Although the centrosome was first described over 100 years ago, we still know relatively little of the molecular mechanisms responsible for its functions. Recently, members of a novel family of centrosomal proteins have been identified in a wide variety of organisms. The transforming acidic coiled‐coil‐containing (TACC) proteins all appear to play important roles in cell division and cellular organisation in both embryonic and somatic systems. These closely related molecules have been implicated in microtubule stabilisation, acentrosomal spindle assembly, translational regulation, haematopoietic (...) development and cancer progression. In this review, I summarise what we already know of this protein family and will use the TACC proteins to illustrate the many facets that centrosomes have developed during the course of evolution. BioEssays 24:915–925, 2002. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

I make three related proposals concerning the development of receptive communication in human infants. First, I propose that the presence of communicative intentions can be recognized in others' behaviour before the content of these intentions is accessed or inferred. Second, I claim that such recognition can be achieved by decoding specialized ostensive signals. Third, I argue on empirical bases that, by decoding ostensive signals, human infants are capable of recognizing communicative intentions addressed to them. Thus, learning about actual modes of (...) communication benefits from, and is guided by, infants' preparedness to detect infant-directed ostensive communication. (shrink)

Many argued (Accardi and Fedullo, Pitowsky) that Kolmogorov's axioms of classical probability theory are incompatible with quantum probabilities, and that this is the reason for the violation of Bell's inequalities. Szabó showed that, in fact, these inequalities are not violated by the experimentally observed frequencies if we consider the real, “effective” frequencies. We prove in this work a theorem which generalizes this results: “effective” frequencies associated to quantum events always admit a Kolmogorovian representation, when these events are collected through different (...) experimental setups, the choice of which obeys a classical distribution. (shrink)

Two experiments investigated whether infants represent goal‐directed actions of others in a way that allows them to draw inferences to unobserved states of affairs (such as unseen goal states or occluded obstacles). We measured looking times to assess violation of infants' expectations upon perceiving either a change in the actions of computer‐animated figures or in the context of such actions. The first experiment tested whether infants would attribute a goal to an action that they had not seen completed. The second (...) experiment tested whether infants would infer from an observed action the presence of an occluded object that functions as an obstacle. The looking time patterns of 12‐month‐olds indicated that they were able to make both types of inferences, while 9‐month‐olds failed in both tasks. These results demonstrate that, by the end of the first year of life, infants use the principle of rational action not only for the interpretation and prediction of goal‐directed actions, but also for making productive inferences about unseen aspects of their context. We discuss the underlying mechanisms that may be involved in the developmental change from 9 to 12 months of age in the ability to infer hypothetical (unseen) states of affairs in teleological action representations. (shrink)

Fantastic Antigones : The Tragic Legacy of Trans Grief.

Now commonly accepted as the point of reference for musicians in the Western world, A 440 hertz only became the standard pitch during an international conference held in 1939. The adoption of this norm was the result of decades of negotiations between countries involving performers, composers, diplomats, physicists, and sound engineers. Although musicians and musicologists are aware of the variability of musical pitches over time, as attested by the use of lower frequencies to perform early music repertoires, no study has (...) fully explained the invention of our current concert pitch. In this book, Fanny Gribenski draws on a rich variety of previously unexplored archival sources and a unique combination of musicological perspectives, transnational history, and science studies. Tuning the World demonstrates the aesthetic, scientific, industrial, and political contingencies underlying the construction of one of the most "natural" objects of contemporary musical performance, itself the result of a cacophony of competing views and interests. (shrink)

This essay offers a critical analysis of Hannah Arendt's notion of natality through the lens of Adriana Cavarero's feminist philosophy of birth. First, I argue that the strength of Arendtian natality is its rootedness in an ontology of uniqueness, and a commitment to human plurality and relationality. Next, I trace with Cavarero three critical concerns regarding Arendtian natality, namely that it is curiously abstract; problematically disembodied and sexually neutral; and dependent on a model of vulnerability that assumes equality rather than (...) asymmetry. This last issue is further developed in the final section of the essay, where I examine the idea that birth, for Cavarero, becomes the very concept by which we can distinguish and normatively differentiate acts of care and love from acts of wounding and violence. Upholding the normative distinction here depends on a conceptual distinction between vulnerability and helplessness. To maintain the ethical potential of the scene of birth, I argue that we have to insist on the very characteristics Cavarero attributes to it—ones, as this essay aims to show, that are ultimately missing in the Arendtian account thereof. (shrink)

Desde la mirada de los estudios de la cultura y la hegemonía del poder esta investigación explora desde la perspectiva de sus habitantes, el sentir popular y la apropiación de la celebración religiosa de San Pedro y San Pablo en la parroquia Picoazá (Portoviejo – Ecuador). Para el fin se acude a la metodología cualitativa, utilizando la entrevista como herramienta de corte etnográfico. Los resultados plantean un colectivo apegado a la religión con connotaciones significativas en la organización social y cultural (...) del entorno, dando paso a la reproducción de tradiciones heredadas de generación en generación. Las mismas que a la par, fetichizan y esencializan la actividad, e invisibilizan otros aspectos inherentes a las prácticas culturales. (shrink)

Metamorphosis in frogs is a critical developmental process through which a tadpole changes into an adult froglet. Metamorphic changes include external morphological transformations as well as important changes in the wiring of sensory organs and central nervous system. This review aims to provide an overview on the events that occur in the visual system of metamorphosing amphibians and to discuss recent studies that provide new insight into the molecular mechanisms that control changes in the retinal growth pattern as well as (...) the formation of new axonal pathways in the central nervous system. BioEssays 23:319–326, 2001. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (shrink)

Religious ethics was founded on a commitment to inclusion, welcoming projects from and about different religious and philosophical traditions. This paper argues that the increasing welcome of feminist ethics in the JRE also reveals a tension in the field between inclusion and critique: where feminist ethics is included as another tradition of ethical inquiry, its critical claims can be escaped by appeal to difference from the traditions it seeks to engage. The response to feminist critique should not be to applaud (...) its inclusion without responding to its claims. Where this occurs, religious ethicists must renegotiate the terms of inclusion and the borders of difference. Feminist critique thus requires a return to founding questions of this journal, and the field, about the terms on which different traditions can be discussed and engaged in a common, critical conversation of religious ethics. (shrink)

Often celebrated as a model of development in Africa, Botswana nonetheless endured a severe HIV epidemic. This article describes the singularity of the Botswana experience in facing AIDS and creating the widest possible access to antiretroviral medications for its citizens. Through exploration of different sets of actors and the construction of their ethics of treatment, it is possible to examine how free and universal access was created within the national antiretroviral program. This article underscores the importance of the site and (...) the local dynamics in the advent of an ethics of access to treatment for Botswana citizens. At the intersection of national citizenship, pharmaceutical philanthropy, and biomedical collaborations, Botswana is an exemplary case (one of the first and unique in its kind) of global health programs for access to drugs in which patients' rights are tied to science and pharmaceutical development. As such it also bears some limitations and concerns over its sustainability. (shrink)

The current study investigates the effects of green advertising and a corporation’s environmental performance on brand attitudes and purchase intentions. A 3 × 3 (firm’s environmental performance and its advertising efforts as independent variables) experiment using n = 302 subjects was conducted. Results indicate that the negative effect of a firm’s low performance on brand attitudes becomes stronger in the presence of green advertising compared to general corporate advertising and no advertising. Further, when the firm’s environmental performance is high, both (...) green and general corporate advertising result in more unfavorable brand attitudes than no advertising. The study’s counter-intuitive findings are explained by attribution theory. (shrink)

According to recent work in experimental philosophy, folk intuitions concerning various metaphysical issues are heavily teleological. The experiments in question, which belong to a broader research program in psychology about ‘promiscuous teleology’, have featured prominently in debates about the methodology of metaphysics, with some authors claiming that the folk’s teleological bias debunks everyday intuitions concerning composition, persistence, and organisms. The present paper argues for a possibility that is very rarely discussed in that debate, namely the idea that the folk’s intuitions (...) could be veridical. Our argument is based on an emerging naturalistic theory of biological functions called “the organismic view”. The gist of the organismic view is that biological systems are characterized by a special circular causal regime where each part of the system contributes to the boundary conditions of some other parts, as well as of the whole. We argue that teleological folk intuitions are veridical in the biological domain under such a view, and they are veridical in the social and artefactual domains under coherent extensions of the organismic view. (shrink)

Ethical decisions are contextualized in the dialectic of a multidimensional system, including situation, setting, culture, and generation. There may be further gaps between the ethical considerations of professionals and folk values. The experience of promoting equal opportunities in Hong Kong illustrates some of these challenges. Whereas the rule of law under a Western legal system advocates human rights, the traditional emphasis on harmony and preference for balancing in conflict resolution underlie the gaps in the interpretation of these ideals. The case (...) of the Hong Kong secondary school places allocation system highlights the conflicting perspectives of law, gender stereotypes, psychological knowledge, as well as ethical principles of justice and fairness in promoting equal opportunities in educational assessment and placement. The cultural perspective highlighted in this case illustrates the complex contexts of ethical decisions. (shrink)

We review studies of an evolution operator ℒ for a discrete Langevin equation with a strongly hyperbolic classical dynamics and a Gaussian noise. The leading eigenvalue of ℒ yields a physically measurable property of the dynamical system, the escape rate from the repeller. The spectrum of the evolution operator ℒ in the weak noise limit can be computed in several ways. A method using a local matrix representation of the operator allows to push the corrections to the escape rate up (...) to order eight in the noise expansion parameter. These corrections then appear to form a divergent series. Actually, via a cumulant expansion, they relate to analogous divergent series for other quantities, the traces of the evolution operators ℒn. Using an integral representation of the evolution operator ℒ, we then investigate the high order corrections to the latter traces. Their asymptotic behavior is found to be controlled by sub-dominant saddle points previously neglected in the perturbative expansion, and to be ultimately described by a kind of trace formula. (shrink)

L’auteure, anthropologue de la consommation, suggère que l’étude de nos pratiques alimentaires offre une fenêtre fascinante sur les structures de domination et la reproduction des élites dans une époque de permacrise. En mettant un éclairage sur les « mangeurs hors pair », elle révèle la manière dont les systèmes de pouvoir sont reproduits et contestés par les choix alimentaires. Par l’intermédiaire de la « magie alimentaire » et des « festins empoisonnés », l’autrice démontre que même nos actes alimentaires les (...) plus quotidiens sont imprégnés de significations sociales, économiques et environnementales profondes. Elle conclut en anticipant une transition vers une alimentation plus simplifiée et collective, qui pourrait contester les structures de pouvoir existantes et offrir une alternative aux régimes alimentaires particuliers qui prévalent actuellement. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to provide a logic-based conceptual analysis of the twin paradox (TwP) theorem within a first-order logic framework. A geometrical characterization of TwP and its variants is given. It is shown that TwP is not logically equivalent to the assumption of the slowing down of moving clocks, and the lack of TwP is not logically equivalent to the Newtonian assumption of absolute time. The logical connection between TwP and a symmetry axiom of special relativity is (...) also studied. (shrink)

War often comes down to one thing: money. The role of economics in the study of both peace and war is arguably then the most important single factor when it comes to the study of defence. This excellent new book from Fanny Coulomb will be of interest not only to those involved in the burgeoning field of defence economics - it will also be of vital interest to students and academics from international relations, defence studies, philosophy and political science backgrounds.

The paper investigates and refines the proportionalist solution to the causal exclusion problem developed by Menzies and List. First and foremost, it explores the implications of their inter-level compatibility result. It is highlighted that in theory the inter-level causal compatibility of realizer and realized properties allows for scenarios where the higher-level property is multiply realized. By developing concrete illustrations, the paper proves this to be an empirically plausible option. Further non-trivial implications of the framework are unpacked to show that the (...) sensitivity of causal relations to background conditions is as important in deciding on the existence and the direction of exclusion as sensitivity to the realization of the cause. This insight also opens the way to further refinements: a richer reconceptualization of upwards exclusion and a plausible answer to a critic of the Menzies and List project. (shrink)

This essay examines Italian philosopher Adriana Cavarero's ontology of uniqueness through a reading of Alex Haley's novel Roots, and the recent television adaptation of that book. If Cavarero has insisted throughout her work that we need to challenge the philosophical privileging of abstract universality and focus instead on the irreducibility of embodied singularity, and if such a move in her work has always relied on a feminist analysis of the role women play in such a drama, I argue that attention (...) to issues of race and the institution of slavery both supports and complicates her analysis in meaningful ways. (shrink)

Si la loi salique empêche les femmes de régner par elles-mêmes, elle leur confère finalement un pouvoir considérable lors des minorités royales. Incapables d’usurper, les reines mères se voient régulièrement confier le gouvernement en même temps que l’éducation de leur jeune fils à la mort de l’époux. L’amour maternel, inscrit dans le registre des lois naturelles, est un argument régulièrement évoqué, tant pour contrer la naturelle incapacité des femmes à gouverner que les jurisconsultes avancent pour justifier la loi salique, que (...) pour appuyer l’autorité sans pareille des régentes. Mais au-delà d’une rhétorique du pouvoir, le lien filial qui unit mère et fils, lesquels sont aussi reine et roi, permet la reconstitution d’un couple royal qui représente à la fois continuité dynastique et stabilité politique. A ceci près que, dans cette figure du pouvoir reconstituée, le fils procède de la mère quand la reine devait son titre à l’époux. Ainsi, le devoir de maternité imposé à la souveraine permet certes un accroissement de la puissance monarchique, ne serait-ce que par la transmission, au jeune monarque, des héritages maternels et paternels, mais assure aussi à la reine de France une puissance que les bornes imposées par l’institution ne peuvent contenir, en contrôlant, par l’exercice de la régence, la source même de son autorité. (shrink)

En commandant à Rubens un cycle exclusivement consacré à sa gloire, Marie de Médicis entend affirmer à toute l’Europe son retour au pouvoir. Au-delà du récit biographique, l’œuvre picturale délivre un message politique fort qui justifie, et légitime, la reine mère dans le gouvernement. Pour parvenir à ses fins, et donner d’elle-même l’image d’une souveraine toute puissante sans transgresser ouvertement les principes monarchiques, Marie de Médicis joue de toutes ses qualités, de femme, de reine, de mère, dans un cycle complexe (...) qui articule le registre narratif sur le registre institutionnel, et mêle figures allégoriques et compositions historiques. En ce début de XVIIe siècle, c’est bien le problème de la représentation d’une femme de pouvoir qui est alors posé. (shrink)

In a recent article “From Epistemology to Ontology,” Tihamer Margitay argues, in addition to other things, that the ontological arguments Polanyi provided for his ontological realism with respect to the levels of reality are insufficient. Although Margitay shows this correctly in the case of arguments from boundary conditions, his arguments are not that convincing against the unidentifyability thesis, the thesis that entity kinds on higher levels cannot be identified with descriptions given on lower levels. I argue that here Polányi relies (...) on a version of the multiple realizeability thesis and this argument can be reformulated in a stronger version against which the counterargument Margitay provides is insufficient. (shrink)

Dans la mesure où il achève l’histoire de la philosophie, Hegel se voit conférer un rôle tout à fait singulier dans la lecture heideggerienne d’une telle histoire. Penser après Hegel, c’est donc penser la fin de cette histoire, et par conséquent aussi son autre limite, à savoir son commencement. Or, la signification et la portée de celui-ci se voient bouleversés de part et d’autre de ce qu’il est convenu de nommer le tournant ( Kehre ) de la pensée heideggerienne. Dans (...) un premier temps, le dépassement de Hegel consiste à se recentrer pour mettre en lumière la temporalité constitutive de cet étant pour lequel il y a être, le Dasein, c’est-à-dire son écart fondamental. Dans un second temps, ce que Heidegger tâche, après Hegel, de rejoindre, répond à l’impensé du premier commencement grec, c’est-à-dire avant que la métaphysique, avec Platon, ne débute. Le chemin est alors paradoxalement celui qui, à travers le plus grand éloignement, tente de penser l’être-commençant. (shrink)