Ruminations on twenty-five years of Patricia Hill Collins's Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge,Consciousness and the Politics of Empowerment

My review focuses on the impact that Black Feminist Thought has had on my personal and professional life. I weave together lessons I have learned from Patricia Hill Collins with reflections on my own lived experience – from my family of origin to college experiences to my work as the founding director of the Collegium of Black Women Philosophers.     

威廉·钱伯斯爵士与邱园

威廉·钱伯斯爵士对东西方园林艺术交流、英国自然式园林的发展有着积极的推动作用。通过介绍钱伯斯生平及其有关中国的建筑、园林论著,梳理了钱伯斯对中国园林艺术认知的缘由、发展和观点,在此基础上阐述钱伯斯时代的邱园建造的背景、特征及变化,总结钱伯斯开创的“绘画式”风景园的风格特点。不同于肯特和布朗关于自然与艺术的看法,钱伯斯提出园林艺术应源于自然、高于自然的思想,并在自然与艺术的融合方面进行了大胆的尝试。     

Extended physics as a theoretical framework for systems biology?

In this essay we examine whether a theoretical and conceptual framework for systems biology could be built from the [Bailly and Longo, 2008] and [Bailly and Longo, 2009] proposal. These authors aim to understand life as a coherent critical structure, and propose to develop an extended physical approach of evolution, as a diffusion of biomass in a space of complexity. Their attempt leads to a simple mathematical reconstruction of Gould’s assumption (1989) concerning the bacterial world as a “left wall of least complexity” that we will examine. Extended physical systems are characterized by their constructive properties. Time is acting and new properties emerge by their history that can open the list of their initial properties. This conceptual and theoretical framework is nothing more than a philosophical assumption, but as such it provides a new and exciting approach concerning the evolution of life, and the transition between physics and biology.     

Design and Implementation of an fMRI Study Examining Thought Suppression in Young Women with,and At-risk,for Depression

Ruminative brooding is associated with increased vulnerability to major depression. Individuals who regularly ruminate will often try to reduce the frequency of their negative thoughts by actively suppressing them. We aim to identify the neural correlates underlying thought suppression in at-risk and depressed individuals. Three groups of women were studied; a major depressive disorder group, an at-risk group (having a first degree relative with depression) and controls. Participants performed a mixed block-event fMRI paradigm involving thought suppression, free thought and motor control periods. Participants identified the re-emergence of “to-be-suppressed” thoughts (“popping” back into conscious awareness) with a button press. During thought suppression the control group showed the greatest activation of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, followed by the at-risk, then depressed group. During the re-emergence of intrusive thoughts compared to successful re-suppression of those thoughts, the control group showed the greatest activation of the anterior cingulate cortices, followed by the at-risk, then depressed group. At-risk participants displayed anomalies in the neural regulation of thought suppression resembling the dysregulation found in depressed individuals. The predictive value of these changes in the onset of depression remains to be determined.     

生物技术的商业化原则及其未来

生物技术就是应用自然科学及工程学的原理 ,依靠微生物、动物、植物作为反应器 ,将物料进行加工以提高产品来为社会服务的技术。文章在重点分析了世界生物技术研究开发、产业发展状况及其管理策略基础上 ,探讨了生物技术及其产业的商业化系统模型以及系统各要素之间的关系 ,阐明了建立生物技术商业化系统的 4项原则 ,即相对优势的竞争原则 ,行业的乘数效应原则 ,投资的获得与运营原则和协调管理的价值实现原则 ,并提出了生物技术未来发展的设想。     

Long range temporal correlations in EEG oscillations of subclinically depressed individuals: their association with brooding and suppression

Long-range temporal correlations (LRTC) in brain oscillations have been found to be associated with depression severity in clinically depressed patients. Less is known, however, about the relationships between LRTC and proneness to engage in depression-related cognitive emotion regulation (ER) strategies which characterize both clinically and subclinically depressed (SBD) people. In this study we applied detrended fluctuation analysis to the amplitude envelope of broad band, theta band, and alpha band spontaneous EEG oscillations of a group of SBD individuals and a group of non-depressed individuals (both groups from a sample of healthy adults, N = 120), to whom brooding and thought suppression questionnaires were administered. Between-groups differences were not found for any band scaling exponents at any brain location, but linear correlations pointed out several associations between exponents at frontal, central, parietal, temporal, and occipital sites and maladaptive ER strategies. These results suggest that alterations in brain dynamics are related with the proneness that depressive individuals show to engage in brooding and thought suppression in order to cognitively regulate their emotions.