Weight gain among psychiatric inpatients is a widespread phenomenon. This change in body mass index (BMI) can be caused by several factors. Based on recent research, we assume the following factors are related to weight gain during psychiatric inpatient treatment: psychiatric medication, psychiatric diagnosis, sex, age, weight on admission and geographic region of treatment.

876 of originally recruited 2328 patients met the criteria for our analysis. Patients were recruited and examined in mental health care centres in Nigeria (N=265), Japan (N=145) and Western-Europe (Denmark, Germany and Switzerland; N=466).

There was a significant effect of psychiatric medication, psychiatric diagnoses and geographic region, but not age and sex, on BMI changes. Geographic region had a significant effect on BMI change, with Nigerian patients gaining significantly more weight than Japanese and Western European patients. Moreover, geographic region influenced the type of psychiatric medication prescribed and the psychiatric diagnoses. The diagnoses and psychiatric medication prescribed had a significant effect on BMI change.

In conclusion, we consider weight gain as a multifactorial phenomenon that is influenced by several factors. One can discuss a number of explanations for our findings, such as different clinical practices in the geographical regions (prescribing or admission strategies and access-to-care aspects), as well as socio-economic and cultural differences.

Paradigm-Case arguments were set out to meet epistemological scepticism and to refute in a short decisive way, without even the need to examine them in detail, paradoxical metaphysical claims. Stroud, J. J. Thomson and Rorty think they utterly fail to do so.1 I shall argue that supplemented by a perfectly innocuous verificationist argument, a distinct argument of Moore's, given a limited sphere of application and taken as also involving the argument from a non-vacuous contrast, the argument from the paradigm-case presents a decisive argument against such forms of scepticism. If it is not sound, transcendental arguments will also be undermined but if it is sound, they are unnecessary.

In the first chapter of Karl Marx's Theory of History, G. A. Cohen contrasts Marx's image of history with Hegel's, contrasts, that is, a powerful form of historical idealism with historical materialism. Historical idealism stresses the “dominion of thought” (Gedankenherrschaft); social change, on such an account, is to be explained principally in terms of changes in consciousness, the course of history being determined by fundamental ruling ideas and conceptions. This view is to be contrasted with historical materialism. The central vision of history in Hegel is formulated as follows by Cohen, “History is the history of the world spirit (and, derivatively of human consciousness) which undergoes growth in self-knowledge, the stimulus and vehicle of which is a culture, which perishes when it has stimulated more growth than it can contain” (26). Marx's vision, a historical materialist vision, is identical in structure with Hegel's, but endows the structure with a new content. This can be seen from the parallel formulation of it, given by Cohen: “History is the history of human industry, which undergoes growth in productive power, the stimulus and vehicle of which is an economic structure which perishes when it has stimulated more growth than it can contain (26).

I am grateful to Professor Garceau for his thoughtful and gracious characterization and critique of my account of religion. As will become apparent, as I proceed, there is much in his account, both methodological and substantive, that I think is fundamentally mistaken, but, that notwithstanding, I very much appreciate the tone and spirit in which his critique of my work was conducted. Benoît Garceau has carefully studied my views and has in an exemplary manner tried sympathetically to understand them to capture what divides reflective and informed religious believers and reflective and informed skeptics. It is, I believe, fair enough to say that the task of trying to ascertain what most fundamentally divides contemporary literate believers and skeptics is of fundamental significance in any attempt to come to grips with the contemporary significance of religion, though it does seem to me that this task is much more problematic than is usually thought. In responding here to Carceau's specific criticisms, I shall, in the general drift of my remarks, be trying to make some contribution to the clarification of that issue. Though I shall only be able to touch on a small corner of it, I shall be concerned to examine in what way, if at all, it is possible for there to be, as Garceau would put it, a dialogue between such believers and skeptics; and I shall be concerned, as well, somewhat more broadly, to ascertain what it would be like for us, not only to understand each other, but, if indeed such a thing is possible at all, what it would be like to move a step forward in the ancient but still ongoing and developing debate concerning whether one should, all things considered, be, if one can, a believer, or a skeptic.

I am grateful to Josiane Boulad-Ayoub and Wesley Cooper for their generous treatment of my Equality and Liberty and for their probing criticisms. They make me keenly aware that I have often not expressed myself clearly enough and they have set in motion a process of self-questioning that will extend well beyond this discussion. They drive home to me, once again, the realization of how difficult it is to get anything right in philosophy.

Since they, for the most part, raise different sorts of issues, I shall discuss their criticisms separately starting with Cooper's account.

Basal ice at the margin of the Greenland ice sheet was studied with respect to its physical characteristics and microbiological community. The basal ice contained high concentrations of dissolved ferrous Fe and must therefore be anoxic. Oxygen consumption experiments indicate that 50% of the oxidation was due to biological activity while the rest could be attributed to chemical processes, most likely weathering reactions with ferrous Fe. At least six different Fe-containing mineral sources were detected in basal ice together with potential bioavailable Fe nanoparticles. An active denitrifier population was identified due to formation of 30N-dinitrogen gas after amendment of anoxic sediment slurries with 15N-NO3−. Sulfate reduction could not be detected. The solid ice facies contained an abundant (∼108 cells cm−3) and complex microbial community that harbored representatives of at least eight major phyla within the domain Bacteria. The clone library was dominated by members of the β-subdivision of proteobacteria of which the largest proportion was affiliated to the genus Rhodoferax that comprises facultative aerobic iron reducers. The second most abundant phylum was Bacteroidetes. The solid ice facies had many physical similarities with the overlying debris-rich banded ice facies, indicating that they formed by similar subglacial processes and harbor similar microbial communities. This study extends our knowledge of life in subglacial environments such as beneath ice sheets. GenBank accession numbers: HM439882-HM439950; HQ144215-HQ144221.

I have been fortunate in having the critics that I had at the Pasadena Session on my Globalization and Justice. All three of them understood me very well, reported me accurately and criticized me fairly and perceptively. An author could not ask for more. In some places I will, as a result of their criticisms, have to modify or clarify what I say, but in other places, and indeed very central places, I remain intransigent and hold my ground, I hope not out of pigheadedness, a hardening of the intellectual arteries or out of a blinkered partisanship.

Low phosphorus availability is often a primary constraint to plant productivity in native soils. Here we test the hypothesis that root carbon costs are a primary limitation to plant growth in low P soils by assessing the effect of P availability and mycorrhizal infection on whole plant C budgets in common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.). Plants were grown in solid-phase-buffered silica sand providing a constant supply of low (1 μm) or moderate (10 μm) P. Carbon budgets were determined weekly during the vegetative growth phase. Mycorrhizal infection in low-P plants increased the root specific P absorption rate, but a concurrent increase in root respiration consumed the increased net C gain resulting from greater P uptake. The energy content of mycorrhizal and non-mycorrhizal roots was similar. We propose that the increase in root respiration in mycorrhizal roots was mainly due to increased maintenance and growth respiration of the fungal tissue. Plants grown with low P availability expended a significantly larger fraction of their total daily C budget on below-ground respiration at days 21, 28 and 35 after planting (29–40%) compared with plants grown with moderate P supply (18–25%). Relatively greater below-ground respiration in low P plants was mainly a result of their increased root[ratio ]shoot ratio, although specific assimilation rate was reduced significantly at days 21 and 28 after planting. Specific root respiration was reduced over time by low P availability, by up to 40%. This reduction in specific root respiration was due to a reduction in ion uptake respiration and growth respiration, whereas maintenance respiration was increased in low-P plants. Our results support the hypothesis that root C costs are a primary limitation to plant growth in low-P soils.

There are nationalisms and nationalisms, and as nationalisms vary from barbarous and murderous to benign and, all things considered, perhaps desirable, so theories of nationalism vary from irrational or turgid metaphysical accounts to reasonable and carefully articulated and argued theories of nationalism. André Van de Putte has well described some of the former (without at all falling into that category himself) while David Miller, Yael Tamir, Geneviève Nootens, Ross Poole, and Robert X. Ware have carefully argued for some modest forms of nationalism, sometimes explicitly and sometimes only by implication. But there are also, as the reader will have seen, forcefully argued and systematic theories setting themselves against even the most sophisticated and plausible defences of nationalism. The articles of Harry Brighouse, Omar Dahbour, and Andrew Levine fall explicitly into that category and, we would argue, so does Allen Buchanan's carefully wrought article, though implicitly and by implication but not by programmatic intent.

Most of the essays collected here are essays in metaethics seeking in exacting and interesting ways to resolve problems raised by the familiar options in metaethics we outlined in our Introduction. Richard Brandt, for example, forcefully argues, going much against the at least modestly holistic grain of our time, for a foundationalism (noncognitivist though it be) which would be foundational in both metaethics and normative ethics. R.M. Hare makes a brief but systematic defense, which is both spirited and clear, of his prescriptivism (a species of what we, following tradition, have called ‘noncognitivism,’ but which he argues should instead be called ‘nondescriptivism’). His arguments here for his position - call it nondescriptivism or noncognitivism- are directed forcefully against ethical naturalism (descriptivism) and specifically against the naturalism of Philippa Foot. Nicholas Sturgeon and David Copp contribute elaborate and rigorously argued defenses of ethical naturalism, or, as they might prefer to call it, ‘moral realism.’

En dépit d'une croyance fermement établie en philosophie et ailleurs, selon laquelle les philosophes non seulement ne s’ entendent pas mais traitent de questions indécidables, les auteurs qui ont contribué au présent ouvrage semblent s'entendre sur deux points au moins. Le premier est qu'il est possible de dire ce qu'est la philosophie et le deuxième est qu'il est possible de la montrer du doigt.

It is argued that there are no moral or legal rights that may never rightly be overridden no matter what the consequences. There are human rights which are inalienable while still being rightly overrideable in certain circumstances. Even rights-based constructivist accounts of human rights do not provide a grounding for morality that escapes consequentialist critique. But the proper form of consequentialism is a weak form of consequentialism which is distinguished from utilitarian consequentialism.