Agouti expression during the middle portion of the mouse hair growth cycle induces melanocytes to synthesize yellow instead of black pigment, generating black hairs with a yellow band. Dominant agouti alleles increase the amount of yellow pigment in the coat and are associated with pleiotropic effects including obesity, diabetes and increased tumor susceptibility. Four dominant agouti alleles (Aiapy, Aiy, Asy and Avy) were recently shown to result from insertions that cause ubiquitous expression of chimeric transcripts encoding a wild‐type agouti protein(1,2). (...) Three insertions were identified as intracisternal A‐particles, which helps explain the variable coat colors and parental imprinting effects associated with some dominat agouti alleles. (shrink)

A wide-ranging, collection focusing on the practical philosophy of Williams, with many chapters on politically relevant themes and many trying to assess the importance and influence of Williams. With contributions by Roman Altshuler, Mathieu Beirlaen, Thom Brooks, Jonathan Dancy, Jennifer Flynn, Lorenzo Greco, Chris D. Herrera, James Kellenberger, Colin Koopman, Stephen Leach, Esther Abin, Nancy Matchett, Jeff McMahan, Sarah Pawlett, Jonathan Sands-Wise, Robert Talisse, and Owen Ware.

In a famous paper in Noûs in 1979, John Perry points out that action depends on indexical beliefs. In addition to “third-person” information about her environment, an agent need “first-person” information about where, when and who she is. This conclusion is widely interpreted as a reason for thinking that tensed claims cannot be translated without loss into untensed language; but not as a reason for realism about tensed facts. In another famous paper in the same volume of Noûs, (...) class='Hi'>Nancy Cartwright argues that action requires that agents represent their world in causal terms, rather than merely probabilistic terms: for, Cartwright argues, there’s a distinction between effective and ineffective strategies, that otherwise goes missing. This is widely taken as a reason for thinking that causal claims cannot be translated without loss into merely probabilistic claims; and also – in contrast to Perry’s case – widely regarded as a reason for realism about causation. In this paper I ask whether the latter conclusion is compulsory, or whether, as in Perry’s case, the need for causal beliefs might merely reflect some “situated” aspect of a decision-maker’s perspective. (shrink)

v. 1. Inheritance and vocation.--v. 2. Philosophy and psychology.

What kind of turn is the turn to ethics? A Right turn? A Left turn? A wrong turn? A U-turn? Ethics is back in literary studies, philosophy, and political theory. Where critiques of universal man and the autonomous human subject had, in recent years, produced a resistance to ethics in many fields of scholarship, today these critiques have generated a crossover among disciplines and led to theories and practices that see and do ethics otherwise. The decentering of the subject, the (...) contributors to this volume suggest, has brought about a recentering of the ethical. The philosophers, political theorists, literary critics and physician whose essays are collected here bring the particularities of their disciplines and training to a vital complex of questions. Many of these authors express concerns that the turn to ethics is a turn away from politics towards moralism. All ultimately conclude, however, that such concerns, rather than leading away from ethics, have helped to reinvigorate the intellectual field in the present moment. Contributors: Judith Butler, Homi K. Bhabha, Lawrence Buell, Nancy Fraser, John Guillory, Beatrice Hanssen, Barbara Johnson, Perri Klass, Chantal Mouffe, Doris Sommer, Rebecca Walkowitz. (shrink)

Rosenblum argues that we should judge associations not only by what they do for civic virtue, but also by what they do for individual members.

Khandro Rinpoche: A Needle Compassionately Sticking Out of a Cushion -- Dagmola Sakya: From the Palace to the Blood Bank -- Tenzin Palmo (Diane Perry): Sandpaper for the Ego -- Sangye Khandro (Nanci Gay Gustafson): Enlightenment Is a Full-time Job -- Pema Chödrön (Deirdre Blomfield-Brown): Relaxing into Groundlessness -- Elizabeth Mattis-Namgyel: A Wonder Woman Hermit -- Chagdud Khadro (Jane Dedman): Like Iron Filings Drawn to a Magnet -- Karma Lekshe Tsomo (Patricia Zenn): Surfing to Realization -- Thubten Chodron (Cherry (...) Greene): A Rebel in Robes -- Roshi Joan Halifax: Fearless, Fierce, and Fragile -- Tsultrim Allione (Joan Rousmanière Ewing): The Enlightened Feminist -- Khandro Tsering Chödron: The Queen of Dakinis. (shrink)

School choice has lately risen to the top of the list of potential solutions to America's educational problems, particularly for the poor and the most disadvantaged members of society. Indeed, in the last few years several states have held referendums on the use of vouchers in private and parochial schools, and more recently, the Supreme Court reviewed the constitutionality of a scholarship program that uses vouchers issued to parents. While there has been much debate over the empirical and methodological aspects (...) of school choice policies, discussions related to the effects such policies may have on the nation's moral economy and civil society have been few and far between. School Choice, a collection of essays by leading philosophers, historians, legal scholars, and theologians, redresses this situation by addressing the moral and normative side of school choice.The twelve essays, commissioned for a conference on school choice that took place at Boston College in 2001, are organized into four sections that consider the relationship of school choice to equality, moral pluralism, institutional ecology, and constitutionality. Each section consists of three essays followed by a critical response. The contributors are Patrick McKinley Brennan, Charles L. Glenn, Amy Gutmann, David Hollenbach, S. J., Meira Levinson, Sanford Levinson, Stephen Macedo, John T. McGreevy, Martha Minow, Richard J. Mouw, Joseph O'Keefe, S. J., Michael J. Perry, Nancy L. Rosenblum, Rosemary C. Salomone, Joseph P. Viteritti, Paul J. Weithman, and Alan Wolfe. (shrink)

<I>Conducting Hermeneutic Research: From Philosophy to Practice is the only textbook that teaches the reader ways to conduct research from a philosophical hermeneutic perspective. It is an invaluable resource for graduate students about to embark in hermeneutic research and for academics or other researchers who are novice to this research method or who wish to extend their knowledge. In 2009, the lead author of this proposed text was one of three co-founders of the Canadian Hermeneutic Institute. The institute was created (...) as a means of bringing together scholars of hermeneutics and hermeneutic research across disciplines in creative dialogue and conversations of philosophy, research, and practice. An outcome of this was the launch of the <I>Journal of Applied Hermeneutics, with Nancy J. Moules serving as Editor. The work of the institute and the journal make clear that people (both students and professors) seek practical guidance on how to conduct hermeneutic research. This book is a must read for this audience. (shrink)

In this paper, the authors describe an aspect of a program of research around grief and clinical practice. The first phase of the study involves examination of experiences of grief with attention to troublesome or problematic beliefs that fuel the extent of suffering in the bereaved. The data, obtained from a review of videotaped clinical interviews with families seen in the Family Nursing Unit at the University of Calgary, were analyzed according to philosophical hermeneutic tradition. Findings suggest that grief is (...) an experience that is ongoing, that changes in nature over time, but that involves a continuing relationship with the deceased; it is a graceful, periodic, deliberate walk backwards while keeping a sure foot in living forward. (shrink)

In this paper, the authors address the perceived recent trend of funding and publishing bodies that seem to have taken a regard of qualitative research as a subordinate to, or even a subset of, quantitative research. In this reflection, they pull on insights that Hans-Georg Gadamer offered around the history of the natural and human science bifurcation, ending with a plea that qualitative research needs to be received, appraised, judged, and promoted by different lenses and criteria of value.

This collection of essays, many translated into English for the first time, examines Weininger's influence and reception in Western culture, particularly his ...

Elements of the relation between religion and politics are standard themes in political theory: toleration and free exercise rights; the parameters of separation of church and state; arguments for and against constraints imposed on religious discourse by philosophic norms of public reason. But religious parties and partisanship are no part of political theory, despite contemporary interest in value pluralism and in liberal democratic theory's capacity to address multicultural, religious, and ethnic group claims. This essay argues that religious parties are missing (...) elements in discussions of identity politics. They play an important role not just in expressing but also in constructing and mobilizing religious political identity. Political activity linked to parties is a principal way of bringing diffuse, politically unorganized groups, whose leaders are self-appointed and not regularly accountable for the way they represent co-religionists in political life, into the democratic mainstream. With political organization and especially partisanship, the fact of pluralism is made concrete for democratic purposes. (shrink)

Nursing on paper: therapeutic letters in nursing practice This paper offers a selected piece of interpretive research extracted from the context of a larger research study. The hermeneutic research inquiry described in this paper involved the examination of the nursing and family therapy intervention of therapeutic letters. It incorporated the textual interpretation of 11 therapeutic letters, clinical sessions with three families, clinical team discussions, and research interviews with four family members and three nurse clinicians who participated in the writing of (...) the letters. This particular paper extracts segments of the research related to the letters received by two participants, as well as some general findings, with a focus on the possibilities and influences of therapeutic letters in nursing practice. The findings of this research offer suggestions, not as a template, but as an inspiration and evocation to write therapeutic letters that address the obligation of meeting people experiencing illness at the point of their suffering, with words and questions that invite relationship, reflection, and are large enough to sustain a meeting. (shrink)

Revolución y colonización en el pensamiento crítico sobre Orígenes.

Drug testing is widely deployed in the United States throughout the public and private sectors. This case study uses two emergent drug-testing technologies—hair analysis and the sweat patch—as examples of techniques of governance that should be subjected to the political equivalent of strict scrutiny. The article contributes to conceptual debates in science and technology studies, arguing that the study of social structure and subject formation should be integral rather than epiphenomenal to analysis in the transdisciplinary field of science and technology (...) studies. The article contextualizes the development and deployment of drug-testing technologies within the structural and epistemological categories of racial and ethnic difference, gender, sexuality, and class formation. Conflicts between proponents of the technologies and critical advocates who seek to constrain their use mark sites of productive theoretical engagement with structural sociology, racial formation theory, critical race theory, and feminist critique.1 Finally, the article demonstrates how STS analyses can contribute to the struggles of strategic counterpublics as they advocate for changing the meaning and material consequences of suspect technologies. (shrink)

There is a disconnect between the academy on the one hand, and the public, the Congress, and the courts on the other, with regard to punishment in the United States. The academy has highlighted the extraordinarily troubling implications of the mass imprisonment of the past two decades, the racial disparities, the social dislocation to poor communities and communities of color, the impact on this democracy of felon disenfranchisement, the extent to which retribution has surpassed all other purposes of punishment, displacing (...) any effort to determine "what works" to reduce crime. But the public is barely a participant in these discussions. If it reads the tabloids, watches television, or surfs the internet, it hears an entirely different story, a story about dangerous crime rates and impending doom, a story about fear and retribution. And so long as it hears that story, it will support ever more punitive laws, and rail against judges who are widely perceived to be lenient.The story is in fact more complex, the proverbial "good news" and "bad news." The good news is that the public may not be as punitive as the media and politicians suggest, if they are given the facts. They understand sentencing and individualized treatment. They can tell the difference between the king pin and the mule, between the postal worker who steals a check and the Enron executive who rapes a company. The bad news is that courts, who know the individual facts, nevertheless face extraordinary pressures to be tough, no matter what the offense. (shrink)

The following statement is a report of the Committee on Philosophy in Education of the American Philosophical Association and was approved by the Association's Board of Officers in December, 1958. The Committee was composed of the following: C. W. Hendel, Chairman, H. G. Alexander, R. M. Chisholm, Max Fisch, Lucius Garvin, Douglas Morgan, A. E. Murphy, Charner Perry and R. G. Turnbull. Primary responsibility for the preparation of this report belonged to a subcommittee composed of Douglas N. Morgan, Chairman, (...) and Charner Perry. (shrink)

The morality of human beings, defined here as our ability to determine whether our actions are right or wrong, depends not just on following rules but also on understanding the impact of our actions on another person. How we understand the impact of our actions on another person depends on our state of consciousness, which is mediated by our brain and nervous system. We describe how we understand our morality to flow naturally from the biological state we are living in (...) and how we see our biology and our morality as mutually interactive. A change in one changes the other. Another way of saying this is that changing either our morality or our biology changes both—changes who we are and what we do. (shrink)

The impact of recent changes in public health insurance on community‐based health‐care in the USARecent changes in US government‐funded healthcare insurance are having profound impacts on all types of community‐based health‐care, reducing access to care by vulnerable populations. This article traces the impacts of recent policies on a range of community institutions in which nurses play a critical role, such as health centers, highlighting the effects on access to care and the survival of non‐profit services in less‐advantaged communities. In general, (...) the new policies shifted revenues into fixed payment per client contracts (capitation) paid to for‐profit managed care organizations and away from non‐profit community services. The full impact of this competitive, market‐oriented system of health services has just begun to be felt. The uncertainties and dissatisfactions assure continued activity to change current conditions, including efforts by groups that seek greater access to health services for all populations and security for committed providers and personnel, including nurses. (shrink)

Contemporary developments in sport pose a powerful challenge to the historical connections between gender, physicality, and power. This process is examined through an analysis of the production of gender in women's ice hockey. Drawing from fieldwork and interviews with players and coaches who participate at elite levels, the author considers the place of physicality in the practice of women's hockey. The analysis suggests that while women's hockey provides an important challenge to historical constructions of gender, the challenge to masculine hegemony (...) is weakened by its construction as an alternative to men's hockey, the version of the sport that “really counts.”. (shrink)

The Law School Admission Test is a half-day standardized exam designed primarily to test the logical reasoning skills of potential law school students. A traditional course in introductory logic does not adequately prepare students for the LSAT. Here I describe the sections of the test, identifying the relevant logic skills students must develop in order to complete them successfully in the time allotted. Then, drawing on my experience teaching a three-week “Logic for the LSAT” course in May 2005, I discuss (...) the main issues you will need to address should you decide to offer such a course. (shrink)

Corporate scandals brought the issue of corporate governance to the forefront of the agendas of lawmakers and regulators in the early 2000s. As a result, Congress, the New York Stock Exchange, and the NASDAQ enacted standards to improve the quality of corporate governance, thereby enhancing the quantity and quality of disclosures by listed companies. We investigate the relationship between corporate governance strength and the quality of disclosures in pre- and post-regulation time periods. If cross-sectional differences in corporate governance policies affect (...) the quality of financial disclosures, the quality of information available to analysts varies with such policies. Specifically, higher quality disclosures, produced as a result of strong corporate governance, should lead to more accurate and less dispersed analysts’ forecasts. Our analysis suggests that voluntary implementation of stronger corporate governance enhanced the quality of disclosures in the pre-regulation period; however, exceeding current corporate governance standards does not appear to result in higher quality disclosures post-regulation. These results suggest that SOX and the stronger regulations enacted by U.S. exchanges were effective in reducing variation in the quality of financial information available to investors. (shrink)

: Gail Mason's Spectacle of Violence undertakes an important project in confronting a number of serious questions about definitions of violence and power, and about the nature of experience, subjectivity, and mind/body dualisms. Hartsock's comments on the book focus on issues of experience, embodiment, and standpoint theories.