The extracellular‐signal regulated kinases 1/2 (ERK or ERKs) are involved in the regulation of important neuronal functions, including neuronal plasticity in normal and pathological conditions. We present findings that support the notion that the kinetics and localization of ERK are intrinsically linked, in that the duration of ERK activation dictates its subcellular compartmentalization and/or trafficking. The latter, in turn, dictates whether ERK‐expressing cells would enter a program of cell death, survival or differentiation. We summarize experimental data showing that chronic activation (...) of ERK plays a role in the mechanisms that trigger neurodegeneration. We also discuss how MKPs, members of the subclass of dual specificity phosphatases, might be the link between ERK kinetics and its subcellular localization. BioEssays 25:1085–1095, 2003. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

The discovery of neurogenesis and neural stem cells (NSC) in the adult CNS has overturned a long‐standing and deep‐routed “dogma” in neuroscience, established at the beginning of the 20th century. This dogma lasted for almost 90 years and died hard when NSC were finally isolated from the adult mouse brain. The scepticism in accepting adult neurogenesis has now turned into a rush to find applications to alleviate or cure the devastating diseases that affect the CNS. Here we highlight a number (...) of methodological, technical and conceptual drawbacks responsible for the historical denial of adult neurogenesis. Furthermore, we discuss old and new issues that need to be faced before NSC or endogenous neurogenesis can safely enter into the doctor's bag for therapies. BioEssays 30:135–145, 2008. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Within Germany, Carl Schmitt's status as a political thinker is on a par with Machiavelli and Hobbes. With the rise in neo-conservatism and authoritarian liberalism in less developed countries such as Chile and Singapore, Renato Christi believes Schmitt's theories will become of considerable importance. Nazi Third Reich. His political theories provide an insight into the nature of Conservatism. well as extrapolate possibilities for the future.

In this article, I present a five-part critique of the main aspects of the second edition of Music Matters by David Elliott and Marissa Silverman. This edition further develops their praxial philosophy, comprising topics on the nature and value of music education from a normative perspective, which in turn is developed to suit all musical education contexts. My analysis is organized in five main arguments concerning, first, an absence of historicity; second, the adoption of universalist premises; third, the inconsistency between (...) the concepts of personhood and musical value; fourth, the adoption of a normative philosophy; and fifth, the relation between synthesis and content in the chapters. I argue that the book is constructed from a universalistic perspective and that its premises have epistemological inconsistencies. I offer a critical analysis of this extensive work for the purpose of engaging in a dialogue about themes which are relevant to the further development of philosophical thought in music education. (shrink)

Neste artigo, examino a duplicidade de sentidos que a tese pluralista “os seres são múltiplos” ou “se há múltiplos seres” comporta: pode significar uma multiplicade numérica, isto é: a tese de que há mais de uma coisa no mundo, assim como pode significar que uma mesma coisa possui mais de um atributo. Incialmente, argumento que Sócrates estava consciente desta ambiguidade, pois as duas compreensões de pluralismo representam perspectivas complementares de uma mesma posição filosófica. Segundo minha interpretação, o reconhecimento dessa ambiguidade (...) permite melhor entender a crítica de Sócrates ao monismo eleático, sua defesa da Teoria das Ideias e sua distinção entre Formas transcendentes e propriedades imanentes. Estes dois sentidos de multiplicidade farão ainda parte da estratégia utilizada por Parmênides na sua contra-argumentação à solução socrática ao paradoxo de Zenão. (shrink)

In this paper, I defend that the historiographical category of eclecticism is a correct way to describe the epistemology and the exegetical activity of the Anonymous commentator on Plato’s Theaetetus. In addition, I show that the interpretation of the platonic philosophy presented in this text not only presupposes an eclectic philosophical attitude, but also offers a conscious defense of a positive and philosophically relevant form of eclecticism. By eclecticism, I understand a method of inquiry based on the deliberate use of (...) hypotheses and arguments from different philosophical traditions. My claim is that Anon. intends to lay ground of his way of doing philosophy by attributing it to Plato and the platonic tradition. In doing so, Anon. provides us with a positive understanding of eclecticism as a legitimate methodology of philosophical investigation. (shrink)

Annotated logics were introduced by V.S. Subrahmanian as logical foundations for computer programming. One of the difficulties of these systems from the logical point of view is that they are not structural, i.e., their consequence relations are not closed under substitutions. In this paper we give systems of annotated logics that are equivalent to those of Subrahmanian in the sense that everything provable in one type of system has a translation that is provable in the other. Moreover these new systems (...) are structural. We prove that these systems are weakly congruential, namely, they have an infinite system of congruence 1-formulas. Moreover, we prove that an annotated logic is algebraizable (i.e., it has a finite system of congruence formulas,) if and only if the lattice of annotation constants is finite. (shrink)

Uma concepção de cosmopolitismo, de base eurocêntrica, é questionada por pensadores como K. A. Appiah, Walter Mignolo, Silviano Santiago entre outros, para buscar possíveis ressemantizações do termo no contexto contemporâneo, marcado pela globalização, pelo multiculturalismo e pela expansão das novas tecnologias de comunicação. Considerando esse confronto de noções de cosmopolitismo, indaga-se como se deu a interpretação do Brasil no início do século XX, quando recrudesceram as tensões entre cosmopolitismo e nacionalismo. Busca-se, por outro lado, confrontar tais interpretações com as que (...) surgem no início do século XXI, quando a nação vai deixando de ser o centro de um sistema de significação, em tempo heterogêneo e de globalização, em que se pode falar em “cosmopolitismo do pobre” (cosmopolitismo do subalterno), como formulou Silviano Santiago. (shrink)

Information and communication technologies are widely used in healthcare. However, there is not still a unified taxonomy for them. The lack of understanding of this phenomenon implies theoretical and ethical issues. This paper attempts to find out the basis for a classification, starting from a new perspective: the structural elements are obtained from the etymologies of the lexicon commonly used, that is words like telemedicine, telehealth, telecare and telecure. This will promote a better understanding of communication technologies; at the same (...) time, it will allow to draw some reflection about health, medicine and care, and their semantic and relational nature. (shrink)

Sometimes medical errors should not be disclosed. We report a case of semen samples exchange, during a homologous artificial insemination procedure, where a bioethics consultation was required. The bioethics consultation addressed ethical and legal elements in play, supporting non-disclosure to some of the subjects involved. Through a proper methodology, gathering factual and juridical elements, a consultant can show when a moral dilemma between values and rights—privacy versus fatherhood, in our case—is unsubstantial, in a given context, because of the groundlessness of (...) the value or the right itself. However, being the error elicited by organizational factors, a broader ethical pronouncement was needed. Under such circumstances, ethical evaluation should engage in a sort of ‘ethical-based root-cause analysis’, linking ethical principles to quality aims and showing the opportunity to integrate ethical methodology in healthcare management. From this perspective, errors may become an incentive to promote high-quality organizations, attending to the central value of person even through the organizational process. (shrink)

Few thinkers have left such an influence across such a diverse range of studies as Michel Foucault has. This book pays homage to that diversity by presenting a multidisciplinary series of analyses dedicated to the question of power today.

Partendo dal problema della dignità umana e della sua libertà come fondamento del pensiero popperiano, questo saggio approfondisce, attraverso un confronto aperto con alcune significative linee di pensiero, il valore rilevante che la lezione antropoetica di Karl Popper, finalizzata a porre in luce il “carattere speciale” della mente umana, assume nella realtà contemporanea.

This article is a belated contribution to a Common Knowledge symposium on the “unanticipated conceptual practice” of “anthropological philosophy.” The basic argument is that the groundwork for this emerging approach, associated foremost with Eduardo Viveiros de Castro's book Métaphysiques cannibales of 2009, was laid in the 1970s by the controversial French anthropologists Pierre and Hélène Clastres. It is argued that the Clastres took the intellectual practices of Guarani shamans and prophets as analogous to the those of ancient Greek philosophers but (...) also as sharply critical of the principles that underlay early Western metaphysics. (shrink)

In this study the influence of irrational beliefs and perfectionism on the emergence of competitive anxiety was investigated. While previous studies indicate that higher irrational beliefs predict greater competitive anxiety, in the present study it is hypothesized that this relationship is mediated by perfectionism. A serial atemporal multiple mediation analysis revealed that both adaptive and maladaptive perfectionism were significant partial mediators between irrational beliefs and competitive anxiety. The total score and all four subscale scores on irrational beliefs had both direct (...) and indirect effects on cognitive competitive anxiety, the latter effects mediated by both forms of perfectionism. Depreciation beliefs had a direct effect, and demandingness and awfulizing had indirect effects, on somatic competitive anxiety when both forms of perfectionism were entered as mediators. These findings suggest that both irrational beliefs and perfectionism influence the emergence of competitive anxiety, therefore rational emotive behavioral therapy with a focus upon perfectionism may be an effective means of reducing competitive anxiety in athletes. (shrink)