The gene regulation function (GRF) provides an operational description of a promoter behavior as a function of the concentration of one of its transcriptional regulators. Behind this apparently trivial definition lies a central concept in biological control: the GRF provides the input/output relationship of each edge in a transcriptional network, independently from the molecular interactions involved. Here we discuss how existing methods allow direct measurement of the GRF, and how several trade‐offs between scalability and accuracy have hindered its application to (...) relatively large networks. We discuss the theoretical and technical requirements for obtaining the GRF. Based on these requirements, we introduce a simplified and easily scalable method that is able to capture the significant parameters of the GRF. The GRF is able to predict the behavior of a simple genetic circuit, illustrating how addressing the quantitative nature of gene regulation substantially increases our comprehension on the mechanisms of gene control. (shrink)

The concept of the universe is used in physical cosmology differently from the usual meaning of the term, naively considered as the entire reality. Traditionally, thinking about the whole led to logical contradictions. Taking as reference the Kantian antecedent, different contemporary philosophical notions of the universe are analysed in the first part of this paper, including realist and constructivist approaches, as well as a notion of the universe as a physical object. In the second part, the specific notion from the (...) standard physical cosmology is discussed. Although modelling the universe as a physical system provides a specific way to define some global properties, the universe as a whole remains empirically inaccessible. Hence, the discussion about the under-determined global properties depends ultimately on philosophical preferences. Under these circumstances, it is argued that the realist interpretation of such properties becomes problematic because it leads to unstable conclusions. Finally, it is argued that the notion of the universe as conceived in standard cosmology is not necessarily consistent with an approach that considers it to be a physical object. (shrink)

La crítica de Feuerbach concibe el fenómeno religioso como una manifestación efectiva de la autoconciencia humana. Partiendo de este supuesto, el presente artículo tiene como objeto contextualizar, a la luz de un desarrollo histórico, el humanismo propuesto por el autor como siguiente estadio del proceso de autoconocimiento humano. Dicha propuesta implicaría necesariamente el reconocimiento de los mecanismos de enajenación implícitos en la religión y, en definitiva, su superación. Al desembarazarse de las especulaciones propias de la fe, la reducción de la (...) teología a la antropología despojaría a la realidad de todo elemento sobrenatural y supondría un avance significativo en pos de la plenitud humana. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to present a philosophically inspired list of minimal requirements for social agency that may serve as a guideline for social robotics. Such a list does not aim at detailing the cognitive processes behind sociality but at providing an implementation-free characterization of the capacities and skills associated with sociality. We employ the notion of intentional stance as a methodological ground to study intentional agency and extend it into a social stance that takes into account social (...) features of behavior. We discuss the basic requirements of sociality and different ways to understand them, and suggest some potential benefits of understanding them in an instrumentalist way in the context of social robotics. (shrink)

A great variety of medical conditions are subject to the placebo effect. Although there is mounting evidence to suggest that the placebo effect is related to the expectation of clinical benefit, little is still known about the biochemical bases underlying placebo responses. Positron emission tomography studies have recently shown that the placebo effect in Parkinson’s disease, pain, and depression is related to the activation of the limbic circuitry. The observation that placebo administration induces the release of dopamine in the ventral (...) striatum of patients with Parkinson’s disease suggests a link between the placebo effect and reward mechanisms. In addition to Parkinson’s disease, the placebo-reward model may also apply to other disorders. However, the relative contribution of the different neurotransmitters and neuropeptides that are known to be involved in modulating the activity of the limbic system may be disease-specific. Thus, while the placebo-induced clinical benefit observed in Parkinson’s disease would mostly reflect the release of dopamine in the dorsal striatum, the activation of opioid and serotonin pathways could be particularly implicated in mediating placebo responses encountered in pain and depression, respectively. (shrink)

A great variety of medical conditions are subject to the placebo effect. Although there is mounting evidence to suggest that the placebo effect is related to the expectation of clinical benefit, little is still known about the biochemical bases underlying placebo responses. Positron emission tomography studies have recently shown that the placebo effect in Parkinson’s disease, pain, and depression is related to the activation of the limbic circuitry. The observation that placebo administration induces the release of dopamine in the ventral (...) striatum of patients with Parkinson’s disease suggests a link between the placebo effect and reward mechanisms. In addition to Parkinson’s disease, the placebo-reward model may also apply to other disorders. However, the relative contribution of the different neurotransmitters and neuropeptides that are known to be involved in modulating the activity of the limbic system may be disease-specific. Thus, while the placebo-induced clinical benefit observed in Parkinson’s disease would mostly reflect the release of dopamine in the dorsal striatum, the activation of opioid and serotonin pathways could be particularly implicated in mediating placebo responses encountered in pain and depression, respectively. (shrink)

El presente trabajo es un estudio descriptivo y con un enfoque sincrónico que da muestra de las deficiencias de los profesores universitarios al redactar textos científicos. Este estudio tiene como objetivo proponer varias acciones de superación para perfeccionar el manejo del lenguaje y el arte de redactar de los docentes de la Universidad de Ciencias Médicas "Dr. Faustino Pérez Hernández" de la provincia Sancti Spíritus que cursan la octava edición de la Maestría en Ciencias de la Educación de la Universidad (...) de Sancti Spíritus "José Martí Pérez". Para darle cumplimiento a este propósito, se aplicaron varios métodos y técnicas de recolección de datos a una muestra seleccionada al azar de informantes y de sus publicaciones, lo que permitió fundamentar la existencia de varias problemáticas en la redacción científica de dichos profesores y la necesidad de implementar formas organizativas básicas del proceso de educación de posgrado para su inmediata y eficaz aplicación. The present work is a descriptive study grounded in a synchronic approach that identifies the deficiencies of university professors when writing scientific texts. This study aims to propose several measures to improve the use of language and the art of writing of teachers of the " Dr. Faustino Pérez Hernández" University of Medical Sciences in Sancti Spíritus, Cuba who are participating in the eighth edition of the Master's Degree in Educational Sciences program at the "José Martí Pérez" University, also located in Sancti Spiritus. Several methods and techniques of data collection were applied to a random sample of informants and their scientific articles. This allowed for the detection of several problems in scientific writing and the need to implement basic organizational forms of postgraduate education for immediate and effective application. (shrink)

The global market for biologics and biosimilar pharmaceutical products is experiencing rapid expansion, primarily driven by the continuous discovery of new molecules. However, information regarding Latin America’s biological market remains limited.

A la memoria del maestro/filósofo Álvaro B. Márquez-Fernández La necesidad de seguir promoviendo temas “no” vistos de forma positiva por los grupos cerrados del poder, y aquellos que han hecho de la academia grupúsculos tradicionales, sistémicos y funcionales a los intereses de los de arriba, se constituye en una apuesta de ir a contracorriente de esos tipos de historias y asumir un compromiso ético-político en función de las luchas, los sentimientos y las emociones de los grupos de abajo.

Social robotics attempts to build robots able to interact with humans and other robots. Philosophical and scientific research in social cognition can provide social robotics research with models of social cognition to implement those models in mechanic agents. The aim of this paper is twofold: firstly, I present and defend a framework in social cognition known as mindshaping. According to it, human beings are biologically predisposed to learn and teach cultural and rational norms and complex cultural patterns of behavior that (...) enhance social cognition. Secondly, I will highlight how this framework can open new research perspectives in the area of social robotics. (shrink)

A general consensus has been reached in health care organizations that the disclosure of medical errors can be a very powerful way to improve patients and physicians well-being and serves as a core component to high quality health care. This practice strongly encourages transparent communication with patients after medical errors or unanticipated outcomes. However, many countries, such as Brazil, do not have a culture of disclosing harmful errors to patients or standards emphasizing the importance of disclosing, taking responsibility, apologizing, and (...) discussing the prevention of recurrences. Medical error is not discussed or approached during medical school. The stigma of error has a strong connection with value judgments, and emotional support for physicians does not exist. This paper suggests that open communication with the patient is essential. Guidance about error disclosure from health care organizations would be helpful for quality and patient safety and for health care professionals in countries like Brazil. (shrink)

A general consensus has been reached in health care organizations that the disclosure of medical errors can be a very powerful way to improve patients and physicians well-being and serves as a core component to high quality health care. This practice strongly encourages transparent communication with patients after medical errors or unanticipated outcomes. However, many countries, such as Brazil, do not have a culture of disclosing harmful errors to patients or standards emphasizing the importance of disclosing, taking responsibility, apologizing, and (...) discussing the prevention of recurrences. Medical error is not discussed or approached during medical school. The stigma of error has a strong connection with value judgments, and emotional support for physicians does not exist. This paper suggests that open communication with the patient is essential. Guidance about error disclosure from health care organizations would be helpful for quality and patient safety and for health care professionals in countries like Brazil. (shrink)

Desde os anos 1960, muitos educadores populares atuaram no Brasil com “objetivos políticos”, buscando construir uma hegemonia popular alcançada “antes de conquistar o poder governamental”. Pretende-se pesquisar a contribuição dessa síntese fecunda entre educação e política nos movimentos populares para o declínio do regime autoritário e para o fortalecimento de um projeto popular de democracia, que disputou a hegemonia política nos anos 1978-1989, bem como analisar os desdobramentos, limites e possibilidades atuais desse projeto, através da consulta a documentos e fontes (...) bibliográficas, além de entrevistas. (shrink)

This chapter argues that from a particularly weak recombination principle and plausible assumptions about the nature of parthood and location, it follows that it is possible that the mereological structure of the material world and that of space-time fail to correspond to one another in very radical ways. The chapter suggests, moreover, that rejecting the possibility of such failures of correspondence leaves us with a choice of no less unappealing alternatives. It also discusses a few ways in which their possibility (...) is relevant to various important debates in metaphysics. (shrink)

ResumoNo presente artigo procura-se oferecer uma análise e avaliação críticas da posição de João Duns Scotus (ca. 1265 – 1308) a respeito do problema dos universais. Para tanto, é levada a cabo primeiramente uma breve exposição dos argumentos e conceitos centrais dos quais ele se utiliza para defender seu realismo. Em seguida, algumas críticas à posição de Scotus, em especial o cerne da que devemos a Guilherme de Ockham (ca. 1287 – 1347), são apresentadas em detalhes e então respondidas.Palavras-chave: Scotus, (...) Ockham, escolástica, universais, realismo, nominalismo.AbstractThe current paper aims to offer an analysis and evaluation of John Duns Scotus’ (ca. 1265 – 1308) position regarding the problem of universals. In order to do so, a brief exposition of the central arguments and concepts he employs to defend his realism is first carried out. Some criticisms of Scotus’ position, especially the core of the one we owe to William of Ockham (ca. 1287 – 1347), are then presented in detail and answered. (shrink)

I argue that from a very weak recombination principle and plausible assumptions about the nature of parthood and location it follows that it's possible that the mereological structure of the material world and that of spacetime fail to correspond to one another in very radical ways. I defend, moreover, that rejecting the possibility of such failures of correspondence leaves us with a choice of equally radical alternatives. I also discuss a few ways in which their possibility is relevant to various (...) debates in metaphysics. (shrink)

Named entity recognition (NER) is a very relevant task for text information retrieval in natural language processing (NLP) problems. Most recent state-of-the-art NER methods require humans to annotate and provide useful data for model training. However, using human power to identify, circumscribe and label entities manually can be very expensive in terms of time, money, and effort. This paper investigates the use of prompt-based language models (OpenAI’s GPT-3) and weak supervision in the legal domain. We apply both strategies as alternative (...) approaches to the traditional human-based annotation method, relying on computer power instead human effort for labeling, and subsequently compare model performance between computer and human-generated data. We also introduce combinations of all three mentioned methods (prompt-based, weak supervision, and human annotation), aiming to find ways to maintain high model efficiency and low annotation costs. We showed that, despite human labeling still maintaining better overall performance results, the alternative strategies and their combinations presented themselves as valid options, displaying positive results and similar model scores at lower costs. Final results demonstrate preservation of human-trained models scores averaging 74.0% for GPT-3, 95.6% for weak supervision, 90.7% for GPT + weak supervision combination, and 83.9% for GPT + 30% human-labeling combination. (shrink)

Based on a mixed-methods study involving triad tasks and ethnobiological models, we analyze local categories and knowledge of key ethnospecies of fish exploring partial overlaps between artisanal fishers’ and academic knowledge in a fishing community in northeast Brazil. We argue that fishers’ and academic knowledge overlaps may provide common ground for transdisciplinary collaboration, while their partiality requires reflection on epistemological and ontological differences. Here, we show how knowledge of artisanal fishers can complement academic knowledge and bring about tensions that need (...) to be addressed through intercultural dialogue. By integrating a general philosophical framework of partial overlaps with a mixed-methods study on fishers’ knowledge, we show how ethnobiology can contribute to reflective and empirically-grounded transdisciplinary practices. (shrink)

. Modern science is one form of knowledge, demarcated by its time (modernity) and by other “knowledges.” There is a fair amount of clarity as to what does not count as scientific, but there is a twilight zone of knowledges whose scientific status is ambivalent. In this zone the encounter between science and religion takes place. The particular contribution of religion and theology in this encounter is to call for an ethics of knowledge in the epistemological endeavors of science.

This is a theological response to two programmatic essays, “Science and the Future of Theology: Critical Issues,” by Arthur Peacocke and “What Game is Being Played? The Need for Clarity about theRelationship between Scientific and Theological Understanding,” by David A. Pailin. It argues that the two authors, well informed by the recent developments in science, are reduplicating some methodological and epistemological trends common to nineteenth‐century theology. The feasibility of their project should, therefore, be examined on whether they succeed in answering (...) the questions posed to the liberal project that dominated theological and philosophical scholarship in the last century. They are found to be wanting in their inadequate response to three considerations: (1) the persistence of particular manifestations of religion and theology's enduring refusal to accept thoroughly scientific “enlightened” criteria, (2) the epistemological implications of the eschatological character of the Christianmessage, and (3) the trinitarian paradigm for Christian theology and the life of faith. (shrink)

I give shape to a neglected debate in metaphysics, the debate over the ontological priority between individuality and collectivity. I distinguish the debate from more familiar ones in the recent literature and articulate what I call ontological collectivism, the view that collectivity is prior to individuality. I defend the in-principle intelligibility of the view from forceful general objections and argue that not only is it coherent but also of significant interest to the literature: it allows for overlooked alternatives on a (...) variety of central discussions. (shrink)

Este artigo busca mapear as diferenças e transformações que marcam a trajetória da noção leibniziana de substância ao longo dos quase trinta anos que separam suas primeiras e últimas sínteses de ar sistemático; percurso que vai do _Discurso de Metafísica_ à _Monadologia_ e aos _Princípios da Natureza e da Graça _. Poderemos, deste modo, fornecer um quadro de mecanismos conceituais e doutrinários que nos permita melhor compreender o estatuto coesivo de sua obra filosófica, donde encontraremos uma noção ampla mas singular (...) de substância que se define, sobretudo, pela articulação reversiva entre unidade e ação. (shrink)

A country‘s development is bound to be influenced by external occurrences. This article analyses two astronomical examples in which Portuguese nationals used high visibility events in the international scientific community to press their own scientific interests upon the government, whether these interests were, or were not, directly linked to the events themselves.During the 1840s and 1850s the parallax, i.e. the distance, of Groombridge’s star 1830 was hotly debated. The astronomer Hervé Faye‘s suggestion at the Académie des Sciences de Paris that (...) observations be made in Lisbon due to its privileged location and the inadequacy of the Lisbon Navy Observatory to perform them rekindled the efforts to improve the Portuguese Navy observatory.In the 1850s and 1860s other Portuguese higher education institutions also wanted to upgrade their facilities or build new ones. Following accepted traditions, scientific field trips were considered a useful part of the acquisition planning for larger instruments, and therefore an important part of regeneration and renewal projects. The Portuguese scientists were, however, limited in their travels by government imposed budget constraints. The total solar eclipse of 18 July 1860 provided an extra argument to send Portuguese scientists abroad. The government support of the eclipse expedition led to an opportunity to travel through other countries and view their observatories and equipment.In the end, neither the Navy astronomers nor those from the Coimbra Astronomical observatory, the other significant site of Portuguese astronomical research, managed to fulfil their objectives, but the contacts initiated by some of the Portuguese travellers were important for the development of the Portuguese national Meteorological and Magnetic Observatories. (shrink)

This present research seeks to introduce to some of the recent developments in analytical philosophy of religion. Thus, the revival of philosophical theism in scholarly debates in the analytic philosophy ocurring since the 60' will be looked at. As a byproduct of this revival, natural theology makes a comeback with its traditional arguments for the existence of God. We discuss this in light of the controversy on same subject involving theologians Karl Barth and Emil Brunner.

O modelo escolar moderno que foi universalizado durante o século XX, mostrou-se incapacitado de responder todas as demandas sociais que lhe foram impostas. Dessa forma, durante a segunda metade deste século a crise do sistema de ensino formal deu abertura a diversos debates sobre questões que permeiam a ação de educar, como os espaços, os atores e porque não sobre próprio conceito: o que é educar? Sendo assim, neste artigo trago reflexões sobre a educação formal, dentre outras formas, analisando o (...) contexto da educação no Brasil e em Cabo Verde, para compreender de que maneira determinados atores sociais, como os rappers, podem contribuir para a construção de uma educação emancipadora. (shrink)

Multiple-conclusion Hilbert-style systems allow us to finitely axiomatize every logic defined by a finite matrix. Having obtained such axiomatizations for Paraconsistent Weak Kleene and Bochvar–Kleene logics, we modify them by replacing the multiple-conclusion rules with carefully selected single-conclusion ones. In this way we manage to introduce the first finite Hilbert-style single-conclusion axiomatizations for these logics.

In this article I argue against the arbitrariness of the concept of music and for an essentialist and naturalist framework, according to which music is a cross-cultural human phenomenon, defined by relational properties held together by uniform features of human nature. Building on Dickie’s classification of theories of art in natural kind theories and cultural-kind theories, I argue for an enhanced natural-kind theory (which explains the institutional element), and use some developments in social ontology to show the inadequacy of an (...) institutionalist approach to art and music. (shrink)