in compliance-focused programs. We conclude by suggesting that the concept of moral imagination can provide a unifying approach to enhance the effectiveness of corporate ethics programs, by providing an intangible asset that supports the implementation of their formal components into management decision making. (shrink)

The techno-moral scenarios approach has been developed to explore the interplay between technology, society and morality. Focused on new and emerging sciences and technologies, techno-moral scenarios can be used to inform and enhance public deliberation on the desirability of socio-technical trajectories. The article presents an attempt to hybridise this scenario tool, complementing the focus on ethics with an explicit acknowledgement of the multiple meanings of responsibility and of the plurality of its regimes, i.e. the institutional arrangements presiding over the assumption (...) and assignment of responsibilities. We call this integrated technique ‘rTMS’ to stress the continuity with the original technique and, at the same time, to highlight the additional element we aim to develop: responsibility. The article describes this approach and illustrates a loosely standardised procedure that can be used to organise and conduct public engagement workshops based on rTMS. (shrink)

Revelatory insights into the early life and thought of the preeminent French feminist philosopher Dating from her years as a philosophy student at the Sorbonne, this is the 1926-27 diary of the teenager who would become the famous French philosopher, author, and feminist, Simone de Beauvoir. Written years before her first meeting with Jean-Paul Sartre, these diaries reveal previously unknown details about her life and offer critical insights into her early philosophy and literary works. Presented here for the first (...) time in translation and fully annotated, the diary is completed by essays from Barbara Klaw and Margaret A. Simons that address its philosophical, historical and literary significance. The volume represents an invaluable resource for tracing the development of Beauvoir's independent thinking and influence on the world. (shrink)

This text considers how a host of ethical traditions define civil society.

Although developmental dyslexia (DD) is frequently associate to a phonological deficit, the underlying neurobiological cause remain undetermined. One prominent hypothesis suggests a specific deficit in magnocellular-dorsal (M-D) pathway. Here we investigated the visual M-D and parvocellular-ventral (P-V) pathway in dyslexic and in chronological age and IQ-matched normally reading children by measuring dynamic (frequency doubling illusion) and static stimuli sensibility, respectively. A specific deficit in M-D task was found. Importantly, the M-D deficit was selectively shown in poor phonological decoders. M-D deficit (...) appears to be frequent because 75% of poor pseudo-word readers were at least 1 SD below the mean of the controls. Finally, a replication study by using a new group of poor phonological decoders and reading level controls suggests a possible role of M-D deficit in DD. These results showed that a M-D deficit might impair the sub-lexical mechanisms that are critical for reading development. The possible link between these findings and the oscillatory “temporal sampling” framework is discussed. (shrink)

Moral philosophers in the laboratory -- Case studies -- Critical perspectives.

The term “lean in” was popularized by Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook COO, via her #1 Best Seller encouraging women to defy their fears and dare to be leaders in their fields. She received criticism because although admitting to external barriers contributing to the gender gap in leadership, the scope of her book focused on the internal shortcomings of women. She asserted that women are hindered by barriers that exist within themselves, and provided practical tips, backed by research, to equip women with (...) strategies to proactively progress in the workplace instead of shying away. Sandberg is not the first to raise concern about gender inequality. Other women in history like Susan B. Anthony and Maggie Lena Walker also challenged lopsided gender roles through their words and actions. Using the critical biography methodology, this paper explores these women’s experiences, philosophies and contributions, reflects on Sandberg’s insight, and develops a framework, based on the theory of planned behavior as well as the ethical principles of utilitarianism and corporate social responsibility, that links internal factors, organizational external factors, and societal external factors to intentions to lean in and leaning in behavior. Thus, via critical biography, this paper examines both internal and external factors, showing how they are linked, and how they may impact leaning in intentions and behavior. The paper also discusses how leaning in may influence both individual and gender mobility for women, and ultimately, increased gender equality. (shrink)

This book describes a novel methodology for studying algorithmic skills, intended as cognitive activities related to rule-based symbolic transformation, and argues that some human computational abilities may be interpreted and analyzed as genuine examples of extended cognition. It shows that the performance of these abilities relies not only on innate neurocognitive systems or language-related skills, but also on external tools and general agent–environment interactions. Further, it asserts that a low-level analysis, based on a set of core neurocognitive systems linking numbers (...) and language, is not sufficient to explain some specific forms of high-level numerical skills, like those involved in algorithm execution. To this end, it reports on the design of a cognitive architecture for modeling all the relevant features involved in the execution of algorithmic strategies, including external tools, such as paper and pencils. The first part of the book discusses the philosophical premises for endorsing and justifying a position in philosophy of mind that links a modified form of computationalism with some recent theoretical and scientific developments, like those introduced by the so-called dynamical approach to cognition. The second part is dedicated to the description of a Turing-machine-inspired cognitive architecture, expressly designed to formalize all kinds of algorithmic strategies. (shrink)

Soft regulation has increased its importance in science and technology governance. Despite such indisputable significance, the literature on technology policy and regulation so far seems to have dedicated only a limited attention to a systematic understanding of the factors affecting compliance with these soft rules. This article addresses this limitation. By way of a literature scoping exercise, we propose a taxonomy of the mechanisms affecting compliance with soft regulation. We subsequently apply the taxonomy as a guide to examine the opinions (...) of a small group of scientists and company managers in the Italian nanotechnology sector. The case study does not assess compliance in a direct way, i.e., observing how organizations comply with regulation, but it explores the opinions on what the factors affecting compliance are. (shrink)

Making better choices about future technologies that are being researched or developed is an important motivator behind lay ethics interventions. However, in practice, they do not always succeed to serve that goal. Especially authors who have noted that lay ethicists sometimes take recourse to well-known themes which stem from old, even ‘archetypical’ stories, have been criticized for making too little room for agency and decision-making in their approach. This paper aims to contribute to a reflection on how lay ethics can (...) acquire more practical relevance. It will use resources in narrative ethics to suggest that in order to be relevant for action, facilitators of lay ethics interventions need to invite participants to engage in a narrative quest. As part of a quest, lay ethicists should be asked to reflect on a specific question or choice, use diverse input which is informative about the heterogeneity of viewpoints that are defended in society and argue for their standpoints. (shrink)

The problem of free will lies at the heart of modern scientific studies of consciousness. Some authors propose that actions are unconsciously initiated and awareness of intention is referred retrospectively to the action after it has been performed [e.g. Aarts, H., Custers, R., & Wegner, D. M. . On the inference of personal authorship: Enhancing experienced agency by priming effect information. Consciousness & Cognition, 14, 439–458]. This contrasts with the common impression that our intentions cause those actions. By combining a (...) stop signal paradigm and an intentional action paradigm we show that participants sometimes indicate to have intentionally initiated an action while reaction time data strongly suggest that they in fact failed to stop the action. In a second experiment we demonstrate that the number of trials in which participants misattributed their awareness of intention varied with the intentional involvement during action planning. Our data support the retrospective account of intentional action. Furthermore, we introduce an experimental approach that objectifies introspective judgments of awareness of intention. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This essay focuses on the history of one of the “atomic patents.” The patent, which described a process to slow down neutrons in nuclear reactions, was the result of experimental research conducted in the 1930s by Enrico Fermi and his group at the Institute of Physics, University of Rome. The value of the patented process became clear during World War II, as it was involved in most of the military and industrial applications of atomic energy. This ignited a controversy (...) between Fermi and U.S. government representatives over royalties to be paid for use of the process during and after the war. The controversy sheds new light on the role that the management of patents played in the context of the Manhattan Project and in the postwar U.S. nuclear program, encompassing issues of power and economic influence in the relationship between scientists, the military, and public administrators. The invention covered by Patent No. 2,206,634 covers the basic process used in the research and development leading up the production of atomic energy and the production of the atomic bomb. Such invention is of continuing importance in the production of fissionable materials and atomic weapons. The Chairman: So Jones might make the greatest invention in the field and be deprived of any award for it? Captain Lavender: If he did not want to accept the award that was offered to him. (shrink)