Gain-of-Function and Pathogenic Viruses

2021 ◽  
Vol 46 (9) ◽  
pp. 1-2
Author(s):  
Thomas H. Fischer ◽  
Carr J. Smith ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Human Cells ◽  
Gain Of Function ◽  
Pathogenic Viruses ◽  
Controversial Area ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Exact Definition ◽  
Area Of Study ◽  
The Way

Gain of function research is a little known and controversial area of study in virology. Though there is some disagreement in the exact definition of gain of function, the process involves modifying animal viruses to infect human cells for the purposes of advancing the understanding of the way viruses mutate. This article examines the controversy, with particular consideration of the COVID-19 lab leak hypothesis, exploring the danger of creating such modified viruses.

scholarly journals What is a firm? A reply to Jean-Philippe Robé

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-11
Author(s):  
Simon Deakin ◽  
David Gindis ◽  
Geoffrey M. Hodgson
Keyword(s):  
Theory Of The Firm ◽  
Recent Book ◽  
Everyday Language ◽  
Modern Capitalism ◽  
Legal Foundations ◽  
Common Parlance ◽  
The Law ◽  
Business Entities ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Way

Abstract In his recent book on Property, Power and Politics, Jean-Philippe Robé makes a strong case for the need to understand the legal foundations of modern capitalism. He also insists that it is important to distinguish between firms and corporations. We agree. But Robé criticizes our definition of firms in terms of legally recognized capacities on the grounds that it does not take the distinction seriously enough. He argues that firms are not legally recognized as such, as the law only knows corporations. This argument, which is capable of different interpretations, leads to the bizarre result that corporations are not firms. Using etymological and other evidence, we show that firms are treated as legally constituted business entities in both common parlance and legal discourse. The way the law defines firms and corporations, while the product of a discourse which is in many ways distinct from everyday language, has such profound implications for the way firms operate in practice that no institutional theory of the firm worthy of the name can afford to ignore it.

General Schema Theory for Genetic Programming with Subtree-Swapping Crossover: Part II

2003 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 169-206 ◽  
Author(s):  
Riccardo Poli ◽  
Nicholas Freitag McPhee
Keyword(s):  
Genetic Programming ◽  
Schema Theory ◽  
Exact Formulation ◽  
Expected Number ◽  
Size Evolution ◽  
General Schema ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Effective Fitness ◽  
Selection Of ◽  
Exact Definition

This paper is the second part of a two-part paper which introduces a general schema theory for genetic programming (GP) with subtree-swapping crossover (Part I (Poli and McPhee, 2003)). Like other recent GP schema theory results, the theory gives an exact formulation (rather than a lower bound) for the expected number of instances of a schema at the next generation. The theory is based on a Cartesian node reference system, introduced in Part I, and on the notion of a variable-arity hyperschema, introduced here, which generalises previous definitions of a schema. The theory includes two main theorems describing the propagation of GP schemata: a microscopic and a macroscopic schema theorem. The microscopic version is applicable to crossover operators which replace a subtree in one parent with a subtree from the other parent to produce the offspring. Therefore, this theorem is applicable to Koza's GP crossover with and without uniform selection of the crossover points, as well as one-point crossover, size-fair crossover, strongly-typed GP crossover, context-preserving crossover and many others. The macroscopic version is applicable to crossover operators in which the probability of selecting any two crossover points in the parents depends only on the parents' size and shape. In the paper we provide examples, we show how the theory can be specialised to specific crossover operators and we illustrate how it can be used to derive other general results. These include an exact definition of effective fitness and a size-evolution equation for GP with subtree-swapping crossover.

The Place of Interests in Hobbes’s Civil Science

2016 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 105-128
Author(s):  
Elliott Karstadt
Keyword(s):  
The Political ◽  
Crucial Importance ◽  
Political Issue ◽  
Political Ideas ◽  
Form Of Government ◽  
Civil Science ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Way

Many scholars argue that Hobbes’s political ideas do not significantly develop between The Elements of Law (1640) and Leviathan (1651). This article seeks to challenge that assumption by studying the way in which Hobbes’s deployment of the vocabulary of ‘interest’ develops over the course of the 1640s. The article begins by showing that the vocabulary is newly important in Leviathan, before attempting a ‘Hobbesian definition’ of what is meant by the term. We end by looking at the impact that the vocabulary has on two key areas of Hobbes’s philosophy: his theory of counsel and his arguments in favour of monarchy as the best form of government. In both areas, Hobbes’s conception of ‘interests’ is shown to be of crucial importance in lending a new understanding of the political issue under consideration.

scholarly journals ROMANTIC NATIONALISM: HISTORY AND ILLUSION IN IRELAND

2015 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 717-745 ◽  
Author(s):  
DAVID DWAN
Keyword(s):  
Democratic Legitimacy ◽  
Irish Context ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Political Understanding ◽  
The Way

Intellectual historians often invoke “romanticism” to account for the origins and conceptual shape of nationalism. In an Irish context, however, this approach has yielded false genealogies of influence and an impaired political understanding. Cast through a “romantic” prism, nationalism is divorced from its conditions of intelligibility, becoming unhelpfully isolated from questions about sovereignty, democratic legitimacy and the nature of modern citizenship. Thus all too often the irrationality that is made part of the definition of “romantic nationalism” is a function of the way that it is interpreted.

An Examination of Women's Perspectives on Power

1992 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 415-428 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cynthia L. Miller ◽  
A. Gaye Cummins
Keyword(s):  
Women’S Experiences ◽  
Body Of Knowledge ◽  
Women's Experiences ◽  
Growing Body ◽  
Personal Authority ◽  
Women’S Perceptions ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Men's Experience ◽  
The Way

Historically, theoretical and popular conceptions about power have not included or addressed women's experiences. This study adds to the growing body of knowledge about women by examining women's perceptions of and relationship to power. One hundred twenty-five women, ranging in age from 21 to 63, were asked to define and explore power through a variety of structured and open-ended questions. The results showed that women's definition of power differed significantly from their perception of society's definition of power, as well as from the way power has traditionally been conceptualized. More theoretical and empirical attention should be given to understanding the role of personal authority in both women's and men's experience of power.

scholarly journals Trauma and Sacrifice in Divided Communities: The Sacralisation of the Victims of Terrorism in Spain

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 104
Author(s):  
Eliana Alemán ◽  
José Pérez-Agote
Keyword(s):  
Human Life ◽  
Traumatic Events ◽  
The State ◽  
A Posteriori ◽  
Institutional Discourse ◽  
Divided Societies ◽  
The Us ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Public Demonstrations ◽  
The Way

This work aims to show that the sacrificial status of the victims of acts of terrorism, such as the 2004 Madrid train bombings (“11-M”) and ETA (Basque Homeland and Liberty) attacks in Spain, is determined by how it is interpreted by the communities affected and the manner in which it is ritually elaborated a posteriori by society and institutionalised by the state. We also explore the way in which the sacralisation of the victim is used in socially and politically divided societies to establish the limits of the pure and the impure in defining the “Us”, which is a subject of dispute. To demonstrate this, we first describe two traumatic events of particular social and political significance (the case of Miguel Ángel Blanco and the 2004 Madrid train bombings). Secondly, we analyse different manifestations of the institutional discourse regarding victims in Spain, examining their representation in legislation, in public demonstrations by associations of victims of terrorism and in commemorative “performances” staged in Spain. We conclude that in societies such as Spain’s, where there exists a polarisation of the definition of the “Us”, the success of cultural and institutional performances oriented towards reparation of the terrorist trauma is precarious. Consequently, the validity of the post-sacrificial narrative centring on the sacred value of human life is ephemeral and thus fails to displace sacrificial narratives in which particularist definitions of the sacred Us predominate.

De structuur van de besluitvorming in de Raad van de Europese Unie

Res Publica ◽  
1994 ◽  
Vol 36 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 381-398
Author(s):  
Jan Beyers
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
European Union ◽  
Functional Approach ◽  
Council Decision ◽  
Working Groups ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Way

In spite of its importance in European Union decision making, research on the functioning of the Council is scarce (Wessels, 1991). Based on empirical findings this article gives some new insights in the way Council decision making is institutionalized. The first part focusses on the characteristics of Council working groups and the different positions of actors in the decision making network. Our findings confirm the definition of the Council as a highly bureaucratized institution. Interesting is that the diversity of tasks of the different actors(working groups, Coreper, CSA etc.) strengthens the impact of national administrations in Council decision making. The second part explores the reasons for this impact. This article adds to the functional approach, which over-emphasizes the adaptive character of the Council, the perception of the Council as an intergovernmental component in a supranational system.

BASIC CONCEPTS OF YEVHEN MALANIUK’S NATIONAL-PHILOSOPHICAL INTERPRETATION: ESEISTIC DISCOURSE

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Petro Ivanyshyn ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Philosophical Interpretation ◽  
National Science ◽  
Basic Concepts ◽  
Post Colonialism ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
National Approach ◽  
The Way

The purpose of the research is to outline the structure of the main methodological ideas within the frames of interpretive thinking in the essay of the famous Vistnyk’s writer, critic and essayist Yevhen Malaniuk. Considering the purpose and tasks of the studio, an interdisciplinary methodological base, related to the author’s “national approach”, has been worked out. The epistemological potential of national philosophy as a philosophy of national existence, national science as a theory of nation, hermeneutics as a theory and practice of interpretation and post-colonialism as interpretation of cultural phenomena from the standpoint of anti- and post-imperial consciousness are used in the work. The scientific novelty is that on the basis of the previous hermeneutic generalization and definition of national-existential methodology, a propaedeutic outlining of the structure of national-philosophical concepts within the frames of the essayistic interpretation of reality in Ye. Malaniuk is proposed. In the methodological sense, the writer’s essayism is structured by such concepts as nation-centrism, idealism, voluntarism, heroism, and can be considered as one of the variants (close by the experiences of D. Dontsov, Yu. Lypa, M. Mukhyn, etc.) of the Vistnyk’s national-philosophical (national-existential, nationalistic or nation-centric) hermeneutics, that is, the way of understanding, which the author by himself outlined as a “national approach”. The support of Ye. Malaniuk as a culture-philosopher and exegete on the eternal nation-centric values and criteria in his essayistic studies makes his reflections not only historically interesting, but also theoretically productive, classically important for the development of modern Ukrainian hermeneutics and humanities in general.

Approaches to an Exact Definition of Schizo-Affective Psychoses for Research Purposes

1983 ◽  
Vol 16 (2-4) ◽  
pp. 245-253
Author(s):  
Peter Berner ◽  
Christian Simhandl
Keyword(s):  
Affective Psychoses ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Exact Definition

Aristotle’s Definition of Scientific Knowledge (APo 71b 9–12)

2016 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 140-166 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lucas Angioni
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Knowledge ◽  
Posterior Analytics ◽  
Way Of Knowing ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Way

In Posterior Analytics 71b9–12, we find Aristotle’s definition of scientific knowledge. The definiens is taken to have only two informative parts: scientific knowledge must be knowledge of the cause and its object must be necessary. However, there is also a contrast between the definiendum and a sophistic way of knowing, which is marked by the expression “kata sumbebekos”. Not much attention has been paid to this contrast. In this paper, I discuss Aristotle’s definition paying due attention to this contrast and to the way it interacts with the two conditions presented in the definiens. I claim that the “necessity” condition ammounts to explanatory appropriateness of the cause.

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