Retinoids play an important role in development and differentiation(1,2). Their effect is mediated through nuclear receptors, RAR (α, β and γ) and RXR (α, β and γ),Abbreviations. RAR: retinoic acid receptor; RXR: retinoid X receptor; T3:thyroid hormone receptor; VD3R: vitamin D3 receptor; PPAR: peroxisome proliferator activated receptor; EcR ecdycsone receptor; USP, ultraspiracle; NGFI‐B: also referred to as nur77a; ELP: embryonal long terminal repeat‐binding protein; FTZ‐F1: positive regulator of the fushi tarazu gene in blastodermstage embryos of Drosophila melanogaster; GR: glucocorticoid receptor; (...) ER: estrogen receptor; RARE, retinoic acid response element; PR: progesterone receptor; DR+x: direct repeat with a spacing of x nucleotides; DBD: DNA‐binding domain; CRABP I and II: cellular retinoic acid binding protein type I and II, respectively; MoMLV: Moloney Murine Leukemia Virus; TBP: TATA‐binding protein; TAF: TBP associated factor. which are members of a distinct subclass (hereafter referred to as type II) of the nuclear receptor superfamily that includes the thyroid hormone receptor (T3R), the vitamin D3 receptor (VD3R) and the peroxisome proliferator activated receptor (PPAR). Type II receptors transactivate through binding sites composed of closely related half‐sites (consensus sequence AGG/T TCA) arranged as direct repeats and, with the possible exception of RXR, do not bind to their cognate binding sites as homodimers but require RXR for high affinity binding. RXR thus provides a link between biologically distinct ligand induced pathways and is a potential target for cross‐regulation. In addition, RAR can utilize alternative routes to enhance transcription initiation mediated through transcriptional co‐activators which are expressed in a cell‐type specific manner. (shrink)

About one third of patients with epilepsy have seizures refractory to the medical treatment. Electrical stimulation mapping is the gold standard for the identification of “eloquent” areas prior to resection of epileptogenic tissue. However, it is time-consuming and may cause undesired side effects. Broadband gamma activity recorded with extraoperative electrocorticography during cognitive tasks may be an alternative to ESM but until now has not proven of definitive clinical value. Considering their role in cognition, the alpha and beta bands could further (...) improve the identification of eloquent cortex. We compared gamma, alpha and beta activity, and their combinations for the identification of eloquent cortical areas defined by ESM. Ten patients with intractable focal epilepsy participated in a delayed-match-to-sample task, where syllable sounds were compared to visually presented letters. We used a generalized linear model approach to find the optimal weighting of each band for predicting ESM-defined categories and estimated the diagnostic ability by calculating the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve. Gamma activity increased more in eloquent than in non-eloquent areas, whereas alpha and beta power decreased more in eloquent areas. Diagnostic ability of each band was close to 0.7 for all bands but depended on multiple factors including the time period of the cognitive task, the location of the electrodes and the patient’s degree of attention to the stimulus. We show that diagnostic ability can be increased by 3–5% by combining gamma and alpha and by 7.5–11% when gamma and beta were combined. We then show how ECoG power modulation from cognitive testing can be used to map the probability of eloquence in individual patients and how this probability map can be used in clinical settings to optimize ESM planning. We conclude that the combination of gamma and beta power modulation during cognitive testing can contribute to the identification of eloquent areas prior to ESM in patients with refractory focal epilepsy. (shrink)

This paper explores the role and resolution of disagreements between physicians and their diagnostic AI-based decision support systems. With an ever-growing number of applications for these independently operating diagnostic tools, it becomes less and less clear what a physician ought to do in case their diagnosis is in faultless conflict with the results of the DSS. The consequences of such uncertainty can ultimately lead to effects detrimental to the intended purpose of such machines, e.g. by shifting the burden of proof (...) towards a physician. Thus, we require normative clarity for integrating these machines without affecting established, trusted, and relied upon workflows. In reconstructing different causes of conflicts between physicians and their AI-based tools—inspired by the approach of “meaningful human control” over autonomous systems and the challenges to resolve them—we will delineate normative conditions for “meaningful disagreements”. These incorporate the potential of DSS to take on more tasks and outline how the moral responsibility of a physician can be preserved in an increasingly automated clinical work environment. (shrink)

Since the late nineties there has been an increased interested in probabilistic logic learning, an area within AI that combines machine learning with logic-based knowledge representation and uncertainty reasoning. Several different formalisms for combining first-order logic with probability reasoning have been proposed, and it has been studied how models in these formalisms can be automatically learned from data. -/- This talk starts with a brief introduction to probabilistic logic learning, after which we will focus on a relatively new formalism known (...) as CP-logic. CP-logic stands for “causal probabilistic logic”. It is a knowledge representation formalism that allows us to write down rules that indicate that a certain combination of conditions may cause certain effects with a particular probability (e.g., tossing a coin may cause a result of heads or tails, each with 50% probability). Besides the fact that this formalism is interesting for knowledge representation in itself, it also offers interesting opportunities from the machine learning point of view. Indeed, given the semantics of these CP-logic programs, learning them from data amounts to extracting probabilistic causal influences from data. We will discuss recent research on learning CP-logic programs, including: algorithms for learning them; how they relate to graphical models; and applications of learning CP-logic programs. (shrink)

In the debate about actions in virtual environments two interdependent types of question have been pondered: What is a person doing who acts in a virtual environment? Second, can virtual actions be evaluated morally? These questions have been discussed using examples from morally dubious computer games, which seem to revel in atrocities. The examples were introduced using the terminology of “virtual murder” “virtual rape” and “virtual pedophilia”. The terminological choice had a lasting impact on the debate, on the way action (...) types are assigned and on how moral evaluation is supposed to be conducted. However, this terminology and its theoretical consequences, while sometimes resulting in correct results, lead to absurd results when applied across the board. It will be suggested that these absurd consequences can be avoided by a different answer to the question what people in virtual worlds are doing. Alleged virtual actions are first and foremost the creation and modification of data-structures and the resulting output in computer hardware. Such modifications of data structure and imagery can be performed with different intentions, purposes and styles, which will influence the type and moral evaluation of a user’s actions. This reinterpretation allows for a more complex analysis of the moral reasons for praiseworthiness or blameworthiness of actions in virtual environments. This analysis takes not just harm and effects on character into account but the peculiar ways in which speech acts can be morally wrong: e.g. agitatory, deceptive, bullshitting. (shrink)

Utility functions often lack additive separability, presenting an obstacle for decision theoretic axiomatizations. We address this challenge by providing a representation theorem for utility functions of quasi-separable preferences of the form $$u(x,y,z)=f(x,z) + g(y,z)$$ on subsets of topological product spaces. These functions are additively separable only when holding z fixed but are cardinally comparable for different values of z. We then generalize the result to spaces with more than three dimensions and provide applications to belief elicitation, inequity aversion, intertemporal choice, (...) and rank-dependent utility. (shrink)

Against the backdrop of recent scholarship related to Deuteronomy 26:5–11, the influential hypothesis formulated by Gerhard von Rad that this verse entails a ‘small historical creed’ will be re-evaluated. In addition to recent Old Testament scholarship, attention will be paid to migrant theory and a rereading of 26:5–11. It will be suggested that this ‘creed’ addressed the identity concerns of returning migrants or exiles from Babylon, as well as the peasant farmers who remained behind in Palestine. Thus, the creed is (...) not understood as an early cultic starting point of a theological tradition, but as a later synthesising framework that responded to theological challenges and tensions prevalent in Persian Yehud. (shrink)

In order to refute the widely held belief that the game known as ‘Newcomb's paradox’ is physically nonsensical and impossible to imagine (e.g. because it involves backward causation), I tell a story in which the game is realized in a classical, deterministic universe in a physically plausible way. The predictor is a collection of beings which are by many orders of magnitude smaller than the player and which can, with their exquisite measurement techniques, observe the particles in the player's body (...) so accurately that they can predict his choice (in much the same way as we can predict the motion of celestial bodies). I argue that the player, by choosing whether to take only one box or both boxes, influences whether or not, in the past, the predictor put a million pounds into the second box. Yet, I establish that no causal paradox can arise in this set-up. (shrink)

Linguistic category learning has been shown to be highly sensitive to linear order, and depending on the task, differentially sensitive to the information provided by preceding category markers (premarkers, e.g., gendered articles) or succeeding category markers (postmarkers, e.g., gendered suffixes). Given that numerous systems for marking grammatical categories exist in natural languages, it follows that a better understanding of these findings can shed light on the factors underlying this diversity. In two discriminative learning simulations and an artificial language learning experiment, (...) we identify two factors that modulate linear order effects in linguistic category learning: category structure and the level of abstraction in a category hierarchy. Regarding category structure, we find that postmarking brings an advantage for learning category diagnostic stimulus dimensions, an effect not present when categories are non‐confusable. Regarding levels of abstraction, we find that premarking of super‐ordinate categories (e.g., noun class) facilitates learning of subordinate categories (e.g., nouns). We present detailed simulations using a plausible candidate mechanism for the observed effects, along with a comprehensive analysis of linear order effects within an expectation‐based account of learning. Our findings indicate that linguistic category learning is differentially guided by pre‐ and postmarking, and that the influence of each is modulated by the specific characteristics of a given category system. (shrink)

The volume focusses on the ethical dimensions of the technological scaffold embedding human thought and action, which has been brought to attention of the cognitive sciences by situated cognition theories. There is a broad spectrum of technologies co-realising or enabling and enhancing human cognition and action, which vary in the degree of bodily integration, interactivity, adaptation processes, of reliance and indispensability etc. This technological scaffold of human cognition and action evolves rapidly. Some changes are continuous, some are eruptive. Technologies that (...) use machine learning e.g. could represent a qualitative leap in the technological scaffolding of human cognition and actions. The ethical consequences of applying situated cognition theories to practical cases had yet to find adequate attention and are elucidated in this volume. (shrink)

Providing healthcare services frequently involves cognitively demanding tasks, including diagnoses and analyses as well as complex decisions about treatments and therapy. From a global perspective, ethically significant inequalities exist between regions where the expert knowledge required for these tasks is scarce or abundant. One possible strategy to diminish such inequalities and increase healthcare opportunities in expert-scarce settings is to provide healthcare solutions involving digital technologies that do not necessarily require the presence of a human expert, e.g., in the form of (...) artificial intelligent decision-support systems (AI-DSS). Such algorithmic decision-making, however, is mostly developed in resource- and expert-abundant settings to support healthcare experts in their work. As a practical consequence, the normative standards and requirements for such algorithmic decision-making in healthcare require the technology to be at least as explainable as the decisions made by the experts themselves. The goal of providing healthcare in settings where resources and expertise are scarce might come with a normative pull to lower the normative standards of using digital technologies in order to provide at least some healthcare in the first place. We scrutinize this tendency to lower standards in particular settings from a normative perspective, distinguish between different types of absolute and relative, local and global standards of explainability, and conclude by defending an ambitious and practicable standard of local relative explainability. (shrink)

Linguistic category learning has been shown to be highly sensitive to linear order, and depending on the task, differentially sensitive to the information provided by preceding category markers (premarkers, e.g., gendered articles) or succeeding category markers (postmarkers, e.g., gendered suffixes). Given that numerous systems for marking grammatical categories exist in natural languages, it follows that a better understanding of these findings can shed light on the factors underlying this diversity. In two discriminative learning simulations and an artificial language learning experiment, (...) we identify two factors that modulate linear order effects in linguistic category learning: category structure and the level of abstraction in a category hierarchy. Regarding category structure, we find that postmarking brings an advantage for learning category diagnostic stimulus dimensions, an effect not present when categories are non‐confusable. Regarding levels of abstraction, we find that premarking of super‐ordinate categories (e.g., noun class) facilitates learning of subordinate categories (e.g., nouns). We present detailed simulations using a plausible candidate mechanism for the observed effects, along with a comprehensive analysis of linear order effects within an expectation‐based account of learning. Our findings indicate that linguistic category learning is differentially guided by pre‐ and postmarking, and that the influence of each is modulated by the specific characteristics of a given category system. (shrink)

"Ist der Patient ein Mensch?" is a collection of articles. Its central topic is the question if the object of modern medicine is still the human being or if just organs and tissues are treated by medical doctors? The drawing on the book cover shows a lung instead of a human patient lying in a hospital bed. The approaches to this topic are diverse and surprising. E.g. the surgeon Ankersmit argues that it is impossible for him to see the human (...) being in the body lying on the operation table because then he would be unable to perform his work professionally. Other texts stretch the topic of the book to the questions whether medical doctors are human beings or if the human being of today is a "patient" in the sense of a current crisis of anthropology. Also questions like patient autonomy and communication with patients are tackled. The book is edited by Helmut Hofbauer, Lukas Kaelin, Hendrik Jan Ankersmit & Walter Feigl. Authors are: Lukas Kaelin, Gabriele Baumann, Hendrik Jan Ankersmit, Renate Heinz, Claus G. Krenn, Alexander Lapin, Sigrid Pilz, Margot Ham-Rubisch, Petra Herzeg, Klaus Spiess, Lucie Strecker, Paul Ferstl, Helmut Hofbauer & Peter Kampits. (shrink)

What happens at the end of a clinical trial for an investigational neural implant? It may be surprising to learn how difficult it is to answer this question. While new trials are initiated with increasing regularity, relatively little consensus exists on how best to conduct them, and even less on how to ethically end them. The landscape of recent neural implant trials demonstrates wide variability of what happens to research participants after an neural implant trial ends. Some former research participants (...) continue to receive support for their devices (e.g., battery and component replacements, software updates, etc.). Others, when safe, have their neural implants removed through surgical explantation. Still others continue to live with a deactivated neural implant embedded in their body. In the United States, there are no uniform requirements to provide services, of any kind, after an neural implant study ends, and other nations are similarly facing this challenge. The existence of a post-trial gap in an expanding neural implant research ecosystem invites obvious questions: What is owed to neural implant research participants post-trial, and why has providing it been so difficult to accomplish in practice? To take a step forward on this difficult issue, we assembled one group of stakeholders – researchers funded for neuroethics grants by the National Institutes of Health – to explore possible starting points on one topic: ethical guidance for post-trial care of research participants in neural implant trials. Based on shared concerns discussed in the expert workshop the current paper is a call to action. It reports the key areas of convergence from the meeting and highlights important next steps towards developing much needed guidance. (shrink)

Reduced forms such as the pronoun he provide little information about their intended meaning compared to more elaborate descriptions such as the lead singer of Coldplay. Listeners must therefore use contextual information to recover their meaning. Across languages, there appears to be a trade‐off between the informativity of a form and the prominence of its referent. For example, Italian adults generally interpret informationally empty null pronouns as in the sentence Corre (meaning “He/She/It runs”) as referring to the most prominent referent (...) in the discourse, and more informative overt pronouns (e.g., lui in Lui corre, “He runs”) as referring to less prominent referents. Although children acquiring Italian are known to experience difficulties interpreting pronouns, it is unclear how they acquire this division of pragmatic labor between null and overt subject pronouns, and how this relates to the development of their cognitive capacities. Here we show that cognitive development can account for the general interpretation patterns displayed by Italian‐speaking children and adults. Using experimental studies and computational simulations in a framework modeling bounded‐rational behavior, we argue that null pronoun interpretation is influenced by working memory capacity and thus appears to depend on discourse context, whereas overt pronoun interpretation is influenced by processing speed, suggesting that listeners must reason about the speaker's choices. Our results demonstrate that cognitive capacities may constrain the acquisition of linguistic forms and their meanings in various ways. The novel predictions generated by the computational simulations point out several directions for future research. (shrink)

This course aims to assess the principle of compositionality (CP) and how it fits with recent developments in natural language interpretation, especially those that stress the role of context. We first try to lay down a suitable formal framework for CP, reviewing proposals by Montague, Janssen, Hendriks, Kracht and Hodges. Versions of CP of varying strength are formulated, and some recent results on the existence of compositional semantics and the (much debated) issue of the empirical import of CP discussed. Complementing (...) CP is the notion of context which, under modern (e.g. "dynamic") conceptions, not only conditions interpretation but also is transformed during interpretation. The tension between CP and context is examined relative to problems of anaphora, presupposition, idioms and ambiguity. A somewhat un-orthodox computational application of CP is suggested, emphasizing co-inductive aspects of interpretation that cut across the divide between model-theoretic and proof-theoretic approaches, and between procedural and declarative styles. (shrink)

Reformational philosophy rests on the ideas of nineteenth-century educator, church leader, and politician Abraham Kuyper, and it emerged in the early twentieth century among Reformed Protestant thinkers in the Netherlands. Combining comprehensive criticisms of Western philosophy with robust proposals for a just society, it calls on members of religious communities to transform harmful cultural practices, social institutions, and societal structures. Well known for his work in aesthetics and critical theory, Lambert Zuidervaart is a leading figure in contemporary reformational philosophy. In (...) Religion, Truth, and Social Transformation – the first of two volumes of original essays from the past thirty years – he forges new interpretations of art, politics, rationality, religion, science, and truth. In dialogue with modern and contemporary philosophers, among them Immanuel Kant, G.F.H Hegel, Martin Heidegger, Theodor Adorno, Jürgen Habermas, and reformational thinkers such as Herman Dooyeweerd, Dirk Vollenhoven, and Hendrik Hart, Zuidervaart explains and expands on reformational philosophy’s central themes. This interdisciplinary collection offers a normative critique of societal evil, a holistic and pluralist conception of truth, and a call for both religion and science to serve the common good. Illustrating the connections between philosophy, religion, and culture, and daring to think outside the box, Religion, Truth, and Social Transformation gives a voice to hope in a climate of despair. (shrink)

This article aims to explicate the concept of emotional sharing against the background of interactive and situated approaches to affectivity, and to contextualize emotional sharing within the broader context of emotion research. It brings together research on situated affectivity with the debate on collective emotion. Emotional sharing is defined via four requirements and distinguished from other phenomena in the broad field of collective emotion, especially from mechanisms of emotional convergence and other forms of affective we-experience. The paper makes use of (...) the recently proposed concepts of affective scaffolding and affective arrangement to explore how emotional sharing is always enacted in sociorelational dynamics and embedded in socio-material contexts which enable, shape, and modulate the unfolding of emotional sharing and regulate who is likely to participate. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Fine examination of our accumulated cultural knowledge is especially helpful in studying the emotions, which are only tangentially accessible to experimental manipulation. Here I use the six properties of emotions that Elster has summarized to suggest how they show a need for changes in the science of motivation. The apparent adaptive purpose of emotions lies in their action tendencies – what they add to the cold calculation of advantage. Subjectively they stand out by their intrusiveness, the duration of which (...) often has a half-life. Emotions each have a valence, which suggests that they are not only motivating but also motivated, an implication that requires re-examination of how negativity works. Emotions are also experienced as ‘triggered’, but are so malleable that triggering cannot mean a simple conditioned reflexiveness. Emotions are not only triggered – or motivated – by beliefs, but motivate beliefs in turn, and can be fed back on themselves in a ‘wildfire’ phenomenon. These feedback effects are further evidence against emotions being reflexive. With regard to the three great revolutions, I argue that enthusiasm differs from romantic love only in its object, and urgency comes from the dysphoria of using response suppression for self-control. I can add nothing further to Elster’s masterful history. (shrink)

A finales de septiembre de 2019, se publica Folie, langage, littèrature que se suma a la anterior colección de textos inéditos de Foucault en torno a la literatura que en 2013 aparecía bajo el título de La gran extranjera. Este nuevo volumen presenta textos inéditos donde los editores, nos dice Judith Revel, han seleccionado textos que vienen a incomodar la lectura canónica del Foucault interesado por la literatura. Y, efectivamente, la selección es especialmente interesante para los estudiosos de su obra (...) porque sitúa su ruptura con un concepto escapista de la literatura en torno a 1967. Particularmente llamativo es el texto «L’extralinguistique et la littérature», donde Foucault propone un análisis de los distintos modos en que lo extralingüístico, como afuera de la obra, se relaciona con ella y viceversa. A partir de esta propuesta, nuestro objetivo es analizar una política de la forma literaria que en Foucault se propone desde una materialidad negativa, a la vez que performativa. (shrink)

As robots increasingly find their way into the various spheres of human life, the question of religious robots becomes relevant. This article examines from a Catholic-Christian theological perspective whether robots can be used for religious purposes, and it asks how this may be done and what issues are important to consider. In addition, the study contributes to research on the theological engagement with robotics. It is argued that the use of religious robotics dif- fers significantly depending on the specific religion. (...) From a Christian perspective, the use of religious robotics is fundamentally plausible, especially since a wide variety of entities are used as religious media or representations of the divine. However, the use of religious robotics will ultimately be decided by different concepts (e.g. human, life), religious doctrines and culturally transmitted and subjective attitudes. This article places particular focus on the design of reli- gious robotics. It becomes clear that the reasons for accepting religious technology do not lie in the technology itself but in phenomenological preferences and various time- and culture-de- pendent ideas and concepts. It is likely that as robotics rapidly advances and our relationship with it develops, the use of religious robots also will change. Puzio, Anna: Robot Theology: On Theological Engagement with Robotics and Religious Robots. In: Puzio, Anna/Kunkel, Nicole/Klinge, Hendrik (Hg.): Alexa, wie hältst du es mit der Religion? Theologische Zugänge zu Technik und Künstlicher Intelligenz (Theologie und KI 1). Darmstadt: wbg 2023, S. 95–113. DOI: 10.53186/1030373. (shrink)

Jelson Roberto de Oliveira, autor de “Compreender Hans Jonas”, é graduado em Filosofia pela Universidade Federal do Paraná, com especialização em Sociologia Política e mestrado em História da Filosofia Moderna e Contemporânea pela mesma universidade. Atualmente é professor da pós-graduação em Filosofia na PUC-PR, e coordenador do GT Hans Jonas, da Anpof, que reúne vários pesquisadores de nível nacional na área. Ética para a civilização tecnológica e A solidão como virtude moral em Nietzsche são alguns dos diversos títulos que compõem (...) o acervo de obras do autor. (shrink)

There is a long history to the debate of nationalism. The Indian nationalism has emerged after a long people’s movement the truth to which is often denied by a range of forces who have ideological leanings towards the ideology of Hindutwa. This paper is an attempt to revisit the historical context in which Indian nationalism has emerged and evaluate it in reference to the contemporary time. It emphasizes on the relation between the nation and the state with special reference to (...) its impact on the universities. Further, the paper suggests that in order to uphold the idea of university and nation, an inclusive and secular idea of nation has to be espoused. Lastly, it suggests that a university needs to foster a non sectarian approach and broaden its vision for an internationalist outlook. (shrink)

© 2016 RCNi Ltd. All rights reserved. Background Conceptual frameworks are important to ensure a clear underpinning research philosophy. Further, the use of conceptual frameworks can support structured research processes. Aim To present a partnership model for a reflective narrative for researcher and participant. Discussion This paper positions the underpinning philosophical framework of the model in social constructionism and narrative enquiry. The model has five stages - study design, invitation to share a research space and partnership, a metaphorical research space, (...) building a community story, and reading the community story to others. Core principles of the partnership model are continual reflection by the researcher, potential reflections by participants, reciprocal sharing, and partnership in research. Conclusion A 'trajectory of self' for both participants and researchers can be enhanced within reflective partnerships. Implications for practice This model can be applied to studies that use narrative enquiry and are seeking a humanistic approach with participant engagement. (shrink)