bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Teleological Dialectic
Authors: Johnson Monte Ransome 
Published: February 2006

Abstract
Aristotle articulates his natural teleology in the context of a dialectical engagement with his predecessors, identifying each of them with a salient causal factor: Empedocles (luck or chance), Democritus (necessity or spontaneity), Anaxagoras (intelligence or mind), and Plato (art and form). Aristotle tries to co-opt each of these factors into his naturalistic teleology by an a fortiori argument: to the extent that luck, necessity, intelligence, or art is a cause, nature must even more so be considered a cause. For luck is an incidental cause of that which nature is an intrinsic cause, necessity is a conjoint cause of that which nature is a leading cause, and art imitates nature.
Teleology and Organisms i: General Principles
Authors: Johnson Monte Ransome 
Published: February 2006

Abstract
Elements compose organic bodies, including tissues (homogenous bodies) and organs (heterogeneous bodies), and in so doing are for the sake of the whole organism of which they are the transformed parts. But the starting point for the explanation of living things is the identification of its functions: nutrition and reproduction for plants, perception and locomotion for animals, and virtue and intelligence for humans. Since the functions of plants are fundamental to all other living things, the vegetative functions are the primary ones in biological explanation. Thus, the survival and reproduction of each species is the basis for its explanation, and these are represented as goods for it. But although goods come first in the order of explanation, they come last in the order of development of the organism. Thus, intelligence is the last thing developed by a human, even though everything else has come to be for the sake of this. The reversal of explanatory and genetic order does not, however, imply some kind of mysterious “backwards causation”.
Teleology and the Cosmos
Authors: Johnson Monte Ransome 
Published: February 2006

Abstract
Aristotle’s cosmos consists of natural substances, each with its own proper functions, motions, and ends. To this extent, his cosmos is teleological. But there is no overall or cosmic teleology in a stronger sense, above and beyond the applicability of teleological explanations to each of the natural things. For the universe (or nature as a whole) does not have a proper function, or motions, goods or ends. The stars, elements, plants, animals and humans do, and nature is the principle of motion and the end for each of these. In the final chapter of Metaphysics XII (Lambda), Aristotle discusses an aporia about how the good exists in “the nature of the whole”. He ends not with a positive account, but with a criticism of his predecessors who have advanced an account of an extrinsic cause of the cosmos.
Conclusion
Authors: Johnson Monte Ransome 
Published: February 2006

Abstract
Aristotle’s teleological explanations are most successful in the domain of living things, and there is good reason to think that organisms are the objects of his most important teleological remarks. The attempts to apply teleological explanations to less complex entities (such as the elements) and more complex entities (such as cities) have been judged by history a failure. His explanations of organisms, on the other hand, have been celebrated by molecular biologists, embryologists and developmental biologists, and advocates of adaptationism in evolutionary biology. Teleology as a scientific proposition seems to require a sufficient level of complexity, but to break down at levels of too much complexity (at the level of human behavior, or of society, for example) or too little complexity (at the level of inanimate entities, for example). But whatever the scientific verdict on Aristotle’s teleology, it is clear that his conception of intrinsic ends has important implications for axiology (the theory of value). For he has shown how it is possible to identify objective goods, independent of human minds, and to avoid the dilemma between radical egalitarianism on the one hand and arbitrary or self-serving hierarchy on the other.
Zombies and Consciousness
Authors: Kirk Robert 
Published: February 2006

AbstractBy definition, zombies would be behaviourally and physically just like us, but not conscious. If a zombie world is possible, then physicalism is false. Just as importantly, the seductive conception of phenomenal consciousness embodied by the zombie idea is fundamentally misconceived. One of this book’s two main aims is to bring out the incoherence of the zombie idea with the help of an intuitively appealing argument (the ‘sole-pictures argument’). The other is to develop a fresh approach to understanding phenomenal consciousness by exploiting two key notions: that of a ‘basic package’ of capacities which is necessary and sufficient for perception in the full sense; and that of ‘direct activity’, which, when combined with the basic package, is necessary and sufficient for perceptual consciousness. These definitions may apply to quite humble creatures, and even to suitably constructed artefacts.
Introduction
Authors: Kirk Robert 
Published: February 2006

AbstractA cook was charged with cruelty to animals for putting live prawns on a hot-plate, but the case was dropped for lack of expertise on whether prawns could suffer pain. What matters from the point of view of an interest in whether a creature is phenomenally conscious: whether there is ‘something it is like’ for it? Even if all the physical facts are known, might it still lack phenomenal consciousness, as ‘zombists’ (those who think zombies are conceivable) claim? The problem is not merely scientific: philosophical explanations are needed. This chapter introduces those and other central topics, and outlines the book.
Zombies and Minimal Physicalism
Authors: Kirk Robert 
Published: February 2006

AbstractEpiphenomenalism accepts the causal closure of the physical, hence the possibility of zombies. But it is argued, via consideration of the ‘redescription thesis’, that physicalism involves commitment to the ‘strict implication thesis’, according to which the narrowly physical truths about the world strictly imply the significant mental truths. This is an empirical thesis but depends on logical or conceptual relations, although physicalists are not therefore compelled to subscribe to any strong doctrine of conceptual analysis. It follows that if zombies are even barely possible, physicalism is false. It also follows that bald assertions of psycho-physical identity do not dispense physicalists from commitment to this conclusion, nor does a thesis of a posteriori necessity.
What Has To Be Done
Authors: Kirk Robert 
Published: February 2006

AbstractThis chapter focuses on the nature of perceptual-phenomenal consciousness. This is the ‘what-is-it problem’, and contrasts strongly with the ‘what-is-it-like problem’. A solution to the latter cannot be found for Nagelian reasons, but that does not prevent an attempt to solve the what-is-it problem. Jackson’s Mary provides useful lessons: she could not get a priori from the physical and functional truths to a full knowledge-with-understanding of phenomenal truths, but she could get a priori from the physical truths to a knowledge of which phenomenal statements were true. The difference between Block’s ‘access consciousness’ and ‘phenomenal consciousness’ is no difficulty for the project; nor is a new science needed. In what follows, the moderate realism of everyday psychology will be useful.
Deciders
Authors: Kirk Robert 
Published: February 2006

AbstractConsidering humbler creatures than ourselves provides a better chance of uncovering what really matters for perceptual consciousness. This chapter discusses a series of broad classes of behaving systems, starting with ‘pure reflex systems’ and ending with ‘deciders’: systems with the ‘basic package’, capable of choosing between alternative courses of action, if only in a rudimentary sense. The idea of the basic package provides a framework for thinking about behaving systems, which advances the overall project of understanding perceptual consciousness. This framework helps to bridge the gap between descriptions in purely physical or biomechanical terms, and descriptions in psychological terms.
Direct Activity
Authors: Kirk Robert 
Published: February 2006

AbstractThe basic package is necessary for perceptual consciousness but seems not to be sufficient. What is also necessary is ‘direct activity’: a special feature of the way events constituting incoming perceptual information affect the system, explained partly with the help of the ‘rabbitoid’. This imagined creature is a decider, but is unlike a normal rabbit in that its perceptual information does not automatically give it the opportunity to modify its current goals if doing so would help it. Direct activity is further explained in terms of ‘instantaneity’ and ‘priority’. It is an integrated process, to be conceived of holistically, and contrasts sharply with what is often called the ‘availability’ or ‘poisedness’ of perceptual information.
Survival of the Fittest
Authors: Kirk Robert 
Published: February 2006

AbstractThe main alternative accounts of perceptual consciousness are briefly discussed, including scientific-psychological; neuroscientific; dualist; physicalist; Wittgensteinian; Sartrean; behaviourist; other kinds of functionalist; pure representationalist (Dretske, Tye); higher-order perception (Armstrong); higher-order thought (Rosenthal, Carruthers). The book concludes with a reminder of its core points.
The Connection between Old and New Approaches to Financial Satisfaction
Authors: Praag Bernard M. S. van 
Published: February 2006

Abstract
This chapter claims priority in the field of happiness and economics for the early researches on financial satisfaction by the Leyden School in Holland during the 1960s. Although the scope of the research exercise was more restricted compared to subsequent studies, the present-day significance of the Leyden School econometric approach is shown to provide new insights to the current debate.
6 Electoral Representation in Loosely Bounded Territories: Mass Politics in the EU?
Authors: Bartolini Stefano 
Published: February 2006

Abstract
This chapter investigates the electoral representation of the integration issues, assuming that the shift in the location of institutional power related to European integration may be accompanied by a corresponding change in the direction of the efforts of mass politics. It documents the extent to which European issues differentiate the attitudes of voters and parties alike. It argues that the attitudes of national and European parties, of political elites, and public opinion towards the constitutive issues of integration are hard to interpret, referring to historical cleavages or to a left-right dimension. It interprets the Europarties development as a top-down attempt by political elites to institutionalize an isomorphic party system at the EU level that tends to select those nation-like issues on which a structuring easier. It discusses the strong collusive push of both national and European parties towards constitutive EU issues in which their divisions appear insurmountable and would undermine their effective existence. The current situation witnesses an imbalance between the lack of party system structuring at the EU level and the growing potential for party system destructuring at the national level. If EU-related latent oppositions were to be politicized, the resulting alignments will not closely correspond with the political divisions on which domestic politics has traditionally been founded.
2 Mandate Theories: Government and Median
Authors: McDonald Michael D. , Budge Ian 
Published: February 2006

AbstractThe argument of Chapter One is spelled out in more detail in terms of propositional tables and accompanying discussion. These show the considerable overlap in the conditions for any mandate to exist, and the fact that the Government Mandate is a special case of the Median Mandate. The tables on voting and governments show that spontaneous majorities, essential to the Government Mandate, rarely form, while correspondences between median voter and median party in Parliament are quite common (three quarters of all governments).
7 Representing the Median Voter
Authors: McDonald Michael D. , Budge Ian 
Published: February 2006

AbstractThis chapter performs a static analysis of correspondences between median voter, Parliamentary median, and government preferences by individual government and election. Distortions are widespread but more evident under SMD than PR systems — which are of course designed to produce a ‘necessary’ correspondence between the median voter and the median party in Parliament. However, distortions at each stage (voter-Parliament, Parliament-government) and over time cancel each other out so long-term representational bias is limited.
Who Controls Short‐Term Policymaking?
Authors: McDonald Michael D. , Budge Ian 
Published: February 2006

AbstractThis chapter considers what happens after parties negotiate a government. How far do they succeed in carrying out their original intentions and thereby effectuating the preferences of the median voter? The analysis of government declarations gives mixed signals about who is in control of policy. On a general Left-Right orientation, the policy position marked by a country's median voter is the most reliably consistent indicator of what a government intends to do. If this effect is causal, it would have to be due to parliaments and governments looking over their shoulders at what the election communicated about the median voter Left–Right position and anticipating policy benefits at the next election, as opposed to the median voter effectively selecting a median parliamentary position that then takes control of the general tenor of policy. If the parliamentary median were the major influence, it would be the variable that withstood controls for the government and electorate. It does not come close to this however. And, while the government's Left–Right position nearly withstands statistical controls, the magnitude of its effect pales in comparison to that of the electorate's position.
10 Long‐Term Policy Regimes: Incrementalism Put in Context
Authors: McDonald Michael D. , Budge Ian 
Published: February 2006

AbstractPolicy outcomes are rather stable while politics in the short-term are in a state of flux — one which oscillates round long-term equilibrium point which is fairly stable within each country. Such well-established policy positions distinguish long-term policy regimes within each country. To change these, governments need popular support over fairly long periods of time, which usually is not forthcoming. Typically, actual policy outputs oscillate round a long-term equilibrium, which does not change very much over a four or five election period.
Functional bioinformatics for Arabidopsis thaliana
Authors: Clare A. , Karwath A. , Ougham H. , King R. D. 
Published: February 2006

Abstract
Motivation: The genome of Arabidopsis thaliana, which has the best understood plant genome, still has approximately one-third of its genes with no functional annotation at all from either MIPS or TAIR. We have applied our Data Mining Prediction (DMP) method to the problem of predicting the functional classes of these protein sequences. This method is based on using a hybrid machine-learning/data-mining method to identify patterns in the bioinformatic data about sequences that are predictive of function. We use data about sequence, predicted secondary structure, predicted structural domain, InterPro patterns, sequence similarity profile and expressions data.
Results: We predicted the functional class of a high percentage of the Arabidopsis genes with currently unknown function. These predictions are interpretable and have good test accuracies. We describe in detail seven of the rules produced.
Availability: Rulesets are available at and predictions are available at
Contact: afc@aber.ac.uk
Adapters, shims, and glue—service interoperability for in silico experiments
Authors: Radetzki U. , Leser U. , Schulze-Rauschenbach S. C. , Zimmermann J. , Lüssem J. , Bode T. , Cremers A. B. 
Published: February 2006

Abstract
Motivation: Computationally, in silico experiments in biology are workflows describing the collaboration of people, data and methods. The Grid and Web services are proposed to be the next generation infrastructure supporting the deployment of bioinformatics workflows. But the growing number of autonomous and heterogeneous services pose challenges to the used middleware w.r.t. composition, i.e. discovery and interoperability of services required within in silico experiments. In the IRIS project, we handle the problem of service interoperability by a semi-automatic procedure for identifying and placing customizable adapters into workflows built by service composition.
Results: We show the effectiveness and robustness of the software-aided composition procedure by a case study in the field of life science. In this study we combine different database services with different analysis services with the objective of discovering required adapters. Our experiments show that we can identify relevant adapters with high precision and recall.
Availability: The IRIS software and the profile language can be downloaded from
Contact: ur@iai.uni-bonn.de
The role of microorganisms in atopic dermatitis
Authors: Baker Barbara S 
Published: February 2006

SummaryAtopic dermatitis (AD) is a common, fluctuating skin disease that is often associated with atopic conditions such as asthma and IgE-mediated food allergy and whose skin lesions are characterized by a Th-2 cell-mediated response to environmental antigens. The increasing prevalence and severity of atopic diseases including AD over the last three decades has been attributed to decreased exposure to microorganisms during early life, which may result in an altered Th-1/Th-2-balance and/or reduced T cell regulation of the immune response. Patients with AD exhibit defects in innate and acquired immune responses resulting in a heightened susceptibility to bacterial, fungal and viral infections, most notably colonization by S. aureus. Toxins produced by S. aureus exacerbate disease activity by both the induction of toxin-specific IgE and the activation of various cell types including Th-2 cells, eosinophils and keratinocytes. Allergens expressed by the yeast Malazessia furfur, a component of normal skin flora, have also been implicated in disease pathogenesis in a subset of AD patients.Microorganisms play an influential role in AD pathogenesis, interacting with disease susceptibility genes to cause initiation and/or exacerbation of disease activity.
Development of serum IgM antibodies against superantigens ofStaphylococcus aureusandStreptococcus pyogenesin Kawasaki disease
Authors: Matsubara K , Fukaya T , Miwa K , Shibayama N , Nigami H , Harigaya H , Nozaki H , Hirata T , Baba K , Suzuki T , Ishiguro A 
Published: February 2006

SummaryTo serologically determine the association of microbial superantigens and the pathogenesis of Kawasaki disease (KD), we conducted a case-control study. Serum IgG and IgM antibodies against staphylococcal enterotoxin A (SEA), SEB, SEC, toxic shock syndrome toxin-1 (TSST-1), and streptococcal pyrogenic exotoxin A (SPEA) were measured by an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay in 293 serum samples from 65 KD patients on clinical days 1–28 and 120 control samples. The administration of immunoglobulin products, which contain high concentrations of IgG antibodies against all the superantigens, directly elevated antitoxin IgG antibodies in KD patients. In contrast, antitoxin IgM antibodies were not detected in immunoglobulin products. Actually, we found a significant elevation of IgM antibodies against SEA in KD patients in the first (median titre: 0·020, P &lt; 0·01 versus control), second (0·024, P &lt; 0·001), third (0·030, P &lt; 0·001) and fourth (0·038, P &lt; 0·001) weeks, compared to the controls (0·015). Significant differences of IgM antibodies were also true for SEB, TSST-1, and SPEA throughout the first to fourth weeks, and for SEC throughout the second to fourth weeks. The prevalence of KD patients having high IgM titres (&gt; mean + 2SD of control values) to the 5 superantigens was increased with the clinical weeks, and reached 29–43% of KD subjects at the fourth week. This is the first study that describes kinetics of IgM antibodies against superantigens and clarifies the serological significance throughout the clinical course of KD. Our results suggest that multiple superantigens involve in the pathogenesis of KD.
Suppressed cellular alloimmune responses in HIV-exposed seronegative female sex workers
Authors: Jennes W , Evertse D , Borget M-Y , Vuylsteke B , Maurice C , Nkengasong J N , Kestens L 
Published: February 2006

SummaryParticular human leucocyte antigen (HLA) polymorphisms have been associated with a reduced risk of HIV transmission. However, protective alloimmune responses expected to result from such a genetic predisposition have not been demonstrated. To this end, we analysed and compared cellular and humoral alloimmune responses in a cohort of female sex workers who remained human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-seronegative despite more than 3 years of high-risk sexual activity (ESN FSWs) with those of low-risk HIV-seronegative female blood donors in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire. ESN FSWs showed significantly lower allostimulated CD69 expression and secretion of interferon-γ, macrophage inflammatory protein (MIP)-1β and RANTES (regulated upon activation, normal T-cell expressed and secreted) by lymphocytes than controls. In contrast, ESN FSWs showed significantly higher mitogen-stimulated CD69 expression and secretion of tumour necrosis factor-α and MIP-1β than controls. Suppression of cellular alloimmune responses among ESN FSWs was associated with a higher self-reported frequency of unprotected sex. Levels of anti-HLA class I alloantibodies in plasma were not significantly different between ESN FSWs and controls. These findings indicate that frequent sexual exposure to multiple partners results in suppression rather than activation of cellular alloimmune responses. Our data support the hypothesis that suppressed cellular alloimmune responses may play a role in protection against HIV infection.