Imperialism, Islam, and the transformation of self : the pilgrimage of Nacir ed-Dine Dinet (1861-1929)

Orientalist travel writing has often been understood as a literate form of imperial domination in which Western travelers reproduced a stereotyping narrative of non-Westerners to reinforce the dichotomist worldview between Westerners and non-Westerners. To reconsider this view, this paper discusses the Muslim pilgrimage account written by converted French orientalist painter, Nacir ed-Dine, born Étienne Dinet (1861–1929). This paper argues that Dinet saw that the difference which separates Europeans and Muslims was surmountable. This worldview allowed Dinet to have hope for self-transformation, which would ultimately blur the cultural borders between the dominators and the dominated as defined in the colonial context

Feeling bad and doing good: Forgiveness through the lens of uninvolved others

Previous forgiveness research has mostly focused on victims’ forgiveness for transgressors, and variables expected to promote forgiveness, such as transgressors’ repentance and atonement, have been collectively branded as apology. However, decisions concerning forgiveness frequently occur outside of dyadic contexts, and the unique roles of repentance and atonement in achieving forgiveness, despite their preeminence in theology and law, have received little empirical attention. Across four experiments (N=601), we show that repentance and atonement independently promote third-party forgiveness for a variety of harms, even without direct apology and even in disinterested contexts. Our findings provide a systematic examination of third-party forgiveness disentangled from personal involvement, resulting in a clearer understanding of components facilitating forgiveness

Developmental changes in point-light walker processing during childhood: A two-year follow-up ERP study

AbstractEvent-related potentials were measured in twenty-four children aged 6–15 years, at one-year intervals for two years, to investigate developmental changes in each subject's neural response to a point-light walker (PLW) and a scrambled PLW (sPLW) stimulus. One positive peak (P1) and two negative peaks (N1 and N2) were observed in both occipitotemporal regions at approximately 130, 200, and 300–400 ms. The amplitude and latency of the P1 component measured by the occipital electrode decreased during development over the first one-year period. Negative amplitudes of both N1 and N2, induced by the PLW stimulus, were significantly larger than those induced by the sPLW stimulus. Moreover, for the P1–N1 amplitude, the values for the eight-year-old children were significantly larger than those for the twelve-year-old children. N1 and N2 latency at certain electrodes decreased with age, but no consistent changes were observed. These results suggest that enhanced electrophysiological responses to PLW can be observed in all age groups, and that the early components were changed even over the course of a single year at the age of twelve

Multilingual Sentence-T5: Scalable Sentence Encoders for Multilingual Applications

Prior work on multilingual sentence embedding has demonstrated that the efficient use of natural language inference (NLI) data to build high-performance models can outperform conventional methods. However, the potential benefits from the recent ``exponential'' growth of language models with billions of parameters have not yet been fully explored. In this paper, we introduce Multilingual Sentence T5 (m-ST5), as a larger model of NLI-based multilingual sentence embedding, by extending Sentence T5, an existing monolingual model. By employing the low-rank adaptation (LoRA) technique, we have achieved a successful scaling of the model's size to 5.7 billion parameters. We conducted experiments to evaluate the performance of sentence embedding and verified that the method outperforms the NLI-based prior approach. Furthermore, we also have confirmed a positive correlation between the size of the model and its performance. It was particularly noteworthy that languages with fewer resources or those with less linguistic similarity to English benefited more from the parameter increase. Our model is available at https://huggingface.co/pkshatech/m-ST5.Comment: Accepted in LREC-COLING 202

Bone regeneration of induced pluripotent stem cells derived from peripheral blood cells in collagen sponge scaffolds

Stem cell-based regeneration therapy offers new therapeutic options for patients with bone defects because of significant advances in stem cell research. Although bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells are the ideal material for bone regeneration therapy using stem cell, they are difficult to obtain. Induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) are now considered an attractive tool in bone tissue engineering. Recently, the efficiency of establishing iPSCs has been improved by the use of the Sendai virus vector, and it has become easier to establish iPSCs from several type of somatic cells. In our previous study, we reported a method to purify osteogenic cells from iPSCs. Objective: This study aimed to evaluate the osteogenic ability of iPSCs derived from peripheral blood cells. Methodology: Mononuclear cells (MNCs) were obtained from human peripheral blood. Subsequently, T cells were selectively obtained from these MNCs and iPSCs were established using Sendai virus vectors. Established iPSCs were evaluated by the expression of undifferentiated markers and teratoma formation assays. Osteoblasts were induced from these iPSCs and evaluated by the expression of osteoblast markers. Additionally, the induced osteoblasts were transplanted into rat critical size calvaria bone defect models with collagen sponge scaffolds. Samples were evaluated by radiographical and histological assessments. Results: Induced osteoblasts expressed several osteoblast-specific markers. The results of radiographical and histological assessments revealed that the cell transplant group had bone formations superior to those of the control group. Conclusions: This study suggests that peripheral blood MNCs have the potential to differentiate into osteoblasts. Although there are some hurdles in iPSC transplantation, osteoblasts obtained from MNC-iPSCs could be applied to bone regeneration therapy in the future

BodyMap-Xs: anatomical breakdown of 17 million animal ESTs for cross-species comparison of gene expression

BodyMap-Xs () is a database for cross-species gene expression comparison. It was created by the anatomical breakdown of 17 million animal expressed sequence tag (EST) records in DDBJ using a sorting program tailored for this purpose. In BodyMap-Xs, users are allowed to compare the expression patterns of orthologous and paralogous genes in a coherent manner. This will provide valuable insights for the evolutionary study of gene expression and identification of a responsive motif for a particular expression pattern. In addition, starting from a concise overview of the taxonomical and anatomical breakdown of all animal ESTs, users can navigate to obtain gene expression ranking of a particular tissue in a particular animal. This method may lead to the understanding of the similarities and differences between the homologous tissues across animal species. BodyMap-Xs will be automatically updated in synchronization with the major update in DDBJ, which occurs periodically

Direct-to-Implant Breast Reconstruction Method: Muscle Anchoring Technique Using Absorbable Strings and its Safety

In prosthesis-based breast reconstruction, surgeons select the sub-muscle layer for implant placement, but the pectoralis major muscle is not sufficient to cover the implant. The pectoralis major muscle does not reach the inframammary sulcus line, so the muscle pockets for implant inevitably have defects. From 2016 to 2019, we performed direct-to-implant (DTI) breast reconstruction for 123 patients, during which the implant was placed partially under the muscle plane and the inferior-lateral portion was placed directly underneath the skin flap. We divided the pectoralis major muscle and serratus anterior muscle in their origin partially and arranged their shape and position. To maintain their intended placement, we used the absorbable mesh sling. From 2020, we had arranged this method and performed DTI in 35 patients using absorbable strings simply as a substitute for mesh. The DTI reconstruction using mesh or using absorbable strings could show the acceptable safety and feasibility. Both techniques were associated with a low risk of surgical complications, reoperation (with mesh 4.1%, and without mesh 0%), and removal of implant (with mesh 2.4%, and without mesh 0%)