We developed an ex silico evolutionary‐based systematic synteny approach to define and name the duplicated genes in vertebrates. The first convention for the naming of genes relied on historical precedent, the order in the human genome, and mutant phenotypes in model systems. However, total‐genome duplication that resulted in teleost genomes required the naming of duplicated orthologous genes (ohnologs) in a specific manner. Unfortunately, as we review here, such naming has no defined criteria, and some ohnologs and their orthologs have suffered (...) from incorrect nomenclature, thus creating confusion in comparative genetics and disease modeling. We sought to overcome this barrier by establishing an ex silico evolutionary‐based systematic approach to naming ohnologs in teleosts. We developed software and compared gene synteny in zebrafish using the spotted gar genome as a reference, representing the unduplicated ancestral state. Using new criteria, we identified several hundred potentially misnamed ohnologs and validated the principle manually. Also see the video abstract here: https://youtu.be/UKNLa_TvSgY. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Worker‐Owned Firms Municipal Enterprises Building Community: Neighborhoods and Nonprofits State and National Innovators Integrated Advances and Further Possibilities3 Challenging the Ideology of Unconstrained Wealth Inequality Conclusion References.

Concept of soul in Indic philosophy; a study.

ABSTRACT An adequate response to the environmental and sustainability issues we now face cannot be limited to single perspectives, disciplines, or ways of knowing, and instead requires an interdisciplinary approach. Despite the connections between the fields of citizenship-, character- and sustainability education, they have thus far run parallel to each other, without any substantial convergence. This paper focuses on the conceptual and historical reasons for this lack of integration, exploring the tensions among them perceived by many scholars and practitioners, such (...) as an individual vs. a social vs. a global focus, a deliberative vs. fact based pedagogic approach, and an individual vs. socio-political educational context. The paper ends by exploring different ways in which these three fields of education might be integrated. (shrink)

ArgumentFrom 1893 to 1909 when it definitely sunk into the glacier, the Mont-Blanc Observatory (MBO) struggled to find its scientific purpose. In this article, we use recent literature on the social characterization of place to analyze this struggle. Our first goal is to investigate where the observatory may fit in the laboratory-field dyad. We investigate various kinds of conceptual “borderlands” between these places and look at the networking activities between particular knowledge production sites. We argue that part observatory, part laboratory, (...) and part field station, the place of the MBO was “heterotopic” space in Foucault's sense. We then examine the social underpinnings that led to the foundation of this observatory in the context of French Third Republic at the turn of the century. Following some of the ways the MBO was connected to other scientific sites and surveying some of its visitors' scientific practices, we finally hint at the fact that some of these practices played a part in the emergence of a regime of science production that endured into the twentieth century (astrophysical aeronautical practices, spatial stations, polar exploration, etc.). (shrink)

This essay articulates one way to conduct a cultural intervention from the Asia/Pacific region that recognizes the cultural governance of “Other” traffics. I investigate the discursive framework of Charlie Chan and Hawai'i detective fiction to inform the ways in which nation-states police cultural difference and enact geo-cultural homogeneity. I contend that Charlie Chan acts as a narrative of containment by inscribing and transcribing those spaces, times and bodies that would otherwise disrupt the national field of America. In particular, the imaginative (...) geography of Charlie Chan not only affirms the tropical paradise coding of Hawai'i, it attempts to provide disciplinary insights from the perspective of a “native informant”; the figure of Charlie Chan translates and forecloses the discordant rhythms of minority and “native” communities in ways that enable the production of popular television shows such as Hawaii Five-O, Magnum P.I. and Baywatch Hawaii. However,despite this national deployment of Charlie Chan, I want to suggest that Charlie Chan can also be read as a tactic of geopolitical resistance. His figure can assume a parodic and critical stance in the form of a native mis-informant, and by so doing, his character insecures dark bodies, times, spaces of the Orient and the Oceanic. (shrink)

Ṣadr al-Dīn Shīrāzī, Muḥammad ibn Ibrāhīm, d. 1641- Criticism and interpretation ; Ḥikmat-i Mutiʻālīyah ; Islamic philosophy.

For any system that uses previous experience to solve problems in new situations, it is necessary to identify the features in the situation that should match features in the previous cases through some process ofsituation analysis. In this paper, we examine this problem in the legal domain, where lawyers know it asissue spotting. In particular, we present an implementation of issue spotting in CHASER, a legal reasoning system that works in the domain of tort law.This approach is a compromise between (...) generality and efficiency, and is applicable to a range of problems and domains besides legal reasoning. In particular, it presents a principled way to use multiple cases for a single problem by exploiting the inherent structure present in many domains. (shrink)

When confronted with an ethical dilemma, most of us like to think we would stand up for our principles. But we are not as ethical as we think we are. In Blind Spots, leading business ethicists Max Bazerman and Ann Tenbrunsel examine the ways we overestimate our ability to do what is right and how we act unethically without meaning to. From the collapse of Enron and corruption in the tobacco industry, to sales of the defective Ford Pinto, the downfall (...) of Bernard Madoff, and the Challenger space shuttle disaster, the authors investigate the nature of ethical failures in the business world and beyond, and illustrate how we can become more ethical, bridging the gap between who we are and who we want to be. Explaining why traditional approaches to ethics don't work, the book considers how blind spots like ethical fading--the removal of ethics from the decision--making process--have led to tragedies and scandals such as the Challenger space shuttle disaster, steroid use in Major League Baseball, the crash in the financial markets, and the energy crisis. The authors demonstrate how ethical standards shift, how we neglect to notice and act on the unethical behavior of others, and how compliance initiatives can actually promote unethical behavior. They argue that scandals will continue to emerge unless such approaches take into account the psychology of individuals faced with ethical dilemmas. Distinguishing our "should self" from our "want self", the authors point out ethical sinkholes that create questionable actions. Suggesting innovative individual and group tactics for improving human judgment, Blind Spots shows us how to secure a place for ethics in our workplaces, institutions, and daily lives. (shrink)

This paper aims to identify several interpretive problems posed by the final part ofDAII.11 (423b27–424 a10), where Aristotle intertwines the thesis that a sense is like a ‘mean’ and an explanation for the existence of a ‘blind spot’ related to the sense of touch, adding the further contention that we are capable of discriminating because the mean ‘becomes the other opposite’ in relation to the perceptible property being perceived. To solve those problems, the paper explores a novel interpretation of Aristotle’s (...) claims, arguing that they describe a homeostatic physiological reaction by which the sensory apparatus responds to perceptible stimuli. According to the proposed interpretation, such homeostatic reaction constitutes a necessary condition for perceiving what Aristotle refers to as ‘proper’ perceptible features, which include properties like ‘hot’ and ‘cold’ as well as colors and sounds. (shrink)

Developers of generative machine learning models have pledged to enable users to identify model-generated content -- that is, to "spot the bot". In this short note, I explain why this promise is based on a bait and switch.

The rotating spot method of timing subjective events involves the subject’s watching a rotating spot on a computer and reporting the position of the spot at the instant when the subjective event of interest occurs. We conducted an experiment to investigate factors that may impact on the results produced by this method, using the subject’s perception of when they made a simple finger movement as the subjective event to be timed. Seven aspects of the rotating spot method were investigated, using (...) a factorial experiment. Four of these aspects altered the physical characteristics of the computer generated spot or clock face and the remaining three altered the instructions given to the participant. We found compelling evidence that one factor, whether the subject was instructed to report the instant when the finger movement was initiated or the instant when it was completed, resulted in a systematic shift in the response. Evidence that three other factors affect the observed variability in the response was also found. In addition, we observed that there are substantial systematic differences in the responses made by different subjects. We discuss the implications of our findings and make recommendations about the optimal way of conducting future experiments using the rotating spot method. Our overall conclusion is that our results strongly validate the rotating spot method of timing at least the studied variety of subjective event. (shrink)

How can the subliminal, mysterious, but uncommonly powerful living-on, the presence, of the past be envisaged? In this essay I argue that presence is not brought about by stories — by, that is, the "storiness" of stories. Presence rather shows itself in how the past can force us—and enable us—to rewrite our stories about ourselves. The question then is how we acquire the experiences that can eventually force us to do so. How, and with what kind of things, does the (...) mémoire involontaire—from which presence wells up—get filled? In order to answer this question one might turn it around to the question how we can fill the mémoire involontaire of others. A consideration of the "art of slandering" shows that the mémoire involontaire tends to get filled with things that we believe are "common knowledge," that are "obliquely" communicated, and that are cast in metonymies. Metonymy offers a much better road to the mémoire involontaire than metaphor because metonymy is better at suggesting that what it conveys is "common knowledge." Therefore, I propose that presence resides in the metonymical region of language. Instead of being contained in the meaningful content of stories, presence resides in what a story inadvertently has to be—in, that is, the things a story has to present in order to present a story. My conclusion is that as presence the past is the exact opposite of what historians think it is. It is indestructible, uncannily close, and—despite its closeness and its durability—utterly impossible to conserve in "representations" that can be taken along in the hand luggage with which we traverse time. (shrink)

Dual-process theories of higher cognition, distinguishing between intuitive (Type 1) and reflective (Type 2) thinking, have become increasingly popular, although also subject to recent criticism. A key question, to which a number of contributions in this special issue relate, is how to define the difference between the two kinds of processing. One issue discussed is whether they differ at Marr’s computational level of analysis. I believe they do but that ultimately the debate will decided at the implementational level where distinct (...) cognitive and neural systems need to be demonstrated. Other distinctions raised in the issue are the unique ability for metarepresentation, cognitive decoupling and hypothetical thinking at the Type 2 level, and the association of emotion and metacognitive feelings with the Type 1 level. The relation of the latter to cognitive control is also discussed. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Blind Spots and Avenues for Transformation within the Utopian Canon: Toward A Terrestrial EcotopianismHeather Alberro (bio)Limitations and Exclusions of the (Western) Utopian CanonUtopianism in all of its manifestations often powerfully (re)surfaces during times of significant socio-ecological upheaval as a response to oppressive and exploitative realities. As such it is a fervent refusal against a given status quo and its purported inevitability. Utopianism and hope are rendered possible by, and (...) draw their transformative potential from, the boundless terrain of potentiality surrounding any given reality.1 Indeed, without such conditions of radical uncertainty, hope and utopianism would not be possible. Often and understandably, the seminal works of Plato, Thomas More, William Morris, H. G. Wells and others come to mind when we think of utopian studies. Hence Kumar’s parochial observation that there is no discernible utopian tradition beyond the West because other cultures lack the foundational myth of the Golden Age—that is, the Garden of Eden, Atlantis, and Arcadia—that has been so formative to the development of utopia in the West.2 These traditional or “transcendental” utopian modalities often feature a dichotomous opposition to their present reality, depicting time and historical movement [End Page 528] as linear successions of stages proceeding from an archaic past and toward a future wherein the utopian ideal is seen as occupying a “fixed space outside time and history.”3 Such temporally “transcendent” utopias marked the dawn of the modern phase of utopian thought, originating in the seventeenth century alongside new theories of social evolution that coalesced into modern Enlightenment notions of linear historical progress.4Prioritizing Pluralism: Critical Heterotopias of the “Here and Now”What kind of life? We are still confronted with the demand to state the “concrete alternative.” The demand is meaningless if it asks for a blueprint of the specific institutions and relationships which would be those of the new society: they cannot be determined a priori; they will develop, in trial and error, as the new society develops.5Tom Moylan’s notion of “critical utopianism,” which emerged during the “historic block” of political opposition of the 1960s and 1970s, marks one important step within the utopian canon toward praxis and the essential “Nowness” of critique and imaginative projection.6 This “critical” strand of utopianism is fueled by a fervent opposition to the exploitation and domination of people and the natural world that is increasingly characteristic of Western-capitalist societies.7 This opposition is coupled with a utopian desire for mutual aid, ecological resilience, liberation, and peaceful living—in effect, a longing for community.8 The “critical” in Moylan’s formulation has a bivalency: first, in the sense of critique through the debunking and deconstruction of the utopian genre itself, which was “colonized” by capitalism toward the 1970s and infused with technocratic dreams of material abundance through boundless economic expansion; and second, in the sense of the critical mass required to effect fundamental societal transformations.9 If the better is the enemy of the good, then perfection serves as “a stick with which to beat the possible.”10 Utopias do not offer rigid blueprints of a fixed or perfect ideal world but rather head toward “the ideal” by offering “a rich blending of creative fantasy, critical thinking, and oppositional activism” predicated on a demand for radically new relations between social and natural systems.11 Ever critically self-reflective, critical utopias continually remind us of the limitations of the utopian impulse, particularly the dangers of pursuing rigid and transcendental visions of “the better.” Nevertheless, these are desperate times that demand some orientation toward a better; utopianism’s [End Page 529] denunciative function is not enough. Thus, in his impassioned recent work Becoming Utopian, Moylan denotes the need for an intersectional, democratically unified leadership structure that can help sustain a political movement for counteracting the “global/neoliberal superpower order while reaching for a utopian horizon.”12 With a focus more on process than a fixed ideal, the critical utopia explores and articulates vibrant post-capitalist futures that are simultaneously open-ended, and far more socio-ecologically resilient than the “now” of late capitalism.Akin in function and style to critical utopias are the grounded and transgressive... (shrink)

This study aims to examine the development of diversity and inclusion (D&I) literature and identify its prominent themes and blind spots. The research was conducted using bibliometric analysis on the Web of Science database and included 2510 publications. Results showed that the development of D&I literature had increased exponentially since the 1960s, mainly due to different political and societal events. The geographic development showed that research was primarily conducted in developed countries where quotas and other legislation are implemented. The thematic (...) development revealed a stable but narrow focus on diversity management, board diversity, and team diversity, with little attention to inclusion. The keyword analysis strongly emphasized surface-level diversity, such as gender, race, and cultural diversity, while deep-level diversity received less attention. This study concludes that previous D&I literature has mainly focused on the financial effects of D&I and neglected other elements, such as the effects on social performance, its ethical implications, and the relationship between diversity and inclusion. The study recommends future research to expand the interpretation of diversity, examine the relationship between diversity and inclusion, and explore the effects of diversity on non-financial outcomes such as social performance and ethics. This study provides a valuable contribution to the field of business ethics by highlighting the blind spots in D&I literature and encouraging future research to consider the ethical implications of diversity in the workplace. (shrink)

Classic theories of religious toleration from the 17th century regularly made exceptions for various categories of people such as Catholics and atheists who need not be tolerated. From a contemporary perspective these may be understood as blind spots because at least some of us would argue that these exceptions were not necessary. This essay explores the toleration theories of John Milton, Benedict de Spinoza, Denis Veiras, John Locke and Pierre Bayle in order to assess whether they actually called for such (...) exceptions and whether those exceptions were justifed or were in fact blind spots. It concludes with some reflections on what our own blind spots may be, and whether we can see around them. (shrink)

Wright, Ken Review(s) of: Blind spots: Why We Fail to Do What's Right And What to Do about It, by Max H. Bazerman and Ann E. Tenbrunsel Princeton University Press 2011, x, 191pp.

An important function of scientific diagrams is to identify causal relationships. This commonly relies on contrasts that highlight the effects of specific difference-makers. However, causal contrast diagrams are not an obvious and easy to recognize category because they appear in many guises. In this paper, four case studies are presented to examine how causal contrast diagrams appear in a wide range of scientific reports, from experimental to observational and even purely theoretical studies. It is shown that causal contrasts can be (...) expressed in starkly different formats, including photographs of complexly visualized macromolecules as well as line graphs, bar graphs, or plots of state spaces. Despite surface differences, however, there is a measure of conceptual unity among such diagrams. In empirical studies they generally serve not only to infer and communicate specific causal claims, but also as evidence for them. The key data of some studies is given nowhere except in the diagrams. Many diagrams show multiple causal contrasts in order to demonstrate both that an effect exists and that the effect is specific -- that is, to narrowly circumscribe the phenomenon to be explained. In a large range of scientific reports, causal contrast diagrams reflect the core epistemic claims of the researchers. (shrink)

In her book Run, Spot, Run: The Ethics of Keeping Pets, bioethicist Jessica Pierce attempts to explore a narrower field of Animal Ethics, the ethics of keeping pets, as the title indicates. Τhere has not been much research in this field, although contemporary literature has dealt with certain issues within its context, such as the issue of euthanasia. The author states that her main aim is to lead the reader, by the time he reaches the last page of the book, (...) to no longer be sure if the very practice of keeping pets is moral. Although the author proposes the use of a kinder language for discussing about pet keeping, she uses the accepted language throughout her book. (shrink)

Dispositionalist accounts of belief define beliefs in terms of specific sets of dispositions. In this article, I provide a blind-spot argument against these accounts. The core idea of the argument is that beliefs having the form [p and it is not manifestly believed that p] cannot be manifestly believed. This means that one cannot manifest such beliefs in one’s assertions, conscious thoughts, actions, behaviours, or any other type of activity. However, if beliefs are sets of dispositions, they must be manifestable (...) in some way. Therefore, according to my argument, beliefs are not sets of dispositions. The argument is defended against some possible objections. (shrink)

Spotting is a typical isolated head coordination used by many dancers during rotation. However, with sporadic and inconclusive explanations as to why dancers spot, the critical characteristics and functionalities of spotting have yet to be identified. Therefore, a Delphi method survey was used as a novel methodology for providing greater insights into this under-examined motor behavior, bringing together experts from various disciplines to generate ideas and identify the crucial elements of spotting. Following the selection of experts, three rounds of data (...) collection and analysis were conducted to narrow down relevant topics and evaluate consensus. To gather opinions in Round 1, experts were asked to respond freely to three prompts regarding the reasoning, characteristics, and uses of successfully spotting; responses were then grouped into predominant items. To rate agreement in Round 2, experts rated their agreement on the relevance of the grouped items from Round 1 on a 5-point Likert scale; items rated 4 or 5 by at least 70% of the experts were taken as those consensually relevant to the group. To rank importance in Round 3, Best-Worst Scaling was used to determine individual rankings of the relevant items from Round 2. In a series of comparisons, experts were prompted to select the most and least important items in multiple sub-groupings. Group mean ranking of items as well as ranking concordance and differentiation were analyzed to determine the most important items and the strength of consensus, respectively. Overall, consensus and differentiation in experts’ item rankings were low; however, novel insights were presented. As characteristics of successfully spotting, experts emphasized head isolation, timing, and gaze specificity alongside functional characteristics, substantiating spotting as purposeful action in rotation. Building on traditional notions of spotting for reduced dizziness and maintaining balance, successfully spotting was further deemed useful for multiple turns, orientation, and rhythm. The findings of this study thus provide informed guidelines for future analysis and training of this complex head coordination in rotations. (shrink)

Bender, Robert Review of: Run, spot, run: The ethics of keeping pets, by Jessica Pierce, Uni of Chicago Press, 2016, 264 pages.

Brandom explains perceptual knowledge as the product of two distinguishable sorts of capacities: the capacity to reliably discriminate behaviorally between different sorts of stimuli; and the capacity to take up a position in the game of giving and asking for reasons. However, in focusing exclusively on the entitlement of observation reports, rather than on perception itself, Brandom passes over a conception of perceptual experience as a sort of contentful mental state. In this article, I argue that this is a blind (...) spot, which makes Brandom’s account of perceptual knowledge unable to properly accommodate the phenomenon of seeing aspects and to explain how we can justify the attributions of reliability to observers that make observation reports. (shrink)

Users of sociotechnical systems often have no way to independently verify whether the system output which they use to make decisions is correct; they are epistemically dependent on the system. We argue that this leads to problems when the system is wrong, namely to bad decisions and violations of the norm of practical reasoning. To prevent this from occurring we suggest the implementation of defeaters: information that a system is unreliable in a specific case (undercutting defeat) or independent information that (...) the output is wrong (rebutting defeat). Practically, we suggest to design defeaters based on the different ways in which a system might produce erroneous outputs, and analyse this suggestion with a case study of the risk classification algorithm used by the Dutch tax agency. (shrink)

The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 11, Issue 9, Page 16-18, September 2011.

Foucault’s intuition that resistance comes first challenges the theses of the co-originality of power and resistance or the superiority of power over resistance. In order to transform this intuition into the concept of the primacy of resistance, the article uses Deleuze’s ontology and in particular the idea of the virtual. According to Deleuze, resistance displays a privileged relation with the virtual, understood as the ontological region animated by all the potentialities that might be or might have been actualised. As such, (...) resistance is presented as a creative and affirmative force, provoking reactions and forcing power to change. Nietzsche’s divide between active and reactive forces serves to set up a qualitative distinction between resistance and power. Power relations are therefore understood as the interplay of the creative affirmation of resistance and the subsequent reaction of power. The primacy of resistance allows us to elaborate a dynamic model of power relations whose mechanism evokes Tronti’s interpretation of Marxism structured upon the primacy of labour and workers’ struggle over capital. (shrink)

This paper deals with the history of “pathogenic environments,” understood as places, regions, or environments whose characteristics are considered to be the origin of diseases in the human beings. While some specific environments were almost universally considered noxious, some others had a different trajectory. Crowded and poorly-ventilated premises as well as tropical regions were perceived as “the most unhealthy spots in the world.” However, the progressive “medicalisation” of hospitals transformed what were previously considered to be hellholes into therapeutic places. This (...) does not mean that iatrogenic diseases disappeared, but that hospitals tended to be seen in a more positive way. Similarly, European colonial expansion changed medical perspectives on tropical regions. Western physicians became increasingly convinced not only that could they prepare Europeans for long travel, but also that they could shape foreign environments. For instance, the perception of the Caribbean climate gradually changed “from deadly to healthy” from the middle of the 19th century onwards. Changes in perceptions could thus follow scientific progress, but also arise from political agendas and stigmatising narratives. Victims of the harmful influences of a pathogenic environment were often presented as responsible for their fate. For instance, some were accused of not carrying out the instructions delivered by the administrative or medical authorities. The process of (un)making pathogenic environments thus offers privileged access to the understanding of the relationship between health and environment. This paper provides situated accounts of how some places or regions came to be perceived as pathogenic or ceased to be so. It explores avenues of research, such as the study of lay perspectives on health and environment, the dangers of travel itself, and the connection between environmental health and military medicine. (shrink)

Groove—defined as the pleasurable urge to move to a rhythm—depends on a fine-tuned interplay between predictability arising from repetitive rhythmic patterns, and surprise arising from rhythmic deviations, for example in the form of syncopation. The perfect balance between predictability and surprise is commonly found in rhythmic patterns with a moderate level of rhythmic complexity and represents the sweet spot of the groove experience. In contrast, rhythms with low or high complexity are usually associated with a weaker experience of groove because (...) they are too boring to be engaging or too complex to be interpreted, respectively. Consequently, the relationship between rhythmic complexity and groove experience can be described by an inverted U-shaped function. We interpret this inverted U shape in light of the theory of predictive processing and provide perspectives on how rhythmic complexity and groove can help us to understand the underlying neural mechanisms linking temporal predictions, movement, and reward. A better understanding of these mechanisms can guide future approaches to improve treatments for patients with motor impairments, such as Parkinson’s disease, and to investigate prosocial aspects of interpersonal interactions that feature music, such as dancing. Finally, we present some open questions and ideas for future research. (shrink)