Self‐renewal and differentiation of stem cells are tightly regulated processes subject to intrinsic and extrinsic signals. Molecular chaperones and co‐chaperones, especially heat shock proteins (Hsp), are ubiquitous molecules involved in the modulation of protein conformational and complexation states. The function of Hsp, which are typically associated with stress response and tolerance, is well characterized in differentiated cells, while their role in stem cells remains unclear. It appears that embryonic stem cells exhibit increased stress tolerance and concomitant high levels of (...) chaperone expression. This review critically evaluates stem cell research from a molecular chaperone perspective. Furthermore, we propose a model of chaperone‐modulated self‐renewal in mouse embryonic stem cells. (shrink)

Climate change's impact on investor behavior is a scantly investigated area in finance. This paper examines the performance of socially responsible exchange trade funds (ETFs) concerning conventional ETFs, in response to climate change events. We proxy climate change signals with a list of natural disaster events that NASA scientists relate to climate change. We contribute to existing literature, by using a very extensive information set of ETF strategies, not influenced by rating agencies' subjective evaluation policies, and covering almost 90% of (...) the universe of worldwide sustainability thematic-oriented ETFs. This sample allows us to identify the socially responsible investment behavior in response to unpredictable climate change shocks. Our identification strategy accounts for endogeneity concerns and relies on two-stage least square (2SLS) approach finding that responsible investors react to climate change events by purchasing socially responsible investments. The relationship between climate change signals and return of investment in themes linked to the development of sustainability is positive. Interestingly enough, the sign of this relationship is different, when we disentangle the empirical results according to the asset type, confirming that investors shift their investments from equity funds to bond funds when market sentiment worsens. Our results indicate that policymakers should increase the support of firms adopting environmentally conscious business practices, while managers should boost a sustainable business strategy. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIt is known that people covertly attend to threatening stimuli even when it is not beneficial for the task. In the current study we examined whether overt selection is affected by the presence of an object that signals threat. We demonstrate that stimuli that signal the possibility of receiving an electric shock capture the eyes more often than stimuli signalling no shock. Capture occurred even though the threat-signalling stimulus was neither physically salient nor task relevant at any (...) point during the experiment. Crucially, even though fixating the threat-related stimulus made it more likely to receive a shock, results indicate that participants could not help but doing it. Our findings indicate that the presence of a stimulus merely signalling the possibility of receiving a shock is prioritised in selection, and exogenously captures the eyes even when this ultimately results in the execution of the threat. Oculomotor capture was particularly pronounced for the fastest saccades which is consistent with the idea that threat influences visual selection at an early stage of processing, when selection is mainly involuntarily. (shrink)

The discovery of the signal peptides that direct proteins to localize at the nucleolus is described here. The nucleolar targeting signal termed the NOS consists of clustered basic amino acids organized such that a portion also functions as the nuclear transporting signal. Although a NOS has been identified within the regulatory genes of human retroviruses, HTLV‐I and HIV‐I, signals of similar function in cellular proteins – such as heat shock proteins – may be induced through the (...) configurational change of protein structure by heat or stress. (shrink)

Public companies in the US stock market must annually report their activities and financial performances to the SEC by filing the so-called 10-K form. Recent studies have demonstrated that changes in the textual content of the corporate annual filing can convey strong signals of companies’ future returns. In this study, we combine natural language processing techniques and network science to introduce a novel 10-K-based network, named Lazy Network, that leverages year-on-year changes in companies’ 10-Ks detected using a neural network embedding (...) model. The Lazy Network aims to capture textual changes derived from financial or economic changes on the equity market. Leveraging the Lazy Network, we present a novel investment strategy that attempts to select the least disrupted and stable companies by capturing the peripheries of the Lazy Network. We show that this strategy earns statistically significant risk-adjusted excess returns. Specifically, the proposed portfolios yield up to 95 basis points in monthly five-factor alphas, outperforming similar strategies in the literature. (shrink)

Anthropological literature on culture shock assigns a social-coordinative function to stylistic conventions such as etiquette and dress codes. In the philosophical literature on the connection between conventions and coordination, however, it is frequently claimed that stylistic conventions do not solve coordination problems, conceived of as situations of interdependent decision making that can be modelled in game theoretical terms. I argue that the debate on conventions and coordination nevertheless provides tools for understanding how and why stylistic conventions serve a coordinative (...) purpose. Some coordination games allow for stable equilibria only by means of public signals that are external to a game, known as correlation devices. I argue that such devices come in different kinds. In complementary coordination games, primary coordination devices allow for rules that specify role-divisions, while secondary correlation devices make existing role-divisions cognitively tractable. Stylistic conventions can be interpreted as correlation devices of the latter kind. We share etiquette and dress codes as secondary correlation devices that highlight who plays which role, which transactions in role-interactions transpire, and where specific role-interactions can be expected to take place. (shrink)

The following is excerpted from Sean Gurd’s translation of Euripides’ Hippolytus published with Uitgeverij this year. Though he was judged “most tragic” in the generation after his death, though more copies and fragments of his plays have survived than of any other tragedian, and though his Orestes became the most widely performed tragedy in Greco-Roman Antiquity, during his lifetime his success was only moderate, and to him his career may have felt more like a failure. He was regularly selected to (...) have his plays performed in the annual festival of Dionysus at Athens. But the plays were performed in a competition, and in the competitions he lost and lost, winning first place only five times in a career that spanned more than forty years. His corpus reads like the remains of a life spent trying to get a few things right and never being quite satisfied: scenes and schematized combinations of elements recur again and again, each time slightly changed. Hippolytus itself is an example: it contains two scenes in which a sick or dying character lies on a couch or a stretcher and is surrounded by silence and grief; he had experimented with such scenes in Alcestis, and would work with them again in Herakles and Orestes. Nor, judging from appearances, was he immune to the desire to score a hit, or to satisfy the audiences and the judges at the competition. Hippolytus is a rewrite of another Hippolytus, performed several years earlier, which scandalized the audience and certainly did not take first place. In that earlier Hippolytus (called by later writers Hippolytus Veiled), Euripides fashioned a Phaedra who was neither ashamed of loving her stepson nor incapable of taking steps to satisfy her desire. The forwardness of her approach to Hippolytus so outraged him that he covered his head with a robe (hence the play’s later title). Euripides liked to write energetic and self-confident women like this. He staged his Medea in 431, just three years before he revised Hippolytus, and in it the jilted title character murders her children in revenge for Jason’s new marriage to a more politically advantageous wife. Another flop: the play came in third of three. Evidently the judges did not like their women showing agency, especially when the consequences were transgressive. “The ornament of women,” wrote another great Athenian a little earlier, “is silence.”i Euripides’ Medea and his first Phaedra had other decorations. So three years after Medea crashed and burned and some time after the first Hippolytus suffered the same fate, he produced another Hippolytus play with a different setting and story. How could this one not have been a reaction to the failure of the first? “Second thoughts are always better,” he has one of his characters say, as though he were offering an apology for his first thoughts on the same story. In this new version, Phaedra is suicidally ashamed of her love, choosing to die rather than have it discovered, and willing to bring down her beloved Hippolytus in the service of the same end. Now it is Phaedra herself who covers her head in shock and horror at her desire. Only an intermediary, a slave of the house and an old crone with her fingers in all sorts of illicit pots, communicates Phaedra’s secret – against orders – and in consequence brings about the demise of two resolutely moral figures. It worked. For his tale of two well-born nobles with an unswerving commitment to moral action, destroyed by the meddling of a slave (and by the hostility of some particularly uncaring divinities), the judges crowned Euripides winner. It was the first time he had won, after almost thirty years of work. *** What Hippolytus wants more than anything else, as he protests with outrage just before leaving Trozen for the last time, is the benefit of due process – oaths, witnesses, an investigation that would reveal who really lusted after whom. Ironic, given that in the first Hippolytus, as far as we can make out, he did get a trial – but too late, and Theseus’ successful processing of Hippolytus failed to prevent his death. I cannot help hearing in the second Hippolytus’ complaints the anger of his authorial semblable who lost year after year by a process of judging that might have seemed brutal to him. Judges took no cognizance of how he worked, how long or hard or why; they just voted, and Euripides lost. But then I hear, in the fate of the first Hippolytus, an even grimmer commentary. Processed or not, we lose. We run aground. At the very least, this might cast a darker shadow on the business of watching or reading a play: in that twilight, things move too fast to make a fair assessment and, in any case, the reasonably high definition of what you see and hear belies the truth of indistinction, the multiplicities just below the surface. Watching is a constrained activity, a form of captivity, but reading is plastic. This translation was begun to supply the script for an audio version of the play, recorded in the spring of 2012, and here and there it sacrifices literalness for sayability and the voices and passions of the actors on that occasion. But it was finished to be read, and engineered to create a reading caught between the poles of specificity and non-specificity that the play itself conjures and relies on at its generative core. Thus two texts: the one clear, perhaps overprecise, respectably modern in its presentation, and the other ancient, a reasonable approximation of the classical reading process, and indistinct in vital ways. Like early modern dramatic texts, the exact provenance and original function of the scripts that have made it down to us are unknown. We do know that the ultimate survival of Hippolytus was thanks to its wide-spread use as a school text. But its relation to the first performance in 428 BCE is a matter only of speculation. Euripides presumably had a fair copy before production began; it was probably modified during rehearsals. The actors may have had copies, too (probably the young men who served in the chorus did not). The chor?gos, a wealthy Athenian who paid for the production, might have been presented with or just made sure to get his hands on a high-quality text, to commemorate the play’s success. Fans might have been able to buy copies. Any one of these sources might have provided the ultimate progenitor of our text. Several of them might have, in fact, if later editors compared and conflated traditions. The plays toured extensively in the Greek-speaking world, and were restaged as repertoire for centuries afterwards. In the process they were subjected to enough modifications by producers and actors that in the later fourth century the Athenian statesman Lycurgus had a law passed prohibiting performances at Athens from deviating from the official “city” text of the tragedies (which he had commissioned). It is unlikely that the city text was the last word; but it marks an important moment in Athens’ role in their dissemination, since after this the major sites of textual curatorship moved overseas, to Alexandria, Pergamum, Rome, Antioch, Constantinople. Any single text of any single play is thus no more than a moment of clarity and stability, crossed and subtended by multiple vectors of change, including that of textual flux (from Euripides’ first drafts to the latest printed text) and that of Euripides’ life work as a writer, in the light of which the Hippolytus is just one attempt to produce something exactly right, to win the prize or finally satisfy himself or prove to himself that all this longing for perfection was a waste of time. I am intrigued by the possibility that a single text might somehow serve as a lens onto this wider zone of indistinction, representing a small region clearly but nonetheless containing a blurred image of the whole, like a Leibnizian monad. After all, no text is a witness: it is, rather, a perception and a performance, and what every Hippolytus must perform is the awkward overlay of singular and plural, social practise and subliminal drive, that structures the tragedy. Modern critical editions can do this by juxtaposing a (relatively) clean and simple text with a textual apparatus reporting variants and theorizing the relationship between textual instantiations. A translation lacks the resolution to catch the fine variations which feed into the construction of an apparatus. But there are other means to hand. Guessing at the exact words of the original text is always just that – guessing – though Hippolytus is less problematic than plays like Iphigenia at Aulis. But we can make a pretty secure guess at what such a text looked like. Texts read by fifth-century readers were fundamentally different from what is presented in the best medieval MSS and printed in modern publications. The texts of Euripides’ time and for many centuries afterwards did not indicate word division with spaces (or by any other means) and were extremely sparing in punctuation, often avoiding it altogether. There was only one “case” of letters – what we call “capitals.” Musical sections were inscribed as though they were prose, without line endings to reflect their rhythm or their rhetorical structure. There was no indication of the speakers within a dramatic text, either. The earliest surviving dramatic texts, which come from over a century after Euripides’ death and a time which was much more elaborate and precise in its textual culture, indicated speaker-change with a little line or paragraphos below the line and a double-point [:] at its end. This convention almost certainly does not date back to Euripides’ own time; it may not even date to Lycurgus. In any case, such indications were understood to be readers’ marks: they did not have the same authority as the text and they were subject to readers’ revisions. At least ideationally, if not in concrete and distinguishable fact, a dramatic text was understood as containing no indication of speaker-change (and certainly none of who was saying what). The reader had to figure that out for him-/herself. The clear, legible, easy texts we are accustomed to reading are the fabrications of medieval and modern reading cultures. The first text, then, presents the translation as the text would have been in the mid-fourth century, perhaps decades after Euripides’ death. The second text processes Hippolytus, makes sense of it and makes it “readable.” That is: too distinct, dangerously so. It gets in your way, conjures fantoms, tries to make you see. Fragments of the Hippolytus Veiled, otherwise almost entirely lost, are juxtaposed with similar passages in the text – not to suggest a reconstruction, but a dialogue and a complex set of reassessments. I have not tried to represent the full variety of textual variants, but I have signalled where, for one reason or another, the text is soft and different editions propose excisions or changes. The two texts must be read together: you, reader, form the bridge between the distinctly seen and the indistinct invisible. You, in the end, will be its mask. *** illsandhateddiseaseswhatcanidoforyouwhatshouldinotdohereisthelightandthebrightairyoursickbedisnowout s idethehouseyoureverywordwastocomeherebutyouwillrushbacktoyourbedroomagainyoufadequicklyyoudelig htinnothingyoudislikewhatyouhaveyoulovewhatyoudontitsbettertobesickthantendthesickthefirstissimpleto the secondattachesheartspainandhandsworkeveryhumanlifeispainfulthereisnoendtotoildarknesshidesbehindclo udswhateverisdearerthanlifeweproveunhappyloversofwhatshineshereforlackofknowledgeofanotherlifethere isnoproofforthingsbeneaththeearthonlystoriessustainus liftmybodystraightenmyheadthebondsofmylimbsareloosenedtakemyhandsandmypalearmsthishatistooheavy formyheadtoweartakeitoffspreadmyhairovermyshoulders couragechilddonttossandturnsoviolentlyyouwillbearyoursicknessmoreeasilywithpeaceandanoblemindallmort alssuffer aiaiiwanttodrinkpurewaterfromadewyspringiwanttoliebackandrestunderthetreesinsomegrassymeadowchildw hycrydontsaythesethingsnearthecrowdhurlingwordsmountedonmadness sendmetothemountainiwillgototheforestwherebeastkillingdogspressthespotteddeergodsilongtoshouttothedo gstoshootthethessalianjavelinpastmyblondhairtoholdthebarbeddartinmyhandwhythisanxietychildwhatdoyouc areabouthuntingwhydoyoulustforflowingspringstheresahillwithwaterjustnexttothetowerwecangetyouadrinkt h ereartemismistressofthesaltlakeandthecoursethunderingwithhorseshoovesiwishiwereonyourplainsbreakings t uds whythrowthesefrenziedwordsaboutjustnowyouweresettingoutforthemountaintohuntandnowyoulongforhorses onthewavelesssand thesethingsneedanoracletotellwhichgodreinsyouinanddrivesyoufromyoursenseschild whathaveidonehowfarhaveibeendrivenfromgoodthoughtsiwascrazyiwascursedbysomepowerpheupheualasn ursecovermyheadagainimashamedofwhativesaidcovermeatearmovesdownfrommyeyeanditembarrassesm eithurtstostraightenourmindanditisterribletobeinsanebesttodiebeforeyoubecomelucidagain illcoveryoubutwhenwilldeathcovermeimoldivelearnedalotmortalsshoulddrinkoffriendshipmoderatelynotfrom th edeepestmarrowofthesoulamindslovecharmsshouldbeeasytoundoorthrustawayortiemoretightlyitisaverydiffic ultweightforonesoultolaborovertwopeopleasiamwrackedbypainforhertoomuchdisciplinecausesmoreharmthan pleasureandwarswithhealthipraisetoomuchlessthannothinginexcessandthewiseagreewithme *** Scene 1 Enter Phaedra and the Nurse; the former is recumbent on a couch while the latter bustles about her with gestures that might be those of a caregiver or a guard. NURSE Ills and hated diseases! What can I do for you? What should I not do? Here is the light, and the bright air; your sick bed is now outside the house. Your every word was to come here, but you will rush back to your bedroom again. You fade quickly. You delight in nothing. You dislike what you have. You love what you don’t. It’s better to be sick than tend the sick – the first is simple. To the second attaches heart’s pain and hand’s work. Every human life is painful. There is no end to toil. Darkness hides behind clouds whatever is dearer than life. We prove unhappy lovers of what shines here for lack of knowledge of another life. There is no proof for things beneath the earth. Only stories sustain us. PHAEDRA Lift my body, straighten my head: the bonds of my limbs are loosened. Take my hands and my pale arms. This hat is too heavy for my head to wear. Take it off, spread my hair over my shoulders. NURSE Courage, child; don’t toss and turn so violently. You will bear your sickness more easily with peace and a noble mind. All mortals suffer. PHAEDRA Aiai. I want to drink pure water from a dewy spring. I want to lie back and rest under the trees in some grassy meadow. NURSE Child, why cry? Don’t say these things near the crowd, hurling words mounted on madness. PHAEDRA Send me to the mountain. I will go to the forest where beast-killing dogs press the spotted deer. Gods! I long to shout to the dogs, to shoot the Thessalian javelin past my blond hair, to hold the barbed dart in my hand. NURSE Why this anxiety, child? What do you care about hunting? Why do you lust for flowing springs? There’s a hill with water just next to the tower; we can get you a drink there. PHAEDRA Artemis, mistress of the salt lake and the course thundering with horse’s hooves: I wish I were on your plains breaking studs! NURSE Why throw these frenzied words about? Just now you were setting out for the mountain to hunt – and now you long for horses on the waveless sand. These things need an oracle to tell which god reins you in and drives you from your senses, child. PHAEDRA What have I done? How far have I been driven from good thoughts? I was crazy, I was cursed by some power. Pheu pheu. Alas. Nurse, cover my head again. I’m ashamed of what I’ve said. Cover me – a tear moves down from my eye and it embarrasses me. It hurts to straighten your mind and it is terrible to be insane. Best to die before you become lucid again. NURSE I’ll cover you. But when will death cover me? I’m old; I’ve learned a lot. Mortals should drink of friendship moderately, not from the deepest marrow of the soul. A mind’s love-charms should be easy to undo, or thrust away, or tie more tightly. It is a very difficult weight for one soul to labor over two people, as I am wracked by pain for her. Too much discipline causes more harm than pleasure and wars with health. I praise “too much” less than “nothing in excess,” and the wise agree with me. ***. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Diseased Body Politic, Athenian Public Finance, and the Massacre at Mykalessos (Thucydides 7.27–29)Lisa KalletIn the midst of his account of the Sicilian expedition Thucydides pauses to describe the economic and financial effects of the Spartan fortification of Dekeleia in Attica in 413 (7.27–28); one result of signal importance for the empire was Athens' decision to abolish tribute, and in its place to levy a harbor tax, the (...) eikostē. Following this digression the historian relates an episode emblematic of the atrocity of war, the wholesale slaughter of the inhabitants of the defenseless Boiotian town of Mykalessos by 1,300 Thracian mercenaries. Most scholars would not adhere to Eduard Schwartz's view that the financial/economic digression has nothing to do with the representation of the Thracians' savagery;1 nevertheless, the two sections have tended to be examined separately, the former by historians of the Athenian empire and finance2 or by Thucydidean scholars looking at the passage historiographically but as distinct from 7.29,3 and the latter by Thucydidean scholars exploring its function in the History.4 There are, however, strong grounds for reading them together: in particular, a degree of detail in each not otherwise warranted by the narrative, a framing device, and the shared use of language common to the description of disease, all suggest that Thucydides was intentionally linking the two sections. By this linkage, I propose, Thucydides not only draws a connection between Athenian public finance and human suffering, but also develops themes central to the work as a whole, namely, those of moral responsibility, human nature, [End Page 223] the conflict between reason and passion, and the nexus of finances, leadership, and military power.First, the detail in both the fiscal digression and the episode at Mykalessos immediately stands out, given their placement within the Sicilian account, the most self–contained and focused part of the History.5 Much of the substance of 7.27–28 concerns a gradual process of fiscal and economic deterioration, yet Thucydides is prompted to embed a diachronic, thematic account in the context of an event utterly trivial to the expedition and the entire course of the war, namely, the tardy arrival of Thracian mercenaries in Athens and the decision to send them home. Moreover, shocking atrocity that the massacre at Mykalessos was, it was peripheral to the war, a minor event that could have been easily omitted, or relegated to a sentence. It is relevant to note in this connection the differing treatments of Skione and Melos. What happened in those places, in 422 and 416 respectively, was identical—a siege and subsequent massacre of the males and enslavement of the women and children—yet Thucydides relates the information about Skione as a passing mention in one sentence (5.32.1), whereas he devotes pages to Melos (5.84–116).The prominence given to the fiscal digression and to what happened at Mykalessos, through such detailed narrative and especially the juxtaposition of the two sections, is in itself a sign that Thucydides intended a larger significance—through their interrelation—to be accorded to these events. The comparative example of Melos is again relevant, for its significance lies partly in its juxtaposition to the Sicilian books (which would explain why Thucydides chose to highlight it, rather than the identical case of Skione's treatment), as is similarly the case with the juxtaposition of the Funeral Oration and the plague (and Perikles' last speech).Thucydides constructs a second link between the two sections by using the subject of the Thracian mercenaries as a framing device for his digression on the economic effects of Dekeleia: in 27.1–2, the Thracians arrive in Athens too late for the expedition for which they had been intended, that of reinforcing the army in Sicily. The Athenians, Thucydides continues, decided to send them home, because "to keep them for the Dekeleian War seemed very costly; for each received a drachma a day" ( [End Page 224] ).6 Yet rather than immediately return to Sicilian events, or continue with the Thracian narrative, he instead undertakes a lengthy analysis of what was a gradual process of fiscal deterioration that could have... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Diseased Body Politic, Athenian Public Finance, and the Massacre at Mykalessos (Thucydides 7.27–29)Lisa KalletIn the midst of his account of the Sicilian expedition Thucydides pauses to describe the economic and financial effects of the Spartan fortification of Dekeleia in Attica in 413 (7.27–28); one result of signal importance for the empire was Athens' decision to abolish tribute, and in its place to levy a harbor tax, the (...) eikostē. Following this digression the historian relates an episode emblematic of the atrocity of war, the wholesale slaughter of the inhabitants of the defenseless Boiotian town of Mykalessos by 1,300 Thracian mercenaries. Most scholars would not adhere to Eduard Schwartz's view that the financial/economic digression has nothing to do with the representation of the Thracians' savagery;1 nevertheless, the two sections have tended to be examined separately, the former by historians of the Athenian empire and finance2 or by Thucydidean scholars looking at the passage historiographically but as distinct from 7.29,3 and the latter by Thucydidean scholars exploring its function in the History.4 There are, however, strong grounds for reading them together: in particular, a degree of detail in each not otherwise warranted by the narrative, a framing device, and the shared use of language common to the description of disease, all suggest that Thucydides was intentionally linking the two sections. By this linkage, I propose, Thucydides not only draws a connection between Athenian public finance and human suffering, but also develops themes central to the work as a whole, namely, those of moral responsibility, human nature, [End Page 223] the conflict between reason and passion, and the nexus of finances, leadership, and military power.First, the detail in both the fiscal digression and the episode at Mykalessos immediately stands out, given their placement within the Sicilian account, the most self–contained and focused part of the History.5 Much of the substance of 7.27–28 concerns a gradual process of fiscal and economic deterioration, yet Thucydides is prompted to embed a diachronic, thematic account in the context of an event utterly trivial to the expedition and the entire course of the war, namely, the tardy arrival of Thracian mercenaries in Athens and the decision to send them home. Moreover, shocking atrocity that the massacre at Mykalessos was, it was peripheral to the war, a minor event that could have been easily omitted, or relegated to a sentence. It is relevant to note in this connection the differing treatments of Skione and Melos. What happened in those places, in 422 and 416 respectively, was identical—a siege and subsequent massacre of the males and enslavement of the women and children—yet Thucydides relates the information about Skione as a passing mention in one sentence (5.32.1), whereas he devotes pages to Melos (5.84–116).The prominence given to the fiscal digression and to what happened at Mykalessos, through such detailed narrative and especially the juxtaposition of the two sections, is in itself a sign that Thucydides intended a larger significance—through their interrelation—to be accorded to these events. The comparative example of Melos is again relevant, for its significance lies partly in its juxtaposition to the Sicilian books (which would explain why Thucydides chose to highlight it, rather than the identical case of Skione's treatment), as is similarly the case with the juxtaposition of the Funeral Oration and the plague (and Perikles' last speech).Thucydides constructs a second link between the two sections by using the subject of the Thracian mercenaries as a framing device for his digression on the economic effects of Dekeleia: in 27.1–2, the Thracians arrive in Athens too late for the expedition for which they had been intended, that of reinforcing the army in Sicily. The Athenians, Thucydides continues, decided to send them home, because "to keep them for the Dekeleian War seemed very costly; for each received a drachma a day" ( [End Page 224] ).6 Yet rather than immediately return to Sicilian events, or continue with the Thracian narrative, he instead undertakes a lengthy analysis of what was a gradual process of fiscal deterioration that could have... (shrink)

One of the immediate eukaryotic cellular responses to DNA breakage is the covalent post‐translational modification of nuclear proteins with poly(ADP‐ribose) from NAD+ as precursor, mostly catalysed by poly(ADP‐ribose) polymerase‐1 (PARP‐1). Recently several other polypeptides have been shown to catalyse poly(ADP‐ribose) formation. Poly(ADP‐ribosyl)ation is involved in a variety of physiological and pathophysiological phenomena. Physiological functions include its participation in DNA‐base excision repair, DNA‐damage signalling, regulation of genomic stability, and regulation of transcription and proteasomal function, supporting the previously observed correlation of cellular (...) poly(ADP‐ribosyl)ation capacity with mammalian life. The pathophysiology effects are mediated through PARP‐1 overactivity, which can cause cell suicide by NAD+ depletion. It is apparent that the latter effect underlies the pathogenesis of a wide range of disease states including type‐1 diabetes, ischaemic infarcts in various organs, and septic or haemorrhagic shock. Therefore pharmacological modulation of poly(ADP‐ribosyl)ation may prove to be an exciting option for various highly prevalent, disabling and even lethal diseases. BioEssays 23:795–806, 2001. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (shrink)

The activation of leukocytes by bacterial cell wall lipopolysaccharide (LPS) contributes to the pathogenesis of septic shock. It is well established that, in the presence of plasma LPS‐binding protein (LBP), LPS binds with high affinity to CD14. The binding of LPS to CD14 has been associated with the activation of cells, although available evidence indicates that CD14 itself does not transduce intracellular signalling. The physiological function of this interaction is to promote host defense mechanisms of cells to combat the (...) infection and clear LPS from the circulation. At higher concentrations of LPS, however, the activation of cells can take place in the absence of LBP and CD14, presumably through a distinct low‐affinity signalling LPS receptor. On the evidence published by us and others, we propose that in neutrophils, and possibly other leukocytes, L‐selectin can act as a low‐affinity LPS receptor. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:“An Immoderate Taste for Truth”: Censoring History in Baudelaire’s “Les bijoux”E. S. Burt (bio)In May 1949, a French Court of Appeals reversed an 1857 decision condemning six poems from Les fleurs du mal for obscenity, in a signal case of a public lifting of a ban against some lyric poems. 1 Among the several interesting features of this case not the least is the decision to proceed against (...) the work in the first place. For lyric poetry does not appear an attractive target for censorship. Its subject matter and formalism remove it far enough from the experience of most readers that Gustave Flaubert, fresh from his troubles with the court over Madame Bovary, could express his surprise at the government’s attack: “This is new,” he wrote to Baudelaire, “this pursuit of a volume of verse.” While Flaubert’s comment was in point of fact inaccurate, he puts his finger on a problem worth considering. 2 Here we have a work that must seem naturally exempt from state intervention, by virtue of a deliberate retreat from risky political subjects, and it nonetheless did get censored by the state. Can anything be learned about “normal” state censorship from this exceptional case? [End Page 19]A key factor in the government’s decision to pursue the book, according to the prosecutor Pinard, was that these poems would prove accessible to a large audience: 3 “An immoral book that had no chance of being read or understood would not be pursued” [1208], he states. In his argument, as in the judgment by the court that the condemned poems “lead necessarily to the exciting of the senses by a coarse realism offensive to modesty” [1182], the assumption is that the work is extraordinarily available, its pictures immediately referable to ordinary experience. In the six condemned poems, language is judged to be not a veil but a tool, and a sex tool at that. “Despite an effort of style” [1182], the poetic situation—in most of the poems that of the boudoir—is painted in a language insufficiently flowery. 4A further interesting feature in the case is that when it comes up again, under DeGaulle’s Fourth Republic, the court summarily dismisses the 1857 judgment of coarse realism as just one possible interpretation, and a forced one at that. Instead, the 1949 court finds that the poems are self-referential, symbolic entities that do not represent ordinary experience:If some pictures, on account of their originality, were able to alarm some minds upon first publication and appeared to the first judges as offensive to morality, such an appraisal, attaching itself only to a realistic interpretation of the poems and neglecting their symbolic meaning, has proved to be of an arbitrary character, unratified by public opinion or by the judgment of the literary world.[St. John-Stevas 249]The shocking representations of 1857, outraging morality, are now understood to deliver the Wordsworthian “shock of mild surprise” by which we recognize the original work of art. In 1949, the poems are precious artifacts; their language is not realistic but symbolical; its sensuous forms reveal an inner, spiritual meaning.A crucial resemblance can be discerned between the actions taken by the two courts: both make their judgments in terms of a “reading pact,” a set of “artificial rules” [1206] that are presumed to govern reading and to have currency in the context. Les fleurs gets policed in the name of this generic purity, with the prosecutor Pinard calling “the judge... a sentinel who must not let the border be crossed” [1206] and the 1949 decision confirming the opinion of the literary world that the supposed transgression against public morality was in point of fact a transformation in the rules regulating the narrow confines of lyric poetry. 5This concern that texts be framed by a reading pact aimed at constraining their interpretation is worth considering in any discussion of censorship that wants to move from the level of pragmatics to that of theory. It leads to queries about the possibility of getting rid of state censorship entirely and about the state’s interest, as guardian and overseer of the archive, in the institutionalization and... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Trauma, Recognition, and the Place of LanguageJuliet Mitchell (bio)Definitions of trauma abound within the psychoanalytic discipline. My own definition is going to be simple. A trauma, whether physical or psychical, must create a breach in a protective covering of such severity that it cannot be coped with by the usual mechanisms by which we deal with pain or loss. The severity of the breach is such that even if (...) the incident is expected, the experience cannot be foretold. We cannot thus make use of anxiety as a preparatory signal. The death of a sick relative, the amputation of a diseased limb may be consciously known about in advance, but if they are to be described as traumatic then the foreknowledge was useless. In trauma we are untimely ripped.Whether it is as childhood seduction, infantile abuse, shell shock, or war violence, or as a preoccupation with the place of neoteny and the trials of human birth, trauma is continually posited as the hypothetical “origin” of psychic states. However, although “trauma” is crucial to psychoanalytic theory, trauma in itself is not really the focus of its analysis. Freud proposed a “biological bedrock” on which psychic states were formed, but this bedrock was not the object of psychoanalytic inquiry. I suggest that what emerges as a motif in the many retheorizings of psychoanalysis time and again, as another “bedrock,” is trauma. One might call it an “experiential bedrock.” As with biology, it is crucial—but as the area of another mode of inquiry. Psychoanalysis is equipped to contribute to the understanding of the reaction to trauma, not to the trauma itself.In a colloquial context we tend to look from the perspective of the observer and label a range of difficult or tragic occurrences “traumatic.” Instead, I want to define trauma from the perspective of the person who experiences it. This means both that the same event will not always be traumatic for different people, and that the experience of different events, if they are experienced as trauma, will be the same whatever the event and whoever the sufferer. It was essentially for this reason that Freud eventually disagreed with the rich findings of Otto Rank, who proposed the trauma of birth as the origin of mankind’s neurosis. Trauma is the great equalizer. What differentiates us, since we were all born? Furthermore, what appears to be the trauma from the observer’s perspective may, from the viewpoint of the psychic response of the recipient, only be the catalyst that brings to the surface an experience which, were it not for this later event, might not in itself have been traumatic (or vice versa). Even so extreme an experience as the Holocaust may not breach the defenses of a particular individual. The catalytic event in the present triggers an earlier occurrence which becomes traumatic only by virtue of its retrospectively endowed meaning.Probably all animate matter can be traumatized; it would seem likely that the response to the breach in the human defensive system takes place at a generalizable psychosocial level. Recognition and language are interactional social processes; without another person neither a psyche nor language is possible. Object relations analysts, notably D. W. Winnicott, whom Max Hernandez addresses in his paper in this issue, have devoted their work to aspects of the psyche, Lacanians to language. To me the fields are interdependent and gain from being looked at together, both in their practice and in the theories that can [End Page 121] be applied to them. When we have a physical trauma it is common for an immediate aftereffect to be some uncertainty about words; even the ability to spell correctly can temporarily disappear. There are undoubtedly physiological explanations for this. But I shall argue that there are psychological parallels. Every patient whom I would regard as having had some relevant form of trauma had a specific relationship to language, and it is this that concerns me. In addition, Max Hernandez describes the breach in the defenses caused by the anal rape of a patient when he was a young boy. But neither the patient’s symptom nor his complaint on coming to a therapist for treatment pertains to... (shrink)

The Y‐box‐binding protein (YB‐1) represents the most evolutionary conserved nucleic‐acid‐binding protein currently known. YB‐1 is a member of the cold‐shock domain (CSD) protein superfamily. It performs a wide variety of cellular functions, including transcriptional regulation, translational regulation, DNA repair, drug resistance and stress responses to extracellular signals. As a result, YB‐1 expression is closely associated with cell proliferation. In this review, we will begin by briefly describing the characteristics of YB‐1 and will then summarize the pleiotropic functions brought about (...) via DNA–RNA transaction and protein–protein interactions. In addition, we will discuss the diverse range of potential physiological and pathological functions of YB‐1. BioEssays 25:691–698, 2003. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

After almost a century of globalization, the trend now appears to be reversing, primarily due to global shocks since 2001. Using war as a legitimate means to reshape global sovereignty clearly signals the breakdown of the original globalization narrative. Societies are no longer fluid; they are increasingly solidifying into strongly opposing factions, particularly in Western nations. Within this framework, I propose an intervention divided into two parts. The first part, a pars destruens, interprets the roots of the contemporary episteme, characterized (...) by dualisms, polarizations, and a belligerent (both metaphorically and literally) approach to questions of human coexistence. The second part, a pars construens, focuses on the paradoxical concept of ‘interindependence’ – the constitutive relationality of life, both biological and social, as the foundation for genuine sustainability. Finally, I will suggest how Christian thought, stripped of superstructures and ideological instrumentalizations, can contribute to an authentic ‘dialogic dialogue’ among diversities. (shrink)

In the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae three positive transcriptional control elements are activated by stress conditions: heat shock elements (HSEs), stress response elements (STREs) and AP‐1 responsive elements (AREs). HSEs bind heat shock transcription factor (HSF), which is activated by stress conditions causing accumulation of abnormal proteins. STREs mediate transcriptional activation by multiple stress conditions. They are controlled by high osmolarity via the HOG signal pathway, which comprises a MAP kinase module and a two‐component system homologous to prokaryotic (...) signal transducers. AREs bind the transcription factor Yap1p. The three types of control elements seem to have overlapping, but distinct functions. Some stress proteins encoded by HSE‐regulated genes are necessary for growth of yeast under moderate stress, products of STRE‐activated genes appear to be important for survival under severe stress and ARE‐controlled genes may mainly function during oxidative stress and in the response to toxic conditions, such as caused by heavy metal ions. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:To Be or Not to Be:Waiving Informed Consent in Emergency ResearchCharles R. McCarthy (bio)The requirements for prior, legally authorized informed consent constitute a necessary condition for recruiting subjects into biomedical or behavioral research. However, informed consent requirements pose a serious problem for most research conducted in emergency care settings. For this reason, the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) regulations governing investigational devices and the Department of Health and Human (...) Services' (HHS) regulations for the protection of human subjects allow narrow exceptions to the general requirements of informed consent. In a joint effort to clarify the applicability of the current FDA regulations and to better understand the intent of the HHS regulations as they apply to emergency research, the FDA and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) cosponsored a public forum on the ethical conduct of emergency research in January 1995.Although the forum was not designed as a consensus conference and participants vigorously disagreed on some of the details, a broad consensus emerged on several major points: (1) both HHS and FDA regulations should, in the immediate future, be interpreted to allow for randomized clinical trials in emergency situations so long as the subjects are carefully protected; and (2) consideration should be given to producing new, closely harmonized regulations from both agencies that will provide greater clarity concerning what kinds of emergency research may be allowed without obtaining prior informed consent.The FDA-NIH forum in January was occasioned primarily by controversy about the hypothermia research protocol described below, but it is obvious that many other kinds of emergency research also await the outcome of deliberations concerning waiver of informed consent in emergency situations. These include research into the care and treatment of: occlusive stroke; subarachnoid hemorrhage due to intracranial aneurysm; metabolic coma; status epilepticus; cardiac arrest; myocardial infarction; cardiac arrhythmia; hemorrhagic shock; pulmonary embolism; acute asthmatic attack; and poisoning. All of these conditions [End Page 155] are encountered in emergency settings where obtaining informed consent from the patient-subjects to participate in research is seldom possible, and obtaining consent from legally authorized representatives of the subjects is either not feasible, or, if obtained, is of doubtful validity.The Hypothermia Research Case and HHS RegulationsA $7.2 million grant for research on the use of hypothermia in the treatment of severe head trauma, the largest award ever made to the University of Texas Health Sciences Center at Houston, is in danger of expiring before the study is completed. The protocol, which involves the use of cooling blankets to induce hypothermia in patients suffering from severe head injuries, is designed to test the hypothesis that: "Early lowering of the body temperature of patients suffering from severe head trauma to approximately 91 degrees Fahrenheit will slow patients' metabolism and will/will not, as a consequence, reduce the rates of both morbidity and mortality in these patients." The protocol was approved by seven Institutional Review Boards (IRBs), each of which waived the requirement to obtain informed consent from research subjects in accordance with Sec. 46. 116(d) of the HHS Regulations for the Protection of Human Subjects.1However, NIH's Office for Protection from Research Risks (OPRR), which is responsible for assuring compliance with the HHS regulations, has taken a controversial regulatory position by requiring informed consent from a legally authorized representative of each subject to be entered in the hypothermia trial. Because the obtaining of surrogate consent has proved to be very difficult, OPRR's position has slowed the research to a point where it may have to be terminated.At issue in the controversy is a fundamental question of ethics and public policy. Is it ever permissible to involve incompetent subjects in research without either their consent, or the consent of their legally authorized representatives? Pertinent HHS regulations for the protection of human subjects seem to answer the question affirmatively by allowing local IRBs to waive some or all of the elements of informed consent under carefully limited circumstances (45 CFR 46 116(d)). Nevertheless, OPRR has signalled the research community that use of the informed consent waiver provision for the Houston hypothermia study is not permitted under the regulations. OPRR judged that the risks... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Are We There Yet?A Narrative of Firsthand Interpreter Experiences in the Medical Field and Insights to Aid Language Access ComplianceHilda Sanchez-HerreraMy Spanish interpreting journey began in 2008. In those days, very little training was available, and online studies were very new and rare. Early trainings involved out-of-town interpreter and translation conferences, reading the recently released Culturally and Linguistically Appropriate Services (CLAS) standards documents, and participating in the diversity events (...) at the hospital and in the community. Eventually, I did three different medical interpreter training programs, each teaching me something new and improving my skills. The first few years opened my eyes to what it meant for one to be trained, qualified, and certified. It has been a marvelous learning experience.Now, with sixteen years of experience and the vastness and richness of being an interpreter in various settings, I continue to learn to be flexible, patient, and courageous. I've also learned to be a teacher because clinical staff have one perspective of what interpreting is, and we have another. I've learned to be courageous because the field of Language Access is very demanding and involves encountering a lot of biases and judgmental perspectives. Language Access champions advocate throughout the nation so that those who are working in this field will have better working conditions. Collaborations started in the community, extending into social services, legal, and beyond.Interpreting sessions that had the most impact are many, but a few stand out, including a patient I assisted who had presumed Locked-In Syndrome and a domestic abuse female at a maternal-fetal appointment. I have had to explain to a family what it means to be brain dead and have interpreted for numerous palliative care sessions.The presumed Locked-In syndrome patient was quite the experience. I had recently started working on the floor at the hospital and was making my rounds to Spanish-speaking inpatients. One morning, I arrived just as the physician team was making their rounds. I listened to the briefing: a 42-year-old female had suffered a stroke. She could not speak and could not use her extremities. The team had done what they could and reached the conclusion that she was "locked-in" because she was aware but their neurological exams were inconclusive. I asked if they had used the video or phone interpreting services and they said yes but it was not fruitful. I offered to rule out a language barrier. They agreed.It was then that the patient began making great progress in her recovery. The team was amazed at the patient's reaction. She cried when she heard her language spoken. We established communication via a board and eye signals. Speech therapy came and they were able to assess her ability to speak and swallow. While she remained approximately 6 months in the hospital, it was not until the last two [End Page 154] months that she made great strides, and it was all due to language access. Eventually, she was transferred to another healthcare facility closer to home. I was overjoyed and wondered why they had not had this success earlier. It was later determined that the connections were not good, and the interpreter could not "see" what the patient was doing.The domestic violence female was an emotional one for me. I was scheduled to assist at two of her appointments that morning: one at maternal fetal and the other at ENT. Upon arrival, I greeted her and noticed her eyes were watery and her face seemed a little swollen, but I did not want to make her feel embarrassed, so I remained quiet. I accompanied her to the ENT appointment first. The doctor asked her questions, and she seemed nervous. Still no intervention. We finished and went to the maternal-fetal appointment. On the way to the office, I asked if she was ok. She began to cry and said in a soft tone, looking around, that her partner had hit her on the way to the clinic.I was shocked! I knew that permission was needed to share this information with the providers and that her safety was critical. She thought... (shrink)

We study the strategic interactions within testing in a model of political agency. A principal decides between convicting and acquitting an agent of unknown innocence based on a noisy signal that is manipulable by the agent’s unobserved actions. We identify conditions under which the principal sets a threshold conviction strategy in the form of “beyond a reasonable doubt.” We show that, in spite of strategic concerns, the amount of information that a principal can glean from the test is entirely (...) determined by the threshold; in equilibrium, the threshold is set where the signal realization conveys just enough information to validate a conviction. As such, the game of testing is analytically equivalent to the principal’s statistical inference problem. We next examine how exogenous shocks on preference parameters affect the principal’s equilibrium threshold and welfare. In general, the principal benefits from being better at distinguishing types; whether she should increase or decrease the threshold depends crucially on whether the agent’s distribution of signals varies with types in the absence of manipulation. (shrink)

This study examines the practices of Equine Assisted Therapy and Learning in Australia. Among Equine Assisted Therapy and Equine Assisted Learning centers there is a large degree of variation in practice worldwide. The current study outlines a range of practices in two states in Australia whereeatandealhave arisen and evolved from models developed elsewhere. The philosophical foundations, training and certification processes followed along with the types and training of horses involved are compared across facilities. The findings of the study illustrated the (...) large variation ineatandealin current practice in Australia. The results suggested that if the practices ofeatandealare to move out of the “fringe” of mental health and learning professional practice and into the mainstream, their theoretical underpinnings, certification and licensure procedures, and methodology of practice must become more clearly defined. (shrink)

Although the popularity of Humane Education Programs as a method of teaching compassion and caring for all living beings is increasing, there is a need for rigorous, methodologically sound research evaluating the efficacy of HEP. Recent calls for the inclusion of HEP within broader humanistic, environmental, and social justice frameworks underline the importance of HEP beyond a simple “treatment of animals” model. Lack of methodological rigor in the majority of published HEP studies and dispersal across disparate fields , however, means (...) that there is a potential for the popular use of HEP to outstrip our understanding of the variables that impact efficacy. The current study discusses some of these issues and presents a pilot study of a literature-only HEP intervention. Comparisons with an age-matched control group indicated that the four-week HEP resulted in an increase in measures of empathy and treatment of animals, although only the increase in empathy levels was significant. This paper discusses the implications of the current results and areas in need of future consideration. (shrink)

Although the popularity of Humane Education Programs as a method of teaching compassion and caring for all living beings is increasing, there is a need for rigorous, methodologically sound research evaluating the efficacy of HEP. Recent calls for the inclusion of HEP within broader humanistic, environmental, and social justice frameworks underline the importance of HEP beyond a simple “treatment of animals” model. Lack of methodological rigor in the majority of published HEP studies and dispersal across disparate fields , however, means (...) that there is a potential for the popular use of HEP to outstrip our understanding of the variables that impact efficacy. The current study discusses some of these issues and presents a pilot study of a literature-only HEP intervention. Comparisons with an age-matched control group indicated that the four-week HEP resulted in an increase in measures of empathy and treatment of animals, although only the increase in empathy levels was significant. This paper discusses the implications of the current results and areas in need of future consideration. (shrink)

Paramedics encounter ethical dilemmas at work, and while previous research has improved ethics education and practice, more can be learned from the lived experience of paramedics facing ethical challenges. This paper explores the lived experience of two paramedics, one with five years’ experience, the other twenty, presented with comparable cases. The participants, who were interviewed in a broader qualitative study exploring practical wisdom, were asked to select a case involving ethical decision-making from their own practice experience. Semi-structured interviews employed the (...) five-step Critical Decision Method as a framework to explore various aspects of the decision-making process. The two cases were identified as exemplars of prominent themes suitable for discussion. The findings highlighted several factors that influence paramedic ethical decision-making, including practical wisdom, communication and teamwork, clinical support, and education. This case comparison identifies a greater need to focus education on the fostering of practical wisdom, and the development of non-technical skills such as communication and teamwork, supported by interprofessional education endeavours. Furthermore, greater access to support for paramedics must be available to further evolve practical wisdom. The combination of improved education and support will likely cater for the full spectrum of ethical challenges faced by paramedics in their work. (shrink)

In Australia, paramedics are obliged to practice ethically. Graduates of baccalaureate degrees in paramedicine should therefore possess a common grounding in ethics to meet the professional capabilities expected of registered paramedics. However, there is a lack of clarity regarding ethics education for paramedicine students, including what is taught, how it is taught, and how it is assessed. This paper explores ethics education for paramedicine students in Australia, how it aligns with current professional expectations, and how it may be enhanced. Point-in-time (...) data regarding ethics education was collected from websites of fifteen Australian universities offering undergraduate baccalaureate degrees in paramedicine. Data collection was supported by consultation with academics from several institutions. Content analysis was utilised to categorise and analyse data to explore similarities and differences in curricula. Similarities included approaches to learning and teaching and the use of case-based learning, with variability found across teaching staff profiles and content areas. Findings suggest it is time for collaboration to develop a model ethics curriculum for paramedicine students in Australia. (shrink)

Following Cass Sunstein's popular treatment of the concept, echo chambers are often defined as environments which exclude contrary opinions through omission. C. Thi Nguyen contests the popular usage and defines echo chambers in terms of in-group trust and out-group distrust. In this paper, I argue for a more comprehensive treatment. While both exclusion by omission and out-group distrust help sustain echo chambers, neither defines the phenomenon. I develop a social network model of echo chambers which focuses on the role of (...) belief-reinforcing echoes. First, I argue that the model allows us to incorporate Nguyen's main point about distrust without construing other commentators as deeply mistaken about the nature of echo chambers. Second, I use the model to develop an account of collaborative resistance and use it to clarify the role echo chambers play in spreading misinformation. (shrink)

Zusammenfassung In der öffentlichen Debatte über die Corona-Warn-App kann der Solidaritätsbegriff als wichtiger, aber inhaltlich umstrittener normativer Bezugspunkt gelten. So stehen hier unterschiedliche Solidaritätsrekurse mit heterogenen Voraussetzungen, normativen Implikationen und praktischen Konsequenzen nebeneinander, die einer medizinethischen Untersuchung bedürfen. Vor diesem Hintergrund ist es Ziel des Beitrags, _erstens_ die Bandbreite der Verwendungsweisen des Solidaritätsbegriffs in der öffentlichen Debatte zur Corona-Warn-App anschaulich zu machen sowie _zweitens_ die Voraussetzungen und normativen Implikationen dieser Verwendungsweisen herauszuarbeiten und einer ethischen Bewertung zu unterziehen. Dazu stelle ich (...) nach einer kurzen Einführung in die Corona-Warn-App und einer Vergegenwärtigung der Grundzüge des Solidaritätskonzepts vier Beispiele aus der öffentlichen Debatte zur Corona-Warn-App dar, die mit Blick auf die zugrundeliegende Identifikation, die Solidaritätsgruppe, den solidarischen Beitrag sowie das normative Ziel erhebliche Unterschiede aufweisen. Sie unterstreichen die Notwendigkeit weiterführender Maßstäbe, um ihre Legitimität zu bewerten. Dazu greife ich auf vier normative Kriterien einer kontextsensitiven, moralisch gehaltvollen Solidaritätskonzeption zurück (Solidaritätsoffenheit, gestaltbare Inklusivität, Angemessenheit des solidarischen Beitrags, normative Abhängigkeit) und evaluiere auf dieser Grundlage die vorgestellten Solidaritätsrekurse ethisch. Für alle dargestellten Solidaritätsrekurse lassen sich in der Folge kritische Rückfragen formulieren. Dabei werden einerseits die Potenziale und Limitationen von Solidaritätsrekursen in öffentlichen Debatten deutlich. Andererseits werden Schlussfolgerungen möglich, wann eine Tracing-App tatsächlich als solidarische Technologie zur Pandemiebekämpfung verstanden werden kann. (shrink)

This study examines whether an acquirer’s pre-announcement corporate social responsibility (CSR) engagement can provide an insurance-like effect to preserve acquirer returns during the announcement of an acquisition event. Drawing on stakeholder theory and signaling theory, we posit that CSR engagement accrues positive moral capital for an acquirer and sends a positive signal indicating the acquirer’s altruism, both of which temper stakeholders’ negative responses and prevent a reduction in market returns around the announcement of an acquisition. However, high-CSR engagement could (...) backfire when the acquirer makes a hostile takeover announcement. Incongruent signals between high-CSR engagement and the hostile practice are a sign of hypocrisy in the eyes of stakeholders, which can worry investors and hurt acquirer returns. By analysing 1310 acquisition transactions from 2002 to 2012, the results of our event study show that high-CSR acquirers generally enjoy positive acquirer returns during their acquisition announcements, but negative returns when the acquisitions are hostile. These findings support the idea that CSR engagement can provide insurance-like benefits during an event that is often seen as “negative”, while also identifying signal incongruence as an important boundary condition. (shrink)

Spitale, Germani, and Biller-Andorno’s (2024) PHERCC matrix sets out a useful and systematic framework for risk and crisis communication in public health emergencies. A problem in ensuring effective messaging is the extent to which the messaging environment is *quiet* or *noisy*: in other words, whether or not a message has to *compete with other messages* at the same time. I use the example of the UK’s experience during COVID-19, which was marked by tensions between the devolved regional governments—and consequently divergent (...) policy responses—which sowed confusion among the populace. More generally, if policymakers try to account for the needs of competing publics simultaneously (in order to meet the inclusivity and understandability principles), this may increase the noise problem and so actually undermine effective public health messaging. The issue of noisy messaging environments reveals a tradeoff between inclusivity and understandability versus effectiveness in risk and crisis communication. (shrink)

Time theft represents an inconspicuous yet pervasive form of unethical misconduct in the workplace, engendering significant losses for organizations. It is thus incumbent upon companies to take measures to mitigate such conduct. Human resource management (HRM) constitutes a pivotal approach through which organizations can regulate employee actions and curb organizational misconduct; however, its role has been largely underexplored in the extant literature. Recognizing the moral foundations of socially responsible HRM (SRHRM), we synthesize signaling theory with cue consistency theory to posit (...) that SRHRM exerts a negative influence on employee time theft via enhanced moral awareness. Furthermore, we contend that ethical leadership acts as a critical contingency factor that reinforces the negative relationship between SRHRM and time theft through heightened moral awareness. Employing two-wave survey studies and a scenario-based experiment, our hypotheses were empirically supported. Our findings contribute to both theoretical and practical understandings within the domains of SRHRM and time theft research. Additionally, we discuss limitations and propose future research directions. (shrink)