DNA polymerases which duplicate cellular chromosomes are multiprotein complexes. The individual functions of the many proteins required to duplicate a chromosome are not fully understood. The multiprotein complex which duplicates the Escherichia coli chromosome, DNA polymerase III holoenzyme (holoenzyme), contains a DNA polymerase subunit and nine accessory proteins. This report summarizes our current understanding of the individual functions of the accessory proteins within the holoenzyme, lending insight into why a chromosomal replicase needs such a complex structure.

What is an apparatus? -- The friend -- What is the contemporary?

Young netizens are an emerging generator of online content, engaging in an increasing number of online flaming interactions. This shortened communication mode has incorporated power amplifiers, enabling the inclusion of both verbal and non-verbal triggers, thereby initiating abuses akin to cyberbullying. Cyberbullying has emerged as an extremely unstable hot issue, which is difficult to regulate upstream, severely impacting inexperienced young netizens. This Machiavellian apparatus proves to be sophisticated, given its powerful nature, and results in its victims being ensnared in (...) a cyber net from which they see very little escape. Laws have been enacted to combat cyberbullying, which is rampant among netizens, highly naive or actively aggressive in their use of various social media platforms. (shrink)

Despite the practical knowledge throughout the nineteenth century that citrus fruit cured scurvy, and that rickets and beriberi were diseases caused by poor diet, it was not until 1901 that animal feeding experiments led one investigator to propose the existence of 'accessory food factors,' a lack of which was determined to be the cause of some illnesses (Hopkins, 1949. In Joseph Needham and E. Baldwin (eds.), Hopkins and Biochemistry, 1861-1947: Papers Concerning Sir Frederick Gowland Hopkins, O.M., P.R.S., with a (...) Selection of His Addresses and a Bibliography of His Publications. Cambridge: W. Heifer and Sons Ltd). The discovery of vitamins has long been considered as a delayed discovery. This delay has been attributed to the power of the germ theory in physiology at the time. While the germ theory and theories of autointoxication certainly played a role in delaying the discovery of vitamins, I argue further that it is important to consider the difference made to physiology by understanding the vitamins’ catalytic function. The profound difference made to physiology by the vitamins’ catalytic function suggests that a vitamin concept had previously been systematically inaccessible to researchers working within the conceptual framework of Bernardian physiology. (shrink)

The apparatus theory is used to challenge the interpretation of religion and also to determine whether religion is a factor to contend with in modern society. Religion could be the element that keeps the city intact or could be the one element that is busy ruining our understanding of reality and the way this interacts with society in the urban environment. Paradigms determine our relationships. In this case, the apparatus theory would be a more precise way of describing (...) not only our relationship towards the city but also the way in which we try to perceive our relationship with religion and the urban conditions we live in. This article gives theoretical background to the interpretation and understanding of the relationship between various entities within the city. The apparatus of the city creates space for religion to function as a binding form. Religion could bind different cultures, diverse backgrounds and create space for growth. (shrink)

The work of Michel Foucault is not often considered in animal ethics discussions, but I believe that many of his insights can be fruitfully extended into this area of philosophical inquiry. In this paper, I present the slaughterhouse as a technology of power that is complicit in the domination and objectification of both human and nonhuman animal subjects. I begin by arguing that Foucault’s notion of an “apparatus” is a useful methodological tool for thinking about the constellation of spaces (...) and discourses in which various bodies (both human and nonhuman) find themselves enmeshed. Next, I outline Foucault’s multifaceted conceptualization of “power,” and I consider whether it makes sense to think of other animals as implicated in “power relations” in the various Foucauldian senses. Finally, I analyze a journalistic account of a contemporary slaughterhouse. Here, I argue that a variety of hierarchies (spatial, racial, species, etc.) dovetail to create an environment in which care and concern are virtually impossible. By coupling a Foucauldian analysis with certain insights developed in the bioethical work of Ralph Acampora, I offer a normative critique of an institution that has pernicious effects on both human and nonhuman animals. (shrink)

It is my intention to attempt to define pacifism, in its engagement and concept, as a necessary requisite of war and military action, following a phrase used over a hundred years ago by Franz Rosenzweig when speaking of pacifism as “necessary equipment of war.” I will try to defend the importance of pacifism as an integral part of war (as such, pacifism as a requisite of war ought to shorten the period of war and mitigate destruction) and oppose this concept (...) of pacifism to Jan Narveson’s old attempt at constructing pacifism as a position and then designating it as “untenable and unreasonable,” and then further oppose this to his later attempt to find in pacifism the cause of further (and more) violence for ever more vicious wars. (shrink)

The question of the moral acceptability of infertility treatment to HIV positive persons raises a number of interesting ethical points regarding the responsibility of the infertility specialist for the outcome of his or her actions. The analysis of the physician’s responsibility is conducted within the framework of accomplice liability. The physician is a collaborator in the parental project of the principals—that is, the intentional parents. Both causal contribution and intention are considered as elements of complicity. It is concluded that a (...) two per cent risk of vertical transmission when the woman is HIV positive is insufficient to blame the infertility specialist who helps her to conceive. Helping an infertile HIV positive infertile couple to have a child does not constitute reckless behaviour. When the couple is fertile, infertility treatment is directed at risk reduction and falls under the physician’s obligation to act in the best interests of his patients. (shrink)

The book includes many seminal articles by film scholars such as Christian Metz, Jean-Louis Baudry, Stephen Heath, Peter Wollen, Laura Mulvey, and Noel Burch, and by the era's leading cultural thinkers as well: Roland Barthes, Julia ...

Inchoate crime consists of acts that are regarded as crimes despite the fact that they are only partial or incomplete in some respect. This includes acts that do not succeed in physically harming the victim or are only indirectly related to such a result. Examples include attempts (as in attempted murder that does not eventuate in the killing of anyone), conspiracy (in which case the crime has only been planned, not yet acted out) and incitement (where the inciter does not (...) himself commit the crime he is urging others to undertake). The present paper attempts to analyze these inchoate crimes from a libertarian perspective, based on the non-aggression principle. (shrink)

Abstract and Keywords Mainstream philosophers take for granted that disability is a prediscursive, transcultural, and transhistorical disadvantage, an objective human defect or characteristic that ought to be prevented, corrected, eliminated, or cured. That these assumptions are contestable, that it might be the case that disability is a historically and culturally specific, contingent social phenomenon, a complex apparatus of power, rather than a natural attribute or property that certain people possess, is not considered, let alone seriously entertained. This chapter draws (...) on the insights of Michel Foucault to advance a historicist and relativist conception of disability as an apparatus (dispositif) of power and identify mechanisms of power within philosophy that produce the underrepresentation of disabled philosophers in the profession and the marginalization of philosophy of disability in the discipline. -/- Keywords: disability, Michel Foucault, apparatus, historicist, relativist, underrepresentation of disabled philosophers. (shrink)

Those with knowledge about scientific instruments come from many different fields. Prominent among them are (1) collectors and dealers, (2) curators, (3) historians, (4) instrument makers, (5) philosophers, and (6) scientists (the order is alphabetical, not value-laden). The annual symposium of the Scientific Instrument Commission often brings members of each of these groups together, and they learn from one another. What follows are brief reflections on the activities of each group when its members consider instruments.

The earliest Chinese handscroll extant painting is the ‘Nushi zhen’ by Gu Kaizhi housed in the British Museum, which is now often considered to be a Tang Dynasty copy of the original. This article shows the study of the representation of garment and accessories of the figure illustrations all-sided in the painting. And by comparing with correlated literature and images, it opens out the typical skills and style in which the ancient Chinese figure painters of Jin Dynasty (AD 265-420) depicting (...) the apparels in the handscroll painting. (shrink)

In popular discussions, the nuances of AI are often abridged as “the algorithm”, as the specific arrangements of machine learning, deep learning and automated decision-making on social media platforms are typically shrouded in proprietary secrecy punctuated by press releases and transparency initiatives. What is clear, however, is that AI embedded on social media functions to recommend content, personalize ads, aggregate news stories, and moderate problematic material. It is also increasingly apparent that individuals are concerned with the uses, implications, and fairness (...) of algorithmic systems. Perhaps in response to concerns about “the algorithm” by individuals and governments, social media platforms utilize transparency initiatives and official statements, in part, to deflect official regulation. In the following paper, I draw from transparency initiatives and statements from representatives of Facebook and TikTok as case studies of how AI is embedded in these platforms, with attention to the promotion of AI content moderation as a solution to the circulation of problematic material and misinformation. This examination considers the complexity of embedded AI as a material-discursive apparatus, predicated on discursive techniques—what is seeable, sayable, knowable in a given time period—as well as the material arrangements—algorithms, datasets, users, platforms, infrastructures, moderators, etc. As such, the use of AI as part of the immensely popular platforms Facebook and TikTok demonstrates that AI does not exist in isolation, instead functioning as human–machine ensemble reliant on strategies of acceptance via discursive techniques and the changing material arrangements of everyday embeddedness. (shrink)