Emotional mechanisms of social (re)production

International audienceSince the 1960s various currents within social theory have been undermining the functionalist and structuralist conceptions of the human agent as a passive automaton moved by obscure forces. While the emerging picture emphasizes the part played by cognition, implicit skill, and explicit knowledge, much less attention has been paid to the role of emotions in the active production and reproduction of the social world. The specialized sub-field known as the sociology of emotions has brought to sociological attention the topic of emotions but has been preoccupied mainly with how social structures of various kinds determine or constrain situated emotions. The aim of this programmatic article is to demonstrate the theoretical plausibility and the empirical viability of research on emotional mechanisms of social production and reproduction. On the basis of a critical reappropriation of the theory of structuration and interaction ritual theory, face-work and sacred-object establishment (or ‘enshrinement’) arise as mechanisms of social production and reproduction of which situated emotions are inherently constitutive. The conclusion points to the need for social theory to develop a concept of motivation integrating the ‘pulling’ and ‘pushing’ duality of emotional intentions as expressed in situated action

Book Review: Johann Michel, Quand le social vient au sens (Bruxelles: PIE Peter Lang, 2015)

A book review of Johann Michel, Quand le social vient au sens (Bruxelles: PIE Peter Lang, 2015).</span

Book Review: Johann Michel, Quand le social vient au sens (Bruxelles: PIE Peter Lang, 2015)

A book review of Johann Michel, Quand le social vient au sens (Bruxelles: PIE Peter Lang, 2015)

Contribution of bacterial respiration to plankton respiration from 50˚N to 44˚S in the Atlantic Ocean

Marine bacteria play an important role in the global cycling of carbon and therefore in climate regulation. However, the paucity of direct measurements means that our understanding of the magnitude and variability of bacterial respiration in the ocean is poor. Estimations of respiration in the 0.2-0.8 µm size-fraction (considered as bacterial respiration), total plankton community respiration, and the contribution of bacterial respiration to total plankton community respiration were made along two latitudinal transects in the Atlantic Ocean (ca. 50 ºN – 44 ºS) during 2010 and 2011. Two different methodologies were used: determination of changes in dissolved O2 concentration after standard 24 h dark bottle incubations, and measurements of in vivo reduction of 2-(ρ-iodophenyl)-3- (ρ-nitrophenyl)-5phenyl tetrazolium salt (INT). There was an overall significant correlation (r = 0.44, p <0.0001, n = 90) between the rates of community respiration estimated by both methods. Depth-integrated community respiration varied as much as three-fold between regions. Maximum rates occurred in waters of the western European shelf and Patagonian shelf, and minimum rates in the North and South oligotrophic gyres. Depth-integrated bacterial respiration followed the same pattern as community respiration. There was a significantly higher cell-specific bacterial respiration in the northern subtropical gyre than in the southern subtropical gyre which suggests that bacterial carbon turnover is faster in the northern gyre. The relationships between plankton respiration and physicochemical and biological variables were different in different years. In general, INTT was correlated to both chlorophyll-a and bacterial abundance, while INT0.2-0.8 was only correlated with bacterial abundance. However, in 2010 INTT and INT0.2-0.8 were also correlated with temperature and primary production while in 2011 they were correlated with nitrate + nitrite concentration. The bacterial contribution to depth integrated community respiration was highly variable within provinces (4 - 77 %). Results from this study suggest that the proportion of total community respiration attributable to bacteria is similar between the 6 oceanographic regions studied

New resonance approach to competitiveness interventions in lagging regions: the case of Ukraine before the armed conflict

Regional competitiveness is considered to be an alternative basis for the determination of regional interventions. However, the composite competitiveness indicator is quite sensitive to the weights of sub-indicators, no matter what methodology is being used. To avoid this uncertainty in the determination of regional interventions, we proposed a new non-compensatory resonance approach that is focused on the hierarchical coincidence between weaknesses of NUTS 1 and NUTS 2 regions measuring the extensive and intensive components of competitiveness. Such a coincidence, being perceived as a resonance effect, is supposed to increase the effectiveness of interventions triggering synergetic effects and stirring up local regional potentials. The components of competitiveness are obtained through synthesising DEA methodology and Hellwig's index, correspondingly focusing on the measurement of technical efficiency and resource level. In analysing Ukrainian regions, no correlation between resonance interventions and the composite competitiveness indicator or GDP per capita was found, pointing toward a completely different direction in resonance approach. In western Ukraine, the congestion of six NUTS 2 regions was defined as a homogeneous area of analogous resonance interventions focused on improving business efficiency.Web of Science171562

Both respiration and photosynthesis determine the scaling of plankton metabolism in the oligotrophic ocean

Despite its importance to ocean–climate interactions, the metabolic state of the oligotrophic ocean has remained controversial for >15 years. Positions in the debate are that it is either hetero- or autotrophic, which suggests either substantial unaccounted for organic matter inputs, or that all available photosynthesis (P) estimations (including 14C) are biased. Here we show the existence of systematic differences in the metabolic state of the North (heterotrophic) and South (autotrophic) Atlantic oligotrophic gyres, resulting from differences in both P and respiration (R). The oligotrophic ocean is neither auto- nor heterotrophic, but functionally diverse. Our results show that the scaling of plankton metabolism by generalized P:R relationships that has sustained the debate is biased, and indicate that the variability of R, and not only of P, needs to be considered in regional estimations of the ocean’s metabolic state

Biomarker-free dielectrophoretic sorting of differentiating myoblast multipotent progenitor cells and their membrane analysis by Raman spectroscopy.

Myoblasts are muscle derived mesenchymal stem cell progenitors that have great potential for use in regenerative medicine, especially for cardiomyogenesis grafts and intracardiac cell transplantation. To utilise such cells for pre-clinical and clinical applications, and especially for personalized medicine, it is essential to generate a synchronised, homogenous, population of cells that display phenotypic and genotypic homogeneity within a population of cells. We demonstrate that the biomarker-free technique of dielectrophoresis (DEP) can be used to discriminate cells between stages of differentiation in the C2C12 myoblast multipotent mouse model. Terminally differentiated myotubes were separated from C2C12 myoblasts to better than 96% purity, a result validated by flow cytometry and Western blotting. To determine the extent to which cell membrane capacitance, rather than cell size, determined the DEP response of a cell, C2C12 myoblasts were co-cultured with GFP-expressing MRC-5 fibroblasts of comparable size distributions (mean diameter ∼10 μm). A DEP sorting efficiency greater than 98% was achieved for these two cell types, a result concluded to arise from the fibroblasts possessing a larger membrane capacitance than the myoblasts. It is currently assumed that differences in membrane capacitance primarily reflect differences in the extent of folding or surface features of the membrane. However, our finding by Raman spectroscopy that the fibroblast membranes contained a smaller proportion of saturated lipids than those of the myoblasts suggests that the membrane chemistry should also be taken into account

Lamb wave-based damage indicator for plate-like structures

Structural health monitoring based on ultrasonics typically involves complex data analysis. Ultrasound monitoring based on Lamb waves techniques are extensively used nowadays due to their efficiency in exploring large areas with relatively small attenuation. In recent years, baseline based methods have been developed to identify structural damage based on the mismatch between the measured signal and the baseline one. To this end, complex time-frequency transformations are required to obtain signal features such as the time of arrival or the energy content, as indicators of damage onset and growth. Notwithstanding this, on-board applications require highly efficient processing techniques due to information storage and exchange limitations. This paper proposes a very high efficiency signal processing methodology to obtain a novel cumulative damage factor using Lamb wave raw data. The new methodology has been tested using ultrasonic and damage data from a fatigue test in carbon-epoxy composite laminates. The data is taken from NASA Prognostics data repository. In view of the results, the method is able to efficiently detect the onset and extent of damage from early stages of degradation. Moreover, the results demonstrate a remarkable agreement between the growth of delamination area and the predicted cumulative damage factor

Ontology Design Patterns for bio-ontologies: a case study on the Cell Cycle Ontology

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Bio-ontologies are key elements of knowledge management in bioinformatics. Rich and rigorous bio-ontologies should represent biological knowledge with high fidelity and robustness. The richness in bio-ontologies is a prior condition for diverse and efficient reasoning, and hence querying and hypothesis validation. Rigour allows a more consistent maintenance. Modelling such bio-ontologies is, however, a difficult task for bio-ontologists, because the necessary richness and rigour is difficult to achieve without extensive training.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Analogous to design patterns in software engineering, Ontology Design Patterns are solutions to typical modelling problems that bio-ontologists can use when building bio-ontologies. They offer a means of creating rich and rigorous bio-ontologies with reduced effort. The concept of Ontology Design Patterns is described and documentation and application methodologies for Ontology Design Patterns are presented. Some real-world use cases of Ontology Design Patterns are provided and tested in the Cell Cycle Ontology. Ontology Design Patterns, including those tested in the Cell Cycle Ontology, can be explored in the Ontology Design Patterns public catalogue that has been created based on the documentation system presented (<url>http://odps.sourceforge.net/</url>).</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Ontology Design Patterns provide a method for rich and rigorous modelling in bio-ontologies. They also offer advantages at different development levels (such as design, implementation and communication) enabling, if used, a more modular, well-founded and richer representation of the biological knowledge. This representation will produce a more efficient knowledge management in the long term.</p

Resource description framework technologies in chemistry

ISSN:1758-294