Kei Yoshida’s recent book Philosophy of the Social Sciences: An Introduction is the first introductory textbook on the philosophy of the social sciences written in Japanese. It concisely expounds on a wide range of topics in the discipline, while its explication of those topics is not impartial or neutral as the author himself says. This paper gives a critical review of the book. The first half of it briefly overviews and assesses the book as a whole. The latter half of (...) the paper reconstructs the gist of the author’s exposition of the naturalism/interpretivism debate and criticizes it. (shrink)

The motor modules during human walking are identified using non-negative matrix factorization from surface electromyography signals. The extraction of motor modules in healthy participants is affected by the change in pre-processing of EMG signals, such as low-pass filters ; however, the effect of different pre-processing methods, such as the number of necessary gait cycles in post-stroke patients with varying steps, remains unknown. We aimed to specify that the number of GCs influenced the motor modules extracted in the consideration of LPFs (...) in post-stroke patients. In total, 10 chronic post-stroke patients walked at a self-selected speed on an overground walkway, while EMG signals were recorded from the eight muscles of paretic lower limb. To verify the number of GCs, five GC conditions were set, namely, 25, 20, 15, 10, and 5 gate cycles with three LPFs. First, the number of modules, variability accounted for, and muscle weightings extracted by the NNMF algorithm were compared between the conditions. Next, a modified NNMF algorithm, in which the activation timing profiles among different GCs were unified, was performed to compare the muscle weightings more robustly between GCs. The number of motor modules was not significantly different, regardless of the GCs. The difference in VAF and muscle weightings in the different GCs decreased with the LPF of 4 Hz. Muscle weightings in 15 GCs or less were significantly different from those in 25 GCs using the modified NNMF. Therefore, we concluded that the variability extracted motor modules by different GCs was suppressed with lower LPFs; however, 20 GCs were needed for more representative extraction of motor modules during walking in post-stroke patients. (shrink)

Extracellular ATP released from necrotic cells in inflamed tissues activates the P2X7 receptor, stimulates the exposure of phosphatidylserine, and causes cell lysis. Recent findings indicated that XK, a paralogue of XKR8 lipid scramblase, forms a complex with VPS13A at the plasma membrane of T cells. Upon engagement by ATP, an unidentified signal(s) from the P2X7 receptor activates the XK‐VPS13A complex to scramble phospholipids, followed by necrotic cell death. P2X7 is expressed highly in CD25+CD4+ T cells but weakly in CD8+ T (...) cells, suggesting a role of this system in the activation of the immune system to prevent infection. On the other hand, a loss‐of‐function mutation in XK or VPS13A causes neuroacanthocytosis, indicating the crucial involvement of XK‐VPS13A‐mediated phospholipid scrambling at plasma membranes in the maintenance of homeostasis in the nervous and red blood cell systems. (shrink)

Aphasia is a language disorder that occurs after a stroke and impairs listening, speaking, reading, writing, and calculation skills. Patients with post-stroke aphasia in Japan are increasing due to population aging and the advancement of medical treatment. Opportunities for adequate speech therapy in chronic stroke are limited due to time constraints. Recent studies have reported that intensive speech therapy for a short period of time or continuous speech therapy using high-tech equipment, including speech applications (apps, can improve aphasia even in (...) the chronic stage. However, its underlying mechanism for improving language function and its effect on other cognitive functions remains unclear. In the present study, we investigated whether intensive speech therapy using a newly developed speech support app could improve aphasia and other cognitive functions in patients with chronic stroke. Furthermore, we examined whether it can alter the brain network related to language and other cortical areas. Thus, we conducted a prospective, single-comparison study to examine the effects of a new speech support app on language and cognitive functions and used resting state functional MRI (rs-fMRI) regions of interest (ROI) to ROI analysis to determine changes in the related brain network. Two patients with chronic stroke participated in this study. They used the independent speech therapy system to perform eight sets of 20 randomly presented words/time (taking approximately 20 min), for 8 consecutive weeks. Their language, higher cognitive functions including attention function, and rs-fMRI, were evaluated before and after the rehabilitation intervention using the speech support app. Both patients had improved pronunciation, daily conversational situations, and attention. The rs-fMRI analysis showed increased functional connectivity of brain regions associated with language and attention related areas. Our results show that intensive speech therapy using this speech support app can improve language and attention functions even in the chronic stage of stroke, and may be a useful tool for patients with aphasia. In the future, we will conduct longitudinal studies with larger numbers of patients, which we hope will continue the trends seen in the current study, and provide even stronger evidence for the usefulness of this new speech support app. (shrink)

Girard introduced phase semantics as a complete set-theoretic semantics of linear logic, and Okada modified phase-semantic completeness proofs to obtain normal-form theorems. On the basis of these works, Okada and Takemura reformulated Girard’s phase semantics so that it became phase semantics for proof-terms, i.e., lambda-terms. They formulated phase semantics for proof-terms of Laird’s dual affine/intuitionistic lambda-calculus and proved the normal-form theorem for Laird’s calculus via a completeness theorem. Their semantics was obtained by an application of computability predicates. In this paper, (...) we first formulate phase semantics for proof-terms of second-order intuitionistic propositional logic by modifying Tait-Girard’s saturated sets method. Next, we prove the completeness theorem with respect to this semantics, which implies a strong normalization theorem. (shrink)

In this paper, I will argue from a historical perspective that Gentzen’s 1935 consistency proof of 1st order Peano Arithmetic PA principally aimed to give a finitist interpretation of implication and this aspect of the 1935 proof emerged as the attempt to cope with the non-finiteness in BHK-interpretation of implication. My argument consists of two parts. First, I will explain that the fundamental idea of the 1935 proof is to show the soundness of PA on some finitist interpretation and Gentzen (...) had attempted to use BHK-interpretation as such an interpretation. It is claimed that he eventually thought that there is a ‘circularity’ which is due to the non-finiteness of BHK-interpretation of implication, so it cannot be used as a finitist interpretation. Secondly, I will argue that the principal aim of the 1935 proof is to give his own finitist interpretation of implication which avoids such a ‘circularity’. Finally, this paper’s conclusion and an open question are presented. (shrink)

Gentzen's three consistency proofs for elementary number theory have a common aim that originates from Hilbert's Program, namely, the aim to justify the application of classical reasoning to quantified propositions in elementary number theory. In addition to this common aim, Gentzen gave a “finitist” interpretation to every number-theoretic proposition with his 1935 and 1936 consistency proofs. In the present paper, we investigate the relationship of this interpretation with intuitionism in terms of the debate between the Hilbert School and the Brouwer (...) School over the significance of consistency proofs. First, we argue that the interpretation had the role of responding to a Brouwer-style objection against the significance of consistency proofs. Second, we propose a way of understanding Gentzen's response to this objection from an intuitionist perspective. (shrink)

Graphical AbstractYeast mitochondria frequently mutate, and some dysfunctional mitochondria out-compete wild-type versions. The retrograde response enables yeast to tolerate dysfunction, but also produces ribosomal DNA circles (ERCs). We propose that ERC accumulation increases expression of the rDNA antisense gene, TAR1, which counteracts spread of respiration-deficient mitochondria in matings with wild-type yeast.

本研究は、史料的裏付けにもとづく、東アジア三地域における気の思想・文化の歴史や内容、特徴を明らかにし、東アジアにおける気の総合的・体系的研究の基礎を構築している。.

Genetic Algorithms(GAs) are effective approximation algorithms which focus on “hopeful area” in the searching process. However, in harder problems, it is often very difficult to maintain a favorable trade-off between exploitation and exploration. All individuals leave the big-valley including the global optimum, and concentrate on another big-valley including a local optimum often. In this paper, we define such a situation on conventional GAs as the “UV-phenomenon”, and suggest UV-structures as hard landscape structures that will cause the UV-phenomenon. We introduce a (...) test function which has explicit UV-structures, and show UV-phenomenon caused by them. Next we analyze Fletcher and Powell function to confirm our hypothesis. Finally we propose a novel framework of GAs which can cope with UV-structures. (shrink)

Sex chromosomes in plants have been known for a century, but only recently have we begun to understand the mechanisms behind sex determination in dioecious plants. Here, we discuss evolution of sex determination, focusing on Silene latifolia, where evolution of separate sexes is consistent with the classic “two mutations” model—a loss of function male sterility mutation and a gain of function gynoecium suppression mutation, which turned an ancestral hermaphroditic population into separate males and females. Interestingly, the gynoecium suppression function in (...) S. latifolia evolved via loss of function in at least two sex‐linked genes and works via gene dosage balance between sex‐linked, and autosomal genes. This system resembles X/A‐ratio‐based sex determination systems in Drosophila and Rumex, and could represent a steppingstone in the evolution of X/A‐ratio‐based sex determination from an active Y system. (shrink)

Something should be done for a better global environment as soon as possible. This paper investigates the direction of management of the global environment and proposes new, concrete ideas for it.

This paper presents a kernel density estimation method by means of real-coded crossovers. Functions of real-coded crossover operators are composed of probabilistic density estimation from parental populations and sampling from estimated models. Real-coded Genetic Algorithm (RCGA) does not explicitly estimate probabilistic distributions, however, probabilistic model estimation is implicitly included in algorithms of real-coded crossovers. Based on this understanding, we exploit the implicit estimation of probabilistic distribution of crossovers as a kernel density estimator. We also propose an application of crossover kernels (...) to Expectation-Maximization estimation (EM) of Gaussian mixtures. (shrink)

We propose a new Real-coded GA(RCGA) using the combination of two crossovers, UNDX-m and EDX. The search region of UNDX-m is biased to the inside area that the population of the RCGA covers. Because of this search bias, the GA using UNDX-m causes stagnation of its search if the cost function has a kind of structure, so called, a ridge structure or a multiple-peak structure. In order to overcome this stagnation, we propose a new crossover EDX, whose search is biased (...) toward extrapolative one. Experimental results show that RCGA with EDX can deal with both ridge-structure function whose dimension reaches more than hundreds and multiple-peak function whose optimum resides at the corner of the search area. (shrink)

In his book Bad Beliefs, Neil Levy defends the engineering of our epistemic environment by removing epistemic pollutions and by nudging people through second-order evidence. Although we agree with his core ideas, in this commentary, we aim at supplementing his approach in light of the participation of the general public in science. In the first part, we argue that the issue of participatory epistemic injustice in the scientific community remains unaddressed in Levy’s discussion and that addressing the issue is equal (...) to removing an epistemic pollution. In the second part, we address the issue of transparency in nudging. Here, we discuss the significance of public engagement in controlling the system of nudges to respect our rational and autonomous choices. (shrink)

科学技術と社会の間に、「新たな関係」を構築する。原発事故、気候工学、ゲノム編集、...現代に生じるさまざまな課題にどう取り組むか?科学技術社会論(STS)は、日ごろあたりまえと考えられている事柄の見え 方を変える力をもつ。イノベーション論や科学技術政策との関係もふくめて問い直す。.

Job-shop Scheduling Problem (JSP) is one of the most difficult benchmark problems. GA approaches often fail searching the global optimum because of the deception UV-structure of JSPs. In this paper, we introduce a novel framework model of GA, Innately Split Model (ISM) which prevents UV-phenomenon, and discuss on its power particularly. Next we analyze the structure of JSPs with the help of the UV-structure hypothesys, and finally we show ISM's excellent performance on JSP.

滝沢教授の古稀を祝して捧げられる論文集。生と死をめぐる法的問題と裁判と法をめぐる諸問題について、学恩を受けた気鋭の学者が執筆。.