Deep Questions Research Articles

Is it time for a time-out? Progress versus politics in studying the psychosexual implications of penile circumcision.

Tye and Sardi present an extensive critical overview of the sparse and inconsistent literature on the psychological, psychosocial, and psychosexual impact of penile circumcision (PC) with a clear aim of achieving a framework for policy considerations and future research. With this perspective I humbly propose to step back and ask some deeper questions about PC, being this a politicized topic we should ask ourselves whether we can engage with a literature so full of polemical publications and polarized opinions. Even when presenting “straightforward” empirical data we can stimulate very different interpretations based on the previous beliefs or convictions of the reader, generating an undesirable sociocultural division. While PC is becoming a hot topic, we are falling far from reaching a consensus towards a medical policy framework to counsel families and individuals searching for answers; it actually seems to become a politicised philosophical battle between medical and health providers, researchers, psychologists, anthropologists, and activists. At this point, can we disentangle this ball of twine, asking the same questions and searching for the same answers—or should we call for a time-out and revaluate what we want to figure out about human sexuality in relation to cultural modifications of the genitals?

Mathematics and its Ancient Classics Worldwide: Translations, Appropriations, Reconstructions, Roles

The workshop analyzes the constitution, recovery, and role of the classical texts in mathematical practice throughout history. It aims at problematizing the notion of “classic”, to make it a historical category and to study the rhetorical, pedagogical, and institutional mechanisms that contribute to secure the status of classic to specific texts. So far, the focus of the historiography has dealt mostly with Greek classics and their impact on Western European societies. We aim to expand the focus of our enquiry culturally and chronologically in two ways. We want to address the reception and transformation of these “classics” outside Europe in different historical periods. We are particularly interested in the roles played by this classical tradition within Islamicate societies, South-East and East Asia. Secondly, we are interested in the ancient mathematical writings in Arabic, Chinese, Sanskrit and other languages that, at certain time periods in these other parts of the world and elsewhere, were perceived as classics. Widening the focus should allow us to inquire into questions such as: what did classical texts mean for various types of actors? How were they available to them? How did they read them? In the contexts of which institutions and with which expectations? The important role classical works have played in mathematical history pose deep methodological questions with far-reaching implications for the history and philosophy of mathematics. In mathematics conceptual and methodological innovations are thought to be legitimized only by appeal to mathematical arguments and consistency. Yet, legitimation has involved in many crucial episodes giving a prominent role to classical works. The mathematical classics have repeatedly been the source and grounds for new ideas and techniques. There is therefore a deep, complex tension between innovation and tradition. We are interested in how innovation has often been legitimized by re-reading old texts, concepts, and methods-old texts whose principles and methods were utterly different from the ones they contributed to sustain. What can this teach us about the nature of mathematical argument, and mathematical practice?

A deep co-attentive hand-based video question answering framework using multi-view skeleton

A deep co-attentive hand-based video question answering framework using multi-view skeleton

Disability bioethics and the commitment to equality.

Robert Veatch’s The Foundations of Justice: Why the Retarded and the Rest of Us Have Claims to Equality (1986) delves into deep questions of justice through the case of a child with disabilities. I describe what is basically right about this vision, as well as what is problematic from the standpoint of contemporary disability bioethics. From there, I dive into the notion of vulnerability that is at play in his work. He describes disability as necessarily a condition of weakness, lesser-than existence, and neediness. When disability is viewed in this way as an inherently vulnerable state of being, the essential sociopolitical dimensions of disability receive inadequate attention, which, in turn, makes it impossible to identify injustices correctly. I connect these points to concrete challenges faced by disability communities during the COVID-19 pandemic, which have raised profound questions about the just use of scarce critical care resources. Any case drawn from the pandemic is a very different kind of case than that of the child in Veatch’s book, but a commonality is the question of who should get what limited resources when needs and urgency vary.

Pharmaceutical Potential of High-Altitude Plants for Fatigue-Related Disorders: A Review.

Natural plants from plateaus have been the richest source of secondary metabolites extensively used in traditional and modern health care systems. They were submitted to years of natural selection, co-evolved within that habitat, and show significant anti-fatigue-related pharmacological effects. However, currently, no review on high-altitude plants with anti-fatigue related properties has been published yet. This study summarized several Chinese traditional high-altitude plants, including Rhodiola rosea L., Crocus sativus L., Lepidium meyenii W., Hippophaerhamnoides L., which are widely used in the Qinghai–Tibet Plateau and surrounding mountains, as well as herbal markets in the plains. Based on phytopharmacology studies, deeper questions can be further revealed regarding how these plants regulate fatigue and related mental or physical disease conditions. Many active derivatives in high-altitude medical plants show therapeutic potential for the management of fatigue and related disorders. Therefore, high-altitude plants significantly relieve central or peripheral fatigue by acting as neuroprotective agents, energy supplements, metabolism regulators, antioxidant, and inflammatory response inhibitors. Their applications on the highland or flatland and prospects in natural medicine are further forecast, which may open treatments to reduce or prevent fatigue-related disorders in populations with sub-optimal health.

Surrogate Tourists on Instagram: An(other) Kind of Mimetic Gaze

From influencers to established travel brands to casual consumers, there are a number of existing organisms in the online ecosystem of Instagram simultaneously producing and consuming content. At first glance, the nature of these relationships seems simple—sharing and engaging via a visual medium—but upon prolonged review, deeper questions about the interwoven complexity existing between these organisms and their content emerge. The authors illuminate several discernible patterns through a deep theoretical framing of the gaze, mimetic reproduction, and ownership followed by a conceptual modeling through a review of everyday Instagramic practices. What becomes apparent are a number of stages of development in this process. Firstly, the practice of photographic mimicry becomes a form of consumption in which the consumer "consumes places" vicariously across space and time, making image reproduction an embodied practice. Secondly, the Instagram feed of an individual consumer (or influencer) becomes a sort of living autobiography, curating and aggrandizing the glossiest images that form a projected extension of self that is not grounded necessarily in authenticity, but in reproduction. Finally, the proliferation of communication between consumer and consumer reproduces a surrogate type that creates a constantly evolving circular content loop where the flow of influence and information becomes muddled and originality becomes less distinguishable. This article critically explores how Instagram has collapsed traditional influence and consumer relationships, particularly in how tourist experience and imagery are shared, resulting in a complex online community that resembles a cultural colonial organism fed by communication feedback loops. The result of this article is the positioning of a surrogate tourist embodied within a collection of individual entities performing specialized tasks dependent on other individuals in the community in which the function and nature of the individual recedes in importance to the relationship existing between organisms.

A First Year of Discovery

The first images from the largest and most advanced orbiting optical observatory to date—NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope—will be released on July 12. As one of the scientists who will be using the Webb, Casey Papovich examines how it may help answer deep questions about the nature of exoplanets and the formation of the first galaxies following the Big Bang.

There is Room for Encouraging Conversion in the Scope of Bioethics Expertise

Abstract The American Society for Bioethics and Humanities has developed a curriculum leading to a certificate in health care ethics consultation. A certification in ethics consultation initially seems to fit nicely into the biomedical model of clinical expertise espoused by modern biomedicine, but examining what exactly constitutes moral expertise, particularly for traditional Christians, reveals a significant problem: the certification relies on an implicit view of ethics as essentially procedural. It leaves virtually all serious moral content to be filled in, if at all, after an ostensibly neutral scaffolding has been erected. Such an approach does not help answer deep moral questions about how one should live, and it is these questions that ought to be encouraged during some conflicts that result in requests for ethics consultations. This paper suggests that, in certain circumstances, and for a subset of patients, encouraging conversion can help remedy the deficiency of an overly mechanized approach. A system open to conversion would have more room for Traditional Christians, regardless of the outcome, as it would take morality as lived, communal experience more seriously and help others, if desired, to do so as well.

ExpRec: Deep knowledge-awared question routing in software question answering community

ExpRec: Deep knowledge-awared question routing in software question answering community

Reith, Russell, and the Robots: AI, Warfare, and Shaping the Debate

On December 8th, 2021, Professor Stuart Russell delivered the second of that year’s Reith Lectures, presented under the banner title ‘Living With Artificial Intelligence’. This specific talk dealt with ‘The Future Role of AI in Warfare’, and in this paper I propose a reading of Russell’s address which both summarises and critiques his argument and stance, to determine what, if anything, can be taken from his position as effectively a public philosopher and applied in the realm of modern warfare, where ethical questions are taken from the seminar room and enacted in battlespace. The Reith lectures occupy a unique place in public discourse; given each year by a leading figure in the field under discussion, they help to shape opinion and debate. In considering the role of AI, and in particular its deployment in combat, there is undoubtedly a need for multi- and transdisciplinary thought, but the choice of Russell as the lecturer is not unproblematic. He is undoubtedly an expert in the field of AI, but he has no direct experience of working with the military, and is clearly not a neutral witness. He has been a leading figure in the campaign to ban research into autonomous weapon systems, and was closely involved in the production of Slaughterbots, a short film which presents a nightmare vision of swarming drones as agents of political repression. There are deep and serious questions to be asked about the role of AI in warfare, but Russell’s position that we must stop all research in the field is arguably naïve. Our adversaries will surely not be as punctilious. At the heart of the debate lie complex issues concerning human agency and control (and ‘control’ lies at the etymological root of ‘cyber’); this paper will use Russell’s lecture as a starting point for the consideration of how we might develop an ethical doctrine for the use of AI, resting on the idea of human-machine teaming. It will, in short, argue for a cybernetic solution to the problems of cyber warfare.

Health Care Chatbot Using NLP and Flask

Abstract: Health care is very important to start a good life. However, if you have a health problem, it is very difficult to talk to your doctor. Chatbots can be used to communicate with text or voice interfaces and receive responses via artificial intelligence. Chatbots are programs designed to automatically interact with incoming messages. Chatbots can be programmed to respond the same each time and respond differently to messages containing specific keywords. In addition, you can use machine learning to adapt your response to your situation. More and more hospitals, nursing homes, and even private centers are now using online human service chatbots on their websites. These bots connect with potential patients accessing the site, find specialists, make appointments, and ensure appropriate treatment. In any case, the use of artificial intelligence in industries where people's lives can be a problem still raises personal concerns. The question arises whether the above tasks should be left to human staff. This healthcare chatbot system helps hospitals provide 24/7 online healthcare support. It answers both deep and general questions. It also helps generate leads and automatically delivers lead information to sales. Asking in turn helps the patient by guiding them on exactly what they are looking for.

TOP MANAGEMENT’S WILL TO SUPPORT SAFETY CULTURE

How Do Company Directors Support Safety Culture Excellence is a deep question to explore the goal of incidents-free status? This article presents a qualitative framework on the issues related to the top/site management at large that are responsible for weak safety culture at the corporates as well as sites resulting in incidents and fatalities. Qualitative research in this paper makes a lot of sense in this regard. 204 industry professionals participated in the study to reflect on the top/site management issues and solutions. Almost 80% industry professionals observed a lack of management’s will to support in safety culture, which amounts to a lag in business sustainability. Top managements need guidance about interventions leading to safety culture transformation.

A Teachable Moment? David Hume and the Tower of Babel

This essay reflects on the de-naming of the David Hume Tower at Edinburgh University in September 2020. It critically examines and contextualises the racist footnote written by Hume, that was the focus of calls to remove his name from the building. It argues that an opportunity was lost to ask deeper questions about the contribution of David Hume to current thought, and why we may want to commemorate historical figures, despite their flaws. In short, a ‘teachable moment’ was squandered in this event. I conclude by suggesting that such symbolic gestures as the de-naming of the David Hume Tower are not effective ways to oppose racism.

The Influence of the National-Cultural Image of the World on the Construction of Metaphors in the Poetic Discourse

Abstract The poetic language of Federico García Lorca amazes the reader’s imagination with the richness of images with the outward simplicity and clarity of style. Lorca’s poems simultaneously reveal to us both the national and cultural specifics of the Spanish linguistic picture of the world, and the ways of cognition and reflection of reality by the author, his assessment of the phenomena of this reality from the standpoint of the aesthetic ideal. One of the ‘keys’ of the secret of the phenomenal success of Lorca’s poetry is its metaphor city, the semantic aesthetics of which is revealed only in the context of not only the poems themselves, but also in the context of Spanish culture as a whole. The metaphor, we emphasize once again, is one of the most mysterious phenomena of language, the intuitive comprehension of which is inherent only in true poets. In a metaphor, reality escapes, as if hiding from thought, and then a deep and urgent question begins to arise before the researcher about the role of metaphor in cognition. In the work of Federico Garcia Lorca, the ability of metaphor to clearly reveal the features of national culture characterizes the Spanish linguistic consciousness and the Spanish linguistic personality. The humanities are armed with modern scientific research tools at the present stage of development and lay the foundation for studying the role of metaphor in understanding the essence of Federico Garcia Lorca's work, as well as its relationship and interaction with reality, thinking and consciousness.

The First Baby Born After Polygenic Embryo Screening

The First Baby Born After Polygenic Embryo Screening

Taking the temperature of a pure quantum state

Temperature is a deceptively simple concept that still raises deep questions at the forefront of quantum physics research. The observation of thermalization in completely isolated quantum systems, such as cold-atom quantum simulators, implies that a temperature can be assigned even to individual, pure quantum states. Here, we propose a scheme to measure the temperature of such pure states through quantum interference. Our proposal involves interferometry of an auxiliary qubit probe, which is prepared in a superposition state and subsequently decoheres due to weak coupling with a closed, thermalized many-body system. Using only a few basic assumptions about chaotic quantum systems, namely, the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis and the emergence of hydrodynamics at long times, we show that the qubit undergoes pure exponential decoherence at a rate that depends on the temperature of its surroundings. We verify our predictions by numerical experiments on a quantum spin chain that thermalizes after absorbing energy from a periodic drive. Our Letter provides a general method to measure the temperature of isolated, strongly interacting systems under minimal assumptions.

Intracellular pH Control by Membrane Transport in Mammalian Cells. Insights Into the Selective Advantages of Functional Redundancy.

Intracellular pH is a vital parameter that is maintained close to neutrality in all mammalian cells and tissues and acidic in most intracellular compartments. After presenting the main techniques used for intracellular an vesicular pH measurements we will briefly recall the main molecular mechanisms that affect and regulate intracellular pH. Following this we will discuss the large functional redundancy found in the transporters of H+ or acid-base equivalents. For this purpose, we will use mathematical modeling to simulate cellular response to persistent and/or transient acidification, in the presence of different transporters, single or in combination. We will also test the presence or absence of intracellular buffering. This latter section will highlight how modeling can yield fundamental insight into deep biological questions such as the utility of functional redundancy in natural selection.

Recollections of How the Child Marriage Field Has Evolved

Recollections of How the Child Marriage Field Has Evolved

The Model of Customer Empowerment in the Field of Renewable Energy: A Case of Tunisian Consumers

This awakening of consciousness on the part of today’s consumers has given rise to the concept of consumer empowerment which states that the current consumer has become a stakeholder and influence in their purchasing decisions. Thus, the current consumer is asking deeper questions, such as environmental rights, animal rights, the rights of future generations, and the rights of the community. This paper proposes an explanatory model of empowerment emanating from new Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), which participated in the crystallization of the concept by giving more power and control to Tunisian consumers. A model was developed from qualitative research based on individual interviews to explore in-depth the world of Renewable Energies Consumption (REC).

Thermodynamics and Inflammation: Insights into Quantum Biology and Ageing

Inflammation as a biological concept has been around a long time and derives from the Latin “to set on fire” and refers to the redness and heat, and usually swelling, which accompanies injury and infection. Chronic inflammation is also associated with ageing and is described by the term “inflammaging”. Likewise, the biological concept of hormesis, in the guise of what “does not kill you, makes you stronger”, has long been recognized, but in contrast, seems to have anti-inflammatory and age-slowing characteristics. As both phenomena act to restore homeostasis, they may share some common underlying principles. Thermodynamics describes the relationship between heat and energy, but is also intimately related to quantum mechanics. Life can be viewed as a series of self-renewing dissipative structures existing far from equilibrium as vortexes of “negentropy” that ages and dies; but, through reproduction and speciation, new robust structures are created, enabling life to adapt and continue in response to ever changing environments. In short, life can be viewed as a natural consequence of thermodynamics to dissipate energy to restore equilibrium; each component of this system is replaceable. However, at the molecular level, there is perhaps a deeper question: is life dependent on, or has it enhanced, quantum effects in space and time beyond those normally expected at the atomistic scale and temperatures that life operates at? There is some evidence it has. Certainly, the dissipative adaptive mechanism described by thermodynamics is now being extended into the quantum realm. Fascinating though this topic is, does exploring the relationship between quantum mechanics, thermodynamics, and biology give us a greater insight into ageing and, thus, medicine? It could be said that hormesis and inflammation are expressions of thermodynamic and quantum principles that control ageing via natural selection that could operate at all scales of life. Inflammation could be viewed as a mechanism to remove inefficient systems in response to stress to enable rebuilding of more functional dissipative structures, and hormesis as the process describing the ability to adapt; underlying this is the manipulation of fundamental quantum principles. Defining what “quantum biological normality” is has been a long-term problem, but perhaps we do not need to, as it is simply an expression of one end of the normal quantum mechanical spectrum, implying that biology could inform us as to how we can define the quantum world.