bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
The knockdown of each component of the cysteine proteinase-adhesin complex ofEntamoeba histolytica(EhCPADH) affects the expression of the other complex element as well as thein vitroandin vivovirulence
Authors: OCÁDIZ-RUIZ RAMÓN , FONSECA WENDY , LINFORD ALICIA S. , YOSHINO TIMOTHY P. , OROZCO ESTHER , RODRÍGUEZ MARIO A. 
Published: November 2015

SUMMARYEntamoeba histolyticais the protozoan parasite causative of human amoebiasis, disease responsible for 40 000–100 000 deaths annually. The cysteine proteinase-adhesin complex of this parasite (EhCPADH) is a heterodimeric protein formed by a cysteine protease (EhCP112) and an adhesin (EhADH) that plays an important role in the cytopathic mechanism of this parasite. The coding genes for EhCP112 and EhADH are adjacent in theE. histolyticagenome, suggesting that their expression may be co-regulated, but this hypothesis has not yet been confirmed. Here, we performed the knockdown of EhCP112 and EhADH using gene-specific short-hairpin RNAs (shRNA), and the effect of these knockdowns on the expression of both complex components as well as on thein vitroandin vivovirulence was analysed. Results showed that the knockdown of one of the EhCPADH components produced a simultaneous downregulation of the other protein. Accordingly, a concomitant reduction in the overall expression of the complex was observed. The downregulation of each component also produced a significant decrease in thein vitroandin vivovirulence of trophozoites. These results demonstrated that the expression of EhCP112 and EhADH is co-regulated and confirmed that the EhCPADH complex plays an important role inE. histolyticavirulence.
THE MYSTERY OF TERRITORY
Authors: Tesón Fernando R. 
Published: October 2015

Abstract:This essay argues that the territorial rights of states derive from the property rights of the individuals that make up those states. The argument draws from the Lockean tradition of justification of political powers. Persons in the state of nature have natural rights. Those rights are first-order substantive rights (the right to property), and second-order executive rights (the right to enforce the right to property.) In the social contract, individuals transfer to the state their executive rights, not their substantive rights. The state can thus define the boundaries of property rights and adjudicate property disputes, but does not legitimately own land itself. The article discusses and rejects, for deontic and consequentialist reasons, positions that justify collective and state ownership of territory. Some important consequences follow from the argument: First, no actual state has territorial rights, since no actual state wields delegated powers in land. Second, notwithstanding the preceding conclusion, actual states have an obligation to exercise their (putative) territorial powers consistently with the respect for private property.
HUMAN RIGHTS AND THE PRIORITY OF THE MORAL
Authors: Renzo Massimo 
Published: October 2015

Abstract:The main point of contention between “naturalistic” and “political” theories of human rights concerns the need to invoke the notion of moral human rights (i.e., rights that all human beings have simply by virtue of their humanity) in justifying the system of human rights included in the international practice. Political theories argue that we should bypass the question of the justification of moral human rights and start with the question of which norms and principles should be adopted to regulate the practice. Naturalistic theories, by contrast, claim that a convincing answer to the latter question will have to presuppose some answer to the former. An adequate justification of the system of human rights included in the international practice, according to naturalistic approaches, will ultimately have to rely on some appeal to moral human rights. I call this view the “Priority of the Moral over the Political.” In this essay, I argue that the Priority of the Moral is harder to dismiss than political theories of human rights suggest, and that before we can assess the plausibility of these theories, they need to say more in defense of their claim that they can do without this view. I then consider the two main objections that seem to have motivated many philosophers to abandon the naturalistic approach to the justification of human rights in favor of the political one. I conclude by suggesting that a variant of naturalistic justification, the basic-needs account, has the resources to address these objections.
THE BEARERS OF HUMAN RIGHTS’ DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES FOR HUMAN RIGHTS: A QUIET (R)EVOLUTION?
Authors: Besson Samantha 
Published: October 2015

Abstract:Recent years have seen an increase of interest on the part of human rights theorists in the “supply-side” of human rights, i.e., in the duties or obligations correlative to human rights. Nevertheless, faced with the practically urgent and seemingly simple question of who owes the duties related to international human rights, few human rights theorists provide an elaborate answer. While some make a point of fitting the human rights practice and hence regard states as the sole human rights duty-bearers merely by referring to that practice, others criticize the “state-centric” approach to human rights duty-bearers and expand the scope of the latter to include any international institution beyond the state and even private actors. Curiously, however, even those more expansive accounts of human rights duty-bearers are usually very evasive about why it should be so and especially how it should work. The time has come to broach anew the issue of the bearers of human rights duties, and responsibilities of international institutions in human rights theory, addressing two challenges: focusing on relational and directed human rights duties specifically and not on duties of global justice in general, thereby distinguishing between human rights duty-bearers and other bearers of responsibilities for human rights, on the one hand, and accounting for and justifying the point of international human rights law and practice in this respect, thereby also securing internal arguments for reform, on the other. The essay’s argument is four-pronged. It starts with a few reminders about the relational nature of human rights and the relationship between human rights and duties and what this means for the specification of human rights duties. It then focuses more specifically on the identification of human rights duty-bearers, i.e., states and international institutions of jurisdiction like the European Union (EU), and the allocation of human rights duties to them. The third section of the article is devoted to the concurrent moral responsibilities for human rights that are incurred by other various responsibility-bearers outside institutions of jurisdiction. In the final section, the essay considers the (quiet) revolution potential of the EU’s fast-developing human rights’ duties, and discusses the normative implications of the development of universal international institutions’ human rights duties stricto sensu for international law and politics more generally.
State Constitution Revision: An Exercise in Federalism and Sovereignty
Authors: Myers J. A. 
Published: October 2015

Experience with the concepts of federalism and sovereignty is usually limited to readings and lectures, especially in a class of undergraduates. Since these two concepts are the foundation of American governmental structure on all levels, I want to ensure that the students grasp them. I feel that students have a better grasp of information and its application when they can actually use the information themselves. I have developed the following exercise to explore federalism and sovereignty issues: posing a question concerning a state's revision of its constitution to the students as if they were on the state's constitution revision commission. The lively debates and discussions that ensue cover not only the main issues of sovereignty and federalism but encompass the use (and misuse) of executive power, legislative oversight, and commissions—all concepts that are critical to the study of American national, state and local government.Towards the end of a class focusing on constitutions (and after a class covering the basics of federalism), the stage is set by talking about state constitution revisions and the trend toward simpler “plain English” state constitutions. (Note: This can be adapted for county/city/town charter revisions also.) The class is told that the instructor is the governor of the State of Confusion, and they have been gathered to form the State of Confusion's Constitution Revision Commission. The first section the commission will address at the next meeting is the following:
African Politics at American Colleges and Universities: Topics, Approaches and Readings
Authors: DeLancey Mark , Green December , Menkhaus Kenneth 
Published: October 2015

In 1987 we surveyed a number of teachers of African politics in order to examine the topics, theoretical frameworks and textbooks/readings treated in those courses. The information presented below was derived from responses to 42 questionnaires and from analysis of 35 syllabi. Reference is also made to a similar 1978 study.About three-fourths of the courses reported were defined as “comparative politics” with international relations treated secondarily; the remaining courses combined comparative and international politics. Sixty-five percent of the courses were offered exclusively to undergraduates. Sixty-seven percent concentrated on sub-Saharan Africa, 14% the entire continent, and 19% southern Africa.Instructors vary widely in their course introduction. The most popular method is historical, but nine spend one to two weeks “setting the scene” of contemporary Africa before the historical overview. Twenty-two percent explicitly address approaches to the study of African politics. Some treat competing approaches to “development” or approaches to the causes and cures of poverty in Africa. This roughly compares to the percent of respondents who indicated a desire to expose students to competing paradigms. Although the low percentage of direct treatment of competing approaches is surprising, the syllabi indicate that many teachers integrate the issue throughout the course.
Updating Microcomputers and Public Policy Analysis
Authors: Nagel Stuart S. 
Published: October 2015

The purpose of this brief review is to update the article entitled “Microcomputers and Public Policy Analysis” which appeared in the summer/fall 1985 special symposium issue of the Public Productivity Review on “Microcomputer Applications to Productivity Improvements.”A lot happened in the three years since early 1985 (when the original article was drafted) and early 1988 (when the current updating review was drafted). The main idea that the 1985 article reported was the development of pioneering software. The logical next step was the inclusion of such software as part of the textbook literature of public administration, business administration, policy analysis, political science, and related fields.This updating review thus mainly reports the availability of recent textbooks which provide a microcomputer interface regarding the five fields which were emphasized in the original article. Those five software fields most relevant to public productivity are multi-criteria decision making, management science/operations research, statistical analysis, information systems, and computer-assisted instruction.
Assessing the Advanced Placement Program in American Politics
Authors: Rosati Jerel A. 
Published: October 2015

The Advanced Placement (AP) program has been growing rapidly in the last decade. In 1987, a new AP program was begun in American Government and Politics and its impact is beginning to be felt in high schools and colleges across the country. However, there has been no objective assessment of the program communicated and discussed throughout the political science community.To begin—what is the AP program? The Advanced Placement program offers the equivalent of introductory college courses which may lead to college credit upon satisfactory performance on an AP exam. The AP program is administered by the College Board which contracts with the Educational Testing Service (ETS) to operate the AP examinations. “About 31 percent of American secondary schools currently participate, serving approximately 17 percent of their college-bound students in this way. This use, by both schools and students, has been growing steadily in recent years” (Guide to the AP Program, 1986, p. 4).The College Board highlights the positive aspects of the AP program for learning, education, and all concerned—students, teachers, and administrators. AP programs are considered part of society's effort to revitalize the educational system in the United States, especially in high schools and higher education. The quality and implications of the AP program are all positively portrayed. Yet, the implementation of the AP program has not been closely examined and publicly discussed.
The “L-Word”: A Short History of Liberalism
Authors: Ball Terence , Dagger Richard 
Published: October 2015

Are these good or bad times for liberalism? On the domestic front, after eight years of the Reagan administration and a presidential campaign in which liberalism became “the L-word,” they seem to be bad times indeed. The same can be said of Margaret Thatcher's Britain. But elsewhere, especially in the Communist world, events and regimes seem to be moving in a liberal direction. China after Tiananmen Square presents a notable exception, of course, but the Communist regimes of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe are generally moving towards market economies and a greater concern for individual rights and liberties—two of the hallmarks of liberal societies.Hence the question: Are these good or bad times for liberalism? To answer, we shall need a broader perspective than a survey of contemporary developments can provide. We shall need to look back, that is, to see what liberalism was in order to understand what it has become. Only then can we assess its current condition and prospects—and appreciate how politics in the United States is largely an intramural debate between different wings of liberalism.Liberalism did not begin as a self-conscious social and political movement. This is evident in the fact that “liberal” did not enter the vocabulary of politics until the early 1800s, at least a century after what we now call liberalism became an important force in political thought and action.
Welfare Rights in the Liberal Tradition
Authors: Horne Thomas A. 
Published: October 2015

It was hardly surprising that John Rawls' argument that a liberal political theory had to include a commitment to welfare rights was quickly countered by Robert Nozick's contention that welfare rights were incompatible with liberalism's devotion to freedom and private property. This controversy over the relationship between state funded welfare and liberty, especially the liberty to acquire property, has been and is still part of the politics of all advanced industrial nations, including America. As a matter of political fact, however, the welfare interpretation of liberalism has been triumphant. Government programs to alleviate suffering, to increase economic opportunities available to the poor, and to redistribute wealth go hand in hand with representation and civil liberties in virtually all of the advanced industrial nations of the West. That this has occurred, I want to argue here, is entirely consistent with the mainstream of the liberal tradition and ought to be presented that way to students.The distinction between classical or libertarian liberalism and welfare or the new liberalism emerged at the end of the nineteenth century in England. From the start this distinction was politically charged, meant to imply that the welfare measures enacted particularly during the second Gladstone administration represented a treasonous repudiation of the liberal tradition. Herbert Spencer's The Man Versus the State (1884), little read now but enormously influential then, was most important to spreading this view.
“Thinking (and Teaching) Democratically”: A Defense of Ideologies
Authors: Love Nancy S. 
Published: October 2015

Ideologies are important in modern politics. This is the standard reason political scientists give for studying them. In this article I provide another rationale for the study of ideologies: to promote democracy. This normative argument has been superceded by empirical ones, in part, because of the pejorative connotations of ideology. Those connotations are, however, based upon a selective history and hence an incomplete definition of the term. By reviewing that history, I recover a positive association between ideology and democracy. In the process, I hope to encourage political theorists to teach political ideologies.TheOxford English Dictionaryprovides two standard definitions of ideology. The first is descriptive or neutral: ideology is the “science of ideas.” This definition, indeed the word itself, originated with Destutt de Tracy, a French Enlightenment philosopher. The second is critical or deprecatory: ideology is “ideal or abstract speculation” and “unpractical or visionary theorizing.” Napoleon Bonaparte, Tracy's contemporary, first used ideology in this pejorative sense. Both definitions are operative in contemporary political science.Political scientists who study ideologies as “belief-systems” follow the first definition. For example, standard texts define ideology as “a set of closely related beliefs, or ideas, or even attitudes, characteristic of a group or community” or “a value or belief system accepted as fact or truth by some group.” These texts focus upon the various functions of ideologies, e.g., communication, legitimation, socialization, and especially mobilization.
The Philosophical Roots of the Bill of Rights: The Federalists' and Anti-Federalists' Conceptions of Rights
Authors: Pangle Thomas 
Published: October 2015

The overall aim of the seminar on “The Philosophical Roots of the Bill of Rights” was to gain a better understanding of the basic presuppositions and implications of our Constitutional commitments as expressed in the Bill of Rights, especially as viewed from the perspective of the original debates and compromises that led finally to the enactment of the Bill of Rights. That original perspective was, of course, riven by considerable controversy, above all between the Federalists who supported, and the Anti-Federalists who opposed, the ratification of the original Constitution. The latter were the primary instigators of the movement for a Bill of Rights amending the proposed Constitution, but at the end of the day it was the Federalist outlook, articulated above all by Congressman James Madison, that most fully determined the actual character of the rights that were given Constitutional recognition. Still, this very fact, that an eventual compromise was reached which was at least as satisfying to most leading Federalists as it was to the leading Anti-Federalists who had originally insisted on the amendments—points to the very large measure of agreement on fundamental principles that underlay the debates between Federalists and Anti-Federalists.This agreement on basic moral and political principles becomes most apparent when one contrasts the republicanism of the Americans, the republicanism rooted in a commitment to individual rights, with earlier and alternative forms of republican political theory. This contrast was the theme of the first seminar. I asked the participants to read Plutarch's life of Lycurgus, not only because Plutarch is an author, and this particular short biography is a text, well-known to the American Founders, but even more because the life of Lycurgus contains a vivid and concrete statement of the classical republican ideal that brings out some of the most alien features of that ideal.
Landmarks in the Judicial Interpretation of Civil Rights in America
Authors: Abraham Henry J. 
Published: October 2015

Approximately 65 applicants opted for acceptance in this seminar, from whom twenty were ultimately selected. All accepted. They came from seven colleges and thirteen universities, located in ten states; ranked from instructor through professor; ranged in age from 29 to 61; and included seventeen men and three women.Wisely, the objectives of the four seminars conducted under the program constituted both substantive inquiry and teaching methodology. Consequently, my approach to the examination of “landmarks in the judicial interpretation of civil rights in America” was designed to stress the communicative responsibilities of teaching as well as content matter. All too frequently, the latter suffers because of insufficient attention to the former. I did not utilize video aids in the seminar, but I provided sundry types of exhibits that have proved helpful in my now more than four decades of teaching at the university level.Although the thrust of the seminar's aims and context was self-evident, it seemed to me that to address the subject matter without an analysis of seminal components of the nature of the judicial process, in general, and the parameters of judicial power, in particular, would be both short-sighted and dysfunctional. Looking back to the seminar now, I am more persuaded than ever that that resolve was appropriate—for, perhaps quite naturally and understandably in view of the deeply felt components of the subject matter, pre-conceived personal, as well as professional commitments, were indubitably in evidence at the threshold. Consequently, the entire first day's attention to an examination of the lines and limits of the judicial role and the postures of individual jurists would serve as seminal background material for the gravamen of the seminar's remaining days.
What Every Student Should Know About the Bill of Rights
Authors: Petracca Mark P. 
Published: October 2015

In June of 1789, Representative James Madison fulfilled a campaign promise to his Virginia constituents by asking colleagues in the House of Representatives to consider a group of constitutional amendments designed to secure basic individual liberties. By December of 1791, ten of these were ratified by the necessary number of states, becoming the first amendments to the new Constitution—the U.S. Bill of Rights. Despite the bicentennial “burnout” which some individuals are experiencing, the bicentennial of the Bill of Rights—which we begin in earnest this spring—should be a most meaningful occasion for every American. The Declaration of Independence made the nation a possibility; the Constitution created the structure of public authority in the nation; but the Bill of Rights has done nothing less than define the very quality of public and private life in the United States. If the Constitution is a “living document,” then surely the Bill of Rights is about daily living and the freedom we have to experience life. This makes the Bill of Rights America's most important “founding” document.The Bill of Rights has been variously described as “a shield to every American citizen,” “the one guarantee of freedom to the American people,” “fetters against doing evil which no honest government should decline,” and “the foundation of liberty against the encroachments of government.” However, even as we prepare to celebrate its bicentennial, ignorance, indifference, intolerance, ideology, and perhaps even modernity threaten the viability of its guarantees. Historian Michael Kammen (1986: 336-356) calls it a “subtle attack” while others see it as a direct frontal assault.