Structural Explanations Research Articles

New theory of acoustic signal detection in the inner ear – An explanation of bifilar structure of the cochlea

In this work a new theory of acoustic signal detection in the inner ear and an experimental explanation of the causes of bifilar cochlear structure was presented. Our innovative approach describes sound detection in a completely different way from the one currently adopted. It requires analyzing the inner ear system in the form of a bent spiral and assuming that perilymph in such a small system behaves like a non-Newtonian fluid. The necessity of analyzing the system in the form of a bifilar spiral results from the need to compensate the head movements, so far omitted in the analysis. We suggest that the construction and the role of the oval window and the stapes are different than just a simple piston that converts mechanical signals to hydrokinetic ones. Stapes provides uniform distribution of the hydrokinetic signal in the spiral cochlear system, and the conversion of momentum to angular momentum creates a force perpendicular to the vestibular membrane, which causes the effect of its deflection, what has not yet been explained.

Drawing a Boundary between Structural Factors and Identity in Ethnic Conflict: Bringing Back the Role of Identity

ABSTRACT This article focuses on the causes of ethnic civil wars, and argues that in order to develop a better understanding of their onset and intractability, one needs to distinguish different types of ethnic civil wars from each other. It first evaluates structural factors in the outbreak of ethnic conflict and then proceeds to discuss ideational factors and finally suggests a theoretic framework of understanding ethnic conflict based upon identity. It develops hypotheses that would allow to discern structuralist explanations from ideational ones and in this way contributes to the literature that tries to understand the causes of ethnic civil wars. To have a clear understanding of the suggested hypotheses, empirical evidence is provided from the post-Soviet space, namely conflicts such as Abkhazia, Crimea, Chechnya, Nagorno-Karabakh, and South Ossetia.

Calculated magnetic exchange interactions in the quantum spin chain materials K2CuSO4Cl2 and K2CuSO4Br2

Using density functional calculations, we present a comprehensive study of the electronic and magnetic properties of the quantum spin chain materials ${\mathrm{K}}_{2}{\mathrm{CuSO}}_{4}{\mathrm{Cl}}_{2}$ and ${\mathrm{K}}_{2}{\mathrm{CuSO}}_{4}{\mathrm{Br}}_{2}$. With the first-principles linear response method, we calculate the magnetic exchange parameters, and the theoretical values are in a quantitatively good agreement with experiments. Depending on the signs and magnitudes of the interchain magnetic exchange interactions, we find that the magnetic order of ${\mathrm{K}}_{2}{\mathrm{CuSO}}_{4}{\mathrm{Br}}_{2}$ along the $b$ axis is antiferromagnetic, while ${\mathrm{K}}_{2}{\mathrm{CuSO}}_{4}{\mathrm{Cl}}_{2}$ has strong frustration along the $b$ axis. Based on the obtained magnetic exchange parameters, we successfully reproduce the experimental spin-wave dispersion. We also calculate Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interactions, which are found to dominate in these compounds compared to the interchain magnetic exchange interactions. Finally, we obtain the phase diagram for these two materials using Monte Carlo simulations. Our results are consistent with previous experiments, giving a complete explanation of the magnetic structure.

Big Gods, socio-cultural evolution and the non-obvious merits of a sociological interpretation

ABSTRACT Much of the recent, renewed interest in the cultural evolution of religion has been driven by findings in experimental and cognitive psychology, and, as a result of disciplinary boundaries, sociologists have engaged very little with this new data and theory. In order to bring sociology formally back into this discussion, we provide in this paper five sociological sources for the birth and diffusion of ‘Big God’ ideation (with monotheism serving as a paradigmatic case). Agentically, we suggest that Big God beliefs assuaged existential anxiety, aided in elite legitimation and were useful for religious entrepreneurs hoping to establish new institutional fields. Structurally, we suggest that Big God beliefs may have been an epiphenomenal attempt by people to symbolically represent the centralization of political authority and the intensified use of new technologies. We conclude with a general theory of the cultural evolution of Big Gods that integrates these agentic and structural explanations.

Community-based individual property rights: developing the ‘bundle of rights’ perspective in the Chinese context

ABSTRACT This article invokes a concept of ‘community-based individual property rights’ as individual property rights recognized in a communal property system by virtue of community membership. It employs mixed methods, including a comparative analysis that reviews and develops the ‘bundle of rights’ perspective in the Chinese context and an analysis of a large dataset of judgments recently made publicly accessible. It sets out an analytical framework which appears more advantageous in helping researchers arrive at a better explanation of the current rights structure in rural China. The article concludes that the concept of ‘community-based individual property rights’ has greater analytical and explanatory force than existing concepts based on continental civil law. The conclusion also challenges the common assumption that common law property theories never work in non-common law jurisdictions and that the Chinese property system is irrelevant to developing common law property theories.

ORBITALS IN GENERAL CHEMISTRY, PART II: MATHEMATICAL REALITIES

In Part II of a three-part series, we discuss two factors absent from textbooks of general chemistry that are important in a discussion of teaching orbitals. First, atomic orbitals are shown systematically to comprise algebraic formulae in coordinates of not one but four sets (spherical polar, paraboloidal, ellipsoidal, spheroconical coordinates). Each formula has its corresponding shape as a surface of constant amplitude; some visual examples are provided. Second, the argument that molecular structure is incompatible with quantum mechanics is presented. Despite the utility of orbitals as mathematical functions in various calculations, they are intrinsically complicated for the traditional purpose of qualitative explanation of molecular structure.

Социальная база и перспективы популизма в странах Запада

The paper examines the reasons, mechanisms and prospects of the populist surge in Western countries. The cross-country analysis shows that both structural and sociocultural explanations of the populist surge are valid and complementary. Evidences suggest that support for the populist parties is the highest among blue-collar workers, low paid employees and less educated persons. It proves that the present-day rise of populism is a reincarnation of dissatisfaction with the ruling elites and dominant political system at low tiers of social hierarchy. While formerly such dissatisfaction led to voting for communists or social democrats, now it increasingly manifests itself in voting for populist parties and programmes. At the same time, horizontal diffusion and intergenerational transmission of attitudes contribute to a steady growth of support for write-wing populist parties in certain areas of France, Germany and Poland. While the young British, unlike older ones, usually eager to remain in the EU, a wider cross-country analysis does not allow to prognosticate a “natural death” of populism. Thus, the data from 1995 to 2017 reveals that in France, people in their thirties and forties vote for the National Front even more often than earlier. Support for populist parties is also the highest among middle-age voters in Italy, Germany and Sweden. This fact along with the higher prevalence of the populist support in certain social strata allows to expect relatively successful outcomes of populist parties and movements in the upcoming elections. Nevertheless, the rise of populism is limited by persistent disinclination of many well educated and middle-class voters to support populist parties and candidates. Given this, the political future of populist parties will depend on their ability to form coalitions and find allies both domestically and internationally.

To the edge and beyond: How fast-response organizations adapt in rapidly changing crisis situations

Fast-response organizations excel in mounting swift and coordinated responses to unexpected events. There are a multitude of conflicting explanations why these organizations excel. These range from acknowledging the strengths of centralized command and control structures, towards stressing the importance of decentralized, improvised action. Though this dichotomy is derived from studies offering either structure or action-based explanations, we were able to reconcile these insights by looking into the process of how fast-responders organize themselves during an unfolding crisis. We analyzed 15 high-speed police pursuits crossing multiple administrative units and jurisdictions, and interviewed and observed officers at work in multiple operations centers, police cars, and helicopters. Our analysis uncovered that fast-responders regularly transition between designed, frontline, and partitioned modes of organizing, each characterized by practices that shape command, allocation, and information sharing. Success and failure are rooted in the ability of the responders to adapt their mode of organizing by tacking back and forth between these practices. Based on our findings, we constructed a process model that provides a deeper understanding of fast-response organizing that informs future studies on organizing in extreme contexts.

Contentious Politics in China: Causes, Dynamics, and Consequences

AbstractChina has become a land of social protests. Yet the Chinese state possesses considerable capacity and is rising on the world stage day by day. Why and how do Chinese people take to the streets? Where does their activism lead? This paper draws on a rich body of existing literature to provide an overview of the broad landscape of Chinese contentious politics and to dig deeper into a few common or emerging forms of social conflict. It then explores the various structural and political opportunity-based explanations for why protest occurs in China, before describing the ways in which different organizations and different framings of issues by citizens affect how protests play out. Shifting to where protests lead, the paper briefly surveys a variety of coercive and conciliatory institutions China possesses for social control and then documents distinct patterns in the state’s handling of different types of resistance—repressive, tolerant, concessionary, and mixed approaches—followed by an examination of the multifaceted impact of unrest. The conclusion offers suggestions for future researchers. Reviewing major concepts, debates, perspectives, and emerging research directions in studies of contentious politics in the world’s most populous country, this paper contributes to a more nuanced understanding of authoritarian politics and authoritarian resilience more generally.

Complex intersections of race and class: Among social liberals, learning about White privilege reduces sympathy, increases blame, and decreases external attributions for White people struggling with poverty.

White privilege lessons are sometimes used to increase awareness of racism. However, little research has investigated the consequences of these lessons. Across 2 studies (N = 1,189), we hypothesized that White privilege lessons may both highlight structural privilege based on race, and simultaneously decrease sympathy for other challenges some White people endure (e.g., poverty)-especially among social liberals who may be particularly receptive to structural explanations of inequality. Indeed, both studies revealed that while social liberals were overall more sympathetic to poor people than social conservatives, reading about White privilege decreased their sympathy for a poor White (vs. Black) person. Moreover, these shifts in sympathy were associated with greater punishment/blame and fewer external attributions for a poor White person's plight. We conclude that, among social liberals, White privilege lessons may increase beliefs that poor White people have failed to take advantage of their racial privilege-leading to negative social evaluations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Biases distorting priority setting

Modern health care faces an ever widening gap between technological possibilities and available resources. To handle this challenge we have constructed elaborate systems for health policy making and priority setting. Despite such systems many health care systems provide a wide range of documented low-value care while being unable to afford emerging high-value care. Accordingly, this article sets out asking why priority setting in health care has so poor outcomes while relevant systems are well developed and readily available. It starts to identify some rational and structural explanations for the discrepancy between theoretical efforts and practical outcomes in priority setting. However, even if these issues are addressed, practical priority setting may still not obtain its goals. This is because a wide range of irrational effects is hampering priority setting: biases. By using examples from the literature the article identifies and analyses a wide range of biases indicating how they can distort priority setting processes. Overuse, underuse, and overinvestment, as well as hampered disinvestment and undermined priority setting principles are but some of the identified implications. Moreover, while some biases are operating mainly on one level, many are active on the micro, meso and on the macro level. Identifying and analyzing biases affecting priority setting is the first, but crucial, step towards improving health policy making and priority setting in health care.

Regulation of Phosphoribosyl-Linked Serine Ubiquitination by Deubiquitinases DupA and DupB.

SummaryThe family of bacterial SidE enzymes catalyzes non-canonical phosphoribosyl-linked (PR) serine ubiquitination and promotes infectivity of Legionella pneumophila. Here, we describe identification of two bacterial effectors that reverse PR ubiquitination and are thus named deubiquitinases for PR ubiquitination (DUPs; DupA and DupB). Structural analyses revealed that DupA and SidE ubiquitin ligases harbor a highly homologous catalytic phosphodiesterase (PDE) domain. However, unlike SidE ubiquitin ligases, DupA displays increased affinity to PR-ubiquitinated substrates, which allows DupA to cleave PR ubiquitin from substrates. Interfering with DupA-ubiquitin binding switches its activity toward SidE-type ligase. Given the high affinity of DupA to PR-ubiquitinated substrates, we exploited a catalytically inactive DupA mutant to trap and identify more than 180 PR-ubiquitinated host proteins in Legionella-infected cells. Proteins involved in endoplasmic reticulum (ER) fragmentation and membrane recruitment to Legionella-containing vacuoles (LCV) emerged as major SidE targets. The global map of PR-ubiquitinated substrates provides critical insights into host-pathogen interactions during Legionella infection.

Oscillating fine structure of x-ray absorption and atomic structure of metallic layers in a magnetic multilayer nanostructure (Сo45Fe45Zr10/SiO2)n

Within the framework of a linearized augmented plane wave method, the electronic structure and x-ray absorption near edge structure of K-spectra were calculated for transition metals that make up the metal layers of multilayer nanostructures (Co45Fe45Zr10/SiO2)n consisting of alternating n pairs of metallic Co45Fe45Zr10 layers and SiO2 interlayers. These results are compared with previously obtained experimental data. An explanation of atomic structure in the metal layers organization of multilayer nanostructures under consideration is given. It is shown that the atomic structure of metal nanolayers MNS (Co45Fe45Zr10/SiO2)32 under experimental conditions of magnetron sputtering proceeds self-organization on the basis of the α-iron bcc structure.

Vampire Bats that Cooperate in the Lab Maintain Their Social Networks in the Wild.

Social bonds, maintained by mutual investments of time and energy, have greatly influenced the evolution of social cognition and cooperation in many species [e.g., 1-8]. However, there are two pitfalls regarding "social bonds" as an explanation for social structure and cooperation [1, 9-11]. First, studies often incorrectly assume that frequent association implies partner fidelity based on mutual social preference, but even seemingly complex nonrandom interaction networks can emerge solely from habitat or spatial structure [12-16]. Second, the false appearance of partner fidelity can result from stable options in the "partner market" [1, 9-11, 17]. For instance, individuals might preferentially groom the same partner, even if the decision depends entirely on the immediate costs and benefits rather than relationship history. Given these issues, a key challenge has been testing the extent to which social structure is driven by the intrinsic relationship history versus the extrinsic physical and social environment. If stable bonds exist, they should persist even if the individuals are moved to a dramatically different physical and social environment. We tested this prediction by tracking social relationships among common vampire bats (Desmodus rotundus) moved from the lab to the wild. We show that allogrooming and food sharing among female vampire bats induced in captivity over 22months predicted their assortativity and association rates when we subsequently tracked them in the wild with custom-made high-resolution proximity sensors. The persistence of many relationships across different physical and social environments suggests that social structure is caused by both extrinsic constraints and intrinsic partner fidelity.

Networking hegemony: alliance dynamics in East Asia

This Special Issue aims to explain the transition from the Cold War US-led system of exclusive bilateral alliances in East Asia (or “hub-and-spokes” system) into a “networked security architecture”, i.e. a network of interwoven bilateral, minilateral and multilateral defence arrangements between the US and its regional allies and partners, and that also partly includes China. Drawing from the English School of International Relations, it challenges dominant Structural Realist explanations which interpret such development as a form of external balancing against a revisionist China. By contrast, this Special Issue submits that China’s selective contestation of the US-led hegemonic order in East Asia has sparked a renegotiation of such order among regional powers, which has resulted in the restructuring of the underlying alliances and defence partnerships into a networked security architecture. Specifically, regional powers have sought to broaden the composition of the US-led hegemonic order in East Asia—by diversifying the range of defence ties between US allies and partners, but also by seeking to include the PRC in it. Thereby, rather than merely balancing the People’s Republic of China, they have sought to channel the trajectory of China’s rise within this hegemonic order through a mixture of resistance and accommodation. This introductory paper develops the theoretical framework and central argument of the Special Issue.

Wave stress and biotic facilitation drive community composition in a marginal hard‐bottom ecosystem

AbstractEcological patterns are inherently scale‐dependent and driven by the interplay of abiotic gradients and biotic processes. Despite the fundamental importance of such gradients, there are many gaps in our understanding of how abiotic stress gradients interplay with biotic processes and how these collectively affect species distributions. Using a hierarchical design, we sampled two communities separated by depth along wave exposure and salinity gradients to elucidate how these two gradients affect species composition in habitats formed by the foundation species Mytilus trossulus and Fucus vesiculosus. Specifically, we looked at the impacts of regional salinity and temperature, local wave exposure, and site‐dependent facilitation effects on the associated community composition. Wave exposure was the best predictor for species assembly structure, which was also affected by Mytilus biomass and by salinity and water temperature. While the tested variables provided robust explanations for community structure and density, they did not provide conclusive explanations for variation in species richness or evenness. Mytilus biomass had a stronger effect on the associated community with increasing wave exposure at the deeper depth, but the patterns were less obvious at the shallower depth. The latter was also the case for Fucus. These findings comply partly with theoretical predictions suggesting stronger facilitation effects in physically harsh environments. Our results indicate that environmental drivers are the main structuring forces that affect species assembly structure, but also foundation species are important. Thus, predicting changes in species distributions and biodiversity requires the simultaneous consideration of environmental gradients, as well as the structure and composition of foundation species and the interplay between these factors. This work advances our understanding of the processes that modulate species distributions in a marginal marine area and broadens the knowledge of how biological and environmental factors interplay and have an influence on hard‐bottom community structure in brackish water seas.

Multivariate GR&R through factor analysis

Several measurement tasks present multivariate nature. In the cases with quality characteristics highly correlated within groups, but with a relatively small correlation between groups, the available multivariate GR&R methods are not suitable to provide a correct interpretation of the results. The present work presents a new multivariate GR&R approach through factor analysis. Factor analysis is a multivariate statistical method which focuses on the explanation of the covariance structure of the data. Through orthogonal rotation of the factors a suitable structure can be achieved with loadings easy to relate the variables to the factors. The proposed multivariate GR&R method through factor analysis is described and applied in the quality evaluation of holes obtained through helical milling process of AISI H13 hardened steel. The method succeeded in achieving a simple structure, with one factor related to the roughness outcomes and other related to the roundness ones, simplifying the gage capability evaluation.

Interplay of Competition and Cooperation in Wind Farm Interorganizational Projects: Relational Approach

AbstractThis paper answers the call for research addressing the structural and relational explanations of interorganizational projects (IOPs). It aims to contribute to extant knowledge by highlight...

Individualistic and Structural Explanations in Ásta’sCategories We Live By

AbstractÁsta’sCategories We Live Byis a superb addition to the literature on social metaphysics. In it she offers a powerful framework for understanding the creation and maintenance of social categories. In this commentary piece, I want to draw attention to Ásta’s reliance on explanatory individualism – the view that the social world is best explained by the actions and attitudes of individuals. I argue that this reliance makes it difficult for Ásta to explain how many social categories are maintained and why certain categories are reliably available to us and so resistant to change. These explanatory deficiencies could be overcome, I argue, by eschewing explanatory individualism and positing social structures to figure in structural explanations of the maintenance and availability of social categories.

Rapid pressure-less sintering of fine grained zirconia ceramics: Explanation and elimination of a core-shell structure

Rapid pressure-less sintering of nanoparticle yttria-stabilized zirconia (YSZ) can result in the formation of a gradient structure characterized by an airtight layer at the surface and interconnected porosity inside the sintered compact. This structure constrains a sample from further shrinkage and limits its final density. In this study, we rapidly sintered green bodies prepared from four commercially available YSZ powder grades, all with a particle size of 60 nm, but with different chemical compositions. We have shown that all powders contained residual chlorine which is responsible for the above mentioned core-shell structure of rapidly sintered samples rather than low thermal conductivity of zirconia. The only sample without this gradient structure was prepared from the powder grade with an increased amount of binder that helped to reduce the chlorine content during binder burnout. The ultimate way for elimination of negative chlorine effect was annealing the sample at 1000 °C prior to rapid sintering.