Paradigmatic Case Research Articles

Using WeChat to solve the Three-Long & One-Short dilemma: insights from a paradigmatic case

Using WeChat to solve the Three-Long & One-Short dilemma: insights from a paradigmatic case

Where do philosophers appeal to intuitions (if they do)?

AbstractIt might be that intuitions are central to philosophy, and it might be that this is true because when philosophers give case‐based arguments for philosophical claims (in published philosophy), the case verdict is typically (a) an intuited proposition and (b) either left undefended or defended on the grounds that it is an intuited proposition. This paper remains neutral on these global issues, however, and instead focuses on whether there is a nontrivial (or many‐membered) class of case‐based arguments in philosophy in which the case verdict is defended by appeal to background beliefs and not on the grounds that it is an intuited proposition. The paper argues that the answer is affirmative by examining seven such arguments that are referred to as “paradigm cases” of case‐based arguments in which the verdict is justified via an appeal to intuition.

Impact of Hydroxyurea to Treat Haematological Disorders on Male Fertility: Two Case Reports and a Systematic Review.

Hydroxyurea (HU) is a cytoreductive agent used as standard treatment option for sickle cell anaemia/disease (SCD), essential thrombocythemia (ET), and polycythaemia vera (PV). Despite its overall good safety profile, its use also in relatively young patients raises an interest on its potential impact on spermatogenesis. To perform a systematic review of all published articles investigating fertility in male patients affected by SCD, ET, and PV and treated with HU. Two paradigmatic case reports of patients affected by PV and ET, respectively, have been also reported. PubMed, EMBASE, and Cochrane databases were queried for all the published studies indexed up to November 15th, 2022. A combination of the following keywords was used: "hydroxyurea," "fertility," "male," "sperm," "sickle cell anaemia," "sickle cell disease," "essential thrombocythemia," "polycythaemia vera." Of 48 articles identified, 8 studies, involving 161 patients, were eligible for inclusion. Overall, the number of spermatogonia per round cross section of seminiferous tubule were decreased in patients with SCD compared to healthy males. HU treatment was always associated with a worsening of semen parameters, even up to azoospermia. Notably, treatment discontinuation was associated with an improvement of semen parameters and a trend toward normalization in the case of PV and ET, with a less clear amelioration in men with SCD. In both our patients with either PV or ET, HU discontinuation was associated with a significant improvement of spermatogenesis with successful spontaneous pregnancies. Published evidence do not consistently report normalization of spermatogenesis after HU discontinuation in SCD cases. Conversely, the literature almost consistently reported an improvement of semen parameters at the discontinuation of HU therapy in PV and ET cases. Our real-life two cases confirmed those findings. The willing of fatherhood and the need for effective fertility treatment warrant further research to improve work-up management in men with hematological disorders.

Quality Evaluation of Banlangen Granule based on Bioassays of Anti-influenzal and Anti-inflammatory Effects

Objective:: In order to control the quality better, this study aimed to develop two bioassay methods of Banlangen Granule (BLGG) based on its anti-influenza activity and antiinflammatory activity and to verify the necessity of established methods by relating the results tested by chemical methods. Methods: First, the bioassay methods for determining the biopotency of the anti-influenza effect and anti-inflammatory activity were established and applied, taking neuraminidase and cyclooxygenase- 2 as disease targets, respectively. Secondly, the ultra-high-performance liquid chromatography coupled photo-diode array detector (UPLC-PDA) technique was used to perform fingerprints and quantify chemical compounds. Finally, the correlation analysis was performed on the results of bioassay methods and chemical methods to assist in choosing the effective quality markers for the BLGG. Results:: Two accurate, stable, and repeatable bioassay methods were developed and applied to the determination of 57 batches of samples. The chemical fingerprints and contents of seven quality compounds were obtained based on UPLC-PDA methods. From the results of correlation analysis, the highest intensity correlation between these quality markers was medium with a r=0.495 (P<0.01), which indicates the need for establishing a bioassay method for BLGG. Conclusion:: This present work illuminated that bioassay methods can be a great means to evaluate the quality of BLGG effectively and also provided a paradigm case for the quality control of other traditional Chinese medicine preparations.

Digital technologies as a tool for identification the authorship of sacred sculpture

Latvian sculptures created before the mid-19th century are located mainly in churches, not in museum collections. The most serious obstacle to research of Latvian art in the given period is lack of pertinent documentary material. As a result, Latvian art historians have mostly studied the sculptures for which written sources are available. This article will offer solutions for further research in cases when written sources are limited or altogether unavailable. How much and what can be discovered using digitisation solutions? The study of the sculptures of the Biķernieki Church in Riga provides a paradigmatic case for further research with the help of digitisation. In 1967, when the congregation of the Biķernieki Church was forced to abandon the church, the sculptures were transferred to museums. Today they can be seen in the exhibition of the Rundāle Palace Museum. The scant extant documentary evidence does not allow us to establish the authorship of the sculptures or the time of their creation with certainty. The study discussed in the article shows the importance of digitisation in art history research. The current research is based on 3D models of the sculptures of the Biķernieki Church obtained using 3D scanning technology. Supplementing them with high-resolution photographs and other digital solutions can confirm or, on the contrary, refute assumptions about their authorship and creation made by historians so far. The article outlines the methods used to identify stylistic influences on the sculptures of the Biķernieki Church, suggesting that they may have been modelled after similar sculptures in Gdańsk (Danzig) and Dresden and even after certain antique sculptures. The graphic methods used in the research have made it possible to precisely identify the style of execution of a single sculptor in several churches in Riga.

The Sweden Democrats and the Twitterstorm of the decade – from social media to riot through a rhetorical vision

Amidst the European migrant crisis, a provocative advertisement campaign by the far-right party the Sweden Democrats was destroyed by a mob. No other campaign in Sweden had attracted a similar amount of attention and resentment. This qualitative case study analyses the activism rhetoric that caused the ‘Twitterstorm’ of the decade. Through a fantasy theme analysis, it determines how the protesters defended their anti-racist rhetorical vision. Action themes connected to fantasy types and symbolic cues provoked the Twittersphere, leading activists to destroy the campaign, transcending the virtual for the physical. This event is a paradigm case for rhetorical-political social media activism and gives insight into how the SD’s provocative rhetoric functions.

Primjena Ustava od strane (hrvatskih) redovnih sudova

The paper deals with the “application of the Constitutionˮ by ordinary courts. On the basis of literature review and preliminary Croatian case law research, six paradigmatic cases of the application of the Constitution by ordinary courts were selected (facts of the case directly regulated by constitutional rules, statutory gaps, avoidable in abstracto antinomies between constitutional and statutory norms, avoidable in concreto antinomies between constitutional and statutory norms, unconstitutionality of individual judicial and administrative decisions, and unavoidable in abstracto antinomies between constitutional and statutory norms). The cases selected were analyzed by using the method of argumentative analysis of judicial reasoning, within the framework of internal and external schemes of justification of judicial decisions, in examples (by and large) designed on the basis of Croatian case law.

Behind the technocratic challenge: Old and new alternatives to party government in Italy

The growing presence of technocrats in contemporary governments has emerged as a relevant phenomenon worldwide. Italy, once known as a paradigmatic case of party government and now identified as the promised land of technocracy, constitutes a crucial case to test the major short-term (critical junctures) and long-term (complexity of policy-making; party decline) factors identified to explain this phenomenon. Our analysis is based on two innovative tools: a new dataset updated to the current back-to-politics Meloni Italian government, including all the cases of the ‘technocratic decade’ (2010s); and a new typology combining partisanship and expertise, which allows us to overcome dichotomous categorizations equating technocrats and non-partisans. This more accurate and updated picture of minister profiles in Italy unveils unexpected dynamics and allows us to reassess both previous findings on the Italian case and the explanatory power of the tested theories on the growing diffusion of technocrats in contemporary governments.

Le musée, l’artiste et l’identité comme marques : le cas du musée d’art latino-américain de Buenos Aires (MALBA)

The Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires (MALBA) illustrates what Robert Fleck (2014) calls the "21st Century Museum": a new type of museum built on branding. This concept is aligned with the debates that, since the 1980s, have proposed the end of the museum as an elitist place for the conservation of the canon, to make way for a museum institution conceived as a mass medium that adheres to the logic of the spectacle, as Andreas Huyssen (1994) postulates. The author describes the phenomenon of musealisation, which is evident in the increasing number of museum openings and the public’s growing interest in the museum experience. This article studies the MALBA as a paradigmatic case in which two conceptual categories coexist: a 21st-century museum conceived as a mass media. From its exhibition proposals to its communication strategies, the museum appropriates the logic of the spectacle, constituting a "star system" of Latin American art, variable according to marketing objectives. We are interested in how the institution constructs itself as a brand, and in the discursive mechanisms through which certain Latin American artists and ideas of "Latin Americanness" serve institutional positioning. We also observe how MALBA adopts some of the positioning strategies of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). This article therefore presents a) a study of the institutional communication strategies of the two museums; b) an analysis of four curatorial discourses of the museum’s collection (from 2010 to 2022) in order to observe the different ways in which MALBA presents Latin American art history and Latin Americanness; and c) an analysis of the construction of the MALBA brand based on the artists that make up its collection.

Phase space analysis of the 3-level Lipkin-Meshkov-Glick model using parity adapted U(D)-spin coherent states

We study the phase-space properties of the 3-level Lipkin-Meshkov-Glick as paradigmatic case of critical, parity symmetric, N-quDit systems undergoing a quantum phase transition in the thermodynamic limit N → ∞. We generalize U(2) spin coherent states to U(D) (quDits), and define the coherent state representation Qψ (Husimi function) of a symmetric N- quDit state |ψ〉 in the phase space ℂP D −1 = U(D)/[U(1) × U(D − 1)]. This allows us to define parity adapted U(D) coherent states (𝕔-DCATs), which reproduce accurately the lowest energy Hamiltonian eigenstates obtained by numerical diagonalization. We visualize precursors of the QPTs by plotting localization measures (Husimi function and its moments) of the parity adapted U(D) coherent states and the numerical Hamiltonian eigenstates for a finite number of particles.

Bus fare evasion of the Santiago de Chile transportation system from a stakeholders perspective

This research presents a paradigmatic case study of fare evasion in the Chilean public transport system. It identifies the perceptions of different stakeholders who interact within this system, raising a series of discourses around the social legitimacy of evasion, a conduct traditionally punished and considered wrong. The methodology consists of the use of 41 semi-structured interviews of public transport system stakeholders, such as users, operators, political authorities, social groups, policemen, and others. A qualitative analyses organizes the data into three dimensions: i) context in which evasion takes place, distinguishing between the historic context, the social context, and the moral context; ii) legitimacy of payment, raising the main arguments from which to defend payment as rightful conduct; and iii) legitimacy of evasion, identifying the perceptions that justify evasion as an acceptable social conduct. The conclusions state evasion is a symptom of a much deeper problem. Socioeconomic inequality in Chile allows us to understand the role of public transport as a social right that grants social inclusion, facilitating equal access to the opportunities society offers.

Primary and Recall Immune Responses to SARS-CoV-2 in Breakthrough Infection.

Breakthrough infections in SARS-CoV-2 vaccinated individuals are an ideal circumstance for the simultaneous exploration of both the vaccine-induced memory reaction to the spike (S) protein and the primary response to the membrane (M) and nucleocapsid (N) proteins generated by natural infection. We monitored 15 healthcare workers who had been vaccinated with two doses of Pfizer BioNTech BNT162b2 and were then later infected with the SARS-CoV-2 B.1.617.2. (Delta) variant, analysing the antiviral humoral and cellular immune responses. Natural infection determined an immediate and sharp rise in anti-RBD antibody titres and in the frequency of both S-specific antibody secreting cells (ASCs) and memory B lymphocytes. T cells responded promptly to infection by activating and expanding already at 2-5 days. S-specific memory and emerging M- and N-specific T cells both expressed high levels of activation markers and showed effector capacity with similar kinetics but with different magnitude. The results show that natural infection with SARS-CoV-2 in vaccinated individuals induces fully functional and rapidly expanding T and B lymphocytes in concert with the emergence of novel virus-specific T cells. This swift and punctual response also covers viral variants and captures a paradigmatic case of a healthy adaptive immune reaction to infection with a mutating virus.

A quantum battery with quadratic driving

Quantum batteries are energy storage devices built using quantum mechanical objects, which are developed with the aim of outperforming their classical counterparts. Proposing optimal designs of quantum batteries which are able to exploit quantum advantages requires balancing the competing demands for fast charging, durable storage and effective work extraction. Here we study theoretically a bipartite quantum battery model, composed of a driven charger connected to an energy holder, within two paradigmatic cases of a driven-dissipative open quantum system: linear driving and quadratic driving. The linear battery is governed by a single exceptional point which splits the response of the battery into two regimes, one of which induces a good amount of useful work. Quadratic driving leads to a squeezed quantum battery, which generates plentiful useful work near to critical points associated with dissipative phase transitions. Our theoretical results may be realized with parametric cavities or nonlinear circuits, potentially leading to the manifestation of a quantum battery exhibiting squeezing.

From substitute to supplement: towards a normative reading of Merleau-Ponty’s Schneider case

How do philosophers and psychologists receive paradigmatic cases from pathology? More specifically, how are some essential features of ‘normal’ cognitive, affective or perceptual functions derived these pathological cases? In this paper, I argue that Maurice Merleau-Ponty offers a fecund answer to this question by putting forth a logic of supplementation in pathology that distinguishes the coping behavior of the organic world in contrast to an inorganic one. Supplementation, instead of substitution, marks the world of the living, particularly in its higher forms, as it denotes a persistence through impairment governed by an organic norm. A prominent example of this appears in his reading of the patient Schneider case, a classic example from Goldstein and Gelb’s Gestalt psychology. While earlier commentators were interested in underlying whether or not Merleau-Ponty used this example to denote the persistence of a key function or the disruption of another, what has been missed, on my view, is a far more consequential point about pathologies and how they structure our relation to our world.

The Global History of the Free Port

ABSTRACTThis article sketches a new, integrated history of the free port from the late sixteenth to the mid twentieth century. It lays out the historiographical problems associated with the free port, ranging from how to conceptualise the form and function of the institution and the uses to which it has been put, to situating its place within liberal political economy. The starting point for making sense of the free port is to trace the history of its paradigmatic cases, studying not only key models such as Livorno, Hamburg, or Singapore; but also how contemporaries discussed, appropriated, and adapted them. It then turns to do just that, reconstructing the defining moments in the history of the free port: from the Mediterranean in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; the Caribbean in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century; Europe in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; East Asia during the nineteenth century; and the entire globe in the twentieth century, when the free port was increasingly subsumed by a host of other spatial arrangements, such as the special economic zone. The conclusion considers what the free port indicates about the history of global capitalism and its relationship to European history and imperialism.

Routes and Hubs in the Indian Ocean World: Methodological Reconsiderations

This article looks at “routes” and “hubs” in the Indian Ocean world, arguing that using these two concepts within a mobility-oriented perspective will provide an insightful addition, and alternative, to investigations that are guided solely by spatial concepts, such as “hinterland” or “littoral.” The first major part of this article discusses various routes in the history of the Indian Ocean world. It addresses questions such as the competition between various routes, their interconnectedness, their internal structure, deviations from the main routes, and the role of local pilots in showing the way to colonial powers. The second major part looks at the nodal points along such routes, here called “hubs.” It will be argued that these hubs not only enable the movements of things, but also stop them, if only temporarily, thereby often transforming them in meaning, value, and function. Therefore, hubs are also identified as having an internal dimension in addition to an external one. These points will be discussed with reference to one paradigmatic case, namely the island of Mauritius in the southwestern part of Indian Ocean world. The issue of mobility is discussed in greater detail in two further sections. While arguing in favor of mobility-oriented perspectives and methods, it is held that an overinflated use of terms such as circulation or flow may also be misleading.

Many-body GW calculations with very large scale polarizable environments made affordable: A fully abinitio QM/QM approach.

We present a many-body GW formalism for quantum subsystems embedded in discrete polarizable environments containing up to several hundred thousand atoms described at a fully abinitio random phase approximation level. Our approach is based on a fragment approximation in the construction of the Green's function and independent-electron susceptibilities. Further, the environing fragments susceptibility matrices are reduced to a minimal but accurate representation preserving low order polarizability tensors through a constrained minimization scheme. This approach dramatically reduces the cost associated with inverting the Dyson equation for the screened Coulomb potential W, while preserving the description of short to long-range screening effects. The efficiency and accuracy of the present scheme is exemplified in the paradigmatic cases of fullerene bulk, surface, subsurface, and slabs with varying number of layers.

Realization of adaptive mesh refinement for phase-field model of thermal fracture within the FEniCS framework

This paper presents an adaptive phase field model for simulating fracture due to coupled interactions (such as thermal quenching and hot cracking in additive manufacturing). The proposed model is implemented in an open-source finite element framework, FEniCS. The model considers spatial variations of the fracture toughness and differential coefficients of thermal shrinkage. Several paradigmatic case studies are addressed to demonstrate the potential of the proposed modeling framework. Specifically, we (a) benchmark our crack predictions for mechanical and thermal boundary condition interactions with the results from alternative numerical methods, (b) accurately reproduce experimentally observed complex crack trajectories due to thermal quenching and hot cracking in additive manufacturing, and (c) demonstrate the ease of extending of the proposed framework to thermal cracking problems in three dimensions. The current implementation provides the basic for an efficient framework for fracture problems due to multi-physical interactions for practical engineers with less programming expertise.

The alarming state of Central Chile's groundwater resources: A paradigmatic case of a lasting overexploitation

Ensuring water supply under climate change scenarios is a global concern, and groundwater resources play a crucial role. Aquifer depletion is a worldwide trend, and Chile is no exception. Through a statistical approach with strong hydrogeological criteria, the groundwater overexploitation phenomenon is studied in Central Chile, the most populated region in this mountainous country. With this purpose, we assess the evolution of groundwater levels and pumping between 1970 and 2020 by analysing 26,065 groundwater rights and 222 observation wells. Withdrawals increased from 498 hm3 in 1970 to 8883 hm3 in 2020. We recognised two general trends in groundwater levels: a quasi-steady state hydrodynamic regime pre-1988 and sustained decline post-1988, exacerbated since 2010 with the start of the Megadrought. Although groundwater recharge is expected to decrease during this severe drought, the declining trend strongly correlates with pumping but not with precipitation changes. Climate forcing is usually invoked to warrant the dramatic depletion of groundwater resources, but we demonstrated that all analysed aquifers have been overexploited since much earlier than 2010. Finally, the Chilean aquifers' overexploitation is a clear example of the consequences of prioritising the water offer over the water demand regulation, which hinders the United Nations' sustainable development goals accomplishment.

Ergodic observables in non-ergodic systems: The example of the harmonic chain

In the framework of statistical mechanics the properties of macroscopic systems are deduced starting from the laws of their microscopic dynamics. One of the key assumptions in this procedure is the ergodic property, namely the equivalence between time averages and ensemble averages. This property can be proved only for a limited number of systems; however, as proved by Khinchin (1949), weak forms of it hold even in systems that are not ergodic at the microscopic scale, provided that extensive observables are considered.Here we show in a pedagogical way the validity of the ergodic hypothesis, at a practical level, in the paradigmatic case of a chain of harmonic oscillators. By using analytical results and numerical computations, we provide evidence that this non-chaotic integrable system shows ergodic behavior in the limit of many degrees of freedom. In particular, the Maxwell–Boltzmann distribution turns out to fairly describe the statistics of the single particle velocity. A study of the typical time-scales for relaxation is also provided.