bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
A critical spotlight on the paradigms of FFPE-DNA sequencing
Authors: Steiert Tim A , Parra Genís , Gut Marta , Arnold Norbert , Trotta Jean-Rémi , Tonda Raúl , Moussy Alice , Gerber Zuzana , Abuja Peter M , Zatloukal Kurt , Röcken Christoph , Folseraas Trine , Grimsrud Marit M , Vogel Arndt , Goeppert Benjamin , Roessler Stephanie , Hinz Sebastian , Schafmayer Clemens , Rosenstiel Philip , Deleuze Jean-François , Gut Ivo G , Franke Andre , Forster Michael
Published: June 2023

In the late 19th century, formalin fixation with paraffin-embedding (FFPE) of tissues was developed as a fixation and conservation method and is still used to this day in routine clinical and pathological practice. The implementation of state-of-the-art nucleic acid sequencing technologies has sparked much interest for using historical FFPE samples stored in biobanks as they hold promise in extracting new information from these valuable samples. However, formalin fixation chemically modifies DNA, which potentially leads to incorrect sequences or misinterpretations in downstream processing and data analysis. Many publications have concentrated on one type of DNA damage, but few have addressed the complete spectrum of FFPE-DNA damage. Here, we review mitigation strategies in (I) pre-analytical sample quality control, (II) DNA repair treatments, (III) analytical sample preparation and (IV) bioinformatic analysis of FFPE-DNA. We then provide recommendations that are tested and illustrated with DNA from 13-year-old liver specimens, one FFPE preserved and one fresh frozen, applying target-enriched sequencing. Thus, we show how DNA damage can be compensated, even when using low quantities (50 ng) of fragmented FFPE-DNA (DNA integrity number 2.0) that cannot be amplified well (Q129 bp/Q41 bp = 5%). Finally, we provide a checklist called ‘ERROR-FFPE-DNA’ that summarises recommendations for the minimal information in publications required for assessing fitness-for-purpose and inter-study comparison when using FFPE samples.
Surveillance of 3′ mRNA cleavage during transcription termination requires CF IB/Hrp1
Authors: Li Jing , Querl Luisa , Coban Ivo , Salinas Gabriela , Krebber Heike
Published: June 2023

CF IB/Hrp1 is part of the cleavage and polyadenylation factor (CPF) and cleavage factor (CF) complex (CPF–CF), which is responsible for 3′ cleavage and maturation of pre-mRNAs. Although Hrp1 supports this process, its presence is not essential for the cleavage event. Here, we show that the main function of Hrp1 in the CPF–CF complex is the nuclear mRNA quality control of proper 3′ cleavage. As such, Hrp1 acts as a nuclear mRNA retention factor that hinders transcripts from leaving the nucleus until processing is completed. Only after proper 3′ cleavage, which is sensed through contacting Rna14, Hrp1 recruits the export receptor Mex67, allowing nuclear export. Consequently, its absence results in the leakage of elongated mRNAs into the cytoplasm. If cleavage is defective, the presence of Hrp1 on the mRNA retains these elongated transcripts until they are eliminated by the nuclear exosome. Together, we identify Hrp1 as the key quality control factor for 3′ cleavage.
Anticaries properties of natural berries: systematic literature review
Authors: García-Manríquez Natalia , Lozano Carla , Muñoz Ana , Morales María Fernanda , Giacaman Rodrigo A
Published: June 2023

Context

Anticariogenic properties have been ascribed to polyphenolic compounds present in high concentrations in numerous fruits. Berries, in particular, have been reported as potentially having an inhibitory effect on the dental biofilm and subsequently on caries, but the evidence is unclear.

Objective

The objective of this review was to explore the literature and summarize the evidence for berries having an inhibitory effect on the dental biofilm and an anticariogenic effect.

Data Sources

Following Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-analysis (PRISMA) guidelines, the PubMed, Web of Science, and SCOPUS databases were scanned using predefined and accessible terms, with a search strategy based on a structured PICO question.

Data Extraction

After article selection, 23 studies met the inclusion criteria, most of them being in vitro studies. A risk assessment was performed, and data were extracted and presented in a table for qualitative analysis.

Data Analysis

Meta-analyses were conducted using standardized mean differences (SMDs) with a 95% confidence interval (CI) by Review manager 5.4.

Results

Only 3 types of berries were found to have a reported anticaries effect: grape seed extract (GSE), cranberry, and sour cherry. Nine studies that fulfilled the eligibility criteria were subjected to quantitative analysis. Meta-analyses showed GSE was associated with enhanced remineralization of dental enamel (SMD = .96 95% CI [.45, 1.46], P < .0002) and of dentin (SMD = .65 95% CI [.13, 1.17], P = .01). Cranberry extracts positively influenced the cariogenic dental biofilm by decreasing the biofilm biomass (SMD = –2.23 95% CI [–4.40, –.05], P = .04), and biovolume (SMD = –2.86 95% CI [–4.34, –1.37], P = .0002), and increasing the biofilm pH (SMD = 7.9 95% CI [3.49, 12.31], P < .0004).

Conclusion

Within the limitations of this systematic review and metaanalysis, GSE and cranberries or their active compounds could represent an alternative for caries management. Further clinical trials are needed to verify this effect in a clinical setting.

Systematic Review Registration

PROSPERO registration no. CRD42020223579.
Botanical, nutritional, phytochemical characteristics, and potential health benefits of murici (Byrsonima crassifolia) and taperebá (Spondias mombin): insights from animal and cell culture models
Authors: Almeida Carolina O R P , Martinez Raquel M , Figueiredo Mariana S , Teodoro Anderson J
Published: June 2023

Brazil has great biodiversity, and the Amazon biome stands out for a variety of native fruits with high economic and nutritional potential. Murici (Byrsonima crassifolia) and taperebá (Spondias mombin) are sources of vitamins, minerals, and phytochemicals with potential health benefits. Because of the bioactive potential of these Brazilian fruits, this review aims to gather the most current existing knowledge about their botanical, nutritional, and phytochemical properties, because the presence of several bioactive compounds may bring promising strategies to the prevention and treatment of several diseases. The search was conducted of the LILACS, MEDLINE, PubMed, and Science Direct databases, considering articles published between 2010 and 2023. The compiled results showed that these fruits, their leaves, and seeds have great antioxidant activity and are a good source of phytochemicals, especially phenolic compounds. In vitro and in vivo studies indicate that these bioactive compounds have several health benefits related to the prevention or treatment of diseases, including antioxidant effects; anti-inflammatory effects; and antidiabetic, antidepressant, neuroprotective, antiproliferative, anticancer, hypolipemic, cardioprotective, gastroprotective, hepatoprotective, and nephroprotective effects, and they are particularly related to the reduction of damage from oxidative stress. This review highlights the potential of these fruits as functional foods and for therapeutic purposes. However, it is recommended to conduct more studies on the identification and quantification of phytochemicals present in these fruits and studies in humans to better understand the mechanisms of action related to their effects and to understand the interaction of these compounds with the human body, as well as to prove the safety and efficacy of these compounds on health.
Plant-based diets and postprandial hyperkalemia
Authors: Varshney Aarushi , Dupuis Leonie , Aggarwal Monika , Joshi Shivam
Published: June 2023

This Letter to the Editor is a response to St-Jules and Fouque and their interpretation of postprandial hyperkalemia, especially regarding plant-based diets. Based on the reviewed literature review, potassium kinetic studies cited by the authors include only 1 study with a food-based intervention that actually showed reduced postprandial hyperkalemia with plant-based diets. The remainder of the studies used potassium salts or supplements that behave differently compared with whole plant foods. As such, we recommend avoiding restriction of whole plant foods in patients with chronic kidney disease when solely based on the theoretical risk of postprandial hyperkalemia.
The Ex Post Facto Clause
Authors: Logan Wayne A.
Published: June 2023

This volume provides the first book-length, modern-era examination of the Ex Post Facto Clause, contained in Article I sections 9 and 10 of the US Constitution, focusing upon its history and role in tempering the penal populism of American legislatures. As one of the few rights specified in the body of the Constitution itself, the clause was intended, as James Madison put it, to serve as a “bulwark” against the tendency of legislatures to enact retroactive laws increasing or imposing new burdens on disdained individuals. For the first several decades of the nation’s history, the Supreme Court enforced the clause with vigor, for instance, invalidating retroactive laws enacted after the Civil War targeting supporters of the Confederacy. Today, however, the clause is a hollowed-out shell of its former self, at once reflecting and enabling the nation’s shift toward politically popular tough-on-crime policies. The book chronicles this evolution and provides a blueprint for how the Ex Post Facto Clause can be restored to its rightful place as a bulwark against the punitive impulses of modern-day legislators, whether state or federal.
Broadening the Scope of Coverage
Authors: Logan Wayne A.
Published: June 2023

This chapter addresses several provocative potential modifications to the current protective scope of the clause. First, whether the clause should remain applicable to only criminal laws, a central holding of the Supreme Court’s seminal decision in Calder v. Bull (1798); second, whether the clause prohibits only the four kinds of retroactive laws specified in Calder; third, whether the clause only pertains to “laws” enacted by legislatures, not also legal dictates emanating from other branches of government; and fourth, finally, whether doctrine should continue to except laws deemed “procedural” from the coverage of the clause. The respective proposals are discussed as are the potential difficulties that might arise if adopted. The chapter closes with a discussion of the many critically important shifts occurring over time in the nation since the Framing Era, and the role and function of its three branches of government, which together heighten the importance of the modifications suggested.
Prologue
Authors: Lieber Laura S.
Published: June 2023

This chapter delineates key terms, ideas, and parameters employed in the present study. In particular, the concept of “religious performance” is defined and contextualized within the larger categories of theater, oratory, and liturgy. Theatrical performances were crucial and ubiquitous in late antique culture. Approaching hymnody, the communal performance of song in religious settings, through the lens of engaging performance helps modern readers recover and appreciate subtle elements and see “theatricality” as a way of understanding the performer–audience dynamic essential to liturgical ritual. There are three distinct threads integral to performance: the author, who created the work; the performer, who translated the text into a living experience for listeners; and the audience, who offered feedback on its success or failure. The chapter concludes with an outline of the monograph, which examines the cultural context of liturgical poetry; the authors, performers, and congregational audiences; sensory engagement; techniques of character creation; and a sense of how the performance of poetry could have been seen and heard.
Take Your Places: Authors, Actors, and Audiences
Authors: Lieber Laura S.
Published: June 2023

This chapter addresses the ways in which liturgical poet-performers resemble other varieties of performers in late antiquity, specifically actors (mimes and pantomimes) and orators practicing declamation. After establishing similarities, the analysis also considers how a liturgically embedded mode of performance was distinctive from its civil-secular counterparts. Of particular interest are the kinds of relationships the liturgical poet fostered among their listeners and to what effect. These relationships were created through poetic use of techniques familiar from the oratorical handbooks of antiquity (progymnasmata), such as speech-in-character (ethopoeia) and vivid description (ekphrasis, energeia). Also considered are the variety of performers implicit and explicit in the composition of liturgical poems, including not only the speaker but also the community, who are included in performance by means of refrains, understood as akin to acclamation, and other informal participatory practices common in other venues of public performance.
Sounds, Sightlines, and Senses:Bodies and Nonverbal Literacy
Authors: Lieber Laura S.
Published: June 2023

The performer’s physical expressiveness and bodily interpretation and delivery of his material were essential to the experience of oratory, theater, or liturgy, despite the nearly unrecoverable nature of such details from the surviving written materials. In this chapter, literary and material clues that can help expand our understanding of the embodied performance of liturgical poems are teased out: evidence of “embodied” practices and experiences in the small sense of the performer’s physical presence, and in the large sense of the audience’s experience of it in an architectural context. Various means by which the performers of hymns could have tapped into the vast physical repertoires of oratory and theater as a means for shaping how their poems were understood are considered. Similarly, diverse ways in which the built spaces of churches and synagogues were themselves essential components of the embodied experience of these works are examined. Attention to the dynamic interactions between humans and performance space are highlighted, presenting an understanding of built spaces as instruments of sight and sound, played by both performer and congregation
Multicultural Conflicts in Postpolitical Double Ethics
Authors: Jeong Seung-hoon
Published: June 2023

In Part I (“Abjection and Agency”), to lay out the global framing of cinema, Chapter 1 begins with the cinematic motif of ‘falling’ that evokes the historic falls signaling two phases of globalization. It is in this context that the double ethical turn of politics takes place with ‘soft-ethical’ tolerance and ‘hard-ethical’ violence. Chapter 1 delves into this pair in terms of ‘multiculturalism’ and ‘hate,’ reviewing related debates on French society, among others. The half-included, half-excluded people in the suburbs of global metropoles as depicted in La haine are examined as ‘the abject’ in the process of tracing abjection theory, reloaded with the concept of ‘agency.’ The last two sections examine ‘abject agency’ with its ethical potential and limitations, exploring a series of post–La haine French films about multicultural conflicts that have globally circulated in the mainstream market and on the festival circuit.
Law, Divine Violence, and the Sanctity of Life
Authors: Jeong Seung-hoon
Published: June 2023

Opening Part II (“Catastrophe and Revelation”), Chapter 4 further investigates sovereignty through Walter Benjamin’s critique of violence. While ‘lawmaking’ violence founds a biopolitical community, and ‘law-preserving’ violence governs it, they interlock, just as Batman and the police use supralegal and legal violence to restore law in the Dark Knight series. Meanwhile, ‘divine violence’ destroys law revolutionarily, but it often turns into ‘pseudo-divine violence’ that sovereign killers justify for community building without revolution, that is, into lawmaking violence. As The Act of Killing shows, here appears a global ethical dilemma: that no absolute justice works as the basis of life’s sacred value. The chapter then inquires into true divine violence without any god-like sovereign and formulates the sanctity of life as a potential humanity yet to come.
The Time Loop of Catastrophe in the Mind-Game Film
Authors: Jeong Seung-hoon
Published: June 2023

To enrich our study of catastrophe with another film trend, Chapter 7 explores time-travel mind-game films. Among others, Donnie Darko stages postcatastrophic redemption from a traumatic time loop through the abject hero’s agency of retroactive causality and sublime self-sacrifice. Moreover, the catastrophe uncovers the hidden sides of the world, making room for a new beginning with unknown potentialities. Source Code uniquely updates and challenges this redemptive potential. Its protagonist, trapped in a loop of a traumatic counterterrorist mission, never finds an exit from the sovereign system of neoliberal productivity and pathological abjection. Even his sacrifice is ‘undone,’ and he ultimately embraces the perpetual present of ‘redoing’ this ‘undoing’ vis-à-vis repetitive disasters. This reinforced reaffirmation of sovereign agency underlies the transhuman ideology found in many post–Source Code films.
Narrative Formations of Community and Network
Authors: Jeong Seung-hoon
Published: June 2023

If Parts I and II centered on today’s subjectivity under abjection and catastrophe, Parts III and IV shed more light on the nature of global society and ethical alternatives in its postpolitical age. As a transitional bridge in Part III (“Community and Network”), Chapter 8 begins with ‘network films’ to illuminate the mechanisms of community and network and their narrative formations in global cinema from biopolitical, psychoanalytic, and sociological perspectives. Community is characterized here as a closed set of subjects who may be ‘abjected’ from it, whereas a network is an open whole of endless links along which the subject-abject shift constantly occurs in the mode of being ‘on/off’ rather than ‘in/out.’ Building on an array of theories, the chapter maps a variety of films in this context and addresses network narratives as symptomatic of the paradigm shift from community to network with all potentials and limitations in our global age.
Nation, Transnationality, and Global Community as Totalized Network
Authors: Jeong Seung-hoon
Published: June 2023

If Chapter 8 theorizes the community- and network-based narratives by mapping many Western films, Chapter 9 maps a series of globally recognized non-Western films, notably based in the Global South, including Arab, Indian, and Chinese regions: Timbuktu, Taste of Cherry, Life and Nothing More . . ., Roja, Rang de Basanti, Slumdog Millionaire, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Chungking Express, The World, and A Touch of Sin. These films not only represent the community and network principles as perceptively as their Western counterparts but also call for further developments of formerly discussed topics such as law, violence, fundamentalism, multiculturalism, neoliberalism, and abject agency. Moreover, the paradigm shift from community to network is detailed along the frame shift from national to transitional to global in world cinema while enriching our view of the global community as a totalized network.
The Category of Comics
Authors: Pratt Henry John , Shaffert Kurt F.
Published: June 2023

The chapter begins with a list of uncontroversial works that we tend to classify as comics because of their fit into the “standard history” of comics. However, merely being part of the standard history is insufficient for making something a comic, which is shown by attending to the relation between comics and cartoons. Comics and cartoons are distinct categories, but it is legitimate to refer to as “cartooning” a range of common styles that are used for drawing comics. The chapter closes with the intersections between comics and art. In the evaluative and premodern senses of art, most (possibly all) comics turn out to be artworks. But in the sense central to the Western modern tradition, fewer comics are artworks. Although some comics occupy the right kind of context for art—the artworld—the fit of the comics world into that context is uneasy.
The Media of Comics
Authors: Pratt Henry John , Shaffert Kurt F.
Published: June 2023

In this chapter, it is argued that comics has no characteristic set of physical media. However, it is proposed that we construe “media” more broadly in this case, to encompass not only the tools and substances with which creators work, but also the basic constituent elements from which they compose their works. For comics, media typically include pictures, a panel sequence, and (most of the time) words. These produce medium-specific tendencies, which is explained by making the case against strong medium specificity and for a more moderate alternative, on which the media out of which a work is created affect its capacities for representation and expression (as well as being evaluatively significant). It is concluded that the combination of pictures, the panel sequence, and (optionally) words explains the effectiveness of comics when used for education and instruction, as well as in graphic medicine.
Creating an Optimal School Environment
Authors: Key Aidan
Published: June 2023

Chapter 10 covers the foundational elements needed to optimize school environments for the long term. The fundamentals set forth in this chapter are not the result of a “best-guess” approach, but rather they are the articulation of successful steps already proven to facilitate gender-inclusive environments within schools across the country. This chapter points to standalone content that educators can use to guide them in the process. The emphasis in this chapter is on the crucial part that educators play in creating an inclusive environment within their school community, regardless of their specific role.
Other Areas of Gender Separation
Authors: Key Aidan
Published: June 2023

Chapter 14 explores some of the many ways that students are divided by gender in schools and encourages the reader to examine those divisions. What are our identified objectives and is a binary gender division the only way to accomplish them? The areas explored extend beyond the facilities discussions and delve into clubs, activities, testing, overnight trips, health and sex education, and other circumstances. A gender-diverse child is not just a child navigating life in a specific physical body but a child negotiating a social environment that is still largely unprepared for this child’s experience. The interplay between physical attributes and gender identities is examined in this chapter, not with an effort to create a gender-less environment but rather one that is gender-inclusive.
Sports
Authors: Key Aidan
Published: June 2023

Chapter 15 provides a window into the early efforts toward establishing and implementing a state-wide, gender inclusive policy for K–12 students and reports on the years-long successful inclusion of trans and nonbinary athletes. This chapter examines Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 in the United States and its applicability to gender identity differences. It highlights the journey of Washington State as it pioneered the path for K–12 trans student participation. An important standalone resource discussed in this chapter is the “Gender Diverse Inclusivity Youth Sports Toolkit” that guides schools and families.
Sports
Authors: Key Aidan
Published: June 2023

Chapter 16 builds on the content in the previous chapter by delving into many frequently asked questions articulated in the Gender-Diverse Inclusivity Youth Sports Toolkit, including topics about privacy, locker rooms, names and pronouns, and team engagement. Commonly asked questions exploring competition and possible “unfair physical advantage” and the gender-diverse or nonbinary athlete placement on gender binary divided teams are discussed as well. This chapter outlines best practices for all-gender inclusion in sports and offers practical examples of nuanced situations with an emphasis on optimizing inclusion and participation for all.
The Time of the Martyrs
Authors: Ployd Adam
Published: June 2023

This chapter examines the theme of history—both the past and the way we narrate that past—in relation to martyr rhetoric. Continuing the theme of exempla introduced in the previous chapter, it begins by comparing Augustine’s understanding of historical exempla with that of classical Roman historiography as represented by Livy and Sallust. Augustine rejects the narrative of decline from a Republican golden age by arguing that any time period is full of possibilities for virtuous struggle against spiritual evil. The chapter concludes with a look at Augustine’s use of the rhetorical trope of antithesis whereby opposites are juxtaposed for persuasive effect. Antithesis allows him to connect the ugliness of the martyrs’ suffering with the beauty of their virtue as part of God’s providential and salvific ordering of history.
The basic rules governing the work of the cerebral hemispheres
Authors: Yokoyama Olga T.
Published: June 2023

Nervous activity in general consists of two phenomena: excitation and inhibition. These are like two halves of a single nervous activity. I hope it won’t be a terrible offense to say, for explanatory purposes, that this is something like positive and negative electricity. The earliest mention of the existence of inhibition in the nervous system comes from the Weber brothers. It concerned the peripheral nervous system. An obligatory status of inhibition within the central nervous system was established in 1863, 24 years after peripheral inhibition was discovered by the Webers.
The cerebral process of stimuli differentiation
Authors: Yokoyama Olga T.
Published: June 2023

The objective research on the higher nervous activity of animals, the theory of conditional reflexes, has arrived at a concept of two main mechanisms of the central nervous system, namely, the mechanism of temporary connection and the mechanism of the analyzer. This presentation will be about the physiology and functioning of the analyzer. To remind you, what we mean by analyzer is a nerve apparatus that consists of the following parts: a given peripheral end, like eye, ear, etc., its corresponding nerve, and the brain end of this nerve, that is, the group of cells in which this nerve ends. We focus on the very upper tip of this nerve, on that very end of it which is located in the cerebral hemispheres. This apparatus, reasonably enough, was named an analyzer because its function is to decompose the complex external world into its smallest possible elements. Our report today concerns the activity of this analyzer. The activity is being pursued in two directions: on the one hand, we explore the limits of analysis, and on the other, we study the mechanism of analysis. The presentation today is about the second topic, namely, the mechanism.
Conditions for the active and restful states of the cerebral hemispheres
Authors: Yokoyama Olga T.
Published: June 2023

I have entitled my talk “Conditions for the active and restful states of the cerebral hemispheres”. By the restful state I mean the somnolent state, as opposed to the state of alertness. The whole question is obviously enormous in scope, and all I have in mind here is to formulate it in general terms, to problematize it for science. What I will say will only be small fragments of this vast topic, which will eventually emerge in its full enormity ready to be fully worked on. In his classic work “The Reflexes of the Brain”, 50 years ago, Prof. I. M. Sechenov anticipated the gist of the main requirement implied by this topic with astounding intellectual acuity. In a perfect formulation, he said that what is required for the higher compartments of the cerebral hemispheres to be alert is a certain minimal sum of stimuli that reach the brain via the usual receptor surfaces of the animal’s body.
An analysis of certain complex reflexes in the dog
Authors: Yokoyama Olga T.
Published: June 2023

Many years ago I and my coworkers in the laboratory began to do a physiological, a strictly objective analysis of the higher nervous activity of the dog. One of our goals in doing so was to establish and systematize the simplest and most basic activities of the nervous system with which the animal is born and on top of which in the course of its later individual life more complex activities are attached and layered by means of special processes. The inborn basic nervous activities constitute permanent regular reactions of the organism to given external or internal stimulations. These reactions are called reflexes or instincts. Most physiologists don’t see any essential difference between what is called a reflex and what is called an instinct, and generally prefer the term “reflex”, since the idea of determinism comes through in it more distinctly, the relationship between the stimulus and the response, cause and effect is more unequivocal. I, too, will rather use the term “reflex”, while leaving to those who wish to substitute the word “instinct” for it.
The normal activity and general constitution of the cerebral hemispheres
Authors: Yokoyama Olga T.
Published: June 2023

The phenomenon of the so-called animal hypnosis (Kircher’s experimentum mirabile) consists of the following: acting energetically, suppressing all resistance, the animal is put in some unnatural position (flat on the back) and is kept in this position for some period of time, generally not very long. After this, even if you completely remove your hands, the animal continues to lie motionless for tens of minutes and even for hours. Different authors, noting this or that detail of the phenomenon, suggested accordingly different explanations for this experiment. At present, thanks to the systematic research on the normal activity of the cerebrum, I’m in a position to explain the biological meaning of the phenomenon, and to precisely and fully clarify its physiological mechanism, thus unifying all the separate data offered by these authors.
The reply of a physiologist to psychologists
Authors: Yokoyama Olga T.
Published: June 2023

It was before our eyes that the physiology of the higher nervous activity was born. This happened when the physiologist, using the objective method of conditional reflexes, began to systematically study the normal activity of the cortex of the cerebral hemispheres and the adjacent subcortex—the specialized apparatus dealing with relations of the entire organism and the surrounding environment—while establishing the basic rules of this activity. In other words, he began to follow the same principle as that used for studying the digestive apparatus, blood circulation, and so on.
Physiological mechanism of the so-called voluntary movements
Authors: Yokoyama Olga T.
Published: June 2023

First, a few words of introduction about the complex history of our research in the physiology and pathology of the higher nervous activity; the adjectives “higher nervous” will be used synonymously with the adjective “psychic”. Thirty-five years ago I was dealing with digestion, my previous special research topic, and along the way I studied the so-called psychic salivation. Wanting to analyze it further, I soon realized that approaching it from the psychological point of view—trying to guess what the dog feels, thinks, etc.—was a non-starter, no exact knowledge ever came out of it. And it was then that I decided for the first time to treat these psychic phenomena, this “psychic saliva”, as if I were observing it only from outside, as objectively as everything is studied in physiology. Soon I found a collaborator, Tolochinov, and the two of us set to work. Ever since that time, joined by many other co-workers, this work has been going on tirelessly for the last 35 years.
The conditional reflex
Authors: Yokoyama Olga T.
Published: June 2023

Krasnogorski? of the physiological laboratory at the Military-Medical Academy (1911) definitively established the unequivocally afferent nature of the motor cortex by succeeding in forming a conditional food stimulus from the kinesthetic stimulation of the skeletal musculature, in the same way it is formed from all other stimulations reaching the hemispheric cortex via the external receptors, such as the eye, the ear, etc. In other words, he showed that any passive skeletal motion could be made into a signal of a positive unconditional food reflex, into a conditional food stimulus. Iu. M. Konorski? and S. M. Miller, who obtained their basic findings while still in Warsaw and continued working on them in the Physiology Section of the Institute of Experimental Medicine, deserve credit for further findings: they developed kinesthetic stimuli (passive motions) into signals of unconditional negative reflexes (a painful stimulation of the ear and the pouring in of acid), as well as into a conditional inhibitor for both groups of the unconditional reflexes. In this way, a lot of data were collected on one of the most vital topics in physiology, that of the mechanism of voluntary movements, i.e., of movements originating in the hemispheric cortex.
Types of higher nervous activity in relation to neuroses and psychoses, and the physiological mechanism of neurotic and psychotic symptoms
Authors: Yokoyama Olga T.
Published: June 2023

Conditional reflex—this is now a stand-alone physiological term that denotes a certain nervous phenomenon, a detailed study of which has led to the establishment of a new subfield in animal physiology, that of the physiology of the higher nervous activity, a first chapter in the physiology of the highest part of the central nervous system. Experiential and scientific observations have long been accumulating which suggest that a mechanical trauma or an illness of the brain, and specifically of the cerebral hemispheres, causes impairment of the highest, most complex behavior of animals and man that is normally called psychic activity. At the present time hardly any person with medical training would challenge the proposition that our neuroses and psychoses are related to the weakening or disappearance of the normal physiological properties of the brain or to its greater or lesser destruction. If so, the pressing fundamental question arises: What is the connection between animals’ and our own higher activity and the brain, and where and how do we begin to study this activity?
The problem of sleep
Authors: Yokoyama Olga T.
Published: June 2023

In my presentation here, among physicians, I must mainly focus on those aspects of our research that directly relate to medicine. However, before I can go to the questions that directly interest you, I must spend a big chunk of time on questions of pure physiology, since the facts I will need to mention have not yet reached the textbooks. You know that I and my collaborators study the behavior of the higher animals. But what do we mean by the behavior of a person or an animal? What is meant by the behavior of a man or an animal is the finest correlation of the organism with the surrounding environment, understood, needless to say, in the broadest sense of the word. Until the end of the last century, these finest correlations of the organism and the surrounding environment were called the psychic activity of the animal organism, and there was no way to approach them physiologically.
New research on conditional reflexes
Authors: Yokoyama Olga T.
Published: June 2023

Although yesterday something very unusual and rather grave happened to me, and I don’t feel quite in my element, so to speak, I thought it imperative that I come here today. Why? Because I thought that in considering the extremely important scientific problem that sleep is—both everyday sleep and clinical sleep—my word would be of some value. And the reason it would be of some value is because I have been thinking about the problem of sleep—and not just me, but my whole team of co-workers—for the last 35 years as we do our research on dogs’ higher nervous activity.
Psychology as a science
Authors: Yokoyama Olga T.
Published: June 2023

It is my pleasure and honor to present to the attention of the representatives of American science the results of my research. In the course of the last 20 years I have been studying the higher nervous activity, the functions of the cerebral hemispheres of the dog. I study these functions only from a physiological viewpoint, based on strictly physiological premises. I never use any psychological concepts or terminology. At the basis of the nervous activity lie the so-called reflexes or instincts. Instincts are also reflexes, they are just more complex. Instincts, i.e., the innate associations with certain stimuli, correspond to the basic activities of the organism.
Ideology and the Persuasive Use of Presupposition
Authors: Sbisà Marina
Published: June 2023

This paper shows that presupposition can be used to convey new information and to achieve persuasion, particularly in fields pertaining to ideology. Informative presupposition and its persuasive use are illustrated by examples drawn from political news in Italian daily newspapers. The received account of pragmatic presupposition is challenged as unable to yield a plausible explanation of these phenomena. It is argued that pragmatic presupposition and presupposition accommodation should not be given two separate accounts, the one correcting and integrating the other, but presupposition should be recognized as being one and the same phenomenon, whether the presupposed content is already shared or new. It is then proposed to consider presuppositions not as shared assumptions, but as assumptions which ought to be shared. This helps account for the persuasive function that they may serve. Presupposition explicitation is indicated as a viable strategy for contrasting uncritical persuasion.
Intentions from the Other Side
Authors: Sbisà Marina
Published: June 2023

This paper examines three ideas in the philosophy of Paul Grice: non-natural meaning, the Cooperative Principle (CP), and the notion of a person he puts forward in Grice’s theory of value. According to a received interpretation, a speaker’s intentions determine whether his or her utterance has non-natural meaning, what meaning it is, whether the speaker observes the CP, and what his or her utterance implicates. A different reading is proposed here, taking the point of view of the audience as central, as opposed to that of the speaker. In this light, some traditional criticisms of Grice’s definition of non-natural meaning show their limitations and the use of the CP in the analysis of discourse appears to be fully justified. The reading of the CP proposed reveals analogies between being a cooperative participant and being a person, and therefore between Grice’s philosophy of language and his theory of value.
Cognition and Narrativity in Speech Act Sequences
Authors: Sbisà Marina
Published: June 2023

The cognitive and interactional dynamics of speech acts is examined, with particular attention to speech act sequences in conversation. Speech act theory is supplemented with a conception, inspired by narrative semiotics, of an action as a move in a sequence. It is argued that action (as opposed to cognitive representation) plays a major role in determining or validating the illocutionary effects of utterances. But a cognitive factor concerning the way in which we understand actions, that is, the “narrative schema” proposed by A. J. Greimas in the framework of narrative semiotics, is claimed to play an important role in structuring speech act sequences. Two examples are taken from naturally occurring conversations to show how responses manifesting the interlocutor’s uptake contribute to determining the illocutionary effect of previous conversational moves and how the narrative schema can shed light on the sequential relations between speech acts. A case of insisting is especially focused upon.
Two Conceptions of Rationality in Grice’s Theory of Implicature
Authors: Sbisà Marina
Published: June 2023

Conversational implicature is considered by Grice, as well as by post-Gricean and neo-Gricean approaches to linguistic communication as something “rational.” This paper explores why. The exploration shows that two distinct conceptions of rationality, “instrumental” and “argumentative,” co-exist in Grice’s thought, generating two different senses in which conversational implicature may be deemed to be rational. “Instrumental” rationality is based on the efficacy of the Cooperative Principle, on which the retrieval of conversational implicatures depends, in maximizing understanding. “Argumentative” rationality, on the other hand, is based on the calculability of conversational implicature. While post- and neo-Gricean theories focus on instrumental rationality, Grice’s posthumous writings on value and reason pay more attention to argumentative rationality. It is argued that the conception of argumentative rationality to be found there can usefully be applied to conversational implicature and improves our understanding of it.
How to Read Austin
Authors: Sbisà Marina
Published: June 2023

This paper reassesses the contributions to pragmatics made by John L. Austin’s How to Do Things with Words. It discusses some of the assumptions of received reading of the volume, as regards its aim and structure, the role of the performative/constative dichotomy, the conceptions of illocution and perlocution, and the alleged exclusion of non-seriousness. It is argued that the volume is structured as a proof by contradiction of the claim that all speech should be considered as action, that in illocution a major role is played by the conventionality of effects, that perlocution presupposes a conception of action as responsibility, and that Austin had reasons not to deal with non-seriousness in detail, albeit recognizing the issue as relevant to the study of the uses of language. Finally, an attempt is made to expound some of the implications of Austin’s views for research into language use and for philosophy.
Ways to Be Concerned with Gender in Philosophy
Authors: Sbisà Marina
Published: June 2023

Some (non-exhaustive) ways in which philosophy can tackle gender are presented and examined: the critique of gender stereotypes through discourse analysis, the critique of gender essentialism, research on how gender concepts work, and reflection upon how gender issues relate to issues of intersubjective recognition. The first three ways, despite making important contributions to how gender is conceived of, do not seem to provide solid grounds for the rejection of gender discrimination, the refutation of essentialist beliefs about the genders, and the neutralization of the normative import of gender concepts. A fourth way is proposed, which considers gendered subjectivity in the context of the dynamics of intersubjective relations, framing it in a view of intersubjective recognition as a basic process in human life. In this perspective, gender issues constitute a context in which people’s capability and willingness to recognize others as subjects, and specifically as human persons, is tested.
Linguistic Luck and the Publicness of Language
Authors: Verheggen Claudine
Published: June 2023

Donald Davidson wrote, famously: “That meanings are decipherable is not a matter of luck; public availability is a constitutive aspect of language” (1990, 314). Yet Davidson is also famous (or infamous) for maintaining that language possession does not require a speaker to mean by her words what others mean by them. The primary goal of this chapter is to show that these prima facie incompatible claims are in fact complementary; what explains the primacy of idiolects also explains the dispensability of luck. It is argued that the reason meanings are decipherable is not a matter of luck is that meanings can be present only if at least some of them have been deciphered; and meanings do not have to be shared by interlocutors in order to be deciphered. The key to seeing this is to understand properly the conditions Davidson lays down, especially in his writings on triangulation, for the possibility of language possession. Davidson’s account of meaning, it is argued, explains why we do not have to rely on luck in order to understand novel uses of language, such as malapropisms and neologisms. Furthermore, the claim that communication does not rely on luck, given what makes language possession possible, can be used to address the sceptical problem about meaning and rule-following Saul Kripke found in Ludwig Wittgenstein’s later writings.
Fleeing conflict to modern slavery
Authors: Heys Alicia
Published: June 2023

This chapter discusses the findings from the research where people had fled conflict and experienced modern slavery. It includes examples of modern slavery occurring in the country of conflict, after arriving in the UK, or in an interim country. While all those who suffered modern slavery had vastly different experiences, there were two underlying themes that linked them all, regardless of the form of exploitation suffered or the country in which it occurred. These were a limiting of choices and a lack of support. The limiting of choices meant that all the respondents were in situations where they had to make decisions which were all imbued with risk, leaving them to choose the option that appeared to be the lesser evil. These choices were being made in a context which also saw a breakdown in their support networks, meaning that individuals no longer had a robust system of people they trusted and could turn to when they needed support, assistance, or advice.
Fleeing conflict to safety
Authors: Heys Alicia
Published: June 2023

This chapter considers those who have fled conflict and come to the UK but who have not experienced modern slavery, reflecting on whether they remained safe because of UK government policies, or despite them. Two methods are highlighted through which the respondents who did not experience modern slavery were kept safe from it: the support of the government and statutory agencies, and the support of strangers and non-governmental organisations (NGOs). While discussions of the former exemplify ways in which government structures can be successful in identifying and protecting potentially vulnerable people, discussions of the latter relate to situations in which those systems can fail and whereby the respondents remained safe only through interventions by strangers or NGOs.
Rise of evaluation in international organizations
Authors: Jankauskas Vytautas , Eckhard Steffen
Published: June 2023

Chapter 2 provides a historical overview of the progressive emergence of evaluation in international organizations (IOs), defines and outlines its processes, and discusses the extent to which evaluation purposes in the United Nations (UN) have been achieved. The chapter outlines and empirically illustrates the spectacular proliferation of evaluation activities, which has come as a result of at least five interconnected trends from the 1990s onwards: the growing critique of IO performance, the wave of new public management reforms at the national level, norm diffusion and community building at the international level, the increase in extrabudgetary member states’ contributions, and the technological development in information technology and data analysis. The chapter also provides a detailed definition of evaluation, describing a typical evaluation process and discussing existing types of evaluation in IOs. Finally, a discussion on the extent to which evaluation has enhanced organizational learning and fostered IO accountability is provided.