Dennis H. Wrong postulates sociological theory’s origins in the asking of general questions about man and society. Th e answers lose their meaning if they are elaborated without reference to the questions, as has been the case in much contemporary theory. An example is the Hobbesian question of how men become tractable to social controls. Th e two-fold answer of contemporary theory is that man „internalizes“ social norms and seeks a favorable self-image by conforming to the „expectations“ of others. (...) Such a model of man denies the very possibility of his being anything but a thoroughly socialized being and thus denies the reality of the Hobbesian question. Th e Freudian view of man, on the other hand, which sociologists have misrepresented, sees man as a social though never a fully socialized creature. Wrong claims that sociologists need to develop a more complex, dialectical conception of human nature instead of relying on an implicit conception that is tailor-made for special sociological problems. (shrink)

Abstract The concept of culture was originally an expression of German nationalism, which reacted to the French Enlightenment by asserting the uniqueness and incomparability of all cultures as historical creations. This understanding of cultural diversity, which prevailed in American anthropology, is widely understood to imply the moral equality of all cultures. Yet its relativism originally applied to different individuals socialized in the values of their culture, rather than to different cultures. The debate over multiculturalism, which presupposes cultural relativism, ignores this (...) distinction. The vogue of multiculturalism reflects the decline of the Left, quests for community and identity, and an actual reduction in diversity more than a genuine appreciation of different cultures. (shrink)

Abstract Several scholars have observed that in contrast to ?socialism,? ?capitalism? was not an ideology promoted by a social class or movement but an economy that emerged ?spontaneously? from particular historical conditions. Since the decline of the Soviet Union, no new version of socialism has been promulgated, although complaints about the inequalities of capitalism inevitably persist and will certainly continue. Capitalism, if not ?eternal,? remains a highly probable form of economy under conditions of economic surplus, extensive division of labor, urbanism, (...) and the absence of fully centralized state power. An inevitably wide variation in its forms will certainly endure and in no way amounts to the ?end of history,? as a few writers have suggested. (shrink)

In the year 1471 a member of the Sorbonne, Guillaume Fichet, looking back on the history of what today we should call communication technology, divided it into three periods: antiquity , a subsequent period which we should identify as the Middle Ages , and a period just beginning . Just over five hundred years later an American scholar, Walter J. Ong, looking back on a longer historical span, divided it into orality, writing, printing, and electronic communications. No matter how much (...) these two figures may differ over details, they occupy a similar position: each stands at the start of a communications shift which has alerted him to changes in the past, and Ong claims explicitly that contrasts “between electronic media and print have sensitized us to the earlier contrast between writing and orality.” We do not have to go as far as Eric A. Havelock, who suggests that our new awareness can be precisely dated by a number of publications appearing in the annus mirabilis 1963 , in order to accept the general point that recent work has been stimulated by recent technology. (shrink)

The goal of this small book and accompanying DVD is to help you to have a better experience in your laboratory by getting you to step back and take a global look at what is involved in making progress in the laboratory.

Gene therapy approaches have great promise in the treatment of neurodegenerative disorders and malignant brain tumors. Neuwelt et al. review available viral-mediated gene therapy methods and their blood-brain-barrier (BBB) disruption delivery technique, briefly mentioning nonviral mediated gene therapy methods. This commentary discussed the BBB disruption delivery technique, viral and nonviral mediated gene therapy approaches to Parkinson's disease, and the potential use of antisense oligo to suppress malignant brain tumors.

Skeletal myoblasts have their origin early in embryogenesis within specific somites. Determined myoblasts are committed to a myogenic fate; however, they only differentiate and express a muscle‐specific phenotype after they have received the appropriate environmental signals. Once proliferating myoblasts enter the differentiation programme they withdraw from the cell cycle and form post‐mitotic multinucleated myofibres (myogenesis); this transformation is accompanied by muscle‐specific gene expression. Muscle development is associated with complex and diverse protein isoform transitions, generated by differential gene expression and mRNA (...) splicing. The myofibres are in a state of dynamic adaptation in response to hormones, mechanical activity and motor innervation, which modulate differential gene expression and splicing during this functional acclimatisation. This review will focus on the profound effects of thyroid hormone on skeletal muscle, which produce alterations in gene and isoform expression, biochemical properties and morphological features that precipitate in modified contractile/mechanical characteristics. Insight into the molecular events that control these events was provided by the recent characterisation of the MyoD gene family, which encodes helix‐loop‐helix proteins; these activate muscle‐specific transcription and serve as targets for a variety of physiological stimuli. The current hypothesis on hormonal regulation of myogenesis is that thyroid hormones (1) directly regulate the myoD and contractile protein gene families, and (2) induce thyroid hormone receptor‐transcription factor interactions critical to gene expression. (shrink)

The ability to recognise others’ emotions from nonverbal cues is measured with performance-based tests and has many positive correlates. Although researchers have...

This study was designed to address the issue of whether there is a general processor for the perception of emotion or whether there are separate processors. We examined the relationships among three channels of emotional communication in 100 healthy right-handed adult males and females. The channels were facial, prosodic/intonational, and lexical/verbal; both identification and discrimination tasks of emotional perception were utilised. Statistical analyses controlled for nonemotional perceptual factors and subject characteristics (i.e. demographic and general cognitive). For identification, multiple significant correlations (...) were found among the channels. For discrimination, fewer correlations were significant. Overall, these results provide support for the notion of a general processor for emotional perceptual identification in normal adult subjects. (shrink)

For centuries medical schools in Britain and elsewhere had a fairly static curriculum based on what might be called the 'three Rs' of medicine, and consequently had to make room for new subjects as the need arose in a fashion which was sometimes makeshift. However, Southampton University has only had a medical school for six years, and therefore their course on medical ethics and legal medicine was carefully integrated into the curriculum after some preliminary experiments carried out by a subcommittee (...) which is continually reviewing the situation. Medical ethics has now a definite place in the fourth year, preceded by an introduction to ethical problems encountered in medicine in the first year. Not only do members of the medical faculty participate in this teaching but also members of the faculties of law and the arts. (shrink)

The human immune system can directly lyse invading micro‐organisms and aberrant host cells by generating pores in the cell envelope, called membrane attack complexes (MACs). Recent studies using single‐particle cryoelectron microscopy have revealed that the MAC is an asymmetric, flexible pore and have provided a structural basis on how the MAC ruptures single lipid membranes. Despite these insights, it remains unclear how the MAC ruptures the composite cell envelope of Gram‐negative bacteria. Recent functional studies on Gram‐negative bacteria elucidate that local (...) assembly of MAC pores by surface‐bound C5 convertase enzymes is essential to stably insert these pores into the bacterial outer membrane (OM). These convertase‐generated MAC pores can subsequently efficiently damage the bacterial inner membrane (IM), which is essential for bacterial killing. This review summarizes these recent insights of MAC assembly and discusses how MAC pores kill Gram‐negative bacteria. Furthermore, this review elaborates on how MAC‐dependent OM damage could lead to IM destabilization, which is currently not well understood. A better understanding on how MAC pores kill bacteria could facilitate the future development of novel strategies to treat infections with Gram‐negative bacteria. (shrink)

A study of the tradition of ethical socialism, its successes, its failures, and its relevance to contemporary Britain. It focuses on a group of writers who, although separated by time, all promoted this brand of socialism. It chronicles their thoughts and theories, and examines their intentions.

This exploratory study analyzes the extent of alignment between the formal and hidden curricula in responsible management education. Based on case study evidence of a school that has signed the United Nations Principles for Responsible Management Education, we found poor alignment between the school’s explicit RME claims and students’ lived experiences. While the formal curriculum signaled to students that RME was important, the school’s hidden curriculum sent a number of tacit messages that led students to question the relevance and applicability (...) of responsible management. The tacit messages that students received occurred along three “message sites” related to how the formal curriculum was delivered, how students and lecturers interacted, and how the school was governed. On the basis of these findings we develop a proposition that can guide further research in this area, i.e., the connotative level of language use is an important site of misalignments between what lecturers say in relation to RME and how students interpret the meaning of their lecturers’ words. We also discuss further implications of our findings for strengthening the alignment between schools’ formal RME claims and their hidden curriculum. (shrink)

In The Logic of Gilles Deleuze, Shores addresses the paradox that despite Deleuze having written a number of books ostensibly on logic (The Logic of Sense, The Logic of Sensation), there has been v...

In East Asia, there has been a long tradition of using graphs and diagrams to express abstract ideas. This paper is to give an account of the East Asian methodsfor representing body, mind and the universe. The fundamental ideas of East Asian graphic interpretation mostly originated from the Yijing (I Ching, Zhouyi), and were later developed by Confucian and Daoist thinkers to describe the universe, the mind, and the body as an organic totality. By comparing different approaches to portraying the (...) universe, this paper offers a critical analysis of East Asian semiotics. (shrink)

In East Asia, there has been a long tradition of using graphs and diagrams to express abstract ideas. This paper is to give an account of the East Asian methodsfor representing body, mind and the universe. The fundamental ideas of East Asian graphic interpretation mostly originated from the Yijing (I Ching, Zhouyi), and were later developed by Confucian and Daoist thinkers to describe the universe, the mind, and the body as an organic totality. By comparing different approaches to portraying the (...) universe, this paper offers a critical analysis of East Asian semiotics. (shrink)