If rapid growth (rap) mutants of Escherichia coli could be obtained, these might prove a valuable contribution to fields as diverse as growth rate control, biotechnology and the regulation of the bacterial cell cycle. To obtain rap mutants, a dnaQ mutator strain was grown for four and a half days continuously in batch culture. At the end of the selection period, there was no significant change in growth rate. This result means that selecting rap mutants may require an alternative strategy (...) and a number of such alternatives are discussed. (shrink)

To discover a unifying theory of biology, it is necessary first to believe in its existence and second to seek its elements. Such a theory would explain the regulation of the cell cycle, differentiation and the origin of life. Some elements of the theory may be obtained by considering both eukaryotic and prokaryotic cell cycles. These elements include cytoskeletal proteins, calcium, cyclins, protein kinase C, phosphorylation, transcriptional sensing, autocatalytic gene expression and the physical properties of lipids. Other more exotic candidate (...) elements include the dynamic enzoskeleton, ATP generation, mechanotransduction, the piezoelectric effect and resonance. Bringing these disparate elements together — and discovering others — will require extensive collaborations between specialists from different sciences. This can only be achieved within the context of an integrated approach to biology. (shrink)

There are strong indications that many consumers are switching towards more socially and environmentally responsible products and services, reflecting a shift in consumer values indicated in several countries. However, little is known about the motives that drive some toward, or deter others from, higher levels of ethical concern and action in their purchasing decisions. Following a qualitative investigation using ZMET and focus group discussions, a questionnaire was developed and administered to a representative sample of consumers; nearly 1,000 usable questionnaires were (...) collected. The degree of awareness, concern and action regarding 16 ethical issues was quantified, using a measure developed from the Stages of Change concept within the Transtheoretical model. Motivations for ethical behaviour, in relation to each individual’s most salient ethical issue, were investigated using initially 22 motive statements within the framework of the Decisional Balance Scale (DBS). The findings suggest that the DBS and Stages model have an explanatory value within the ethical decision-making context, and that the motives identified do reflect the Decisional Balance Constructs. Indeed the study suggests that respondents’ motivational attitudes are a function of their stage of ethical awareness, concern and action. Therefore, the Decisional Balance Scale may well prove useful for designing appropriate interventions and communications to facilitate movement towards more ethical decision-making. These findings yield strategic insight for communicating messages to ethical consumers and for better understanding their purchasing decisions. (shrink)

Aberrant consumer behaviour costs firms millions of pounds a year, and the Internet has provided young techno-literate consumers with a new medium to exploit businesses. This paper addresses Internet related ethics and describes the ways in which young consumers misdemean on the Internet and their attitudes towards these. Using a sample of 219 generation Y consumers, the study identified 24 aberrant behaviours which grouped into five factors; illegal, questionable activities, hacking related, human Internet trade and downloading. Those perceived as least (...) wrong were; "Downloading movie and music files from the Internet for free". The consequences of these behaviours have implications for educators, consumer policy and marketers. (shrink)

The most public-facing forms of contemporary Darwinism happily promote its worldview ambitions. Popular works, by the likes of Richard Dawkins, deflect associations with eugenics and social Darwinism, but also extend the reach of Darwinism beyond biology into social policy, politics, and ethics. Critics of the enterprise fall into two categories. Advocates of Intelligent Design and secular philosophers (like Mary Midgley and Thomas Nagel) recognise it as a worldview and argue against its implications. Scholars in the rhetoric of science or science (...) communication, however, typically take the view that Darwinism isn't a worldview, but a scientific theory, which has been improperly embellished by some; they uphold the distinction between is and ought and argue that science is restricted to the former. This prompts an is–ought problem on another level. I catalogue the ways in which Darwinism plainly is a worldview and why commentators' beliefs that it ought not to be distorts their analysis. Hence, it is their own worldview that precludes them from accepting Darwinism's worldview implications. (shrink)

Comprehension and recall of informed consent was assessed after the study closure in the parents/guardians of a birth cohort of children participating in an intensive three-year diarrhoeal surveillance. A structured questionnaire was administered by field workers who had not participated in the study's follow-up protocol. Of 368 respondents, 329 stated that the study was adequately explained during enrolment, but only 159 could recall that it was on diarrhoea. Nearly half of the respondents stated that they would not have participated if (...) free medical treatment was not provided, although the free medical clinic was not offered at enrolment. Spousal approval was the most important factor in the decision to participate. In the multivariate analysis, maternal education was associated with increased awareness about the disease under study: mothers without any formal education had the lowest awareness. Despite a high compliance with the study protocol, retention of understanding about the research study was low over a long period of time. Although the local government provides free healthcare in the study area, respondents cited free healthcare as an important reason for participation, highlighting the need for true health equity before meaningful informed consent can be obtained. (shrink)

Background: When adolescent boys experience close, secure relationships with their parents and peers, the implications are potentially far reaching, including lower levels of mental health problems in adolescence and young adulthood. Here we use rare prospective intergenerational data to extend our understanding of the impact of adolescent attachments on subsequent postpartum mental health problems in early fatherhood.Methods: At age 17–18 years, we used an abbreviated Inventory of Parent and Peer Attachment to assess trust, communication, and alienation reported by 270 male (...) participants in their relationships with mothers, fathers, and peers. More than a decade later, we assessed the adult males, now fathers, at 12 months postpartum for symptoms of depression, anxiety, and stress. Logistic regression was used to examine the extent to which attachment dimensions predicted paternal postpartum mental health, adjusting for potential confounding, and with assessment for interactions between parent and peer attachments.Results: Trust in mothers and peers, and good communication with fathers during adolescence, were associated with 5 to 7 percentage point reductions in postpartum mental health symptoms in early fatherhood. Weak evidence of parent-peer interactions suggested secure attachments with either parent or peer may compensate for an insecure attachment with the other.Conclusions: Our results suggest that fostering trust and communication in relationships that adolescent boys have with parents and peers may have substantial effects on rates of paternal postpartum mental health problems. The protective benefits may be preventative in intergenerational cycles of risk for mental health problems. (shrink)

Dogma’s Primrose Path addresses how the perpetual presence of ignorance, poverty, and war is accepted by most people as an inevitable consequence of human life. The author argues that this almost universal acceptance is a dogmatically learned and programmed condition that needs to be overcome through reason and fact.

The primrose path and prisoner's dilemma paradigms may require cognitive (executive) control: The active maintenance of context representations in lateral prefrontal cortex to provide top-down support for specific behaviors in the face of short delays or stronger response tendencies. This perspective suggests further tests of whether altruism is a type of self-control, including brain imaging, induced affect, and dual-task studies.

A l’aube de nos premiers pas, nous découvrîmes la position debout qui nous permit de voir le monde sous un autre angle. Puis pas à pas nous explorâmes de nouvelles trajectoires et un autre rapport à l’espace.C'est peu après ces découvertes que de notre corps jaillit un langage verbal singulier, imprégné de nos mouvements.Il arrive parfois que la rencontre d'un objet nous donne la chance de réitérer ailleurs ces expériences.Ce fut pour moi le cas lorsque je découvris le sextant.

“[T]he Precautionary Principle still has neither a commonly accepted definition nor a set of criteria to guide its implementation. “There is”, Freestone … cogently observes, “a certain paradox in the widespread and rapid adoption of the Precautionary Principle”: While it is applauded as a “good thing”, no one is quite sure about what it really means or how it might be..

Using a simple learning agent, we show that learning self-control in the primrose path experiment does parallel learning cooperation in the prisoner's dilemma. But Rachlin's claim that “there is no essential difference between self-control and altruism” is too strong. Only iterated prisoner's dilemmas played against reciprocators are reduced to self-control problems. There is more to cooperation than self-control and even altruism in a strong sense.

The model function for induction of Goodmans's composite predicate "Grue" was examined by analysis. Two subpredicates were found, each containing two further predicates which are mutually exclusive (green and blue, observed before and after t). The rules for the inductive processing of composite predicates were studied with the more familiar predicate "blellow" (blue and yellow) for violets and primroses. The following rules for induction were violated by processing "grue": From two subpredicates only one (blue after t) appears in the conclusion. (...) As a statement about a future and unobserved condition this subpredicate, however, is not projectible for induction whereas the only suitable predicate (green before t) does not show up in the conclusion. In a disjunction "a v b" where "a" is true and "b" false the disjunction is true. When, however, the only true component is dropped, what remains is necessarily false. An analogous mistake may be observed in the processing of "grue", where the only true component (green) was dropped in the conclusion. - As a potent criterion for correct inductions a check of the necessity of the conclusions is recommended. (shrink)

“Stoic Constructions of Virtue in The Vicar of Wakefield” reconceives the commonplace account of the opposition between Stoic and sentimental ethics. My examination of the influence Stoic doctrines had on eighteenth-century moral philosophy regarding universal sympathy, virtue’s disinterest, and its rewards, informs my reading of Primrose’s trials. I contend that Goldsmith presents the limitless extension of sympathy as the basis of disinterested industry within a commercial economy. He thus establishes virtue’s rigor, not its compromise.

Gunn told me once that he had gone on a picnic on Primrose Hill with Ted and Sylvia. What was she like? She seemed a very good mother, Thom said, recalling the picnic basket she had prepared, adding that famous people never seemed to behave characteristically when he met them. Although neither Gunn nor Plath could have known it, they would come to have something deeply personal in common. Gunn's mother was a suicide who left her body for her (...) children (in her case, two teenage sons) to find in the morning. His poem about it is called “The Gas-Poker.”Readers may ask whether we do not already know enough about Sylvia and Ted. The bite mark on his cheek where she drew blood the night they met, the cup of warm milk set out for her toddlers to find with her body in the morning. This detail—the cup of warm milk cooled to frigid temperatures during a night that was one of the coldest on record locally—is, for me, the hardest to forgive. But Clark, drawing on a vast reservoir of evidence and anecdote amassed over years, is able to construct a more nuanced impression of Plath than we have had before. There are missteps, as when Clark complains of Plath's “popular, clichéd image as the Marilyn Monroe of the literati.” No one who has ever heard the breathy voice of Monroe singing “Happy Birthday, Mr. President” and compared it to the plummy, matronly, decidedly upper-class voice Plath cultivated for the BBC can believe that any such cliché exists. Plath mythologized her own life, but Clark succeeds in weaving a tight fabric of minutiae that permits the reader to see what Plath was doing at almost any hour of any particular day. In this steady neutral light, she becomes more fully human. (shrink)

We are accustomed to thinking that a primrose is "concrete" and a prime number is "abstract," that "roundness" is more abstract than "round," and that "property" is more abstract than "roundness." In reality, the relation between "abstract" and "concrete" is more like the (non)relation between "abstract" and "concave," "concrete" being a sensory term [about what something feels like] and "abstract" being a functional term (about what the sensorimotor system is doing with its input in order to produce its output): (...) Feelings and things are correlated, but otherwise incommensurable. Everything that any sensorimotor system such as ourselves manages to categorize successfully is based on abstracting sensorimotor "affordances" (invariant features). The rest is merely a question of what inputs we can and do categorize, and what we must abstract from the particulars of each sensorimotor interaction in order to be able to categorize them correctly. To categorize, in other words, is to abstract. And not to categorize is merely to experience. Borges's Funes the Memorious, with his infinite, infallible rote memory, is a fictional hint at what it would be like not to be able to categorize, not to be able to selectively forget and ignore most of our input by abstracting only its reliably recurrent invariants. But a sensorimotor system like Funes would not really be viable, for if something along those lines did exist, it could not categorize recurrent objects, events or states, hence it could have no language, private or public, and could at most only feel, not function adaptively (hence survive). Luria's "S" in "The Mind of a Mnemonist" is a real-life approximation whose difficulties in conceptualizing were directly proportional to his difficulties in selectively forgetting and ignoring. Watanabe's "Ugly Duckling Theorem" shows how, if we did not selectively weight some properties more heavily than others, everything would be equally (and infinitely and indifferently) similar to everything else. Miller's "Magical Number Seven Plus or Minus Two" shows that there are (and must be) limitations on our capacity to process and remember information, both in our capacity to discriminate relatively (detect sameness/difference, degree-of-similarity) and in our capacity to discriminate absolutely (identify, categorize, name), The phenomenon of categorical perception shows how selective feature-detection puts a Whorfian "warp" on our feelings of similarity in the service of categorization, compressing within-category similarities and expanding between-category differences by abstracting and selectively filtering inputs through their invariant features, thereby allowing us to sort and name things reliably. Language does allow us to acquire categories indirectly through symbolic description.... (shrink)

Aristotle and the biologists who follow him have led us down a primrose path for centuries. The biological possibility of classifying species led Aristotle to assume that logic and the human mind did or should move in the same way. All men are mortal; Socrates is a man; therefore Socrates is a mortal—is true. And the human mind can also follow the universal rules of genus and species. The problem is, however, that the world was so created that human (...) value systems do not parallel this neat structure. Not all of anything is all of something else, other than biologically or logically. Where values are concerned, God evidently opted for a dual system, one where different orders operate according to different principles. Spinoza thought all possible orders were parallel in structure. This is the rationalist’s assumption, and it would be easier for us if it were true. But God opted for greater complexity, or so it seems. (shrink)

Living organisms are caught between a hammer and an anvil, evolutionarily speaking. On the one hand, they need to buffer the influences of genetic mutations and environmental stresses if they are to develop normally and maintain a coherent and functional form. On the other, stabiliz- ing one’s development too much may mean not being able to respond at all to changes in the environment and starting down the primrose path to extinction. On page 618 of this issue, Queitsch et (...) al.1 propose that, in plants, the balance between stability and the potential for change is made possible in part through a protein involved in ‘heat- shock responses’ in a wide variety of species, from plants to insects. (shrink)