Homologous recombination promoted by Chi sites and RecBC enzyme ofEscherichia coli.Gerald R. Smith &Franklin W.Stahl -1985 -Bioessays 2 (6):244-249.detailsChi sites are examples of special sites enhancing homologous recombination in their region of the chromosome. Chi, 5′ G‐C‐T‐G‐G‐T‐G‐G3′, is a recognition site for the RecBC enzyme, which nicks DNA near Chi as it unwinds DNA. A molecular model of genetic recombination incorporating these features is reviewed.
Moral fictions and medical ethics.Franklin G. Miller,Robert D. Truog &Dan W. Brock -2009 -Bioethics 24 (9):453-460.detailsConventional medical ethics and the law draw a bright line distinguishing the permitted practice of withdrawing life-sustaining treatment from the forbidden practice of active euthanasia by means of a lethal injection. When clinicians justifiably withdraw life-sustaining treatment, they allow patients to die but do not cause, intend, or have moral responsibility for, the patient's death. In contrast, physicians unjustifiably kill patients whenever they intentionally administer a lethal dose of medication. We argue that the differential moral assessment of these two practices (...) is based on a series of moral fictions – motivated false beliefs that erroneously characterize withdrawing life-sustaining treatment in order to bring accepted end-of-life practices in line with the prevailing moral norm that doctors must never kill patients. When these moral fictions are exposed, it becomes apparent that conventional medical ethics relating to end-of-life decisions is radically mistaken. (shrink)
Rethinking Human Embryo Research Policies.Kirstin R. W. Matthews,Ana S. Iltis,Nuria Gallego Marquez,Daniel S. Wagner,Jason Scott Robert,Inmaculada Melo-Martín,Marieke Bigg,SarahFranklin,Soren Holm,Ingrid Metzler,Matteo A. Molè,Jochen Taupitz,Giuseppe Testa &Jeremy Sugarman -2021 -Hastings Center Report 51 (1):47-51.detailsIt now seems technically feasible to culture human embryos beyond the “fourteen‐day limit,” which has the potential to increase scientific understanding of human development and perhaps improve infertility treatments. The fourteen‐day limit was adopted as a compromise but subsequently has been considered an ethical line. Does it remain relevant in light of technological advances permitting embryo maturation beyond it? Should it be changed and, if so, how and why? What justifications would be necessary to expand the limit, particularly given that (...) doing so would violate some people's moral commitments regarding human embryos? Robust stakeholder engagement preceded adoption of the fourteen‐day limit and should arguably be part of efforts to reassess it. Such engagement could also consider the need for enhanced oversight of human embryo research. In the meantime, developing and implementing reliable oversight systems should help foster high‐quality research and public confidence in it. (shrink)
Motor Learning in Response to Different Experimental Pain Models Among Healthy Individuals: A Systematic Review.Mohammad Izadi,SaeFranklin,Marianna Bellafiore &David W.Franklin -2022 -Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 16.detailsLearning new movement patterns is a normal part of daily life, but of critical importance in both sport and rehabilitation. A major question is how different sensory signals are integrated together to give rise to motor adaptation and learning. More specifically, there is growing evidence that pain can give rise to alterations in the learning process. Despite a number of studies investigating the role of pain on the learning process, there is still no systematic review to summarize and critically assess (...) investigations regarding this topic in the literature. Here in this systematic review, we summarize and critically evaluate studies that examined the influence of experimental pain on motor learning. Seventeen studies that exclusively assessed the effect of experimental pain models on motor learning among healthy human individuals were included for this systematic review, carried out based on the preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses statement. The results of the review revealed there is no consensus regarding the effect of pain on the skill learning acquisition and retention. However, several studies demonstrated that participants who experienced pain continued to express a changed motor strategy to perform a motor task even 1 week after training under the pain condition. The results highlight a need for further studies in this area of research, and specifically to investigate whether pain has different effects on motor learning depending on the type of motor task. (shrink)
Symbolic connectionism in natural language disambiguation.JamesFranklin &S. W. K. Chan -1998 -IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks 9:739-755.detailsUses connectionism (neural networks) to extract the "gist" of a story in order to represent a context going forward for the disambiguation of incoming words as a text is processed.
Rethinking Human Embryo Research Policies.Kirstin R. W. Matthews,Ana S. Iltis,Nuria Gallego Marquez,Daniel S. Wagner,Jason Scott Robert,Inmaculada de Melo-Martín,Marieke Bigg,SarahFranklin,Soren Holm,Ingrid Metzler,Matteo A. Molè,Jochen Taupitz,Giuseppe Testa &Jeremy Sugarman -2021 -Hastings Center Report 51 (1):47-51.detailsIt now seems technically feasible to culture human embryos beyond the “fourteen‐day limit,” which has the potential to increase scientific understanding of human development and perhaps improve infertility treatments. The fourteen‐day limit was adopted as a compromise but subsequently has been considered an ethical line. Does it remain relevant in light of technological advances permitting embryo maturation beyond it? Should it be changed and, if so, how and why? What justifications would be necessary to expand the limit, particularly given that (...) doing so would violate some people's moral commitments regarding human embryos? Robust stakeholder engagement preceded adoption of the fourteen‐day limit and should arguably be part of efforts to reassess it. Such engagement could also consider the need for enhanced oversight of human embryo research. In the meantime, developing and implementing reliable oversight systems should help foster high‐quality research and public confidence in it. (shrink)
Mental models of force and motion.Varol Akman,Deniz Ede,William RandolphFranklin &Paul J. W. ten Hagen -1990 - In Okyay Kaynak,Proceedings of the IEEE International Workshop on Intelligent Motion Control (Istanbul, 20-22 August 1990). Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. pp. 153-158.detailsFuture robots should have common sense about the world in order to handle the problems they will encounter. A large part of this commonsense knowledge must be naive physics knowledge, since carrying out even the simplest everyday chores requires familiarity with physics laws. But how should one start codifying this knowledge? What kind of skills should be elicited from the experts (each and every one of us)? This paper will attempt to provide some hints by studying the mental models of (...) force and motion. (shrink)
Adaptive information and animal behaviour: Why motorists stop at red traffic lights.Ronald W. Templeton &JamesFranklin -1992 -Evolutionary Theory 10:145-155.detailsArgues that information, in the animal behaviour or evolutionary context, is correlation/covariation. The alternation of red and green traffic lights is information because it is (quite strictly) correlated with the times when it is safe to drive through the intersection; thus driving in accordance with the lights is adaptive (causative of survival). Daylength is usefully, though less strictly, correlated with the optimal time to breed. Information in the sense of covariance implies what is adaptive; if an animal can infer what (...) the information implies, it increases its chances of survival. (shrink)
Reframing Consent for Clinical Research: A Function-Based Approach.Scott Y. H. Kim,David Wendler,Kevin P. Weinfurt,Robert Silbergleit,Rebecca D. Pentz,Franklin G. Miller,Bernard Lo,Steven Joffe,Christine Grady,Sara F. Goldkind,Nir Eyal &Neal W. Dickert -2017 -American Journal of Bioethics 17 (12):3-11.detailsAlthough informed consent is important in clinical research, questions persist regarding when it is necessary, what it requires, and how it should be obtained. The standard view in research ethics is that the function of informed consent is to respect individual autonomy. However, consent processes are multidimensional and serve other ethical functions as well. These functions deserve particular attention when barriers to consent exist. We argue that consent serves seven ethically important and conceptually distinct functions. The first four functions pertain (...) principally to individual participants: (1) providing transparency; (2) allowing control and authorization; (3) promoting concordance with participants' values; and (4) protecting and promoting welfare interests. Three other functions are systemic or policy focused: (5) promoting trust; (6) satisfying regulatory requirements; and (7) promoting integrity in research. Reframing consent around these functions can guide approaches to consent that are context sensitive and that maximize achievable goals. (shrink)
George Washington Williams and the Beginnings of Afro-American Historiography.John HopeFranklin -1978 -Critical Inquiry 4 (4):657-672.detailsBut Williams had created a field of historical study, where his white counterparts had not. Single-handedly and without the blessing or approval of the academic community, Williams had called attention to the importance of including Afro-Americans in any acceptable and comprehensive history of the nation long before the historians of various groups of European-Americans or Asian-Americans had begun to advocate a similar treatment for their groups. And if Williams did not impress the white professional historians, he gave heart and encouragement (...) to future Afro-American historians. When the History of the Negro Troops appeared in 1887, nineteen-year-old W. E. B. Du Bois was a college senior at Fisk University and editor-in-chief of the student magazine, The Fisk Herald. In the columns of the Herald Du Bois wrote, "At last we have a historian; not merely a Negro historian, but a man who judged by his merits alone has written a splendid narrative. The Herald congratulates George W. Williams, and the race, which may justly be . . . [proud] of him."1 Many years later, Carter G. Woodson, the founder of the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History and of the Journal of Negro History, described Williams' History of the Negro Troops as "one of the most valuable accounts of the Civil War."2 With words like these from Du Bois and Woodson, on whose shoulders much of the second stage of Afro-American historiography would rest, it is not too much to say that George Washington Williams was responsible for the beginnings of Afro-American historiography. · 1. The Fisk Herald, January 1888, p. 8.· 2. Woodson's appraisal of Williams was found among his papers and made available to me by Dr. Charles H. Wesley when he was executive director of the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, which had been founded by Woodson in 1915. John HopeFranklin, president-elect of the American Historical Society, has written a biography of George Washington Williams. He is the John Matthews Manly Distinguished Service Professor of History at the University of Chicago and the author of, among other works, From Slavery to Freedom: A History of Negro Americans and A Southern Odyssey: Travelers in the Antebellum North. (shrink)
Immanent Critique and Particular Moral Experience.TitusStahl -2017 -Critical Horizons (1).detailsCritical theories often express scepticism towards the idea that social critique should draw on general normative principles, seeing such principles as bound to dominant conceptual frameworks. However, even the models of immanent critique developed in the Frankfurt School tradition seem to privilege principles over particular moral experiences. Discussing the place that particular moral experience has in the models of Honneth, Ferrara and Adorno, the article argues that experience can play an important negative role even for a critical theory that is (...) committed to the necessity of conceptual mediation, as moral experiences can undermine our confidence in the appropriateness of our moral concepts. Building on McDowell’s account of moral perception and Brandom’s interpretation of Hegel’s theory of experience, one can reconstruct Adorno as providing a “radically negativist” approach to immanent critique that takes particular moral experience seriously. (shrink)
F. W. J. Schelling.ThomasFranklin O'Meara -1977 -Review of Metaphysics 31 (2):283 - 309.detailsThe Encyclopedia of Philosophy could state accurately in 1967: "Of all the major German philosophers, Schelling is the least known in the English-speaking world." A tentative survey discloses few articles and books on one who is casually ranked with Hegel. There is, in fact, not one book-length study in English on Schelling’s thought.
Intellectual Bad Conscience and Solidarity with the Underdogs.TitusStahl -2021 -Krisis 41 (2):67-69.detailsThere are few aphorisms in Minima Moralia that display a less sympathetic attitude towards their subject than “They, the people”(§ 7). Adorno denounces the “amor intellectualis for [the] kitchen personnel” in the subsequent aphorism, but “They, the people” already seems to confirm all suspicions about the alleged elitism of critical theory. The idea that intellectuals mostly encounter those less educated when “illiterates come to intellectuals wanting letters written for them” is laughable, even for the 1950s, and the claim that, among (...) the “underdogs”,“envy and spite surpass anything seen among literati or musical directors”(ibid.) oozes with contempt, no matter how much Adorno insists that these alleged character deficits result from the social structures in which uneducated, working class people find themselves. Yet the point of Adorno’s remarks is not to disprove a deferential form of a Lukácsian “standpoint theory …. (shrink)
F.W.J. Schelling, System of Transcendental Idealism. [REVIEW]ThomasFranklin O’Meara -1978 -The Owl of Minerva 10 (2):7-8.detailsBy 1800 Schelling’s thought had moved from the Fichtean Ich through all-encompassing systems of objective nature to the point where the idea for a first synthesis, a first system, captured his attention. And so at twenty-five, at Jena, he composed the first of those systems written and published each year between 1800 and 1802.
Christine Ladd-Franklin: Pragmatist Feminist.David W. Agler &Deniz Durmuş -2013 -Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 49 (3):299.detailsBefore the early 1990s, accounts of classical American philosophy paid relatively little attention to the work and intellectual contributions of women philosophers. However, as early as 1991, a number of contemporary feminist philosophers and historians began to devote more focused attention to women philosophers whose intellectual achievements had been marginalized or forgotten. One woman philosopher whose contributions have still gone unnoticed is that of American logician, mathematician, and color theorist Christine Ladd-Franklin. This paper argues that Ladd-Franklin's feminist efforts (...) to increase the opportunities for women in professional academia were influenced not only by her work as a woman scientist and her reading of feminist literature but also by her understanding of pragmatism and her interaction with Charles Peirce. Specifically, Ladd-Franklin's arguments to increase academic research positions for women and her criticisms of male-only scientific societies point out how discrimination on the basis of gender violates Peirce's first rule of reason that one ought not block the road to inquiry and expose the unscientific nature of gender discrimination by contrasting the pragmatic meaning of acquiring a doctorate with the institutional practice of barring women from making intellectual contributions by denying them professorial positions. (shrink)