Histone acetylation is an important regulatory mechanism that controls transcription and diverse nuclear processes. While great progress has been made in understanding how localized acetylation and deacetylation control promoter activity, virtually nothing is known about the consequences of acetylation throughout entire chromosomal regions. An increasing number of genes have been found to reside in large chromatin domains that are controlled by regulatory elements many kilobases away. Recent studies have shown that broad histone acetylation patterns are hallmarks of chromatin domains. The (...) purpose of this review is to discuss how such patterns are established and their implications for regulating gene expression. BioEssays 23:820–830, 2001. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (shrink)

Late in 1990, the Center for the Study of Ethics in the Professions at Illinois Institute of Technology (lIT) received a grant of more than $200,000 from the National Science Foundation to try a campus-wide approach to integrating professional ethics into its technical curriculum.! Enough has now been accomplished to draw some tentative conclusions. I am the grant's principal investigator. In this paper, I shall describe what we at lIT did, what we learned, and what others, especially philosophers, can learn (...) from us. We set out to develop an approach that others could profitably adopt. I believe that we succeeded. (shrink)

When physicist Alan Sokal recently submitted an article to the postmodernist journal Social Text, the periodical's editors were happy to publish it--for here was a respected scientist offering support for the journal's view that science is a subjective, socially constructed discipline. But as Sokal himself soon revealed in Lingua Franca magazine, the essay was a spectacular hoax--filled with scientific gibberish anyone with a basic knowledge of physics should have caught--and the academic world suddenly awoke to the vast gap that (...) has opened between the scientific community and their mould-be critics. But the truth is that not only postmodern critics but Americans in general have a weak grasp on scientific principles and facts. In Connected Knowledge, physicist Alan Cromer offers a way to bridge the chasm, with a lively, lucid account of scientific thinking and a provocative new agenda for American education. Science, Cromer argues, is anything but common sense: It requires a particular habit of mind that does not come naturally. For example, something as simple as buoyancy can only be explained through Archimedes' principle--that a body in a fluid is subject to an upward force equal to the weight of fluid it displaces--yet few scientists could arrive at this ancient concept by trial and error. School children, however, are often given a ball and a tank of water, and asked to explain buoyancy any way they can. Today's de emphasis on teaching pupils necessary facts and principles, he argues, "far from empowering them, makes them slaves of their own subjective opinions." This movement in education, known as Constructivism, has close ties to postmodern critics (such as the editors of Social Text) who question the objectivity of science, and with it the existence of an objective reality. Cromer offers a ringing defense of the knowability of the world, both as an objective reality and as a finite landscape of discovery. The advance of scientific knowledge, he argues, is not unlike the mapping of the continents; at this point, we have found them all. He shows how the advent of quantum mechanics, rather than making knowledge less certain, actually offers a more precise understanding of the behavior of atoms and electrons. Turning from philosophy to education, he argues that instead of allowing students to flounder, however creatively, schools should follow a progressive curriculum that returns theoretical knowledge to the classroom. Connected Knowledge, however, goes much farther. As a discipline that insists upon connecting theory with measurable reality, physical science offers a new direction for reforming the social sciences. Cromer also shows how some of the hottest issues in public policy--including the debates over special education and group variations in I.Q., can be resolved through clear, hard headed thinking. For example, he argues for use of the G.E.D. as a national educational standard, with a new "politics of intelligence" to guide the distribution of school resources. Always forthright and articulate, Alan Cromer offers a startling new vision for integrating science, philosophy, and education. (shrink)

Die aramäischen Texte aus Tall Šēḫ Ḥamad/Dūr-Katlimmu/Magdalu. By Wolfgang Röllig. Berichte der Ausgrabung Tall Šēḫ Ḥamad/Dūr-Katlimmu, vol. 17. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2014. Pp. lxiv + 284, illus. €84.

What determines whether an action is right or wrong? Morality, Rules, and Consequences: A Critical Reader explores for students and researchers the relationship between consequentialist theory and moral rules. Most of the chapters focus on rule consequentialism or on the distinction between act and rule versions of consequentialism. Contributors, among them the leading philosophers in the discipline, suggest ways of assessing whether rule consequentialism could be a satisfactory moral theory. These essays, all of which are previously unpublished, provide students in (...) moral philosophy with essential material and ask key questions on just what the criteria for an adequate moral theory might be. (shrink)

This collection of previously unpublished essays addresses a number of issues arising out of philosophical controversies over the possibility of genuine moral dilemmas. Issues addressed include the form of a moral dilemma; the paradoxes a moral dilemma is said to entail; the question of whether a moral dilemma must exhibit inconsistency; the role of intractable circumstances in occasioning moral dilemmas; and the plausibility of supposing that there might be rational ways of addressing moral dilemmas in practice. The contributors, writing from (...) a number of widely differing points of view, include Simon Blackburn, Ruth Barcan Marcus, Alan Donagan, Terrance McConnell, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Mary Mothersill, Norman Dahl, David Brink, Peter Railton, Thomas E. Hill, Jr., Christopher Gowans, and H.E. Mason. (shrink)

Justifying involuntary psychiatric treatment on the basis of a judgment that a person lacks capacity is usually expressed in terms of a person’s ability to make a decision about his or her health and treatment. Typically, this relates to the ability to refuse treatment. Exactly what “capacity” means, however, and how one determines when another individual lacks capacity, or lacks sufficient capacity, in this context is particularly controversial, with the United Nations Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities insisting (...) that involuntary treatment be abandoned altogether and capacity tests avoided.Capacity is a concept that has multiple meanings and applications across different disciplines and... (shrink)

The adjective μøιμτωρ occurs, so far as our evidence goes, twice in Greek literature: in Aeschylus' Herakleidai and in Euripides' Andromache . And the ancient authorities are unanimous that it means, in the words of P. T. Stevens, ‘sons of the same father by different mothers, i.e. half-brothers’.

It is desirable that the antecedents of existing, highly specialised, evolutionary mechanisms in animals be sought. The study of the lower Metazoa and especially of their simpler reproductive processes suggests that asexual reproduction is the primitive evolutionary mechanism from which the more advanced sexual mechanisms have evolved. A study of the metagenetic cycles of Coelenterata and Platyhelminthes seems to throw much light upon their prophylogeny and indicates that: Such cycles seem to provide the closest possible recapitulatory parallelism between phylogeny and (...) ontogeny. The Hydrozoa are ancestral to the other classes of Coelenterata. The polypoid adult is more primitive than the medusoid adult. The sporocysts, rediae and scolices represent the more primitive types of adults in their respective ontogenies and phylogenies.On avance la théorie qu'il y a eu une évolution des mécanismes évolutionnaires depuis les stades primitifs jusqu'aux stades avancés. D'après cette théorie les premières étapes dans l'évolution des Métazoaires inférieurs se sont effectuées par la reproduction asexuelle avant que les mecanismes sexuels très spécialisés se soient manifestés.Des preuves à l'appui de cette théorie découlent: de la rencontre actuelle d'une reproduction asexuelle chez des animaux, avec l'indication que sa simplicité est, dans la plupart des cas, originelle, et des cycles d'évolution des Coelentérés et Platyhelminthes qui sont métagénésiques. Leurs cycles peuvent s'interpréter comme partant de stades reproductifs asexuels pour évoluer vers des formes se reproduisant sexuellement.On croit que les organismes ne pouvant se reproduire que sexuellement sont plus avancés que ceux qui peuvent se reproduire asexuellement, ou à la fois sexuellement et asexuellement.Cette théorie a d'importantes implications pour l'étude de la métagenèse, de la récapitulation et de la phylogénie chez les Métazoaires inférieurs; elle exemplifie, dans l'étude de ces phénomènes, la nouvelle orientation qu'on a appelée Prophylogénie.In dieser Arbeit wird eine Theorie entwickelt, die besagt, dass eine Fortentwicklung der Evolutionsmechanismen von primitiven zu fortgeschrittenen Stufen besteht. Dieser Theorie nach haben sich die niedrigeren Metazoen ursprünglich nur ungeschlechtlich entwickelt und fortgepflanzt. Erst später haben sich die höchst spezialisierten geschlechtlichen Mechanismen entwickelt.Belege für diese Theorie sind: Noch heute kommt die geschlechtslose Fortpflanzung in Tieren vor, was dafür spricht, dass ihre Einfachheit in den meisten Fällen ursprünglich ist. Die Lebenskreisläufe der Metagenetischen Coelenteraten und Platyhelminthen lassen sich interpretieren als bestehend aus ursprünglich ungeschlechtlichen Fortpflanzungsstufen, die jedoch später in Formen mit geschlechtlicher Fortpflanzung übergehen.Es wird behauptet, dass Organismen mit nur geschlechtlicher Fortpflanzung weiter fortgeschritten sind als solche mit nur ungeschlechtlicher oder mit sowohl ungeschlechtlicher als auch geschlechtlicher Fortpflanzung.Diese Theorie ist wichtig für das Studium der Metagenese, Rekapitulation und Phylogenie in den niedrigen Metazoen und veranschaulicht die Prophylogenie, d.h. die neue Methode im Studium dieser Erscheinungen. (shrink)

Alan Gewirth has propounded a moral theory which commits him to the view that prescriptions can appropriately be addressed to people who have neither any moral reasons nor any prudential reasons to follow the prescriptions. We highlight the strangeness of Gewirth's position and then show that it undermines his attempt to come up with a supreme moral principle.

The longstanding interest in business ethics has been given renewed emphasis by high profile scandals in the world of business and finance. At the same time, many economists--dissatisfied with the discipline's emphasis on self-interest and individualism and by the asocial nature of much economic theory--have sought to englarge the scope of economics by looking at ethical questions. In Ethics and Economic Affairs a group of interdisciplinary scholars provide contributions on international interest in this aspect of socio-economics and economic-psychology. The book (...) is divided into four parts. The first looks at Business Ethics and Management. Part Two enlivens the debate with empirical data. The third part examines the implications for economic theory and asks if the integration of ethics in the economy is possible or if they are fundamentally different systems. Part Four introduces perspectives from other disciplines, sets economics within its wider context and looks to the future. The editors have brought together a group of contributors from nine different countries and a broad range of disciplines, including: Norman E. Bowie, Monroe Burk, Amitai Etzioni, Richard H. Guerette, Ralph E. Miner, Lynne M. Rosansky, N. Craig Smith, Roberts Stallaerts, Philip Stone and John Tomer. (shrink)

Evidence that confirms a scientific hypothesis is said to be ‘novel’ if it is not discovered until after the hypothesis isconstructed. The philosophical issues surrounding novel confirmation have been well summarized by Campbell and Vinci [1983]. They write that philosophers of science generally agree that when observational evidence supports a theory, the confirmation is much stronger when the evidence is ‘novel’... There are, nevertheless, reasons to be skeptical of this tradition... The notion of novel confirmation is beset with a theoretical (...) puzzle about how the degree of confirmation can change without any change in the evidence, hypothesis, or auxiliary assumptions... There have not yet appeared any obviously satisfactory solutions to these problems Much of the literature on novel confirmation relies on the Bayesian analysis of conditional probabilities. Let H represent a hypothesis, E an event that confirms the hypothesis, and B some relevant background information. Denote by Pr the conditional probability of x given y. There are various plausible measures of the degree of support that E lends to H. Among these are: Degree of support = Pr Degree of support = Pr – Pr Degree of support = Pr – Pr Degree of support = Pr – Pt In the work cited, Campbell and Vinci offer a somewhat more involved Bayesian interpretation. Formula is discussed by Gardner [1981] who points out that under this formulation there can be no role for novelty. 'The function Pr contains no third slot in which to insert a temporal relation between the invention of H and the inventor's learning E. Obviously, then, this relation could not possibly affect E's support of H.' Formula, on the other hand, suggests a role for novelty. Bayes's Theorem allows us to rewrite the formula as Degree of support = Pr x [Pr – 1] We can use 1/Pr as a measure of the novelty of E. Then shows that the degree of support increases with novelty of E. In the paper already cited, Campbell and Vinci discuss shortcomings of this analysis. Formula expresses an alternative offered by Howson [1984]. In that formula, Pr represents the probability of H assuming that only B – {E} is known. This allows for the possibility of non-novel facts generating support for hypotheses. Niiniluoto [1984] argues for a variant along the lines of, in which we account for the possibility that the theorist was unaware that his hypothesis entails E. One problem in deciding among these approaches is that the choice of a definition for the degree of support appears arbitrary. What kind of argument could justify the choice of one definition over another? It is our position that there can be no basis for addressing this question in the absence of an explicit model of the process by which hypotheses are generated. Only in the presence of such a model can the various conditional probabilities be given meaningful interpretations. We provide such models in Sections 1, 2 and 4. The simple model of Section 1, incorporating strong assumptions, yields the conclusion that novelty is irrelevant. When these assumptions are relaxed in the later sections, novelty becomes relevant for a variety of reasons. It is at least potentially the case that scientists have more information about their own abilities than is publicly available, and this information might influence their decisions about whether even to attempt novel prediction. If this is so, then it should be incorporated into the model of hypothesis generation. This requires an explicit discussion of how scientists respond to incentives and how the incentives themselves evolve, which in turn takes us into the realm of economic theory. We have addressed these issues in another paper, written for an audience of economists. The results of this research are summarized in Section 3. (shrink)