Each annual Ontology Summit initiative makes a statement appropriate to each Summit’s theme as part of our general advocacy designed to bring ontology science and engineering into the mainstream. The theme this year is "Towards an Open Ontology Repository". This communiqué represents the joint position of those who were engaged in the year's summit discourse on an Open Ontology Repository (OOR) and of those who endorse below. In this discussion, we have agreed that an "ontology repository is a facility where (...) ontologies and related information artifacts can be stored, retrieved and managed." -/- We believe in the promise of semantic technologies based on logic, databases and the Semantic Web, a Web of exposed data and of interpretations of that data (i.e., of semantics), using common standards. Such technologies enable distinguishable, computable, reusable, and sharable meaning of Web and other artifacts, including data, documents, and services. We also believe that making that vision a reality requires additional supporting resources and these resources should be open, extensible, and provide common services over the ontologies. (shrink)

In December 2013, the Nonhuman Rights Project (NhRP) filed a petition for a common law writ of habeas corpus in the New York State Supreme Court on behalf of Tommy, a chimpanzee living alone in a cage in a shed in rural New York (Barlow, 2017). Under animal welfare laws, Tommy’s owners, the Laverys, were doing nothing illegal by keeping him in those conditions. Nonetheless, the NhRP argued that given the cognitive, social, and emotional capacities of chimpanzees, Tommy’s confinement constituted (...) a profound wrong that demanded remedy by the courts. Soon thereafter, the NhRP filed habeas corpus petitions on behalf of Kiko, another chimpanzee housed alone in Niagara Falls, and Hercules and Leo, two chimpanzees held in research facilities at Stony Brook University. Thus began the legal struggle to move these chimpanzees from captivity to a sanctuary, an effort that has led the NhRP to argue in multiple courts before multiple judges. The central point of contention has been whether Tommy, Kiko, Hercules, and Leo have legal rights. To date, no judge has been willing to issue a writ of habeas corpus on their behalf. Such a ruling would mean that these chimpanzees have rights that confinement might violate. Instead, the judges have argued that chimpanzees cannot be bearers of legal rights because they are not, and cannot be persons. In this book we argue that chimpanzees are persons because they are autonomous. (shrink)

RELAÇÃO E EFEITOS BIOQUÍMICO-NUTRICIONAIS SOBRE O RETARDO DA MATURIDADE SEXUAL EM BOVINOS -/- -/- Emanuel Isaque Cordeiro da Silva -/- Departamento de Agropecuária – IFPE Campus Belo Jardim -/- [email protected] ou [email protected] -/- WhatsApp: (82)98143-8399 -/- -/- 12. RETARDO DA MATURIDADE SEXUAL -/- -/- Nos animais em crescimento, as deficiências em qualquer dos nutrientes: proteína, energia, macro ou microminerais, vitaminas e aporte hídrico, geram inibição das sínteses de proteínas específicas como os fatores de crescimento. Neste tipo de situação, as taxas (...) de ganho de peso e o desenvolvimento dos diferentes segmentos do trato reprodutivo se alteram. Os animais atrasam a idade a que chegam à puberdade, atrasando a entrada na vida produtiva como animais aptos a se reproduzir. O quadro de atraso à puberdade ocasiona atraso na idade a que se apresenta o primeiro parto, fator responsável por grande parte das falhas na eficiência reprodutiva. Sem dúvida, aspectos nutricionais são os maiores limitantes no crescimento e na maturidade reprodutiva, sendo assim, esse trabalho têm como cunho a apresentação de alguns destes fatores: -/- 12.1 Relação Energia:Proteína -/- A maturidade sexual relaciona-se com um consumo adequado de energia e com a obtenção de um peso corporal adequado; o crescimento depende, em grande medida, da ingestão abundante de elementos energéticos. Uma ração deficiente em energia diminui a velocidade de crescimento, reduz a produção de leite, retarda a puberdade, reduz a fertilidade e diminui a resistência às doenças e ao parasitismo. -/- Uma das causas mais comuns da baixa fertilidade e do atraso da maturidade sexual nas vacas leiteiras é a falta de energia em relação às necessidades do animal ou um balanço de energia negativo; além disso, este atraso no início tardio da maturidade sexual diminui o tempo de vida durante o qual os animais têm uma reprodução ativa. -/- A falta de energia na ração pode ser causada por um consumo insuficiente de alimentos ou por uma baixa digestibilidade de seus componentes (dieta de baixa qualidade) e, por um teor elevado de umidade na dieta. O baixo consumo de energia é normalmente o resultado de restrições alimentares. Em qualquer uma das situações, a falta de energia impede o animal de expressar seu potencial genético de produção e o problema complica-se se, por sua vez, existe deficiência em proteínas, minerais e vitaminas. -/- Como referenciado anteriormente, a energia têm papel fundamental em todos os mecanismos fisiológicos do animal, seja para a reprodução, fornecimento de leite ou para produção de carne, uma vez que possui relação direta com as mitocôndrias celulares. A energia é considerada um tipo de gordura, e possui relação direta com o sistema reprodutivo da vaca. Para a produção de leite, uma vaca pode utilizar suas reservas de gordura e transformá-las em leite, isto é, a cada quilo de gordura corporal pode-se obter de 7 a 9 quilos de leite. O fornecimento de energia têm como fator a categoria animal, o sistema produtivo, a idade etc. logo, a administração de energia deve obedecer os parâmetros de 1,75 a 1,25 Mcal/kg do alimento fornecido, seja matéria seca, volumoso ou ração concentrada. Vale frisar novamente que os níveis de energia administrada devem ser altos (1,72 Mcal/kg) para as vacas no início da lactação e deve-se diminuir gradativamente conforme chega o final da lactação, chegando a 1,54 Mcal/kg ou menos. No caso de prevenção contra o retardamento dos animais à idade reprodutiva, os níveis de energia para as bezerras de 0-3 meses com ± 150 kg deve ser de 1,70 Mcal/kg de MS para mantença e de 1,06 Mcal para ganho de peso diário; para bezerras com idade entre 6-12 meses e um peso de ± 250 kg o nível de energia deve ser de 1,54 Mcal para mantença e de 0,97 para ganho; por fim, para bezerras chegando a categoria de novilhas (> 12 meses) o ideal é o fornecimento de 1,39 Mcal para mantença e de 0,81 Mcal para ganho. Os alimentos que mais fornecem energia são o sebo, a gordura protegida, o milho, etc. -/- O efeito da proteína da dieta na reprodução é complexo. Em geral, quantidades inadequadas de proteína na dieta reduzem a produção de leite e o desempenho reprodutivo (maturidade sexual). Deficiências de proteínas diminuem os níveis de proteínas de reserva ou de transporte no sangue, fígado e músculos o que predispõe o animal a várias doenças que podem levar a não manifestação da maturidade sexual ou mesmo a morte. -/- Há tipos de proteínas como a PB (proteína bruta), a PDR (proteína degradada no rúmen), proteína metabolizável entre outras, ambas possuem relação com a PB e são primordiais no entendimento da nutrição de ruminantes. Os níveis de PDR se forem baixos mostra uma boa população microbiana presente no rúmen do animal, esse compartimento que se desenvolve conforme a ingestão de alimentos concentrados. -/- Para que se possa prevenir o retardamento dos animais à maturidade sexual, deve-se estar atentos aos níveis de proteína que se administra aos animais, em especial para as bezerras que entrarão logo na puberdade estando aptas para se reproduzir. Contudo, o tipo e a quantidade de proteína se limita a fatores como os ingredientes da ração, método alimentar utilizado na propriedade e o potencial produtivo do lote que se maneja. Sendo assim, os níveis oscilam conforme a categoria, idade e peso como demonstra na tabela 1, que traz os níveis ideias de proteína que devem estar presentes na alimentação das bezerras conforme idade e peso médio das mesmas. -/- Tabela 1: Exigências de proteína em bezerras e novilha -/- Nutriente 3-6 meses (± 150 kg) 6-12 meses (± 250 kg) > 12 meses (± 400 kg) -/- PB % 16 12 12 -/- PDR % 8,2 4,3 2,1 -/- Fonte: TEIXEIRA, 1997. -/- Para que as bezerras entrem na maturidade sexual sem atraso ou quaisquer problema, é ideal que a ração que viera ser fornecida para as mesmas possuam uma quantidade básica de 22% de PB presente na composição. Os alimentos mais proteicos são os de origem animal como a farinha de sangue, de penas etc., porém sua administração deve ser limitada. Sendo assim, a tabela 2 traz os possíveis melhores alimentos a serem ofertados aos animais e sua quantidade diária para que se possa suprir os requerimentos dos animais e prevenir o retardamento sexual ou qualquer outro problema reprodutivo que tenha relação nutricional. -/- Tabela 2: Alimentos proteicos e quantidades ideais para bovinos -/- Alimento PB% Quantidade % da mistura ou kg/cab./dia -/- Caroço de algodão 21 ± 50% da mistura da ração (1 kg = 0,5 kg de caroço) -/- Farelo de glúten de milho 23 Pode substituir o volumoso (máximo 3,5 kg/cab./dia) -/- Grão de soja 38 ± 20% da mistura (1 kg = 0,2 kg de grão) ou no máximo 2,5-3,5 kg/cab./dia -/- Farelo de algodão 41 ± 30-40% da mistura (1 kg = 0,3-0,4 kg de farelo) ou no máximo 4,5 kg/cab./dia -/- Fonte: TEIXEIRA, 1997. -/- A Ureia e outras substâncias que contêm nitrogênio não proteico (NNP) podem ser utilizadas pelos microrganismos do rúmen para a produção de proteínas bacterinas. Em geral, a utilização da NNP não é recomendada, exceto em situações especiais de alimentação e sob controle técnico, uma vez que um manejo inadequado, nomeadamente de excessos de consumo, pode provocar intoxicações com efeitos letais (ROIG, 2003; FERGUSON et al., 1989). É claro que as fontes de NNP não possuem aminoácidos e que muitos deles são essenciais e não são sintetizados pela microbiota ruminal. -/- Alguns autores argumentam que o nitrogênio não proteico (NNP) como a ureia, pode ser muito bem utilizado desde que não exceda um terço do total de nitrogênio na dieta diária ou 3% da ração de grãos de cereais e após adaptação gradual de, pelo menos, três semanas. A boa utilização da ureia nos ruminantes depende da ração conter pelo menos 75% de nutrientes digestíveis totais NDT, disponibilidade suficiente de amido e de CNE para converter o nitrogênio da ureia em proteína microbiana e quando o teor de proteína verdadeira da ração não for inferior a 12% (ROIG, 2003). -/- 12.2 Minerais (K e I) -/- Um excesso de potássio no sangue ocorre quando o consumo excede a capacidade do rim de o eliminar, provocando um atraso na maturidade sexual, ciclos sexuais irregulares e baixa natalidade; também interfere na absorção intestinal do magnésio, dificultando a absorção e o metabolismo do cálcio, magnésio e sódio; geralmente afeta fêmeas de alta produção leiteira (com o leite é excretado muito magnésio). -/- No macho, o excesso de potássio diminui a fecundidade, altera as vesículas seminais e influencia a composição espermática. Na fêmea prejudicaria os ciclos sexuais (duração e intensidade). -/- A excreção de íons de potássio diminui quando se ingere pouca quantidade deste elemento e de sódio, e quando há acidose aguda ou insuficiência das glândulas adrenais. -/- O potássio é um elemento de muitas funções no metabolismo animal e participa de múltiplos mecanismos fisiológicos, dentre eles o reprodutivo. Sendo assim, é importante o criador estar atento sobre a administração do mineral na alimentação das bezerras que vão entrar para a maturidade sexual. De forma geral, é indicado fornecer matéria seca que contenha K na ordem de 0,6 a 1% da composição do alimento. Em média, uma vaca de 600 kg que produz 15 kg de leite ingira cerca de 230 gramas desse mineral diariamente. -/- Em crescimento, a função tireoide tem um papel protetor da sexualidade e estimula a puberdade por suas relações com as funções hipofisária e ovariana, atuando como sensibilizador da gônada para o aparecimento do estro; sendo, na fêmea sinérgico com a FSH. Uma deficiência na produção de hormonas da tireoide induzirá uma redução na troca de energia e na liberação de calor corporal, ou seja, ocorre uma diminuição no metabolismo basal do -/- As iodo-proteínas ou tireoproteínas (T3 e T4) beneficiam o crescimento e a secreção láctea, no macho estimulam a puberdade (maturidade sexual) e são gametogênicas (a hipófise é estimulada pela tiroxina e a vitamina A). -/- Para se livrar do atraso e da desordem da administração dos animais e do cronograma da fazenda, o proprietário deve atentar ao fornecimento adequado de I que varia entre 0,34 e 0,88 mg/kg de MS. -/- As formas de prevenção por parte desses minerais poderá ser manejada através dos alimentos, da água ou via suplementação mineral injetável. Por fim, o criador poderá ficar tranquilo e ter seu cronograma estabelecido sendo posto e prática e obtendo êxito no plantel. -/- -/- REFERÊNCIAS BIBLIOGRÁFICAS -/- -/- BARRENHO, Gonçalo José Pinheiro. Nutrição e fertilidade em bovinos de leite. 2016. Dissertação de Mestrado. Universidade de Évora. -/- BINDARI, Yugal Raj et al. Effects of nutrition on reproduction-A review. Adv. Appl. Sci. Res, v. 4, n. 1, p. 421-429, 2013. -/- BOLAND, M. P. Efectos nutricionales en la reproducción del ganado. XXXI Jornadas Uruguayas de Buiatría, 2003. -/- CASTILLO-BADILLA, Gloriana et al. Efecto de la edad al primer parto sobre parámetros productivos en vacas Jersey de Costa Rica. Agronomía Mesoamericana, v. 24, n. 1, p. 177-187, 2013. -/- DEHNING, R. Interrelaciones entre nutrición y fertilidad. In: Curso Manejo de la Fertilidad Bovina18-23 May 1987Medellín (Colombia). CICADEP, Bogotá (Colombia) Universidad de La Salle, Medellín (Colombia) Instituto Colombiano Agropecurio, Bogotá (Colombia) Sociedad Alemana de Cooperación Técnica-GTZ (Alemania), 1987. -/- DE LUCA, Leonardo J. Nutrición y fertilidad en el ganado lechero. XXXVI Jornadas Uruguayas de Buiatría, 2008. -/- DIAS, Juliano Cesar et al. Alguns aspectos da interação nutrição-reprodução em bovinos: energia, proteína, minerais e vitaminas. PUBVET, v. 4, p. Art. 738-743, 2010. -/- FERGUSON, James D.; CHALUPA, William. Impact of protein nutrition on reproduction in dairy cows. Journal of dairy science, v. 72, n. 3, p. 746-766, 1989. -/- GORDON, Ian. Controlled reproduction in farm animals series. Nova Iorque: CAB International, 1996. -/- GRANJA, Yury Tatiana; CERQUERA, Jefferson; FERNÁNDEZ, Omar. Factores nutricionales que interfieren en el desempeño reproductivo de la hembra bovina. Revista Colombiana de Ciencia Animal, v. 4, n. 2, p. 458-472, 2012. -/- MAAS, John. Relationship between nutrition and reproduction in beef cattle. The Veterinary Clinics of North America. Food Animal Practice, v. 3, n. 3, p. 633-646, 1987. -/- NOGUEIRA, E. et al. Nutrição aplicada à reprodução de bovinos de corte. Embrapa Pantanal-Capítulo em livro científico (ALICE), 2015. -/- PASA, Camila. Relação reprodução animal e os minerais. Biodiversidade, v. 9, n. 1, 2011. -/- ROIG, C. Alimentación del ganado caprino. Informe técnico: PROGANO-INTA. Colonia Benítez, Chaco, Argentina, 2003. -/- SARTORI, Roberto; GUARDIEIRO, Monique Mendes. Fatores nutricionais associados à reprodução da fêmea bovina. Revista Brasileira de Zootecnia, v. 39, p. 422-432, 2010. -/- SHORT, Robert E.; ADAMS, D. C. Nutritional and hormonal interrelationships in beef cattle reproduction. Canadian Journal of Animal Science, v. 68, n. 1, p. 29-39, 1988. -/- TEIXEIRA, J. C.; TEIXEIRA, LFAC. Alimentação de bovinos leiteiros. FAEPE, Lavras, 1997. -/- . (shrink)

...If, in some places, backward science determines the remaining period by the lack of optimism only by the number 123456789, then our progressive science expands it to 987654321, which is eight times more advanced than theirs. However, due to the inherent caution of scientists, both sides do not specify the measuring unit of reference — year, day, hour or minute are meant. Leonid Leonov. Collected Op. in ten volumes. Volume ten. M.: IHL, 1984, p.583. -/- The modern men being as (...) a rule is proceeding in three relatively autonomous, but immanently coexisting, and each penetrating dialectically through other, and each contesting even cruelly with other, and each more or less dominating on other, differently in various societies, worlds: the first one of the barbarity, the second one the culture, the third one the civilization... Barbarity is the mode of coexistence of autonomous human societies based on the unlimited will to act so as subject wants to do without any limitations of his activities... Culture is the mode of coexistence of autonomous human societies based on the most ancient testaments, customs, traditions etc of the highestly sacrified appearence... Civilisation is the mode of coexistence of autonomous human societies based on the reasoned or legitimated by social contracts, by profits, by expediency and so more constitutions, institutions etc... -/- Andrei Melnikov-Pechersky in his epic "In the Woods" says that there was a movement among the Old Believers in Russia, or a current that proclaimed Kostroma the new and, it seems, the only true Jerusalem, in an apocalyptic sense, of course, which in its spiritual scale was probably not inferior to the Bogomils, shakers, Mormons, or else and the whole Reformation in potential. In Western Europe, every more or less convex nuance of the history of a state or region (even if it is a small San Marino) is overgrown with almost a dozen institutions, not always state ones, by the way, in which almost every sneeze and step of very ambivalent historical subjects in a broad sense is studied. Especially in the young, but very pretentious America of the United States, which embodies all world justice. In our country, for example, even many leading humanitarian specialists do not realize the spiritual value of the Ipatievsky MONASTERY. The Russian writer Boris Shiryaev, who died quite a long time ago and in a very far abroad, devoted a special part of his documentary and artistic epic of wanderings "The Inextinguishable Lampada" to an entertaining and instructive, tragic fate of a kind of village monarchy in some Villages of the Kostroma province (I could not identify the area, and, frankly, I did not really try) in the early years The Soviet government. At the same time, all Russians learn about the French emperor Napoleon almost with their mother's milk how many percent of cyanide potassium was found in his hair, they reflect on Lermontov's "Airship" (probably, just not to "memorize" the imposed "Borodino" by heart). The events, of course, are incomparable, but the fact is significant. The outstanding national artist (if not to say a thinker of the Chesnyakov level) Grigory Pavlovich Kusochkin was glorified wherever, in whatever catalogues he was not included. Paris, London, New York, St. Petersburg, Moscow... To look at some smear of luminaries like Picasso or Modigliani, international tourist routes are organized in the restaurant toilet using the finest marketing technologies, and we did not even know Grigory Pavlovich by sight until, thank God, a series of TV shows on all Russian channels was dedicated to him in one gulp. Why is this happening? Is it a consequence of poverty or the result of the conscious policy of the ruling elite of the country and the world? The regions of the Kostroma Region are Austria, Switzerland, Bavaria, Armenia, Moldova, and Georgia... Georgia! I served in the army there. In this small but very great country, judging even by the appearance of its President Shevardnadze, although it is smaller than the Kostroma region, there are so many different, but Georgian-speaking peoples! Kakhetians, Meskhetians, Imereti, Iveretians, Mingrelians, Khevsurs... Adjarians (mostly Georgian-speaking Muslims) even have their own autonomy. And some peoples are not Georgian—speaking at all — South Ossetians, Abkhazians, Kurds, Armenians, Greeks, even Assyrians. In the Kostroma Region, and in any Russian "province" — not much less: there are plenty of the same Georgians or Armenians everywhere, quite moderate, loyal, and so on. Having, as a rule, their own officially registered associations within the framework of cultural autonomy. Well done! And Israel! He is the only one with all his "illegal" (and I am for the fact that every nation knows better where its ancestral lands are) territories half the size of the Kostroma region. The total number of Jews worldwide, according to the "Soviet Encyclopedic Dictionary" in 1987, is about 14 million. Meanwhile, the fate of Israel is being preoccupied (it is very instructive how he achieved this!) all the united nations of the world. In the Kostroma Region and its diaspora, it seems to everyone, and especially to its semi-migrant, Varangian leadership. I don't care if they build a public atomic bomb here in the form of a nuclear power plant or not. Because they do not know the value of this land, the greatness of its spirit. Kostroma is a holy land. I will immediately make a reservation that by Kostroma I mean not only the modern region, but the entire area that has ever historically been associated with Kostroma. The USSR is also a part of the great historical Russia. In this sense, even the entire era of the Russian Romanov Empire is the Kostroma region. Or: many toponymic objects of our native land are called mysteriously beautiful: Sharya, Shunga, Shekshema, Sholezhka, - we need to find out what kind of peoples — and where are they now? — we left such euphonious archetypal combinations, because these are our Kostromsky peoples, these are our Kostroma people. Or, say, the classic of American and world sociology Pitirim Alexandrovich Sorokin writes in his autobiographical scientific novel "The Long Way" that he studied at the Khrenovskaya (what a strong word!) teachers' seminary of Kostroma province, but in an administrative row for propaganda activities, gendarmes were taken by sledge to the prison of the city of Kineshma - is this not a fact for Kostroma, and primarily for him, local history, although Kineshma has long been attributed to the Ivanovo region, and Pitirim Alexandrovich is buried on the other side of the planet?! I have not the slightest doubt that Kostroma provided spiritual food, gave birth to and nurtured a huge intellectual diaspora with extremely valuable material on a national, global scale. And this is both in direct and indirect order, in the form of a chain reaction. Apparently, it is easy for an intelligent person to grow up in Kostroma, but it is impossible to live, and somewhere on the contrary. Therefore, it is not surprising that the geneticist academician D. K. Belyaev, who was born in the village of Protasov near Nerekhta, very close to Kostroma, glorified Moscow and Siberia with his discoveries and practical results, which immeasurably enriched the Soviet state treasury with foreign exchange income from the sale of the most valuable fur grown according to the biotechnology developed by him in a much shorter time than it usually turns out in nature. And in Kostroma, most likely, few people know who he is and what he is famous for. I will focus in more detail on one of the aspects of his great life. This happened back in the so-called pre-Perestroika times. In a series of his speeches, Dmitry Konstantinovich, based on the results of his and colleagues' research, emphasized, in his opinion, the determining role of the biological factor in shaping the content of human essence, of course, only in a philosophical, conceptual aspect. For some reason, this was opposed by a geneticist, as they say, persecuted at one time by the "senile" in selectionism (including human nature) by the Michurino-Lysenkoists, academician N. P. Dubinin, which personally remains incomprehensible to me until now. With a grateful curtsey to Academician Dubinin and his point of view, the famous French humanist, member of the Politburo of the French Communist Party Lucien Sav appeared on the pages of the Communist magazine. The material was clearly titled: "Problems are not only scientific, but also political." He very indecently attributed the views of academician Belyaev to "a reactionary ideology that tries to put genetics at its service, and more broadly, biology, in order to present all kinds of social inequalities of all kinds as inherent in nature itself"(1). I would like to see any ideology that does not try to "put this or that at its service," much less something worthwhile... A little later, the editorial of the Communist hit the "biologizers", and soon Dmitry Konstantinovich was gone. In short, it is only on the example of our fellow countrymen that you can write interesting, world-class essays on science and its history, but instead our scientists should fit their global potencies into a page and a half (good yet. if not entirely at their own expense), and then for at least three years to guess whether they will be published or not. Now it no longer surprises me how at one time, when, after reading the listener card I filled out, the sweetest girl from the IPKPON office at USU congratulated me for something. It turned out that the dean of the Faculty of Philosophy of USU, doctor, professor, Honored Scientist, and now academician Konstantin Niko-laevich Lyubutin is a countryman, Kostromsky, or rather Manturovsky by origin, as I write below in the notes — we are Kostromendors. To him, my fellow citizen in the most subtle micropatriotic dimensions, I owe a lot in my professional and social development, even in survival. Because that's how it often turns out: you can be born here, sometimes you can live here... It's very hard. Maybe the Kostroma origin of an outstanding Russian historian of philosophy, organizer of science and education, educator and friend of a galaxy of people devoted to the Motherland and the cause is not a great milestone in the history of the region, but name me at least a dozen Russian cities on the scale of Kostroma, from where such intellectual ones would come out into the world and light luminaries like ours. No matter who you take from the world significance of the pillars of national (and world, and foreign, - even the great Rabbi of Lubavitcher spent three years in exile in a Campfire, — I learned from some foreign voices) history, literature, culture in general, technology, science and so on - you will always find someone, which is very directly related to Kostroma. Pushkin, Lermontov, Gorky. Alexander Nikolaevich Ostrovsky, Pisarev, Uspensky, Katenin, Florensky, Savrasov, Kustodiev, Dyagilev, Mikhalkov, Alexander Alexandrovich Zinoviev; writers, artists, entrepreneurs, revolutionaries, inventors, politicians... In some world-famous for its classic Russian provincialism, Kologriv has been storing, figuratively speaking, unique sketches, if not of Leo-Nardo da Vinci himself, then certainly of his school, almost since the seventeenth century. And not only that. Nevertheless, the well-known Chukhloma to the Fatherland, in addition to thinkers of the rank of Rozanov and Zinoviev (where should domestic philosophers mature and not be born, if not in Chukhloma, Manturov or Khrenknowswhere?), gave an actor of amazing, national, originality — Mikhail Pugovkin, who can not be confused with anyone, a role that no one will repeat. (shrink)

TRANSPORTE DE GAMETAS, FERTILIZAÇÃO E SEGMENTAÇÃO -/- • _____OBJETIVO -/- O entendimento do desenvolvimento embrionário nos estágios iniciais, desde a deposição dos espermatozoides na fêmea, passando pela fertilização deste no ovócito e na formação do zigoto, é de suma importância para diferenciar especialistas em reprodução e manejo reprodutivo no mercado de trabalho e, também, durante a vida acadêmica. Compreender os processos que levam à formação do zigoto na fêmea é essencial para avaliar a capacidade reprodutiva dos animais e, mediante técnicas, (...) avaliar o trato reprodutivo da fêmea e o desenvolvimento do embrião até a formação do feto e, por fim, em um novo animal sadio na propriedade. Com esse trabalho, o estudante de veterinária ou zootecnia, que deseja se aprofundar na fisiologia da reprodução animal, identificará os mecanismos que são envolvidos no transporte dos gametas, bem como os processos que estes últimos devem completar para alcançar a fertilização e para desencadear as divisões iniciais do embrião. -/- • _____INTRODUÇÃO -/- A fertilização ou fecundação é o processo pelo qual os gametas masculino (espermatozoide) e feminino (ovócito) se fundem para gerar um novo indivíduo. Seu êxito depende da culminação adequada dos diferentes processos que devem sofrer os gametas durante sua maduração e percurso; do transporte oportuno destes no trato reprodutivo da fêmea, assim como de uma série de adaptações dos órgãos genitais internos da mãe. A segmentação refere-se às primeiras divisões celulares do embrião. -/- • _____TRANSPORTE DO OVÓCITO -/- O ovócito que é liberado na ovulação, e que se encontra coberto pelas células do cumulus (figura 1), é capturado pela fímbria do infundíbulo ao aderir aos cílios. Esse processo é altamente eficaz, inclusive em espécies onde os ovários possuem várias formações globosas, por exemplo nas porcas, onde os ovidutos capturam entre 95 e 100% dos ovócitos que são ovulados. As contrações das camadas musculares do oviduto e o movimento intenso dos cílios da mucosa faz com que as secreções fluam em direção ao útero, transportando assim o complexo cumulus-ovócito. Esse transporte é relativamente rápido até alcançar a junção da ampola com o istmo (que é considerado o local de fertilização do espermatozoide e ovócito) a partir do qual se torna lento. Devido a fêmea estar em estro, o processo está sob controle endócrino, isto é, controle hormonal através do estradiol. Nas fêmeas domésticas, ao contrário das mulheres, o transporte ao longo do oviduto é extremamente eficiente, pois os embriões passam para o útero sem dificuldade, de modo que gestações ectópicas (tubárias ou em cavidade) são quase inexistentes. A égua, frequentemente, retém por muito tempo os ovócitos não fertilizados no oviduto, provavelmente devido a não secreção de substâncias (como a prostaglandina E) que poderiam favorecer sua passagem, como se propõe que aconteça com os embriões. A figura 2 apresenta um ovócito com suas respectivas estruturas. Figura 1: ovócitos de uma vaca madurados in vitro. Nota-se as células do cumulus que os recobre. -/- Figura 2: estruturas do ovócito de uma ovelha que se encontra na etapa de ovócito secundário, depois da ovulação. Elaborado pelo autor. • _____TRANSPORTE ESPERMÁTICO -/- Para que os espermatozoides sejam capazes de fertilizar o ovócito, deverão sofrer uma série de mudanças bioquímicas e morfológicas ao longo de sua passagem pelo aparelho reprodutor tanto masculino como feminino. Uma vez produzidos na parede do túbulo seminífero, os espermatozoides são liberados em direção ao lúmen tubular e transportados passivamente para uma estrutura ramificada conhecida como rede testicular (rete testis). Dessa rede são conduzidos em direção ao epidídimo passando através de 10 a 20 ductos eferentes localizados no polo superior do testículo. O epidídimo é dividido em três seções denominadas cabeça, corpo e cauda; é constituído por um só ducto longo e tortuoso que continua com o canal deferente. Ao final desemboca nas ampolas seminais, no ducto ejaculatório e na uretra. As funções do epidídimo são as de maduração, transporte e armazenamento dos espermatozoides. O transporte através do epidídimo é lento, aproximadamente de 10 dias em touros, e segue sendo passivo. Os espermatozoides tomados da cabeça do epidídimo são ainda imaturos e incapazes de fertilizar, enquanto os armazenados na cauda são completamente maduros. Durante o trânsito pelo epidídimo os espermatozoides adquirem motilidade e o potencial para fertilizar, o acrossomo é remodelado e a gota citoplasmática migra para o flagelo e é liberada. Quando um macho ejacula com muita frequência, é possível observar espermatozoides com gota citoplasmática no sêmen, já que não há tempo suficiente para que completem sua maduração. Os espermatozoides são expulsados fora do organismo durante a cópula, na masturbação ou em emissões espontâneas. Na ejaculação, os espermatozoides que se encontram suspensos nos fluidos do testículo e do epidídimo, misturam-se ao chegar na uretra com as secreções das glândulas acessórias para formar o sêmen. Essas secreções denominadas plasma seminal, proporcionam substâncias para manter o metabolismo energético das células espermáticas, e integram suas membranas elementos que impedem uma capacitação prematura. Durante a cópula, o sêmen é depositado na vagina ou no útero, variando entre as espécies (tabela 1). Na monta natural, geralmente, o serviço ocorre no momento propício, já que está definido pela fase do ciclo estral em que a fêmea é receptiva ao macho. No entanto, na inseminação artificial, é o macho que deverá determinar o momento ideal, e para isso é importante considerar a vida média dos gametas, ao qual é muito curta no caso dos ovócitos (tabela 1). -/- Tabela 1: local de depósito do sêmen, volume da ejaculação e vida média dos gametas. Espécie Local de deposição Volume (ml) Velocidade de ejaculação Vida média do ovócito Vida média do espermatozoide Bovinos Intravaginal 2 1 – 3 seg 8 h 30 – 48 h Caninos Intravaginal 2 – 30 (10 média) 6 – 45 min 48 – 72 h 9 – 11 d Equinos Intrauterina 50 – 200 20 – 60 seg 6 – 8 h 72 – 120 h Humanos Intravaginal 3 - - 5 – 6 d Ovinos Intravaginal 1 1 – 2 seg 16 – 24 h 30 – 48 h Suínos Intrauterina 200 – 400 5 – 20 min 8 – 10 h 24 – 48 h Onde d = dias; h = horas. A vida fértil do ovócito é muito curta, portanto, o momento do serviço é de grande importância para obter altos índices de fertilização. -/- Independentemente do local em que os espermatozoides sejam depositados no aparelho reprodutor feminino, serão expostos às secreções genitais e sofrem uma série de mudanças em seu trajeto até o local de fertilização antes de penetrar no ovócito. Nas espécies em que o sêmen é depositado na parte cranial da vagina, uma parte do mesmo penetra através da cérvix, enquanto outra parte é eliminada do aparelho genital da fêmea, em pouco tempo, através do fluxo retrógrado. O meio vaginal não é adequado e imobiliza os espermatozoides em pouco tempo, pelo qual deverão entrar no útero onde o ambiente é mais propício. O transporte espermático na fêmea é o resultado da alta contratilidade, do movimento ciliar e o fluido do aparelho genital durante o estro, ao qual está sob controle endócrino e do sistema nervoso. Esse transporte é favorecido pelas características especiais do muco estral, cujas moléculas formam uma espécie de canais que facilitam a passagem dos espermatozoides. Pelo contrário, durante a fase lútea seu transporte é dificultado. Além do meio vaginal, a cérvix também atua como barreira natural para limitar a passagem dos espermatozoides, diminuindo assim a possibilidade de polispermia. Funciona, também, como um filtro que seleciona os espermatozoides aptos dos que não o são, uma vez que somente os primeiros possuem uma motilidade vigorosa que lhes permite passar pelo muco altamente hidratado. Na vaca a cérvix é considerada como um reservatório espermático. Quando atravessam a cérvix, os espermatozoides seguem sua deslocação tanto por movimento próprio como pelas contrações uterinas e tubárias. Nas espécies em que o local de depósito do sêmen do macho na fêmea é intrauterino, como equinos, a principal barreira que os espermatozoides enfrentam é a união ou junção útero-tubárica. A união entre o útero e o oviduto (istmo do oviduto) serve como reservatório funcional dos espermatozoides nas espécies domésticas. Poucos minutos depois da cópula, é possível encontrar alguns espermatozoides no oviduto, que é conhecido como fase de transporte rápido. No entanto, esses espermato-zoides não são os que participam do processo de fertilização e podem apresentar certas anormalidades. Existe um segundo tipo de transporte denominado fase sustentada, a qual consiste na migração prolongada dos espermatozoides em direção as partes mais craniais do aparelho genital feminino, que conduzem à colonização do reservatório funcional e na liberação gradual dos espermatozoides dos reservatórios espermáticos, incluindo este último. O reservatório do istmo fornece aos espermatozoides um ambiente propício, protegendo-os contra a fagocitose, prolongando assim a sua viabilidade. Aqui os esper-matozoides permanecem aderidos a superfície das células ciliadas do epitélio até a finalização de sua capacitação, depois da qual são liberados quando alteram seu padrão de motilidade flagelada, fenômeno conhecido como hipermotilidade, e migram em ondas em direção ao local da fertilização. Dos milhões de espermatozoides ejaculados, somente alguns milhares alcançarão o istmo do oviduto e um número sumamente pequeno será encontrado nas imediações do ovócito no momento da fertilização. -/- • _____CAPACITAÇÃO ESPERMÁTICA E REAÇÃO ACROSSÔMICA -/- A capacitação é um processo gradual e essencial para a fertilização. Os espermato-zoides devem passar por um dado tempo de “incubação” no aparelho genital da fêmea e sofrer uma série de mudanças antes de serem capazes de fecundar o ovócito. A capacita-ção dos espermatozoides começa quando eles entram em contato com as secreções do aparelho genital da fêmea e termina no istmo do oviduto. Durante esse percurso a superfície da cabeça do espermatozoide se modifica já que algumas moléculas como o colesterol são removidas da membrana plasmática, aumentando sua fluidez e alterando suas propriedades bioquímicas. Entre outras coisas, essa reorganização dos lipídios facilita a entrada de cálcio extracelular pelos canais iônicos e ocasiona a desestabilização da membrana, tornando-a mais fusogênica. Também são eliminados outros fatores (conhecidos genericamente como fatores descapacitantes) que expõem receptores membranais indispensáveis para a realização da união entre o espermatozoide e o ovócito durante a fertilização. Os espermatozoides capacitados apresentam um padrão de hipermotilidade e uma maior atividade metabólica, características que devem obter para que sejam capazes de penetrar as camadas do ovócito. A capacitação é necessária para que ocorra a reação acrossômica. A reação acrossomal ou acrossômica (RA) é um fenômeno de exocitose que é desencadeada pela ligação entre as proteínas e receptores localizados na membrana do espermatozoide e a zona pelúcida do ovócito (figura 3). Envolve a fusão da membrana plasmática do espermatozoide com a membrana externa de seu acrossomo; formando, assim, pequenas vesículas, cujo conteúdo de enzimas hidrolíticas, como a hialuronidase e a acrosina, é liberado em direção ao seu exterior, facilitando a penetração da zona pelúcida. A adesão do espermatozoide à zona pelúcida é específica da espécie e depende de glicoproteínas presentes na membrana dos ovócitos maduros; a cabeça do espermatozoide se une com essas glicoproteínas mediante receptores específicos e atravessam em direção oblíqua a zona pelúcida até chegar ao espaço perivitelino. Nos mamíferos, particularmente em roedores e nos humanos, algumas dessas glicoproteínas são conhecidas como ZP1, ZP2 e ZP3. Pensa-se que a união da membrana espermática a esta última é o que desencadeia a reação acrossomal. Posteriormente, as vilosidades do ovócito entram em contato com o espermatozoide e a membrana presente na secreção equatorial da cabeça do espermatozoide, que tem proteínas fusogênicas específicas, une-se a membrana plasmática do ovócito, fusionando-se e permitindo a entrada do núcleo espermático ao citoplasma (figura 4). A capacitação dos espermatozoides é fundamental para o êxito da fertilização, uma vez que apenas os aptos estarão perfeitos e íntegros para que a união e percepção das glicoproteínas presentes nos mesmos possam ocorrer de forma ideal para a penetração deste no ovócito, fertilizá-lo e formar um zigoto. Figura 3: estrutura do espermatozoide. Nota: a membrana é acrossomal e não acrossonal. Elaborado pelo autor. -/- Figura 4: eventos que ocorrem durante a fertilização. A – depois de passar através das células do cumulus, o espermatozoide entra em contato com a zona pelúcida, onde receptores da membrana plasmática reconhecem as proteínas da zona pelúcida; B – é desencadeada, então, a reação acrossomal; C – para que o espermatozoide penetre na zona pelúcida; D – ao atravessar a zona pelúcida e entrar no espaço perivitelino, a cabeça do espermatozoide entra em contato com a membrana vitelina; ambas membranas se fusionam graças ao reconhecimento de proteínas fusogênicas que estão no segmento equatorial. E – ocorre, então, que o núcleo do espermatozoide penetra no citoplasma do ovócito; uma das consequências da fusão da membrana com a cabeça do espermatozoide é a reação cortical, em que os grânulos corticais do ovócito liberam seu conteúdo em direção ao espaço perivitelino, o que resulta na alteração da estrutura da zona pelúcida e da membrana vitelina para bloquear a polispermia. Elaborado pelo autor. • _____CONSEQUÊNCIAS DA PENETRAÇÃO -/- Bloqueio da polispermia -/- A fusão das membranas dos gametas durante a penetração permite a entrada da fosfolipase C zeta (PLCζ) – fator solúvel que provém do espermatozoide – que desencadeia liberação e oscilações de Ca2+ no retículo endoplasmático. Isso, por sua vez, provoca a migração e fusão dos grânulos corticais, com a consequente liberação de enzimas, que mudam tanto a estrutura da zona pelúcida (por exemplo a inativação de ZP3), como a da membrana vitelina. Desse modo, impede-se que outros espermatozoides as penetrem, evitando assim a polispermia (figura 5). -/- Figura 5: os grânulos corticais que encontram-se na periferia do citoplasma, debaixo da superfície da membrana do ovócito, migram e fusionam-se sobre a mesma, liberando seu conteúdo no espaço perivitelino imediatamente depois da penetração do espermatozoide. A – como conse-quência, tanto a membrana vitelina como a zona pelúcida são modificadas, impedindo a entrada de mais espermatozoides, o que evita a polispermia. B – o ovócito retoma, então, sua segunda divisão meiótica, que ocasiona a expulsão do segundo corpúsculo polar, e na formação dos pronúcleos feminino e masculino. C – continuando, os pronúcleos migram, suas membranas se dissolvem e os cromossomos de ambos se condensam e se unem. Completa-se, assim, a singamia e forma-se, então, o zigoto. Elaborado pelo autor baseado nos livros de embriologia e fisiologia da reprodução conforme vida bibliografia. -/- Ativação do ovócito e formação de pronúcleos -/- Na maioria das fêmeas domésticas, com exceção da cadela, o ovócito encontra-se suspenso na metáfase II da segunda meiose no momento da ovulação. A entrada da PLCζ do espermatozoide no citoplasma do ovócito, e a consequente liberação de Ca2+, faz com que o ovócito se ative, terminando a segunda divisão meiótica e expulse o segundo corpo polar. Posteriormente, o material nuclear do ovócito se reorganiza para formar o pronú-cleo feminino. Entretanto, a membrana nuclear do espermatozoide se dissolve, a cromatina descondensa-se, as protaminas são substituídas por histonas, e se forma uma nova membrana nuclear, dando lugar ao pronúcleo masculino. -/- Singamia -/- Uma vez que os pronúcleos feminino e masculino são formados, migram para o centro do ovócito, aproximam-se, suas membranas se dispersam e os cromossomos paternos e maternos se associam, com o qual recupera a condição diploide e dá origem ao zigoto (figura 5). -/- • _____DESENVOLVIMENTO EMBRIONÁRIO -/- Poucas horas após a fertilização ocorre a primeira divisão do zigoto em duas, depois em 4, 8, 16 e 32 células, denominadas blastômeros. Essas divisões mitóticas são conhecidas como divisões de segmentação ou clivagem (figura 6), uma vez que são realizadas sem aumento do citoplasma, de modo que com cada divisão os blastômeros se tornam menores. A partir das 16 células o embrião se chama mórula, e é visto como uma massa celular compacta. A compactação deve-se a informação de proteínas de ligação entre os blastômeros. O embrião acumula líquido em seu interior, formando uma cavidade denominada blastocele. Esse processo é conhecido como blastulação; o embrião, assim, passa a ser chamado de blastocisto. Nessa etapa é possível diferenciar duas populações de células embrionárias: a massa celular interna, embrioblasto ou botão embrionário (que dará origem ao embrião), e a massa celular externa, células superficiais ou trofoblasto, do qual se originam a maioria das membranas fetais. Ao continuar a multiplicação das células e a acumulação de líquido, o blastocisto aumenta de tamanho, convertendo-se em blastocisto expandido. A zona pelúcida torna-se mais fina e, finalmente, o embrião eclode; isto é, o embrião é liberado da zona pelúcida. -/- • _____FERTILIZAÇÕES ATÍPICAS -/- Polispermia -/- É a penetração de dois ou mais espermatozoides no óvulo. Esta condição é letal nos mamíferos, já que o número cromossômico desse zigoto é maior que 2n, o envelheci-mento do ovócito da porca, como consequência do serviço tardio, favorece a apresentação da polispermia, por isso, é comum ver números de nascimentos de média de 10 a 12 leitões por parição nessa espécie. Nas aves, no entanto, a penetração de mais de um espermatozoide é normal, embora apenas um pronúcleo masculino se formará, fundindo-se com o feminino. -/- Figura 6: etapas do processo de segmentação/clivagem. Fonte: aula de reprodução da professora Domenica Palomaris, UFT. -/- Ginogênese -/- É o desenvolvimento de um embrião a partir de um óvulo normal fecundado por um espermatozoide, mas sem a fusão dos cromossomos masculinos com os da fêmea. A função do espermatozoide, nesse caso, é a de ativação do ovócito para que este inicie seu desenvolvimento, mas não há fusão com o núcleo do espermatozoide. Ocorre em plantas, em nematódeos e em algumas espécies de peixes, por exemplo a Poecilia formosa, espécie em que os ovócitos das fêmeas são ativados por machos de outra espécie relacio-nada. -/- Partenogênese -/- Consiste no desenvolvimento do embrião sem a participação do espermatozoide. Ocorre em alguns insetos, o zangão, por exemplo, é partenogenético. Também pode apresentar-se em perus, cujos embriões são machos e, geralmente, morrem antes da eclosão. -/- • _____GÊMEOS -/- Existem dois tipos de gêmeos: idênticos ou monozigóticos e os não idênticos ou dizigóticos. -/- Idênticos ou monozigóticos -/- Originam-se do mesmo zigoto, sendo assim, possuem o mesmo genótipo e um fenótipo similar e, portanto, são do mesmo sexo. Em laboratório é possível gerá-los ao seccionar uma mórula em duas ou mais partes, por meio de um micromanipulador. Uma vez que possuem o mesmo genótipo, os produtos resultantes são clones. -/- Não idênticos ou dizigóticos -/- Provêm da fertilização de dois óvulos distintos por espermatozoides diferentes. Possuem, portanto, genótipos e fenótipos diferentes, e podem ser de sexo diferente. -/- REFERÊNCIAS BIBLIOGRÁFICAS -/- ALBERTS, Bruce et al. Biologia molecular da célula. Artmed Editora, 2010. AUSTIN, Colin Russell; SHORT, Roger Valentine. Reproduction in Mammals, Book I: Germ Cells and Fertilization. 1982. BEARDEN, Henry Joe et al. Reproducción animal aplicada. México: Manual Moderno, 1982. BOSCH, P.; WRIGHT JR, R. W. The oviductal sperm reservoir in domestic mammals. Archivos de medicina veterinaria, v. 37, n. 2, p. 95-105, 2005. CAPALLEJAS, Roberto Brito; RODRÍGUEZ, Lourdes Tagle. Fisiología de la reproducción animal: con elementos de biotecnología. Editorial Félix Varela, 2010. CROXATTO, Horacio B. Physiology of gamete and embryo transport through the fallopian tube. Reproductive biomedicine online, v. 4, n. 2, p. 160-169, 2002. CUPPS, Perry T. (Ed.). Reproduction in domestic animals. Elsevier, 1991. DIEDRICH, Smidt et al. Endocrinología y Fisiología de la Reproducción de los Animales Zootécnicos. 1972. DUKES, Henry Hugh; SWENSON, Melvin J.; REECE, William O. Dukes fisiologia dos animais domésticos. Editora Guanabara Koogan, 1996. FERREIRA, A. de M. Reprodução da fêmea bovina: fisiologia aplicada e problemas mais comuns (causas e tratamentos). Juiz de Fora: Minas Gerais–Brasil, p. 422, 2010. HAFEZ, Elsayed Saad Eldin; HAFEZ, Bahaa. Reprodução animal. São Paulo: Manole, 2004. HUNTER, Ronald Henry Fraser. The Fallopian tubes in domestic mammals: how vital is their physiological activity?. Reproduction Nutrition Development, v. 45, n. 3, p. 281-290, 2005. HUNTER, R. H. F.; RODRIGUEZ‐MARTINEZ, H. Capacitation of mammalian spermatozoa in vivo, with a specific focus on events in the Fallopian tubes. Molecular Reproduction and Development: Incorporating Gamete Research, v. 67, n. 2, p. 243-250, 2004. GALINA, Carlos; VALENCIA, Javier. Reproducción de los animales domésticos. 2006. HOPPER, Richard M. (Ed.). Bovine reproduction. John Wiley & Sons, 2014. HYTTEL, Poul; SINOWATZ, Fred; VEJLSTED, Morten. Embriologia veterinária. Elsevier Brasil, 2012. KÖLLE, Sabine; REESE, Sven; KUMMER, Wolfgang. New aspects of gamete transport, fertilization, and embryonic development in the oviduct gained by means of live cell imaging. Theriogenology, v. 73, n. 6, p. 786-795, 2010. MCKINNON, Angus O. et al. (Ed.). Equine reproduction. John Wiley & Sons, 2011. OLIVERA, Martha et al. El espermatozoide, desde la eyaculación hasta la fertilización. Revista Colombiana de Ciencias Pecuarias, v. 19, n. 4, p. 426-436, 2006. PLANT, Tony M.; ZELEZNIK, Anthony J. (Ed.). Knobil and Neill's physiology of reproduction. New York: Academic Press, 2014. RODRIGUEZ-MARTINEZ, Heriberto. Role of the oviduct in sperm capacitation. Theriogenology, v. 68, p. S138-S146, 2007. SAAVEDRA LEOS, María Dolores. Estudio de la composición de los gránulos corticales y del oolema de ovocitos porcinos y bovinos madurados y fecundados in vitro. Proyecto de investigación:, 2010. SENGER, Phillip L. et al. Pathways to pregnancy and parturition. Current Conceptions, Inc, 2004. SUAREZ, Susan S. The oviductal sperm reservoir in mammals: mechanisms of formation. Biology of Reproduction, v. 58, n. 5, p. 1105-1107, 1998. VALENCIA MÉNDEZ, Javier de J. Fisiología de la reproducción porcina. 1986. -/- FIXAÇÃO DO ASSUNTO -/- 1. Defina e diferencie fertilização e segmentação. -/- 2. Disserte sobre o transporte do ovócito. Por que no istmo o transporte do ovócito se torna lento? -/- 3. Fale sobre a eficiência do transporte do gameta no trato genital da fêmea e sobre a retenção de ovócitos pela égua. -/- 4. Defina as células do cumulus e explique seu papel sobre o ovócito. -/- 5. Quais as estruturas que compõem o ovócito? Qual a função de cada uma? -/- 6. Todos os ovócitos das fêmeas domésticas são iguais? Justifique. -/- 7. Disserte sobre o papel dos hormônios e das secreções sobre o transporte do ovócito no trato genital da fêmea. -/- 8. Disserte sobre o transporte do espermatozoide. Por que há transporte rápido e lento dos espermatozoides? -/- 9. Fale sobre o local de deposição do sêmen nas espécies domésticas e como esse influen-cia na eficiência da reprodução. -/- 10. Por que a vida média do espermatozoide canino é maior que as outras espécies? -/- 11. Quais as mudanças que os espermatozoides precisam sofrer para conseguir êxito na fertilização e por quê? -/- 12. Defina fase de transporte rápido, fase sustentada e hipermotilidade. Qual a importân-cia de cada um? -/- 13. Como ocorre a reação acrossômica? -/- 14. O que é polispermia e como ocorre seu bloqueio? 15. Como ocorre a ativação do ovócito e como se formam os pronúcleos? -/- 16. O que é e qual a importância da singamia? -/- 17. Disserte sobre as divisões de segmentação e qual a importância destas para o êxito da reprodução. -/- 18. Defina e diferencia mórula e blastocisto. -/- 19. Defina e diferencie ginogênese e partenogênese. -/- 20. Qual o papel endócrino e quais hormônios e enzimas atuam sobre o transporte de gametas, sobre a fertilização e sobre a segmentação? (shrink)

This paper argues that epistemic errors rooted in group- or identity- based biases, especially those pertaining to disability, are undertheorized in the literature on medical error. After sketching dominant taxonomies of medical error, we turn to the field of social epistemology to understand the role that epistemic schemas play in contributing to medical errors that disproportionately affect patients from marginalized social groups. We examine the effects of this unequal distribution through a detailed case study of ableism. There are four primary (...) mechanisms through which the epistemic schema of ableism distorts communication between nondisabled physicians and disabled patients: testimonial injustice, epistemic overconfidence, epistemic erasure, and epistemic derailing. Measures against epistemic injustices in general and against schema-based medical errors in particular are ultimately issues of justice that must be better addressed at all levels of health care practice. (shrink)

It has been a common assumption that words are substances that instantiate or have properties. In this paper, I question the assumption that our ontology of words requires posting substances by outlining a bundle theory of words, wherein words are bundles of various sorts of properties (such as semantic, phonetic, orthographic, and grammatical properties). I argue that this view can better account for certain phenomena than substance theories, is ontologically more parsimonious, and coheres with claims in linguistics.

While there seems to be much evidence that perceptual states can occur without being conscious, some theorists recently express scepticism about unconscious perception. We explore here two kinds of such scepticism: Megan Peters and Hakwan Lau's experimental work regarding the well-known problem of the criterion -- which seems to show that many purported instances of unconscious perception go unreported but are weakly conscious -- and Ian Phillips' theoretical consideration, which he calls the 'problem of attribution' -- the worry that many (...) purported examples of unconscious perception are not perceptual, but rather merely informational and subpersonal. We argue that these concerns do not undermine the evidence for unconscious perception and that this sceptical approach results in a dilemma for the sceptic, who must either deny that there is unconscious mentality generally or explain why perceptual states are unique in the mind such that they cannot occur unconsciously. Both options, we argue, are problematic. (shrink)

Binding specificity is a centrally important concept in molecular biology, yet it has received little philosophical attention. Here I aim to remedy this by analyzing binding specificity as a causal property. I focus on the concept’s role in drug design, where it is highly prized and hence directly studied. From a causal perspective, understanding why binding specificity is a valuable property of drugs contributes to an understanding of causal selection—of how and why scientists distinguish between causes, not just causes from (...) noncauses. In particular, the specificity of drugs is precisely what underwrites their value as experimental interventions on biological processes. (shrink)

In this paper, we developed an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) for detect the absence or presence of lung cancer in human body. Symptoms were used to diagnose the lung cancer, these symptoms such as Yellow fingers, Anxiety, Chronic Disease, Fatigue, Allergy, Wheezing, Coughing, Shortness of Breath, Swallowing Difficulty and Chest pain. They were used and other information about the person as input variables for our ANN. Our ANN established, trained, and validated using data set, which its title is “survey lung (...) cancer”. Model evaluation showed that the ANN model is able to detect the absence or presence of lung cancer with 96.67 % accuracy. (shrink)

According to the person-affecting restriction, one distribution of welfare can be better than another only if there is someone for whom it is better. Extant problems for the person-affecting restriction involve variable-population cases, such as the nonidentity problem, which are notoriously controversial and difficult to resolve. This paper develops a fixed-population problem for the person-affecting restriction. The problem reveals that, in the presence of incommensurable welfare levels, the person-affecting restriction is incompatible with minimal requirements of impartial beneficence even in fixed-population (...) contexts. (shrink)

MMA fighting in a competition is not necessarily wrong and is often, as far as we can tell, permissible. Our argument has two premises. First, if an act does not infringe on anyone’s moral right or violate another side-constraint, then it is morally permissible. Second, MMA-violence does not infringe on anyone’s moral right or violate another side-constraint. The first premise rested on two assumptions. First, if a person does a wrong act, then he wrongs someone. Second, if one person wrongs (...) a second, then the first infringes on the second’s right. We then looked at Nicholas Dixon’s powerful Kantian argument that MMA fighting is wrong. (shrink)

This article explores Fanon's thought on dance, beginning with his explicit treatment of it in Black Skin, White Masks and The Wretched of the Earth. It then broadens to consider his theorization of Black embodiment in racist and colonized societies, considering how these analyses can be reformulated as a phenomenology of dance. This will suggest possibilities for fruitful encounters between the two domains in which (a) dance can be valorized while (b) opening up sites of resignification and resistance for Black (...) persons and communities-including a revalorization of Black embodiment as a kind of empowering danced experience. (shrink)

Part of a larger project of constructing a new, historically informed philosophy of dance, built on four phenomenological constructs that I call “Moves,” this essay concerns the third Move, “grace.” The etymology of the word “grace” reveals the entwined meanings of pleasing quality and authoritative power, which may be combined as “beautiful force.” I examine the treatments of grace in German philosopher Friedrich Schiller, who understands it as playful, naive transformation of matter; and in American philosopher John Dewey, for whom (...) it represents rhythmic organism/environment reversal. I conclude by showing how “grace” can be used in analyzing various types of dance, which in turn suggests transformational potential for philosophy, dance, and society as a whole. (shrink)

Although they were never to meet and corresponded only briefly, Catharine Macaulay and Mary Wollstonecraft shared a mutual admiration and a strong intellectual bond. Macaulay’s work had a profound and lasting effect on Wollstonecraft, and she developed and expanded on many of Macaulay’s ideas. While she often took these in a different direction, there remains a great synergy between their ideas to the extent that we can understand Wollstonecraft’s own feminist arguments by approaching them through the frameworks and ideas that (...) Macaulay provided. These included the principles of classical republicanism, particularly in its understanding of the values of freedom, equality and virtue, and an understanding of reason as grounded in immutable principles that apply equally to both sexes. On the question of women’s freedom and social equality with men, I argue that though Macaulay sets up the problem in far richer and more detailed philosophical terms, in the end it is Wollstonecraft that has the more compelling account of its far-reaching social implications and of how this might be addressed. (shrink)

This article surveys the state of the literature on Hume’s epistemology, focusing on treatments of what has come to be known as the ‘Kemp Smith problem’, that is, the problem of reconciling Hume’s scepticism with his naturalism. It first surveys the literature on this issue with regard to the Treatise, moving on to briefly compare the Treatise and the Enquiry in virtue of their epistemological frameworks, before finally examining the literature with regard to the first Enquiry.

In this chapter, I will offer a strategic new interpretation of Hannah Arendt's conception of forgiveness. In brief, I propose understanding Arendt as suggesting—not that evil is objectively banal, or a mere failure of imagination—but instead that it is maximally forgiveness-facilitating to understand the seemingly unforgivable as merely a failure of imagination. In other words, we must so expand our imaginative powers (what Arendt terms “enlarged mentality”) by creatively imagining others as merely insufficiently unimaginative, all in order to reimagine them (...) as beings whom we are willing and able to forgive. It is in this sense that I understand forgiveness for Arendt as a kind of “magic.” That is, forgiveness involves the imaginatively-funded creation of a new reality by merely naming it, like the phenomenon of “magic thinking,” wherein one believes one’s thoughts or speech are immediately realized in the world. The magic of forgiveness, in other words, is an incantation or performative speech act, based on the forgiver’s choice to “make believe,” or pretend-into-being, that the forgiven person is forgivable qua thoughtless. (shrink)

Dance receives relatively little attention in the history of philosophy. My strategy for connecting that history to dance consists in tracing a genealogy of its dance-relevant moments. In preparation, I perform a phenomenological analysis of my own eighteen years of dance experience, in order to generate a small cluster of central concepts or “Moves” for elucidating dance. At this genealogical-phenomenological intersection, I find what I term “positure” most helpfully treated in Plato, Aristotle and Nietzsche; “gesture” similarly in Condillac, Mead and (...) Kristeva; “grace” in Avicenna, Schiller and Dewey; and “resilience” in Fanon, (Judith) Butler and Deleuze. With these analyses in place, I apply the four Moves in analyzing various forms of dancing (including salsa dancing and the pollen dance of the honeybee) and coordinate them to outline a comprehensive philosophy of dance. This philosophy points to certain conditions for an ideally flourishing, dancing society. And these conditions create the possibility for a coalition of sympathetic discourses (including critical race theory, queer theory, disability studies and democratic theory) united in pursuit of political virtue. The development of a philosophy of dance offers a deeper understanding of the intellectual values of a practice often identified with bodily immediacy and therefore judged uninteresting. It also reinvigorates philosophy with the dynamism and bodily relevance of the practice of dancing. Most important, it demonstrates the meaningful intersection of aesthetics and political ethics, by exploring how aesthetic practices underlie and inspire human flourishing. (shrink)

According Philip Pettit, suitably organised groups not only possess ‘minds of their own’ but can also ‘make up their minds’ and 'speak for themselves'--where these two capacities enable them to perform as conversable subjects or 'persons'. In this paper I critically examine Pettit's case for group personhood. My first step is to reconstruct his account, explaining first how he understands the two capacities he considers central to personhood – the capacity to ‘make up one’s mind’, and the capacity to ‘speak (...) for oneself’ – before showing how he thinks these can be manifested in groups. With Pettit’s account duly reconstructed, I then turn to criticism, arguing that Pettit’s construal of making up one’s mind does not do proper justice to our first-personal self-understanding, nor to our characteristic interpersonal forms of engagement. This leads me, finally, to consider an alternative construal of ‘making up one’s mind’ and ‘speaking for oneself’ that is associated with the work of Richard Moran and whichargue, could usefully be exteextended to groups. (shrink)

The chapter examines Russian political theorist Aleksandr Dugin’s (b. 1962) challenge to the Western liberal order. Even though Dugin’s project is in many ways a theoretical epitome of Russia’s contemporary attempt to profile itself as a regional great power with a political and cultural identity distinct from the liberal West, Dugin can also be read in a wider context as one of the currently most prominent representatives of the culturally and intellectually oriented international New Right. The chapter introduces Dugin’s role (...) on the Russian right-wing political scene and his international networks, Russian neo-Eurasianism as his ideological footing, and his more recent “fourth political theory” as an attempt to formulate a new ideological alternative to liberalism as well as the two other main twentieth-century ideologies, communism and fascism. Dugin’s fourth ideology, essentially meant as an alternative to a unipolar post–Cold War global hegemony of victorious liberalism, draws inspiration from the German conservative revolutionary movement of the Weimar era. In particular, Martin Heidegger’s philosophy of history, with its thesis of the end of modernity and another beginning of Western thought, and Carl Schmitt’s pluralistic model of geopolitics are highlighted as key elements of Dugin’s eclectic political thought, which is most appropriately characterized as a form of radical conservatism. (shrink)

In this paper I aim to show that the restoration model of pleasure as we find it in Plato’s Gorgias, Republic, Timaeus, and Philebus contain a common psychological core, despite the substantial developments and greater sophistication in the later works. I argue that, contrary to the scholarly consensus, all four dialogues take the necessary condition for pain to be a state of imbalance or disharmony rather than a process of destruction or deterioration. Given that the necessary condition for pleasure is (...) a process of restoration, it follows that the restoration model offers a strikingly asymmetrical account of pleasure and pain. This unorthodox interpretation of pain is not only favoured by the textual evidence but is also more charitable, as it attributes to Plato a more plausible view of impure pleasures, a more realistic account of desire, and a more compelling argument for the greater pleasantness of the philosophical life. (shrink)

In light of new historical evidence regarding ethnomycologist R. Gordon Wasson’s correspondence with art historian Erwin Panofsky, this article provides an in-depth analysis of the presence of entheogenic mushroom images in Christian art within the context of the controversy between Wasson and philologist John Marco Allegro over the identification of a Garden of Eden fresco in the 12th century Chapel of Plaincourault in France. It reveals a compelling financial motive for Wasson’s refusal to acknowledge that this fresco represents Amanita muscaria, (...) as well as for Wasson’s reluctance to pursue his hypothesis regarding the entheogenic origins of religion into Christian art and artifacts. While Wasson’s view – that the presence of psychoactive mushrooms in the Near and Middle East ended around 1000 BCE – prevailed and stymied research on entheogens in Christianity for decades, a new generation of 21st century researchers has documented growing evidence of A. muscaria and psilocybin-containing mushrooms in Christian art, consistent with ethnobotanist Giorgio Samorini’s typology of mushroom trees. This article presents original photographs, taken during fieldwork at churches and cathedrals throughout Europe and the Middle East, that confirm the presence of entheogenic mushrooms in Christian art: in frescoes, illuminated manuscripts, mosaics, sculptures, and stained glass windows. Based on this iconic evidence, the article proposes a psychedelic gospels theory and addresses critiques of this theory by art historians, ardent advocates, medieval historians, and conservative Catholics. It calls for the establishment of an Interdisciplinary Committee on the Psychedelic Gospels to independently evaluate the growing body of evidence of entheogenic mushrooms in Christian art in order to resolve a controversial question regarding the possible role of entheogens in the history and origins of Christianity. (shrink)

In this article, I channel the autobiography of Black Panther cofounder Huey P. Newton, entitled Revolutionary Suicide, against the misogyny of the alt-right movement today. Both Newton and the alt-right have been powerfully influenced by Nietzsche, but one way of grasping the central difference between them is by comparing their conceptions of Dionysus. While the alt-right sticks closer to Nietzsche’s conception, which minimizes the god’s androgyny, Newton’s thought resonates with that androgyny, thereby bringing him closer to the most influential Dionysus (...) scholar since Nietzsche, Walter Otto. I therefore turn to the latter’s Dionysus: Myth and Cult, whose analyses I synthesize into the following image inspired by the god’s closest animal familiar: the dancingly-graceful panther as aqueous-androgynous soul-hunter. Reimagining Newton’s Black Panther in this way, finally, can help us overcome the alt-right. (shrink)

This essay—part of a larger project of constructing a new, historically informed philosophy of dance, built on four phenomenological constructs that I call “Moves”—concerns the second Move, “gesture,” the etymology of which reveals its close connection to the Greek word “metaphor.” More specifically, I examine the treatments of gesture by the philosophers George Herbert Mead and Etienne Bonnot de Condillac, both of whom view it as the foundation of language. I conclude by showing how gesture can be used in analyzing (...) various types of dance, which in turn suggests transformational potential for philosophy, dance, and society as a whole. (shrink)

A case could be made that the practice of philosophy demands a certain humility, or at least intellectual humility, requiring such traits as inquisitiveness, openness to new ideas, and a shared interest in pursuing truth. In the positive psychology movement, the study of both humility and intellectual humility has been grounded in the methods and approach of personality psychology, specifically the examination of these virtues as traits. Consistent with this approach, the chapter begins with a discussion of the examination of (...) intellectual humility as a “character trait,” comparing intellectual humility to various well-known traits in the personality psychology literature (e.g the “Big 5” and the “Big 2”) as well as other key traits such as the need for cognition and the need for closure. The chapter then turns to the proverbial issue of whether virtues in general, and intellectual humility in particular, are a matter of “nature”- that is, an innate trait determined by heritability, or “nurture” – a trait mostly shaped by situation and environment. While the chapter does not resolve the issue, it provides occasion for an examination of the role of situations in the expression of intellectual humility, and for the interaction of “situation” and “trait.” The chapter concludes with a discussion of how the interaction of trait with situation provides the most robust understanding of the psychology of any character virtue, including humility and intellectual humility. (shrink)

In this exploratory paper, I consider how intellectual humility and epistemic injustice might contribute to the failure of testimonial exchanges. In §1, I will briefly highlight four broad ways a testimonial exchange might fail. In §2, I will very briefly review the nature of epistemic injustice. In §3, I will explore how both epistemic injustice and intellectual humility can lead to failures in testimonial exchange, and I’ll conclude by suggesting how intellectual humility and epistemic injustice might be related.

[First paragraphs: This essay takes its practical orientation from my experiences as a member of a philosophy reading group on death row at Riverbend Maximum Security Penitentiary in Nashville, Tennessee. Its theoretical orientation comes from W. E. B. Du Bois’ lecture-turned-essay, “Criteria of Negro Art,” which argues that the realm of aesthetics is vitally important in the war against racial discrimination in the United States. And since, according to Michele Alexander’s critically-acclaimed The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age (...) of Colorblindness, the prison system should be the primary front today in this war, my essay’s ultimate aim is t/o articulate a new criterion of the present-day “Negro” art being created by a prison population that is still overwhelmingly constituted by persons of color. In my first section, I will show how Du Bois’ insights in “Criteria of Negro Art” remain relevant today, especially in the prison context, and argue that it is thus appropriate for my new criterion to be shaped by his distinctive conception of “propaganda.” In my second section, through a close reading of two texts by Michel Foucault (the pivotal thinker of modern imprisonment), I will flesh out this new criterion, “self-torsion,” defined as the effect of prisoners’ attempts at self-care within a prison system that distorts those attempts into further exploitation of both prisoners and the outside world that imprisons them. And my final section, in an attempt to illustrate this new criterion’s efficacy as a form of propagandistic resistance to contemporary racism, will deploy self-torsion as a critique of two artworks created by imprisoned members of my reading group at Riverbend penitentiary. (shrink)

The study aimed to identify E- Learning strategies and their relation to the efficiency of research performance in foreign and Palestinian universities (University of Ottawa, Munster, Suez Canal, Al-Azhar, Islamic, Al-Aqsa). The analytical descriptive approach was used for this purpose, and relying on the questionnaire as a main tool for data collection. The study society is from the senior management, where the number of senior management in the universities in question is 206. The random stratified sample was selected and (SPSS) (...) was used for statistical data analysis. The study found a significant relationship between E- Learning strategies and the efficiency of research performance in universities. It also reached the participation of senior management in the research that develops the university performance in the Palestinian universities. The senior management indicated that they do not care to follow the policies of implementing the development of scientific research. While the senior management in foreign universities indicated that they are interested in following up the policies of implementing the development of scientific research. The study also showed that senior management in Palestinian universities does not care about providing the appropriate budget for E- Learning. The study recommended that the senior management of Palestinian universities should provide an E- Learning budget and encourage employees to continue using E- Learning strategies. The administration in the Palestinian universities should adopt and support outstanding research, and the need to encourage interest in the implementation of policies for the development of scientific research. (shrink)

Truth is a locus of guilt for the Christian, according to Jacques Lacan. The religious person, he argues, punitively defers truth eschatologically. Yet Lacan’s own view dissolves eschatological deferral to the world, as the “Real”. The metaphysics of Erich Przywara SJ helps highlight that this mirrors Lacan’s view of the religious person. Przywara’s Christian metaphysics and Lacanian psychoanalysis converge on the immanence of truth to history. But Przywaran analogy corrects Lacan’s position on the religious person, which by implication calls for (...) an adjustment to Lacan’s worldview. In the final analysis, Lacan’s dialectical nihilism should yield to a Christian’s hopeful relation to the truth. (shrink)

We present an abstract social aggregation theorem. Society, and each individual, has a preorder that may be interpreted as expressing values or beliefs. The preorders are allowed to violate both completeness and continuity, and the population is allowed to be infinite. The preorders are only assumed to be represented by functions with values in partially ordered vector spaces, and whose product has convex range. This includes all preorders that satisfy strong independence. Any Pareto indifferent social preorder is then shown to (...) be represented by a linear transformation of the representations of the individual preorders. Further Pareto conditions on the social preorder correspond to positivity conditions on the transformation. When all the Pareto conditions hold and the population is finite, the social preorder is represented by a sum of individual preorder representations. We provide two applications. The first yields an extremely general version of Harsanyi's social aggregation theorem. The second generalizes a classic result about linear opinion pooling. (shrink)

This chapter outlines a new theoretical method, which I call “dancing-with,” emerging from the process of writing my dissertation and the book manuscript that followed it. Defined formally, a given theorist X can be said to “dance-with” with a second theorist Y insofar as X “choreographs” an interpretation of Y which is both true to Y and Y’s historical communities, and also meaningful and actionable (i.e. facilitating social justice) for X and X’s historical communities. In this pursuit, the method of (...) dancing-with involves both (1) a creative “torsion” of Y’s thought (particularly in the direction of unconscious, embodied and political factors at work in Y’ texts), and (2) a resultant, sympathetic torsion of X’s thought toward Y. In other words, X and Y “meet in the middle,” like two dancers walking onto the dance floor, to explore the promise of a flourishing artistic partnership. In this partnership, each must attend to the way that political meanings are inscribed on the other’s raced/sexed/etc. body, both to react maximally justly, and to maximize the aesthetic movement options that can be brought into play. As the method of dancing-with is thus modeled on an ideal comportment for improvisational social dance (such as the contemporary Latin dance called “salsa”), I envision the end-goal of dancing-with as what I call “poetic social justice.” By this, I mean the “poetic justice” of two theorists’ mutually empowering each other for maximal social good. Though this process is admittedly more difficult between some theorists, in part as a function of their respective embodiments and sociohistorical positions, at least a move or two together is always possible. (shrink)

In this chapter, I approach the subject of peace by way of Andrew Fiala’s pioneering, synthetic work on “practical pacifism.” One of Fiala’s articles on the subject of peace is entitled “Radical Forgiveness and Human Justice”—and if one were to replace “Radical Forgiveness” with “Peace,” this would be a fair title for my chapter. In fact, Fiala himself explicitly makes a connection in the article between radical forgiveness and peace. Also in support of my project, Fiala’s article names four of (...) the six historical figures who are central to my chapter, namely Marcus Aurelius, King, Arendt, and Nietzsche. Moreover, Fiala also insists there “forgiveness must be held in creative tension with justice,” and it is this very tension that forms the basis of my new conception of socially-just peace. To wit, I propose that socially-just peace is lovingly generous reimagining (peace) through intuitively self-overcoming tension (social justice). (shrink)

[First paragraph]: Believe it or not, it’s no exaggeration to say that Ender’s Game has been the most transformative book of my life. In fact, when I first read it, at the age of fifteen, it almost single-handedly initiated a crisis of faith in me that ended up lasting for eight long years. The reason that it was able to do so is that it is positively full of important philosophical ideas (a fact attested to by the very existence of (...) this volume and its many essays). It should come as no surprise to fellow science fiction fans—and especially fans of Ender’s Game in particular—that science fiction is full to bursting with philosophical ideas. But the skeptical reader need not fear; in this case, at least, you don’t have to take my word for it. Orson Scott Card’s 1991 edition of Ender’s Game mentions his master’s degree in literature, and that all “the layers of meaning are there to be decoded, if you like to play the game of literary criticism.” So if you think you might have found a hidden layer of meaning in Ender’s Game, it’s a lot less likely that he or she is just crazy, and a lot more likely that there really is some hidden meaning there—and maybe even one that Card himself consciously put there to be found! (shrink)

This essay derives its focus on poetry from the subtitle of Die Fröhliche Wissenschaft: “la gaya scienza.” Nietzsche appropriated this phrase from the phrase “gai saber” used by the Provençal knight-poets (or troubadours) of the eleventh through thirteenth centuries — the first lyric poets of the European languages — to designate their Ars Poetica or “art of poetry.” I will begin with an exploration of Nietzsche’s treatment of poets and poetry as a subject matter, closely analyzing his six aphorisms which (...) deal explicitly with poets and poetry. Having considered The Gay Science as a text about poetry, I will then briefly explore three further ways in which The Gay Science can be thought of as itself a kind of poetry. The result of these analyses is an understanding of Nietzsche’s own understanding of philosophy (and of the best way to live) as also a form of poetry. (shrink)

: In APo II 3-7 Aristotle discusses a series of difficulties concerning definition, deduction, and demonstration. In this paper I focus on two interrelated but distinct questions: firstly, what are exactly the difficulties emerging from or alluded to in the discussion in II 3-7; secondly, whether and in what sense the discussion in II 3-7 can be considered an aporetic discussion with a specific role to play in the development of the argument in APo II.

Artikkeli käy läpi Quentin Meillassoux’n Äärellisyyden jälkeen -teoksessa esittelemiä spekulatiivisen materialismin lähtökohtia: ajatuksen Kantin jälkeistä filosofiasta hallinneesta korrelationismista ja sen ”heikosta” ja ”vahvasta” muodosta sekä Meillassoux’n perusargumentin, jolla hän pyrkii osoittamaan vahvan korrelationismin pyrkimyksen absoluuttisista viitepiisteistä luopumiseen sisäisesti ristiriitaiseksi. Tarkastelun pääpaino on Meillassoux’n väitteessä, että ajattelun riisuminen kaikista absoluuttisista näkökohdista johtaa vahvan korrelationismin omaksumaan ”fideistisen”, uskon ja järjen erillisyyttä ja keskinäistä riippumattomuutta korostavan suhtautumisen uskonnolliseen uskoon. Tällainen fideismi voi Meillassoux’n mukaan suojella tai jopa palvella ”nykypäivän fanatismia”. Artikkeli esittää joukon kriittisiä (...) huomioita Meillassoux’n fideismin ja uskon, uskonnollisten absoluuttien sekä fanatismin käsitteistä. Hänen klassiseen valistusmoderniin nojaava fideismikritiikkinsä osoittautuu toistaiseksi puutteellisesti perustelluksi ja ongelmallisesti muotoilluksi. (shrink)

[First paragraph]: On Wednesday, June 8, 2011, UK’s The Guardian reported that numerous US universities including Harvard and Vanderbilt were invested in companies that were buying large tracts of African farmland and kicking off the indigenous farmers in order for their employees (mostly non-Africans) to grow cash crops to sell to Europe.1 Harms associated with this land-grabbing include, in addition to the evictions themselves, corruption among African governments and among absentee African land owners, increased food prices, and accelerated climate change.

Richard Wright gave a series of lectures in Europe from 1950 to 1956, collected in the following year in the volume, White Man, Listen! One dominant theme in all four essays is that expanding the moral imagination is centrally important in repairing our racism-benighted globe. What makes Wright’s version of this claim unique is his forthright admission that expanding the moral imagination necessarily involves pain and suffering. The best place to hear Wright in regard to the necessary pain of expanding (...) the moral imagination, I would argue, is his poetry collection, This Other World: Projections in the Haiku Manner. To wit, for Wright the necessary pain of expanding one’s moral imagination is the loneliness that results from delegating to others—in the etymological sense of “deputizing or committing”—one’s whiteness qua privilege or social capital. In conclusion, lonely delegation constitutes an imperative template from Wright regarding the painful expansion of our own moral imagination, in the service of social justice for economically oppressed communities of color across the globe. (shrink)

In this chapter, I will explore the intersection of philosophy and childhood through the intriguing case study of J. S. Mill, who was almost completely denied a childhood—in the nineteenth-century sense of a qualitatively distinct period inclusive of greater play, imaginative freedom, flexibility, and education. For his part, Mill’s lack of such a childhood was the direct result of his father, James Mill (economic theorist and early proponent of Utilitarianism), who in a letter to Jeremy Bentham explicitly formulates a plan (...) to raise his son as an experiment in the Utilitarian “science” of ethics. More specifically, although James Mill’s end was to create a near-superhuman champion of Utilitarianism, his means to that end included denying John access to other children and the Romantic poetry of his contemporaries. Despite this oppressive lack of a childhood, however, J. S. Mill went on to become perhaps the most influential social and political reformer in British history, especially in regard to gender relations through his groundbreaking work for women’s suffrage. This begs the central question of this chapter, namely how could a philosopher’s tyrannized childhood nevertheless lead to his later overturning of such tyranny in the political sphere? (shrink)

Many strategies for incorporating poetry into non-poetry classes, especially outside of English and associated disciplines, appear to make poetry subservient and secondary in relation to the prose content of the course. The poet under consideration becomes a kind of involuntary servant to one or more prose authors, forced to “speak only when spoken to,” and effectively prevented from challenging the ideas of the course’s prose writers, and thereby the instructor. Fortunately, this is not the only strategy for incorporating poetry into (...) prose-dominated courses. In this chapter, I will suggest an alternate approach which recognizes and facilitates the agency of poets and poetry per se, which I term “empowering poetic defiance.” In brief, this approach consists of the following four steps: (1) challenge one’s own poetic self-loathing (2) position the course’s poetry’s content to challenge the course’s non-poetic contents (3) position the course’s poetry’s forms to challenge your class’s non-poetic forms (4) comport oneself as interlocutor toward the poets featured in the course as the intellectual equals of oneself and the course’s prose writers. My first section will elaborate on these four steps, and my second section will flesh out the method further with a new reading of one of the most powerfully defiant poets in the Western canon, the nineteenth-century French Symbolist poet Charles Baudelaire, in dialogue with one of the most formidable challengers to the power of poetry, the eighteenth-century Prussian philosopher Immanuel Kant. (shrink)

My intention in this paper is to respond to Jean-Luc Nancy’s claim that poetry, along with philosophy, is essentially incapable of what Nancy describes as "thinking love." To do so, I will first try to come to an understanding of Nancy’s thinking regarding love and then of poetry as presented in his essay "Shattered Love." Having thus prepared the way, I will then respond, via Pablo Neruda’s poem "Oda al Limón," to Nancy’s understanding of poetry vis-à-vis "Shattered Love." This response, (...) in acting out Nancy’s thinking regarding love, will suggest a greater plurality within poetry than Nancy acknowledged. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore what gives collective testimony its epistemic credentials, through a critical discussion of three competing accounts of the epistemology of collective testimony. According to the first view, collective testimony inherits its epistemic credentials from the beliefs the testimony expresses— where this can be seen either as the beliefs of all or some of the group’s members, or as the beliefs of group itself. The second view denies any necessary connection to belief, claiming instead that the epistemic (...) credentials of collective testimony derive from the reliability or truth-conduciveness of the statement that expresses the testimony. Finally, the third view claims that the epistemic credentials of collective testimony derive from the fact that it involves undertaking a collective commitment to trustworthiness, which makes the group susceptible to rebuke and blame if its testimony is not trustworthy. I argue that this last account holds the most promise for preserving what is distinctive about testimonial knowledge while still underwriting a robust epistemology of collective testimony. (shrink)

Jennifer Lackey (2018) has developed an account of the primary form of group assertion, according to which groups assert when a suitably authorized spokesperson speaks for the group. In this paper I pose a challenge for Lackey's account, arguing that her account obscures the phenomenon of group silencing. This is because, in contrast to alternative approaches that view assertions (and speech acts generally) as social acts, Lackey's account implies that speakers can successfully assert regardless of how their utterances are taken (...) up by their audiences. What reflection on group silencing shows us, I argue, is that an adequate account of group assertion needs to find a place for audience uptake. (shrink)

The computer science (CS) graduated students suffered from documenting their projects and specially from coordinating it. In addition, students’ supervisors faced difficulties with guiding their students to an efficient process of documenting. In this paper, we will offer a suggestion as a solution to the mentioned problems; that is an application to make the process of documenting computer science (CS) student graduation project easy and time-cost efficient. This solution will decrease the possibility of human mistakes and reduce the effort of (...) documenting process. (shrink)

Over the past few decades, Indigenous communities have successfully campaigned for greater inclusion in decision-making processes that directly affect their lands and livelihoods. As a result, two important participatory rights for Indigenous peoples have now been widely recognized: the right to consultation and the right to free, prior and informed consent (FPIC). Although these participatory rights are meant to empower the speech of these communities—to give them a proper say in the decisions that most affect them—we argue that the way (...) these rights have been implemented and interpreted sometimes has the opposite effect, of denying them a say or ‘silencing’ them. In support of this conclusion we draw on feminist speech act theory to identify practices of locutionary, illocutionary, and perlocutionary group silencing that arise in the context of consultation with Indigenous communities. (shrink)

Recent feminist philosophy of language has highlighted the ways that the speech of women can be unjustly impeded, because of the way their gender affects the uptake their speech receives. In this chapter, I explore how similar processes can undermine the speech of a different sort of speaker: Indigenous communities. This involves focusing on Indigeneity rather than gender as the salient social identity, and looking at the ways that group speech, rather than only individual speech, can be unjustly impeded. To (...) do this, I make use of the notion of ‘discursive injustice’ that has been developed by Quill Kukla, and, with reference to three case studies, show how discursive injustice can effectively derail the speech of Indigenous communities. (shrink)

I have a theory of the emotions that many people find unflattering. I contend that all emotions, as such, are negative and neither life-enhancing nor truth-connected. In this essay, I present this theory and my reasons for it.

This discourse analysis aimed to expose the context of globalization in the face of COVID 19 pandemic. I contend to refute the notion that globalization is the same before and during the pandemic crisis. Moreover, I seek to bring out the contextual landscape of social and cultural changes as influenced by pandemic and how the conduct of globalization in terms of power struggle, digitalization, debt and geographies of blame, care, interdependence, infection, immunization, vulnerability and resilience are being redefined in its (...) optimum level. (shrink)