Although Caenorhabditis elegans was chosen and modified to be an organism that would facilitate a reductionist program for neurogenetics, recent research has provided evidence for properties that are emergent from the neurons. While neurogenetic advances have been made using C. elegans which may be useful in explaining human neurobiology, there are severe limitations on C. elegans to explain any significant human behavior.
Level statistics and nodal point distribution in a rectangular semiconductor quantum dot are studied for different degrees of spin-orbit coupling. The chaotic features occurring from the spin-orbit coupling have no classical counterpart. Using experimental values for GaSb/InAs/GaSb semiconductor quantum wells we find that level repulsion can lead to the semi-Poisson distribution for nearest level separations. Nodal lines and nodal points are also investigated. Comparison is made with nodal point distributions for fully chaotic states.
The average male–female performance difference in the three sports of track athletics, swimming and time trial cycling are examined between the years 1948 and 1976. During this period females have gradually come to participate in a much larger number of events, particularly those of longer duration. In each of these three sports, women's performances in relation to men's have more or less continuously improved and it appears that if the changes between 1948 and 1976 are maintained, average female performance will (...) equal that of males for all events currently competed in by both sexes in these sports at some time during the next century. Estimates as to when, precisely, this will occur vary somewhat according to the basis on which the calculations are made. The other main change evident during these years is that in all three sports women's performances relative to men's for events of long duration have become as good or better than their relative performance at events of short duration. (shrink)
Some men can obtain hundred years or more, but the grounds are as yet unknown. Till now medical research has given no specific clues. Intensive consideration shows that life under quite natural (no longer found), not too hard social and climatic conditions (more maritime than arid) and in mountainous regions is decisive. It is clear that few territories of the earth come into consideration. The specific mental situation of mountain dwellers which contrasts in important points to that of the inhabitants (...) of flat country, plays a decisive part. (shrink)
With disagreement, doubts, or ambiguous grounds in end–of-life decisions, doctors are advised to involve a clinical ethics committee. However, little has been published on doctors’ experiences with discussing an end-of-life decision in a CEC. As part of the quality assurance of this work, we wanted to find out if clinicians have benefited from discussing end-of-life decisions in CECs and why. We will disseminate some Norwegian doctors’ experiences when discussing end-of-life decisions in CECs, based on semi-structured interviews with fifteen Norwegian physicians (...) who had brought an end-of-life decision case to a CEC. Almost half of the cases involved conflicts with the patients’ relatives. In a majority of the cases, there was uncertainty about what would be the ethically preferable solution. Reasons for referring the case to the CEC were to get broader illumination of the case, to get perspective from people outside the team, to get advice, or to get moral backing on a decision already made. A great majority of the clinicians reported an overall positive experience with the CECs’ discussions. In cases where there was conflict, the clinicians reported less satisfaction with the CECs’ discussions. The study shows that most doctors who have used a CEC in an end-of-life decision find it useful to have ethical and/or legal aspects illuminated, and to have the dilemma scrutinized from a new perspective. A systematic discussion seems to be significant to the clinicians. (shrink)
Open peer commentary on the article “Elementary Students’ Construction of Geometric Transformation Reasoning in a Dynamic Animation Environment” by Alan Maloney. Upshot: Parnorkou and Maloney describe how a dynamic animation environment, Graphs ’n Glyphs, supported fourth-grade students’ understandings of translations and rotations. Two elements were critical in their teaching experiment: the design of the software and tasks. This commentary focuses on the decisions that they made and possible implications they had for students’ reasoning.
Those who deny the usefulness of the concept of “motive” for psychology commonly bring two arguments in support of theirview. The first is that the whole notion of “motive” is “animistic” and “folklorish”, since a motive cannot be directly observed. The second is that “motives” cannot be accurately observed, and therefore are beyond the scope of scientific study, because they are “the secret of the agent”, and the agenthimself has no indubitable knowledge of his “motives”. In a recent article, Professor (...) MacIver defends the view that the imputation of “motives” is necessary to a complete explanation of behaviour. To the first of the above criticisms, he replies that such a view neglects a part of reality and that since “motives” exist they should be studied by psychology. This reply does nothing to demonstrate the necessity of imputing motives in order to obtain a complete explanation of behaviour. To the second criticism he replies “motives” are not the secret of the agent, and we can only assert that the agent has mistaken his “motive” if we can gain indepen-dent knowledge of it. We can do this, Professor MacIver asserts, by observing typical behaviour in typical circum-stances, and making inferences from the coherence of total situations. Professor MacIver's replies to the second of the above criticisms are valid only if “motive” is defined as equivalent to “need”, so that we can say “under such-and-such conditions, such-and-such behaviour occurs”. A statement of this type says nothing about the agent's awareness of his goal. When the term “consciousness” is carefully defined along the lines suggested by Boring, the methods of imputation described by Professor MacIver can be seen to lead us only to the agent's “drives”, or “needs”, defined without reference to the agent's awareness of his goal. Professor MacIver uses “motives” to mean “awareness of the goal”, but gives us no clue as to how they may be imputed, and adduces no proof that their imputation is necessary. A possible criterion of the presence of a “motive” is the degree of direction observable in the organism's varied reac-tions in response to frustration, though the more precise definition of such a criterion must await further experiment. In view of the ambiguity of the term “motive” and its penumbra of false suggestion, it is desirable that the term be dropped from psychology. (shrink)
