The four coauthors describe the twenty-five-year history of efforts of the Council of Learned Societies in Education (CLSE) to represent the interests of the social foundations of education in the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE), including the evolution of CLSE into the Council for the Social Foundations of Education and its recent departure from NCATE after a quarter century of successful involvement. The coauthors, each personally supportive of foundational involvement in national accreditation, delineate advantages gained by both (...) CLSE and NCATE during the quarter century of involvement, while also describing concerns and arguments that have led to the current disassociation of the Council for Social Foundations of Education (CSFE) fromNCATE. The article concludes with suggestions for the future and the coauthors' hope that this history and chronicle will provide incentive for reinvolvement of the foundations in national accreditation circles. (shrink)

This paper examines recent developments in U.K. utility regulation from a business ethics perspective. The regulatory framework that facilitated privatisation of the utility companies has foundations based upon free market principles involving a transfer from regulation to competitive markets wherever possible. Where competition is not feasible, continuing economic regulation is relied upon, designed to mirror the competitive market to induce, through comparative competition and the price capping mechanism, incentives for greater efficiency. The New Labour Government, having fundamentally reviewed this framework (...) when it came to office, has surprisingly endorsed its basic tenets. However, it wishes to superimpose social responsibility regulations designed to achieve social policy rather than economic objectives. This interventionist approach is in itself in conflict with the free market inspired regulatory framework but additionally, the imposition of social policy objectives creates fundamental ambiguities within the framework for the key stakeholders. The paper concludes that the Government''s policy, by eliciting stakeholder confusion and perverse behaviour, could be counter-productive but that ethical theories and frameworks can contribute to thinking in this vital area of the economy. (shrink)

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)