The Agricultural Revolution and plant domestication in the Near East (among its components) have fascinated generations of scholars. Here, we narrate the history of ideas underlying plant domestication research since the late 19th century. Biological and cultural perspectives are presented through two prevailing models: one views plant domestication as a protracted, unconscious evolutionary mutualistic (noncentric) process. The second advocates a punctuated, knowledge-based human initiative (centric). We scrutinize the research landscape while assessing the underlying evolutionary and cultural mechanisms. A parsimony measure indicates that the punctuated-centric view better accords with archaeological records, and the geobotany and biology of the species, and requires fewer assumptions. The protracted alternative requires many assumptions, does not account for legume biology, fails to distinguish domestication from postdomestication changes, and, therefore, is less parsimonious.
This chapter formulates a version of idealism and argues for it. Sections 2 and 3 explicate this version of idealism: the world is mental through-and-through. Section 2 spells this out precisely and contrasts it with rival views. Section 3 draws a consequence from this formulation of idealism: idealism is necessarily true if true at all. Sections 4 and 5 make the case for idealism. Section 4 is defensive: it draws from the conclusion of section 3 to reply to a central, perhaps the central, anti-idealist argument. Section 5 is on the offense: it develops a new argument for idealism based on the contemporary debate in philosophy of mind. The contemporary debate in philosophy of mind has been dominated by physicalism and dualism, with idealism almost totally neglected. This chapter rectifies this situation.
Stylo Fantome. 2017. The Neighborhood. North Charleston, SC: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform.
Kisspeptin and neurokinin B (NKB) are neuropeptides co-expressed in the mammalian hypothalamus and coordinately control GnRH signaling. We have found that Nkb and kisspeptin neurons are distinct in the teleost, striped bass (STB) and capitalized on this phenomenon to study the mode of action of Nkb and its related neuropeptide-F (Nkf), both of which are encoded by the gene. brain slices and administration studies revealed that Nkb/f consistently downregulated , whereas antagonist (AntD) administration restored this effect. Overall, a minor effect was noted on expression, whereas Gnrh1 content in the pituitaries was reduced after Nkb/f treatment and increased with AntD. Concomitantly, immunostaining demonstrated that hypothalamic Nkb neurons border and densely innervate the largest kiss2 neuronal population in the hypothalamus, which also coexpresses Nkb receptor. No expression of Nkb receptor or Nkb neuronal projections was detected near/in Gnrh1 soma in the preoptic area. At the level of the pituitary, however, the picture was more complex: both Nkb/f and AntD upregulated and expression and Lh secretion Together with the stimulatory effect of Nkb/f on Lh/Fsh secretion from pituitary cells, , this may indicate an additional independent action of Nkb/f within the pituitary, in which the hypothalamic pathway is more dominant. The current study demonstrates that Nkb/f utilizes multiple pathways to regulate reproduction in the STB and that in the brain, Nkb mainly acts as a negative modulator of kiss2 to regulate the release of Gnrh1.
Internal clocks driving rhythms of about a day (circadian) are ubiquitous in animals, allowing them to anticipate environmental changes. Genetic or environmental disturbances to circadian clocks or the rhythms they produce are commonly associated with illness, compromised performance or reduced survival. Nevertheless, some animals including Arctic mammals, open sea fish and social insects such as honeybees are active around-the-clock with no apparent ill effects. The mechanisms allowing this remarkable natural plasticity are unknown. We generated and validated a new and specific antibody against the clock protein PERIOD of the honeybee Apis mellifera (amPER) and used it to characterize the circadian network in the honeybee brain. We found many similarities to Drosophila melanogaster and other insects, suggesting common anatomical organization principles in the insect clock that have not been appreciated before. Time course analyses revealed strong daily oscillations in amPER levels in foragers, which show circadian rhythms, and also in nurses that do not, although the latter have attenuated oscillations in brain mRNA clock gene levels. The oscillations in nurses show that activity can be uncoupled from the circadian network and support the hypothesis that a ticking circadian clock is essential even in around-the-clock active animals in a constant physical environment.
MicroRNAs orchestrate brain functioning via interaction with microRNA recognition elements (MRE) on target transcripts. However, the global impact of potential competition on the microRNA pool between coding and non-coding brain transcripts that share MREs with them remains unexplored. Here we report that non-coding pseudogene transcripts carrying MREs (PSG) often show duplicated origin, evolutionary conservation and higher expression in human temporal lobe neurons than comparable duplicated MRE-deficient pseudogenes (PSG). PSG participate in neuronal RNA-induced silencing complexes (RISC), indicating functional involvement. Furthermore, downregulation cell culture experiments validated bidirectional co-regulation of PSG with MRE-sharing coding transcripts, frequently not their mother genes, and with targeted microRNAs; also, PSG single-nucleotide polymorphisms associated with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and autism, suggesting interaction with mental diseases. Our findings indicate functional roles of duplicated PSG in brain development and cognition, supporting physiological impact of the reciprocal co-regulation of PSG with MRE-sharing coding transcripts in human brain neurons.
It has long been known that we subjectively experience longer stimuli as being more intense. A recent study sheds light on the neural mechanisms underlying this bias by tracking the formation of a percept of intensity in the rat brain.
Remote drug loading into nano-liposomes is in most cases the best method for achieving high concentrations of active pharmaceutical ingredients (API) per nano-liposome that enable therapeutically viable API-loaded nano-liposomes, referred to as nano-drugs. This approach also enables controlled drug release. Recently, we constructed computational models to identify APIs that can achieve the desired high concentrations in nano-liposomes by remote loading. While those previous models included a broad spectrum of experimental conditions and dealt only with loading, here we reduced the scope to the molecular characteristics alone. We model and predict API suitability for nano-liposomal delivery by fixing the main experimental conditions: liposome lipid composition and size to be similar to those of Doxil® liposomes. On that basis, we add a prediction of drug leakage from the nano-liposomes during storage. The latter is critical for having pharmaceutically viable nano-drugs. The "load and leak" models were used to screen two large molecular databases in search of candidate APIs for delivery by nano-liposomes. The distribution of positive instances in both loading and leakage models was similar in the two databases screened. The screening process identified 667 molecules that were positives by both loading and leakage models (i.e., both high-loading and stable). Among them, 318 molecules received a high score in both properties and of these, 67 are FDA-approved drugs. This group of molecules, having diverse pharmacological activities, may be the basis for future liposomal drug development.
This paper finds that a 10-μg/m3 increase in airborne particulate matter[particulate matter smaller than 10 μm (PM10)] reduces life expectancyby 0.64 years (95% confidence interval = 0.21–1.07). This estimateis derived from quasiexperimental variation in PM10 generated byChina’s Huai River Policy, which provides free or heavily subsidized coalfor indoor heating during the winter to cities north of the Huai Riverbut not to those to the south. The findings are derived from a regressiondiscontinuity design based on distance from the Huai River, andthey are robust to using parametric and nonparametric estimationmethods, different kernel types and bandwidth sizes, and adjustmentfor a rich set of demographic and behavioral covariates. Furthermore,the shorter lifespans are almost entirely caused by elevated rates ofcardiorespiratory mortality, suggesting that PM10 is the causal factor.The estimates imply that bringing all of China into compliance with itsClass I standards for PM10 would save 3.7 billion life-years.
An estimated 4.5 billion people are currently exposed to particulate matter (PM) levels at least twice the concentration that the WHO considers safe. Existing evidence linking health to air pollution is largely based on populations exposed to only modest levels of PM and almost entirely composed of observational studies, which are likely to confound air pollution with other unobserved determinants of health. This study uses quasiexperimental variation in particulate matter smaller than 10 μm (PM10) generated by an arbitrary Chinese policy to find that a 10-μg/m3 increase in PM10 reduces life expectancy by 0.64 years. The estimates imply that bringing all of China into compliance with its Class I standards for PM10 would save 3.7 billion life-years.This paper finds that a 10-μg/m3 increase in airborne particulate matter [particulate matter smaller than 10 μm (PM10)] reduces life expectancy by 0.64 years (95% confidence interval = 0.21–1.07). This estimate is derived from quasiexperimental variation in PM10 generated by China’s Huai River Policy, which provides free or heavily subsidized coal for indoor heating during the winter to cities north of the Huai River but not to those to the south. The findings are derived from a regression discontinuity design based on distance from the Huai River, and they are robust to using parametric and nonparametric estimation methods, different kernel types and bandwidth sizes, and adjustment for a rich set of demographic and behavioral covariates. Furthermore, the shorter lifespans are almost entirely caused by elevated rates of cardiorespiratory mortality, suggesting that PM10 is the causal factor. The estimates imply that bringing all of China into compliance with its Class I standards for PM10 would save 3.7 billion life-years.
Ramona Bruckner, Marsiano, Noga , Nissim-Eliraz, Einat , Nir, Eilam , Lang, Silvia , Spalinger, Marianne , Rogler, Gerhard , Yagel, Simcha , Scharl, Michael M. , ו Shpigel, Nahum Y.. 2017. “New Human Gut Xenograft Mouse Model For Intestinal Fistulas”. Gastroenterologygastroenterology, 152, Pp. S784.
The following study presents a novel method for computerized 3D geometric morphometric shape analysis of archaeological artifacts. It consists of a newly developed tool for automated positioning of 3D digital models and the following placement of 3D homologous landmarks for geometric morphometric analysis. It provides a quick and easy method for acquiring high-resolution 3D landmark coordinate data. This tool is applicable to a wide range of objects which have two opposed faces of relatively similar size and can be consistently positioned along their maximal length in planform view. The acquired data can be subjected to common multivariate statistical procedures for the quantitative description and analysis of shape variability in an assemblage. The method is applied here to a case study of experimentally produced assemblages of Acheulian handaxe replicas made by six knappers of differing skill levels. An analysis is performed to test whether the shapes of the handaxes can be used to classify them according to their knapper's skill level. Generalized Procrustes analysis (GPA), principal component analysis (PCA) and discriminant analysis (DA) are applied to the landmarks' coordinates. The results indicate that applying DA to PC scores allows a reliable classification of artifacts according to the skill level of their knappers, with a minimal misclassification rate. Thus, this method demonstrates that application of high-resolution 3D geometric morphometric methods can be used for the quantitative differentiation of skill levels based on tool morphology.
A recent development in literature’s engagement with music involves the role played by emerging technologies and the way they not only transmit musical content to the listener, but very strongly condition the form the music takes and the way we listen. While music is still often considered ephemeral and transcendent, there is a new recognition of it as an object and a commodity, whether an LP record or a file to be downloaded from itunes. Technologies coexist; records are now collected and venerated in a nostalgic mode while music moves into the digital sphere of downloads and participatory cultures of online sharing. Contemporary literature can tell us not only about the idealization of music as a non-referential and thus “higher” art, but about the way music is mediated by technologies. The present paper focuses on two recent musical novels that foreground the mass media of musical expression, Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity (1995) and Arthur Phillips’s The Song Is You (2009). Both celebrate songs — incorporated as records in the former and digital files on an ipod in the latter — as symbols of taste, carriers of memory, means of establishing interpersonal connections, and media that condition our thinking. Songs also exist in relation to others, demonstrated by the protagonist’s fixation on lists modeled on radio’s top-forty rankings in High Fidelity and on juxtaposition of songs on the ipod’s shuffle mode in The Song Is You. The comparison of these novels in terms of their focus on different musical technologies leads to an exploration of modes of listening as characters experience their lives through the lens of popular music.
January 2017: Emily Petermann is a post-doc in American Studies and junior faculty member of the Literature Department at the University of Konstanz. She is a founding member of the Word and Music Association Forum (since 2009) and co-editor of the volume Time and Space in Words and Music (Lang 2012). Her monograph, The Musical Novel: Imitation of Musical Structure, Performance, and Reception, was published by Camden House in 2014. She is currently working on a postdoctoral book project on “Strands of Nonsense in American Literature.”
This essay explores the philosophical foundations of the concept of literary humanism: the idea, roughly, that works of literary fiction offer a distinct form of epistemic insight into social and cultural reality. We develop our account by way of a critique of Richard Gaskin’s recent defense of literary humanism, according to which literary works achieve their cognitive significance by referring to linguistically structured propositions that provide the link to truth and reality. Against this, we urge a broadly Wittgensteinian model of literary humanism that rejects the metaphysics of the proposition and in its place casts literature as having special ability to reveal the irreducibly cultural grounds of meaning. We conclude with a reading of W. B. Yeats’ “A Prayer for my Daughter,” which illustrates the claim central to a Wittgensteinian model of literary humanism: in certain works of literature we gain insight into the nature of those sense-bestowing cultural practices in virtue of which we make our world meaningful.
June 2017: Bernard Harrison is currently Emeritus E.E. Ericksen Professor of Philosophy in the University of Utah and an Emeritus Professor in the University of Sussex. He is one of a number of analytic philosophers, more numerous now than formerly, whose interests include literature and its relationships with philosophy and the history of ideas. His literary work includes Fielding's Tom Jones: The Novelist as Moral Philosopher (Chatto, 1975), Inconvenient Fictions: Literature and the Limits of Theory (Yale University Press, 1991), What Is Fiction For? Literary Humanism Restored (Indiana University Press, 2015), and numerous papers. His more strictly philosophical writings include work on epistemology, ethics, the philosophy of Wittgenstein and the philosophy of language. His most recent book on such topics, Word and World: Practice and the Foundations of Language (Cambridge University Press, 2004), co-authored with his Utah colleague Patricia Hanna, offers a systematic rethinking, with implications, among other things, for literary studies, of the philosophy of language, as it has developed since Russell and Frege, on the basis of a new reading of Wittgenstein. He is currently (2017) at work on a study of the nature of anti-Semitism, and the continuity between its traditional and contemporary forms, under the title Blaming the Jews: The Persistence of a Delusion. It develops and carries further some of the ideas proposed in his The Resurgence of Anti-Semitism: Jews, Israel and Liberal Opinion (Rowman and Littlefield, 2006).
June 2017: John Gibson is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Louisville, where he directs the Commonwealth Center for Humanities and Society. He works on topics in aesthetics and the philosophy of literature, and he is especially concerned with connections between these areas and central issues in the philosophy of language and the philosophy of the self. He is the author of Fiction and the Weave of Life and is currently writing book titled Poetry, Metaphor & Nonsense: An Essay on Meaning.
