University of California

About: University of California is a education organization based out in Oakland, California, United States. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Layer (electronics). The organization has 55175 authors who have published 52933 publications receiving 1491169 citations. The organization is also known as: UC & University of California System.

Introduction: Cultural and Linguistic Anthropology and the Opacity of other minds

Abstract: The essays in this Social Thought and Commentary section are exercises in a tried and true anthropological trick, albeit one that these days is perhaps not so often performed. The trick involves taking some very focused, one might even say " small," bits of ethnography and using them to unsettle major doctrines of social thought. Among famous David and Goliath efforts along these lines, one thinks of Malinowski's deployment of the details of Trobriand social structure and personal life to cast doubt on the universality of the Oedipus complex, or, closer thematically to our focus here, of Michelle Rosaldo's Ilongot-based assault on speech act theory (to which we return below). Neither of these efforts even approached complete success in unseating the paradigms they took on-entrenched ideas die hard-but they did stimulate a lot of valuable social-theoretical debate. Our aim here is to try to do the same. The focused bit of ethnography which all of the contributors to this special section have in hand is the assertion, widespread in the societies of the Pacific, that it is impossible or at least extremely difficult to know what other people think or feel. We have called this idea the doctrine of "the opacity of other minds." The opacity doctrine is not limited to the Pacific (as noted in several of the essays that follow), and it is likely that in most societies one can occasionally find people ruminating on how difficult it is to see into the hearts and minds of others. But the opacity doctrine is unusually well developed in many of the cultures of the Pacific, where it is not so much a matter of episodic personal reflection as it is a widely shared and taken-for-granted fact about the world, and one that shapes normative orders and everyday practice. In Pacific societies where the opacity doctrine is present, for example, people are often expected to refrain from speculating (at least publicly) about what others may be thinking, and penalties for gossip about other people's intentions are often very high (see Schieffelin, this collection). For related reasons, people tend to put little store in the veracity of what others say about their own thoughts, rarely expecting that they can take such reports as reliable guides to how those who make them will behave in the future. Many other examples of the way opacity ideas shape the course of daily life appear in the papers collected here. But these brief observations should be enough to carry the point that such ideas have real ramifications in the Pacific societies in which they appear. If our privileged piece of data is quite focused, the social theoretical target at which we aim it is broader. It is the contention of our essays that Pacific opacity doctrines ought to force a rethinking of some fairly settled approaches to topics such as the nature of theories of mind, the role of intention in linguistic communication and social interaction more generally, and the importance of empathy in human encounters and in anthropological method. In all of these areas, Pacific assumptions about the impossibility of knowing the minds of others fundamentally contradict social scientific models that assume such knowledge is possible, and that further assume that gaining such knowledge stands universally as a regulating ideal for human beings in engagement with their fellows. Can our theories imagine that we might approach other people without assuming that we can know something about what goes on in their heads? Or that we might interpret their speech without explicitly making guesses about their intentions in producing it? Or that we can get along with others without assuming that we can replicate their thoughts and feelings within ourselves as a way of understanding how things are with them? Could we ever cooperate with each other without being able to mind-read on all these levels? At least as they talk about their lives, many people in the Pacific appear to answer yes to these questions. …

Enhancing Knowledge Sharing in Public Accounting Firms

Abstract: The goal of this study is to advance understanding of factors that may enhance or hinder knowledge sharing in public accounting firms and, in the end, provide practical recommendations for the firms. Attention to this topic is warranted for two reasons. First, today's regulatory environment and new auditing standards have broadened and intensified pressures on CPA firms to enhance the quality, effectiveness, and efficiency of the audit process. Second, knowledge and expertise are unevenly distributed among the members of the audit team. Thus, knowledge sharing can help CPA firms in leveraging the skills, knowledge, and best practices of their professional staff. Against this background, CPA firms' ability to effectively deploy knowledgesharing activities is increasingly vital to their competitive advantage, including gaining tangible benefits in terms of time and cost reductions. We draw upon prior research in accounting, organizational learning, psychology, and knowledge management to examine the role of...

Evidence for a second class of S-adenosylmethionine riboswitches and other regulatory RNA motifs in alpha-proteobacteria

Abstract: Background Riboswitches are RNA elements in the 5' untranslated leaders of bacterial mRNAs that directly sense the levels of specific metabolites with a structurally conserved aptamer domain to regulate expression of downstream genes. Riboswitches are most common in the genomes of low GC Gram-positive bacteria (for example, Bacillus subtilis contains examples of all known riboswitches), and some riboswitch classes seem to be restricted to this group.

tla1, a DNA insertional transformant of the green alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii with a truncated light-harvesting chlorophyll antenna size.

Abstract: DNA insertional mutagenesis and screening of the green alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii was employed to isolate tla1, a stable transformant having a truncated light-harvesting chlorophyll antenna size. Molecular analysis showed a single plasmid insertion into an open reading frame of the nuclear genome corresponding to a novel gene (Tla1) that encodes a protein of 213 amino acids. Genetic analysis showed co-segregation of plasmid and tla1 phenotype. Biochemical analyses showed the tla1 mutant to be chlorophyll deficient, with a functional chlorophyll antenna size of photosystem I and photosystem II being about 50% and 65% of that of the wild type, respectively. It contained a correspondingly lower amount of light-harvesting proteins than the wild type and had lower steady-state levels of Lhcb mRNA. The tla1 strain required a higher light intensity for the saturation of photosynthesis and showed greater solar conversion efficiencies and a higher photosynthetic productivity than the wild type under mass culture conditions. Results are discussed in terms of the tla1 mutation, its phenotype, and the role played by the Tla1 gene in the regulation of the photosynthetic chlorophyll antenna size in C. reinhardtii.