Idiosyncratic Systems Research Articles

Divergent connectomic organization delineates genetic evolutionary traits in the human brain

The relationship between human brain connectomics and genetic evolutionary traits remains elusive due to the inherent challenges in combining complex associations within cerebral tissue. In this study, insights are provided about the relationship between connectomics, gene expression and divergent evolutionary pathways from non-human primates to humans. Using in vivo human brain resting-state data, we detected two co-existing idiosyncratic functional systems: the segregation network, in charge of module specialization, and the integration network, responsible for information flow. Their topology was approximated to whole-brain genetic expression (Allen Human Brain Atlas) and the co-localization patterns yielded that neuron communication functionalities—linked to Neuron Projection—were overrepresented cell traits. Homologue-orthologue comparisons using dN/dS-ratios bridged the gap between neurogenetic outcomes and biological data, summarizing the known evolutionary divergent pathways within the Homo Sapiens lineage. Evidence suggests that a crosstalk between functional specialization and information flow reflects putative biological qualities of brain architecture, such as neurite cellular functions like axonal or dendrite processes, hypothesized to have been selectively conserved in the species through positive selection. These findings expand our understanding of human brain function and unveil aspects of our cognitive trajectory in relation to our simian ancestors previously left unexplored.

Dynamic time warp-based clustering: Application of machine learning algorithms to simulation input modelling

Effective input modelling in stochastic simulation is essential in driving and understanding underlying system behaviours. Current approaches to input modelling either consider all input data as a homogeneous data set, resulting in simulation models that ignore idiosyncratic systems characteristics, or alternatively, treat individual data sets independently, leading to more complex analysis. In this article we propose a novel approach based on exploratory machine learning techniques to generate representative system behaviours with just adequate scenario experiments by grouping input data into clusters. Dynamic time warping measures the similarity between input sources and silhouette indices are used to determine the optimal number of clusters. This approach provides more targeted analysis to characterize underlying systems behaviours driven by factors such as socio-economics, demographics or geography. Results from two simulation case studies demonstrated the effectiveness of the proposed approach, in that system output behaviours remain invariant based on several statistical tests.

Emergent Morphology in Child Homesign: Evidence from Number Language

ABSTRACT Human languages, signed and spoken, can be characterized by the structural patterns they use to associate communicative forms with meanings. One such pattern is paradigmatic morphology, where complex words are built from the systematic use and re-use of sub-lexical units. Here, we provide evidence of emergent paradigmatic morphology akin to number inflection in a communication system developed without input from a conventional language, homesign. We study the communication systems of four deaf child homesigners (mean age 8;02). Although these idiosyncratic systems vary from one another, we nevertheless find that all four children use handshape and movement devices productively to express cardinal and non-cardinal number information, and that their number expressions are consistent in both form and meaning. Our study shows, for the first time, that all four homesigners not only incorporate number devices into representational devices used as predicates , but also into gestures functioning as nominals, including deictic gestures. In other words, the homesigners express number by systematically combining and re-combining additive markers for number (qua inflectional morphemes) with representational and deictic gestures (qua bases). The creation of new, complex forms with predictable meanings across gesture types and linguistic functions constitutes evidence for an inflectional morphological paradigm in homesign and expands our understanding of the structural patterns of language that are, and are not, dependent on linguistic input.

Spatial Structure Can Decrease Symbiotic Cooperation.

Mutualisms occur when at least two species provide a net fitness benefit to each other. These types of interactions are ubiquitous in nature, with more being discovered regularly. Mutualisms are vital to humankind: Pollinators and soil microbes are critical in agriculture, bacterial microbiomes regulate our health, and domesticated animals provide us with food and companionship. Many hypotheses exist on how mutualisms evolve; however, they are difficult to evaluate without bias, due to the fragile and idiosyncratic systems most often investigated. Instead, we have created an artificial life simulation, Symbulation, which we use to examine mutualism evolution based on (1) the probability of vertical transmission (symbiont being passed to offspring) and (2) the spatial structure of the environment. We found that spatial structure can lead to less mutualism at intermediate vertical transmission rates. We provide evidence that this effect is due to the ability of quasi species to purge parasites, reducing the diversity of available symbionts. Our simulation is easily extended to test many additional hypotheses about the evolution of mutualism and serves as a general model to quantitatively compare how different environments affect the evolution of mutualism.

"Sweetheart, I wish you Could Text without Help": Mediating Emotional Communication within the Context of Close Personal Relationships

This article explores the emotional challenges of mediated communication from the point of view of mediators who have close personal relationships with the people for whom they perform the mediating role. The article is based on the personal experiences of the three authors and on qualitative analysis of interviews with mothers and fathers of seven young adults who rely on mediated communication in their everyday lives. Our narrative highlights six key themes related to mediation within the context of close personal relationships: 1.The importance of parent/child communication; 2.The development of idiosyncratic communication systems – sometimes in defiance of professional constructions of what constitutes "real communication;" 3. The continued need for mediation after independent communication techniques have been mastered; 4. Parental concern about who will mediate in their absence; 5. Complications involved in parental mediation during the transition to adulthood; and 6.The problem of "blended voices" when both the mediator and communicator have an emotional stake in the communication.Keywords: Disability, Mediated Communication, Caregiving, Emotion, Close Relationships

The Dialogue of Marriage

This article, framed in relational dialectics theory, argues for dialogic creativity as an alternative to extant companionate and institutional conceptualizations of marital quality. Dialogic creativity—dialogue—forecloses monologic calcification of meaning in marriage, including the evaluative judgment of what constitutes marital quality, through the ongoing interplay of competing discourses. Four potential discursive sites are discussed through the Bakhtinian concept of the utterance chain as a way to frame the kinds of discursive struggles that are prevalent in marriage; two of these discursive sites capture struggles among sociocultural discourses, and two capture struggles among idiosyncratic systems of meaning that reflect the unique history of a given marriage and the unique pattern of similarities and differences between partners in a given marriage. Dialogic creativity is enacted communicatively through three forms of dialogic expansion: diachronic separation, synchronic interplay, and hybrid and aesthetic‐moment enactments. The three kinds of communicative practices are contrasted with dialogically contractive monologue, in which a single monolithic discourse silences all competing discourses in the struggle of meaning.

Analyses reveal a novel avirulent Streptococcus suis Serotype 2 strain that induces protective immunity against challenge with the highly virulent strains

Results By comparing the genomes of the virulent and avirulent strains, we observed massive genome rearrangements that may result in alterations in gene expression and, in turn, causing enormous single gene gain and loss for the S. suis 2 species. It is most interesting that both virulent and avirulent species feature a similarly structured genomic island (GEI) which carries different idiosyncratic systems as an adoptive evolutionary response. Strikingly, all of the animals vaccinated with the avirulent strain 05HAS68 were protected from challenge infection with the most virulent S. suis 2 strain, 05ZYH33, and, furthermore, the protective immunity could be transferred with T cells and plasma from the vaccinated pigs to unimmunized animals. Increased production of tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-alpha) and gamma interferon (IFN-gamma) in peripheral blood of the immunized animals may be attributed to the protective immunity elicited by the live vaccine. Discussion Since the S. suis 2 strains command large genetic diversity, it is almost impossible to achieve global protection for all S. suis 2 pathogenic strains by depending on one, or even several, virulence-related substances as vaccines. In view of our results, both humoral and cellular immunities induced by live 05HAS68-based vaccine are required for the specific protection against virulent S. suis strains; therefore, we suggest reconsideration of research strategy in terms of model strains to test for vaccine design.

Making place for clutter and other ideas of home

In this article, we examine the containment of clutter in family homes and, from this, outline considerations for design. Selected materials from an ethnographically informed study of home life are used to detail the ways in which families contain their clutter in bowls and drawers. Clutter, within these containers, is found to be made up of a heterogeneous collection of things that, for all manner of reasons, hold an ambiguous status in the home. It is shown that bowls and drawers provide a “safe” site of containment for clutter, giving the miscellany of content the “space” to be properly dealt with and classified, or to be left unresolved. The shared but idiosyncratic practices families use to contain their clutter are seen to be one of the ways in which the home, or at least the idea of home, is collectively produced. It is also part of the means by which families come to make their homes distinct and unique. These findings are used to consider what it might mean to design for the home, and to do so in ways that are sensitive to the idiosyncratic systems of household organization. In conclusion, thought is given to how we design for people's ideas of home, and how we might build sites of uncertainty into homes, where physical as well as digital things might coalesce.

An explanation of human capital disclosure from the resource‐based perspective

PurposeAlthough the importance of human capital (HC) in firm value creation is firmly established in the literature, the level of emphasis placed on human capital disclosure (HCD) by preparers of financial statements and sell‐side analysts is minimal. The purpose of this paper is to address this dilemma by critically analysing the conceptualisation of HC in disclosure literature and introduce a more suitable explanation.Design/methodology/approachThe paper begins by reviewing the literature on intellectual capital disclosure (ICD) to examine the level of HCD in various company media and the use of such information by the capital market. It then critically analyses the conceptualisation of HC in those studies with a view to forming an opinion about the adequacy of that conceptualisation. Then the resource‐based view is justified as providing a more appropriate conceptualisation of HC to meet demands of the capital market.FindingsSubstantial ICD literature conceptualises HC using HC theory as a collection of knowledge and competences possessed by employees individually and collectively in firms. This has resulted in HC disclosure scores being considerably low compared to external and internal capital disclosure and does not portray HC in a way that is useful to the capital market. A resource‐based perspective enables HC to be depicted in a way that closely resembles the value creation potential of firms' employees.Practical implicationsGuidance is provided for future HCD and ICD studies to operationalise HC and to reflect its value creation potential by encompassing not only the firm specific stock of knowledge and capabilities of employees, but also the strategic HC management practices. Thus the corporate culture and the idiosyncratic systems and practices of the firm which are in place are enabled in to reaping the benefits of these.Originality/valueICD literature portrays HC as the least important intellectual capital subcategory. However, anecdotal evidence suggests otherwise. This study is the first attempt to clarify and provide an explanation to this dilemma.

Clusters of orthologous genes for 41 archaeal genomes and implications for evolutionary genomics of archaea

BackgroundAn evolutionary classification of genes from sequenced genomes that distinguishes between orthologs and paralogs is indispensable for genome annotation and evolutionary reconstruction. Shortly after multiple genome sequences of bacteria, archaea, and unicellular eukaryotes became available, an attempt on such a classification was implemented in Clusters of Orthologous Groups of proteins (COGs). Rapid accumulation of genome sequences creates opportunities for refining COGs but also represents a challenge because of error amplification. One of the practical strategies involves construction of refined COGs for phylogenetically compact subsets of genomes.ResultsNew Archaeal Clusters of Orthologous Genes (arCOGs) were constructed for 41 archaeal genomes (13 Crenarchaeota, 27 Euryarchaeota and one Nanoarchaeon) using an improved procedure that employs a similarity tree between smaller, group-specific clusters, semi-automatically partitions orthology domains in multidomain proteins, and uses profile searches for identification of remote orthologs. The annotation of arCOGs is a consensus between three assignments based on the COGs, the CDD database, and the annotations of homologs in the NR database. The 7538 arCOGs, on average, cover ~88% of the genes in a genome compared to a ~76% coverage in COGs. The finer granularity of ortholog identification in the arCOGs is apparent from the fact that 4538 arCOGs correspond to 2362 COGs; ~40% of the arCOGs are new. The archaeal gene core (protein-coding genes found in all 41 genome) consists of 166 arCOGs. The arCOGs were used to reconstruct gene loss and gene gain events during archaeal evolution and gene sets of ancestral forms. The Last Archaeal Common Ancestor (LACA) is conservatively estimated to possess 996 genes compared to 1245 and 1335 genes for the last common ancestors of Crenarchaeota and Euryarchaeota, respectively. It is inferred that LACA was a chemoautotrophic hyperthermophile that, in addition to the core archaeal functions, encoded more idiosyncratic systems, e.g., the CASS systems of antivirus defense and some toxin-antitoxin systems.ConclusionThe arCOGs provide a convenient, flexible framework for functional annotation of archaeal genomes, comparative genomics and evolutionary reconstructions. Genomic reconstructions suggest that the last common ancestor of archaea might have been (nearly) as advanced as the modern archaeal hyperthermophiles. ArCOGs and related information are available at: .ReviewersThis article was reviewed by Peer Bork, Patrick Forterre, and Purificacion Lopez-Garcia.

A Unique but Idiosyncratic Behavioral Systems Look at Development

A Unique but Idiosyncratic Behavioral Systems Look at Development

The Revised International Phonetic Alphabet

In August 1989 the International Phonetic Association held a convention in Kiel, Germany, in order to revise the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). The principal product of the meeting was the chart accompanying this note, together with the report published in the Association's Journal (International Phonetic Association 1989). The purpose of this note is not to argue for or against different aspects of the new chart. It was quite clear to everybody at the Kiel convention that this is not the best possible chart; but it was also clear that we could not agree on how it should be improved. My own opinions on its current failings and possible future revisions are appearing elsewhere (Ladefoged 1990). Here I simply wish to urge linguists to abandon idiosyncratic systems of phonetic representation, and to adopt the new international standard. There are three points concerning the IPA that should encourage linguists to regard it as suitable for their needs. The first is that the Association has made it evident that the chart has a linguistic basis, rather than being a general phonetic notation scheme. As the report notes: 'The IPA is intended to be a set of symbols for representing all the possible sounds of the world's languages.' It goes on to make it clear that by 'possible sounds' it means phonologically contrastive elements within a language, stating that 'the sounds that are represented are primarily those that distinguish one word from another.' The second point that is of interest to linguists is that the Association recognizes that the symbols can be taken to represent what linguists would call distinctive feature combinations. The new IPA chart does not actually use the term 'features'; it retains the names of the traditional phonetic categories for the row and column headings. But the linguistic basis for these phonetic categories is made evident by statements in the report (which will eventually become part of an official Handbook of the IPA) such as: 'The categories define a number of natural classes of sounds that operate in phonological rules and historical sound changes. The symbols of the IPA are shorthand ways of indicating certain intersections of these categories. Thus [p] is a shorthand way of designating the intersection of the categories voiceless, bilabial, and plosive; [m] is the intersection of the categories voiced, bilabial, and nasal; and so on.' Most linguists should find little difficulty in regarding what are here called categories as equivalent to what are elsewhere called features. Of course the Association nowhere suggests that these categories are either the sole or the best set of features for linguistic purposes. They simply make evident the linguistic underpinnings of the IPA chart. The final point to be noted here is that the chart is an attempt to provide a summary of agreed phonetic knowledge on a single page. Of course, the pho550

Selecting a computer system for a mental health center.

Health (7) is an attempt to learn and apply the lessons of these idiosyncratic systems. The goal of the NIMH prototypes is to provide the core of common data items useful in almost all centers while permitting the flexibility needed to help each center define its particular characteristics and monitor specific areas of clinical emphasis. Clinical programs are at an earlier stage of development, but generic models of clinician consultaiions, direct patient interviews, and patient treatment programs that herald the development of more and better programs for dinical computing are available.

The “Reconstituted Family”: A Model for Group Treatment of the Severely Emotionally Disturbed Adolescent

Abstract The severely emotionally disturbed adolescent (SEDA) requires a markedly different therapeutic approach from that used with adolescents who are experiencing problems, even severe ones, arising out of variations of normal adolescent growth and development. SEDAs are often products of dysfunctional family systems, and they bring vestiges of these systems into group therapy. They often project conflicts with parents onto the leaders and display in the group the maladaptive behaviors and idiosyncratic belief systems fostered in the family unit

Sketching

Work on computer-aided design in general and sketch recognition in particular has been jointly sponsored by the Division of Computer Research of the National Science Foundation (Grant Number DCR74-20974-A01, Machine Recognition and Inference Making in Computer Aids to Design) and the Office of Naval Research (Contract Number N0014-67-A-0204-0074, Context Definition through Idiosyncratic Systems).

The architecture machine

The report documents the state of The Architecture Machine, as a teaching operation, as a computer-aided design facility, and as a computer science research unit. The underlying theme of all these roles is to understand the makings of architecture; the interfaces between people, machines, and the real world; and the ingredients of intelligent behaviour. Design is construed as an inference-making procedure. We postulate that it must be aided by very personalized computer systems, idiosyncratic systems, capable of handling ambiguities, incosistencies, and the vagaries indigenous to design thinking.