Ingroup projection as a challenge of diversity: consensus about and complexity of superordinate categories

As is often done, we could begin such a chapter in a volume on intergroup conflict with a dire description of the state of human society and the continuing menace of social discrimination, prejudice, injustice, and ethnic violence. However, a children's book by the Austrian writer Edith Schreiber-Wicke (1990), whose title may be translated as “When the crows were still colorful,” provides a fable that is more fun, yet insightful. It describes the story of the crows when they still came in all sorts of colors and patterns – orange with blue stripes, green with yellow spots, and so on – until one day a snowman asked the fateful (and probably spiteful) question of what a real, true crow looked like. Now the yellow-with-blue-spotted crows declared yellow with blue spots was the true color of crows, but the lilac crows argued the ur-crow was lilac colored, and all the other crows also claimed their colors were the real ones. There was arguing and quarreling; the crows began to fly with like-colored others only. The fighting ended only when one day a black rain turned all animals black. Afterward, only the crows stayed black and no longer had a reason to argue. The moral of the story? Obviously: ingroup projection is a challenge of diversity! And if we do not want to buy social harmony with dull sameness, we had better think of a more creative way to appreciate and enjoy differences. Ingroup projection is the perception or claim that one's own group is more prototypical for a higher-order superordinate identity, hence more normative and positive, than a relevant comparison outgroup is, or more prototypical at least than the outgroup thinks the ingroup is. In the present chapter, we briefly outline the ingroup projection model (IPM; Mummendey & Wenzel, 1999; Wenzel, Mummendey, & Waldzus, 2007), discuss its key concepts and relevant recent findings, and essentially argue for two ways in which we need to construe our superordinate identities to reduce tension between diverse and divergent groups included in them: We need to advance consensus about the superordinate identity in question, and about the complexity of its representation.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

Breakdown of the Luttinger sum-rule at the Mott-Hubbard transition in the one-dimensional t1-t2 Hubbard model

We investigate the momentum distribution function near the Mott-Hubbard transition in the one-dimensional t1-t2 Hubbard model (the zig-zag Hubbard chain), with the density-matrix renormalization-group technique. We show that for strong interactions the Mott-Hubbard transition occurs between the metallic-phase and an insulating dimerized phase with incommensurate spin excitations, suggesting a decoupling of magnetic and charge excitations not present in weak coupling. We illustrate the signatures for the Mott-Hubbard transition and the commensurate-incommensurate transition in the insulating spin-gapped state in their respective ground-state momentum distribution functions

Nonessential role of beta3 and beta5 integrin subunits for efficient clearance of cellular debris after light-induced photoreceptor degeneration

PURPOSE: During light-induced photoreceptor degeneration, large amounts of cellular debris are formed that must be cleared from the subretinal space. The integrins alphavbeta5 and alphavbeta3 are involved in the normal physiological process of phagocytosis in the retina. This study was conducted to investigate the question of whether the lack of beta5 and/or beta3 integrin subunits might influence the course of retinal degeneration and/or clearance of photoreceptor debris induced by acute exposure to light. METHODS: Wild-type, beta5(-/-) and beta3(-/-) single-knockout, and beta3(-/-)/beta5(-/-) Ccl2(-/-)/beta5(-/-) double-knockout mice were exposed to 13,000 lux of white light for 2 hours to induce severe photoreceptor degeneration. Real-time PCR and Western blot analysis were used to analyze gene and protein expression, light- and electron microscopy to judge retinal morphology, and immunofluorescence to study retinal distribution of proteins. RESULTS: Individual or combined deletion of beta3 and beta5 integrin subunits did not affect the pattern of photoreceptor cell loss or the clearance of photoreceptor debris in mice compared with that in wild-type mice. Invading macrophages may contribute to efficient phagocytosis. However, ablation of the MCP-1 gene did not prevent macrophage recruitment. Several chemokines in addition to MCP-1 were induced after light-induced damage that may have compensated for the deletion of MCP-1. CONCLUSIONS: Acute clearance of a large amount of cellular debris from the subretinal space involves invading macrophages and does not depend on beta3 and beta5 integrins

Capturing Hiproofs in HOL Light

Hierarchical proof trees (hiproofs for short) add structure to ordinary proof trees, by allowing portions of trees to be hierarchically nested. The additional structure can be used to abstract away from details, or to label particular portions to explain their purpose. In this paper we present two complementary methods for capturing hiproofs in HOL Light, along with a tool to produce web-based visualisations. The first method uses tactic recording, by modifying tactics to record their arguments and construct a hierarchical tree; this allows a tactic proof script to be modified. The second method uses proof recording, which extends the HOL Light kernel to record hierachical proof trees alongside theorems. This method is less invasive, but requires care to manage the size of the recorded objects. We have implemented both methods, resulting in two systems: Tactician and HipCam

A Vernacular for Coherent Logic

We propose a simple, yet expressive proof representation from which proofs for different proof assistants can easily be generated. The representation uses only a few inference rules and is based on a frag- ment of first-order logic called coherent logic. Coherent logic has been recognized by a number of researchers as a suitable logic for many ev- eryday mathematical developments. The proposed proof representation is accompanied by a corresponding XML format and by a suite of XSL transformations for generating formal proofs for Isabelle/Isar and Coq, as well as proofs expressed in a natural language form (formatted in LATEX or in HTML). Also, our automated theorem prover for coherent logic exports proofs in the proposed XML format. All tools are publicly available, along with a set of sample theorems.Comment: CICM 2014 - Conferences on Intelligent Computer Mathematics (2014

Interaction induced collapse of a section of the Fermi sea in in the zig-zag Hubbard ladder

Using the next-nearest neighbor (zig-zag) Hubbard chain as an one dimemensional model, we investigate the influence of interactions on the position of the Fermi wavevectors with the density-matrix renormalization-group technique (DMRG). For suitable choices of the hopping parameters we observe that electron-electron correlations induce very different renormalizations for the two different Fermi wavevectors, which ultimately lead to a complete destruction of one section of the Fermi sea in a quantum critical point

Block-Spin Approach to Electron Correlations

We consider an expansion of the ground state wavefunction of quantum lattice many-body systems in a basis whose states are tensor products of block-spin wavefunctions. We demonstrate by applying the method to the antiferromagnetic spin-1/2 chain that by selecting the most important many-body states the technique affords a severe truncation of the Hilbert space while maintaining high accuracy.Comment: 17 pages, 3 Postscript figure

Accuracy of a New Wrist Cuff Oscillometric Blood Pressure Device: Comparisons with Intraarterial and Mercury Manometer Measurements

Accurate measurement of arterial blood pressure is of great importance for the diagnosis and treatment of hypertension. Because of the chronic nature of antihypertensive drug therapy, the involvement of the patient in blood pressure control is desirable. Such an involvement, however, is only feasible if simple, user-friendly, and precise blood pressure measurement devices are available. In this study we tested a new wrist cuff oscillometric blood pressure measurement device in 100 consecutive patients undergoing cardiac catheterization. Blood pressures were simultaneously taken intraarterially (axillary artery) and with a mercury manometer and stethoscope or noninvasive measurement device (OMRON R3). Intraarterial measurements were directly compared with two measurements taken in random order with either an arm cuff mercury manometer or the wrist cuff device. Systolic and diastolic blood pressure as assessed with the mercury manometer was higher, especially when compared with the intraarterial and the wrist cuff values, which were comparable. Correlations of blood pressure values with intraarterial measurement were 0.86 systolic and 0.75 diastolic (P < .01) for the wrist cuff and 0.84 systolic (P < .01) and 0.59 diastolic (P < .05) for the mercury manometer measurements. Reproducibility of both measurements was good for the wrist cuff device ([systolic/diastolic]: r = 0.94/0.92; P < .01) and the mercury manometer (r = 0.97/0.88; P < .01). Both methods overestimated high diastolic values, whereas only the wrist cuff underestimated high systolic values. Thus, the new oscillometric wrist cuff blood pressure measurement device measures arterial blood pressure with great accuracy and reproducibility. As compared with intraarterial values, the wrist cuff device overestimated high diastolic and underestimated high systolic blood pressure values. Blood pressure values as measured by the mercury manometer were higher than intraarterial values and those of the wrist cuff. Both noninvasive devices overestimated high diastolic value

Damage and repair classification in reinforced concrete beams using frequency domain data

This research aims at developing a new vibration-based damage classification technique that can efficiently be applied to a real-time large data. Statistical pattern recognition paradigm is relevant to perform a reliable site-location damage diagnosis system. By adopting such paradigm, the finite element and other inverse models with their intensive computations, corrections and inherent inaccuracies can be avoided. In this research, a two-stage combination between principal component analysis and Karhunen-Loéve transformation (also known as canonical correlation analysis) was proposed as a statistical-based damage classification technique. Vibration measurements from frequency domain were tested as possible damage-sensitive features. The performance of the proposed system was tested and verified on real vibration measurements collected from five laboratory-scale reinforced concrete beams modelled with various ranges of defects. The results of the system helped in distinguishing between normal and damaged patterns in structural vibration data. Most importantly, the system further dissected reasonably each main damage group into subgroups according to their severity of damage. Its efficiency was conclusively proved on data from both frequency response functions and response-only functions. The outcomes of this two-stage system showed a realistic detection and classification and outperform results from the principal component analysis-only. The success of this classification model is substantially tenable because the observed clusters come from well-controlled and known state conditions