Canada has a marked shortfall between the supply and demand for kidneys for transplantation. Median wait times for deceased donor kidney transplantation vary from 5.8 years in British Columbia, 5.2 years in Manitoba and 4.5 years in Ontario to a little over 2 years in Quebec and Nova Scotia. Living donation provides a viable option for some, but not all people. Consequently, a small number of people travel abroad to undergo kidney transplantation by commercial means. The extent to which they (...) are aware of the potential risks to their health and the health of the kidney vendors is unclear. Travel abroad to obtain a kidney commercially i.e. transplant tourism (TT), raises ethical issues which include the exploitation of the poor, uncertainty of donor informed consent to nephrectomy, poor clinical care and lack of follow up for the donor, commodification of the body and inequity of access to medical care for donors. Also, TT widens socioeconomic disparities in access to transplantation, differing from the Canadian system of universal coverage for healthcare. The Canadian transplant community has discussed how to respond to patients who plan to travel abroad for TT or return with a purchased kidney. Unease rests in the tension between the duty to care for legitimate Canadian residents and the unwillingness to enable TT. This paper discusses three anonymized cases and the Canadian responses to TT as recorded in academic literature and a formal statement by relevant professional bodies. (shrink)

While it is known that reward induces attentional prioritization, it is not clear what effect reward-learning has when associated with stimuli that are not fully perceived. The masked priming paradigm has been extensively used to investigate the indirect impact of brief stimuli on response behavior. Interestingly, the effect of masked primes is observed even when participants choose their responses freely. While classical theories assume this process to be automatic, recent studies have provided evidence for attentional modulations of masked priming effects. (...) Most such studies have manipulated bottom-up or top-down modes of attentional selection, but the role of “newer” forms of attentional control such as reward-learning and selection history remains unclear. In two experiments, with number and arrow primes, we examined whether reward-mediated attentional selection modulates masked priming when responses are chosen freely. In both experiments, we observed that primes associated with high-reward lead to enhanced free-choice priming compared to primes associated with no-reward. The effect was seen on both proportion of choices and response times, and was more evident in the faster responses. In the slower responses, the effect was diminished. Our study adds to the growing literature showing the susceptibility of masked priming to factors related to attention and executive control. (shrink)

Current EEG research emphasizes gamma band coherence as a signature of functional integration, that is, the solution to the binding problem. We note that spatial patterns of coherent neural activity are also observed at other EEG frequencies. If these oscillations reflect Nunez's resonant modes, they offer a solution to the binding problem that emerges naturally from the architecture of cortical connections.

Like several other classes of hormones, the class of plant hormones called auxins exert myriad effects on cell development. While auxins are most noted for inducing cell elongation, they are also involved in cell division, cell differentiation, cell and organ polarity, and wound responsiveness. Consistent with this pleiotropy, is the recent identification of several putative auxin receptors that in theory could represent the primary elements of more than one auxin signal pathway leading to distinct responses or leading in parallel to (...) a single response. Our current working hypothesis is that some auxin‐mediated responses may be mediated by multiple receptors. We describe some of what is known about each of the new putative receptors and elaborate on the hypothesis using the example of cell elongation. Specifically for auxin‐induced elongation, we propose that two rapid events, specific gene transcription and cell wall acidification, are separately mediated by at least two receptors, acting in the nucleus and at the plasma membrane, respectively. (shrink)

Предназначено для представителей науки и образования, политических партий, общественных и религиозных организаций, органов государственного управления.

In domestic scientific and public opinion, interest in religion as a new worldview paradigm is very high. Today's attention to the Christian religion in our society is connected, in our opinion, with the specificity of its value system, which distinguishes it from other forms of consciousness: the idea of ​​God, the absolute, the eternity of moral norms. That is why its historical forms do not receive accurate characteristics and do not matter in the mass consciousness. Modern religious beliefs do not (...) always arise as a result of the direct influence of church preaching. The emerging religious values ​​are absorbed in a wide range of philosophical, artistic, ethical ideas, acting as a compensation for what is generally defined as spirituality. At the same time, the appeal to Christian values ​​became very popular. (shrink)

The relevance of the study of the problem of Christian axiology is due to the growing interest in religion and the associated change in world outlook and values ​​in contemporary Ukrainian society. The study of religious values ​​is caused by the urgent problem of finding universal moral values ​​of social development and clarifying the content, structure and nature of their functioning. The scientific study of religious values ​​is also relevant because this problem is closely linked to the value aspects of (...) political life. Christian values ​​are one of the most important factors influencing the formation and development of Ukrainian culture. (shrink)

According to Proudhon, before Kant, the believer and the philosopher moved “by an irresistible impulse,” asked themselves, “What is God!” They then asked themselves “Which, of all religions, is the best!” “In fact, if there does exist a Being superior to Humanity, there must also exist a system of the relations between this Being and Humanity. What then is this system! The search for the best religion is the second step that the human mind takes in reason and in faith. (...) Kant gave up these insolvable questions. He no longer asked himself what is God, and which is the best religion; he set about explaining the origin and development of the Idea of God; he undertook to work out the biography of this idea.” And the results he attained were as great as they were unexpected. “What we seek, what we see, in God, as Malebranche said ... is our own Ideal, the pure essence of Humanity ... The human soul does not become conscious of its Ego through premeditated contemplation, as the psychologists put it; the soul perceives something outside itself, as if it were a different Being face to face with itself, and it is this inverted image which it calls God. Thus morality, justice, order, law, are no longer things revealed from above, imposed upon our free will by a socalled Creator, unknown and ununderstandable; they are things that are proper and essential to us as our faculties and our organs, as our flesh and our blood. In two words religion and society are synonymous terms, man is as sacred to himself as if he were God.”. (shrink)