Normative States Research Articles

COPD-Like Phenotypes in TBC-Treated Mice Can be Effectively Alleviated via Estrogen Supplement.

Tris(2,3-dibromopropyl) isocyanurate (TBC), recognized as an endocrine disruptor, can cause inflammatory injury to the lung tissue of mice. To investigate the specific respiratory effects of TBC, male C57BL/6J mice were administered a daily dose of 20 mg/kg of TBC over 14 days. Postexposure, these mice developed chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD)-like symptoms characterized by inflammatory lung damage and functional impairment. In light of the antiestrogenic properties of TBC, we administrated estradiol (E2) to investigate its potential protective role against TBC-induced damage and found that the coexposure of E2 notably mitigated the COPD-like phenotypes. Immunohistochemical analysis revealed that TBC exposure reduced estrogen receptor alpha (ERα) expression and increased nuclear factor kappa-light-chain-enhancer of activated B cells (NF-κB) expression, while E2 treatment rebalanced the expression levels of ERα and NF-κB to their normative states. Our findings indicate that TBC, as an antiestrogenic agent, may contribute to the pathogenesis of COPD through an ERα-mediated inflammatory pathway, but that E2 treatment could reverse the impairment, providing a potentially promising remedial treatment. Given the lung status as a primary target of air pollution, the presence of antiestrogenic compounds like TBC in atmospheric particulates presents a significant concern, with the potential to exacerbate respiratory conditions such as COPD and pneumonia.

Is Practical Deliberation Bound by a Coherency Requirement? Foundational Normative States, Volitional Conflict, and Autonomy

AbstractHarry G. Frankfurt has put the problem of volitional conflict at the center of philosophical attention. If you care fundamentally about your career and your family, but these cares conflict, this conflict undermines the coherency of your decision standard and thereby your ability to choose and act autonomously. The standard response to this problem is to argue that you can overcome volitional conflict by unifying your foundational motivational states. As Frankfurt puts it, the ‘totality of things that an agent cares about’ plus his ‘ordering of how important to him they are effectively specifies his answer to the question of how to live’ (The Reasons of Love (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), p. 23). In this paper, I critically assess the three main reasons given for such a coherency requirement: 1) we can do only one action at a time; 2) our motivational states come with normative pressure towards coherency; and 3) conflicting motivational states provide us with an incoherent decision-making framework. I conclude that these reasons do not ground a coherency requirement for practical deliberation and argue that we can autonomously express ourselves as volitionally conflicted by acting on our conflicting motivational states over the course of multiple actions.

Between the Prerogative and the Normative States: The Evolving Power to Detain in China’s Political-Legal System

Abstract This article uses Ernst Fraenkel’s dual-state framework as an analytical tool to study those conflicting imperatives and constitutional tensions with a focus on the power to detain. This article makes the argument that China has emerged as a dual state with a normal state that functions increasingly with a rule-based government in inter-personal matters and a prerogative state that solidifies control in areas that are regarded as political sensitive. Overall, while the equilibrium between the normative and prerogative states has been evolving in China, it has remained stable. The Party has been able to build a relatively self-defined and self-referencing legal system to provide the certainty and order that the Chinese political economy demands while maintaining a zone of exception, expansive and continuing to evolve, for the prerogative state to safeguard authoritarian rule.

The vision of sustainable sport in a backcasting research

AbstractIt is now becoming widely accepted that our economy has reached the limits both in terms of the carrying capacity of our planet and in terms of bringing real social justice to the table. Degrowth is a research area that aims to transcend mainstream approaches. While moving beyond the growth paradigm would entail serious changes in all areas of social life and Degrowth research extends into most of them, the transformation of sports is not among them. Neither is Degrowth a recognised concept among those who deal with sports. The participatory backcasting research introduced in this paper attempts to fill this void. In the backcasting project, master students of sports economics envisioned the sustainable future of sports and identified potential intervention steps that lead towards such normative states. This paper describes the results and assesses those elements that aim for strong sustainability. The results show that relocalisation and the sharing economy are the most accepted Degrowth concepts in a normative scenario on sustainable sports in this group. At the same time, the paper offers frameworks of thoughts for those who want to move beyond the slogans of sustainability either as responsible citizens or in positions related to the world of sports.

Toward a Volitional Definition of Religion

AbstractThis article advocates for the production of stipulative definitions of religion, a type of nominal definition that articulates new ways of applying a word to a thing. I propose that scholars look to sites where phenomena historically have been labeled “religion” on lexical or real understandings of the term, this to query how religious agents there chose, implicitly or explicitly, to systematize thought, speech, emotion, and action. Such self-consciously ordered systems, I argue, may properly be labeled “religion.” Next, I apply this method to premodern South Asia, suggesting “religion” refers to the second-order structuring there that links normative social relations to normative states of subjectivity, any innovation in the one demanding innovation in the other. I conclude by inviting other efforts at stipulative definition, all with an eye toward an inductive approach, allowing that the myriad locations of religion present mutually distinguishable systems that may all properly be so labeled.

The Physics of Possibility: Victorian Fiction, Science, and Gender

The Physics of Possibility: Victorian Fiction, Science, and Gender

Dead-Letter Regimes in the Post-Soviet Space: Strategies and Communication

ABSTRACTThis article explores why dead-letter regimes, sets of norms and institutions with low efficiency and few expectations of tangible output, have become an enduring feature of international politics in the post-Soviet space. It focuses on the Collective Security Treaty Organization and the Eurasian Economic Union, the two regional regimes promoted by Russia. The article analyzes their emergence and evolution, normative frameworks, performance and member states’ expectations. It argues that, while mostly failing as instruments of strategic action, these regimes have become conduits of communicative action and arenas enabling member states to enact specific international roles.

Normative Pressures and Change in International Relations: Looking at “Democratic Intergovernmental Organizations?” and Beyond

This article summarizes the main arguments from my book, “Democratic Intergovernmental Organizations? Normative Pressures and Decision-making Rules.” The book asks how democratic norms have shaped decision-making rules in intergovernmental organizations. It discusses developments over almost two centuries, across six major organizations and finds that “normative pressures,” and states' varied reactions to such pressures, have slowly brought the rules of such organizations closer to the ones in the domestic realm that we generally associate with democracy. I also explain here how the book can lead to further research on intergovernmental organizations, norms, and, more broadly, on international relations. I do so by responding to a number of important questions raised by three reviewers, especially those referring to the actual norm dynamics leading to change in the international realm, the implications of my findings for future democratic trends in global governance, and the implications of this research for other aspects of international relations.

DEVELOPMENT, APPLICATION, AND RESULTS FROM A CLINICAL INFORMATICS PLATFORM THAT ENABLES A MULTI-MODAL TREATMENT PROTOCOL FOR ALZHEIMER'S DISEASE (AD)

Clinical informatics platforms are improving the treatment of individuals with chronic, complex diseases. The pathologic drivers of Alzheimer's disease are numerable and active simultaneously, with different etiologies for every individual. Muses Labs has deployed an informatics platform that integrates large datasets measuring different parameters of individuals to generate personalized, multi-modal treatment protocols for those at risk or in early stages of AD. The AD1 Protocol implemented by Muses Labs uses a data-analytics engine to optimize research-supported treatment recommendations to slow or reverse multiple factors associated with AD simultaneously. Data inputs comprise genomics, bio-specimen measurements, imaging results, medical histories, medications, allergies, immunizations, comorbidities, and results of cognitive evaluations. Algorithms compare the status of multiple physiological and lifestyle states known to be contributors to cognitive decline against desired normative states. We observe that AD disease drivers are interlocked, comprising modifiable feedback loops. Software algorithms implement the protocol, and generated recommendations are delivered to physicians. Health coaches motivate individuals' adherence and ongoing data collection. One to five iterations of protocols were generated for self-selected individuals (n=183, 52% pre-MCI, 58.5% female, mean age 66.7 years, mean 17.6 years of education, mean BMI 24.6). Genome data files were obtained with patient consent (65.4% ApoE4 carriers). 100+ serum blood tests were collected in each iteration. Approximately 60% of individuals on the protocol for 6 months have improved memory function, as measured on standardized cognitive evaluations. An informatics-based platform enables an actionable combination therapy for AD. This allows the testing of the hypothesis that recommended intervention protocols for physician usage can consistently modulate a large number of factors. From an IT perspective, well-established, big-data analytics techniques are utilized, including prioritizing, weightings, probabilities, and partial differential equations. Diagnosis, treatment recommendations and ongoing tracking is extensible. Health coaches are essential to adherence, providing guidance and influencing individuals' compliance. Individuals comply with the recommendations and can achieve the short-term goals leading to measurable cognitive improvements. Longer-term studies are needed to show that addressing multiple disease drivers simultaneously can be an effective path to improve cognitive function, and to delay or prevent AD.

The manifestation of the principles of geoecological ethics: Environmental approach

We investigate the additionality of the principles of geoecological ethics and ethical geography from the perspective of the manifestation of the norms of human activity in the natural environment. Geoecological ethics is based on the through principles of sustainable development and responsibility for breaches of different-quality norms existing in nature, economy and society, and on social relations considered in different systems with due regard for the characteristics of geographical environment. The degree of responsibility is measured in dimensionless indicators of reliability (dependability) theory, the integrated hazard of activity with natural restrictions on the action on geosystems and departures from normative states. Ethical geography generates landscape-cultural norms of implementation of different kinds of activity on a territory. The general ethical laws and quantitative models and methods for responsibility assessment are special interpretations of the notions and axioms of general system theory adopted as the norm of organization of knowledge. The principles of geoecological ethics manifest themselves as a result of the interpretation of the general laws of ethics via the geohistorical environment, primarily in the form of responsibility for a departure from the environment-caused norms of activity. Ethical geography implies responsibility for the reliability of knowledge of the generally significant norms of the state and allowable changes in environment. A violation of geoethical norms and nature management normative will necessarily lead to negative changes in the living conditions of man and society.

INITIAL DEVELOPMENT, APPLICATION, AND RESULTS FROM A CLINICAL INFORMATICS PLATFORM THAT ENABLES A MULTI-MODAL TREATMENT PROTOCOL FOR ALZHEIMER'S DISEASE

Clinical informatics platforms are improving the treatment of individuals with chronic diseases that have complex pathologies. The pathology drivers of Alzheimer's disease (AD) are highly complex and exist simultaneously, with different etiologies for every individual. Muses Labs has developed an informatics platform that generates multi-modal treatment protocols for individuals at risk for AD or those with mild AD. The MEND Protocol implemented by Muses Labs uses a data-analytics engine to deliver treatment recommendations, supported by research, to slow or reverse AD disease drivers. Computer inputs comprise genomics, bio-specimen measurements, imaging results, medical histories, medications, allergies, comorbidities, and neuropsych tests. Algorithms compare an individual's status of multiple physiological and lifestyle states known to be contributors to cognitive decline against desired normative states. We observe that AD disease drivers are interlocked, comprising modifiable feedback loops. A combination therapy for AD – customized to each individual – is proposed as a viable approach. Software implements the protocol, and generated recommendations are delivered to physicians. Health coaches motivate individuals' adherence. A baseline of treatment support of 76 individuals has been completed (58% female, mean age 66 years, mean 17 years of education, mean BMI 24.5). 100+ blood serum tests were collected for each. Genome raw data files from 23andMe were obtained, 66% with ApoE4. Approximately 40% of the individuals on the protocol for 6 months have improved memory function, based on standard neuropsych tests. An informatics-based platform enables rapidly-processed combination therapy for AD treatment approaches. This allows the testing of the hypothesis that recommended intervention protocols for physician usage can consistently modulate a large number of factors. From an IT perspective, well-established, big-data analytics techniques are utilized, including prioritizing, weightings, probabilities, and partial differential equations. Diagnosis, treatment recommendations and ongoing tracking is extensible. Health coaches are essential to adherence, providing guidance and influencing individuals' compliance. This pilot has demonstrated that individuals comply with the recommendations and can achieve the short-term goals. Longer-term studies are needed to show that addressing multiple disease drivers simultaneously can be an effective path to improve cognitive function, and to delay or prevent AD.

INITIAL DEVELOPMENT, APPLICATION, AND RESULTS FROM A CLINICAL INFORMATICS PLATFORM THAT ENABLES A MULTI-MODAL TREATMENT PROTOCOL FOR ALZHEIMER'S DISEASE

Clinical informatics platforms are improving the treatment of individuals with chronic diseases that have complex pathologies. The pathology drivers of Alzheimer's disease (AD) are highly complex and exist simultaneously, with different etiologies for every individual. Muses Labs has developed an informatics platform that generates multi-modal treatment protocols for individuals at risk for AD or those with mild AD. The MEND Protocol implemented by Muses Labs uses a data-analytics engine to deliver treatment recommendations, supported by research, to slow or reverse AD disease drivers. Computer inputs comprise genomics, bio-specimen measurements, imaging results, medical histories, medications, allergies, comorbidities, and neuropsych tests. Algorithms compare an individual's status of multiple physiological and lifestyle states known to be contributors to cognitive decline against desired normative states. We observe that AD disease drivers are interlocked, comprising modifiable feedback loops. A combination therapy for AD – customized to each individual – is proposed as a viable approach. Software implements the protocol, and generated recommendations are delivered to physicians. Health coaches motivate individuals' adherence. A baseline of treatment support of 76 individuals has been completed (58% female, mean age 66 years, mean 17 years of education, mean BMI 24.5). 100+ blood serum tests were collected for each. Genome raw data files from 23andMe were obtained, 66% with ApoE4. Approximately 40% of the individuals on the protocol for 6 months have improved memory function, based on standard neuropsych tests. An informatics-based platform enables rapidly-processed combination therapy for AD treatment approaches. This allows the testing of the hypothesis that recommended intervention protocols for physician usage can consistently modulate a large number of factors. From an IT perspective, well-established, big-data analytics techniques are utilized, including prioritizing, weightings, probabilities, and partial differential equations. Diagnosis, treatment recommendations and ongoing tracking is extensible. Health coaches are essential to adherence, providing guidance and influencing individuals' compliance. This pilot has demonstrated that individuals comply with the recommendations and can achieve the short-term goals. Longer-term studies are needed to show that addressing multiple disease drivers simultaneously can be an effective path to improve cognitive function, and to delay or prevent AD.

Supporting flexible regulation of crisis management by means of situated artificial institution

This paper highlights the use of situated artificial institution (SAI) within a hybrid, interactive, normative multi-agent system to regulate human collaboration in crisis management. Norms regulate the actions of human actors based on the dynamics of the environment in which they are situated. This dynamics results from both environment evolution and actors’ actions. Our objective is to situate norms in the environment in order to provide a context-aware crisis regulation. However, this coupling must be a loose one to keep both levels independent and easyto-change in order to face the complex and changing crisis situations. To that aim, we introduce a constitutive level between environmental and normative states providing a loose coupling of normative regulation with environment evolution. Norms are thus no more referring to environmental facts but to status functions, i.e., the institutional interpretation of environmental facts through constitutive rules. We present how this declarative and distinct SAI modelling succeeds in managing the crisis with a context-aware crisis regulation.

“Shape Carries Story”: Navigating the World as Fat

“Shape Carries Story”: Navigating the World as Fat

A Path to Successful Management of Employee Security Compliance: An Empirical Study of Information Security Climate

Research problem: Although organizations have been exerting a significant effort to leverage policies and procedures to improve information security, their impact and effectiveness is under scrutiny as employees' compliance with information security procedures remains problematic. Research questions: (1) What is the role of information security climate (ISC) in cultivating individual's compliance with security policy? (2) Do individual affective and normative states mediate the effect of ISC to increase security policy compliance intention while thwarting employees' security avoidance? Literature review: Drawing upon Griffin and Neal's safety climate model, which states the effect of safety climate on individual safety behaviors that lead to specific performance outcomes, we develop an ISC model to empirically examine the efficacy of security climate in governing employee's policy compliance. The literature suggests that there could be practical reasons for employees not to observe the security policies and procedures. These go beyond the simple lack of use or negligence, and include rationalizing security violation, particularly in light of the fact that they are under pressure to get something done without delays in daily work. To empirically address such employee behavior, we employed the term, security avoidance in this study-an employee's deliberate intention to avoid security policies or procedures in daily work despite the need and opportunity to do so. Methodology: We surveyed IT users in South Korea about individuals' perception about various organizational/managerial information security practices in the work environment. Results and discussion: The results from 581 participants strongly support the fundamental proposition that the information security climate has a significant positive impact on employee's conformity with the security policy. The study also reveals that the security climate nurtures the employee's affective and cognitive states through affective commitment and normative commitment. These, in turn, mediate the influence of security climate on employee policy compliance by facilitating rule adherence among employees while, at the same time, inspiring self-adjusted behaviors to neutralize their deliberate intents of negligence. Overall, the findings support our view that the creation of strong security climate is the adequate alternative to a sanction-based deterrence to employees' security policy compliance, which limits the presence of security avoidance. The implications to theory are the multidimensional nature of ISC construct and its linkage to a systematic view of individual level information security activities. The implications to practice are the ISC's favorable role of discouraging employee's security avoidance while inducing the security policy compliance intention at the same time, given the limit of sanctions.

A New Method for Tracking of Motor Skill Learning Through Practical Application of Fitts’ Law

ABSTRACT A novel upper limb motor skill measure, task productivity rate (TPR) was developed integrating speed and spatial error, delivered by a practical motor skill rehabilitation task (MSRT). This prototype task involved placement of 5 short pegs horizontally on a spatially configured rail array. The stability of TPR was tested on 18 healthy right-handed adults (10 women, 8 men, median age 29 years) in a prospective single-session quantitative within-subjects study design. Manipulations of movement rate 10% faster and slower relative to normative states did not significantly affect TPR, F(1.387, 25.009) = 2.465, p = .121. A significant linear association between completion time and error was highest during the normative state condition (Pearson's r = .455, p < .05). Findings provided evidence that improvements in TPR over time reflected motor learning with possible changes in coregulation behavior underlying practice under different conditions. These findings extend Fitts’ law theory to tracking of practical motor skill using a dexterity task, which could have potential clinical applications in rehabilitation.

The Dual State Reframed: Ernst Fraenkel's Political Clients and his Theory of the Nazi Legal System

From 1936 to 1938 the prominent political scientist Ernst Fraenkel wrote the first draft of his classic analysis of the National-Socialist legal system, The Dual State. The dual state theory describes the steady encroachment of the ‘prerogative state’, which was lawless and arbitrary, on the ‘normative state’, which consisted of traditional and nazified legal institutions. Fraenkel developed his theory in large part based on his own legal practice in Germany between 1933 and 1938, when he often represented leftist defendants against political prosecutions. While his legal practice helped inspire his theory, his book reports nothing about his own cases. But scattered information provides glimpses at a handful of them. This article addresses what Fraenkel’s actual courtroom experiences show about the prerogative and normative states, the nature of each, and their interplay with each other. While the theory focuses on the victory of the prerogative state – on the way...

Practices and the Direct Perception of Normative States

The overall aim of this two-part paper is to provide a supplement to ability theories of practice in terms of a defense of the following thesis: Individuals’ ability to act appropriately sometimes depends on their exercise of the ability directly to perceive normative states. In part I, I presented the account of direct perception. In this part II, I argue that, by the lights of this account, normative states are sometimes directly perceptible. Also, I show that the ability directly to perceive normative states is a commonly possessed—and exercised—ability. On this basis, I establish the conclusion that, in situations of social interaction, individuals’ ability to act appropriately is sometimes underwritten by their exercise of the ability directly to perceive normative states. By way of ending, I briefly explain the different ways in which my discussion constitutes both a useful supplement to ability theories of practice and a reply to an important objection raised against these theories.

Practices and the Direct Perception of Normative States

The overall aim of this two-part article is to provide a supplement to ability theories of practice in terms of a defense of the following thesis: In situations of social interaction, individuals’ ability to act appropriately sometimes depends on their exercise of the ability directly to perceive normative states. In this Part I, I introduce ability theories of practice and motivate my thesis. Furthermore, I offer an analysis of normative states as response-dependent properties. Last, I work out and defend an account of direct perception that is compatible with individuals being able directly to perceive various everyday phenomena. Drawing on this account, I show in part II, that normative states are sometimes directly perceptible too.

Major running on the spot.

Major running on the spot.