Lakatos ja metamatematiikka:todistusten ja kumoajien metodi Imre Lakatosin Proofs and Refutations-teoksessa

Tiivistelmä. Tässä Pro gradu -tutkielmassa käsitellään Imre Lakatosin matematiikanfilosofiaa teoksessa Proofs and Refutations. Tutkielmassa esitellään Lakatosin tulkinta euklidisesta koulukunnasta matemaattisessa tiedontuotannossa ja hänen puheenvuoronsa vastaesimerkkien merkityksestä matemaattisessa tutkimuksessa. Lakatos nojaa Karl Popperin falsifikationismiin metamatemaattisessa puheenvuorossaan vastaesimerkkien tärkeydestä, mutta poikkeaa Popperin tieteenfilosofiasta esittäessään, kuinka matemaatikon tulisi toimia vastaesimerkin kumottua hänen työstämänsä loogisen rakennelman. Tutkielmassa esitellään Lakatosin todistusten ja kumoajien metodi, jonka hän väittää toimivan rationaalisena, dialektisena toimintamallina matemaattisessa tutkimuksessa, jossa vastaesimerkkiä käytetään matemaattisen teorian uudelleenmuotoiluun ja parantamiseen sen kumoamisen ja hylkäämisen sijasta. Tutkielma nostaa esiin myös Lakatosin väitteiden ongelmakohtia, varsinkin niiden historiallisuuden osalta. Lakatosin esittelemä matemaattisen tutkimuksen malli ei kuvaile tai selitä matemaatikkojen tosiasiallisia työskentelykäytäntöjä. Teoksen Proofs and Refutations puheenvuoro matematiikanfilosofian piirissä on silti merkityksellinen. Tutkielma nostaa esiin Lakatosin ansion tiedostamattomien oletuksien roolin esiintuomisessa matemaattisessa tutkimustyössä ja skeptisen näkökulman puolustamisessa David Hilbertin formalismia vastaan, jota Lakatos syyttää liiallisesta dogmaattisuudesta

One rate does not fit all: An empirical analysis of electricity tariffs for residential microgrids

Increasingly, residential customers are deploying PV units to lower electricity bills and contribute to a more sustainable use of resources. This selective decentralization of power generation, however, creates significant challenges, because current transmission and distribution grids were designed for centralized power generation and unidirectional flows. Restructuring residential neighborhoods as residential microgrids might solve these problems to an extent, but energy retailers and system operators have yet to identify ways of fitting residential microgrids into the energy value chain. One promising way of doing so is the tailoring of residential microgrid tariffs, as this encourages grid-stabilizing behavior and fairly re-distributes the associated costs. We thus identify a set of twelve tariff candidates and estimate their probable effects on energy bills as well as load and generation profiles. Specifically, we model 100 residential microgrids and simulate how these microgrids might respond to each of the twelve tariffs. Our analyses reveal three important insights. Number one: volumetric tariffs would not only inflate electricity bills but also encourage sharp load and generation peaks, while failing to reliably allocate system costs. Number two: under tariffs with capacity charges, time-varying rates would have little impact on both electricity bills and load and generation peaks. Number three: tariffs that bill system and energy retailer costs via capacity and customer charges respectively would lower electricity bills, foster peak shaving, and facilitate stable cost allocation

Routine outcome monitoring en benchmarking: hoe kunnen we behandelresultaten op een zorgvuldige manier vergelijken?

Contains fulltext : 157216.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access)Achtergrond: Het structureel meten van de resultaten van een behandeling in de geestelijke gezondheidszorg en het vergelijken daarvan tussen instellingen helpen om inzicht te krijgen in het effect van behandelingen in de reguliere praktijk. Doel: Geven van een overzicht van de kwesties die van belang zijn bij het vergelijken van instellingen. Methode: Analyseren van documentatie en beleidsinformatie over en praktijkervaring met routine outcome monitoring (rom). Resultaten: We beschrijven knelpunten die kunnen ontstaan bij het vergelijken van instellingen en formuleren oplossingsrichtingen voor deze knelpunten. Daarbij staat centraal dat het werken met rom een groeiproces is, waarbij men experimenteert met verschillende oplossingsrichtingen en op basis van ervaringen definitieve keuzes maakt. Conclusie: Het is leerzaam om instellingen te vergelijken, zowel onderling als met 'best practices' (benchmarking). Instellingen verschillen echter in cliëntenpopulaties, meetprocedures en instrumentarium. Een zinvolle vergelijking is op termijn toch mogelijk.5 p

Comparison of radiative and structural properties of 1.3 µm InxGa(1-x)As quantum-dot laser structures grown by metalorganic chemical vapor deposition and molecular-beam epitaxy: Effect on the lasing properties

The authors have studied the radiative and structural properties of identical InxGa(1-x)As quantum dot laser structures grown by metalorg. CVD (MOCVD) and MBE. Despite the comparable emission properties found in the two devices by photoluminescence, electroluminescence, and photocurrent spectroscopy, efficient lasing from the ground state is achieved only in the MBE sample, whereas excited state lasing was obtained in the MOCVD device. Such a difference is ascribed to the existence of the internal dipole field in the MOCVD structure, induced by the strong faceting of the dots, as obsd. by high-resoln. TEM. [on SciFinder (R)

Childrearing style of anxiety-disordered parents

FSW - Self-regulation models for health behavior and Psychopathology - Ou

Multiancestry analysis of the HLA locus in Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases uncovers a shared adaptive immune response mediated by HLA-DRB1*04 subtypes

Across multiancestry groups, we analyzed Human Leukocyte Antigen (HLA) associations in over 176,000 individuals with Parkinson’s disease (PD) and Alzheimer’s disease (AD) versus controls. We demonstrate that the two diseases share the same protective association at the HLA locus. HLA-specific fine-mapping showed that hierarchical protective effects of HLA-DRB1*04 subtypes best accounted for the association, strongest with HLA-DRB1*04:04 and HLA-DRB1*04:07, and intermediary with HLA-DRB1*04:01 and HLA-DRB1*04:03. The same signal was associated with decreased neurofibrillary tangles in postmortem brains and was associated with reduced tau levels in cerebrospinal fluid and to a lower extent with increased Aβ42. Protective HLA-DRB1*04 subtypes strongly bound the aggregation-prone tau PHF6 sequence, however only when acetylated at a lysine (K311), a common posttranslational modification central to tau aggregation. An HLA-DRB1*04-mediated adaptive immune response decreases PD and AD risks, potentially by acting against tau, offering the possibility of therapeutic avenues

The evolving SARS-CoV-2 epidemic in Africa: Insights from rapidly expanding genomic surveillance

INTRODUCTION Investment in Africa over the past year with regard to severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) sequencing has led to a massive increase in the number of sequences, which, to date, exceeds 100,000 sequences generated to track the pandemic on the continent. These sequences have profoundly affected how public health officials in Africa have navigated the COVID-19 pandemic. RATIONALE We demonstrate how the first 100,000 SARS-CoV-2 sequences from Africa have helped monitor the epidemic on the continent, how genomic surveillance expanded over the course of the pandemic, and how we adapted our sequencing methods to deal with an evolving virus. Finally, we also examine how viral lineages have spread across the continent in a phylogeographic framework to gain insights into the underlying temporal and spatial transmission dynamics for several variants of concern (VOCs). RESULTS Our results indicate that the number of countries in Africa that can sequence the virus within their own borders is growing and that this is coupled with a shorter turnaround time from the time of sampling to sequence submission. Ongoing evolution necessitated the continual updating of primer sets, and, as a result, eight primer sets were designed in tandem with viral evolution and used to ensure effective sequencing of the virus. The pandemic unfolded through multiple waves of infection that were each driven by distinct genetic lineages, with B.1-like ancestral strains associated with the first pandemic wave of infections in 2020. Successive waves on the continent were fueled by different VOCs, with Alpha and Beta cocirculating in distinct spatial patterns during the second wave and Delta and Omicron affecting the whole continent during the third and fourth waves, respectively. Phylogeographic reconstruction points toward distinct differences in viral importation and exportation patterns associated with the Alpha, Beta, Delta, and Omicron variants and subvariants, when considering both Africa versus the rest of the world and viral dissemination within the continent. Our epidemiological and phylogenetic inferences therefore underscore the heterogeneous nature of the pandemic on the continent and highlight key insights and challenges, for instance, recognizing the limitations of low testing proportions. We also highlight the early warning capacity that genomic surveillance in Africa has had for the rest of the world with the detection of new lineages and variants, the most recent being the characterization of various Omicron subvariants. CONCLUSION Sustained investment for diagnostics and genomic surveillance in Africa is needed as the virus continues to evolve. This is important not only to help combat SARS-CoV-2 on the continent but also because it can be used as a platform to help address the many emerging and reemerging infectious disease threats in Africa. In particular, capacity building for local sequencing within countries or within the continent should be prioritized because this is generally associated with shorter turnaround times, providing the most benefit to local public health authorities tasked with pandemic response and mitigation and allowing for the fastest reaction to localized outbreaks. These investments are crucial for pandemic preparedness and response and will serve the health of the continent well into the 21st century

Factors of perceived parental rearing styles:the EMBU-C examined in a sample of Dutch primary school children

The aim of the present study was to explore the dimensional framework underlying the original item pool of 81 items of the Dutch EMBU-C in a large sample of primary school aged children (n = 824). It was demonstrated that the full range of 81 items of the Dutch EMBU-C, could be reduced to four reliable factors, Emotional Warmth, Rejection, Overprotection and Favouring Subject. It was shown that the EMBU-C Scales for children have conceptually much in common with their adult and adolescent counterparts. Thus, the EMBU-C can be considered to be a suitable measure examining whether relations between psychological disorders and the perception of parenting style, as found in older subjects., can be confirmed in childhood. Preliminary results showed that the associations between perceived parenting, as measured by the EMBU-C, and trait anxiety in children, as measured with the STAIC, are consistent with findings yielded in studies with adults where anxious individuals expressed that they had been reared in a more rejective and protected way than their non-anxious equivalents. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved

Psychopathic-like traits in detained adolescents: clinical usefulness of self-report

New methods for child psychiatric diagnosis and treatment outcome evaluatio