Part Of Way Research Articles

Building A Research Culture: Interventions And Innovations

This study explored the promotion of research-based strategies and practices in Philippine public schools. The Department of Education supported this initiative by encouraging teachers and school leaders to engage in research to develop evidence-based solutions. Using a phenomenological approach and action research design, the researchers examined the concepts of ”building” and ”research culture.” The research culture emerged as a way of life and part of the teacher’s identity, involving five key actions: becoming, experiencing, feeling, sustaining, and developing. These actions encompassed the elements of forming a teacher-researcher identity, navigating challenging and positive experiences, investing emotions in research, and maintaining the culture through various support mechanisms. The ’developing’ action highlighted the dynamic nature of research culture and continuous learning. The study introduced the MOVERS (Moving Research through Blended Learning Space) intervention in different schools, providing coaching and mentoring to teachers’ as they craft their concept paper presentations. This programme also addressed the challenges of conducting research during the new normal. Future research should consider measuring MOVERS’ impact after multiple iterations.

Transformation of the tobacco product market in Japan, 2011–2023

ObjectiveThis study updates a previous paper that examined trends in the sale of cigarettes and heated tobacco products (HTPs) in Japan between 2011 and part way through 2019. The current study includes complete unit sales data through 2023.MethodsData on cigarette and HTP sales were obtained from public sources available from the websites and stockholder reports for the Tobacco Institute of Japan, Philip Morris International and Japan Tobacco. We used joinpoint regression using the parametric method to test for trends in both per capita and total sales for the three outcome variables assessed between 2011 and 2023: (1) cigarette sales, (2) HTP sales and (3) combined cigarette and HTP sales. Joinpoint regression identifies changes in trends and estimates the annual per cent change (APC) for each trend segment.ResultsBetween 2011 and 2023, per capita and total cigarette sales declined by 52.6% and 52.7%, respectively. From 2011 to 2015, per capita cigarette sales in Japan decreased −1.5% APC; from 2015 to 2018, the decline accelerated to −10.5% APC and continued to fall −7.3% APC between 2018 and 2023. Between 2016 and 2018, per capita HTP sales increased by 149.0% APC, and since 2018, they have increased by 8.1% APC.ConclusionWhile many factors may account for the decreased sale of cigarettes in Japan over the past 12 years, the increased sale of HTPs appears to be a factor.

Toward diversification of acute stressors and precision stress research: A stage 2 Registered Report validating a reward-salient stress task in emerging adults.

Stress is one of, if not the, most ubiquitously studied risk factor across the health sciences. This is unlikely to change given that the primary drivers of mortality and disability are chronic, stress-mediated illnesses (often highly comorbid with psychopathology). We argue that an important limitation of stress research is the consistency with which the Trier Social Stress Test is used when the research questions are not specific to social stress. We advocate for precision stress research using qualitatively different stressors to facilitate exploration of how different types of stressors might differentially impact health outcomes, including psychopathology. This registered report validates a reward-salient stress task (a modified Anger Incentive Delay Task) in a sample of 101 emerging adults, over half of whom reported clinically relevant anxiety, hypo/mania, depression, and/or suicidal ideation, who participated in a study between 2020 and 2022. This task involves teaching participants a game where they can win money. Part way through, the "goal frustration" condition changes the rules such that correct responses to trials with anticipatory stimuli indicating the possibility to win money actually lose money on 56% of trials despite visual feedback indicating that responses were successful. Results consistently indicated that the Anger Incentive Delay Task successfully reduced positive emotions and motivation and increased negative emotions. The magnitude of these responses was predicted by individual differences in reward and punishment sensitivity. Given the breadth of psychopathologies that share both (a) stress and (b) reward and punishment sensitivity as risk factors, a reward-salient acute stress task is an important tool for precision psychopathology research. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Effect Handlers for C via Coroutines

Effect handlers provide a structured means for implementing user-defined, composable, and customisable computational effects, ranging from exceptions to generators to lightweight threads. We introduce libseff, a novel effect handlers library for C, based on coroutines. Whereas prior effect handler libraries for C are intended primarily as compilation targets, libseff is intended to be used directly from C programs. As such, the design of libseff parts ways from traditional effect handler implementations, both by using mutable coroutines as the main representation of pending computations, and by avoiding closures as handlers by way of reified effects. We show that the performance of libseff is competitive across a range of platforms and benchmarks.

Structural basis for ryanodine receptor type 2 leak in heart failure and arrhythmogenic disorders

Heart failure, the leading cause of mortality and morbidity in the developed world, is characterized by cardiac ryanodine receptor 2 channels that are hyperphosphorylated, oxidized, and depleted of the stabilizing subunit calstabin-2. This results in a diastolic sarcoplasmic reticulum Ca2+ leak that impairs cardiac contractility and triggers arrhythmias. Genetic mutations in ryanodine receptor 2 can also cause Ca2+ leak, leading to arrhythmias and sudden cardiac death. Here, we solved the cryogenic electron microscopy structures of ryanodine receptor 2 variants linked either to heart failure or inherited sudden cardiac death. All are in the primed state, part way between closed and open. Binding of Rycal drugs to ryanodine receptor 2 channels reverts the primed state back towards the closed state, decreasing Ca2+ leak, improving cardiac function, and preventing arrhythmias. We propose a structural-physiological mechanism whereby the ryanodine receptor 2 channel primed state underlies the arrhythmias in heart failure and arrhythmogenic disorders.

GILBERT SIMONDON AND DIFFERENT SENSES OF “EVOLUTION”

This article explores the influence of Bergsonian ideas on Simondon’s thought. In his main thesis Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information, Simondon parts ways with Bergson, in spite of parallel ideas, insofar as he favours a physical paradigm of individuation, applicable to all kinds of dynamic systems. Hence it is not just life that manifests a tendency toward individuation. The Bergsonian influence becomes manifest in Simondon’s complementary thesis On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects, where he applies a quasi-biological, evolutionary schema to technical development. The idea of technical evolution is Simondon’s attempt to bestow a certain autonomy and dignity to technical reality, too often depreciated in his view as a simple tool or extension of organic life. This article pursues the question of how this account of technical evolution fits within the broader schema of the theory of individuation.

Women's toilet use behaviors and water use in a urine diversion squat pan toilet pilot

ABSTRACT Understanding user behavior is critical to the adoption of technology; however, there is a paucity of data related to gender-specific sanitation practices and water-use patterns in toilet use despite the global imperative to increase attention toward the needs of women and girls. This user-focused study sought to understand the role of women's behavior related to the urine diversion performance of a novel toilet design. Forty-one female users of urine diversion toilets installed in two shared bathroom sites in Coimbatore, India, were surveyed about their behavior during toilet use. About 32% of respondents reported behaviors that reduce urine separation efficiency in this system, including aiming urine directly into the hole of the squat pan instead of the ceramic surface (15%); facing backwards (12%); squatting only part way down (7%); and pouring water onto the pan while urinating (5%). Separately, 88% of respondents use available water to clean the floor around the toilet, a practice that may alter the relative volumes of generated blackwater and graywater. These findings may aid the design of future sanitation solutions. Most respondents did not identify the specific toilet design as different from conventional ones, suggesting that these behaviors may apply to broader use cases.

Subjectivity and the Politics of Self-Cultivation: A Comparative Study of Fichte and Nietzsche

Abstract At first glance, Fichte and Nietzsche might strike us as intellectual contraries. This impression is reinforced by Nietzsche’s disparaging remarks about Fichte. The dearth of critical literature comparing the two thinkers also could easily lead us to believe that they are, for all intents and purposes, irrelevant to one another. In this paper, however, I argue that their theories of subjectivity are in many respects remarkably similar and worthy of comparison. But I further explain how, despite this convergence, their normative philosophies end up so conspicuously at odds with one another. After examining the resemblance between their denials of the substantial self, I respectively analyse Fichte’s and Nietzsche’s positive accounts of subjectivity, self-cultivation, and the political preconditions of self-cultivation. I locate the conceptual juncture at which their practical outlooks begin to part ways in their divergent drive psychologies and in their distinct conceptions of conscience. These apparently minor theoretical differences generate a large-scale disagreement regarding the political systems they believe best enable self-cultivation, with Fichte favouring a democratic regime, while Nietzsche opts for a markedly more aristocratic one. I close by sketching a possible way out of this dilemma.

Fit for purpose? Climate change, security and IR

As the contributions to this special issue suggest, IR has had a problematic relationship with environmental issues. Indeed it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that IR has treated environmental change almost as a distraction from important concerns of global politics, and gives us few significant resources for understanding these challenges or addressing them effectively. This is perhaps most starkly evident in the subfield of security studies, despite increasing recognition that environmental change warrants consideration as a security issue. This paper examines this engagement with a particular focus on climate change. Ultimately, the paper advances two arguments. First, examinations of the climate change–security relationship located in traditional security studies struggle to come to terms with the nature of the Anthropocene challenge and more specifically with the questions of who needs securing; what the nature of the threat posed is; and who is capable of or responsible for addressing this threat. Second, however, we can see progressive potential in engagement with the security implications of climate change in IR where such scholarship parts ways with traditional accounts of security; does not allow existing configurations of power to define the conditions for thinking about agency and sites of politics; and reflexively and self-consciously draws on insights from beyond the IR discipline. The increasing volume of work consistent with this more critical engagement is grounds for hope for this field of study in engaging productively even with a challenge as complex and significant as climate change.

A multi-arm multi-stage platform design that allows preplanned addition of arms while still controlling the family-wise error.

There is growing interest in platform trials that allow for adding of new treatment arms as the trial progresses as well as being able to stop treatments part way through the trial for either lack of benefit/futility or for superiority. In some situations, platform trials need to guarantee that error rates are controlled. This paper presents a multi-stage design, that allows additional arms to be added in a platform trial in a preplanned fashion, while still controlling the family-wise error rate, under the assumption of known number and timing of treatments to be added, and no time trends. A method is given to compute the sample size required to achieve a desired level of power and we show how the distribution of the sample size and the expected sample size can be found. We focus on power under the least favorable configuration which is the power of finding the treatment with a clinically relevant effect out of a set of treatments while the rest have an uninteresting treatment effect. A motivating trial is presented which focuses on two settings, with the first being a set number of stages per active treatment arm and the second being a set total number of stages, with treatments that are added later getting fewer stages. Compared to Bonferroni, the savings in the total maximum sample size are modest in a trial with three arms, <1% of the total sample size. However, the savings are more substantial in trials with more arms.

Opaque morphology and phonology: Historical prefixes in English

Abstract In most of the literature on English phonology, historically prefixed words such as contain, respect or submit are seen as having no morphological structure synchronically. However, such words were treated as complex in the early generative literature and are still analysed in that way in part of the literature. In this paper, we seek to review the evidence for the claim that such words are simplex words, which predicts that they should pattern with words with no internal structure in their phonological and morphological behaviours and in psycholinguistic experiments. We show that the evidence does not support that claim and shows that these words should be treated as morphologically complex units, although they differ from words with productive morphology. As these words tend to be partly or entirely opaque semantically, this raises the question of how such structures may be learned. We argue that the recurrence of forms is the main factor leading to their identification and lay out a possible order of acquisition of various morphological structures. Finally, we argue that theories of phonology may account for this by allowing the reference to morphological constituents whose semantics are impoverished.

Trust, nuance, and care: Advantages and challenges of repeat qualitative interviews

Most methodological discussions about the pros and cons of repeat interviews fall within qualitative longitudinal literature and are premised on project designs with relatively long intervals between encounters. Less attention has been paid to the practice and ethics of repeat interviewing as a stand-alone method, that does not follow participants long-term, but instead conducts several interviews over a short period of time. This article is based on interviews and research logs from a project in which over 350 incarcerated persons in Latin America were interviewed. We evaluate the advantages and shortcomings of repeat interviewing, in this case, three sessions with each participant with up to a week in between sessions. We find that repeat interviewing increases trust and rapport, contributes to nuanced data, generates reflexivity, and ensures more ethical research by making it easier for researchers to care for participants. Yet the method also has the disadvantages of demanding a significant investment of resources, the risk of losing participants, and on occasion, the emotional challenge of breaking strong bonds when researchers and participants part ways. We argue that the advantages of repeat interviews exceed the shortcomings, but ethical concerns added to the cost in time, energy, and money might at times proscribe the method.

Curation of myeloma observational study MALIMAR using XNAT: solving the challenges posed by real-world data

ObjectivesMAchine Learning In MyelomA Response (MALIMAR) is an observational clinical study combining “real-world” and clinical trial data, both retrospective and prospective. Images were acquired on three MRI scanners over a 10-year window at two institutions, leading to a need for extensive curation.MethodsCuration involved image aggregation, pseudonymisation, allocation between project phases, data cleaning, upload to an XNAT repository visible from multiple sites, annotation, incorporation of machine learning research outputs and quality assurance using programmatic methods.ResultsA total of 796 whole-body MR imaging sessions from 462 subjects were curated. A major change in scan protocol part way through the retrospective window meant that approximately 30% of available imaging sessions had properties that differed significantly from the remainder of the data. Issues were found with a vendor-supplied clinical algorithm for “composing” whole-body images from multiple imaging stations. Historic weaknesses in a digital video disk (DVD) research archive (already addressed by the mid-2010s) were highlighted by incomplete datasets, some of which could not be completely recovered. The final dataset contained 736 imaging sessions for 432 subjects. Software was written to clean and harmonise data. Implications for the subsequent machine learning activity are considered.ConclusionsMALIMAR exemplifies the vital role that curation plays in machine learning studies that use real-world data. A research repository such as XNAT facilitates day-to-day management, ensures robustness and consistency and enhances the value of the final dataset. The types of process described here will be vital for future large-scale multi-institutional and multi-national imaging projects.Critical relevance statementThis article showcases innovative data curation methods using a state-of-the-art image repository platform; such tools will be vital for managing the large multi-institutional datasets required to train and validate generalisable ML algorithms and future foundation models in medical imaging.Key points• Heterogeneous data in the MALIMAR study required the development of novel curation strategies.• Correction of multiple problems affecting the real-world data was successful, but implications for machine learning are still being evaluated.• Modern image repositories have rich application programming interfaces enabling data enrichment and programmatic QA, making them much more than simple “image marts”.Graphical

Regulating speech: harm, norms, and discrimination

ABSTRACT Mary Kate McGowan's Just Words offers an interesting account of exercitives. On McGowan's view, one of the things we do with words is change what's permitted, and we do this ubiquitously, without any special authority or specific intention. McGowan's account of exercitives is meant to identify a mechanism by which ordinary speech is harmful, and which justifies the regulation of such speech. It is here that I part ways. I make three main arguments. First, McGowan's focus on harm is misguided; that ordinary speech is harmful is harder to support, and in turn does not less to support conclusions about whether it is wrong and warrants regulation, than Just Words suggests. Second, if the speech is harmful, McGowan's account of exercitives is ill-suited to explain why; the relevant instances of ordinary speech seem to express speakers' views about moral norms, not change social norms. Third, McGowan's argument for why ordinary speech should be regulated because it is a form of discrimination presupposes a great deal that is controversial about what makes discrimination wrong and legally actionable, and even if it is right it may license the regulation of more speech than many, including McGowan, would deem acceptable.

Cybernetic or Machinic Ecology? Guattari’s Parting Ways with Bateson

In this article, I examine the relation between Bateson and Guattari’s ecological thoughts: two thinkers whose ecological ideas at first sight have a lot in common. In order to show the difference between the thoughts of both thinkers, I will take my clue from Guattari’s remark that he parts ways with Bateson on the role of context. Explaining the role of context in both authors will allow me to show how Guattari’s thought implies both an endorsement and a critique of cybernetics, and, specifically, promoting a machinic rather than cybernetic ecology. I will conclude by indicating what is at stake in this distinction.

Uma defesa de uma historiografia inferencialista da filosofia: compromissos, incompatibilidades e direitos

Abstract: Even if we deny any kind of exceptionalism to philosophy as an intellectual enterprise (see Williamson, 2007), it seems easy to concede that, at least concerning relations with its own history, philosophy is different from other fields of knowledge (see Williamson, 2018). However, questions regarding the scope, role and validity of the history of philosophy for philosophical activity are as old as philosophy itself, as well as becoming relevant in the so-called “parting of ways” between analytic and hermeneutic phenomenological trends. However, it is possible to say that, at least since the second half of the last century, we have seen an important inflection about the place and importance of the history of philosophy in contemporary philosophy: both because of the “historical turn” in analytical philosophy, with works by Strawson, Sellars and, more recently, Brandom, serving as good examples of such a movement, and due to the recently renewed interest in questions of metaphilosophy. An example of this second movement is the debate between the so-called appropriationists and contextualists. Hence, this paper sets out to analyze the two main arguments against rational reconstructions - the GTRC and the causation of anachronism - and offer a defense of an inferentialist approach to the history of philosophy, based on Robert Brandom’s work, which is simultaneously open to certain contextualism, as well as establishing parameters for rational reconstructions.

The Collapse of the Riau Entrepôt in 1784 and the Rise of Singapore

Abstract: The creation of a British trading station on the island of Singapore in 1819 and the ensuing 1824 Anglo-Dutch Treaty have traditionally been presented as causes of the division and decline of the Johor-Riau sultanate. This article proposes a less Eurocentric explanation, arguing that the collapse of the Riau entrepôt in 1784 set in motion a train of events that culminated a generation later with the emergence of an entrepôt on Singapore, which quickly became a major trading centre. This interpretation is based on the actions of the chief protagonists in 1784, when a rupture of Dutch-Bugis relations produced a divide between Riau’s Malay and Bugis factions, a conceptual parting of ways between sultanate and entrepôt, and an English fixation on Riau as the archetype of the straits entrepôt. Re-examining the collapse of Riau provides fresh perspectives on the origins of early colonial Singapore, while also drawing much needed attention to the continuities between the Singapore entrepôt and its antecedents in the Straits.

Unbecoming Archives: Anne Sexton's "Perverse" Imagination

Abstract: It is impossible to read much about American poet Anne Sexton before encountering references to her "perverse" imagination. Critics routinely argue that she paints a perverse vision of childhood sexuality, female identity, and adult sexuality in her work, and they often object to her frank discussions of the body, its pleasures, and its dangerous powers. Her depictions of mental illness, initiated in To Bedlam and Part Way Back , also earned the derision of many critics who urged her "not to enquire further." Helen Vendler (1988) argued that "a poem was never better for having a uterus in it," and James Dickey objected to being exposed to so much "naked suffering"; that quote was in Anne's wallet when she killed herself in her garage in 1974. In her interviews and her poetry, Sexton answered these critics as a confessional poet and a cultural critic. But even after her death, accusations of her perversion abound. First, her biographer, Diane Middlebrook, exposed her sexual abuse of her daughter Linda. And then Sexton's sister Blanche referred to the poet's "perverse imagination" in a 1991 letter to the Boston Globe , where she and her daughters objected to how Middlebrook's biography represented Sexton's family as riddled with alcoholism, child neglect and/or abuse, and suicide.

Introduction Part of the Knowledge and Intelligence Course

It is necessary for students to have a deep understanding of knowledge and intelligence. We have been teaching Knowledge and Intelligence course to the students majoring in computer science and artificial intelligence at Northeastern University since 2018. This paper is about the instructional design of the introductory part of the knowledge and intelligence course. We use a question to draw out the significance of the Knowledge and Intelligence course: "When did humans part ways with other animals?" We organize students to debate whether "walking upright" or "using tools" can better distinguish humans from animals. Through the teacher's comments on the debate, students will find that both "walking upright is a sign that distinguishes humans from other animals" or "using tools is a sign that distinguishes humans from other animals" are correct. Their essence is that "knowledge is the mark that distinguishes humans from other animals." Through the exploration and inheritance of knowledge, humans gradually parted ways with other animals. Students will understand the great significance of the Knowledge and Intelligence course by this way.

Perils of towers in the swamp: dark dimensions and the robustness of EFTs

Recently there has been an interesting revival of the idea to use large extra dimensions to address the dark energy problem, exploiting the (true) observation that towers of states with masses split, by MN2\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \\usepackage{amsmath} \\usepackage{wasysym} \\usepackage{amsfonts} \\usepackage{amssymb} \\usepackage{amsbsy} \\usepackage{mathrsfs} \\usepackage{upgreek} \\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \\begin{document}$$ {M}_N^2 $$\\end{document} = f(N)m2, with f an unbounded function of the integer N, sometimes contribute to the vacuum energy only an amount of order mD in D dimensions. It has been argued that this fact is a consequence of swampland conjectures and may require a departure from Effective Field Theory (EFT) reasoning. We test this claim with calculations for Casimir energies in extra dimensions. We show why the domain of validity for EFTs ensures that the tower spacing scale m is always an upper bound on the UV scale for the lower-energy effective theory; use of an EFT with a cutoff part way up a tower is not a controlled approximation. We highlight the role played by the sometimes-suppressed contributions from towers in extra-dimensional approaches to the cosmological constant problem, old and new, and point out difficulties encountered in exploiting it. We compare recent swampland realizations of these arguments with earlier approaches using standard EFT examples, discussing successes and limitations of both.