Conceptual Breakthroughs Research Articles

Nickel/Iridium Metallaphotoredox Catalysis for Allylic C-H Bond Arylation of N-Allyl Heterocycles.

Despite conceptual breakthroughs in dual photoredox- and nickel-catalyzed arylation of radicals, the approach remains largely limited to localized C-centered radicals. Here, we extend it to allylic radicals, focusing on N-allyl heterocycles. Using [Ir(dF(CF3)ppy)2(dtbbpy)]PF6 and NiCl2(dtbbpy) under visible light, we achieve regioselective γ-amino radical arylation, yielding enamines in good yields. In some cases, in situ photoisomerization produces the Z isomer, influenced by the substrate and the triplet state energy of the photocatalyst.

Making Mars: The Emergence of a Resources-Territory Areopolitics

ABSTRACT Human activities are territorialising and commodifying Mars. Areopolitically reexploring the planet is a pressing necessity as outer space actors have increasingly been operating there for several decades, intensifying thus the interaction. This paper argues that territory and resources are being made on the basis of a novel theoretical framework in the involved sub-fields of geography that it formalises, utilises, and advances: the resources-state-territory nexus and, more specifically, the resources-territory sub-nexus. The unprecedented application of a nexus thinking on areopolitics allows to analyse both sectors simultaneously. This study is informed by the Foucauldian apparatus and is grounded in the conceptual breakthroughs of object-oriented ontology. The discourses and materials, actually conceivable as objects, of the Martian endeavour are that way critically investigated to uncover the dynamics of the nexus. It results that areometrics not only creates territory but influences the creation of resources and, parallelly, that commodity frontiers not only create resources but influence the creation of territory. This interdependence is the core of the sub-nexus. Besides, the exclusive robotic mediation of the relationship with the Red Planet calls for an examination of its implications. Pointing out probe-power further brings to light the bonds between the territorial sub-elements, terrain and land, and resources through the stress it exercises on these interconnections. It also strengthens territory by creating a bridge between its constitutive sub-elements. Hence, the terrain- and land-resources bonds prove to be more substantial than the main sub-nexus, which renders the questions of territory and resources even more inseparable.

:Conceptual Breakthroughs in the Evolutionary Biology of Aging. Conceptual Breakthroughs Series

:<i>Conceptual Breakthroughs in the Evolutionary Biology of Aging. Conceptual Breakthroughs Series</i>

Conceptual breakthroughs of the long noncoding RNA functional system and its endogenous regulatory role in the cancerous regime.

Long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) derived from noncoding regions in the human genome were once regarded as junks with no biological significance, but recent studies have shown that these molecules are highly functional, prompting an explosion of studies on their biology. However, these recent efforts have only begun to recognize the biological significance of a small fraction (< 1%) of the lncRNAs. The basic concept of these lncRNA functions remains controversial. This controversy arises primarily from conventional biased observations based on limited datasets. Fortunately, emerging big data provides a promising path to circumvent conventional bias to understand an unbiased big picture of lncRNA biology and advance the fundamental principles of lncRNA biology. This review focuses on big data studies that break through the critical concepts of the lncRNA functional system and its endogenous regulatory roles in all cancers. lncRNAs have unique functional systems distinct from proteins, such as transcriptional initiation and regulation, and they abundantly interact with mitochondria and consume less energy. lncRNAs, rather than proteins as traditionally thought, function as the most critical endogenous regulators of all cancers. lncRNAs regulate the cancer regulatory regime by governing the endogenous regulatory network of all cancers. This is accomplished by dominating the regulatory network module and serving as a key hub and top inducer. These critical conceptual breakthroughs lay a blueprint for a comprehensive functional picture of the human genome. They also lay a blueprint for combating human diseases that are regulated by lncRNAs.

The diverse landscape of memory T-cell heterogeneity.

The diverse landscape of memory T-cell heterogeneity.

Wearable ultrasound bioelectronics for healthcare monitoring

Wearable ultrasound bioelectronics for healthcare monitoring

Topical Problems of Transition to the “Green” Economy in Construction, Industry and Transport: Legal Aspect

Introduction . With regard to Russia the most important task in transition to the "green" economy is first of all the development of a consistent strategy for moving towards this goal. Therefore, initially it is necessary to determine the mainstreams for applying the economic, legal, organisational and other efforts. The transition to the "green" economy in itself does not imply any conceptual breakthroughs (unlike, for example, the concept of sustainable development). This means that all the main spheres of human activity, including industry, construction, transport, etc., should undergo “greening”. The aim is to investigate the contemporary legal regulation on the environmental protection in industry, transport and construction, to identify the problems and prospects of the legislation improvement for determining the directions of these spheres further “greening” and clarifying Russia’s strategy of transition to the "green" economy. The objectives of the study are: to consider the specifics of Russia's transit to the "green" economy standards within three spheres of human activity, to identify the contemporary legal regulation for this process. Materials and Methods. In the article the generally accepted in Russia methods of scientific knowledge are used: general scientific methods (dialectical method) and specific scientific methods (analysis, synthesis, concrete historical, logical methods, etc.). Results . The main result of the study is systematisation of the contemporary environmental problems in industry, transport and construction, discussion of the mainstreams in “greening” these spheres as one of the conditions of Russia's transit to the standards of "green" economy. Discussion and Conclusions. The article is useful for scientific and educational activity, for improvement of the Russian environmental legislation. The conclusions made in the work indicate on the need to “green” all sectors of economy in order to ensure the transit of Russia to the "green" economy, however at present the implementation of the new environmental requirements into different sectors is going at a different pace. With this regard, there arises the acute need to find the legislative response to the modern threats to the environmental safety, which requires the development of "green" technologies in industry, construction and transport.

Literature and Medicine 2000-2007.

Literature and Medicine 2000–2007 Maura Spiegel (bio) and Rita Charon (bio) Our co-editorial retrospect on Literature and Medicine from 2000 to 2007 exposes major conceptual and disciplinary breakthroughs that, at the time, were of course invisible. We can see now how significant a role L&M played in the emergence and development of the genre of illness narratives, which by 2022 has emerged as one of the towering developments not only in literature and medicine but in the humanities and the public discourse altogether. After publishing her 1993 authoritative Reconstructing Illness: Studies in Pathography, Anne Hunsaker Hawkins became an L&M Associate Editor in 1996. Anne characterized what she termed "pathography" as survival stories or modern adventure stories and, perhaps more tellingly, as "cautionary parables," striking the parallel to conversion narratives in which life undergoes a total bouleversement to become something else entirely.1 As Guest Editor of our Spring 2002 Special Issue on "Literature, Medicine, and Children," Anne devoted a section to "Personal Narrative," written by several parents about their acutely or chronically ill or disabled children. In "Research Shows: A Narrative of Teaching and Learning," English professor Deborah Minter provided pages from her journal during her baby's treatment for an aggressive leukemia. She counterposed dramatic scenes from visits to the pediatric oncologist, support groups with other mothers of severely ill children, and classroom discussions in her ironically timed college seminar on "Stories and Human Experience." Throughout, the reader sees the narrator relying on her own intellectuality as a ploy to get one step removed from what she is actually going through. Her artist husband Dale contributes a series of photographic collages that juxtapose teddy bears with IV drips and a rocking horse with an intubated baby, with one unbearable shot of a doll's head enshrouded in a plastic bag. Literary scholars Joanne Trautmann Banks and Michael Bérubé, well known to L&M (Banks wrote the first essay in the first issue of [End Page 213] our journal in 1982), themselves had severely ill or neuroatypical children. Banks's son Piers suffered irreversible neurological damage as an infant from uncontrolled seizures. Bérubé's son Jamie was born with Down's Syndrome. The parents' comments widen the picture toward both the existential and the surreal, exposing the "comedy, tragedy, and higher comedy" (Jo's words) of parenting ill children while nailing the personal confrontations with embodiment and mortality that had been theirs every day.2 Jo narrates days in Piers's life in his residential school for developmentally challenged children and adults, in effect donating the protagonist position to the child. Darker, Michael's account probes the ironies and pathos in the family's situation with a physically healthy, rambunctious child whose thoughts and actions travel uncommon paths. Michael repeats the words "solace," "consolation," or "inconsolable" six times in his five-and-a-half page essay, "Life Stories: In Response to Deborah Minter." Consolation is sought by both the child and his parents. Disrupting this otherwise rather snarky representation of the endlessness of a family's situation with a child requiring above-average attention, the idea of consolation recalls Anne Hawkins's sense of pathography as a religious genre. What seemed at the time an odd pleat in the mood of Michael's essay became telling upon reading Michael Rowe's essay "Metamorphosis: Defending the Human" (Fall 2002), which indirectly takes up the notion of consolation. A Yale sociologist of poverty and urban health and author of Crossing the Border: Encounters between Homeless People and Outreach Workers (1999), Rowe seems particularly well qualified to write a personal essay about illness narratives. He lived through the long illness and death of his teen-aged son after a second failed liver transplant. Rowe paid me [Rita] a visit some time after the events recounted in his paper. This young father joined me in my office, exuding urgent, charged affect, sitting on the edge of his seat, leaning forward as if to extinguish the distance between us, asking without words, "Why did he die? Why is he gone? It cannot be that he is dead." Although the essay provides an elegant analysis of Kafka's "Metamorphosis," it...

Exploring a novel linked dataset and building linked data analytics skills in Public Health Intelligence teams in Sussex.

ObjectivesPublic health intelligence teams in Sussex wanted to use newly linked health and social care data, to gain insights into local patterns of multi-morbidity, service use, service provision and socio-demographic data. In this study we report initial exploration of this new linked dataset, in a partnership between university and local authority analysts. ApproachThe Sussex Integrated Dataset (SID) comprises person-level health and social care data on residents and services users across Sussex. During a 6-month secondment, two analysts evaluated the number of data sources available for each individual, evaluated data quality for identifying long-term conditions, developed presentation methods to compare SID outputs on demographics and condition prevalence with open source or expected distributions, and identified the skills-mix and infrastructure required in local authorities for future work. They worked alongside the SID data processing team to inform and improve data quality; and with university data-scientists to learn prediction modelling. ResultsAnalysts established an efficient querying system to investigate the breadth of data available, more thoroughly focusing on encounters and demographic data in all sources. Long-term conditions were identified through code lists in a range of NHS data sources, to enable consideration of multi-morbidity by demographic. A range of quality issues were identified, such as non-current patients being uploaded into the SID, distorting prevalence estimates, and GP practice populations that did not match expected figures published by NHS digital. Results were represented in multi-morbidity plots, maps, and theographs. Through this data exploration, we have been able to identify the skills-mix needed for local Public Health Intelligence teams to maximise the use of linked data to achieve Public Health objectives. ConclusionWe have made many conceptual breakthroughs, particularly in understanding data quality, however still need a more complete understanding of quality issues in SID for public health outputs to have meaningful use. Further investigation into the patterns of service use, as well as modelling of multi-morbidity to make predictions and target interventions, will be key next steps.

Implementing halal logistics in a non-Muslim-dominant environment: a proposal for reengineering the business processes in two stages

PurposeThe purpose of this paper, positioned in the halal logistics research domain, is to bridge the gap between the theory of halal logistics and halal logistics' empirical implementation through a business process reengineering (BPR) project in the context of a major European airport (i.e. Frankfurt Airport, Fraport AG).Design/methodology/approachAn in-depth case study approach has been adopted in the authors' business processes reengineering proposal. Prior investigations on the topic maintained that “business process analysis and activity elimination” (BP and AE) and “problem analysis” (PA) are the most widespread approaches when the prominent business reengineering dimension under analysis is the specific process/task. Consistently, the authors adopted a six-step BP&amp;AE-based model in order to implement the halal logistics requirements in the context of an air cargo supply chain.FindingsThis paper addresses fundamental issues about the analysis and the redesign of air cargo processes when halal shipments are taken into account. Conceptual breakthroughs of new processes are suggested. The paper sheds light on potential issues which may arise when adapting the extant air cargo processes to halal logistics guidelines. In addition, the paper suggests an appropriate resolution scheme articulated in two stages of progressively higher compliance to halal logistics according to the Malaysian standards (MS).Research limitations/implicationsThe outcome of this work has implications for practitioners, researchers, and transport associations. For practitioners, the study offers an immediately applicable implementation plan which is ready to be discussed with all agents involved in the business reengineering (BR) process. For researchers, the study offers a basis for future halal logistics reengineering projects, both from a theoretical and from an empirical standpoint. Finally, the collaboration of transport associations will become mandatory due to an update of the International Air Transport Association (IATA) code system that includes a dedicated halal code, “HAL”, for halal air cargo shipments.Originality/valueThe concept of halal logistics is still in the infant stage and there is a complete lack of academic publications, especially empirical implementations of halal logistics principles. The authors' project provides detailed guidelines to help air cargo operators operating in non-Muslim-dominant countries to reengineer their internal processes and, in doing so, to comply with halal logistics and principles.

Conceptual Breakthroughs on Common Ownership and Competition: A Framework For Evaluating Policy

Conceptual Breakthroughs on Common Ownership and Competition: A Framework For Evaluating Policy

Political Ideologies through the Lens of Modern Neuroscience

The article presents the standpoint that naturalistic tendencies in modern science, which are especially expressed in neuroscience, push up social knowledge toward the need to revise its attitudes and norms, which consist in consistent sociocentrism and biophobia, and, hence, a simplified understanding of the phenomenon of “genetic reductionism”. We show that the application of the methods of natural science to social disciplines often marked visible progress and even conceptual breakthroughs in their development. Achievements of modern neuroscience affect a traditional area of social and humanitarian knowledge as political science, which leads to the formation of an independent area of research – political neuroscience. Through the optics of this research, cognitive styles characteristic of individuals and social groups with different value orientations imply the dominance of certain ideological sympathies and antipathies, which attributed to the opposite poles of the ideological scale – liberalism and conservatism. Considerable empirical material allows us to conclude that these ideological positions are exist due to differences in their ontogenetic “foundations”, which allows us to develop I. Kant's ideas about a priorism and transcendentalism in the context of the Kantian research program in contemporary neuroscience. The result of the implementation of this program to the political sphere was the discovery of the genesis of political views, and the demonstration of the peculiarities of their dynamics. They are based on the difference in the activity of certain neural sets, which in their turn are influenced by culture and society, forming an integral system “brain – culture – society”, where each component of which affects other components. Features and changes in the socio-cultural context of the development of an individual or a group of people may have an effect upon the architectonics of the brain and shift, due to its plasticity, of the political views along the scale of ideologies “liberalism – conservatism”. At the same time, carriers of different cognitive styles and, therefore, with a sufficient degree of probability of ideological views, percept the world in which they live in differently, and evaluate its past and possible future in diverse ways.

Review: ¡Printing the Revolution! The Rise and Impact of Chicano Graphics, 1965 to Now, by E. Carmen Ramos, Tatiana Reinoza, Terezita Romo, and Claudia E. Zapata

Review: <i>¡Printing the Revolution! The Rise and Impact of Chicano Graphics, 1965 to Now</i>, by E. Carmen Ramos, Tatiana Reinoza, Terezita Romo, and Claudia E. Zapata

Luminescent First-Row Transition Metal Complexes.

Precious and rare elements have traditionally dominated inorganic photophysics and photochemistry, but now we are witnessing a paradigm shift toward cheaper and more abundant metals. Even though emissive complexes based on selected first-row transition metals have long been known, recent conceptual breakthroughs revealed that a much broader range of elements in different oxidation states are useable for this purpose. Coordination compounds of V, Cr, Mn, Fe, Co, Ni, and Cu now show electronically excited states with unexpected reactivity and photoluminescence behavior. Aside from providing a compact survey of the recent conceptual key advances in this dynamic field, our Perspective identifies the main design strategies that enabled the discovery of fundamentally new types of 3d-metal-based luminophores and photosensitizers operating in solution at room temperature.

Decoding the Cardiac Actions of Protein Kinase D Isoforms.

Protein kinase D (PKD) consists of a family of three structurally related enzymes that play key roles in a wide range of biological functions that contribute to the evolution of cardiac hypertrophy and heart failure. PKD1 (the founding member of this enzyme family) has been implicated in the phosphorylation of substrates that regulate cardiac hypertrophy, contraction, and susceptibility to ischemia/reperfusion injury, and de novo PRKD1 (protein kinase D1 gene) mutations have been identified in patients with syndromic congenital heart disease. However, cardiomyocytes coexpress all three PKDs. Although stimulus-specific activation patterns for PKD1, PKD2, and PKD3 have been identified in cardiomyocytes, progress toward identifying PKD isoform-specific functions in the heart have been hampered by significant gaps in our understanding of the molecular mechanisms that regulate PKD activity. This review incorporates recent conceptual breakthroughs in our understanding of various alternative mechanisms for PKD activation, with an emphasis on recent evidence that PKDs activate certain effector responses as dimers, to consider the role of PKD isoforms in signaling pathways that drive cardiac hypertrophy and ischemia/reperfusion injury. The focus is on whether the recently identified activation mechanisms that enhance the signaling repertoire of PKD family enzymes provide novel therapeutic strategies to target PKD enzymes and prevent or slow the evolution of cardiac injury and pathological cardiac remodeling. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT: PKD isoforms regulate a large number of fundamental biological processes, but the understanding of the biological actions of individual PKDs (based upon studies using adenoviral overexpression or gene-silencing methods) remains incomplete. This review focuses on dimerization, a recently identified mechanism for PKD activation, and the notion that this mechanism provides a strategy to develop novel PKD-targeted pharmaceuticals that restrict proliferation, invasion, or angiogenesis in cancer and prevent or slow the evolution of cardiac injury and pathological cardiac remodeling.

The 150th anniversary ofThe Descent of Man: Darwin and the impact of sex-role reversal on sexual selection research

AbstractThe year 2021 marks the 150th anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin’s extraordinary book The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex. Here, we review the history and impact of a single profound insight from The Descent of Man: that, in some few species, females rather than males compete for access to mates. In other words, these species are ‘sex-role reversed’ with respect to mating competition and sexual selection compared to the majority of species in which sexual selection acts most strongly on males. Over the subsequent 150 years, sex-role-reversed species have motivated multiple key conceptual breakthroughs in sexual selection. The surprising mating dynamics of such species challenged scientists’ preconceptions, forcing them to examine implicit assumptions and stereotypes. This wider worldview has led to a richer and more nuanced understanding of animal mating systems and, in particular, to a proper appreciation for the fundamental role that females play in shaping these systems. Sex-role-reversed species have considerable untapped potential and will continue to contribute to sexual selection research in the decades to come.

Genetic enhancement, TED talks and the sense of wonder

TED talks are an emergent and hybrid genre (Ludewig) and have become a highly successful disseminator and populariser of scientific knowledge (Sugimoto et al). The popular appeal of TED may...

Natural Product Synthesis Enabled by Domino Processes Incorporating a 1,2-Rearrangement Step.

The art of natural product total synthesis is closely associated with two major determinants: the development/application of novel chemical reactions and the innovation in strategic use of classic organic reactions. While purposely seeking/applying a new synthetic methodology allowing nonconventional bond disconnections could shorten the synthetic route, the development of domino processes composed of a series of well-established reactions could also lead to a concise, practical, and aesthetically appealing synthesis. As an important class of textbook reactions, the 1,2-anionotropic rearrangements discovered at the dawn of modern organic chemistry have important bearings not only on chemical synthesis but also on the conceptual breakthroughs in the field. In its basic form, the 1,2-shift affords nothing but a constitutional isomer of the starting material and is therefore not a complexity-generating transformation. However, such a simple 1,2-shift could in fact change the molecular topology if the precursor is cleverly designed. More dramatically, it can metamorphosize the structure of the substrate when it is combined with other transformations in a domino sequence. In this Outlook, we highlight recent examples of natural product synthesis featuring a key domino process incorporating a 1,2-anionotropic rearrangement. Specifically, domino reactions integrating Wagner–Meerwein, pinacol, α-ketol, α-aminoketone, α-iminol, or benzilic acid rearrangements will be discussed.

Conceptual Breakthroughs in Evolutionary Ecology

Conceptual Breakthroughs in Evolutionary Ecology

Our Virtual Tribe: Sustaining and Enhancing Community via Online Music Improvisation.

This article documents experiences of Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra’s virtual, synchronous improvisation sessions during COVID-19 pandemic via interviews with 29 participants. Sessions included an international, gender balanced, and cross generational group of over 70 musicians all of whom were living under conditions of social distancing. All sessions were recorded using Zoom software. After 3 months of twice weekly improvisation sessions, 29 interviews with participants were undertaken, recorded, transcribed, and analyzed. Key themes include how the sessions provided opportunities for artistic development, enhanced mood, reduced feelings of isolation, and sustained and developed community. Particular attention is placed upon how improvisation as a universal, real time, social, and collaborative process facilitates interaction, allowing the technological affordances of software (latencies, sound quality, and gallery/speaker view) and hardware (laptop, tablet, instruments, microphones, headphones, and objects in room) to become emergent properties of artistic collaborations. The extent to which this process affects new perceptual and conceptual breakthroughs for practitioners is discussed as is the crucial and innovative relationship between audio and visual elements. Analysis of edited films of the sessions highlight artistic and theoretical and conceptual issues discussed. Emphasis is given to how the domestic environment merges with technologies to create The Theatre of Home.