This comprehensive volume marks a new standard in scholarship in the still emerging field of the philosophy of chemistry. With selections drawn from a wide range of scholarly disciplines, philosophers, chemists, and historians of science here converge to ask some of the most fundamental questions about the relationship between philosophy and chemistry. What can chemistry teach us about longstanding disputes in the philosophy of science over such issues as reductionism, autonomy, and supervenience? And what new issues may chemistry bring to (...) the forefront now that it has joined physics and biology as a serious topic for philosophical reflection? This newest addition to the prestigious Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science series marks the true arrival of philosophy of chemistry within the corpus of the philosophy of science. (shrink)

Adaptive mutation is defined as a process that, during nonlethal selections, produces mutations that relieve the selective pressure whether or not other, nonselected mutations are also produced. Examples of adaptive mutation or related phenomena have been reported in bacteria and yeast but not yet outside of microorganisms. A decade of research on adaptive mutation has revealed mechanisms that may increase mutation rates under adverse conditions. This article focuses on mechanisms that produce adaptive mutations in one strain of Escherichia coli, FC40. (...) These mechanisms include recombination-induced DNA replication, the placement of genes on a conjugal plasmid, and a transient mutator state. The implications of these various phenomena for adaptive evolution in microorganisms are discussed. BioEssays 22:1067–1074, 2000. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (shrink)

This article explores the extent to which consumers consider ethics in luxury goods consumption. In particular, it explores whether there is a significant difference between consumers’ propensity to consider ethics in luxury versus commodity purchase and whether consumers are ready to purchase ethical-luxury. Prior research in ethical consumption focuses on low value, commoditized product categories such as food, cosmetics and high street apparel. It is debatable if consumers follow similar ethical consumption patterns in luxury purchases. Findings indicate that consumers’ propensity (...) to consider ethics is significantly lower in luxury purchases when compared to commoditized purchases and explores some of the potential reasons for this reduced propensity to identify or act upon ethical issues in luxury consumption. (shrink)

Many studies examine student self-concept during compulsory schooling but few have explored the self-concept of students in higher educational settings. The current study examined self-concept by faculty and gender among higher education students in New Zealand. Participants were 929 undergraduate students from a large New Zealand university. The results showed some differences in verbal and maths self-concept by faculty. Generally, students in faculties teaching subjects more reliant on maths skills had higher maths self-concept than those in faculties where facility in (...) verbal skills was important. The opposite results were found for verbal self-concept. No overall gender differences were found for general, academic, verbal and maths self-concept although a statistically significant difference was found for problem-solving self-concept. This finding suggests students? choice of faculty may be based on perceptions of their skills and capabilities in the various fields, irrespective of gender. (shrink)

Does ethical content in organizational mission statements make a difference? Research regarding the effectiveness and results of mission statements is mixed. Krohe concluded that much of the good results do not come from the mission statements themselves but from the strategic re-education that happens in producing one. We attempted to discover whether universities that explicitly state their ethical orientation and vision in their mission statements had students with higher perceived character trait importance and activities that reinforce character than universities that (...) did not. While the faculty and administration may receive benefits from mission statement development through strategic re-education as Krohe suggested, do the statements influence the students at the university who may have had no role in its creation? Using a sample of senior business students at 16 universities we found that students at universities with ethical statements in their mission statements had significantly higher perceived character trait importance and character reinforcement than those at universities whose missions lacked ethical statements. This research suggests that schools that explicitly stated ethical content in their mission statements do influence student ethical orientation. (shrink)

When The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-Vegetarian Critical Theory by Carol J. Adams was published more than twenty years ago, it caused a immediate stir among writers and thinkers, feminists and animal rights activists alike. Never before had the relationship between patriarchy and meat eating been drawn so clearly, the idea that there lies a strong connection between the consumption of women and animals so plainly asserted. But, as the 21 personal stories in this anthology show, the impact of (...) this provocative text on womens lives continues to this day, and it is as diverse as it is revelatory. One writer attempts to reconcile her feminist-vegan beliefs with her Muslim upbringing; a second makes the connection between animal abuse and her own self-destructive tendencies. A new mother discusses the sexual politics of breastfeeding, while another pens a letter to her young son about all she wishes for him in the future. Many others recall how the book inspired them to start careers in the music business, animal advocacy, and food. No matter whether they first read it in college or later in life, whether they are in their late teens or early forties, these writers all credit The Sexual Politics of Meat in some way with the awakening of their identities as feminists, activists, and women. Even if you havent read the original work, youre sure to be moved and inspired by these tales of growing up and, perhaps more important, waking up to the truths around us. (shrink)

Branching morphogenesis of epithelia is an important mechanism in mammalian development. The last decade has seen the identification of many signalling pathways and intracellular mechanisms that control epithelial branching. Tissue‐level mechanisms that space new branches out have, however, remained an unsolved problem. A recent publication by Nelson et al.1 suggests—if extrapolation from their novel and abstract culture system is valid—that branches may be spaced out by a system of mutual inhibition based on diffusion of TGFβ. Such a system would allow (...) a developing tree to arrange itself, without detailed genetic specification, by adaptive self‐organization. BioEssays 29: 205–207, 2007. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

IntroductionThe COVID-19 pandemic required more responsibilities from teachers, including implementing prevention strategies, changes in school policies, and managing their own mental health, which yielded higher dissatisfaction in the field.MethodsA cross-sectional web survey was conducted among educators to collect information on their experiences teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic throughout the 2020–2021 academic year. Qualtrics, an online survey platform, fielded the survey from May 6 to June 8, 2021 to a national, convenience sample of 1,807 respondents.ResultsFindings revealed that overall, 43% of K-12 (...) teachers reported a greater intention to leave the profession than previously recalled prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. Intention to leave was multi-level, and associated with socio-demographic factors, individual factors, and teachers’ agency. We also found demographic disparities with respect to race and gender around teachers’ ability to provide feedback to schools on opening/closing and overall dissatisfaction with school/district COVID-19 prevention strategies implementation and policies.ConclusionThese findings are consistent with the Job-Demand and Resources Model, which posits that lack of organizational support can exacerbate job stressors, leading to burnout. Specifically, dissatisfaction with the way school policies were implemented took a toll on teachers’ mental health, leading to a desire to leave the profession. These findings are also consistent with research conducted once in-person teaching resumed in 2020–2021, specifically that the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated preexisting teacher shortages that led to self-reported issues of stress, burnout, and retention.ImplicationsFurther research is necessary to understand the resources that may be most useful to reduce the demands of teaching in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Some teachers are more likely to leave the field, and educational agencies may wish to target their teacher-retention efforts with emphasis on strong employee wellness programs that help educators to manage and reduce their stress. Education agency staff may wish to review policies and practices to provide meaningful opportunities to give input to school/district decisions and enable proactive communication channels. (shrink)

Increasing attention is being paid to the potential of anti-retroviral treatment for HIV prevention. The possibility of eliminating HIV from a population through a universal test and treat intervention, where all people within a population are tested for HIV and all positive people immediately initiated on ART, as part of a wider prevention intervention, was first proposed in 2009. Several clinical trials testing this idea are now in inception phase. An intervention which relies on universally testing the entire population for (...) HIV will pose challenges to human rights, including obtaining genuine consent to testing and treatment. It also requires a context in which people can live free from fear of stigma, discrimination and violence, and can access services they require. These challenges are distinct from the field of medical ethics which has traditionally governed clinical trials and focuses primarily on patient researcher relationship. This paper sets out the potential impact of a population wide treatment as prevention intervention on human rights. It identifies five human right principles of particular relevance: participation, accountability, the right to health, non-discrimination and equality, and consent and confidentiality. The paper proposes that explicit attention to human rights can strengthen a treatment as prevention intervention, contribute to mediating likely health systems challenges and offer insights on how to reach all sections of the population. (shrink)

BackgroundDespite its ubiquity, it is often not clear what organizations and services mean by well-being. Visual impairment has been associated with poorer well-being and well-being has become a key outcome for support and services for adults living with VI. A shared understanding of what well-being means is therefore essential to enable assessment of well-being and cross-service provision of well-being support.ObjectivesTo provide an overview of the ways in which well-being has been conceptualized in research relating to adults living with VI.Eligibility criteriaArticles (...) were included in the review if the article discussed well-being in the context of adults living with VI, was available in English and as a full text.Data sourcesA systematic search using search terms relating to VI and well-being was conducted in EBSCOHost and Ovid.ChartingA team of three reviewers screened titles, abstracts and full-texts articles and extracted data. Ambiguous articles were referred to the research group and discussed.ResultsOf 10,662 articles identified in the search, 249 were included in the review. These referred to 38 types of well-being. The most common types were general well-being emotional well-being and psychological well-being. Most articles referred to one type only, with a maximum of 9 listed in one article. A large number of articles did not clearly define well-being. A wide range of indicators of well-being related to the domains of hedonia, mood, positive and negative affect, quality of life, mental health, eudaimonia, self/identity, health, psychological reactions to disability and health problems, functioning, social functioning and environment, were extracted, many of which were used just once.ConclusionsThere remains a lack of consensus on how well-being is conceptualized and assessed in the context of adult VI. A standardized multi-domain approach derived with input from adults with VI and practitioners working with them is required to enable comparison of findings and cross-organizational provision of support. (shrink)

In a profile in the November, 2012 issue of the magazine Architect, activist-architect Raphael Sperry, a founder of the group Architects Planners & Designers for Social Responsibility discussed his petition to amend the AIA’s Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct to include a prohibition on “the design of spaces intended for long-term solitary isolation and execution.”1 This issue is both serious and timely. It deserves contemplative attention before any action is taken. The purpose of this letter is to provide the (...) the architecture profession a condensed analysis of the possible justification for taking the action Mr. Sperry advocates. After review and consideration, we are persuaded that Mr. Sperry’s proposal does merit action by the AIA. (shrink)

Objective: Individually, vision and hearing impairments have been linked to higher levels of anxiety and depression. We investigated the effect of dual sensory impairment in a large representative sample of Spanish adults. Methods: Data from a total of 23,089 adults from the Spanish National Health Survey 2017 were analyzed. Self-reported difficulty of seeing and hearing, and depression and chronic anxiety were analyzed. Multivariable logistic regression was assessed for difficulty with vision alone, hearing alone and with difficulty with both, adjusting for (...) gender, age, marital status, living as a couple, education, smoking, alcohol consumption, BMI, physical activity, use of glasses/contact lenses, and hearing aid. Results: Visual difficulty, hearing difficulty, and dual difficulties were all associated with significantly higher odds for depression and for chronic anxiety. Dual sensory difficulty was associated with higher odds ratios for depression and anxiety when compared to either impairment alone. Conclusion: Dual sensory difficulty is associated with significantly higher odds of anxiety and depression when compared to either vision or hearing difficulty alone. Appropriate interventions are needed to address any reversible causes of vision and hearing as well as anxiety and depression in people in these specific groups. (shrink)

Does ethical content in organizational mission statements make a difference? Research regarding the effectiveness and results of mission statements is mixed. Krohe (1995, Across the board, 32, 17–21) concluded that much of the good results do not come from the mission statements themselves but from the strategic re-education that happens in producing one. We attempted to discover whether universities that explicitly state their ethical orientation and vision in their mission statements had students with higher perceived character trait importance and activities (...) that reinforce character than universities that did not. While the faculty and administration may receive benefits from mission statement development through strategic re-education as Krohe suggested, do the statements influence the students at the university who may have had no role in its creation? Using a sample of senior business students at 16 universities we found that students at universities with ethical statements in their mission statements had significantly higher perceived character trait importance and character reinforcement than those at universities whose missions lacked ethical statements. This research suggests that schools that explicitly stated ethical content in their␣mission statements do influence student ethical orientation. (shrink)

This paper is one of the four interrelated action agenda papers resulting from the National Summit on Public Health Legal Preparedness convened in June 2007 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and multi-disciplinary partners. Each of the action agenda papers deals with one of the four core elements of public health legal preparedness: laws and legal authorities; competency in using those laws; coordination of law-based public health actions; and information. Options presented in this paper are for consideration by (...) policy makers and practitioners — in all jurisdictions and all relevant sectors and disciplines — with responsibilities for all-hazards emergency preparedness.Advancing and protecting the public's health depends upon the coordination of actions by many, diverse partners. For effective public health preparedness, there must be effective coordination of legal tools and law-based strategies across local, state, tribal, and federal jurisdictions, and also across sectors such as public health, health care, emergency management, education, law enforcement, community design, and academia. (shrink)

This paper is one of the four interrelated action agenda papers resulting from the National Summit on Public Health Legal Preparedness convened in June 2007 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and multi-disciplinary partners. Each of the action agenda papers deals with one of the four core elements of public health legal preparedness: laws and legal authorities; competency in using those laws; coordination of law-based public health actions; and information. Options presented in this paper are for consideration by (...) policy makers and practitioners — in all jurisdictions and all relevant sectors and disciplines — with responsibilities for all-hazards emergency preparedness.Advancing and protecting the public's health depends upon the coordination of actions by many, diverse partners. For effective public health preparedness, there must be effective coordination of legal tools and law-based strategies across local, state, tribal, and federal jurisdictions, and also across sectors such as public health, health care, emergency management, education, law enforcement, community design, and academia. (shrink)

The sixteen essays in Gender Struggles address a wide range of issues in gender struggles, from the more familiar ones that, for the last thirty years, have been the mainstay of feminist scholarship, such as motherhood, beauty, and sexual violence, to new topics inspired by post-industrialization and multiculturalism, such as the welfare state, cyberspace, hate speech, and queer politics, and finally to topics that traditionally have not been seen as appropriate subjects for philosophizing, such as adoption, care work, and the (...) home. (shrink)

BackgroundDespite rapid growth of the scientific literature, no consensus guidelines have emerged to define the optimal criteria for editors to grade submitted manuscripts. The purpose of this project was to assess the peer reviewer metrics currently used in the surgical literature to evaluate original manuscript submissions.MethodsManuscript grading forms for 14 of the highest circulation general surgery-related journals were evaluated for content, including the type and number of quantitative and qualitative questions asked of peer reviewers. Reviewer grading forms for the seven (...) surgical journals with the higher impact factors were compared to the seven surgical journals with lower impact factors using Fisher’s exact tests.ResultsImpact factors of the studied journals ranged from 1.73 to 8.57, with a median impact factor of 4.26 in the higher group and 2.81 in the lower group. The content of the grading forms was found to vary considerably. Relatively few journals asked reviewers to grade specific components of a manuscript. Higher impact factor journal manuscript grading forms more frequently addressed statistical analysis, ethical considerations, and conflict of interest. In contrast, lower impact factor journals more commonly requested reviewers to make qualitative assessments of novelty/originality, scientific validity, and scientific importance.ConclusionSubstantial variation exists in the grading criteria used to evaluate original manuscripts submitted to the surgical literature for peer review, with differential emphasis placed on certain criteria correlated to journal impact factors. (shrink)

The pioneering work of Johann Winckelmann (1717-1768) identified a homoerotic appreciation of male beauty in classical Greek sculpture, a fascination that had endured in Western art since the Greeks. Yet after Winckelmann, the value (even the possibility) of art's queer beauty was often denied. Several theorists, notably the philosopher Immanuel Kant, broke sexual attraction and aesthetic appreciation into separate or dueling domains. In turn, sexual desire and aesthetic pleasure had to be profoundly rethought by later writers. Whitney Davis follows (...) how such innovative thinkers as John Addington Symonds, Michel Foucault, and Richard Wollheim rejoined these two domains, reclaiming earlier insights about the mutual implication of sexuality and aesthetics. Addressing texts by Arthur Schopenhauer, Charles Darwin, Oscar Wilde, Vernon Lee, and Sigmund Freud, among many others, Davis criticizes modern approaches, such as Kantian idealism, Darwinism, psychoanalysis, and analytic aesthetics, for either reducing aesthetics to a question of sexuality or for removing sexuality from the aesthetic field altogether. Despite these schematic reductions, sexuality always returns to aesthetics, and aesthetic considerations always recur in sexuality. Davis particularly emphasizes the way in which philosophies of art since the late eighteenth century have responded to nonstandard sexuality, especially homoeroticism, and how theories of nonstandard sexuality have drawn on aesthetics in significant ways. Many imaginative and penetrating critics have wrestled productively, though often inconclusively and "against themselves," with the aesthetic making of sexual life and new forms of art made from reconstituted sexualities. Through a critique that confronts history, philosophy, science, psychology, and dominant theories of art and sexuality, Davis challenges privileged types of sexual and aesthetic creation imagined in modern culture-and assumed today. (shrink)

In this engaging and provocative new book, Lee Eisenberg, bestselling author of The Number, dares to tackle nothing less than what it takes to find enduring meaning and purpose in life. He explains how from a young age, each of us is compelled to take memories of events and relationships and shape them into a one-of-a-kind personal narrative. In addition to sharing his own pivotal memories (some of them moving, some just a shade embarrassing), Eisenberg presents striking research culled from (...) psychology and neuroscience, and draws on insights from a pantheon of thinkers and great writers-Tolstoy, Freud, Joseph Campbell, Virginia Woolf, among others. We also hear from men and women of all ages who are wrestling with the demands of work and family, ever in search of fulfillment and satisfaction. It all adds up to a fascinating story, delightfully told, one that goes straight to the heart of how we explain ourselves to ourselves-in other words, who we are and why. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 26.1 (2002) 157-172 [Access article in PDF] Symposium: On Ken Burns's "Jazz" Jazz: America's Classical Music? 1 Lee B. Brown I VIEWERS OF KEN BURNS'S third cultural epic "Jazz" probably fell into one of three categories. 2 Some found it gripping. Some found it grating. Some found it both at once.The series has unforgettable moments: spectacular jitterbug sequences; Jimmy Lunceford's horn men fanning their trumpet bells (...) with hat mutes in sync; the close-up of the whirring cross-hand drumming of Art Blakey; the bitter-sweet glance Billie Holiday and Lester Young exchange in their last filmed appearance together; the occasional marriage of visuals to music. One riveting three minutes comes when the talking heads tune out, a 78-rpm disk of Louis Armstrong's "West End Blues" is set spinning, and the thrilling notes pour out on a carousel of visual imagery—finally freeze-framing on the face of the young genius himself.On the downside, the series is massively repetitious. As a result of Burns's decision to track two major figures—Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington—from cradle to grave, the same cuts of Armstrong appear again and again, no matter what the time frame. Some of the series' commentators are particularly annoying—the fiddler of Burns's Civil War series, Matt Glaser, for instance, with his fatuous theories [End Page 157] about Louis Armstrong and Albert Einstein. And the documentary's heavy load of social freight—by Wynton Marsalis, and his mentors Albert Murray and Stanley Crouch 3 —threatens to flatten the music.The series is designed as informative entertainment, not Jazz 101. But Burns pays a price here, as he did in his documentary about baseball, in which not even the basics of the game, let alone any of the subtleties, were explained. In "Jazz" we get no explanation of what Jelly Roll Morton did to transform ragtime into jazz. (The series could easily have pressed Morton himself into service. With no sacrifice of his considerable charm, Morton did explain it, beautifully, in his recorded Library of Congress interviews. 4) Although the swing era gets big billing, no attempt is made to explain how swing rhythm actually works, as contrasted with earlier practices. (I have watched swing drummer Panama Francis entertain a packed hall with a brief but riveting illustration of how it works.)As jazz history, the film also has problems. Some legendary figures are resurrected unconvincingly. When Marsalis tells us what the legendary trumpet player Buddy Bolden sounded like, the illustrative off-camera trumpet is Marsalis's, not Bolden's, who embedded not one note in a record groove. Further, we face the tiresomely obvious problem of omissions. We hear nothing of Albert Ayler, Keith Jarrett, Sun Ra, Mildred Bailey, Benny Carter, Lennie Tristano, Erroll Garner, Eric Dolphy, Art Pepper, or Woody Herman. All we learn about Bill Evans—whose influence on jazz piano was huge—is that Miles Davis hired him even though he was white. Omissions are inevitable, of course. But there is a muted pattern to the exclusions. It was impossible for the series to avoid Benny Goodman, given his central role in the swing era. But white figures are too often either ignored or treated as alienated outsiders. We hear New York Times columnist Margo Jefferson opine that Bix Beiderbecke drank himself to death because he wasn't allowed to play with black musicians. In fact, many of the greatest players—white and black—never played with musicians of their own caliber.Most figures covered in the film are treated either with respect or with reverence. But things get nasty when matters turn to avant-gardists. Thus, Branford Marsalis—Wynton's talented brother—singles out the volcanic pianist Cecil Taylor for a particularly hostile attack. 5 Instead of explaining what Ornette Coleman meant by "free jazz," Albert Murray tells us that jazz is, by definition, free music—and by implication, that Coleman's concept must be fatuous. And Wynton has complained [End Page 158] elsewhere about a jazz avant-garde retreat into what he calls "a... (shrink)