856 research outputs found
Hannah Arendtâs Vision of Politics: Exemplary Negativities and the Ostjuden
Hannah Arendtâs vision of politics is one of the most enigmatic, perplexing, thoroughly analyzed, and potentially generative aspects of her philosophic corpus. It is marked by insightful analysis, cutting deconstructions of pressing moral issues, and confusing vernacular wherein her analytic boundaries, topics, and categories appear obfuscated. Although it has been observed that Arendtâs late-career theory of the political owes a debt to her earlier writings on Jewish history, including her Kantian-influenced theory of political judgment and storytelling, in this thesis I would like to narrow down this debt to a specific trope: The Ostjuden, or the imagined associations with Eastern European Jewry. In order to locate this âinfluenceâ, which I will track through a certain indirect intertextual conversation, I will invert the Kantian term âexemplary validityâ. This concept is central to how Arendtâs ideal of individual judgement can find resonance in the space of public action, and therefore I will mobilize a certain heuristic notion of âexemplary negativityâ in order to analyze these indirect modes of influence and theory production. Along with other tropes, signifiers, topics and events, assessing the Ostjudenâs intertextual function as an exemplary negativity sheds light on how certain aspects of Arendtâs politics that she presents as categorical in fact rely on certain assumptions about historical progress, cultural eloquence, and her own personal projections
Rethinking assessment in response to generative artificial intelligence
The use of decision-making support tools during assessments, such as electronic differential diagnosis in examinations, is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to how technology is currently changing assessment practice. We have reached a transformative stage in the development of artificial intelligence (AI). We can no longer rely on non-invigilated assessments and submitted âartefactsâ to demonstrate student learning and competence. This is bringing many long-term demands on educators, course coordinators and curriculum designers, forcing us to rethink assessment approaches. Going forward, we see an important distinction between âassistedâ assessments and âunassistedâ assessments. With the recent increase and facilitation of virtual assessment through convenient online platforms, and the new challenge to non-invigilated assessment formats posed by AI, we think the time has come for the ârehabilitationâ and re-acceptance of the oral format as a highly valuable and unique form of assessment in medical education. Nevertheless, generative AI need not threaten the validity or trustworthiness of our assessments in either formative or summative contexts. Rather, it can add fidelity and nuance to assisted assessment while facilitating a greater focus and purposefulness to unassisted assessment
Developing a Global Health Assessment Collaboration: Ancillary Report
This document reports on a project designed to develop an assessment collaboration between medical schools in both Australia and the United Kingdom. The project was funded by the Office for Learning and Teaching (OLT), utilising surplus funding from a broader assessment collaboration project â the Australian Medical Assessment Collaboration (OLT ID12-2482). The Global Health Assessment Collaboration (GHAC) involved five universities in Australia and the United Kingdom (UK). It developed an assessment framework and item specifications, undertook assessment item drafting workshops, built in a process of review and resulted in the development of a focused suite of assessment items. This report provides an overview of the processes undertaken in developing this collaboration. It supplements the other main output of the work, an Assessment Framework for Global Health
The Australian Medical Assessment Collaboration: developing the foundations for a national assessment of medical student learning outcomes
In late December 2010 the Australian Learning and Teaching Council Ltd (ALTC) provided a grant to The University of Queensland along with the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) and Monash University to develop foundations for a national assessment that evaluates the learning outcomes of laterâyear medical students in Australia. The project, titled âDeveloping the foundation for a national assessment of medical student learning outcomesâ responds to the growing need to prove and improve the standards of medical education by establishing an Australian Medical Assessment Collaboration (AMAC). This project includes scoping work, wideâranging sector engagement, development of an assessment framework, the compilation of assessment items, and the validation of items through pilot testing. The work provides a foundation for what will be the ongoing development and implementation of collaboration that will provide a sustainable and robust means of assuring the standards of medical education in Australia. The ALTC grant for this project has enabled the establishment of AMAC. This report outlines the achievements of the project and provides operational detail on the establishment of the collaboration
Seabirds and the circulation of Lyme borreliosis bacteria in the North Pacific
Seabirds act as natural reservoirs to Lyme borreliosis spirochetes and may play a significant role in the global circulation of these pathogens. While Borrelia burgdorferi sensu lato (Bbsl) has been shown to occur in ticks collected from certain locations in the North Pacific, little is known about interspecific differences in exposure within the seabird communities of this region. We examined the prevalence of anti-Bbsl antibodies in 805 individuals of nine seabird species breeding across the North Pacific. Seroprevalence varied strongly among species and locations. Murres (Uria spp.) showed the highest antibody prevalence and may play a major role in facilitating Bbsl circulation at a worldwide scale. Other species showed little or no signs of exposure, despite being present in multispecific colonies with seropositive birds. Complex dynamics may be operating in this wide scale, natural hostparasite system, possibly mediated by the host immune system and host specialization of the tick vector
Dynamical coupled-channel model of meson production reactions in the nucleon resonance region
A dynamical coupled-channel model is presented for investigating the nucleon
resonances in the meson production reactions induced by pions and photons. The
model is based on an energy-independent Hamiltonian which is derived from a set
of Lagrangians by using a unitary transformation method. By applying the
projection operator techniques,we derive a set of coupled-channel equations
which satisfy the unitarity conditions within the channel space spanned by the
considered two-particle meson-baryon states and the three-particle
state. We present and explain in detail a numerical method based on a
spline-function expansion for solving the resulting coupled-channel equations
which contain logarithmically divergent one-particle-exchange driving terms
resulted from the unitarity cut. We show that this driving term can
generate rapidly varying structure in the reaction amplitudes associated with
the unstable particle channels. It also has large effects in determining the
two-pion production cross sections. Our results indicate that cautions must be
taken to interpret the parameters extracted from using models which do
not include cut effects.Comment: 73 pages, 20 figure
Searching for Novel Biomarkers Using a Mouse Model of CLN3-Batten Disease
CLN3-Batten disease is a rare, autosomal recessive disorder involving seizures, visual, motor and cognitive decline, and premature death. The Cln3Îex7/8 mouse model recapitulates several phenotypic characteristics of the most common 1.02kb disease-associated deletion. Identification of reproducible biomarker(s) to facilitate longitudinal monitoring of disease progression and provide readouts for therapeutic response has remained elusive. One factor that has complicated the identification of suitable biomarkers in this mouse model has been that variations in animal husbandry appear to significantly influence readouts. In the current study, we cross-compared a number of biological parameters in blood from Cln3Îex7/8 mice and control, non-disease mice on the same genetic background from multiple animal facilities in an attempt to better define a surrogate marker of CLN3-Batten disease. Interestingly, we found that significant differences between Batten and non-disease mice found at one site were generally not maintained across different facilities. Our results suggest that colony variation in the Cln3Îex7/8 mouse model of CLN3-Batten disease can influence potential biomarkers of the disease
Higher string functions, higher-level Appell functions, and the logarithmic ^sl(2)_k/u(1) CFT model
We generalize the string functions C_{n,r}(tau) associated with the coset
^sl(2)_k/u(1) to higher string functions A_{n,r}(tau) and B_{n,r}(tau)
associated with the coset W(k)/u(1) of the W-algebra of the logarithmically
extended ^sl(2)_k conformal field model with positive integer k. The higher
string functions occur in decomposing W(k) characters with respect to level-k
theta and Appell functions and their derivatives (the characters are neither
quasiperiodic nor holomorphic, and therefore cannot decompose with respect to
only theta-functions). The decomposition coefficients, to be considered
``logarithmic parafermionic characters,'' are given by A_{n,r}(tau),
B_{n,r}(tau), C_{n,r}(tau), and by the triplet \mathscr{W}(p)-algebra
characters of the (p=k+2,1) logarithmic model. We study the properties of
A_{n,r} and B_{n,r}, which nontrivially generalize those of the classic string
functions C_{n,r}, and evaluate the modular group representation generated from
A_{n,r}(tau) and B_{n,r}(tau); its structure inherits some features of modular
transformations of the higher-level Appell functions and the associated
transcendental function Phi.Comment: 34 pages, amsart++, times. V2: references added; minor changes; some
nonsense in B.3.3. correcte
Differential MicroRNA Expression Levels in Cutaneous Acute Graft-versus Host Disease
Allogeneic haematopoietic stem cell transplantation (allo-HSCT) is a curative treatment for numerous haematological malignancies. However, acute graft-versus-host disease (aGvHD) is a major complication affecting 40-70% of all transplant patients, whereby the earliest and most frequent presentation is in the skin. MicroRNAs play a role in varied biological process and have been reported as potential biomarkers for aGvHD. More recently, microRNAs have received added attention as circulatory biomarkers that can be detected in biofluids. In the present study we performed global microRNA expression profiling using a discovery cohort of diagnostic cutaneous aGvHD biopsies (n=5, stage 1-3) and healthy volunteers (n=4), in order to identify a signature list of microRNAs that could be used as diagnostic biomarkers for cutaneous aGvHD. Candidate microRNAs (n=8) were then further investigated in a validation cohort of post-HSCT skin biopsies (n=17) for their association with aGvHD. Expression of miR-34a-5p (p<0.001), miR-34a-3p (p=0.013), miR-503-5p (p=0.021) and let-7c-5p (p=0.037) was elevated in cutaneous aGvHD and significantly associated with survival outcome (miR-34a-3p ROC AUC=0.93, p=0.003, Log Rank p=0.004; miR-503-5p ROC AUC=0.83 p=0.021, Log Rank p=0.003). There was no association with relapse. A statistical interaction between miR-34a-3p and miR-503-5p (p=0.016) was diagnostic for aGvHD. Expression levels of the miR-34a-5p protein target p53 were assessed in the epidermis of the skin, and an inverse correlation was identified (r2=0.44, p=0.039). Expression of the validated candidate microRNAs was also assessed at day 28 post-HSCT in the sera of transplant recipients, in order to investigate their potential as circulatory microRNA biomarkers. Expression of miR-503-5p (p=0.001), miR-34a-5p (p=0.005) and miR-34a-3p (p=0.004) were significantly elevated in the sera of patients who developed aGvHD vs. no-aGvHD (n=30) and miR-503-5p was associated with overall survival (ROC AUC=0.80, p=0.04, Log Rank p=0.041). In conclusion, this investigation reports that microRNA expression levels in clinical skin biopsies, obtained at the time of cutaneous aGvHD onset, show potential as diagnostic biomarkers for aGvHD and as predictive biomarkers for overall survival. Additionally, the same microRNAs can be detected in the circulation and show predictive association with post-HSCT outcomes
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