Ambiguity in the Determination of the Free Energy for a Model of the Circle Map

We consider a simple model to describe the widths of the mode locked intervals for the critical circle map. Using two different partitions of the rational numbers, based on Farey series and Farey tree levels respectively, we calculate the free energy analytically at selected points for each partition. It is found that the result of the calculation depends on the method of partition. An implication of this is that the generalized dimensions $D_q$ are different for each partition except when $q=0$, i.e. only the Hausdorff dimension is the same in each case.Comment: 14 page

Sacred stories: digital storytelling to preserve the stories of vocation and calling of retired nuns

Background: Communities within the EU are aging. For some religious communities this is not just a demographic effect, but one influenced by changes in recruitment rates to the order. As communities age, the tacit knowledge and experiences members carry within them – the stories of vocation and calling – are amongst those most vulnerable to loss, and yet also some of the most valuable and powerful delineators of what it is to be ‘community’. This paper describes a project intended to help the members of a retirement community of nuns in northern England recollect and share their stories. Methods: The Patient Voices Reflective Digital Storytelling process was adapted to suit the needs of the group, using experiences gained in working with elderly patients and service users in health and social care settings. Results: A set of some twenty stories was created with members of the community, in several workshops. Ages of participants ranged up to 101 years. One storyteller returned several times to tell four stories over a period of some years. Several adaptations to the process were needed to fit it to storyteller profile. Conclusions: With appropriate adaptation and support, digital storytelling can be an effective process through which elderly sections of religious communities can preserve and share stories of vocation, calling and life experience. These stories can then provide valuable resources for reflection within the broader part of that religious community, and have common ground with stories told by groups within health and social care.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Helping tomorrow’s doctors to become reflective practitioners through digital storytelling

Background: Latest medical education guidelines in the UK stress the need for doctors to be capable reflective practitioners. However, traditional cultures and methods within medical education departments develop and deliver reflective programmes that are mechanistic and ineffective. This paper describes two programmes run for medical students at two different UK universities based on Reflective digital storytelling principles, and their outcomes. Methods: The Patient Voices Reflective Digital Storytelling process was used to provide reflective opportunities for medical students at the University of Leicester (N=5) in 2008 and Kings College London (N=4) in 2014. In both cases the normal process was adapted to suit student timetables, examination schedules, etc. Experience running Patient Voices Reflective Digital Storytelling workshops for newly-qualified nurses, etc. was used to inform facilitative approaches. Different adaptations were needed in each institution. Results: In both cases all students created reflective stories. Several (N=6) found the process so engaging they created two stories. Student feedback in both cases was powerfully positive, with students arguing at the launch of the stories created for universal adoption of this approach to reflection within their institutions. Students reported bonding as a group and feeling greater empathy with patients while on placement. Conclusions: Digital storytelling can provide the basis for a methodology within which medical students can deeply and effectively reflect on experiences of personal life, training and early practice, but key to this is ensuring a safe facilitative environment within which they can truly reflect rather than merely fill in reflection forms.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Editorial: EFSA calls for integrated and coordinated actions at EU and international levels to address global declines of pollinators

No abstract availabl

Modification of the Creator recombination system for proteomics applications – improved expression by addition of splice sites

BACKGROUND: Recombinational systems have been developed to rapidly shuttle Open Reading Frames (ORFs) into multiple expression vectors in order to analyze the large number of cDNAs available in the post-genomic era. In the Creator system, an ORF introduced into a donor vector can be transferred with Cre recombinase to a library of acceptor vectors optimized for different applications. Usability of the Creator system is impacted by the ability to easily manipulate DNA, the number of acceptor vectors for downstream applications, and the level of protein expression from Creator vectors. RESULTS: To date, we have developed over 20 novel acceptor vectors that employ a variety of promoters and epitope tags commonly employed for proteomics applications and gene function analysis. We also made several enhancements to the donor vectors including addition of different multiple cloning sites to allow shuttling from pre-existing vectors and introduction of the lacZ alpha reporter gene to allow for selection. Importantly, in order to ameliorate any effects on protein expression of the loxP site between a 5' tag and ORF, we introduced a splicing event into our expression vectors. The message produced from the resulting 'Creator Splice' vector undergoes splicing in mammalian systems to remove the loxP site. Upon analysis of our Creator Splice constructs, we discovered that protein expression levels were also significantly increased. CONCLUSION: The development of new donor and acceptor vectors has increased versatility during the cloning process and made this system compatible with a wider variety of downstream applications. The modifications introduced in our Creator Splice system were designed to remove extraneous sequences due to recombination but also aided in downstream analysis by increasing protein expression levels. As a result, we can now employ epitope tags that are detected less efficiently and reduce our assay scale to allow for higher throughput. The Creator Splice system appears to be an extremely useful tool for proteomics

Evaluating Human-Language Model Interaction

Many real-world applications of language models (LMs), such as writing assistance and code autocomplete, involve human-LM interaction. However, most benchmarks are non-interactive in that a model produces output without human involvement. To evaluate human-LM interaction, we develop a new framework, Human-AI Language-based Interaction Evaluation (HALIE), that defines the components of interactive systems and dimensions to consider when designing evaluation metrics. Compared to standard, non-interactive evaluation, HALIE captures (i) the interactive process, not only the final output; (ii) the first-person subjective experience, not just a third-party assessment; and (iii) notions of preference beyond quality (e.g., enjoyment and ownership). We then design five tasks to cover different forms of interaction: social dialogue, question answering, crossword puzzles, summarization, and metaphor generation. With four state-of-the-art LMs (three variants of OpenAI's GPT-3 and AI21 Labs' Jurassic-1), we find that better non-interactive performance does not always translate to better human-LM interaction. In particular, we highlight three cases where the results from non-interactive and interactive metrics diverge and underscore the importance of human-LM interaction for LM evaluation.Comment: Authored by the Center for Research on Foundation Models (CRFM) at the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI

Prenatal THC Exposure Induces Sex-Dependent Neuropsychiatric Endophenotypes in Offspring and Long-Term Disruptions in Fatty-Acid Signaling Pathways Directly in the Mesolimbic Circuitry

Despite increased prevalence of maternal cannabis use, little is understood regarding potential long-term effects of prenatal cannabis exposure (PCE) on neurodevelopmental outcomes. While neurodevelopmental cannabis exposure increases the risk of developing affective/mood disorders in adulthood, the precise neuro-pathophysiological mechanisms in male and female offspring are largely unknown. Given the interconnectivity of the endocannabinoid (ECb) system and the brain’s fatty acid pathways, we hypothesized that prenatal exposure to ∆9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) may dysregulate fetal neurodevelopment through alterations of fatty-acid dependent synaptic and neuronal function in the mesolimbic system. To investigate this, pregnant Wistar rats were exposed to vehicle or THC (3 mg/kg) from gestational day (GD)7 until GD22. Anxiety-like, depres-sive-like, and reward-seeking behavior, electrophysiology, and molecular assays were performed on adult male/female offspring. Imaging of fatty acids using matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization imaging mass spectrometry (MALDI IMS) was performed at prepubescence and adulthood. We report that PCE induces be-havioral, neuronal, and molecular alterations in the mesolimbic system in male and female offspring, resem-bling neuropsychiatric endophenotypes. Additionally, PCE resulted in profound dysregulation of critical fatty acid pathways in the developing brain lipidome. Female progeny exhibited significant alterations to fatty acid levels at prepubescence but recovered from these deficits by early adulthood. In contrast, males exhibited persistent fatty acid deficits into adulthood. Moreover, both sexes maintained enduring abnormalities in gluta-matergic/GABAergic function in the nucleus accumbens (NAc). These findings identify several novel long-term risks of maternal cannabis use and demonstrate for the first time, sex-related effects of maternal cannabinoid exposure directly in the developing neural lipidome

The ethics of practical reasoning : exploring the terrain

Social work has been under sustained scrutiny regarding the quality of decision-making. The assumption is that social workers make poor quality decisions. And yet our knowledge and understanding of how social workers make decisions is, at best, partial. In our view, examination of practitioner decision-making will be enhanced by considering the role that ethics plays in practical judgement in practice. Although there has been significant work regarding the role of values and ethics in practice, this work tends to idealise morality setting up external standards by which practice is judged. In this paper, we will argue that ethics in practice needs to be understood as more than simply operationalise ideal standards, ethics also entails critical engagement with social and ethical issues and can challenge idealised statements of values. We outline the idea of the ethical dimension of practical reasoning, consider its relationship to professional discretion, judgments and decision-making in order to provide a clear focus for this research agenda, and identify the practical challenges researching ethics in professional decision-making entails

Intergenerational Communication – an interdisciplinary mapping review of research between 1996 and 2017

Concerns have been raised regarding the limited opportunities for intergenerational communication both outside and within the family. This “mapping review” draws together empirical literature in the topic published since 1996. Three hundred and twenty-four published studies met inclusion criteria, based on abstract review. The contents of each study were subjected to thematic analysis and nine broad themes emerged. These were (1) Dynamics of relationships, (2) Health & Well-being, (3) Learning & Literacy, (4) Attitudes, (5) Culture, (6) Digital, (7) Space, (8) Professional Development, and (9) Gender & Sexual Orientation. Studies commonly intersected disciplinary research areas. There was a marked rise across three key academic journals since 2007. An emergent finding was that a third of the studies relate to programs addressing intergenerational interventions, but many of these were primarily descriptive and failed to specify a primary outcome. Review implications and future research directions are discussed