Who is afraid of constructivism? (¿Quién tiene miedo del constructivismo?)

Both generative and constructivist researchers agree that children are able to form abstractions and produce novel grammatically patterned utterances. Both approaches are able to explain such abilities, and hence their existence does not entail an innate Universal Grammar. However, generativists and constructivists differ in their views on the nature of early generalisations: while generative researchers assume that adult-like linguistic representations are present from the very beginning, constructivists argue that children begin with relatively specific, low level schemas and gradually extract more abstract patterns. There is considerable empirical evidence for the latter position. Moreover, constructivist theories provide a better explanation for principled behaviour -not just the observed patterns, but also the absence of certain constructions in children's early productions and various developmental asynchronies. Tanto los investigadores generativistas como constructivistas coinciden en que los niños son capaces de formar abstracciones y de producir emisiones novedosas gramaticalmente estructuradas. Ambos enfoques son capaces de explicar tales habilidades, y por eso su existencia no implica una Gramática Universal innata. Sin embargo, los investigadores generativistas y constructivistas difieren en su visión sobre la naturaleza de las generalizaciones tempranas: mientras que los investigadores generativistas asumen que las representaciones lingüísticas parecidas a las adultas están presentes desde edades tempranas, los constructivistas argumentan que los niños comienzan con esquemas de bajo nivel, relativamente específicos, y que gradualmente extraen esquemas más abstractos. Existe considerable evidencia empírica en apoyo de esta segunda posición. Además, las teorías constructivistas proporcionan una mejor explicación de las conductas basadas en reglas; no sólo de los patrones observados, sino también de la ausencia de ciertas construcciones en las producciones verbales tempranas de los niños y de diversas asincronías evolutivas

Produce Meets Pinterest

The purpose of this project was to examine Tanimura & Antle’s (T&A) Pinterest analytics. The author will determine if using the site was beneficial for T&A’s marketing plan. T&A has a strong influence in social media marketing and has added Pinterest to the list of platforms they utilize in 2015. Analytics are useful in gauging the effectiveness of content, so analyzing T&A’s Pinterest use will provide measurable marketing tools. The number of followers is important, but does not indicate the overall success. Therefore various metrics were measured to see who T&A’s audience was and what they were like. The findings suggest Tanimura & Antle needs to create additional Pinterest content. This project proves Pinterest and analytics expand marketing tools when used effectively to promote products and services

A strategy for the design of skyrmion racetrack memories

Magnetic storage based on racetrack memory is very promising for the design of ultra-dense, low-cost and low-power storage technology. Information can be coded in a magnetic region between two domain walls or, as predicted recently, in topological magnetic objects known as skyrmions. Here, we show the technological advantages and limitations of using Bloch and Neel skyrmions manipulated by spin current generated within the ferromagnet or via the spin-Hall effect arising from a non-magnetic heavy metal underlayer. We found that the Neel skyrmion moved by the spin-Hall effect is a very promising strategy for technological implementation of the next generation of skyrmion racetrack memories (zero field, high thermal stability, and ultra-dense storage). We employed micromagnetics reinforced with an analytical formulation of skyrmion dynamics that we developed from the Thiele equation. We identified that the excitation, at high currents, of a breathing mode of the skyrmion limits the maximal velocity of the memory

Experimental models for testing hypotheses about cumulative cultural evolution

The rapid appearance (over evolutionary time) of the cognitive skills and complex inventions of modern humans has been attributed to “cumulative cultural evolution” (henceforth CCE), the accumulation of knowledge and skills over generations. To date, researchers have only been able to speculate about the reasons for the apparent absence of this phenomenon in nonhumans, and it has not been possible to test hypotheses regarding the mechanisms underlying it. Here we show that it is possible to demonstrate CCE under laboratory conditions, by simulating generational succession through the repeated removal and replacement of human participants within experimental groups. We created “microsocieties” in which participants were instructed to complete simple tasks using everyday materials. In one of our procedures, participants were instructed to build a paper aeroplane which flew as far as possible, and in the other, they were instructed to construct a tower of spaghetti which was as tall as possible. We show that, in both cases, information accumulates within the groups such that later generations produce designs which are more successful than earlier ones. These methods offer researchers a window to understanding CCE, allowing for experimental manipulation and hypothesis testing

HEAT SHOCK PROTEINS AND ULCERATIVE COLITIS: THE START OF A NEW ERA?

We read with great interest the article written by Abou El Azm and coworkers, published in the last issue of the Arab Journal of Gastroenterology [1]. In this article, the authors investigated the molecular expression of heat shock proteins (HSP) 70 and 90 in relation to the grades of inflammation and dysplasia in patients with ulcerative colitis (UC) before and after treatment. In this study, in agreement with other published studies [2–4], the authors not only found a potential role for HSP 70 and HSP 90 for assessment of the activity and prognosis of UC, but also such markers predicted the presence of dysplasia and differentiated it from reactive atypia [1]. HSP had been found not only a marker of active disease, thus considering UC as a ‘‘chaperonopathy by mistake’’, but also show a key role in the psychosocial setting in which inflammatory bowel diseases manifest themselves [5]. Furthermore, they could represent a new diagnostic tool to differentiate the different phenotypes of UC, thus allowing to tailor a targeted approach to better manage UC patients [6]. However, some unresolved issues still remain about the potential roles of HSP in both the acute and the longstanding disease. First, it should be interesting to assess the role of HSP in the infections associated to UC flares, like Clostridium difficile and Cytomegalovirus (CMV) infections. In fact, HSP could be investigated as a further marker of inflammation in case of severe and steroid-refractory disease; with regard to CMV infection, mucosal levels of HSP could differentiate when CMV plays a role of direct pathogen or when it represents merely a ‘‘silent bystander’’. Second, in longstanding UC, an integrated approach of colorectal cancer surveillance, by using the advanced endoscopic imaging together with mucosal markers, like HSP, could result in being markedly helpful, both to clinicians and pathologist. In fact, current guidelines recommend that image-enhanced endoscopy (IEE) may increase the yield of detection of dysplasia, thus representing a reasonable alternative to the random sampling of colon using standard white light [7]. The use of both IEE and new biomarkers, like HSP, predicting future occurrence of colonic neoplasia, could lead to a more centralised approach of UC patients, in which a ‘‘biomarker-based surveillance’’ might play a pivotal rol

Theory of mind in animals : current and future directions

C.K. was supported by European Commission Marie Skłodowska‐Curie fellowship MENTALIZINGORIGINS and J.C. by European Research Council Synergy grant 609819 SOMICS.Theory of mind (ToM; a.k.a., mind-reading, mentalizing, mental-state attribution, and perspective-taking) is the ability to ascribe mental states, such as desires and beliefs, to others, and it is central to the unique forms of communication, cooperation, and culture that define our species. As a result, for 40 years, researchers have endeavored to determine whether ToM is itself unique to humans. Investigations in other species (e.g., apes, monkeys, corvids) are essential to understand the mechanistic underpinnings and evolutionary origins of this capacity across taxa, including humans. We review the literature on ToM in nonhuman animals, suggesting that some species share foundational social cognitive mechanisms with humans. We focus principally on innovations of the last decade and pressing directions for future work. Underexplored types of social cognition have been targeted, including ascription of mental states, such as desires and beliefs, that require simultaneously representing one's own and another's conflicting motives or views of the world. Ongoing efforts probe the motivational facets of ToM, how flexibly animals can recruit social cognitive skills across cooperative and competitive settings, and appropriate motivational contexts for comparative inquiry. Finally, novel methodological and empirical approaches have brought new species (e.g., lemurs, dogs) into the lab, implemented critical controls to elucidate underlying mechanisms, and contributed powerful new techniques (e.g., looking-time, eye-tracking) that open the door to unexplored approaches for studying animal minds. These innovations in cognition, motivation, and method promise fruitful progress in the years to come, in understanding the nature and origin of ToM in humans and other species.PostprintPeer reviewe

Conservatism in Laboratory Microsocieties: Unpredictable Payoffs Accentuate Group-Specific Traditions

Theoretical work predicts that individuals should strategically increase their reliance on social learning when individual learning would be costly or risky, or when the payoffs for individually-learned behaviors are uncertain. Using a method known to elicit cumulative cultural evolution in the laboratory, we investigated the degree of within-group similarity, and between-group variation, in design choices made by participants under conditions of varying uncertainty about the likely effectiveness of those designs. Participants were required to build a tower from spaghetti and modeling clay, their goal being to build the tower as high as possible. In one condition, towers were measured immediately on completion, and therefore participants were able to judge the success of their design during building. In the other condition, participants’ towers were measured five minutes after completion, following a deliberate attempt to test the tower’s stability, making it harder for participants to judge whether an innovative solution was liable to result in a good score on the final measurement. Cultural peculiarity (i.e. the extent to which a design could be identified as belonging to a particular chain) was stronger in the delayed measure condition, indicating that participants were placing greater reliance on social learning. Furthermore in this condition there was only very weak evidence of successive improvement in performance over learner generations, whereas in the immediate measure condition there was a clear effect of steadily increasing scores on the goal measurement. Increasing the risk associated with learning for oneself may favor the development of arbitrary traditions

GASTRIC METASTASES ORIGINATING FROM OCCULT BREAST LOBULAR CARCINOMA: DIAGNOSTIC AND THERAPEUTIC PROBLEMS

BACKGROUND: Breast cancer is the most frequent malignant tumour to metastasize into the gastrointestinal tract in female and is second only to malignant melanoma. Nevertheless gastrointestinal metastases arising from breast cancer are quite rare. The upper gastrointestinal tract is more frequently involved and lobular infiltrating carcinoma has a greater predilection compared to the ductal type. CASE PRESENTATION: The authors describe the case of a 70 years old woman with a preoperative diagnosis of gastric undifferentiated medullary--type carcinoma, which was the first manifestation of an occult breast carcinoma. The primary site of carcinoma was identified with the use of a panel of selected immunohistochemical markers. CONCLUSION: Our goal in this case report is to increase the awareness of surgeons and clinicians to rule out the possibility of mammary origin in circumstance of gastric cancer occurring in female, even in patients without a previous or concurrent history of breast carcinoma. Although not a particularly common event, it is, nevertheless, reported in the literature. The differentiation between primary gastric carcinoma and metastatic breast carcinoma is essential for planning the correct therapeutic approach, in order to avoid the patient unnecessary surgery

Studying cumulative cultural evolution in the laboratory

Cumulative cultural evolution is the term given to a particular kind of social learning, which allows for the accumulation of modifications over time, involving a ratchet-like effect where successful modifications are maintained until they can be improved upon. There has been great interest in the topic of cumulative cultural evolution from researchers from a wide variety of disciplines, but until recently there were no experimental studies of this phenomenon. Here we describe our motivations for developing experimental methods for studying cumulative cultural evolution, and review results we have obtained using these techniques. The results that we describe have provided insights into understanding the outcomes of cultural processes at the population level. Our experiments show that cumulative cultural evolution can result in adaptive complexity in behaviour, and also can also produce convergence in behaviour. These findings lend support to ideas that some behaviours commonly attributed to natural selection and innate tendencies could in fact be shaped by cultural processes

Primary tumor sidedness and benefit from FOLFOXIRI plus bevacizumab as initial therapy for metastatic colorectal cancer. Retrospective analysis of the TRIBE trial by GONO

Right-sided metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC) patients have poor prognosis and achieve limited benefit from first-line doublets plus a targeted agent. In this unplanned analysis of the TRIBE study, we investigated the prognostic and predictive impact of primary tumor sidedness in mCRC patients and the differential impact of the intensification of the chemotherapy in subgroups defined according to both primary tumor sidedness and RAS and BRAF mutational status