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Guilt and Redemption on Wisteria Lane: A Burkeian Analysis of Desperate Housewives
In 2004 after Desperate Housewives premiered, it was met with significant criticism condemning the lack of values and morals on the show, depicted through the pervasiveness of sinful and illegal behavior (Olsen & Morgan, 2010). However, Olsen and Morgan contend that sinful and illegal behavior is accompanied with attempts at redemption and honesty, making Desperate Housewives a redemptive drama. This study seeks to demonstrate how Kenneth Burke's dramatistic process of guilt, redemption and purification provide insight furthering Olsen and Morgan's claims that methods of guilt purification contain valuable messages. Particularly, this study compares the effectiveness of transcendence in contrast to the ineffectiveness of mortification and scapegoating though the characters' various attempts at redemption. In addition, this study also examines how the dramatistic process may sometimes entail several attempts at guilt alleviation or guilt avoidance until redemption is achieved. Finally, implications of how this study impacts the academic literature on dramatism, rhetorical criticism and fictional television are discussed
Random walks pertaining to a class of deterministic weighted graphs
In this note, we try to analyze and clarify the intriguing interplay between
some counting problems related to specific thermalized weighted graphs and
random walks consistent with such graphs
Uncoupled continuous-time random walks: Solution and limiting behavior of the master equation
A detailed study is presented for a large class of uncoupled continuous-time
random walks (CTRWs). The master equation is solved for the Mittag-Leffler
survival probability. The properly scaled diffusive limit of the master
equation is taken and its relation with the fractional diffusion equation is
discussed. Finally, some common objections found in the literature are
thoroughly reviewed.Comment: Preprint version of an already published paper. 8 page
Nonextensivity and multifractality in low-dimensional dissipative systems
Power-law sensitivity to initial conditions at the edge of chaos provides a
natural relation between the scaling properties of the dynamics attractor and
its degree of nonextensivity as prescribed in the generalized statistics
recently introduced by one of us (C.T.) and characterized by the entropic index
. We show that general scaling arguments imply that , where and are the
extremes of the multifractal singularity spectrum of the attractor.
This relation is numerically checked to hold in standard one-dimensional
dissipative maps. The above result sheds light on a long-standing puzzle
concerning the relation between the entropic index and the underlying
microscopic dynamics.Comment: 12 pages, TeX, 4 ps figure
Anomalous diffusion associated with nonlinear fractional derivative Fokker-Planck-like equation: Exact time-dependent solutions
We consider the nonlinear Fokker-Planck-like equation with fractional
derivatives . Exact
time-dependent solutions are found for
(). By considering the long-distance {\it asymptotic}
behavior of these solutions, a connection is established, namely
(), with the solutions optimizing
the nonextensive entropy characterized by index . Interestingly enough,
this relation coincides with the one already known for L\'evy-like
superdiffusion (i.e., and ). Finally, for
we obtain which differs from the value
corresponding to the solutions available in the literature (
porous medium equation), thus exhibiting nonuniform convergence.Comment: 3 figure
Exact Scale Invariance in Mixing of Binary Candidates in Voting Model
We introduce a voting model and discuss the scale invariance in the mixing of
candidates. The Candidates are classified into two categories
and are called as `binary' candidates. There are in total
candidates, and voters vote for them one by one. The probability that a
candidate gets a vote is proportional to the number of votes. The initial
number of votes (`seed') of a candidate is set to be . After
infinite counts of voting, the probability function of the share of votes of
the candidate obeys gamma distributions with the shape exponent
in the thermodynamic limit . Between the
cumulative functions of binary candidates, the power-law relation
with the critical exponent
holds in the region . In the double
scaling limit and with
fixed, the relation holds
exactly over the entire range . We study the data on
horse races obtained from the Japan Racing Association for the period 1986 to
2006 and confirm scale invariance.Comment: 19 pages, 8 figures, 2 table
A Pearson-Dirichlet random walk
A constrained diffusive random walk of n steps and a random flight in Rd,
which can be expressed in the same terms, were investigated independently in
recent papers. The n steps of the walk are identically and independently
distributed random vectors of exponential length and uniform orientation.
Conditioned on the sum of their lengths being equal to a given value l,
closed-form expressions for the distribution of the endpoint of the walk were
obtained altogether for any n for d=1, 2, 4 . Uniform distributions of the
endpoint inside a ball of radius l were evidenced for a walk of three steps in
2D and of two steps in 4D. The previous walk is generalized by considering step
lengths which are distributed over the unit (n-1) simplex according to a
Dirichlet distribution whose parameters are all equal to q, a given positive
value. The walk and the flight above correspond to q=1. For any d >= 3, there
exist, for integer and half-integer values of q, two families of
Pearson-Dirichlet walks which share a common property. For any n, the d
components of the endpoint are jointly distributed as are the d components of a
vector uniformly distributed over the surface of a hypersphere of radius l in a
space Rk whose dimension k is an affine function of n for a given d. Five
additional walks, with a uniform distribution of the endpoint in the inside of
a ball, are found from known finite integrals of products of powers and Bessel
functions of the first kind. They include four different walks in R3 and two
walks in R4. Pearson-Liouville random walks, obtained by distributing the total
lengths of the previous Pearson-Dirichlet walks, are finally discussed.Comment: 33 pages 1 figure, the paper includes the content of a recently
submitted work together with additional results and an extended section on
Pearson-Liouville random walk
The pregnane X receptor drives sexually dimorphic hepatic changes in lipid and xenobiotic metabolism in response to gut microbiota in mice.
The gut microbiota-intestine-liver relationship is emerging as an important factor in multiple hepatic pathologies, but the hepatic sensors and effectors of microbial signals are not well defined.
By comparing publicly available liver transcriptomics data from conventional vs. germ-free mice, we identified pregnane X receptor (PXR, NR1I2) transcriptional activity as strongly affected by the absence of gut microbes. Microbiota depletion using antibiotics in Pxr <sup>+/+</sup> vs Pxr <sup>-/-</sup> C57BL/6J littermate mice followed by hepatic transcriptomics revealed that most microbiota-sensitive genes were PXR-dependent in the liver in males, but not in females. Pathway enrichment analysis suggested that microbiota-PXR interaction controlled fatty acid and xenobiotic metabolism. We confirmed that antibiotic treatment reduced liver triglyceride content and hampered xenobiotic metabolism in the liver from Pxr <sup>+/+</sup> but not Pxr <sup>-/-</sup> male mice.
These findings identify PXR as a hepatic effector of microbiota-derived signals that regulate the host's sexually dimorphic lipid and xenobiotic metabolisms in the liver. Thus, our results reveal a potential new mechanism for unexpected drug-drug or food-drug interactions. Video abstract
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