Big Questions Research Articles

Answering Big Questions in Pain Medicine.

The future of pain medicine is marked by many questions. What can other nations around the world learn from the opioid crisis that is still affecting the United States? The American opioid experience was mischaracterized and wrongly described, and its causes were misdiagnosed from the outset, leading to its mismanagement and the abandonment of many chronic pain patients to their suffering. There are a few new drugs in the analgesic armamentarium. What new targets do we have in pain medicine? There are many breakthroughs, discoveries, and potential new targets that could add to our analgesic prescribing choices. These include sigma receptors, d-amino acid oxidase, endoplasmic reticulum stress receptors, histone deacetylase, and others. Neuromodulation had been used with varying degrees of success for years, but with a simplistic approach based on the gate theory of pain. Despite our familiarity with neuromodulation and spinal cord stimulators, neuromodulation research indicates that the activation of glial cells may activate the immune system and enhance analgesia. Neuromodulation studies have concentrated on how electricity affects neuronal activity rather than how electrical activity could reduce pain. There are still more frontiers in our battle against pain and some promising avenues for treatments. This narrative review will try to summarize what can be done from the perspective of recent technological and pharmacological developments.

Fakenews is much more than fake content

The goal of this article is simple. In the context in which there is more and more talk about the concept of fakenews, there are also efforts to instrumentalize and operationalize it. Rightly so, from media to commerce, from social networks to propaganda, the phenomenon is at the heart of the communication processes we use today, but also at the heart of the problems we face as societies. Unfortunately, fakenews is a much more subtle concept than people think and the big question is whether this phenomenon can be approached legally, without violating the right to opinion and free expression. Our article deals precisely with these subtleties of the concept and puts them in parallel with the normative basis that we now have as a reference. What can and cannot be done in this area ultimately depends on our ability to correctly understand the manifestations of what we call fakenews.

Consciousness beyond the human case

There is growing interest in the relationship been AI and consciousness. Joseph LeDoux and Jonathan Birch thought it would be a good moment to put some of the big questions in this area to some leading experts. The challenge of addressing the questions they raised was taken up by Kristin Andrews, Nicky Clayton, Nathaniel Daw, Chris Frith, Hakwan Lau, Megan Peters, Susan Schneider, Anil Seth, Thomas Suddendorf, and Marie Vanderkerckhoeve.

Scheduled Tribes in Higher Education: Problems & Perspectives

Education is a key indicator of the human development index. The basic need of life is not only food, clothe, and shelter but also education. The tribal community also has a right to life with dignity, and the dignity comes from education. After seven decades of independence, the tribal community is still considered a marginalized section of society, which makes a big question mark on our development system. The tribes are the country's indigenous people, with a large population that contributes 8.6 percent of the nation's population. (Census, 2011). Under the flagship program of the Ministry of Tribal Affairs, the Government of India and the Tribal Welfare Department of different states launched many programs and schemes such as scholarships, fellowships, education at abroad, reservation of sheets, coaching for competitive exams, hostels, etc., for the educational upliftment of the tribal students but still, the high dropout rate, high number of school dropout, low GER in school, collages and other higher education institute found within the tribal community. A smaller number of students enrolled in higher education, and the dropout rate is increasing with increased schooling. Tribal students face many problems in higher education institutes. This paper will discuss the issues and changes of ST students in higher education and the facts and figures of the government policies, programs, and schemes for the higher education of ST students of Madhya Pradesh.

Socio-spatial Infrastructures

This paper explores the social and spatial implications of drinking water infrastructures in rural southern Bihar. Hardiya, a multi-caste and multi-religion village, has a complex social arrangement. This village consists of original households, households resettled due to dam construction, and households resettled due to excessive fluoride contamination in groundwater. Excessive fluoride produces incidences of fluorosis among households, and historically, households have low access to clean drinking water. In response to the drinking water and public health crisis, multiple state, non-state, and transnational institutions intervened in Hardiya to provide safe technologies and infrastructures for clean drinking water. These twenty years of interventions have brought different technologies, institutions, and actors together to supply drinking water. However, these schemes are functioning inadequately on the ground, and access to clean water remains a big question amidst the development of drinking water infrastructures in Hardiya. This paper explores the dialectical relationship between drinking water infrastructures and social spaces, how both shape each other, through which assemblages, and what it renders. It explores the uneven outcomes of this technological intervention across different socio-spatial groups in Hardiya...

The Authority Of The DPR On The Appointment and Dismissal of Constitutional Judges

Based on the 1945 Constitution, 3 institutions are authorized to appoint constitutional judges, including the Representative Council, Supreme Court, and the President. In the event that the dismissal of constitutional judges can be carried out if they have fulfilled the criteria contained in article 23 of Law No.7/2020. Paragraph (4) of the same article confirms that those with authority to dismiss a constitutional judge are the Chief Justices of the Constitutional Court and the President. However, in 2022 there is a polemic, namely the form of intervention against the dismissal of constitutional judges carried out by one of the legislative bodies, namely the Representative Council of Indonesia, which is a big question mark. What kind of authority does the Representative Council have as a legislature over the CC? Is this action justifiable and in accordance with applicable law? This legal research with a normative juridical approach examines secondary data in books, journals, and legislation as a reference. The result of this study indicates that the Representative Council’s over CC as contained in the 1945 Constitutions is very limited in proposing 3 candidates for constitutional judges and has no authority at all to dismiss them. The Representative Counsil’'s decision to dismiss constitutional judges is an act of offending the principle of the independence of the Constitutional Court and has no legal basis.

Approximate reasoning and the ethnomathematics of cooking

Several methods of approximate reasoning are known, and many remain to be discovered across domains. Some are tied to reasoning with uncertainty. The developments over the last fifty years or so in the development of approximate reasoning methods, and their application across multiple STEM domains, suggest that it is necessary to introduce them early in school. Whileefforts towards building the infrastructure for the process have been limited, the bigger question is “What should be introduced?”. If concepts are always approximated in real life, then how should they be done mathematically? If thereal numbers are not always necessary to approximate concepts or even quantities, then how should they be approximated, and what should be taught in schools? Specifically, functional representations of approximate reasoning are notintroduced early. This additionally impedes diversity, ethnomathematical explorations, learning from experience, and through models. The objective of this research is to explain the problem with a focus on the ethnomathematics of cooking, and associated haptic methods. Further, it is argued through the context that of the many approaches to approximate reasoning, intrusive methods are best avoided, and that general rough sets is better suited for modeling such knowledge. Intrusive methods, such as those based on fuzzy or probability theory, are those that indulge in an excess of unjustified numeric assumptions. This builds on earlier work of the present author on modeling approximate reasoning. Her axiomatic approach to granularity are additionally applicable to approximate recipes that possess desired properties. In the contexts of ethnomathematical discourse involving haptic reasoning (as in cooking), it is shown that such an approach can model the essence of context without oversimplifications or outright dismissal of the efforts involved. Further, it has the potential to help in inventing expressive structured languages for the ethnomathematics, and associated model eliciting activities. Distinct facets of three specific contexts are theoretically explored to illustrate aspects of the reasoning, and meta aspects.

Big questions for small animals. Taphonomic analysis of small vertebrates in Matja Kuru 2 (Timor-Leste) during the late pleistocene

The analysis of subsistence practices in the Lesser Sunda Islands (from Bali in the west to Wetar and Timor to the east) provides data to interpret anatomically modern humans’ subsistence adaptation in insular environments. Most previous analyses of small vertebrate assemblages in these islands have focused on sites with evidence of intensive coastal subsistence, where the fish and other marine faunal remains can be assigned unequivocally to human predation. Inland sites, however, contain large quantities of murids, reptiles and bats of varying sizes, which could have been accumulated by different predators.Here we present the first detailed taphonomic analysis of the faunal assemblage recovered from the Pleistocene levels of the inland cave site Matja Kuru 2 (Timor-Leste), dominated by small murids, followed by large and giant murids, reptiles, birds, bats and fish bones. Through the study of skeletal representation, fragmentation and bone surface modifications in the large and giant murids, turtle and fish remains, we aim to determine whether humans were responsible for their presence in the older units of the site, whether they comprise natural deaths, or were prey of non-human predators such as raptors.Our analyses indicate differences in predator actions according to age of prey and taxa, with adult large and giant murids, freshwater turtles and fish showing evidence of human predation. The results presented here contribute significantly to understanding human behaviour in insular environments and deposition dynamics in karstic taphosystems in Island Southeast Asia, as well as providing a framework for future taphonomic studies in the region.

Metode Fatwa MPU (Majelis Permusyawaratan Ulama) Aceh

Fatwa is a process of providing legal certainty to issues that arise which are asked of the mufti. The people's need for fatwas began at the beginning of the development of Islam, which was marked by the presence of the Prophet as the first figure giving fatwas. In Islam, fatwas have an important position, so those who give fatwas must have adequate competence and scientific capacity. As far as research is concerned, no work has been found that specifically examines the fatwa method of the Aceh Ulama Consultative Council, bearing in mind that the fatwa issued by the Aceh Ulama Consultative Assembly has a great influence on Acehnese society. This research was conducted to answer two big questions which became the formulation of the problem, namely how is the MPU Aceh fatwa method and its application? How does the Aceh MPU fatwa method relate to the fatwa on the determination of the Ghair Mu'tabar book? In answering these two big questions, the researcher uses qualitative descriptive research using two approaches, namely library research which will examine the fatwa in depth and the history of the Aceh MPU and its fatwas. The second approach is with field research, to examine the extent to which the effect of the fatwa of the Ghair Mu'tabar book is on society. The theoretical framework used in this study is to use the theory of Islamic scholars and scientists who write about religious fatwas. This research is expected as an effort to understand the process of presenting fatwas that are right on target, so that stability can be created in life, the realization of justice, benefit and prosperity in human life in this world and in the hereafter.

Redefining liberal arts education in the twenty-first century

Redefining liberal arts education in the twenty-first century

Cultural Studies in Interhemispherical Perspective. China, Africa, Asia and Australasia

Thematic assessment is offered with regard to Critical Arts’s incorporation into various Chinese trajectories and networks of cultural and media studies. The predominance of discourse analysis, corpus linguistics, and comparative empirical studies of Western and Chinese media is addressed for the period 2016–2023, as is the recent location of Critical Arts within the global discourse analysis publishing sector, that is mapped in Wang and Sun (2023, “Bibliometric Study on Chinese Discourse (1994-2021).” Critical Arts 1–17). The reasons for this narrow discursive framing are offered in comparison with another trajectory that is evident in the pages of the journal, one that emerges out of Chinese literary studies in conversation with Western theories, Western philosophies and which addresses big epistemological questions rather than questions of comparative “us-them” differences/correspondences or of administrative or linguistic detail. Finally, in addressing the different methodological directions that have been experienced in the journal’s pages, this overview seeks to act as something of a manifesto in returning Critical Arts to a more general cultural and media studies position. Our method of analysis is to symptomatically track and frame the Chinese meta-narratives as published in the journal, to identify and describe the themes that have been of concern to our various Chinese authors and editors, to relate these to cultural studies as inherited from the field’s earlier origins across the world, and to offer a paradigmatic map for future authors through which to conceptually filter their submissions. Our analysis was pre-circulated to the four Critical Arts editorial board China specialists, amongst others, who were invited to contribute to our narrative.

Race and Ethnicity as Foundational Forces in Political Communication: Special Issue Introduction

ABSTRACT Despite the centrality of race and ethnicity in social and political life, they are often absent from studies of the urgent questions in contemporary political communication research. In this essay introducing a special issue focused on “Race and Ethnicity as Foundational Forces in Political Communication,” we examine factors that may contribute to the relative absence of race/ethnicity in the political communication scholarship, including: 1) structural inequalities in the field, 2) contested conceptualizations of race, and 3) the domination of certain epistemological and methodological traditions. We introduce the articles in this issue as a means of moving toward a richer integration of race/ethnicity into the field’s “big questions” and expanding the boundaries of the field itself. In making a case for a more robust conversation about race and ethnicity in political communication, we note crucial areas for self-reflection, debate, and inspiration.

A Short Survey of Matter-Antimatter Evolution in the Primordial Universe

We offer a survey of the matter-antimatter evolution within the primordial Universe. While the origin of the tiny matter-antimatter asymmetry has remained one of the big questions in modern cosmology, antimatter itself has played a large role for much of the Universe’s early history. In our study of the evolution of the Universe we adopt the position of the standard model Lambda-CDM Universe implementing the known baryonic asymmetry. We present the composition of the Universe across its temperature history while emphasizing the epochs where antimatter content is essential to our understanding. Special topics we address include the heavy quarks in quark-gluon plasma (QGP), the creation of matter from QGP, the free-streaming of the neutrinos, the vanishing of the muons, the magnetism in the electron-positron cosmos, and a better understanding of the environment of the Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN) producing the light elements. We suggest but do not explore further that the methods used in exploring the early Universe may also provide new insights in the study of exotic stellar cores, magnetars, as well as gamma-ray burst (GRB) events. We describe future investigations required in pushing known physics to its extremes in the unique laboratory of the matter-antimatter early Universe.

A Clinical Trial to Evaluate Efficacy of Dhatri Lauh in Management of Annadrava Shoola & Parinama Shoola W.s.r. to Peptic Ulcer

Annadrava Shoola and Parinama Shoola can be compared to Gastric Ulcer and Duodenal Ulcer as explained in modern medical science respectively. Annadrava Shoola shows the characteristic features of Pain before, during the digestion and after the digestion, while Parinama Shoola shows feature of pain during the digestion of food. Disorders related to the digestive system are more on the rise due to the faulty diet and a example of one such condition is peptic ulcer. Peptic ulcer disease is an ulcer (mucosal erosion) of the Gastro-Intestinal Tract that is usually acidic and thus extremely painful. Peptic ulcer is a worldwide problem and its prevalence in India is quite high. Recent studies suggest approximately 40% of adults at some times of their lives get affected by peptic ulcer. It is true that modern medical science has grown up considerably, still it has to face a big question mark in so far as some miserable problems are concerned. The problem selected for this work is one among them. Considering the solemnity and incidence of the disease, the present study is aimed to observe Efficacy of Trial Drug Dhatri Lauh in clinically Diagnosed cases of Annadrava Shoola and Parinama Shoola.

The Role of Student Radio Stations in the Higher Education System

Student radio stations are an important part of the media environment in Slovakia. Our research focused on obtaining information on the functioning of these stations, including their legal regulation, training of new members and formal integration into university structures. Student radio stations have several rights and obligations secured by the new Slovak Media Act and can be classified as community radio stations. Students are mostly mentored and apprenticed by senior radio colleagues for a semester or a whole year to hone their communication skills, create scripts and master broadcasting techniques. Student radio stations are under the umbrella of, or are part of, a university, but focus on student topics in content and do not serve as a medium for a given educational institution. The topic for discussion remains whether the student radio stations are fulfilling their legal obligations and whether they are interested in applying for a radio broadcasting licence. The qualitative research carried out in this study shows that the majority of radio stations in Slovakia have advertisements on air, mostly in the form of barter, and the principles regarding commercial media communication are not always followed. A big question mark is the possibility of obtaining a radio broadcasting licence, as the current legislation may be too restrictive for student radio stations. Overall, the research has shown that student radio stations are an important part of the media environment and can provide students with valuable experience and knowledge in media work.

Brain works principle followed by neural information processing: a review of novel brain theory

The way the brain work and its principle of work has long been a big scientific question that scientists have dreamed of solving. However, as is known to all, the brain works at different levels, and the operation at different levels is interactional and mutually coupled. Unfortunately, until now, we still do not know how the nervous system at different levels is interacting and coupling with each other. This review provides some preliminary discussions on how to address these scientific questions, for which we propose a novel theory of the brain called neural energy. Such a theoretical and research approach can couple neural information with neural energy to address the interactions of the nervous system at various levels. Therefore, this review systematically summarizes the neural energy theories and methods proposed by our research in the field of brain science, as well as the internal relationship between mechanics and neural energy theory. Focuses on how to construct a Wang–Zhang (W–Z) neuron model equivalent to Hodgkin–Huxley (H–H) model by using the idea of analytical dynamics. Then, based on this model, we proposed a large-scale neural model and a theoretical framework of global neural coding of the brain in the field of neuroscience. It includes information processing of multiple sensory and perceptual nervous systems such as visual perception, neural mechanism of coupling between default mode network and functional network of brain, memory switching and brain state switching, brain navigation, prediction of new working mechanism of neurons, and interpretation of experimental phenomena that are difficult to be explained by neuroscience. It is proved that the new W–Z neuron model and neural energy theory have unique functions and advantages in neural modeling, neural information processing and methodology. The idea of large-scale neuroscience research with neural energy as the core will provide a potentially powerful research method for promoting the fusion of experimental neuroscience and theoretical neuroscience in the future, and propose a widely accepted brain theory system between experimental neuroscience and theoretical neuroscience. It is of great scientific significance to abandon the shortcomings of reductive and holism research methods in the field of neuroscience, and effectively integrate their respective advantages in methodology.

Rohde’s Theory of Relationship between the Novel and Rhetoric and the Problem of Evaluating the Entire Corpus of Post-Classical Greek Literature

The one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the first publication of Rohde’s monograph on the Greek novel is drawing near, affording a welcome occasion to raise the big question as to what remains of it today, all the more so since the ancient novel, due to his classical work, has become a major area of research. The aforesaid monograph, considered to be one of the greatest scientific achievements of the nineteenth century, can be justifiably used as a litmus test for ascertaining how efficient the methods hitherto employed were or, in other words, whether we are entitled to speak of continuous progress in research or the opposite is true. Finally, the questions raised in the monograph will turn out to be more important than the results obtained by the author, in so far as the latter, based on his unfinished theses, proved to be very harmful to evaluating both the Greek novel and the entire corpus of post-classical Greek literature. In this paper we focus our attention on two major questions raised by the author such as division of the third type of narration in the rhetorical manuals of classical antiquity and the nature of rhetoric, as expressed in the writings of the major exponents of the Second Sophistic so as to be in a position to point to the way out of aporia, with the preliminary remark that we shall not be able to get a full picture of the Greek novel until the two remaining big questions posed by the author, namely the role played by both Tyche and women in the mentioned genre, are fully answered.

Biomass power plants

Biomass power plants

The Oppressed Anthropology of Dalits Identity: Perspective of Evolution and Modern Nepali society

When a person is insulted in the society by tagging one as untouchable, he neither writes news nor agitates that any person has been insulted. Even if he does, he tries to show off by blaming him. So I've tried to raise some issues. In our society, the Dalit caste is viewed with a low and untouchable perversion; it is a rude, adulterous culture. There are also such societies that take it as their tradition and consider it their ethnic ego. Unless we can fight against it, accepting the rule of an alleged class remains the only option. This is not an insult to anyone; it is an anthropological study of how Dalits became and why they are suffering.
 We want to end this perversion as soon as possible. Inter-caste marriage is in fact a legal trap for Dalits. If the girl or boy you like marries for interracial love, the girl's side will bring the girl back. Chandra Kami of Sarke village in Humla has recently been accused of raping a boy on the side of a girl belonging to a big caste. Similarly, Harikesar Sarki, 10, of Dang Ghorahi Municipality, had a love marriage with a 17-year-old girl from Bohora Thar. He also spent a long time in jail after three months, alleging that the girl's side had committed adultery. But the girl was released from jail after being told that we had a love marriage. But the girl forcibly took the girl away, threatening that the sky and the earth could not be reconciled. Many such incidents have been unfair to Dalits. No democratic, revolutionary leader speaks in this regard.
 56-year-old Savitra Kamini of Bajura district recently got citizenship under her old name. Being written in the citizenship certificate as a bitch did not suffer humiliation in the society. Sons and daughters were not even allowed to go to school because they insulted them {August 7, 2079, Kantipur}. It seems necessary to be aware of the situation where this kind of Hindu oppression can lead to violent activities in the society.This is a very popular song sung about the humiliation suffered by the Dalit caste in so-called Hindu upper class society. The singer of this song is Chhewang Lama. I find this song relevant in this research article. This song has raised a big question not only about the plight of Dalits but also about the rituals of Hindu society and our civilize modernity.

Agency of Trauma in Anand's Untouchable and Roy's The God of Small Things

Mulk Raj Anand's Untouchable (1935) and Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things (1997) seek to represent the traumatic sufferings of the scheduled castes in the caste-ridden Indian society. The authors of the novels under study are not from the scheduled-castes the traumatic sufferings of whom they have tried to represent in the novels. When such is the case, the problematic resides in the authenticity of voice in the representation of dalits' traumatic sufferings. The traumatic pain of the downtrodden people the authors enact in the novels evokes the affect of sympathy in the readers. However, the big question in trauma theory is not just the sympathy that the authors evoke in their readers towards the traumatized protagonists but whether the evocation carries the direct voice of the authors and the middle voice. The projection of dalit subjectivity accompanied by the academic vocation also evokes the affect of sympathy, besides the construction of pain in the transaction between language and body. The agency of trauma supports the representation of dalits' trauma only when the authentic voice of the authors accompanies the narrativization of pain. Examined in the light of Dominick LaCapra's notion of the middle-voice and Melissa Gregg's idea of communicating investment, this research has come to the conclusion that Anand's representation of dalits' trauma in Untouchable carries the agency of trauma, which is consistent throughout the novel, whereas; Roy's representation of dalits' trauma remains ambivalent vis-à-vis the consistency of the agency of trauma in the novel The God of Small Things. Therefore, the intensity of the agency of dalits' trauma in Untouchable is more intriguing than in The God of Small Things.