Suchergebnisse

The division of Germany into two militarized blocs during the Cold War fundamentally shaped the lives of people living in both East and West. Yet, as recent scholarship has increasingly highlighted, there were also numerous areas of contact and interaction, whether in the cultural, political or social sphere. One largely overlooked aspect of these Cold War relations, which this article explores, is the environment. Focusing on the history of the shared German environment from the end of the Second World War through to the early 1970s, the article argues that on a local level, environmental problems helped to ensure the survival of cross-border relations. Despite their repeated efforts, the two states failed to divide the German landscape in half. Rivers, lakes and forests continually crossed the fortified border, while animals and plant life traversed from one side to the other too. In attempting to maintain this shared border landscape, East and West Germans were repeatedly forced into dialogue. Although relations gradually faded as the border regime was strengthened, it proved impossible for either side to escape fully the entangled German environment.

AbstractMetabolites are small molecules involved in cellular metabolism where they act as reaction substrates or products. The term 'metabolomics' refers to the comprehensive study of these molecules. The concentrations of metabolites in biological tissues are under genetic control, but this is limited by environmental factors such as diet. In adult mono- and dizygotic twin pairs, we estimated the contribution of genetic and shared environmental influences on metabolite levels by structural equation modeling and tested whether the familial resemblance for metabolite levels is mainly explained by genetic or by environmental factors that are shared by family members. Metabolites were measured across three platforms: two based on proton nuclear magnetic resonance techniques and one employing mass spectrometry. These three platforms comprised 237 single metabolic traits of several chemical classes. For the three platforms, metabolites were assessed in 1407, 1037 and 1116 twin pairs, respectively. We carried out power calculations to establish what percentage of shared environmental variance could be detected given these sample sizes. Our study did not find evidence for a systematic contribution of shared environment, defined as the influence of growing up together in the same household, on metabolites assessed in adulthood. Significant heritability was observed for nearly all 237 metabolites; significant contribution of the shared environment was limited to 6 metabolites. The top quartile of the heritability distribution was populated by 5 of the 11 investigated chemical classes. In this quartile, metabolites of the class lipoprotein were significantly overrepresented, whereas metabolites of classes glycerophospholipids and glycerolipids were significantly underrepresented.

Il lavoro si propone di affrontare un problema urgente e non rimandabile: la condizione di emergenza ambientale del pianeta terra. Il fenomeno viene ricostruito storicamente, focalizzando l'attenzione sugli aspetti filosoficamente rilevanti – come, per esempio, il rapporto tra scienza e tecnica – e dimostrando la necessità di un cambiamento di rotta, soprattutto in riferimento al fenomeno del surriscaldamento climatico. A questo riguardo viene passata in rassegna una tassonomia delle etiche ambientali, dividendole tra antropocentriche e anti-antropocentriche e considerando la rilevante eccezione a questo schema rappresentata da Hans Jonas. Vengono sottolineati i problemi che incontra l'etica nell'affrontare un compito complesso, globale, a responsabilità diffusa e per il quale è difficile individuare basi motivazionali come quello della difesa dell'ambiente. Per compensare queste mancanze viene preso in analisi il concetto di beni comuni, sulla scia della sua diffusione avvenuta negli ultimi anni. Questo è analizzato nel suo sviluppo a livello di storia delle idee. Sono presi in considerazione in modo critico i contributi di Garret Hardin, di Elinor Ostrom e dei diversi rappresentati dei fronti italiani, divisi in tre approcci: quello dei benecomunisti, quello giuridico e quello dell'etica della cura. Inoltre tale concetto viene posto in relazione dialogica con quelli di bene comune, democrazia e diritti e viene proposta una tassonomia dei suoi usi che si divide in quattro modalità: economica, giuridica, etica e sociale. Infine, viene valutato in modo critico l'effettivo contributo dei diversi fronti dei beni comuni e di un loro possibile approccio integrato possono fornire a livello etico e normativo per contribuire ala difesa dell'ambiente. L'attenzione viene posta anche sul rapporto tra crisi e opportunità e sull'etica animale. In conclusione, l'approccio dei beni comuni sembra essere insufficiente perché manca di una prospettiva globale per affrontare un problema che invece la richiede come quello ambientale. Vengono, quindi, proposte alcune possibili integrazioni. ; This work wants to face an urgent and not postponable issue: the environmental emergency on Planet Earth. The topic is explored from an historical point of view, focusing on some philosophically considerable issues – as, for example, the connection between science and technology – and showing how a change of human behaviour is needed, especially regarding global warming. A taxonomy of the environmental ethics is described, dividing them in anthropocentric and anti-anthropocentric and considering the exception of Hans Jonas. Ethic has problems to face such a complex, global, and with widespread responsibility task which does not offer a sound ground for motivation as environmental protection. In order to exceed these limits, the attention is focused on the notion of common goods, which has encountered a large use over the last few years. This topic is firstly described under the perspective of the history of ideas. Then some proposals are critically examined as the one of Garret Hardin, Elinor Ostrom and some among the different line-ups of the Italian debate as the "benecomunisti", the juridical and the ethic of care approach. Moreover the notion of commons is related in a dialogic way to other concepts such as common good, democracy and rights and a taxonomy of its uses is proposed diving them into: economical, juridical, ethical and social uses. Finally the different proposals of the commons and the one of their integrated approach are critically analysed regarding the help they can offer from an ethical and normative point of view to the task of environmental protection. Also the crisis/opportunity dialectic and topics from animal ethics are described. In conclusion, the common goods approach is considered not sufficient to face a global issue as environmental emergency because of its lack of a global perspective. Therefore some possible integrations are offered.

AbstractBehavioral and molecular genetic research has established that child cognitive ability and academic performance are substantially heritable, but genetic variation does not account for all of the stratification of cognitive and academic outcomes across families. Which specific contexts and experiences contribute to these shared environmental influences on cognitive ability and academic achievement? Using an ethnically and socioeconomically diverse sample of N = 1728 twins ages 7–20 from the Texas Twin Project, we identified specific measured family, school, and neighborhood socioecological contexts that statistically accounted for latent shared environmental variance in cognitive abilities and academic skills. Composite measures of parent socioeconomic status (SES), school demographic composition, and neighborhood SES accounted for moderate proportions of variation in IQ and achievement. Total variance explained by the multilevel contexts ranged from 15% to 22%. The influence of family SES on IQ and achievement overlapped substantially with the influence of school and neighborhood predictors. Together with race, the measured socioecological contexts explained 100% of shared environmental influences on IQ and approximately 79% of shared environmental influences on both verbal comprehension and reading ability. In contrast, nontrivial proportions of shared environmental variation in math performance were left unexplained. We highlight the potential utility of constructing "polyenvironmental risk scores" in an effort to better predict developmental outcomes and to quantify children's and adolescents' interrelated networks of experiences. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at: https://youtu.be/77E_DctFsr0

Intercultural, interdisciplinary, and transdisciplinary research interfaces confront researchers with considerable challenges. Towards Shared Research portrays how scholars from different disciplinary and geographical origins and at various academic career stages strive for a more inclusive and better understanding of knowledge about African environments. The book is addressed to researchers, facilitators, and policy-makers to make a case for participatory and integrative approaches resulting in systemic and co-created analyses.

Intercultural, interdisciplinary, and transdisciplinary research interfaces confront researchers with considerable challenges. Towards Shared Research portrays how scholars from different disciplinary and geographical origins and at various academic career stages strive for a more inclusive and better understanding of knowledge about African environments. The book is addressed to researchers, facilitators, and policy-makers to make a case for participatory and integrative approaches resulting in systemic and co-created analyses.

Goals and the performance feedback on those goals are fundamental to organizational learning and adaptation. However, most research has focused on single overall, high-level organizational goals while ignoring important operational goals farther down in the goal hierarchy. This paper explores the important issue of interdependent feedback on multiple operational goals with shared task environments. We conjecture about the impact of shared technological task environments on feedback across goals. We then empirically examine these conjectures using panel vector autoregression (PVAR) analysis of performance feedback from three strategically important operational goals with shared technological task environments in the automobile industry. We find that interdependent feedback can lead to severe and misleading confusion regarding learning from feedback on such goals with shared task environments. Then, we discuss the implications of our findings. These include the following: the absolute intractability of the problem of meeting multiple goals with interdependent task environments as the number of goals increases; limits on the modularity of organization structure; and severe challenges in ex post credit assignment and ex ante planning when goals share technological task environments. Finally, we discuss the application of PVAR to interdependent feedback problems in organizations. The online appendices are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2018.1207 .