Absence Of Facts Research Articles

FACT maintains nucleosomes during transcription and stem cell viability in adult mice.

Preservation of nucleosomes during replication has been extensively studied, while the maintenance of nucleosomes during transcription has gotten less attention. The histone chaperone FACT has a role in transcription elongation, although whether it disassembles or assembles nucleosomes during this process is unclear. To elucidate the function of FACT in mammals, we deleted the Ssrp1 subunit of FACT in adult mice. FACT loss is lethal, possibly due to the loss of the earliest progenitors in bone marrow and intestine, while more differentiated cells are not affected. Using cells isolated from several tissues, we show that FACT loss reduces the viability of stem cells but not of cells differentiated in vitro. FACT depletion increases chromatin accessibility in a transcription-dependent manner in adipose mesenchymal stem cells, indicating that nucleosomes are lost in these cells during transcription in the absence of FACT. We also observe activation of interferon (IFN) signaling and the accumulation of immunocytes in organs sensitive to FACT loss. Our data indicate that FACT maintains chromatin integrity during transcription in mammalian adult stem cells, suggesting that chromatin transcription in stem cells and differentiated cells is different.

Index of destination attractiveness: A quantitative approach for measuring tourism attractiveness

The common perceptions about tourist destinations often hold even in the absence of facts and evidences. This research is an attempt to analyze the ground behind generic perceptions about tourism attractiveness of Kashmir valley. This has been done through primary survey of most important stakeholders; the visiting tourists. The data collected from 370 tourists has been used to deconstruct tourism attractiveness into different parameters and an Index of Destination Attractiveness has been prepared to understand the importance of each parameter to overall attractiveness. The evidences support the common perception that natural attractions play very important role in tourism attractiveness of valley but valley lacks other tourism motivators and falls short on most of the hygiene factors. These findings can be used to increase the attractiveness of valley by working on weak areas and the Index developed for the study can be used as a standard tool for continuous monitoring of attractiveness.

Histone chaperone FACT is essential to overcome replication stress in mammalian cells

The histone chaperone FACT is upregulated during mammary tumorigenesis and necessary for the viability and growth of breast tumor cells. We established that only proliferating tumor cells are sensitive to FACT knockdown, suggesting that FACT functions during DNA replication in tumor cells but not in normal cells. We hypothesized that the basal level of replication stress defines the FACT dependence of cells. Using genetic and chemical tools, we demonstrated that FACT is needed to overcome replication stress. In the absence of FACT during replication stress, the MCM2-7 helicase dissociates from chromatin, resulting in the absence of ssDNA accumulation, RPA binding, and activation of the ATR/CHK1 checkpoint response. Without this response, stalled replication forks are not stabilized, and new origin firing cannot be prevented, leading to the accumulation of DNA damage and cell death. Thus, we propose a novel role for FACT as a factor preventing helicase dissociation from chromatin during replication stress.

COMPREHENSIVE ASSESSMENT OF EXPERT CONCLUSION IN CRIMINAL PROCEEDINGS

The authors of the article on the basis of analysis of scientific sources, forensic practice and legislation considers the conceptual issue of specifying the procedure of comprehensive evaluation of expert’s conclusion in criminal proceedings. There is a distinguishing features of this procedure is the following: the first stage examines the procedural form of the expert’s conclusion, the second – its content, the factual data on the basis of which the presence or absence of facts and circumstances relevant to criminal proceedings and subject to be proved. The criterion for assessing whether an expert’s conclusion is appropriate depends on the content of the conclusions provided to confirm or refute certain circumstances; confirmation of the reliability or inaccuracy of other evidence; the possibility or inability to use other evidence. The condition for the admissibility of an expert’s conclusion is compliance with the procedural form for conducting the examination and drawing up a conclusion, namely: compliance with the requirements of the criminal procedural law; due process registration of the appointment of the examination (decision, determination, petitions of the parties, etc.); the procedural independence and individual responsibility of the expert for the conclusion provided by him/her; immediacy of research; objectivity and reliability of the of the conducted research and conclusion; due documentation of the results of expert’s research. Objective reality indicates that doubts about the reliability of the expert’s conclusion will always be, however, if there are reasonable grounds for the unreliability of the expert’s conclusion, such a conclusion cannot be used in the process of proving. Consequently, there is a need for additional procedural actions aimed at obtaining data that confirm or refute the conclusion of the examination, among such actions is the appointment of a repeated examination. The dominant role in the criterion for assessing the sufficiency of evidence in the expert’s conclusion is played by the subjective conclusion of the initiator of the expert research, his/her inner conviction, which determines a different approach to the assessment of evidence in connection with a different level of knowledge and experience.

FACT mediates cohesin function on chromatin.

Cohesin is a regulator of genome architecture with roles in sister chromatid cohesion and chromosome compaction. The recruitment and mobility of cohesin complexes on DNA is restricted by nucleosomes. Here we show that the role of cohesin in chromosome organisation requires the histone chaperone FACT in S. cerevisiae. We find that FACT interacts directly with cohesin, and is dynamically required for its localization on chromatin. Depletion of FACT in metaphase cells prevents cohesin accumulation at pericentric regions and causes reduced binding on chromosome arms. Using Hi-C, we show that cohesin-dependent TAD (Topological Associated Domains)-like structures in G1 and metaphase chromosomes are reduced in the absence of FACT. Sister chromatid cohesion is intact in FACT-depleted cells, although chromosome segregation failure is observed. Our data shows that FACT contributes to the formation of cohesin-dependent TADs thus uncovering a new role for this complex in nuclear organisation during interphase and mitotic chromosome folding.

The essence and peculiarities of conducting forensic evaluation expertise

Purpose. The aim of the article is determination of peculiarities of forensic evaluation expertise and its classification on the basis of the analysis of existing scientific views and provisions of the current legislation of Ukraine. Methodology of research. The theoretical and methodological basis of the study are the fundamental provisions of forensic evaluation expertise, as well as scientific works of domestic scientists, devoted to the problems of classification and conduct of forensic evaluation expertise in Ukraine. Modern research methods are used to achieve this goal: systematic analysis – in the study of theoretical and methodological foundations of forensic evaluation expertise; abstract and logical – to clarify the essence of the basic concepts, definitions and categories of forensic evaluation expertise. We also used such research methods as a monographic and graphical method of presenting information. Findings. It is determined that in modern conditions forensic expertise is a complex multifaceted activity, which is carried out in expert institutions by relevant highly qualified specialists, which performs multidimensional activity having specific characteristics related to organizational, cognitive, criminal procedural and other parties. It has been established that forensic activities perform an information-providing function to form the conditions for conducting a qualified, objective forensic expertise using scientific methods of cognition. The purpose of the examination is to provide answers to the questions that require special knowledge. The subject matter of the examination is the disputed subject, the subject matter – facts and data related to the question under investigation and which require the expert's judgment. It is determined that the expert's study is formalized by expert opinion, which is evidence of the presence or absence of facts and other data that have been the subject of dispute. The analysis of the legislative framework for the regulation of the national judicial evaluation expertise has been carried out. Originality. The characteristic features of forensic evaluation expertise that determine their authenticity are highlighted in the article, in particular: the legal concept of examination; “expertise” as an extracurricular check; “expertise” as a procedural inquiry and “independent expertise” as a non-procedural study. The classification and methods used in forensic evaluation are substantiated and determined. Various approaches to the classification of expertise in domestic practice have been generalized and highlighted. Practical value. The obtained proposals can be used to improve the current system of forensic evaluation development, which determine the need for organizational, procedural and legal solutions to a number of problematic situations. Key words: evaluation; appraisal activity; expert; expertise; economic expertise; commodity expertise; market value estimation; forensics expertise; forensic expert appraisal.

Evidence-based policy or risk minimisation? The regulation of e-cigarettes in Australia

Theoretical discussions of evidence-based policy place primary importance on facts and values. However, there are situations in which policy must be made in the absence of facts and values. In this article, one such situation is investigated: the emergence of electronic cigarettes. This article reviews attempts to regulate e-cigarettes in Australia, a country with a history of international leadership on regulating tobacco cigarettes. The article concludes that Australian governments have not been following an evidence-based approach and, further, it suggests that these governments are instead content to minimise political risk by either taking no action or by adapting existing legislation.

Time-resolved analysis of transcription through chromatin.

During transcription along nucleosomal DNA, RNA polymerase II (Pol II) pauses at multiple positions and induces formation of multiple intermediates that aid in maintaining proper chromatin structure. To describe the kinetics of this multiple-step reaction, we utilized a computational model-based approach and KinTek Explorer software to analyze the time courses. Here we describe the stepwise protocol for analysis of the kinetics of transcription through a nucleosome that provides the rate constants for each step of this complex process. We also present an example where this time-resolved approach was applied to study the mechanism of histone chaperone FACT action during Pol II transcription through a single nucleosome by comparing the rate constants derived in the presence or in the absence of FACT.

Certain aspects of determining qualities of evidence in the criminal process

W ell-known jurist Spasovich argued that the theory of evidence "is the central node of the entire judicial system, the soul of the entire criminal process, the principles that move it, form its essence, which determine the judiciary, and all the main forms of justice." . According to Art. 84 of the Criminal Procedure Code of Ukraine, evidence in criminal proceedings is defined as factual data obtained in accordance with the procedure provided by this Code, on the basis of which the investigator, prosecutor, investigating judge and court establish the presence or absence of facts and circumstances that are relevant for criminal proceedings and are subject to proof. T he qualities of evidence are its necessary features, provided that certain information acquires the quality of evidence and, conversely, in the absence of at least one of them, information is not of probative value. A legal analysis of their properties, namely belonging, admissibility and authenticity, was carried out. The belonging of the evidence is regarded as having the link of the evidence in content to the subject matter or ancillary the facts that serve to establish it. This quality does not cover all the evidence in general, but only its substantive part - the actual data. Admissibility is another feature of the evidence. According to the Criminal Procedure Code of Ukraine, evidence is admissible if it is received in accordance with the procedure established by the Code. The admissibility of evidence is determined by the legality of its source, conditions and methods of obtaining it. The question of attributing credibility to the number of properties of evidence is perhaps the most difficult. The concept of "authenticity" is associated with such philosophical categories as "truth", "probability", "probability" and others that characterize the degree of knowledge of truth.

Investigaciones literarias en la narrativa mexicana contemporánea Figuras del lector en explorador del olvido

Inspired by the construction of literary detectives in the works of Ricardo Piglia and Roberto Bolaño, several Mexican writers of the beginning of the XXIst century revisit the topic of the investigation and quest of the forgotten writer, the lost text, the ghosts of literature. They repetitively use a structure – the pattern of the research, of following traces, interpret sign – that is no more an exclusive form of the detective novel and is displaced in other contexts. At the center of the quest of the literary detective there is no crime any more but an absence, an emptiness. What triggers the investigations of the characters of those contemporary novels is the absence of facts, an author’s disappearance, a lost manuscripts. The investigator is a reader who talks to the departed and navigates the murky waters of oblivion, this abyss in which all works inevitably end up. This paper will follow some leads drawn by those characters haunted by the threat of emptiness. In Daniel Saldaña París’s first novel, a university professor follows the tracks and traces of an obscure poet and boxer who disappeared in Mexico at the beginning of the past century, inspired by Arthur Cravan, and will be taken up in an absurd epical adventure that will save him from the boredom of his life. Valeria Luiselli tells in Faces in the crowd (Los ingrávidos) the parallel lives of two Mexican exiles in New York: a young translator obsessed by her own invisibility and the ghost of Gilberto Owen. Juan Villoro explores the figure of the witness in a complex novel whose main character, another professor back from exile in Europe, meets the specters of his past and the Mexican historical past, while working on the life and works of the poet López Velarde. Those narratives decipher the shadows of the past in the present in a disturbing way, showing how deeply our reality is inhabited by the violence that made it possible, and imagining the transformation of the characters who look into the well of oblivion into ghosts themselves.

A linguistic model for assessing information system risks

Modern trends in the development of information systems require more appropriate ways of providing information security. The most important step in devising complex information protection is to analyze the risks in the target information system. The study has revealed that the existing methods have several disadvantages such as absence of facts testifying to uncertain security threats and probabilistic approaches that do not account for the complexity of processes occurring in the system. Given the difficulties and shortcomings, the authors have suggested that risks should be analyzed through the theory of fuzzy sets and linguistic variables. The approach includes development of fuzzy models allowing to assess risks as probable or emerging and to evaluate whether the information system assets are satisfactory. The suggested approach can help analyze the risks of an information system, using natural language that is understood by any owner of the assets; it adds experience in security design.

The Histone Chaperones FACT and Spt6 Restrict H2A.Z from Intragenic Locations

H2A.Z is a highly conserved histone variant involved in several key nuclear processes. It is incorporated into promoters by SWR-C-related chromatin remodeling complexes, but whether it is also actively excluded from non-promoter regions is not clear. Here we provide genomic and biochemical evidence that the RNA polymerase II (RNA Pol II) elongation-associated histone chaperones FACT and Spt6 both contribute to restricting H2A.Z from intragenic regions. In the absence of FACT or Spt6, the lack of efficient nucleosome reassembly coupled to pervasive incorporation of H2A.Z by mislocalized SWR-C alters chromatin composition and contributes to cryptic initiation. Therefore, chaperone-mediated H2A.Z confinement is crucial for restricting the chromatin signature of gene promoters that otherwise may license or promote cryptic transcription.

Civil War Eufaula by Mike Bunn (review)

Reviewed by: Civil War Eufaula by Mike Bunn Ben H. Severance Civil War Eufaula. By Mike Bunn. Charleston, SC: The History Press, 2013. 160 pp. $19.99 (paper). ISBN 978-1-62619-244-7. Southern communities experienced the Civil War in manifold ways. Some were the scene of a battle or siege. Others were the victim of an enemy raid or occupation. And then there were those that escaped physical damage, yet were traumatized all the same by a [End Page 128] war that stalked the streets and fields like an unwelcome specter. In his latest work, Civil War Eufaula, Mike Bunn provides a case study of this last wartime phenomenon. Located in Barbour County along the Chattahoochee River in southeast Alabama, Eufaula never felt directly the hard hand of war; nonetheless, the conflict dominated the daily lives of the city’s residents. Although Bunn’s account is more descriptive than analytical, his narrative presents a theme of angst with his characters seemingly holding their breath until the very end. Going into the Civil War, Eufaula played a prominent role in Alabama’s political economy. Annually, thousands of cotton bales passed through the city en route to the Gulf and markets beyond. Plantations and the Peculiar Institution prospered together. Not surprisingly, many of the state’s most vocal fire-eaters lived in Barbour County. Men such as Henry D. Clayton, John G. Shorter, and James L. Pugh, all three of whom went on to serve as important Rebel leaders, formed the Eufaula Regency, a pro-slavery organization that clamored for secession throughout the 1850s. When that moment came in 1861, the people of Eufaula overwhelmingly supported their state’s membership in the new Confederacy. Hundreds of young men from the city and the surrounding area volunteered to fight for the South. When the excitement of the secession crisis passed, however, Eufaula entered a four-year period of uncertain isolation. Drawing on an impressive array of diaries and letters, mostly from the local region’s women, Bunn chronicles the ordeal of a people who anxiously watched their world slowly disintegrate. The city’s commerce suffered steady decline, in no small part because of the Union blockade. Consequently, Eufaulians were forced to become more self-sufficient through rationing and creative home economics. Bunn points out that despite their privation, Eufaulians developed a praiseworthy spirit of shared sacrifice and so avoided much of the social unrest that adversely affected other parts of southern home front. Nevertheless, as Bunn explains, the war’s very distance produced different kinds of distress, namely lack of information and feelings [End Page 129] of insignificance. Residents of Eufaula rarely knew exactly what was going on outside of Barbour County. They constantly worried about loved ones at the front and the course of the war in general, often clutching to rumors in the absence of facts. To be sure, they took pride in their city’s involvement in the Confederacy’s larger war effort, notably its adjunct connection to the armaments factories and prison facilities across the state line in Georgia, but Eufaulians still wondered whether they were a genuine part of the struggle. Bunn stresses that this manifest frustration never gave way to defeatism. In fact, the arrival in the war’s closing days of Union forces under Gen. Benjamin Grierson elicited more curiosity among folks who were seeing the enemy at last, than it did fear and despair. Treating their conquerors with stolid politeness, Eufaulians accepted the war’s end and soon went about the process of Reconstruction. While focusing primarily on the lives of white Eufaulians, Bunn offers some valuable insights into the perspective of local blacks. According to the author, slaves in the area remained steadfast in their obedience to white authority, although they displayed little enthusiasm for the Cause. Blacks discreetly rejoiced whenever they learned of Union victories and greeted Grierson’s troopers as liberators. One segment of Eufaula society neglected in this study, however, is that of the soldier. Over 2,000 men from Barbour County wore the Rebel uniform, yet we learn virtually nothing of their exploits. Some discussion of Eufaula’s martial contribution to Confederate arms seemed in order, particularly since...

The Double Bromodomain Proteins Brd2 and Brd3 Couple Histone Acetylation to Transcription

Posttranslational histone modifications are crucial for the modulation of chromatin structure and regulation of transcription. Bromodomains present in many chromatin-associated proteins recognize acetylated lysines in the unstructured N-terminal regions of histones. Here, we report that the double bromodomain proteins Brd2 and Brd3 associate preferentially in vivo with hyperacetylated chromatin along the entire lengths of transcribed genes. Brd2- and Brd3-associated chromatin is significantly enriched in H4K5, H4K12, and H3K14 acetylation and contains relatively little dimethylated H3K9. Both Brd2 and Brd3 allowed RNA polymerase II to transcribe through nucleosomes in a defined transcription system. Such activity depended on specific histone H4 modifications known to be recognized by the Brd proteins. We also demonstrate that Brd2 has intrinsic histone chaperone activity and is required for transcription of the cyclin D1 gene in vivo. These data identify proteins that render nucleosomes marked by acetylation permissive to the passage of elongating RNA polymerase II.

The role of the physician in the preservation of life

In the modern hospital, and in the present climate of increasing concern over medical costs, it has become fashionable to question the traditional duty of the physician to preserve life. Anguished relatives wait in the wings, expecting and fearing that death will come, and sometimes disappointed that it does not. We are urged to consider the needs of society in determining the type and amount of care we deliver. Ethicists and churchmen indicate their up-to-date orientation by proposing an action of ‘allowing to die’. Grieving relatives, wracked by the strains of a terminal illness, write powerfully about the callousness of physicians who keep patients alive. Honestly distressed doctors sometimes talk of ‘the right to die’ with the fervour of a Rousseau declaring the rights of man, and increasingly take refuge in that Orwellian phrase, ‘Comfort measures only’. It was easier 100 years ago in the era of therapeutic nihilism. Then, for many more patients than at present, the matter seemed to be out of our hands. There were fewer decisions to be made. A gentle manner and a firm, wise countenance did wonders for the physician and the family, if not for the patient. ‘Pneumonia,’ said William Osler, ‘is the friend of the aged.’ Antibiotics were not available; transfusions were given in homeopathic amounts; mechanical ventilation and dialysis machines were unheard of. It was easy to let an old, sick patient die, and even to believe that it was God's will. But it is harder for us. We have become, some feel, too successful in rescuing life. For some perverse reason, God has made dialysis machines, respirators, cardiac catheters, and antibiotics available, and we don't know whether Osler would call them friends of the aged or not. And on this subject, (and in the absence of facts) everyone feels entitled …

Who needs fact when you’ve got narrative? The case of P,C&S vs United Kingdom

Legal arguments and judgements ostensibly rely for their credibility and persuasiveness on the presentation of factual claims and determination of facts through due process. While it should follow that proceedings that are undermined by disregard for facticity and due process should not appear credible or persuasive, in practice this is not always the case. In cases where narratives are not firmly underpinned by factuality and due process a series of narrative techniques and processes can be brought into play to enhance the persuasiveness and credibility of those narratives. These processes include the reliance on a narrative trajectory, the presentation of consensus, drawing on supportive discourses, the privileging of certain narrators and the smoothing over of contradictory evidence. This paper examines these processes in the case of P,C&S vs United Kingdom in which in the absence of fact and due process a local authority and the domestic courts in the UK constructed and confirmed a narrative of a dangerous mother.

On Field’s truth and The absence of fact – comment

In "Deflationist Views of Meaning and Content," one of the papers in his terrifically important and interesting Truth and the Absence of Fact, Hartry Field contrasts two traditions in philosophical accounts of truth, truth conditions and other semantic concepts and properties; reference, meaning and so forth. According to accounts belonging to the first tradition semantic concepts and properties/relations are descriptively and explanatorily "extremely" central in the philosophy of mind and language. Proponents of these accounts hold that truth is a substantive value and goal for belief and assertion, that understanding a language and grasping thoughts consists in knowledge of truth conditions (and other semantic properties and relations), that the difference between factual and nonfactual discourse is explicated in terms of semantic notions, and that semantic properties (and relations) of thoughts and other intentional mental events and states enter into rationalizing and causal explanations of actions. Some go even further and claim that semantic (and intentional) properties as "natural kinds" involved in scientific laws. According to accounts belonging to the second tradition the concept of truth is not explanatorily central, at least not in the ways just mentioned. On these accounts the primary role of the concept of truth (or the predicate "is true") is as a logical device for disquotation and for expressing certain thoughts that would otherwise require infinitely long expressions. Proponents of these accounts think that the explanatory work that the first tradition assigns to semantic concepts can either be accomplished by this logical role (together with other nonsemantic notions like causation, indication, computational

‘Allowing it to speak out of him’: The Heterobiographies of David Malouf, Antonio Tabucchi and Marguerite Yourcenar

Under true pretences We know very little about the life of Ovid, and it is this absence of fact that has made him useful as the central figure of my narrative and allowed me the liberty of free invention, since what I wanted to write was neither historical novel nor biography, but a fiction with its roots in possible event. Thus starts the Afterword of David Malouf’s An Imaginary Life, a novel in which the poet Ovid, exiled from Rome, narrates his experience in the border outpost of Tomis, near the delta of the Danube on the Black Sea. ‘Relegated’ among the Getae at the edges of the Empire and ‘expelled form the confines of [the] Latin tongue’ (IL 26), this glittering and cynical poet undergoes a series of changes or metamorphoses. Initially pining for Rome and its sophisticated, complex language, he learns to overcome his hostility towards the barbarous people and their language, but when he discovers a wild Child that had been raised by the wolves in the forest and captures him with the intention of teaching him to speak and to be human, he soon realises that he himself has to learn from the Child another language, based not on symbolization and arbitrary convention but on an intuitive identity with things, on becoming the things signified in silence. After the death of the village’s elderly chief, which the villagers blame on the child’s demonic powers, the poet and the Child escape north across the frozen river. Ovid’s death is the poet’s final transformation, perhaps a literal metamorphosis like the ones described in Ovid’s great poem. Malouf’s Afterword concludes: My purpose was to make this glib fabulist of ‘the changes’ live out in reality what had been, in his previous existence, merely the occasion for dazzling literary display. (IL 154) Is Malouf’s novel then a fantasy inspired by ‘mere’ literary dazzle or, as ‘a fiction with its roots in possible event’, is it a work that, while not claiming to the factual accuracy of biography or the broad reliability of the historical background of a historical novel, can however still claim to be rooted in verisimilitude, in events that, although not documented, are nevertheless possible, as would be the case with a realist novel, or in Aristotelian poetics? The Afterword thematizes a tension between the desire to anchor the novel to history and the desire to free Ovid from historical necessity. How can Ovid live out ‘in reality’ the metamorphoses to which he is subjected, if metamorphoses are but the occasion for ‘literary display’? This tension also defines, more widely, the large number of novels written as if they were the autobiographies of historical personages, novels that gesture towards historical factuality and literary fictionality, towards ‘truth’ and invention, and exist under the sign of an essential structural displacement (the ‘autobiography’ is written by another) that brings to the foreground structural, narrative, and ethical issues also central to autobiography itself. (First paragraphs of submitted version)

Truth and the Absence of Fact

Book Information Truth and the Absence of Fact. By Hartry Field. Clarendon Press. Oxford. 2001. Pp. xi + 401. Hardback, £45.00, US$65.00. Paperback, £16.99, $24.95.

Review: Truth and the Absence of Fact

1Department of Philosophy, University of Texas, Austin, Austin, TX 78712‐1180, USA Truth and the Absence of Fact Hartry Field Oxford Clarendon Press xv + 401 Hardback£45.00, $65.00 Paperback£16.99, $24.95