Whole–exome sequencing (WES) has increased our ability to analyze large parts of the human genome, bringing with it a plethora of ethical, legal, and social implications. A topic dominating discussion of WES is identification of “secondary findings” (SFs), defined as the identification of risk in an asymptomatic individual unrelated to the indication for the test. SFs can have considerable psychosocial impact on patients and families, and patients with an SF may have concerns regarding genomic privacy and genetic discrimination. The Genetic (...) Information Nondiscrimination Act of 2008 (GINA) currently excludes protections for members of the military. This may cause concern in military members and families regarding genetic discrimination when considering genetic testing. In this report, we discuss a case involving a patient and family in which a secondary finding was discovered by WES. The family members have careers in the U.S. military, and a risk–predisposing condition could negatively affect employment. While beneficial medical management changes were made, the information placed exceptional stress on the family, who were forced to navigate career–sensitive “extra–medical” issues, to consider the impacts of uncovering risk–predisposition, and to manage the privacy of their genetic information. We highlight how information obtained from WES may collide with these issues and emphasize the importance of genetic counseling for anyone undergoing WES. (shrink)

Dynamic intra-individual variability (IIV) in cardiac vagal control across multiple situations is believed to contribute to adaptive cognition under stress; however, a dearth of research has empirically tested this notion. To this end, we examined 25 U.S. Army Soldiers (all male, Mean Age= 30.73, SD = 7.71) whose high-frequency heart rate variability (HF-HRV) was measured during a resting baseline and during three conditions of a shooting task (training, low stress, high stress). Response inhibition was measured as the correct rejection of (...) friendly targets during the low and high stress conditions. We tested the association between the standard deviation of HF-HRV across all four task conditions (IIV in vagal control) and changes in response inhibition between low and high stress. Greater differences in vagal control between conditions (larger IIV) were associated with higher tonic vagal control during rest, and stronger stress-related decreases in response inhibition. These results suggest that flexibility in vagal control is supported by tonic vagal control, but this flexibility also uniquely relates to adaptive cognition under stress. Findings are consistent with neurobehavioral and dynamical systems theories of vagal function. (shrink)

Humans are obligate cooperative breeders, relying heavily on support from kin to raise children. To date, most studies of cooperative breeding have focused on help that supplements rather than replaces parental care. Here we propose that fosterage can act as a form of dispersed cooperative breeding, one that enhances women’s fitness by allowing them to disinvest in some children and reallocate effort to others. We test this hypothesis through a series of predictions about the costs and benefits of fosterage for (...) mothers, foster parents, and foster children using data from the Himba, a group of Namibian agro-pastoralists. We show that fostering out children enhances mothers’ fitness, and we provide evidence for a causal link from fosterage to enhanced fitness by showing that fosterage of early-born children is associated with greater maternal reproductive success. Foster parents minimize the costs of fosterage by skewing their care toward their postreproductive years, and by mainly fostering close kin. However, the system is associated with some detrimental effects on foster children, who are more likely to be stunted and underweight than their non-fostered counterparts. (shrink)

People frequently gesture when problem-solving, particularly on tasks that require spatial transformation. Gesture often facilitates task performance by interacting with internal mental representations, but how this process works is not well understood. We investigated this question by exploring the case of mental abacus, a technique in which users not only imagine moving beads on an abacus to compute sums, but also produce movements in gestures that accompany the calculations. Because the content of MA is transparent and readily manipulated, the task (...) offers a unique window onto how gestures interface with mental representations. We find that the size and number of MA gestures reflect the length and difficulty of math problems. Also, by selectively interfering with aspects of gesture, we find that participants perform significantly worse on MA under motor interference, but that perceptual feedback is not critical for success on the task. We conclude that premotor processes involved in the planning of gestures are critical to mental representation in MA. (shrink)

Management practitioners and scholars have worked diligently to identify methods for ethical decision making in international contexts. Theoretical frameworks such as Integrative Social Contracts Theory (Donaldson and Dunfee, 1994, Academy of Management Review 19, 252–284) and more recently the Global Business Citizenship Approach [Wood et al., 2006, Global Business Citizenship: A Transformative Framework for Ethics and Sustainable Capitalism. (M. E. Sharpe, Armonk, NY)] have produced innovations in practice. Despite these advances, many managers have difficulty implementing these theoretical concepts in daily (...) practice. Using the example of recent decisions by internet service providers Google, Yahoo, and MSN regarding censorship requirements in China, we offer six heuristic questions to help managers to resolve cross-cultural ethical conflicts in which the firm’s way of doing business differs from the practice in the host country. Recognizing that companies can take different approaches to law and ethics (Paine, 1994, Harvard Business Review 72(2), 107–117), our aim is to provide a management decision process to deal with demands or opportunities for engaging in questionable business practices in a host country. (shrink)

Over the past thirty years, academic dialogues on the relationships between the sciences and religions have flourished, albeit primarily within Judeo-Christian historical, theological and philosophical contexts. Can a Hindu tradition be brought into this dialogue? The Bhagavata Purana is one of the most well-known sacred texts of India, and biology, Darwinism in particular, has become one of the most spirited areas of the science and religion dialogue in academia, as well as in the popular media. This thesis examines the possibility, (...) scope and foundational topics involved in a dialogue between Vaisnava-Hindu theology as found in the Bhāgavata, and the theoretical, philosophical and theological issues surrounding contemporary biology. To examine the possibility and scope of a Bhāgavata-science dialogue, I focus on the theological, ontological, epistemological and teleological presuppositions that each tradition bring to the study of nature, outlining the similarities and differences in their approaches. I establish the grounds for further discussion through a comparative analysis of terms such as "consciousness," "knowledge" and "goal of knowledge" as they appear in the Bhagavata and noteworthy Darwinian texts. My argument is that although prima facie the two traditions appear different in their philosophical, scientific and theological approaches, there are a number of areas of common interest and parallels, especially in their epistemologies and teleologies. In the case of genuine differences, such as their views on the ontology of consciousness, I demonstrate the possibility of reconciliation. Clarifying the conceptual differences, establishing parallels and demonstrating areas of common interests opens the possibility and widens the scope for further dialogue. (shrink)

Cross cultural ethical conflicts are a major challenge for managers of multinational corporations (MNEs) when an MNE''s business practices and a host country''s practices differ. We develop a set of decision principles to help MNE managers deal with these conflicts and illustrate with examples of ethical conflicts faced by MNEs doing business in contemporary Russia (DeGeorge, 1994). We discuss the generalizability of the principles by comparing them to the Donaldson (1989) and Buller and Kohls (1997) decision models. Finally we discuss (...) changes in the cross cultural ethical problems facing MNE managers and offer suggestions for future corporate and academic work on these problems. (shrink)

Cross cultural ethical conflicts are a major challenge for managers of multinational corporations (MNEs) when an MNE's business practices and a host country's practices differ. We develop a set of decision principles to help MNE managers deal with these conflicts and illustrate with examples of ethical conflicts faced by MNEs doing business in contemporary Russia (DeGeorge, 1994). We discuss the generalizability of the principles by comparing them to the Donaldson (1989) and Buller and Kohls (1997) decision models. Finally we discuss (...) changes in the cross cultural ethical problems facing MNE managers and offer suggestions for future corporate and academic work on these problems. (shrink)

Prefrontal cortex is dysregulated in women with restricting anorexia nervosa . It is not known whether appetitive non-conscious stimuli bias cognitive responses in those with RAN. Thirteen women with RAN and 20 healthy controls completed a dorsolateral PFC working memory task and an anterior cingulate cortex conflict task, while masked subliminal food, aversive and neutral images were presented. During the DLPFC task, accuracy was higher in the RAN compared to the HC group, but superior performance was compromised when subliminal food (...) stimuli were presented: errors positively correlated with self-reported trait anxiety in the RAN group. These effects were not observed in the ACC task. Appetitive activation is intact and anxiogenic in women with RAN, and non-consciously interacts with working memory processes associated with the DLPFC. This interaction mechanism may underlie cognitive inhibition of appetitive processes that are anxiety inducing, in people with AN. (shrink)

Management practitioners and scholars have worked diligently to identify methods for ethical decision making in international contexts. In this paper we offer sixheuristic questions to help corporate managers resolve cross-cultural ethical conflicts involving questionable business practices in a host country. Our aim is to provide practical guidance for discussion within a firm on whether or not to do business the firm’s way, the host’s way or refrain from doing business there (the highway).

S B Brooke-Norris; Is School Enough? A Critique of Langford’s Idea of Education, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 20, Issue 2, 30 May 2006, Pages 227–.

Von Hippel & Trivers suggest that people enhance their own self-views as a means of persuading others to adopt similarly inflated perceptions of them. We question the existence of a pervasive desire for self-enhancement, noting that the evidence the authors cite could reflect self-verification strivings or no motive whatsoever. An identity negotiation framework provides a more tenable approach to social interaction.

Graphical AbstractCephalopods provide a unique model system to investigate how organismal novelties evolve. In article number 1900073, Elena A. Ritschard et al. discuss how co-evolutionary signatures among various genomic characters have contributed to cephalopod organismal novelties and can be used to dissect their functional organization. Cover illustration by Hannah Schmidbaur.

How genomic innovation translates into organismal organization remains largely unanswered. Possessing the largest invertebrate nervous system, in conjunction with many species‐specific organs, coleoid cephalopods (octopuses, squids, cuttlefishes) provide exciting model systems to investigate how organismal novelties evolve. However, dissecting these processes requires novel approaches that enable deeper interrogation of genome evolution. Here, the existence of specific sets of genomic co‐evolutionary signatures between expanded gene families, genome reorganization, and novel genes is posited. It is reasoned that their co‐evolution has contributed to (...) the complex organization of cephalopod nervous systems and the emergence of ecologically unique organs. In the course of reviewing this field, how the first cephalopod genomic studies have begun to shed light on the molecular underpinnings of morphological novelty is illustrated and their impact on directing future research is described. It is argued that the application and evolutionary profiling of evolutionary signatures from these studies will help identify and dissect the organismal principles of cephalopod innovations. By providing specific examples, the implications of this approach both within and beyond cephalopod biology are discussed. (shrink)

Cognitive Science, Volume 46, Issue 6, June 2022.

Humans are an exceptionally cooperative species, but there is substantial variation in the extent of cooperation across societies. Understanding the sources of this variability may provide insights about the forces that sustain cooperation. We examined the ontogeny of prosocial behavior by studying 326 children 3–14 y of age and 120 adults from six societies (age distributions varied across societies). These six societies span a wide range of extant human variation in culture, geography, and subsistence strategies, including foragers, herders, horticulturalists, and (...) urban dwellers across the Americas, Oceania, and Africa. When delivering benefits to others was personally costly, rates of prosocial behavior dropped across all six societies as children approached middle childhood and then rates of prosociality diverged as children tracked toward the behavior of adults in their own societies. When prosocial acts did not require personal sacrifice, prosocial responses increased steadily as children matured with little variation in behavior across societies. Our results are consistent with theories emphasizing the importance of acquired cultural norms in shaping costly forms of cooperation and creating cross-cultural diversity. (shrink)

This lavishly illustrated book highlights the conservation importance of congregatory animals species--those which gather in vast groups. It also focuses on the irreplaceability of the congregation sites which are able to support such large gatherings of animals, fish, or birds.

On 18–19 May 2018, a symposium was held in the Research Institute of Irish and Scottish Studies at the University of Aberdeen to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the death of Ronald W. Hepburn (1927–2008). The speakers at this event discussed Hepburn’s oeuvre from several perspectives. For this book, the collection of the revised versions of their talks has been supplemented by the papers of other scholars who were unable to attend the symposium itself. Thus this volume contains contributions from (...) eighteen notable scholars of different disciplines, ranging from contemporary aesthetics and art theory through to philosophical approaches to religion, education and social anthropology. It also includes a bibliography of Hepburn’s writings. The essays were first published in two special issues of the Journal of Scottish Thought, vols. 10–11 (2018–2019). -/- Ronald William Hepburn was born in Aberdeen on 16 March 1927. He went to Aberdeen Grammar School, then he graduated with an M.A. in Philosophy (1951) and obtained his doctorate from the University of Aberdeen (1955). His tutor at Aberdeen was Donald MacKinnon (1913– 1994), a Scottish philosopher and theologian, the author of A Study in Ethical Theory (1957) and The Problem of Metaphysics (1974). Hepburn taught as Lecturer at the Department of Moral Philosophy at Aberdeen (1956–60), and he was also Visiting Associate Professor of Philosophy at New York University (1959–60). He returned from the United States as Professor of Philosophy at Nottingham University. In 1964, he was appointed as a Chair in Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh and between 1965 and 1968 he was also Stanton Lecturer in the Philosophy of Religion at the University of Cambridge. From 1975 until his retirement in 1996, he held the Professorship of Moral Philosophy at Edinburgh. He died in Edinburgh on 23 December 2008. His philosophical interests ranged from theology and the philosophy of religion through moral philosophy and the philosophy of education to art theory and aesthetics. Notably, Hepburn is widely regarded as the founder of modern environmental and everyday aesthetics as a result of the influence of papers in the 1960s which pioneered a new approach to the aesthetics of the natural world. (shrink)

Background: The current study was designed to examine whether ethnic-racial identity moderated the relationship between disordered eating and primary ethnic identification.Methods: Three hundred and ninety-eight undergraduate women were recruited from a large university in Hawai‘i. Participants completed the Eating Disorder Examination Questionnaire, the ERI measure, and reported their primary ethnicity as an index of ethnicity.Results: There was a significant correlation between eating concerns and centrality, r = 0.127, p < 0.05. Moderation analyses indicated that only ERI centrality moderated the predictive (...) effect of ethnicity on the importance of eating concerns, b = 0.05, t = 2.37, p = 0.018.Conclusions: The results suggest that the relationship between self-reported primary ethnicity and EDEQ scores is greater when ethnicity is more central to the individual's identity or when the in-group affect is important to an individual. Findings underscore the need for further research on the underlying mechanisms that account for the differing ways that ERI may affect eating concerns. (shrink)

Human consciousness usually displays a striking unity. When one experiences a noise and, say, a pain, one is not conscious of the noise and then, separately, of the pain. One is conscious of the noise and pain together, as aspects of a single conscious experience. Since at least the time of Immanuel Kant (1781/7), this phenomenon has been called the unity of consciousness . More generally, it is consciousness not of A and, separately, of B and, separately, of C, but (...) of A-and-B- and-C together, as the contents of a single conscious state. (shrink)

This memorial tribute reflects on the personal and intellectual qualities of Elizabeth Fox-Genovese (1941–2007), who was the author's teacher. Higginbotham says that her first impressions of Fox-Genovese, formed in a graduate seminar in European history at the University of Rochester in the mid-1970s, have been lasting impressions. The seminar introduced patterns of thought and behavior that proved consistent over the years, despite Fox-Genovese's several shifts in the past three decades—from Marxist to non-Marxist, historian of France to historian of antebellum Southern (...) women, feminist to nonfeminist, and religious agnostic to devout Catholic. Higginbotham discusses political theorist C. B. McPherson's idea of “possessive individualism” and its influence on Fox-Genovese's steadfast belief that individual rights derive from society (rather than innate nature) and that the concept of individualism maintains a contradictory and fraught relationship between individual and community. Her analysis and political positions often distanced her from her colleagues. But in this meditation on a brilliant mind and complex life, Higginbotham observes that Fox-Genovese never abandoned the tendency to speak openly and candidly, and thus to present herself vulnerable to the criticism of onlookers. (shrink)

Moral enhancement techniques modifying brain processes to produce improved moral conduct present us with new challenges for how we grapple with the ethical questions raised. John Shook (2012) argues that we should greet these developments with some measure of skepticism and cynicism regarding their success and desirability. This commentary considers further Shook’s scepticism. It is argued that the issue of “moral enhancement” raises questions about which view(s) may benefit and the problems this poses for societies characterized by the fact of (...) reasonable pluralism. More importantly, it is further argued that moral enhancement runs into greater difficulties where enhancement is thought to contribute to alleviating illegal behavior. This is because law and morality are related imperfectly and, therefore, improved moral sensitivity may not translate into less illegality. Thus, moral enhancement techniques may create moral Frankensteins that (a) may undermine the existence of reasonable pluralism in modern liberal societies and (b) may fail to better achieve lawful behavior. (shrink)

Imagine there are three boats equidistant from one another. You are alone in the first boat. The other two boats are sinking fast: one boat has one person (A), the other has two persons (B&C). There is only enough time to allow saving either A or B&C before their boats sink, drowning whoever is onboard. Will we always combine claims of those wishing to be saved and rescue B&C? Otsuka says that the 'Kamm-Scanlon' contractualist framework that does not aggregating various (...) claims for rescue combines claims in this example. Otsuka has been criticized by Hirose and Kumar. Here I offer a defense. (shrink)

This paper offers two potential worries in Robert B. Talisse's A Pragmatist Philosophy of Democracy. The first worry is that is that the picture of democracy on offer is incomplete. While Talisse correctly argues that democracy is about more than elections, democracy is also about more than deliberation between citizens. Talisse's deliberative democracy is problematic to the degree its view of deliberation fails to account for democracy. The second worry we may have concerns the relationship between Talisse's Peircean pragmatism and (...) deliberative democracy. If this pragmatism is always open to revision and change in light of future evidence, then no pragmatist should adhere to only one particular political system, such as democracy. When we claim that only one system can ever be justified, then we fail to honour our professed openness to revision and change in the future. If my analysis is correct, then I do not aim to demonstrate that Talisse's Peircean pragmatism is incorrect, only incomplete. Thus, the hope of this paper is to help develop this pragmatism further. (shrink)

Current views of consciousness can be divided by whether the theorist accepts or rejects cognitivism about consciousness. Cognitivism as we understand it is the view that consciousness is just a form of representation or an information-processing property of a system that has representations or perhaps both.<b> </b>Anti-cognitivists deny this, appealing to thought experiments about inverted spectra, zombies and the like to argue that consciousness could change while nothing cognitive or representational changes. Nearly everyone agrees, however, that consciousness has a _representational (...) base._ Whether consciousness _simply is_ representational or cognitive, it at least _requires _representation (and cognition). In an ecumenical spirit, we will focus on this point of agreement and sketch a theory of what this representational base might be. We hope that the result will be a framework useful for investigating consciousness empirically. (shrink)

Robert B. Talisse's A Pragmatist Philosophy of Democracy is a genuine tour de force. His aim is both to defend a particular view of pragmatism originating with the work of Charles Sanders Peirce and, at the same time, argue in favour of a new view of deliberative democracy developed from Talisse's Peircean pragmatism. The result is a stunning achievement with real persuasive power. In this article, I will focus on one worry, namely, that the picture of democracy on offer is (...) incomplete. While Talisse correctly argues that democracy is about more than elections, democracy is also about more than deliberation between citizens. Talisse's deliberative democracy is problematic to the degree its view of deliberation fails to account for democracy. If my analysis is correct, then I do not aim to demonstrate that Talisse's Peircean pragmatism is incorrect, only incomplete. Thus, the hope of this article is to help develop this pragmatism further. (shrink)