At metaphase in mitotic cells, pulling forces at the kinetochore‐microtubule interface create tension by stretching the centromeric chromatin between oppositely oriented sister kinetochores. This tension is important for stabilizing the end‐on kinetochore microtubule attachment required for proper bi‐orientation of sister chromosomes as well as for satisfaction of the Spindle Assembly Checkpoint and entry into anaphase. How force is coupled by proteins to kinetochore microtubules and resisted by centromere stretch is becoming better understood as many of the proteins involved have been (...) identified. Recent application of genetically encoded fluorescent tension sensors within the mechanical linkage between the centromere and kinetochore microtubules are beginning to reveal – from live cell assays – protein specific contributions that are functionally important. (shrink)

Causation is one of philosophy's most venerable and thoroughly-analyzed concepts. However, the study of how ordinary people make causal judgments is a much more recent addition to the philosophical arsenal. One of the most prominent views of causal explanation, especially in the realm of harmful or potentially harmful behavior, is that unusual or counternormative events are accorded privileged status in ordinary causal explanations. This is a fundamental assumption in psychological theories of counterfactual reasoning, and has been transported to philosophy by (...) Hitchcock and Knobe (2009). A different view--the basis of the culpable control model of blame (CCM)--is that primary causal status is accorded to behaviors that arouse negative evaluative reactions, including behaviors that stem from nefarious motives, negligence or recklessness, a faulty character, or behaviors that lead to harmful or potentially harmful consequences. This paper describes four empirical studies that show consistent support for the CCM. (shrink)

It is well known that today jails and prisons house many seriously mentally ill citizens who in prior decades have been treated in mental hospitals and community mental health programs. This paper begins with a brief review of the history of support for mental health programs at the federal level and then, using the State of Oregon as an example, describes the new state era of mental health services which is characterized by the increasing use of the criminal justice system (...) as a cornerstone of the treatment of many seriously and chronically mentally ill individuals. Are there any solutions to our current dilemma? The paper ends with this question, and the reader must determine if any of the suggestions posed in this discussion are realistic and/or feasible given the current fiscal and political climate. (shrink)

In 1848 Dorothea Dix, the famous 19th century advocate for the indigent mentally ill, appealed to the United States Congress to support the setaside of a very large tract of land that was to be used for the “Relief and Support of the Indigent Curable and Incurable Insane.” She stated:It will be said by a few, perhaps that each State should establish and sustain its own institutions; that it is not obligatory upon the general government to legislate for maintenance of (...) State charities…. But may it not be demonstrated as the soundest policy of the federal government to assist in the accomplishment of great moral obligations, by diminishing and arresting wide-spread miseries which mar the face of society; and weaken the strength of communities? (shrink)

In reviewing five edited collections and one monograph from the 1990s, the article summarizes the present status of the "human rights revolution" that was signaled by the adoption in 1948 of the "Universal Declaration of Human Rights". It goes on to elaborate and evaluate some of the attempts contained in these books to deal with theoretical and practical controversies surrounding the subject of human rights, particularly the discussion of what to make of "cultural relativism" as far as human rights are (...) concerned. Finally, the article summarizes some recent thinking and research on a neglected area, namely compliance with human rights standards protecting "freedom of religion or belief.". (shrink)

In spite of heralded progress in civil rights, this paper pessimistically maintains that blacks are systematically excluded from directorships on the boards of the major industrial companies in this country. The statistics derived from a 1980 survey, which yielded responses from 143 companies, show that blacks constituted only 1.9 percent of the entire directorate pool, with no black chairmen, no company with more than one black director, and significantly high multiple-board service on the part of a few black directors. There (...) is a strong correlation between size and importance of a company and black directorships, as well as between longer-range company commitments and white male directorships. There is discussion of answers from board members relating to constituency representation, philosophy regarding black recruitment and reasons for the paucity of black representation. After drawing a profile of typical boards, the study shows how the pool of individuals traditionally eligible to serve as directors virtually excludes blacks, confining them to rigid and narrow categories, and concludes that the "white club" remains white because it is insulated by an inflexible system whose inequity has been internalized and whose existence current directors would rather not acknowledge. While admitting the difficulty of discussing and even defining the existence of tokenism, the paper looks at the phenomenon of single-black-member boards, questioning the status, use and professions of some black directors. In the context of a climate that encourages governmental mandating of corporate responsibility, the authors suggest that corporate initiative wisely be generated toward achieving more equitable balances in the highest economic echelons where black impotence, given the present system, can neither be remedied nor tolerated much longer. (shrink)

Over recent years, lawyer misconduct and regulation of the profession have been topics of considerable interest. Yet, when the topic of legal ethics is raised, the focus tends to be on lawyer conduct external to the firm: lawyer conduct in court; lawyer conduct vis-a-vis client; or lawyer conduct vis-a-vis opposing counsel or the judiciary. The recent National Attrition and Re-engagement Study, however, raises a different aspect of legal professional ethics. This Report found a widespread incidence of bullying, intimidation, discrimination and (...) harassment within law firms, primarily affecting though not confined to, female lawyers. Of course, bullying and associated behaviours are not confined to the legal profession. But these behaviours are at odds with a profession that purports to be deeply concerned with the ethical conduct of its members. Arguing that ‘ethics begins at home’, this paper suggests NARS raises uncomfortable questions about legal professional ethics: if law firms cannot treat their own staff members ethically, what does that say about the firm’s approach to ethical conduct more generally? And if this culture is as widespread as the report suggests, what does this say about the ethics of the legal profession as a whole? (shrink)

Suicide among Veterans experiencing or at risk for homelessness remains a significant public health concern. Conducting research to understand and meet the needs of this at-risk population remains challenging due to myriad factors. To address this challenge, the United States Department of Veterans Affairs convened the Health Services Research and Development Suicide Prevention in Veterans Experiencing Homelessness: Research and Practice Development meeting, bringing together subject-matter experts in the fields of homelessness and suicide prevention, both from within and outside of VA. (...) During the meeting, attendees identified 10 potential research priorities at the intersection of suicide prevention and homelessness. After the meeting, Delphi methodology was used to achieve consensus on the relative importance of the identified research domains. Through this iterative Delphi process, agreement was reached regarding the need to increase understanding of barriers and facilitators to suicide risk assessment and emergency intervention for Veterans experiencing homelessness by examining the perspectives of both Veterans and healthcare providers. Elucidating the complex relationships between risk periods, subgroups, suicide means, and drivers of suicide among Veterans experiencing homelessness was also considered a top priority. This article documents the Delphi process and provides a research agenda for researchers, funding agencies, and policymakers to prioritize the most relevant and potentially impactful research domains aimed at preventing suicide among Veterans experiencing or at risk for homelessness. (shrink)

The strong word and stance issue only from a strict will, a will that dares the error of reading all of reality as a text, and all prior texts as openings for its own totalizing and unique interpretations. Strong poets present themselves as looking for truth in the world, searching in reality and in tradition, but such a stance, as Nietzsche said, remains under the mastery of desire, of instinctual drives. So, in effect, the strong poet wants pleasure and not (...) truth; he wants what Nietzsche named as "the belief in truth and the pleasurable effects of this belief." No strong poet can admit that Nietzsche was accurate in this insight, and no critic need fear that any strong poet will accept and so be hurt by demystification. The concern of this book, as of my earlier studies in poetic misprision, is only with strong poets, which in this series of chapters is exemplified by the major sequence of High Romantic British and American poets: Blake, Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, Tennyson, Browning, Yeats, Emerson, Whitman, and Stevens, but also throughout by two of the strongest poets in the European Romantic tradition: Nietzsche and Freud. By "poet" I therefore do not mean only verse-writer, as the instance of Emerson also should make clear. Harold Bloom is DeVane Professor of the Humanities at Yale University. This article is the first chapter of his new book, Poetry and Repression, to be published by the Yale University Press. The book completes a tetralogy, of which the earlier volumes are The Anxiety of Influence, A Map of Misreading, and Kabbalah and Criticism. See also: "Formalism, Savagery, and Care; or, The Function of Criticism Once Again" by Jerome J. McGann in Vol. 2, No. 3; "The Poet as Elaborator: Analytical Psychology as a Critical Paradigm" by David D. Cooper in Vol. 6, No. 1. (shrink)

Bernard Rimé effectively reorients emotions and emotional disclosure in a more social and interpersonal direction, outlining the intricate interplay between emotion generation, emotional sharing, and social integration. However, he also takes a hard line on the intra-psychic emphasis of emotional disclosure, which he frames as the product of an individualistic “Lone Ranger” perspective. In many ways Rimé's critique is on target, but it does not fully credit research and theory demonstrating the benefits of private, self-to-self disclosure. This commentary proposes a (...) reconciliation between Rimé's social structuralist perspective and an intra-psychic, self-based perspective. George Herbert Mead's symbolic interactionism, which suggests that the people can relate to their own selves as with another person, provides the basis for this accord. (shrink)

It is a truth of military history that major battles are not clearly understood by the rank-and-file who are embroiled in them. There is a flurry of activity, a “blooming, buzzing confusion,” and anything that moves in the surrounding terrain is likely to be identified as the enemy. Usually it is only after the “tumult and the shouting dies” that a clear picture emerges, and a tally can be obtained of how many of one’s friends were felled by mistake.

"This is one of the few books on Montaigne that fuses analytical skill with humane awareness of why Montaigne matters."—Harold Bloom, Sterling Professor of Humanities, Yale University "In this exhilarating and learned book on Montaigne's essays, Lawrence D. Kritzman _contemporizes_ the great writer. Reading him from today's deconstructive America, Kritzman discovers Montaigne always already deep into a dialogue with Jacques Derrida and psychoanalysis. One cannot but admire this fabulous act of translation."—Hélène Cixous "Throughout his career, Lawrence D. Kritzman has (...) demonstrated an intimate knowledge of Montaigne's essays and an engagement with French philosophy and critical theory. _The Fabulous Imagination_ sheds precious new light on one of the founders of modern individualism and on his crucial quest for self-knowledge."—Jean Starobinski, professor emeritus of French literature, University of Geneva Michel de Montaigne's (1533-1592) _Essais_ was a profound study of human subjectivity. More than three hundred years before the advent of psychoanalysis, Montaigne embarked on a remarkable quest to see and imagine the self from a variety of vantages. Through the questions How shall I live? How can I know myself? he explored the significance of monsters, nightmares, and traumatic memories; the fear of impotence; the fragility of gender; and the act of anticipating and coping with death. In this book, Lawrence D. Kritzman traces Montaigne's development of the Western concept of the self. For Montaigne, imagination lies at the core of an internal universe that influences both the body and the mind. Imagination is essential to human experience. Although Montaigne recognized that the imagination can confuse the individual, "the fabulous imagination" can be curative, enabling the mind's "I" to sustain itself in the face of hardship. Kritzman begins with Montaigne's study of the fragility of gender and its relationship to the peripatetic movement of a fabulous imagination. He then follows with the essayist's examination of the act of mourning and the power of the imagination to overcome the fear of death. Kritzman concludes with Montaigne's views on philosophy, experience, and the connection between self-portraiture, ethics, and oblivion. His reading demonstrates that the mind's I, as Montaigne envisioned it, sees by imagining that which is not visible, thus offering an alternative to the logical positivism of our age. (shrink)

Biographer Richardson has written a moving portrait of James--pivotal member of the Metaphysical Club and author of The Varieties of Religious Experience. The biography, ten years in the making, draws on unpublished letters, journals, and family records. Richardson paints extraordinary scenes from what James himself called the "buzzing blooming confusion" of his life, beginning with childhood, as he struggled to achieve amid the domestic chaos and intellectual brilliance of Father, brother Henry, and sister Alice. James was a beloved teacher who (...) taught courage and risk-taking, and served as mentor to W.E.B. Du Bois, Gertrude Stein, and many other Harvard outsiders. Richardson also illuminates James's hugely influential works. One of the great figures in mysticism here brought richly to life, James is a man "whose leading ideas are still so fresh and challenging that they are not yet fully assimilated by the modern world they helped to bring about."--From publisher description. (shrink)

From the title of this volume—which resists the temptation to call Parmenides, Heraclitus, and Anaximander "pre-Socratics"—to the high quality of the translations, this book is an extended exercise in faithfulness to the text of Martin Heidegger. This is in my judgment the most successful attempt yet in the Sisyphian task of translating Heidegger’s works into English which Harper & Row has been undertaking in the past fifteen years. The volume consists in three essays on Parmenides and Heraclitus which appear together (...) and in the same order in Heidegger’s Vorträge und Aufsätze ; these are preceded by the important essay on Anaximander which is taken from Holzwege. These essays in the original German are written in the full bloom of Heidegger’s attempt to liberate language from logic and to find, not only the vocabulary, but also the grammar which is required in order to bring the matter to be thought into language. They are therefore in any strict sense untranslatable. They exist only in German, in the language in which they have come to birth. But the Krell-Capuzzi translation is as faithful an attempt as one could hope for to bring this matter into English, and so to introduce those who are coming to grips with Heidegger for the first time to a very important dimension of his thought, and to help those of us who have been at this for some time to hear these German words anew. What more can one say about a translation than that it helps one to understand the original? And that is what this volume does. (shrink)

Perhaps the best way to understand Harold Bloom's enigmatic theory of "poetic misprision" is to avoid the immanent critique altogether. It is best described, rather , as a synthesis. Bloom seems to have taken Aristotle's mimesis and linked it to Freud's concept of sublimation,1 with particular emphasis on the role that sublimation plays in "the family romance." Even if one were to hedge a bit and take into account the fact that neo-Freudian re-evaluations of orthodox psychoanalysis have succeeded (...) in extracting the purely sexual component out of the psychodynamics of sublimation, one is still left with the notion of sublimation as anxiety producing. Thus it is that, according to Bloom, the modern poet, in particular, sublimates his imitation of a strong precursor poet. Since the emphasis today is on desexualizing libido, Freud's original sexual vocabulary seems to have survived for its metaphorical value alone; the "unconscious fear of castration," for example, is simply a metaphor for "the poet's fear of ceasing to be a poet," a man's fear of ceasing to be a man. No matter how much we "modernize" Freud, the fact will always remain that the psychoanalytic context is the context of psychopathology: "a variety of the uncanny." · 1. See Sigmund Freud, Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex, in The Basic Writings of Sigmund Freud, ed. and trans. A. A. Brill , pp. 625-26. David D. Cooper is an associate in the department of English at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Using the critical paradigm developed in the present essay, he has written a book on Thomas Merton's poetry. See also: "Poetry, Revisionism, Repression" by Harold Boom in Vol. 2, No. 2; "Formalism, Savagery, and Care; or, The Function of Criticism Once Again" by Jerome J. McGann in Vol. 2, No. 3. (shrink)

"This is one of the few books on Montaigne that fuses analytical skill with humane awareness of why Montaigne matters."—Harold Bloom, Sterling Professor of Humanities, Yale University "In this exhilarating and learned book on Montaigne's essays, Lawrence D. Kritzman _contemporizes_ the great writer. Reading him from today's deconstructive America, Kritzman discovers Montaigne always already deep into a dialogue with Jacques Derrida and psychoanalysis. One cannot but admire this fabulous act of translation."—Hélène Cixous "Throughout his career, Lawrence D. Kritzman has (...) demonstrated an intimate knowledge of Montaigne's essays and an engagement with French philosophy and critical theory. _The Fabulous Imagination_ sheds precious new light on one of the founders of modern individualism and on his crucial quest for self-knowledge."—Jean Starobinski, professor emeritus of French literature, University of Geneva Michel de Montaigne's _Essais_ was a profound study of human subjectivity. More than three hundred years before the advent of psychoanalysis, Montaigne embarked on a remarkable quest to see and imagine the self from a variety of vantages. Through the questions How shall I live? How can I know myself? he explored the significance of monsters, nightmares, and traumatic memories; the fear of impotence; the fragility of gender; and the act of anticipating and coping with death. In this book, Lawrence D. Kritzman traces Montaigne's development of the Western concept of the self. For Montaigne, imagination lies at the core of an internal universe that influences both the body and the mind. Imagination is essential to human experience. Although Montaigne recognized that the imagination can confuse the individual, "the fabulous imagination" can be curative, enabling the mind's "I" to sustain itself in the face of hardship. Kritzman begins with Montaigne's study of the fragility of gender and its relationship to the peripatetic movement of a fabulous imagination. He then follows with the essayist's examination of the act of mourning and the power of the imagination to overcome the fear of death. Kritzman concludes with Montaigne's views on philosophy, experience, and the connection between self-portraiture, ethics, and oblivion. His reading demonstrates that the mind's I, as Montaigne envisioned it, sees by imagining that which is not visible, thus offering an alternative to the logical positivism of our age. (shrink)

This paper examines how semiotics, in conjunction with hermeneutics, can illuminate the structure of James Joyce's 'Ulysses' as a literary text. The paper begins with an account of two poet-critics who examined Joyce's novel in terms of classical myths and literary precedents. A crucial turning-point in the essay occurs when Jean Michel Rabate's Lacanian reading of the novel is introduced to clarify Joyce's use of the "signifier of absence" to clarify the meaning of paternity in the novel. The function of (...) the intertext is then examined, particularly in view of the relationship between Stephen Dedalus and Leopold Bloom. The conclusion of the paper shows how a dialogical reading supports the belief in a 'hermeneutical self' as part of the text's underlying meaning. (shrink)

Although Kierkegaard's writings have not exerted an essential influence on canonical trends in literary criticism and theory, his work has supplied subtle and important inspiration for numerous eminent literary critics and theorists. Kierkegaard's influence transcends many polemics in literary theory—a claim justified by the fact that literary critics who draw significant examples and authority from Kierkegaard support varied and sometimes greatly conflicting philosophical and moral positions. This chapter argues that literary‐critical topics invested in Kierkegaard's texts and ideas can be grouped (...) loosely under three thematic banners: irony, repetition, and silence. These themes are often pursued with reference to Kierkegaard's On the Concept of Irony, Repetition, and Fear and Trembling, respectively. The chapter discusses key examples from each of the three common themes, and indicates some of the important exceptions to this typology. (shrink)

The RecQ family of DNA helicases have been shown to be important for the maintenance of genomic integrity in all organisms analysed to date. In human cells, representatives of this family include the proteins defective in the cancer predisposition disorder Bloom's syndrome and the premature ageing condition, Werner's syndrome. Several pieces of evidence suggest that RecQ family helicases form associations with one or more of the cellular topoisomerases, and together these heteromeric complexes manipulate DNA structure to effect efficient DNA (...) replication, genetic recombination, or both. Here, we propose that RecQ helicases are required for ensuring that structural abnormalities arising during replication, such as at sites where replication forks encounter DNA lesions, are corrected with high fidelity. In mutants defective in these proteins, not only is replication abnormal, but cells display aberrant responses to DNA-damaging agents or inhibitors of DNA synthesis. We suggest that RecQ helicases may be important for the integration of cellular responses to these insults, such as by linking cell cycle checkpoint responses to recombinational repair. BioEssays 21:286–294, 1999. © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (shrink)

This paper is a survey of Father Mersenne’s views about the classification of sciences, its reasons and its practical consequences. Some emphasis is put on the interconnection between Mersenne’s two majors ideas about the practice of science : scientific research is an activity mostly devoted to religious apology and to the edification of the people. This religious concern allows him to resist two of the most influential philosophical streams of his time, scepticism and alchemy, which provide some favorite opponents to (...) his works. We also show how an analogical kinship based on theological considerations and on the classification of sciences gives ground to the same kind of arguments shaping his views about arithmetic, language, and music. Finally, we focus on the connection between Mersenne’s theses, especially about the nature and virtue of language and sound, and a more general discussion of the scientific status of music and language in the context of the blooming of academies. (shrink)

J. Hillis Miller (1928–2021) was one of the most prominent figures in literary criticism and theory. After receiving his Ph.D. from Harvard University, he taught at Johns Hopkins University, Yale University and the University of California at Irvine. He retired as Professor Emeritus in 2002. Miller was president of the Modern Language Association of America in 1986 and contributed significantly to professional academic institutions and organizations throughout his career. As an important representative of the Yale School, he had close relationships (...) with Derrida, Paul de Man, Geoffrey Hartman and Harold Bloom. Dr. Ning Yizhong did postdoctoral research under his supervision at UCI from 1997 to 1998. This is part of his interviews with Professor Miller during that time. In this interview, Miller talks about the Yale School in general, and Jacques Derrida, Paul de Man and Harold Bloom in particular. 1. (shrink)