265 research outputs found
Echinococcus granulosus "sensu stricto" in a captive ring-tailed lemur (Lemur catta) in Northern Italy
Cystic echinococcosis (CE) by Echinococcosis granulosus (Eg) infection was seen in a 13 years old male lemur, found dead in a zoo in Northern Italy. Necropsy revealed several transparent cysts in the lungs and in the abdominal cavity. Freefloating cysts of varying sizes were found in the peritoneal cavity, and no protoscolex was seen microscopically. Histologically, a multifocal severe parasitic granulomatous pneumonia was observed. Confirmation of E. granulosus "sensu stricto" was reached by PCR and sequencing. In view of the absence of definitive host in the zoo, located in non-endemic region for CE, it is speculated that infection introduced through translocation of lemur from endemic region (Southern Italy zoo)
Asymmetric Hybrids: Dialogues for Computational Concept Combination
When people combine concepts these are often characterised as âhybridâ, âimpossibleâ, or âhumorousâ. However, when simply considering them in terms of extensional logic, the novel concepts understood as a conjunctive concept will often lack meaning having an empty extension (consider âa tooth that is a chairâ, âa pet flowerâ, etc.). Still, people use different strategies to produce new non-empty concepts: additive or integrative combination of features, alignment of features, instantiation, etc. All these strategies involve the ability to deal with conflicting attributes and the creation of new (combinations of) properties. We here consider in particular the case where a Head concept has superior âasymmetricâ control over steering the resulting concept combination (or hybridisation) with a Modifier concept. Specifically, we propose a dialogical approach to concept combination and discuss an implementation based on axiom weakening, which models the cognitive
and logical mechanics of this asymmetric form of hybridisation
The SandS Ecosystem, a True Instance of WEB4.0
We introduce a peculiar ecosystem aimed at ruling in remote the household appliances of the members
of a special social network. The keen feature of the social network is a networked intelligence, equipped with cognitive
tools that enable it to provide services fully compliant with the members\u2019 needs. The scheme is the following: The
appliances are internet-connected through the home Wi-Fi router. The user asks the social network for a task to be
executed by his appliance (for instance, washing three kilos of woollen coloured laundry), the network, in the role of an
electronic super-mom, sends directly to the washing machine an optimal sequence of commands the recipes (such as:
warm the water at 34\ub0, soak for 57 minutes, etc.) to execute the task in a way that matches the user preferences,
possibly green goals included. Feedbacks are sent by user and appliances themselves to the network intelligence to
close the permanent recipe optimization loop, with offline advice on the part of appliance manufacturers. A properly
devised user interface allows a friendly and accurate management of all interactions between the user and the social
network, constituting the user-centric support of the cognitive driven services representing a genuine instance of WEB
4.0
Continuous Team Semantics
Peer reviewe
Continuous Team Semantics
We study logics with team semantics in computable metric spaces. We show how to define approximate versions of the usual independence/dependence atoms. For restricted classes of formulae, we show that we can assume w.l.o.g.~that teams are closed sets. This then allows us to import techniques from computable analysis to study the complexity of formula satisfaction and model checking
The genetic architecture of membranous nephropathy and its potential to improve non-invasive diagnosis
Membranous Nephropathy (MN) is a rare autoimmune cause of kidney failure. Here we report a genome-wide association study (GWAS) for primary MN in 3,782 cases and 9,038 controls of East Asian and European ancestries. We discover two previously unreported loci, NFKB1 (ï»żrs230540, OR = 1.25, P = 3.4 Ă 10â12) and IRF4 (ï»żrs9405192, OR = 1.29, P = ï»ż1.4 Ă 10â14), fine-map the PLA2R1 locus (ï»żrs17831251, OR = 2.25, P = 4.7 Ă 10â103) and report ancestry-specific effects of three classical HLA alleles: DRB1*1501 in East Asians (OR = 3.81, P = 2.0 Ă 10â49), DQA1*0501 in Europeans (OR = 2.88, P = 5.7 Ă 10â93), and DRB1*0301 in both ethnicities (OR = 3.50, P = 9.2 Ă 10â23 and OR = 3.39, P = 5.2 Ă 10â82, respectively). GWAS loci explain 32% of disease risk in East Asians and 25% in Europeans, and correctly re-classify 20â37% of the cases in validation cohorts that are antibody-negative by the serum anti-PLA2R ELISA diagnostic test. Our findings highlight an unusual genetic architecture of MN, with four loci and their interactions accounting for nearly one-third of the disease risk
Investigating variation in replicability
Although replication is a central tenet of science, direct replications are rare in psychology. This research tested variation in the replicability of 13 classic and contemporary effects across 36 independent samples totaling 6,344 participants. In the aggregate, 10 effects replicated consistently. One effect â imagined contact reducing prejudice â showed weak support for replicability. And two effects â flag priming influencing conservatism and currency priming influencing system justification â did not replicate. We compared whether the conditions such as lab versus online or US versus international sample predicted effect magnitudes. By and large they did not. The results of this small sample of effects suggest that replicability is more dependent on the effect itself than on the sample and setting used to investigate the effect
An Open, Large-Scale, Collaborative Effort to Estimate the Reproducibility of Psychological Science
Reproducibility is a defining feature of science. However, because of strong incentives for innovation and weak incentives for confirmation, direct replication is rarely practiced or published. The Reproducibility Project is an open, large-scale, collaborative effort to systematically examine the rate and predictors of reproducibility in psychological science. So far, 72 volunteer researchers from 41 institutions have organized to openly and transparently replicate studies published in three prominent psychological journals in 2008. Multiple methods will be used to evaluate the findings, calculate an empirical rate of replication, and investigate factors that predict reproducibility. Whatever the result, a better understanding of reproducibility will ultimately improve confidence in scientific methodology and findings
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