73,285 research outputs found
Methodological Individualism, the We-mode, and Team Reasoning
Raimo Tuomela is one of the pioneers of social action theory and has done as much as anyone over the last thirty years to advance the study of social action and collective intentionality. Social Ontology: Collective Intentionality and Group Agents (2013) presents the latest version of his theory and applications to a range of important social phenomena. The book covers so much ground, and so many important topics in detailed discussions, that it would impossible in a short space to do it even partial justice. In this brief note, I will concentrate on a single, though important, theme in the book, namely, the claim that we must give up methodological individualism in the social sciences and embrace instead irreducibly group notions. I wish to defend methodological individualism as up to the theoretical tasks of the social sciences while acknowledging what is distinctive about the social world and collective intentional action.
Tuomela frames the question of the adequacy of methodological individualism in terms of a contrast between what he calls the I-mode and the we-mode. He argues that we-mode phenomena are not reducible to I-mode phenomena, and concludes that we must reject methodological individualism. I will argue that the irreducibility of the we-mode to the I-mode, given how the contrast is set up, does not entail the rejection of methodological individualism. In addition, I will argue that the three conditions that Tuomela places on genuine we-mode activities, the group reason, collectivity, and collective commitment conditions, if they are understood in a way that does not beg the question, can plausibly be satisfied by a reductive account. Finally, I will argue that the specific considerations advanced in the book do not give us reason to think that a reductive account cannot be adequate to the descriptive and explanatory requirements of a theory of the social worl
A haptic-enabled multimodal interface for the planning of hip arthroplasty
Multimodal environments help fuse a diverse range of sensory modalities, which is particularly important when integrating the complex data involved in surgical preoperative planning. The authors apply a multimodal interface for preoperative planning of hip arthroplasty with a user interface that integrates immersive stereo displays and haptic modalities. This article overviews this multimodal application framework and discusses the benefits of incorporating the haptic modality in this area
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Muonium addition reactions in the gas phase: Quantum tunneling in Mu + C2H4 and Mu + C2D4
Copyright © 1990 American Institute of Physics.The reaction kinetics for the addition of the muonium (Mu=μ+e−) atom to C2H4 and C2D4 have been measured over the temperature range 150–500 K at (N2) moderator pressures near 1 atm. A factor of about 8 variation in moderator pressure was carried out for C2H4, with no significant change seen in the apparent rate constant kapp, which is therefore taken to be at the high pressure limit, yielding the bimolecular rate constant kMu for the addition step. This is also expected from the nature of the μSR technique employed, which, in favorable cases, gives kapp=kMu at any pressure. Comparisons with the H atom data of Lightfoot and Pilling, and Sugawara et al. and the D atom data of Sugawara et al. reveal large isotope effects. Only at the highest temperatures, near 500 K, is kMu/kH given by its classical value of 2.9, from the mean velocity dependence of the collision rate but at the lowest temperatures kMu/kH≳30/1 is seen, reflecting the pronounced tunneling of the much lighter Mu atom (mμ=1/9 mp). The present Mu results should provide accurate tests of reaction theories on currently available ab initio surfaces.NSERC (Canada), the Canada Council for their awarding of a Killam Research Fellowship and the Meson Science Institute, Faculty of Science, University of Tokyo
Comparative proteomics of uropathogenic Escherichia coli during growth in human urine identify UCA-like (UCL) fimbriae as an adherence factor involved in biofilm formation and binding to uroepithelial cells
Uropathogenic Escherichia coli (UPEC) are the primary cause of urinary tract infection (UTI) in humans. For the successful colonisation of the human urinary tract, UPEC employ a diverse collection of secreted or surface-exposed virulence factors including toxins, iron acquisition systems and adhesins. In this study, a comparative proteomic approach was utilised to define the UPEC pan and core surface proteome following growth in pooled human urine. Identified proteins were investigated for subcellular origin, prevalence and homology to characterised virulence factors. Fourteen core surface proteins were identified, as well as eleven iron uptake receptor proteins and four distinct fimbrial types, including type 1, P, F1C/S and a previously uncharacterised fimbrial type, designated UCA-like (UCL) fimbriae in this study. These pathogenicity island (PAI)-associated fimbriae are related to UCA fimbriae of Proteus mirabilis, associated with UPEC and exclusively found in members of the E. coli B2 and D phylogroup. We further demonstrated that UCL fimbriae promote significant biofilm formation on abiotic surfaces and mediate specific attachment to exfoliated human uroepithelial cells. Combined, this study has defined the surface proteomic profiles and core surface proteome of UPEC during growth in human urine and identified a new type of fimbriae that may contribute to UTI
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Cytolethal distending toxin (CDT)-negative Campylobacter jejuni strains and anti-CDT neutralising antibodies induced during human infection but not chicken colonisation
The cytolethal distending toxin (CDT) of Campylobacter jejuni was detectable, using an in vitro assay, in most but not all of 24 strains tested. The reason for the absence of toxin activity in these naturally occurring CDT-negative C. jejuni strains was then investigated at the genetic level. CDT is encoded by three highly conserved genes, cdtA, -B, and -C. In the CDT-negative strains, two types of mutation were identified. The CDT activities of C. jejuni strains possessing both types of mutation were successfully complemented with the functional genes of C. jejuni 11168. The first type of mutation comprised a 667-bp deletion across cdtA and cdtB and considerable degeneration in the remainder of the cdt locus. Using a PCR technique to screen for this deletion, this mutation occurred in fewer than 3% of 147 human, veterinary, and environmental strains tested. The second type of mutation involved at least four nonsynonymous nucleotide changes, but only the replacement of proline with serine at CdtB position 95 was considered important for CDT activity. This was confirmed by site-directed mutagenesis. This type of mutation also occurred in fewer than 3% of strains as determined using a LightCycler biprobe assay. The detection of two CDT-negative clinical isolates raised questions about the role of CDT in some cases of human campylobacteriosis. To determine if anti-CDT antibodies are produced in human infection, a toxin neutralization assay was developed and validated using rabbit antisera. Pooled human sera from infected patients neutralized the toxin, indicating expression and immunogenicity during infection. However, no neutralizing antibodies were detected in colonized chickens despite the expression of CDT in the avian gut as indicated by reverse transcription-PCR
Interpretable and Generalizable Person Re-Identification with Query-Adaptive Convolution and Temporal Lifting
For person re-identification, existing deep networks often focus on
representation learning. However, without transfer learning, the learned model
is fixed as is, which is not adaptable for handling various unseen scenarios.
In this paper, beyond representation learning, we consider how to formulate
person image matching directly in deep feature maps. We treat image matching as
finding local correspondences in feature maps, and construct query-adaptive
convolution kernels on the fly to achieve local matching. In this way, the
matching process and results are interpretable, and this explicit matching is
more generalizable than representation features to unseen scenarios, such as
unknown misalignments, pose or viewpoint changes. To facilitate end-to-end
training of this architecture, we further build a class memory module to cache
feature maps of the most recent samples of each class, so as to compute image
matching losses for metric learning. Through direct cross-dataset evaluation,
the proposed Query-Adaptive Convolution (QAConv) method gains large
improvements over popular learning methods (about 10%+ mAP), and achieves
comparable results to many transfer learning methods. Besides, a model-free
temporal cooccurrence based score weighting method called TLift is proposed,
which improves the performance to a further extent, achieving state-of-the-art
results in cross-dataset person re-identification. Code is available at
https://github.com/ShengcaiLiao/QAConv.Comment: This is the ECCV 2020 version, including the appendi
Arterial distensibility in adolescents: the influence of adiposity, the metabolic syndrome, and classic risk factors.
BACKGROUND: Atherosclerosis develops from childhood, but the determinants of this preclinical stage remain uncertain. We examined the relations of classic coronary risk factors, adiposity and its associated metabolic disturbances, to arterial distensibility (a marker of early arterial disease) in 13- to 15-year-olds, some of whom had previously been studied at ages 9 to 11 years. METHODS AND RESULTS: Brachial artery distensibility was measured by a noninvasive ultrasound technique in 471 British children in whom measures of adiposity, blood pressure, fasting blood lipids, and insulin had been made. All adiposity measures showed strong graded inverse relationships with distensibility. Inverse associations with distensibility were also observed for insulin resistance (homeostasis model assessment), diastolic pressure, C-reactive protein, and the number of metabolic syndrome components present, which had a graded relation to distensibility. Total and LDL cholesterol levels were also inversely related to distensibility, but less strongly than adiposity; homocysteine had no relation to distensibility. Although the relations of total and LDL cholesterol and diastolic pressure to distensibility had been present at 9 to 11 years of age, those of adiposity and insulin resistance were only apparent at 13 to 15 years. CONCLUSIONS: Adiposity and its metabolic consequences are associated with adverse changes in the arterial wall by the teenage years. The graded relation with increasing adiposity was stronger than that for cholesterol and was seen at body mass index levels well below those considered to represent "obesity." This emphasizes the importance of population-based strategies to control adiposity and its metabolic consequences in the young
On Symbolic Ultrametrics, Cotree Representations, and Cograph Edge Decompositions and Partitions
Symbolic ultrametrics define edge-colored complete graphs K_n and yield a
simple tree representation of K_n. We discuss, under which conditions this idea
can be generalized to find a symbolic ultrametric that, in addition,
distinguishes between edges and non-edges of arbitrary graphs G=(V,E) and thus,
yielding a simple tree representation of G. We prove that such a symbolic
ultrametric can only be defined for G if and only if G is a so-called cograph.
A cograph is uniquely determined by a so-called cotree. As not all graphs are
cographs, we ask, furthermore, what is the minimum number of cotrees needed to
represent the topology of G. The latter problem is equivalent to find an
optimal cograph edge k-decomposition {E_1,...,E_k} of E so that each subgraph
(V,E_i) of G is a cograph. An upper bound for the integer k is derived and it
is shown that determining whether a graph has a cograph 2-decomposition, resp.,
2-partition is NP-complete
Characterization of three vasopressin receptor 2 variants: an apparent polymorphism (V266A) and two loss-of-function mutations (R181C and M311V).
Arginine vasopressin (AVP) is released from the posterior pituitary and controls water homeostasis. AVP binding to vasopressin V2 receptors (V2Rs) located on kidney collecting duct epithelial cells triggers activation of Gs proteins, leading to increased cAMP levels, trafficking of aquaporin-2 water channels, and consequent increased water permeability and antidiuresis. Typically, loss-of-function V2R mutations cause nephrogenic diabetes insipidus (NDI), whereas gain-of-function mutations cause nephrogenic syndrome of inappropriate antidiuresis (NSIAD). Here we provide further characterization of two mutant V2Rs, R181C and M311V, reported to cause complete and partial NDI respectively, together with a V266A variant, in a patient diagnosed with NSIAD. Our data in HEK293FT cells revealed that for cAMP accumulation, AVP was about 500- or 30-fold less potent at the R181C and M311V mutants than at the wild-type receptor respectively (and about 4000- and 60-fold in COS7 cells respectively). However, in contrast to wild type V2R, the R181C mutant failed to increase inositol phosphate production, while with the M311V mutant, AVP exhibited only partial agonism in addition to a 37-fold potency decrease. Similar responses were detected in a BRET assay for β-arrestin recruitment, with the R181C receptor unresponsive to AVP, and partial agonism with a 23-fold decrease in potency observed with M311V in both HEK293FT and COS7 cells. Notably, the V266A V2R appeared functionally identical to the wild-type receptor in all assays tested, including cAMP and inositol phosphate accumulation, β-arrestin interaction, and in a BRET assay of receptor ubiquitination. Each receptor was expressed at comparable levels. Hence, the M311V V2R retains greater activity than the R181C mutant, consistent with the milder phenotype of NDI associated with this mutant. Notably, the R181C mutant appears to be a Gs protein-biased receptor incapable of signaling to inositol phosphate or recruiting β-arrestin. The etiology of NSIAD in the patient with V266A V2R remains unknown
Assessing communication on sexual and reproductive health issues among high school students with their parents, Bullen Woreda, Benishangul Gumuz Region, North West Ethiopia
Background: “Adolescents "and "young people “are defined by WHO as the age group 10-19 years and 10-24 years, respectively. Young people make up over one –quarter of the world’s population. Neglecting this population has a major implication on sexual and reproductive behaviors as they develop into adults. The health threats for adolescents today are predominantly behavioral rather than biomedical and more of today's adolescents are involved in health behaviors with potential for serious consequences. Hence, it is important to understand the exposure of school students to sexual and reproductive health knowledge and skills at different places including home.Objective: To assess the level and factors influencing communication between school students and parents on sexual and RH issues.Methods: A cross-sectional survey using self-administered questionnaire and supplemented by focus group discussion was conducted in January 2006 at Bullen Woreda preparatory and high schools in northwest Ethiopia.Results: A total of 412 young people participated in the study. Of these, 284(68.9%) were males and the rest 29.1% females About 13% of the respondents were sexually active. School was mentioned as the most common source of information for sexual and reproductive health issues followed by friends. Three hundred sixty two (88%) respondents believed that it is important to discuss sexual and reproductive health issues/matters with parents. However, only 119 (28.9%) of them discussed on two or more SRH topics with their parents. A high proportion of both male (78%) and female (72%) students preferred to discuss sexual and reproductive health issues with peers compared to less than 27% who prefer to discuss with parents. Conclusions: Although the majority of the students think discussion on sexual and reproductive health issues is important, they prefer to discuss with peers as this makes them more comfortable. Thus, it is essential to improve the sexual and Reproductive Health knowledge of school students to enhance peer influence positively and improve parent student communications through targeted family life education activities among students and parents. [Ethiop. J. Health Dev. 2010;24(2):89-95
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