BackgroundThe Health Research Council of New Zealand is the first major government funding agency to use a lottery to allocate research funding for their Explorer Grant scheme. This is a somewhat controversial approach because, despite the documented problems of peer review, many researchers believe that funding should be allocated solely using peer review, and peer review is used almost ubiquitously by funding agencies around the world. Given the rarity of alternative funding schemes, there is interest in hearing from the first (...) cohort of researchers to ever experience a lottery. Additionally, the Health Research Council of New Zealand wanted to hear from applicants about the acceptability of the randomisation process and anonymity of applicants.MethodsThis paper presents the results of a survey of Health Research Council applicants from 2013 to 2019. The survey asked about the acceptability of using a lottery and if the lottery meant researchers took a different approach to their application.ResultsThe overall response rate was 39%, with 30% from applicants in the years 2013 to 2018, and 68% for those in the year 2019 who were not aware of the funding result. There was agreement that randomisation is an acceptable method for allocating Explorer Grant funds with 63% in favour and 25% against. There was less support for allocating funds randomly for other grant types with only 40% in favour and 37% against. Support for a lottery was higher amongst those that had won funding. Multiple respondents stated that they supported a lottery when ineligible applications had been excluded and outstanding applications funded, so that the remaining applications were truly equal. Most applicants reported that the lottery did not change the time they spent preparing their application.ConclusionsThe Health Research Council’s experience through the Explorer Grant scheme supports further uptake of a modified lottery. (shrink)

The principal findings of experimental economics are that impersonal exchange in markets converges in repeated interaction to the equilibrium states implied by economic theory, under information conditions far weaker than specified in the theory. In personal, social, and economic exchange, as studied in two-person games, cooperation exceeds the prediction of traditional game theory. This book relates these two findings to field studies and applications and integrates them with the main themes of the Scottish Enlightenment and with the thoughts of F. (...) A. Hayek. (shrink)

A considerable body of evidence now documents, beyond reasonable doubt, biological and health risk factors for crime and violence. Nevertheless, intervention and prevention efforts with offenders have avoided biological interventions, in part due to past misuses of biological research and the challenges that biological predispositions to crime raise. This article reviews the empirical literature on two biological intervention approaches, omega-3 supplementation and transcranial direct current stimulation. Emerging research on these relatively benign interventions suggests that increased omega-3 intake through dietary intervention (...) and prefrontal upregulation using non-invasive brain stimulation may show some initial promise in reducing antisocial behavior. The ethical issues related to mandated and offered biological interventions within the criminal justice system are discussed. (shrink)

The extraordinary story of Krishnamurti, hailed early in life as the messiah for the 20th century, is told here in the light of a century of changing spiritual attitudes. It is a tale of mysticism, sexual scandals, religious fervor and chicanery, out of which emerged one of the most influential thinkers of modern times. Krishnamurti was "discovered" as a young boy on a beach in India by members of the Theosophical Society, convinced that they had found the new world leader, (...) a spiritual savior as historic and as influential as Jesus himself. By the 1920s he was attracting worldwide press attention and people flocked to his talks in the thousands. In 1922, Krishnamurti broke with the society and set out on a teaching mission of his own as a secular philosopher of spirituality. He ultimately had a career that spanned six decades, founded seven schools, published 50 books and encompassed thousands of talks. This extraordinary story is told for the first time by Roland Vernon in the full light of 20th-century attitudes in a narrative that is as compelling as any novel. (shrink)

The book also points to some of the ways in which polities currently termed 'liberal democracies' fall clearly short of the values that might legitimize them.

Cosmopolitan theory suggests that we should shift our moral attention from the local to the global. Richard Vernon argues, however, that if we adopt cosmopolitan beliefs about justice we must re-examine our beliefs about political obligation. Far from undermining the demands of citizenship, cosmopolitanism implies more demanding political obligations than theories of the state have traditionally recognized. Using examples including humanitarian intervention, international criminal law, and international political economy, Vernon suggests we have a responsibility not to enhance risks (...) facing other societies and to assist them when their own risk-taking has failed. The central arguments in Cosmopolitan Regard are that what we owe to other societies rests on the same basis as what we owe to our own, and that a theory of cosmopolitanism must connect the responsibilities of citizens beyond their own borders with their obligations to one another"--Provided by publisher. (shrink)

Mark Vernon links the resources of the philosophical tradition with numerous illustrations from modern culture to ask what friendship is and how it relates to sex, work, politics and spirituality. Unusually, he argues that Plato and Nietzsche, as much as Aristotle and Aelred, should be put center stage. Their penetrating and occasionally tough insights are invaluable if friendship is to be a full, not merely sentimental, way of life for today.

Phosphoinositides modulate a plethora of functions including signal transduction and membrane trafficking. PtdInsPs are thought to consist of seven interconvertible species that localize to a specific organelle, to which they recruit a set of cognate effector proteins. Here, in reviewing the literature, we argue that this model needs revision. First, PtdInsPs can carry a variety of acyl chains, greatly boosting their molecular diversity. Second, PtdInsPs are more promiscuous in their localization than is usually acknowledged. Third, PtdInsP interconversion is likely achieved (...) through kinase-phosphatase enzyme complexes that coordinate their activities and channel substrates without affecting bulk substrate population. Additionally, we contend that despite hundreds of PtdInsP effectors, our attention is biased toward few proteins. Lastly, we recognize that PtdInsPs can act to nucleate coincidence detection at the effector level, as in PDK1 and Akt. Overall, better integrated models of PtdInsP regulation and function are not only possible but needed. Phosphoinositides are lipids that control many cellular functions. However, the field of PtdInsP signaling is dominated by several dogmatic notions. Here, we offer an updated glimpse on the current state of the field regarding molecular diversity, localization, organization of modifying enzymes, effector types, and effector organization. (shrink)

Evolutionary game theory and public goods games offer an important framework to understand cooperation during pandemics. From this perspective, the COVID-19 situation can be conceptualized as a dilemma where people who neglect safety precautions act as free riders, because they get to enjoy the benefits of decreased health risk from others’ compliance with policies despite not contributing to or even undermining public safety themselves. At the same time, humans appear to carry a suite of evolved psychological mechanisms aimed at curbing (...) free riding in order to ensure the continued provision of public goods, which can be leveraged to develop more effective measures to promote compliance with regulations. We also highlight factors beyond free riding that reduce compliance rates, such as the emergence of conspiratorial thinking, which seriously undermine the effectiveness of measures to suppress free riding. Together, the current paper outlines the social dynamics that occur in public goods dilemmas involving the spread of infectious disease, highlights the utility and limits of evolutionary game-theoretic approaches for COVID-19 management, and suggests novel directions based on emerging challenges to cooperation. (shrink)

Hydrogen is troublesome in any periodic table classification. This being so it may as well be placed in a position that confers desirable attributes to the arrangement of the elements, while notionally recognising its lineage to the group 1 alkali metals and the group 17 halogens. Since the noble gases bridge the halogens and the alkali metals, and hydrogen encompasses the transition from the alkali metals to the halogens, there is more to the idea of hydrogen over helium. (Meyer 1870, (...) p. 357) (Proust 1927, p. 559). (shrink)

The tropical rain-forest regions in Borneo Island have in place various tough environmental policies to manage the economic use of natural resources sustainably. Nevertheless, their biological landscapes are struggling against unprecedented ecological assault amid rapid industrial transformations which have involved massive and irreversible exploitation of land resources. The main reason behind this mismatch of sustainable resource management vis-à-vis unsustainable resource use is the failure on the part of the policy makers to act under the guidance of certain ethical virtues when (...) attempting to translate environmental rhetoric in print to concrete actions in reality. Ethical engagement with nature is pivotal in helping to stimulate genuine efforts in environmental conservation. Field research in the Borneo tropical rain-forest state of Sarawak, Malaysia is able to identify and evaluate the distinctive environmental attitudes, values, and practices of the indigenous communities, and their implications on Sarawak’s sustainable land-resource use and to reinforce the importance of ethical leadership in addressing a myriad of today’s environmental challenges. (shrink)

Examines independent documentary film production in India within a political context.

Michel Foucault’s notion of “biopower” has been a highly fertile concept in recent theory, influencing thinkers worldwide across a variety of disciplines and concerns. In The History of Sexuality: An Introduction, Foucault famously employed the term to describe “a power bent on generating forces, making them grow, and ordering them, rather than one dedicated to impeding them, making them submit, or destroying them.” With this volume, Vernon W. Cisney and Nicolae Morar bring together leading contemporary scholars to explore the (...) many theoretical possibilities that the concept of biopower has enabled while at the same time pinpointing their most important shared resonances. Situating biopower as a radical alternative to traditional conceptions of power—what Foucault called “sovereign power”—the contributors examine a host of matters centered on life, the body, and the subject as a living citizen. Altogether, they pay testament to the lasting relevance of biopower in some of our most important contemporary debates on issues ranging from health care rights to immigration laws, HIV prevention discourse, genomics medicine, and many other topics. (shrink)

Examines allegory in H lderlin's later work, exploring subjects such as Freud and Derrida's views of mourning, and offering original readings of works including Impossible Ode, Mnemosyne, and The Churchyard. Originally published in German as Laub voll Trauer: H lderlins spSte Allegorie in 1991 by Wilhelm Fink Verlag. Annotation c. by Book News.

The questions that my paper shall pursue are: 1) What path leads from Deleuze’s early writings to his latter-day conception of a life, and 2) What can such a conception of life mean? Our path will trace a reversal and a return, respectively, through phenomenology to Bergson. For Deleuze, a genuine concept of a life is thinkable, only when the phenomenological subject, which Deleuze considers an illusion, has been jettisoned, reabsorbed into the flux of immanence. This implies a return to (...) a century-old philosophical renewal, namely, the reformulation of the experience of time. (shrink)

Published in 1967, Voice and Phenomenon marked a crucial turning point in Derrida's thinking: the culmination of a 15-year-long engagement with the phenomenological tradition. It also introduced the concepts and themes that would become deconstruction. Voice and Phenomenon is a short book, but it can be an overwhelming text, particularly for inexperienced readers of Derrida's work. This is the first guide to clearly explain the structure of his argument, step by step.

The particular fascination of butterfly wings for developmental biologists (and others) lies in their spectacular array of colour patterns. The evolutionary and developmental relationships between these patterns have been analysed and we know something of the cell interactions involved in their formation(1). Now butterfly homologues of Drosophila wing‐patterning genes have been identified, and their expression patterns offer the first clues to the molecular mechanisms which specify wing colour patterns(2).

The formation of segments in the Drosophila early embryo is understood in greater detail than any other complex developmental process. Now, by studying other types of insect embryo, we can hope to deduce something of the ancestral mechanism of segmentation and the ways in which it has been modified in evolution. The parasitic wasp, Copidosoma floridanum, is spectacularly atypical of insects in that the small egg cell divides extensively, with no initial syncytial phase, and forms eventually some 2000 embryos(1). This (...) process raises intriguing questions about the control of embryonic polarity and segmentation. (shrink)

Previous empirical research has found mixed results for the impact of corporate social responsibility (CSR) investments on corporate financial performance (CFP). This paper contributes to the literature by exploring in a two stage investor decision-making model the relationship between a firm’s innovation effort, CSR, and financial performance. We simultaneously examine the impact of CSR on both accounting-based (financial health) and market-based (Tobin’s Q) financial performance measures. From a sample of top corporate citizens, we find that: (1) a firm’s social responsibility (...) commitment (CSR) contributes to its financial performance; (2) after controlling for investment in innovation activities, CSR continues to have a positive impact on a firm’s financial performance; (3) the customer dimension of CSR has a positive effect on both CFP measures, whereas the employee dimension indicates a significant impact only on financial heath; and (4) the community relation dimension of CSR only affects the market-based CFP measure of firms with high innovation intensity. (shrink)

In this essay, we read Derrida’s Theory and Practice seminar against the backdrop of the theme of the “death of philosophy,” prominent in 1960s French philosophy. This theme takes two forms—one Nietzschean-Heideggerian and the other Hegelian-Marxian. We summarize both before turning to Derrida’s treatment of Althusser’s views on the Hegelian-Marxian form of this death. Althusser posits a distinction between theory in the general sense and Theory as a designation for Marxist dialectical materialism. Derrida gives two specific criticisms of Althusser that (...) we discuss: (1) Althusser commits himself to a tautology, by arguing that Theory only makes explicit what is implicit already in Marxist practice; (2) Althusser ultimately establishes the priority of practice over theory. We refute both of these charges before concluding that, prior to the distinction between theory and practice, is the world itself; and presenting itself to us as unthinkable, the world places the demands upon us that it be engaged with, in theory and in practice. (shrink)

Avia Pasternak’s Responsible Citizens, Irresponsible States makes a case for concluding that ‘intentional citizens’ of states should be held liable, in the sense of being chargeable for remedial costs, when their state has caused wrongful damage to another state. In making this case, the book steers a course between purely ascriptive views that assign liability on the basis of membership alone, and intentionalist views that require a stronger connection with the fault. The exemptions from liability that the book acknowledges, however, (...) may raise questions about its overall case, by implicating more individualized ideas of intention. Even so, the argument may be read as a compelling forward-looking warning about the risks of citizenship. (shrink)

While neo-classical analysis works well for studying impersonal exchange in markets, it fails to explain why people conduct themselves the way they do in their personal relationships with family, neighbors, and friends. In Humanomics, Nobel Prize-winning economist Vernon L. Smith and his long-time co-author Bart J. Wilson bring their study of economics full circle by returning to the founder of modern economics, Adam Smith. Sometime in the last 250 years, economists lost sight of the full range of human feeling, (...) thinking, and knowing in everyday life. Smith and Wilson show how Adam Smith's model of sociality can re-humanize twenty-first century economics by undergirding it with sentiments, fellow feeling, and a sense of propriety - the stuff of which human relationships are built. Integrating insights from The Theory of Moral Sentiments and the Wealth of Nations into contemporary empirical analysis, this book shapes economic betterment as a science of human beings. (shrink)

In this paper I employ the notion of the ‘thought of the outside’ as developed by Michel Foucault, in order to defend the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze against the criticisms of ‘elitism,’ ‘aristocratism,’ and ‘political indifference’—famously leveled by Alain Badiou and Peter Hallward. First, I argue that their charges of a theophanic conception of Being, which ground the broader political claims, derive from a misunderstanding of Deleuze’s notion of univocity, as well as a failure to recognize the significance of the (...) concept of multiplicity in Deleuze’s thinking. From here, I go on to discuss Deleuze’s articulation of the ‘dogmatic image of thought,’ which, insofar as it takes ‘recognition’ as its model, can only ever think what is already solidified and sedimented as true, in light of existing structures and institutions of power. Then, I examine Deleuze’s reading of Foucault and the notion of the ‘thought of the outside,’ showing the ‘outside’ as the unthought that lies at the heart of thinking itself, as both its condition and its impossibility. Insofar as it is essential to thinking itself, finally, I argue that the passage of thought to the outside is not an absolute flight out of this world, as Hallward claims, but rather, a return of the different that constitutes the Self for Deleuze. Thinking is an ongoing movement of deterritorialization and reterritorialization, or as Foucault says, death and life. Thinking, as Deleuze understands it, is essentially creative; it reconfigures the virtual, thereby literally changing the world. Thinking is therefore, according to Deleuze, thoroughly political. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain (...) in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

In this paper I explore two distinct but related emphases in Deleuze's later philosophy, both on his own and in collaboration with Félix Guattari, having to do with literature. The first is the emphasis on the work of literature as an assemblage whereby the author constructs lines of flight in the pursuit of self-experimentation and self-transformation. The second is the rejection of metaphor across Deleuze's work. I use Difference and Repetition to chart the origins of these emphases, by unpacking the (...) metaphysics of language contained in Difference and Repetition. I first recount the basic structure of Deleuze's intensive ontology, before going on to discuss the way in which the ‘fundamental encounter’ forces thought to formulate Ideas, which, as they are transmitted through the subject, alter her nature. This self-transformation is tantamount to a kind of ‘death’, whereby one is continually explicated, but this explication implies the transcendental Other-structure at the end of Difference and Repetition, wherein the Other, through language, gives birth to ‘possible worlds’. I end with the development of an unexplored concept in Difference and Repetition, the loquendum, which is what must be spoken precisely because it is inexpressible, the purely intensive. Language comes closest to this intensive use in its aesthetic, poetic, literary modes whereby authors distort their own languages. (shrink)

In this paper, I trace the concept of ‘becomings’, most thoroughly articulated in the tenth plateau of A Thousand Plateaus, as it relates to the notion of the writer as sorcerer. More precisely, my aim is to articulate how it is that Deleuze and Guattari conceptualise the writer as really effecting what they understand as ‘becomings’. My thesis is that if the writer is a sorcerer, capable of enabling real becomings, it is because language itself, for Deleuze and Guattari, is (...) bodily and material, and the author, particularly the literary author, has the ability to disrupt language's representational domain of sense, causing language to hum with the intensive vitality that puts it in closest proximity to the body, from whence language emerges in the first place. We shall first look to Bergson and Spinoza, from whom Deleuze and Guattari abstract their intensive conception of the body in A Thousand Plateaus. From here we will outline the apparent progression of becomings in the tenth plateau. Finally, we will look to the Kafka book as outlining the material and affective capacities of literature. (shrink)

The periodic table can be simply demarcated into four classes of metal and four classes of nonmetal. Such a treatment has been obstructed by the traditional view of metalloids as in-between elements; understandable but needless boundary squabbles; and a group-by-group view of the reactive nonmetals. Setting aside these limiting notions reveals some interesting patterns and facilitates teaching and learning the periodic table.

Science and Homosexualities is the first anthology by historians of science to examine European and American scientific research on sexual orientation since the coining of the word "homosexual" almost 150 years ago. This collection is particularly timely given the enormous scientific and popular interest in biological studies of homosexuality, and the importance given such studies in current legal, legislative and cultural debates concerning gay civil rights. However, scientific and popular literature discussing the biology of sexual orientation have been short-sighted in (...) representing it as objective, new scientific work. This volume demonstrates that the quest for the biological "cause" of homosexuality and other sexualities is as old as the term itself. These essays explore the active role experimental subjects played in shaping scientific theories of homosexuality and cultural perceptions of sexuality and sexual identity. Finally this anthology studies the way in which this doctor-patient interaction shaped not only scientific theories of homosexuality, but also cultural perceptions and self-identities as well. Contributors include: Garland E. Allen, Erin G. Carlston, Julian Carter, Alice D. Dreger, Anne Fausto-Sterling, Margaret Gibson, Stephanie Kenen, Hubert Kennedy, Harry Oosterhuis, James Steakley, Richard Pillard, Jennifer Terry. (shrink)

In the fall of 1957 the University of California Press expanded Arnheim’s 1933 book _Film_ by four essays and brought that landmark work back into print as _Film as Art._ Now nearly fifty years after that re-edition, the book continues to occupy an important place in the literature of film. Arnheim’s method, provocative in this age of technological wizardry, was to focus on the way art in film was derived from that medium’s early limitations: no sound, no color, no three-dimensional (...) depth. (shrink)