Complex Itinerary Research Articles

La questione del metodo nella prospettiva della bioetica di stampo personalista

L’Autore affronta la questione del metodo nella prospettiva personalista. Dopo aver chiarito che non esiste un metodo specifico della bioetica, se non nel senso che la bioetica non fa altro che assumere il metodo di indagine che è specifico della riflessione etica dalla quale dipende, l’Autore sottolinea che l’originalità della bioetica rispetto all’etica sta nell’insieme dei contenuti che essa affronta, ossia azioni e processi mediati dalla conoscenza scientifica e dalla prassi tecnologica.
 In particolare, viene proposta una riflessione su come è articolato il metodo triangolare proposto da Elio Sgreccia nel suo noto Manuale di Bioetica. Questo metodo si distingue dal proceduralismo di altre prospettive, sia per la sua connotazione contenutistica, che ha il suo perno in una concezione sostanzialistica della persona umana, sia per la sua struttura critica o dialettica. Nella connessione tra il dato medico-scientifico, il dato antropologico e il momento etico emerge il significato analogo della verità, concetto non confinato soltanto nel campo delle scienze sperimentali ma efficace anche sul piano etico.
 In tal senso, la bioetica emerge come una disciplina che si costituisce attraverso un percorso (il itriangolo) che ha il suo esito laddove il giudizio di coscienza è formulato in base alle verità acquisite ed integrate, in base ai diversi beni messi in gioco. Il momento prescrittivo, quello decisivo dell’indagine bioetica, non è assimilabile ad una pura deduzione dai principi morali ma si costituisce all’interno di un complesso itinerario teorico che tiene conto dei diversi approcci alla realtà.

The Struggle for Form: A Conversation between Nick Carbó and M. Evelina Galang

Editor's Introduction: This email conversation between poet Nick Carbo and fiction writer M. Evelina Galang took place during a ten-month period from September 2002 to June 2003. I invited Carbo and Galang to discuss issues that American writers have to encounter because I thought that a dialogue between two writers would provide enriching glimpses into highly individual creative processes and allow them to speak more openly in context. From their positions as talented writers concerned with the state of American writing and actively motivating the publication of diverse work--both Carbo and Galang have co-edited groundbreaking anthologies of poetry and prose--they are singularly well-suited for this reflexive exercise. The writers agreed to talk this way because, as they affirmed, it allowed them time to reflect on the questions they asked each other and provide the exact details often left out in hurried person-to-person interviews. This conversational form created a personal and intimate space without an outside voice directing the questions with a specific agenda in his or her mind. In this conversation, Carbo and Galang uncovered hidden memories and exposed details of their lives that shaped much of what they are as American writers today. Though much of their dialogue centers on their writerly processes and experiences, many of their insights may be easily used to comprehend the process that occurs in other texts. Their views allow us to see behind the texts, to the complex itineraries of creative choices and positions that American writers make and occupy, respectively. Further, the writers engage many of the questions that the authors of the critical articles in this issue negotiate, primarily the intersection between aesthetic choices and thematic concerns in American writing. --Rocio G. Davis NC: I grew up in Manila in the seventies and early eighties during the height of the Marcos dictatorship. I attended the international School in Makati, which was the former American School established by the Americans during the Commonwealth period of the Philippines. Only the very rich families of Manila could afford to send their children to the International School. Among my classmates were sons and daughters of the elite with names like Tantoco, Benedicto, Elizalde, Araneta, Soriano, and Tan. There were even movie industry teen stars in attendance like Sharon Cuneta and Pops Fernandez. Even though the school was educating the children of some of the most powerful families in society, there was still a hierarchy based on nationality and race. In one of my early poems Civilizing the Filipino (from El Grupo McDonald's) I document an incident where I was accused by a white American classmate of stealing his gold pen. In the white American Principal's office I was slapped, picked up by the front of my shirt and thrown against the wall in an effort to make me confess to the crime. The words dirty, lying Filipino never left my mind because I realized that no matter how hard I protested, or pleaded my innocence, the American Principal believed down to his Florsheim shoes that the white kid was telling the truth. All American things (and people) were privileged over anything Filipino. I can look back now and say that it was the perfect example of a neocolonial existence. I learned to speak with an accent straight from California's Long Beach, I wore Nikes and Jordache jeans to school, and I read American books like The Catcher in the Rye and the Hardy Boys. My experience at I.S. was not the typical education most middle class Filipinos had growing up in the Philippines, who went to local private schools like De LaSalle, Ateneo, Assumption, San Agustin, and Xavier, where there was more homogeneity among the students. How different or similar was your high school experience in Milwaukee? Was your sense of being formed that early? …

Biogenesis of Weibel-Palade bodies.

Weibel-Palade bodies (WPBs) are the lysosome-related secretory organelles of endothelial cells. Their content protein von Willebrand factor, plays a key role in haemostasis, whilst P-selectin in the membranes is critical in the initiation of inflammation. Biogenesis of these rod-shaped structures is driven by von Willebrand factor, since its heterologous expression leads to formation of organelles morphologically indistinguishable from bona fide WPBs. The two main membrane proteins of WPBs, CD63 and P-selectin, have complex itineraries controlled largely by cytoplasmic targeting signals. We are only just beginning to understand the way in which these three proteins come together to form mature WPBs.

From Geographical Information Systems to Spatial Group Decision Support Systems: A Complex Itinerary

Group extensions to spatial decision support systems (SGDSS as extensions of SDSS) lack an integrated conceptual basis. The article proposes and explores the concept of 'spatial complexity' as the key for providing this basis. Four sources of spatial complexity are distinguished: analytical, dynamic, social and constructive complexity. The current generation of SDSS mainly addresses matters of analytical complexity. SGDSS add some elements belonging to the realm of social complexity. Several specific problems associated with this analytical/social focus in current SGDSS arise: their preoccupation with the choice phase, their focus on consensus building and the piecemeal character of their support facilities. To arrive at a broader, more encompassing vision of the support to be offered by SGDSS, a focus on problem exploration and construction is needed. The article explores at the conceptual level how such a focus may be introduced. It offers a conception of SGDSS that avoids the narrow analytical/social focus prevalent in current SGDSS conceptions and that tackles the problems associated with this narrow focus.

Control of p62 binding to TGN38/41 by phosphorylation

TGN38/41 cycles between the trans-Golgi network (TGN) and plasma membrane, traversing three sorting compartments: the TGN, plasma membrane and early endosome. The targeting signals responsible for this complex itinerary reside in a short cytoplasmic domain of 33 amino acid residues. We show that phosphorylation of the cytoplasmic domain of TGN38 prevents binding of p62 — a cytoplasmic protein essential for exocytic vesicle formation. Thus the cycle of TGN38/41 traffic, and by implication the pathway of exocytosis, could be controlled by phosphorylation of the TGN38 cytoplasmic domain.