DNA microarrays are perfectly suited for comparing gene expression in different populations of cells. An important application of microarray techniques is identifying genes which are activated by a particular drug of interest. This process will allow biologists to identify therapies targeted to particular diseases, and, eventually, to gain more knowledge about the biological processes in organisms. Such an application is described in this paper. It is focused on diabetes and obesity, which is a genetically heterogeneous disease, meaning that multiple defective (...) genes are responsible for the diseases. The paper is divided in three parts, each dealing with a different problem addressed to our study. First we validate the data from our microarray experiment. We identified significant systematic sources of variability which are potentially issues for other microarray datasets. Second, we applied multiple hypothesis testing to identify differentially expressed genes. We found a set of genes which appear to change in expression level over time in response to a drug treatment. Third, we tried to address the problem of identification of co-expressed genes using cluster analysis. This last problem is still under discussion. (shrink)

Recent research explores the high proliferation of conspiracy theories about COVID-19 vaccination, and their potential effects within digital media environments. By means of a 2 × 2 experimental design (N = 945) conducted in Romania, we explore whether exposure to media messages promoting conspiracy theories about vaccination versus media messages debunking such conspiracy narratives could influence people’s intention to either support or argue against vaccination in front of their friends and family (interpersonal influence). We also analyze the moderation effects of (...) education and critical thinking. Main results show that both conspiracy and counter-conspiracy media content about vaccination negatively affect people’s willingness to discuss the topic with others, which offers support for a silencing effect. Education and critical thinking moderate the main effects, but only to some extent and in certain experimental conditions. (shrink)

Este artículo aborda el papel de las emociones para argumentar en favor del dualismo avanzado por Descartes, siguiendo de cerca el amor en su constitución en el límite del _modus cognoscendi_ y el _modus volendi_. Las dos preguntas siguientes inspiran la reflexión sobre el amor como ejercicio espiritual y emoción constitutiva del (auto)conocimiento: ¿Representa el amor para Descartes una emoción central que recupera su pensamiento cristiano en el límite de su proyecto metafísico y epistemológico, aparentemente exento de cualquier implicación religiosa? (...) ¿Cuál es el relato de Descartes sobre el amor y cómo cambia (emocionalmente) el sentido y la recepción de las pasiones? Las implicaciones cristianas del amor y la devoción a Dios dan acceso a un supuesto proyecto político implícito en la obra de Descartes, basado en la lealtad y la adoración de un soberano ungido en nombre de la fe. (shrink)

My aim in this paper is to investigate what epistemic role, if any, do appeals to representations play in cognitive neuroscience. I suggest that while at present they seem to play something in between a minimal and a substantive explanatory role, there is reason to believe that representations have a substantial contribution to the construction of neuroscientic explanations of cognitive phenomena.

Philosophical accounts of scientific explanation are broadly divided into ontic and epistemic views. This paper explores the idea that the lexical ambiguity of the verb to explain and its nominalisation supports an ontic conception of explanation (Salmon 1989; Craver 2007). I analyse one argument which challenges this strategy by criticising the claim that explanatory talk is lexically ambiguous (Wright, European Journal of Philosophy of Science 2(3), 375–394, 2012). I propose that the linguistic mechanism of transfer of meaning (Nunberg, Journal of (...) Semantics 12(2), 109–132, 1995) provides a better account of the lexical alternations that figure in the systematic polysemy of explanatory talk, and evaluate the implications of this proposal for the debate between ontic and epistemic conceptions of scientific explanation. (shrink)

In the first half of the 2000s, one project to restore the former Danube floodplain was carried out in Belene, a marginal town on the Bulgarian Danube. The aim of this article is to record the practices that were already in place before the interventions on the Danube, as part of a heterogeneous local knowledge that had an alternative vision to the scientific knowledge of experts involved in the restoration project. The data comes from qualitative interviews with locals and experts (...) implicated in this project, as well as ethnographic observations from the fieldwork I carried out in 2013–2014, 2020 and 2022. The conclusion is that without attempting to replace the scientific knowledge, the locals aim to impose, through their local knowledge, a sort of slow ecology that eases the pace of the restoration of the former Danube floodplains. (shrink)

The inconsistent relation between word frequency and free recall performance and the non-monotonic relation found between the two cannot all be explained by current theories. We propose a theoretical framework that can explain all extant results. Based on an ecological psychology analysis of the free recall situation in terms of environmental and informational resources available to the participants, we propose that because participants’ cognitive system has been shaped by their native language, free recall performance is best understood as the end (...) result of relational properties that preexist the experimental situation and of the way the words from the experimental list interact with those. In addition to this, we borrow from predictive coding theory the idea that the brain constantly predicts “what is coming next” so that it is mainly prediction errors that will propagate information forward. Our ecological psychology analysis indicates there will be “prediction errors” because the word frequency distribution in an experimental word list is inevitably different from the particular Zipf’s law distribution of the words in the language that shaped participants’ brains. We further propose the particular distributional discrepancies inherent to a given word list will trigger, as a function of the words that are included in the list, their order, and of the words that are absent from the list, a surprisal signal in the brain, something that is isomorphic to the concept of Bayesian surprise. The precise moment when Bayesian surprise is triggered will determine to what word of the list that Bayesian surprise will be associated with, and the word the Bayesian surprise will be associated with will benefit from it and become more memorable as a direct function of the magnitude of the surprisal. Two experiments are presented that show a proxy of Bayesian surprise explains the free recall performance and that no effect of word frequency is found above and beyond the effect of that proxy variable. We then discuss how our view can account for all data extant in the literature on the effect of word frequency on free recall. (shrink)

The following study presents some considerations on different subjects regarding the field of art, from the art of using sounds in theatre and the importance of the Greek tragedy to the subtle differences between opera and theatre. The sound experiment is to be approached knowing that the audience is, in some way, deaf. The renewal of the sounds, even of those coming forth from the remote ages, is part of the author’s lust for a theater that celebrates real contact and (...) real feeling, with a unique expression of force, of intense colors and sharp energies. The main goal is to discover the actor’s or the opera singer’s work with the sounds, with the vibration of the words in his body, thus investigating the “meanings” of the pure sound. (shrink)

Our current moral relativism has blurred the distinction between true and false and even between right and wrong by accepting multiple truths and subjective truths as valid evaluations of reality. Serban documents that man, in the process of pursuing his goals, tends to manipulate others. Adapting through deception, particularly in crisis, is part of our animal heritage. Our thought processes, protective of our emotions and self-image, are perfectly adapted for the task of lying.

The phenomenological problem of the body (Leib) goes further than its treatment as a theoretical object, insofar as it concerns the meaning and the accomplishment of the phenomenological method itself. Both reduction and intuition, the two major poles of this method, imply in their specificity the reference to an operative corporeity (fungierende Leiblichkeit). The primordial sphere of absolute givenness cannot thus reduce the body proper without sacrificing the very principle that allows delimiting it. But this seems to lead to an (...) unavoidable subjectivation of the phenomenological experience, whose model remains the object of perception (internal or external) and its ideal of intuitivity. In the last part of the paper it is however argued that corporeity is more than the resort of such a subjectivation, appearing also to be, within the framework of expression, the key to intersubjective comprehension. (shrink)

Au § 31 de Sein und Zeit, Heidegger thématise la possibilité comme existential en la distinguant à la fois de l’acception logique du possible et de la contingence de l’étant sous-la-main. Malgré sa force et son rôle central dans l’analytique existentiale du Dasein (dans la mesure où l’existential de la possibilité représente « la déterminité ontologique positive...

Cette étude se propose d’envisager les effets du mouvement husserlien de génétisation de l’ego pur transcendantal sur l’identité de cet ego même. L’habitus, la passivité , l’instinct sont les moments génétiques qu’augmentent la tension entre la facticité et la transcendantalité de l’auto-constitution de l’ego. L’identité semble échapper à tout acte d’identification pour s’enfouir dans dans la vie même de l’ego.

Economic diplomacy is known as a symbol of the European Union and represents its primary function. With the development of science and new ways of communication, the European Union can organize a new approach for its economic diplomacy. The main advantage of the European Union as a soft power is that its economic and diplomatic interests are represented in a manner that is based not on confrontation but economic collaboration with other states. The disadvantage is that this domain is presently (...) not used enough to represent EU interests. This paper describes economic diplomacy in general and the economic diplomacy of the EU in particular. Divided into three parts, the goal of this study is to outline the importance of economic diplomacy, its evolution, the influence of this domain on the creation of previous economic treaties, and its possible future impact on the development of new agreements between the European Union and its neighbor countries. The main methodology used is descriptive, presenting the evolution of this field and the new business strategies that can be used to improve cooperation at the eastern border of the European Union. Therefore we present here the historical background of EU economic diplomacy, its present issues and future challenges. The quantitative data used in this research paper are based on information from EU websites and on the actual events concerning debates about economic diplomacy and its future. The research questions presented herein follow the general evolution of this domain and its mutual influence with EU’s businesses strategies. (shrink)

This study has pursued a microcosmic perspective of the Maximian ethics, the doctrine of love, and friendship and the role of love in the manifestation of virtuosity through ongoing ethical transformation. In Saint Maximus’ view, the internal integrity of the spiritual microcosm is closely connected with the integrity of the interrelations in the new form of politeia. One of the most beautiful ethical themes of this interpretation is the theme of friendship (philia), highlighted by Saint Maximus to demonstrate the integrity (...) of love and, implicitly, of ethical virtue, as an expression of cosmic reconciliation. I have illustrated the interpretation of one of the spiritual models of ethical virtue, namely the spiritual friendship (philia), seen as that state whereby virtue, and also vice, can be surprised directly and can be involved in virtue education. (shrink)

The reassessment of intentionality as “tendency” or “drive,” already important when the intentionality at stake designates the directedness of lived experiences toward a particular object, might be even more crucial when the orientation toward others is concerned. How do drives and affects intermingle within our intersubjective life and fashion our relations to others? The present paper will address this question by focusing on a particular or even primary kind of intersubjectivity: the mother–child relationship, that received a particular, yet still insufficiently (...) noticed attention in early phenomenology. Scheler and Husserl both analyse this relationship, indeed, in terms that imply drive intentionality as well as affective intentionality (that is, for what concerns the mother, maternal instinct and maternal love). In their view, this relation also has a crucial ethical significance, and may even be taken to be paradigmatic for ethical relationships as such. Accordingly, drive intentionality is understood as an instinctive orientation toward others, that love takes up and develops, thus providing an affective and even instinctive ground for ethical behaviour. All this imples the depart from an ethics grounded on the primacy and sufficiency of reason. (shrink)

I. Les voies d’un « chemin a-religieux vers la religion » La publication, en 2014, du tome XLII des Husserliana, dont la troisième section est intitulée « Metaphysik : Monadologie, Teleologie und philosophische Theologie », a rendu accessible un nombre conséquent de textes où s’illustre l’approche husserlienne de la question de Dieu. Sans attendre ce travail d’édition, une littérature importante était toutefois déjà disponible sur le sujet, même en langue française. De la traduction, par Jacq...

Au § 74 de l’Anthropologie d’un point de vue pragmatique, Kant propose une définition remarquable de l’affect comme une « surprise par la sensation (Überraschung durch Empfindung) ». La vie affective serait, dans cette perspective, une vie de surprises. Mais l’on peut sans doute aller encore plus loin et viser à montrer que la surprise ne recouvre et n’exprime pas seulement le surgissement de l’affect, mais aussi, plus fondamentalement, le mouvement de la phénoménalisation. En proposant dans...

La question que nous souhaitons soulever et qui motive les analyses proposées dans cet article est stratifiée, car elle recoupe de fait plusieurs interrogations connexes. La première est celle de savoir si, lorsqu’elle parle de l’événement dans une acception tellement généralisée qu’elle va jusqu’à l’identifier à la notion même de phénomène, la phénoménologie contemporaine conserve encore une référence fondamentale à l’événement historique. L’événement historique détient-il une fonction pro...

The increasing application of network models to interpret biological systems raises a number of important methodological and epistemological questions. What novel insights can network analysis provide in biology? Are network approaches an extension of or in conflict with mechanistic research strategies? When and how can network and mechanistic approaches interact in productive ways? In this paper we address these questions by focusing on how biological networks are represented and analyzed in a diverse class of case studies. Our examples span from (...) the investigation of organizational properties of biological networks using tools from graph theory to the application of dynamical systems theory to understand the behavior of complex biological systems. We show how network approaches support and extend traditional mechanistic strategies but also offer novel strategies for dealing with biological complexity. (shrink)

This volume assesses Friedrich Schleiermacher s contribution to the theory and practice of translation two hundred years after his classic text "On the Different Methods of Translating". It brings together scholars from Philosophy and Translation Studies who offer close readings of Schleiermacher s ideas, placing them in the context of his hermeneutics and examining their relevance today as well as their potential to inspire further work.".

One reason for the popularity of Craver’s mutual manipulability account of constitutive relevance is that it seems to make good sense of the experimental practices and constitutive reasoning in the life sciences. Two recent papers propose a theoretical alternative to in light of several important conceptual objections. Their alternative approach, the no de-coupling account, conceives of constitution as a dependence relation that once postulated provides the best explanation of the impossibility of breaking the common cause coupling of a macro-level mechanism (...) and its micro-level components. This entails an abductive view of constitutive inference. Proponents of the NDC or abductive account recognize that their discussion leaves open a big question concerning the practical dimension of the notion of constitutive relevanssssce: Is it possible to faithfully reconstruct constitutional reasoning in science in terms of a failure to de-couple, via interlevel experiments, phenomena from their mechanistic constituents? Focusing on the field of memory and long-term potential research, this article argues that the abductive account provides a more adequate description of interlevel experiments in neuroscience. We also suggest that the account highlights some significant practical recommendations of how to interpret the findings of interlevel experiments. 1Introduction 2Mutual Manipulability and Constitutive Relevance 2.1Constitutive relevance through an interventionist lens 2.2Mutual manipulability: A methodological application 3Trouble for the Mutual Manipulability Account 4The Abductive Account of Constitution 5The Abductive Account: A Methodological Application 5.1Long-term potential and memory experiments 5.2A comparative summary 6Conclusions. (shrink)