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The trolley problem
No full textBook synopsis: The Trolley Problem is one of the most intensively discussed and controversial puzzles in contemporary moral philosophy. Over the last half-century, it has also become something of a cultural phenomenon, having been the subject of scientific experiments, online polls, television programs, computer games, and several popular books. This volume offers newly written chapters on a range of topics including the formulation of the Trolley Problem and its standard variations; the evaluation of different forms of moral theory; the neuroscience and social psychology of moral behavior; and the application of thought experiments to moral dilemmas in real life. The chapters are written by leading experts on moral theory, applied philosophy, neuroscience, and social psychology, and include several authors who have set the terms of the ongoing debates. The volume will be valuable for students and scholars working on any aspect of the Trolley Problem and its intellectual significance
Liquid metal, liquid crystal meets swimming Nanorobots: on the political aesthetics of self-organising behaviours in life systems
No full textBook synopsis: Fluidity is about materials in motion rather than a general flux of matter. It is a diverse, challenging phenomenon. This volume contributes to a critical cultural rheology examining the material complexities, epistemic functions, political ramifications, and ecological dimensions of fluidity
The volume deals with materials in motion. It is a contribution to a critical cultural rheology and examines the material complexity, the epistemic functions, the political and ecological dimensions of fluidity.
Fluidity deals with materials in motion - active and activated, mobile and mobilized. The focus is not on a general flow of matter, but on diverse interdependencies and mixtures of real materials and the associated metaphors, imaginations and theoretical challenges. Fluidity is a complex phenomenon: often confusing, viscous, turbulent, sometimes catastrophic. The volume is a contribution to a critical cultural rheology and examines the material complexity, the epistemic functions, the political and ecological dimensions of fluidity
The barriers to a scientific and evidence-based coaching evaluation practice
Get PDFWorkplace coaching has grown in popularity and is increasingly used for a plethora of purposes across organisations. As a growing field, coaching is still in need of a continuing commitment to evidence-based evaluation, especially considering the current unsystematic outcome literature. However, this need for scientific, evidence-based evaluation is not actioned and there is indication that coaching evaluation is even less rigorous in practice. This position paper explores what might be the barriers against a scientific, evidence-based coaching evaluation in practice. Suggestions grounded in the literature are presented with the aim that these might inform future research and practice
Structural asymmetries in the representation of giving and taking events
Get PDFAcross languages, GIVE and TAKE verbs have different syntactic requirements: GIVE mandates a patient argument to be made explicit in the clause structure, whereas TAKE does not. Experimental evidence suggests that this asymmetry is rooted in prelinguistic assumptions about the minimal number of event participants that each action entails. The present study provides corroborating evidence for this proposal by investigating whether the observation of giving and taking actions modulates the inclusion of patients in the represented event. Participants were shown events featuring an agent (A) transferring an object to, or collecting it from, an animate target (B) or an inanimate target (a rock), and their sensitivity to changes in pair composition (AB vs. AC) and action role (AB vs. BA) was measured. Change sensitivity was affected by the type of target approached when the agent transferred the object (Experiment 1), but not when she collected it (Experiment 2), or when an outside force carried out the transfer (Experiment 3). Although these object-displacing actions could be equally interpreted as interactive (i.e., directed towards B), this construal was adopted only when B could be perceived as putative patient of a giving action. This evidence buttresses the proposal that structural asymmetries in giving and taking, as reflected in their syntactic requirements, may originate from prelinguistic assumptions about the minimal event participants required for each action to be teleologically well-formed
Genome-wide functional analysis reveals key roles for kinesins in the mammalian and mosquito stages of the malaria parasite life cycle
Get PDFKinesins are microtubule-based motors important in cell division, motility, polarity, and
intracellular transport in many eukaryotes. However, they are poorly studied in the
divergent eukaryotic pathogens- Plasmodium spp., the causative agents of malaria,
which manifest atypical aspects of cell division and plasticity of morphology throughout
the lifecycle in both mammalian and mosquito hosts. Here we describe a genome-wide
screen of Plasmodium kinesins, revealing diverse subcellular locations and functions in
spindle assembly, axoneme formation, and cell morphology. Surprisingly, only kinesin-
13 is essential for growth in the mammalian host while the other eight kinesins are
required during the proliferative and invasive stages of parasite transmission through
the mosquito vector. In-depth analyses of kinesin-13 and kinesin-20 revealed functions
in microtubule dynamics during apical cell polarity formation, spindle assembly, and
axoneme biogenesis. These findings help us to understand the importance of
microtubule motors and may be exploited to discover new therapeutic interventions
against malaria
Beyond the boundaries of the self: applying relational theory towards an understanding of the teacher-student relationship as a driver of motivation in foreign language learning
Get PDFPrevious research on the foreign language (FL) learner has yielded a rich body of knowledge on personality, individual differences, and conceptions of the self as a measure of motivation. While these contributions have greatly enriched our understanding of learner psychology, the current paper proposes an analytical framing of language learning based on relational theory, which positions human relationships with others as the main driver of the psyche and behavior. As human beings are relationally dependent from birth, according to this theory, the self can only be conceptualized in relation to others. Applied to language learning, this perspective shifts the focus from the attainment of knowledge as an individual, private endeavor, to a relational process in which students and teacher are interwoven perforce. As part of a larger study on student perceptions of teacher emotion, qualitative data were collected as case studies from eight adult learners and analyzed using qualitative content analysis. Results support the power of the teacher-student relationship to influence and motivate students both positively and negatively, affirming the notion of FL learning as a relational process in accordance with Gergen’s (2009) notion that relationships are not merely the self interacting with the other but a true confluence
Evolutionary remodelling of N-terminal domain loops fine-tunes SARS-CoV-2 spike
Get PDFThe emergence of SARS-CoV-2 variants has exacerbated the COVID-19 global health crisis. Thus far, all variants carry mutations in the spike glycoprotein, which is a critical determinant of viral transmission being responsible for attachment, receptor engagement and membrane fusion, and an important target of immunity. Variants frequently bear truncations of flexible loops in the N-terminal domain (NTD) of spike; the functional importance of these modifications has remained poorly characterised. We demonstrate that NTD deletions are important for efficient entry by the Alpha and Omicron variants and that this correlates with spike stability. Phylogenetic analysis reveals extensive NTD loop length polymorphisms across the sarbecoviruses, setting an evolutionary precedent for loop remodelling. Guided by these analyses, we demonstrate that variations in NTD loop length, alone, are sufficient to modulate virus entry. We propose that variations in NTD loop length act to fine-tune spike; this may provide a mechanism for SARS-CoV-2 to navigate a complex selection landscape encompassing optimisation of essential functionality, immune-driven antigenic variation and ongoing adaptation to a new host
Physiological arousal explains infant gaze following in various social contexts
Get PDFGaze-following is fundamental to central aspects of human sociocognitive development, such as acquiring language and cultural learning. Studies have shown that infant gaze-following is not a simple reflexive orientation to an adult’s eye movement. In contrast, infants adaptively modulate gaze-following behaviour depending on the social context. However, arguably, the neurophysiological mechanisms underlying contextual modulation of gaze-following remain somewhat unexplored. In this study, we tested the proposition about whether the contextual modulation of infant gaze-following is mediated by the infant’s heart rate, which indicates infant’s physiological arousal. Forty-one 6- to 9-month-old infants participated in this study, and infants observed either a reliable face, which looked towards the location of an object or, an unreliable face, which looked away from the location of an object. Thereafter, the infants watched a video of the same model making eye contact or not making any ostensive signals, before shifting their gaze towards one of the two objects. We revealed that reliability and eye contact acted independently to increase heart rate, which then fully mediates the effects of these social cues on the frequency of gaze-following. Results suggest that each social cue independently enhances physiological arousal, which then accumulatively predicts the likelihood of infant gaze-following behaviour
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