bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
8 Baudelaire: Life and the Production of Poetry
Authors: Jefferson Ann
Published: September 2008

The chapter explores Baudelaire's biographical portraits of other writers, especially Poe and Gautier, in which he revises the contemporary view that the poet's work simply reflects his life. Instead, he presents the writer's life as deliberately geared to the creation of the work. Baudelaire's view of poetry as a production that takes place in a lived context is reflected in the biographical structure of Les Fleurs du mal in which a poet goes from birth to death. The volume repeatedly stages scenes of poetic creativity, or of its absence, in which the poetry explores the tensions between different models of poetic creation: technical skill and inward predisposition, and thus pushes poetry itself to a kind of crisis. The life is presented as the condition under which prosodic mastery may be achieved, and its results enjoyed, though often at a price.
10 Biography and Literary Principle: Marcel Schwob's Vies imaginaires
Authors: Jefferson Ann
Published: September 2008

This chapter examines Schwob's account of biography as the basis for the literariness of literature. Biography's concerns with the unique and the individual — often in the form of incidental details to be found in the record of a person's life — are, according to Schwob, precisely those of literature itself. Brevity is a concomitant necessity for the biographer. Schwob possessed considerable erudition of the kind usually associated with the biographical dictionary, but he exploits it to privilege the unique biographical detail. Like Nerval, his texts do not just borrow or reinvent the biographical genre, but may be read as reflections on the principles of biography. With Schwob literature and biography become one, and biography provides the means of defining the literariness of literature.
11 Romancing Lives: Literary Creativity in the 1920s
Authors: Jefferson Ann
Published: September 2008

This chapter deals with the vies romancées, the partly fictionalized biographies that were popular in the in 1920s. Many critics deplored this form of biography on the grounds that it trivialized serious subjects and pandered to popular tastes. Maurois's defence of biography as a form of literary writing on a par with the novel represents the more respectable version of this practice; it is justified by an increased interest in the inner life of biographical subjects, and in particular with the experience of artistic creation. His account of the structure and language of biography appeals to the example provided by fiction. He argues for the literary value of biographical writing and for the authorial standing of the biographer. The interest in the experience of literary creation is also evident in the work of Bergson and Valéry.
12 Proust and the Lives of the Artists
Authors: Jefferson Ann
Published: September 2008

The concerns of the ‘new’ biography of the 1920s make it possible to regard Proust's novel as sharing many of its strategies and preoccupations. La Recherche is often viewed as a form of fictional autobiography, but, despite Proust's renowned attack on Sainte-Beuve's biographical method in criticism, his treatment of the key artist figures in the novel may be read as a series of biographical studies. This makes it possible to consider La Recherche as in part a fictional version of the biographical recueil of the 19th century, each artist offering Marcel an example of the way to live as an artist, rather than instances of achieved works he might emulate. The focus in each case is on the nature of the creative experience of the artist.
14 Michel Leiris: Autobiography and the Sacred
Authors: Jefferson Ann
Published: September 2008

When Leiris sought to reinvent literature as something more than what he regarded as empty formalism, he turned to autobiography as the means whereby writing might become an act with real consequences in the writer's own life. The autobiographical enterprise, as explored both in L'Age d'homme and La Règle du jeu, is allied to the performing arts as practised by his acrobat uncle and opera-singer aunt, laying the writer open to personal risk and holding out the possibility of giving form to the sacred in the modern world. Leiris's goal is to make living and writing indistinguishable from each other in ways that invariably fail but must constantly be pursued and recalibrated. In the process, the ideal of ‘poetry’ oscillates between the disappointingly derisory and the ideal whose pursuit keeps it constantly connected to the unfolding temporality of the writer's day to day existence.
15 Sartre and Biography: Existential Acts and the Desacralization of Literature
Authors: Jefferson Ann
Published: September 2008

Sartre shares with Leiris a view of literature that conceives of it as an act, but, in contrast to Leiris, his aim is rather to desacralize the literary. An examination of his theoretical writings, especially Qu'est-ce que la littérature?, reveals that this conception rests on a biographical approach to the writer's role. The entanglement of literature with biography is evident not just in Sartre's own literary biographies of Baudelaire, Genet, and Mallarmé but also in his novel, La Nausé. These texts explore the concepts of literature and biography in ways that highlight Sartre's ambivalent evaluation of them. His autobiography, Les Mots, is as much a denunciation of the way that the ‘retrospective illusion’ created by biography can corrupt the existential project of a subject, as it is an exploitation of the potential offered by autobiography to construct literature as an act — even if it is an act of farewell to the literary.
18 Vocation, Regime, and the Production of Literature: Max Jacob and Roland Barthes
Authors: Jefferson Ann
Published: September 2008

This chapter examines the history of the idea of the literary vocation first as the overwhelming compulsion to write as described by Rilke and, second in terms of the practical organization of day-to-day life required by writing, as described by Max Jacob or Roland Barthes. Biography, according to Sollers, is a way of highlighting the real consequences that writing has on lived existence, while Barthes explores the prospect of a writing regime independently of any tangible creative outcome.
19 Life‐Writing in Roger Laporte and Jacques Roubaud
Authors: Jefferson Ann
Published: September 2008

This chapter examines the work of Laporte and Roubaud as instances and illustrations of vocation and regime respectively. Laporte's biographie has nothing to do with biography as traditionally understood, and everything to do with enacting writing as a vocation that seeks to equate living and writing. The result is a radically new form of life-writing in which the writing, as the consequence of it being lived, is constantly in pursuit of its own definition. Roubaud's multi-volume Grand Incendie de Londres is both the fruit of and partial description of writing undertaken according to a strict daily routine which is treated as having the creative potential of the sort of device favoured by OULIPO. The aim is to produce a new form of writing that works against literature's inherent tendency to end.
Afterword
Authors: Jefferson Ann
Published: September 2008

The closing section of the book considers the temporality of biographical writing and suggests that far from being bound exclusively to retrospect, it constantly reveals a prospective impulse. This factor offers another explanation as to the performative capacity of biography to contest and transform definitions of the literary.
2 Theory
Authors: Flinders Matthew
Published: September 2008

This chapter sets out the theoretical framework used in this book. This consists of three complementary theoretical approaches — the Westminster Model, Historical Institutionalism, and Principal-Agent Theory — which each in their own distinct way allows each chapter to dissect and tease apart the politics of delegation in Britain. Moreover, these approaches also operate at distinct levels, which again deepen our understanding of both the theory and practice of delegation.
4 Structure
Authors: Flinders Matthew
Published: September 2008

Having examined the long-term institutional layering and sedimentation that has occurred, this chapter sets out to map out the topography of the state as it currently exists. In doing so, it succeeds where numerous parliamentary, official, and academic studies have failed. It also provides a new conceptual tool — in the form of the Russian Doll Model — through which different degrees of delegation can be represented and through this, the ‘drift’ of functions across a ‘spectrum of autonomy’.
6 External Accountability
Authors: Flinders Matthew
Published: September 2008

This chapter challenges the dominant view that public bodies are unaccountable, and instead seeks to cultivate a more sophisticated frame of analysis which is aware of and sympathetic to different forms and gradations of accountability as well as different forms of scrutiny.
7 Patronage
Authors: Flinders Matthew , Denton Matthew
Published: September 2008

This chapter focuses on the issue of public appointments and patronage. Contrary to media suggestions and the public's perception, research suggests that the sphere of delegated governance is no longer a patronage resource for ministers, or that it is replete with financially lucrative and under-demanding positions. In fact, research reveals a gradual but very clear ‘shrinking reach’ in terms of the breadth and nature of ministerial appointment capacity.
8 Depoliticization
Authors: Flinders Matthew
Published: September 2008

This chapter examines the concept of depoliticization in detail. It seeks to show how it has played an increasingly important role since the election of New Labour in 1997, and how it raises fundamental questions about the nature of ‘the political’, the limits of democracy, and the existence of more positive choices in the face of growing public disenchantment with politics.
9 Above and below
Authors: Flinders Matthew
Published: September 2008

One prominent alternative to the challenges of delegation rests on the movement of responsibilities above and below the nation state to democratic structures that may offer greater capacity in terms of scrutiny and control. This chapter focuses on decentralization and devolution. It contains sections on the degree to which the implementation of devolution to Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland since 1998 has led to a reduction in the sphere of delegated governance within those territories, or the imposition of tighter and more transparent governance frameworks. In order to complete the analyses of vertical decentralization, the chapter also examines the role of delegated governance within the European level.
The Longest Journey: Bertrand Russell
Authors: van Fraassen Bas C.
Published: September 2008

The first sustained, rigorous development of a structuralist view of science appeared in the writings of Bertrand Russell, where the philosophical motivation precedes a precise formulation drawing on mathematical logic. He founded theoretical physics in a mathematics constructed along logicist lines, which is also what proved his undoing at the hands of a famous review by Newman that set the pattern for later objections to structuralist views.
An Empiricist Structuralism
Authors: van Fraassen Bas C.
Published: September 2008

The mechanization and mathematization of the world-picture in modern science has a rightful claim upon us to develop views of science that do justice to its revolutionary impact on the sciences themselves. This claim is honoured in the century-long attempts to develop structuralist views of science, the recurrent defeats of such views notwithstanding. It is argued that the defeats were not inevitable. The structuralism here developed however, as a view of science rather than a view of nature, can find its proper articulation only in an empiricist setting. Essential to an empiricist structuralism is the following core construal of the slogan that all we know is structure: (I) Science represents the empirical phenomena as embeddable in certain abstract structures (theoretical models); (II) Those abstract structures are describable only up to structural isomorphism. This faces at once the Weyl's paradox introduced in Chapter 8; but the lessons concerning indexicality learned from the cases of Russell, Carnap, and Putnam show the way out of the paradox.
Pictorial Perspective and the Indexical
Authors: van Fraassen Bas C.
Published: September 2008

The connection between perspective and the indexical shows up in the sciences, for example, when talk of frames of reference is conducted in terms of observers (whose frames they are, so to speak). This metaphor can be eliminated to produce an objective theoretical representation. But in the use of such representations as basis for prediction and manipulation, the indexical element returns. Examining the character of perspective and the role of indexical judgments (such as self-attributions and self-locations) brings to fore a fundamental connection between perspective, measurement, and theoretical representation.
A Window on the Invisible World (?)1
Authors: van Fraassen Bas C.
Published: September 2008

Investigating the connection between instrumentation and measurement, this chapter focuses on the microscope, which is perhaps the best example of an instrument used in measurement, and putatively as a means to extend the reach of the senses. In fact, the relation between observation, experiment, and measurement is far from simple. Measurements occur in general only as special elements of the experimental procedure by which objects are deliberately placed in unusual, artificially designed conditions — conditions in which they are made to respond to the questions put to them. Under these conditions, measurement procedures produce representations — images — with complex, theory-mediated relations to the entities on which the measurements are made. In distinguishing the various roles of instrumentation in experiment we automatically induce a corollary taxonomy of experiments, distinguishing for example mimetic experimentation from the creation of new phenomena, providing thus also a precise setting for assessment of empiricist views of science.
The Problem of Coordination
Authors: van Fraassen Bas C.
Published: September 2008

The term ‘problem of coordination’ had appeared in Mach's writings on mechanics and thermodynamics; was salient in the discussion of the relation between mathematical and physical geometry that extended from the 19th century into the 20th; and came to special prominence through the writings of Schlick and Reichenbach when logical empiricism was beginning to break with the neo-Kantian tradition. The questions What counts as a measurement of (physical quantity) X? and What is (that physical quantity) X? cannot be answered independently of each other, which brings up the famed ‘hermeneutic circle’. This chapter examines this apparent circularity by focusing on the one hand on its more abstract consideration by Reichenbach, and on the other hand the practical response in history examined by Mach and Poincaré, with the conclusion that pure or presuppositionless coordination is neither possible nor required.
Measurement as Representation: 1. The Physical Correlate
Authors: van Fraassen Bas C.
Published: September 2008

This chapter explores measurement ‘from above’: that is, looking for a view that we can have after the measurement procedures, concepts, and theories have stabilized. This resting point in the conceptual and scientific development is fleeting and momentary — yet marking a context in which some things can be taken for granted pro tem, where it makes sense to ask about the world-picture of currently accepted physical theory. The physical conditions of possibility for measurement, the general theory of measurement, and what cannot count as measurement in a theoretical context are discussed, drawing on general lessons derived from 20th-century foundations of physics.
The Changing Distribution of Earnings in OECD Countries
Authors: Atkinson A.B.
Published: September 2008

This book is about how much people earn and why the distribution of earnings has been changing over time. The gap between the top and bottom in the United States has widened significantly since 1980. Why has this happened? Is it due to new technologies? What is the role of globalization? Are there historical precedents? The book begins with the ‘race’ between technology and education, and shows that continuing technical progress does not necessarily imply a continuing rise in dispersion. It then examines the experience of twenty OECD countries over the 20th century, material presented in the form of twenty country case studies. The book breaks new ground in assembling data on the distribution of individual earnings covering much of the 20th century and drawing on a variety of under-exploited sources. The findings overturn a number of widely-held beliefs. It is not the earnings of the low paid that have been most affected by the recent changes; widening is largely due to what is happening at the top. The recent rise in earnings dispersion is not unprecedented, but should be seen as part of a longer-run history of successive compression and expansion of earnings differences.
1 Introduction: What This Lecture Is About
Authors: Atkinson A. B.
Published: September 2008

This introductory chapter begins with a brief discussion of the overall theme of this book, which is the distribution of individual earnings or household income. Specifically, the book examines changes in earnings differences or dispersion over time. The interest in this topic is largely attributed to rise in earnings dispersion in the US since the 1980s.
2 The Race between Technology and Education: The Textbook Model
Authors: Atkinson A. B.
Published: September 2008

This chapter uses the textbook model of supply and demand of labour to discuss the race between technology and education and its impact on wages. It is shown that with a specified set of dynamics, the skill wage premium converges to a constant value even where demand is continuing to shift. The extent of the rise depends however on the working of the labour market. Countries that respond more quickly to the need for more educated workers will see a smaller rise in the wage premium.
3 Taking Data Seriously: Where the Data Come From and How We Should Use Them
Authors: Atkinson A. B.
Published: September 2008

This chapter discusses the selection and application of earnings distribution data. Topics covered include criteria data selection and quality grading, the variety of data sources available, problems with cross-country comparisons of data and comparability of data over time, and the use of metrics and language.
4 The Changes in Dispersion since 1980
Authors: Atkinson A. B.
Published: September 2008

This chapter discusses the changes in earnings dispersion in nineteen countries since 1980. In sixteen out of nineteen countries, either the bottom decile has fallen by five percent or more, or the top decile has risen by five percent or more, and in seven cases both have happened. It is not enough to look just at the decile ratio, the chapter states, which masks the asymmetry in the changes in the distribution; much of the action over the past twenty-five or more years has been in the upper part of the distribution. There is diversity in the experience of individual countries. A large number of countries have experienced a ‘fanning out’ of the upper half of the earnings distribution.
5 Recent History in Full: Was there a Lull before the Storm?
Authors: Atkinson A. B.
Published: September 2008

This chapter discusses the evolution of the distribution of earnings in recent decades in the US, Canada, and eastern and western Europe. The data show that the late 1960s and 1970s were a period of earnings compression in a number of countries (Finland, France, Italy, Sweden, and the United Kingdom); there was not a lull before the storm, and the falls in the bottom decile after 1980 can be seen as a part reversal of the 1970s compression. In many countries, there has been a steady upward movement since 1980 in the top decile (Australia, Canada, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States). The finding of a fanning out at the top is evident for Australia, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The three Eastern European countries all showed a move towards increased earnings dispersion with the transition to a market economy, but there are differences, with dispersion being less, and more stable, in the Czech Republic than in Hungary and Poland.
7 What We Are Seeking to Explain
Authors: Atkinson A. B.
Published: September 2008

This chapter considers two theories to explain the earnings dispersion in the different countries studied: shifting pay norms and pyramidal/superstar theories. It argues that the fanning out of the upper part of the earnings distribution in some, but not all, countries could be explained by a shift to a less redistributive pay norm. However, this argument has hardly been recognized in the literature. The superstar model has received more attention, but this attention has concentrated exclusively on the recent rise in top earnings.
10 Conclusions
Authors: Atkinson A. B.
Published: September 2008

This chapter reviews the discussions in the preceding chapters. It argues that the distribution of earnings is not outside our control. Although governments are constrained by the global economy and by the pace of technological change, policy still has a role. The evolution of pay norms is partly endogenous, and state enterprises can influence the resulting market equilibrium. Conversely, the privatization of state enterprises can affect pay at both the top and the bottom of the distribution.
Note 1 The Dynamics of Supply and Demand
Authors: Atkinson A. B.
Published: September 2008

This note presents details of the model used to explain the dynamics of supply and demand.
Note 2 A Behavioural Model of Changing Pay Norms
Authors: Atkinson A. B.
Published: September 2008

The note describes a simple version of the pay norm model, where the assumptions are chosen to bring out the essence of the argument, rather than to allow for the full richness of strategic behaviour. It is essentially a behavioural model.
Introduction to Part III
Authors: Atkinson A. B.
Published: September 2008

This introductory chapter presents an overview of the data provided for tewnty OECD countries and the analyses of their earnings distribution over the past 100 years. The analyses draw heavily from the ground-breaking book by Lydall (1968), which continues to provide a most valuable resource for researchers wanting to go back before 1965. A separate chapter is dedicated to each of the twenty countries. Each chapter describes the evidence available on earnings dispersion in the country in question, lists the data in a series of tables with percentiles and, in some cases, decile shares and Gini coefficients, and summarizes the findings in two graphs, covering the upper and lower parts of the distribution.
A Australia
Authors: Atkinson A. B.
Published: September 2008

This chapter presents tables of data on Australia and an account of its increased earnings distribution. It shows that the widening of earning dispersion took place during the Golden Age of the 1950s; there was a possible reversal in the early 1970s; this was followed by renewed widening (with possibly a pause in the 1980s); widening resumed in the 1990s, and appears to have continued into this century.
B Austria
Authors: Atkinson A. B.
Published: September 2008

This chapter presents tables of data on Austria and an account of its increased earnings distribution. It shows that from 1980, there has been a widening in the earnings distribution in Austria. A comparison of wage tax results for 2004 with those for 1964, it shows that that the top decile has risen by twenty-one percent, enough to qualify as large. The upper quartile rose by ten percent, so that there has been a degree of ‘fanning out’.
C Canada
Authors: Atkinson A. B.
Published: September 2008

This chapter presents tables of data on Canada and an account of its increased earnings distribution. It highlights the difficulties in reaching conclusions about the changes in earnings dispersion in Canada in recent decades. The pictures drawn here underscore the problems associated with the absence of a single, authoritative series covering the past twenty-five years. The graphs also underline the fact that the changes in recent decades — a fall in the bottom decile in the early 1980s, and a rise in the top decile in the later 1980s (and possibly after 2000) — are smaller in magnitude than the ‘dramatic’ reduction in dispersion from 1931 to 1951, and are not dissimilar to the widening that characterized the Golden Age of the 1950s and early 1960s.
D Czech Republic
Authors: Atkinson A. B.
Published: September 2008

This chapter presents tables of data on the Czech Republic and an account of its increased earnings distribution. It shows that the distribution of earnings in Czechoslovakia was broadly stable for the thirty-year period from 1959 to 1989. The move to a market economy led to a widening of differentials in the upper part of the distribution. Although there has been a fall in the bottom decile since 1993, to date the upper part does not appear to be following the pattern of widening observed in many other countries.
E Denmark
Authors: Atkinson A. B.
Published: September 2008

This chapter presents tables of data on Denmark and an account of its increased earnings distribution. It shows that the direction of movement in recent years has been towards widening earnings dispersion, but the magnitude has been too small to register according to the criteria adopted in this study. It is only at the top, particularly the top percentile, that the widening is large enough to register.
F Finland
Authors: Atkinson A. B.
Published: September 2008

This chapter presents tables of data on Finland and an account of its increased earnings distribution. It shows that there was a large a significant fall in earnings dispersion in Finland from the 1970s to the mid-1980s, after which the distribution remained stable in the sense that the observed changes were not large enough to register.
G France
Authors: Atkinson A. B.
Published: September 2008

This chapter presents tables of data on France and an account of its increased earnings distribution. It shows that the history of the earnings distribution in France since the mid-1980s is one of broad stability and of a recent rise in the bottom decile, in contrast to a number of other countries. The previous sixty-five years were characterized less by stability and more by episodes of change. These episodes have tended to touch differently the upper and lower parts of the distribution. In the inter-war period, there is only evidence for the upper part, but there appears to have been a rise in the top percentiles followed by a fall with the arrival of the Front Populaire. In the Golden Age of the 1950s and early 1960s, earnings dispersion increased on account of the larger increases at the top of the distribution. The gap was narrowed dramatically after the events of May 1968, with the bottom decile jumping upwards, and then from 1972 beginning a period of steady increase until the mid-1980s.
J Ireland
Authors: Atkinson A. B.
Published: September 2008

This chapter presents tables of data on Ireland and an account of its increased earnings distribution. It shows that the period 1937 to 1951 exhibits a significant compression, which is of interest since Ireland was not directly engaged in the Second World War. The latter part of the 1950s and 1960s showed a rise in the top decile. There is then a gap in coverage, but in the period 1987 to 1997 there was a fanning out of the upper part of the earnings distribution.
K Italy
Authors: Atkinson A. B.
Published: September 2008

This chapter presents tables of data on Italy and an account of its increased earnings distribution. It shows that earnings dispersion in Italy decreased in the late 1970s, stayed broadly unchanged in the 1980s. It increased in the 1990s, with a fanning out of the upper percentiles.
L Netherlands
Authors: Atkinson A. B.
Published: September 2008

This chapter presents tables of data on Netherlands and an account of its increased earnings distribution. It shows that the overall distribution of earnings in the Netherlands was fairly stable from 1970 to 1983, with an improvement in the position of those in the lower part of the distribution. This was followed by a period from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s when the top decile increased; the bottom decile may have fallen and the incidence of low pay increased. Since the mid-1990s, any changes in dispersion are not large enough to register according to the criteria applied here.
M New Zealand
Authors: Atkinson A. B.
Published: September 2008

This chapter presents tables of data on New Zealand and an account of its increased earnings distribution. It shows that although New Zealand is often presented as having experienced dramatic distributional changes, the evidence on the distribution of earnings is limited in its coverage of the post-war period. Estimates exist for the period 1984 to 1997, during which the bottom decile fell and the top decile rose significantly. Going back to the 1970s and earlier, there is some indication that the Golden Age in New Zealand benefited the top decile relative to the median.
N Norway
Authors: Atkinson A. B.
Published: September 2008

This chapter presents tables of data on Norway and an account of its increased earnings distribution. It shows that the picture of earnings dispersion in Norway remains unclear. However, there is nothing in the data assembled here to disprove the hypothesis that there have been only limited changes since 1970.
O Poland
Authors: Atkinson A. B.
Published: September 2008

This chapter presents tables of data on Poland and an account of its increased earnings distribution. It shows that the period since 1960 has not been one of stability in the distribution of earnings in Poland. There appear to have been distinct cycles during the communist period, notably associated with the Solidarity Movement and its aftermath, and the employer surveys indicate that the post-communist period saw a large fall in the bottom decile relative to the median, and a fanning out of the upper part of the distribution.
Q Sweden
Authors: Atkinson A. B.
Published: September 2008

This chapter presents tables of data on Sweden and an account of its increased earnings distribution. It shows that Sweden's experience over the period since 1960 can be summarized as stability, followed by compression, and then reversal, with a significant rise in the top decile. As in other countries, the bottom decile has retained part of the gains from compression.
Being For
Authors: Schroeder Mark
Published: September 2008

Expressivism — the sophisticated contemporary incarnation of the noncognitivist research program of Ayer, Stevenson, and Hare — is no longer the province of metaethicists alone. Its comprehensive view about the nature of both normative language and normative thought has also recently been applied to many topics elsewhere in philosophy. Yet the semantic commitments of expressivism are still poorly understood and have not been very far developed. Expressivists have not yet even managed to solve the ‘negation problem’ — to explain why atomic normative sentences are inconsistent with their negations. As a result, it is far from clear that expressivism even could be true. This book evaluates the semantic commitments of expressivism by showing how an expressivist semantics would work, what it can do, and what kind of assumptions would be required, in order for it to do it. Building on a highly general understanding of the basic ideas of expressivism, it argues that expressivists can solve the negation problem — but only in one kind of way. It shows how this insight paves the way for an explanatorily powerful, constructive expressivist semantics, which solves many of what have been taken to be the deepest problems for expressivism, including making unprecedented progress in attacking the well-known Frege-Geach problem for noncognitivist theories. But it also argues that any account which can attain these advantages will face further, even more formidable, obstacles. Expressivism, it is argued, is coherent and interesting, but false.
The Negation Problem
Authors: Schroeder Mark
Published: September 2008

This chapter explores the difficult features of the negation problem for expressivism. The problem is outlined together with the set of tools available to expressivists in order to solve it. A-type and B-type inconsistency in mental states are introduced, and it is argued that only an appeal to A-type inconsistency and to inconsistency-transmitting attitudes could solve this problem by appeal to the kind of assumptions which expressivists will be able to discharge. It is proven, given an assumption implicit in all existing expressivist approaches that a formally adequate expressivist account must appeal to B-type inconsistency. The approaches of Terry Horgan and Mark Timmons, of Allan Gibbard, and Jamie Dreier, are criticized to illustrate why appeals to B-type inconsistency are unsatisfactory.
Predicates and Quantifiers
Authors: Schroeder Mark
Published: September 2008

This chapter shows how to expand the ideas of Chapter 5 for a language involving quantifiers, and offers a more rigorous treatment. Since the contents of states of being for are treated as properties, predicates are treated as semantically contributing functions from objects to properties. Lambda-abstractions are introduced to denote properties, and open lambda-abstractions to denote functions from objects to properties. After improved versions of the main developments in Chapter 5, it is observed that both the treatment of inconsistency and the constructive feature of the semantics turn essentially on the assumption that all sentences in this simple language express the same kind of mental state. From this, it is argued that the only way to incorporate descriptive language is if belief is itself analyzed in terms of being for.
The Limits and Costs of Expressivism
Authors: Schroeder Mark
Published: September 2008

This chapter summarizes the basic insights and arguments needed in order to get this far. It is argued, however, that expressivists will have extraordinary difficulties trying to expand the expressive power of their language beyond that of the predicate calculus. It is shown that most obvious treatments of the past tense and of ‘necessarily’ — constructed on exactly the same model as the accounts of negation, conjunction, and the quantifiers — result in tensed and modal sentences expressing incoherent states of mind, and fail to assign them the right truth conditions on either the approach of Chapter 9 or that of Chapter 10. It is argued, further, that binary quantifiers like ‘most’ cannot be incorporated into biforcated attitude semantics at all. The moral is that the prospects for expressivism are dim. An appendix to the chapter makes suggestions for further research.
The Standard Conception of Composition
Authors: Koslicki Kathrin
Published: September 2008

This chapter is devoted to an exposition of the main concepts and principles of standard mereology, the system originally developed by Stanislaw Leśniewski and introduced into the English-speaking world in the guise of Henry Leonard and Nelson Goodman's ‘Calculus of Individuals’. The main source for this chapter is Peter Simons', Parts: A Study in Ontology, in particular his instructive gradual development of standard mereology, which shows how stronger and stronger principles may be added gradually to a minimal core, until we arrive at the full-strength theory of standard mereology. Despite standard mereology's merits as a formal theory, however, it remains to be seen whether it is of any use to the metaphysician in characterizing ordinary mereological concepts, as they apply to our scientifically informed, common-sense ontology.
Composition as Non‐Identity
Authors: Koslicki Kathrin
Published: September 2008

The positive view adopted later in this book defends a conception of parthood and composition which carries genuine ontological commitment: contrary to the Lewisian Composition-as-Identity model, wholes according to this alternative conception are in no way to be identified with their parts; rather, a commitment to wholes is a commitment to entities that are numerically distinct from their parts. A crucial piece of apparatus which supports this ontologically loaded conception of parthood and composition is a certain style of argument which reasons from Leibniz's Law to the numerical distinctness of wholes and their parts: according to this style of argument, wholes and their parts are numerically distinct by Leibniz's Law, because they do not share all of their properties. This present chapter defends this style of argument for the numerical distinctness of wholes and their parts.
Aristotle's Refinements of Plato's Theory
Authors: Koslicki Kathrin
Published: September 2008

This chapter examines Aristotle's refinements of Plato's theory of composition. Aristotle is generally sympathetic to the Platonic outlook, but differs over the details. In some cases, Aristotle's more nuanced approach avoids certain of the downfalls of Plato's theory. In other cases, however, the added complexities introduced by Aristotle actually lead to further difficulties of their own. Given that the positive account of composition that is presented in Chapter 7 is broadly Aristotelian in spirit, the overarching goal of this chapter is to find inspiration in Aristotle's insights into matters of mereology, and to separate those features in his treatment of parts and wholes that are timeless and can be taken over by the modern-day mereologist from those that are best left behind.
Structure
Authors: Koslicki Kathrin
Published: September 2008

This chapter isolates and illustrates the general features of the notion of structure by examining the use to which this notion is put in several domains that are especially focused on the study of structure. The particular case-studies examined are taken from the disciplines of mathematics, logic, chemistry, music, and linguistics. Each of these areas conceives of a structure as a sort of entity which (i) makes available positions or places for other object to occupy; and which (ii) places two distinctive sorts of constraints on these positions, type-constraints and configuration-constraints. The two features in (i) and (ii) that have shown themselves to be characteristic of the general notion of structure lead to a distinction between what is taken as variable and what is taken as invariable within a given context.
Identification of the idiosyncratic bacterial protein tyrosine kinase (BY-kinase) family signature
Authors: Jadeau Fanny , Bechet Emmanuelle , Cozzone Alain J. , Deléage Gilbert , Grangeasse Christophe , Combet Christophe
Published: September 2008

Motivation: Most of the protein tyrosine kinases found in bacteria have been recently classified in a new family, termed BY-kinase. Indeed, they share no sequence homology with their eukaryotic counterparts and have no known eukaryotic homologues. They are involved in several biological functions (e.g. capsule biosynthesis, antibiotic resistance, virulence mechanism). Thus, they can be considered interesting therapeutic targets to develop new drugs to treat infectious diseases. However, their identification is rendered difficult due to slow progress in their structural characterization and comes most often from biochemical experiments. Moreover BY-kinase sequences are related to many other bacterial proteins involved in several biological functions (e.g. ParA family proteins). Accordingly, their annotations in generalist databases, sequence analysis and classification remain partial and inhomogeneous and there is no bioinformatics resource dedicated to these proteins.

Results: The combination of similarity search with sequence-profile alignment, pattern matching and sliding window computation to detect the tyrosine cluster was used to identify BY-kinase sequences in UniProt Knowledgebase. Cross-validations with keywords searches, pattern matching with several patterns and checking of motifs conservation in multiple sequence alignments were performed. Our pipeline identified 640 sequences as BY-kinases and allowed the definition of a PROSITE pattern that is the signature of the BY-kinases. The sequences identified by our pipeline as BY-kinases share a good sequence similarity with BY-kinases that have already been biochemically characterized, and they all bear the characteristic motifs of the catalytic domain, including the three Walker-like motifs followed by a tyrosine cluster.

Availability:  http://bykdb.ibcp.fr

Contact:  c.combet@ibcp.fr
FACTA: a text search engine for finding associated biomedical concepts
Authors: Tsuruoka Yoshimasa , Tsujii Jun'ichi , Ananiadou Sophia
Published: September 2008

Summary: FACTA is a text search engine for MEDLINE abstracts, which is designed particularly to help users browse biomedical concepts (e.g. genes/proteins, diseases, enzymes and chemical compounds) appearing in the documents retrieved by the query. The concepts are presented to the user in a tabular format and ranked based on the co-occurrence statistics. Unlike existing systems that provide similar functionality, FACTA pre-indexes not only the words but also the concepts mentioned in the documents, which enables the user to issue a flexible query (e.g. free keywords or Boolean combinations of keywords/concepts) and receive the results immediately even when the number of the documents that match the query is very large. The user can also view snippets from MEDLINE to get textual evidence of associations between the query terms and the concepts. The concept IDs and their names/synonyms for building the indexes were collected from several biomedical databases and thesauri, such as UniProt, BioThesaurus, UMLS, KEGG and DrugBank.

Availability: The system is available at http://www.nactem.ac.uk/software/facta/

Contact:  yoshimasa.tsuruoka@manchester.ac.uk
Science Across Borders: 5th Annual Natural Health Product Research Conference—March 26–29, 2008, Toronto, Canada
Authors: Ghayur Muhammad Nabeel
Published: September 2008

Canada is experiencing a growing interest in the use of alternative therapies and products particularly natural health products (NHP). In 1997, Canadians spent around C$ 2 billion on NHP. In an attempt to catch with this popularity of NHP use, Canadian researchers and administrators from academia, industry and government jointly established the Natural Health Product Research Society of Canada (NHPRS). Since its formation, NHPRS has been organizing an annual meeting which brings together world renowned researchers and experts in the area of NHP research. For 2008, the annual NHPRS meeting took place in Toronto from the 26th to 29th of March with a focus on ‘Science Across Borders: Global Natural Health Products Research’. The scientific program was spread into three days of plenary lectures and oral presentations. The different sessions containing these talks were on: ethnobotany around the world; chemical analysis of NHP; product standards and quality control; ethnomedicine; novel analytical approaches; systemic research, nutrisciences and molecular medicine; and drug development from NHP. The meeting proved to be a great success in terms of the speakers that were invited and based on the data that was presented which highlighted recent research taking place in the field of NHP not only in Canada but from many parts of the world.
The impact of methadone or buprenorphine treatment and ongoing injection on highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) adherence: evidence from the MANIF2000 cohort study
Authors: Roux Perrine , Carrieri M. Patrizia , Villes Virgine , Dellamonica Pierre , Poizot‐Martin Isabelle , Ravaux Isabelle , Spire Bruno
Published: September 2008

Aims  To date, no data exist assessing the impact of either methadone or buprenorphine on adherence to highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) in the long term. This study was conducted in order to evaluate whether receiving take‐home methadone and buprenorphine may ensure better adherence to HAART in individuals infected with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) through injection drug use (IDU).

Design  Longitudinal data on adherence, opioid substitution treatment (OST) and patient behaviours starting from their first HAART prescription were collected for 276 individuals HIV‐infected through drug use (n = 1558 visits).

Setting  Out‐patient hospital services delivering HIV care in Marseilles, Avignon, Nice and Ile de France.

Measurements  At any given visit, patients were classified both according to the type of OST received and ongoing injection. Patients who reported no injection and no OST over the whole study period were considered as ‘abstinent’ and used as a reference category. A logit model based on generalized estimation equations (GEE) was used to identify predictors of non‐adherence.

Findings  After adjustment for alcohol consumption, depression and self‐reported side effects, patients ceasing injection during OST and abstinent patients exhibited comparable adherence. Patients reporting injection, on OST or not, had a twofold and threefold risk, respectively, of non‐adherence compared with abstinent patients (P < 0.01 linear trend). Duration on OST without injecting was associated significantly with virological success.

Conclusions  Both access to and effectiveness of OST contribute to sustaining adherence to HAART in HIV‐infected IDUs. These results advocate strongly the need of wider use of OST in countries scaling‐up HAART where HIV is driven by IDUs.
The waterpipe: time for action
Authors: Maziak Wasim
Published: September 2008

The waterpipe, known in many cultures under different shapes and names (e.g. hookah, shisha, narghile), is a centuries‐old tobacco use method that is witnessing a world‐wide surge in popularity. This popularity is most noticeable among youths, and is surpassing cigarette smoking among this group in some societies. Many factors may have contributed to the recent waterpipe spread, including the introduction of sweetened/flavored waterpipe tobacco (known as Maassel), its reduced‐harm perception, the thriving café culture, mass media and the internet. The passage of smoke through water on its way to the smoker underlies much of the common misperception that waterpipe use is less harmful than cigarettes. The health/addictive profile of waterpipe compared to cigarettes is largely unresearched and is likely to be influenced by the properties of smoke, duration and frequency of use, type of tobacco used, volume of smoke inhaled and the contribution of charcoal. However, the accumulation of evidence about the harmful and addictive potential of waterpipe use is outpacing the public health response to this health risk. A timely public health and policy action is needed in order to curb the emerging waterpipe smoking epidemic.