Physical Resemblance Research Articles

PENGGUNAAN PRIMER GEN CYTOCHROME OXIDASE 1 DALAM REAKSI POLYMERASE CHAI REACTION (PCR) UNTUK IDENTIFIKASI KANDUNGAN BABI PADA MAKANAN

Muslims make up the majority of the population in Indonesia so halal food safety is of paramount importance. From a religious and health perspective, adulteration and contamination of Sus scrofa meat is considered a violation of halal norms. Sus scrofa is often used to adulterate beef to take advantage of the physical resemblance and price difference. The need to identify Sus scrofa meat contamination in food products was highlighted in this study. After a successful isolation process, the Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) method was used to validate the presence of porcine DNA. PCR utilizes primers specifically made to replicate specific DNA sequences associated with pigs. PCR testing provides precise results for pig DNA, ensuring the accuracy of detection of pork contamination in foodstuffs. This research contributes to efforts to maintain halal food safety in Indonesia by emphasizing the important role of PCR in the detection process of Sus scrofa meat.

Czech Hercules: Gustav Frištenský, ‘Musculinity’, the Others and Visual Pleasure around 1900

Before 1900, in the Czech lands of the Habsburg Monarchy, the lean body of an athlete became a representation of strength, health, and beauty. Through Sokol gymnastics, the body of every Czech man was to be shaped into the form of the somatic mythotype Apollo. After 1900, in circuses, variety shows, and strength sports clubs, a new ideal man embodying somatic mythotype Hercules appeared: the strongman, who transformed a lightly muscled Apollonian shape into a modern Herculean form bulking massive shredded musculature. Strongman Gustav Frištenský in particular, whose body was eroticized, photogenized, nationalized, and racialized, embodied a mobilizing sports star who strengthened the Czech national community. Frištenský’s body was shaped by Hellenistic idealism, which gave rise to his adherence to the somatic mythotype of Hercules. This subsequently gave birth to ‘musculinity’, a new kind of hegemonic masculinity. The perception of Frištenský’s body was influenced by a physical resemblance to the Estonian wrestler Georg Lurich, by practices of othering, and the myth of white male supremacy. The steel and statuesque aesthetic of Frištenský’s body and the voyeurism of the masses then undermined traditional middle-class prudery and patriarchal control over the distribution of visual pleasure.

Exploring Transference in Borderline Personality Disorder: An Empirical Study of Facial Resemblance and Emotional Valence.

Transference is a psychological process where feelings and attitudes towards a familiar person are unconsciously redirected to another. This phenomenon can be activated by physical resemblance, including facial features. Despite its potential therapeutic significance, little research has investigated transference processes in individuals with psychiatric conditions. Here, we explored how patients with borderline personality disorder (BPD)-characterized, among other features, by unstable relationships, self-damaging impulsivity, and suicidal ideation-would exhibit transference of negative and positive attributes. We performed an experiment where BPD participants and a control group with no prior psychiatric history completed a face-rating task. The task involved an evaluation of images of strangers who resembled significant others in terms of facial features. Our results indicated that transference effects were elicited in both groups. Notably, there were significant differences in ratings assigned to significant others, whereby participants with BPD displayed transference of negative attributes more and positive attributes less intensely than healthy controls, which, in part, correlated with attachment anxiety. Our findings align with the tendency in BPD to perceive interpersonal relationships and emotions more negatively. They have potential implications for psychotherapeutic approaches in treating patients with BPD and our understanding of underlying pathophysiological mechanisms of BPD itself.

The impact of emotional valence on generalization gradients

Generalization enables individuals to respond to novel stimuli based on previous experiences. The degree to which organisms respond is determined by their physical resemblance to the original conditioned stimulus (CS+), with a stronger response elicited by more similar stimuli, resulting in similarity-based generalization gradients. Recent research showed that cognitive or conceptual dimensions also result in gradients similar to those observed with manipulations of physical dimensions. Such findings suggest that attributes beyond physical similarity play a role in shaping generalization gradients. However, despite its adaptive relevance for survival, there is no study exploring the effectiveness of affective dimensions in shaping generalization gradients. In two experiments (135 Spanish and 150 English participants, respectively), we used an online predictive learning task, in which different stimuli (words and Gabor patches) were paired with the presence – or absence – of a fictitious shock. After training, we assessed whether valence (i.e., hedonic experience) conveyed by words shape generalization gradients. In Experiment 1, the outcome expectancy decreased monotonically with variations in valence of Spanish words, mirroring the gradient obtained with the physical dimension (line orientation). In Experiment 2, conducted with English words, a similar gradient was observed when non-trained (i.e., generalization) words varied along the valence dimension, but not when words were of neutral valence. The consistency of these findings across two different languages strengthens the reliability and validity of the affective dimension as a determinant of generalization gradients. Furthermore, our data highlight the importance of considering the role of affective features in generalization responses, advancing the interplay between emotion, language, and learning.

‘Is that not Titian?’ Echoes of Venice in George Frederic Watts’s Self-Portraits, between Self-Fashioning and Artistic Practice

The reception of Venetian Renaissance painters had a profound effect on the creation of a British tradition of painting and played an important role in the development of the portrait as a typically British genre. This is precisely what this article aims to explore, through the emblematic case of the self-portraits of Victorian artist George Frederic Watts. Many of the artist’s self-portraits, in fact, explicitly engage with the tradition of Venetian art, and do so in multiple ways. On the one hand, the artist models himself on the figure of Titian, playing with the pose, the gesture, and the physical resemblance with the old master. On the other hand, Watts also aims at mastering the secrets of Titian’s painting method, which he discovered through the reading of ancient painting treatises. Thus, the relationship with the Renaissance plays a double role here, as it shapes the public and private image of the artist, but it also affects his artistic practice, and the very materiality of his paintings. This paper will also contextualize Watts’s ‘venetianism’ with that of Frederic Leighton, mid-Victorian photography, and the decadent painter Charles Ricketts, drawing a broader picture of the fascination with Venetian art in late 19th-century England.

Towards Humanlike Passive Dynamic Walking with Physical and Dynamic Gait Resemblance

Towards Humanlike Passive Dynamic Walking with Physical and Dynamic Gait Resemblance

New Suid remains of genus Listriodon from the Siwaliks of Pakistan

New dental remains of the genus Listriodon (Mammalia, Suidae) have been found and described from the Lower to Middle Miocene Siwalik beds located around Hasnot, district Jhelum, Punjab, Pakistan. The present material consists of an isolated upper second premolar and a second molar of the upper left side. The presence of an advanced listriodont in Pakistan at an early stage provides valuable insights into the timing of the development of specific characteristics associated with lophodonty in Listriodontinae. Furthermore, it prompts significant
 inquiries into the early evolution of Listriodontinae in the Old World. The presence of significant physical resemblance between Listriodon guptai and Listriodon akatikubas, an African species discovered in the late early Miocene era, indicates a high likelihood that the latter species migrated from Asia. The provided specimens offer novel insights and supplementary details regarding the dental characteristics of Listriodon pentapotamiae, a species found in the Lower to Middle Siwaliks of Pakistan.

The impacts of gray products and counterfeits in the luxury industry

With the rapid development of e-commerce, both gray products and counterfeit products are particularly serious in the luxury industry. This paper develops an analytical framework to investigate the interaction among the gray market, the counterfeit market and the authorised market, and examines how luxury manufacturers should manage unfair competition from gray products and/or counterfeit products. First, regardless of the existence of counterfeit products, the manufacturer can benefit from gray products when the status utility is moderate. Second, counterfeit products may benefit the manufacturer, depending on the availability of gray products and the physical resemblance of counterfeit products. Third, gray product may benefit the counterfeiter while counterfeit product always harms the gray marketer. Finally, we reveal that gray products can help luxury manufacturers fight against counterfeit products. In particular, gray products can reduce the demand for counterfeit products and even drive counterfeit products out of the market when the physical resemblance of counterfeit products is sufficiently low. Our findings provide several new managerial insights for luxury manufacturers and gray marketers.

Creation and Validation of a Massive Hemoptysis Simulator

Simulation for the management of massive hemoptysis is limited by the absence of a commercially available simulator to practice procedural skills necessary for management. Is it feasible to create and validate a hemoptysis simulator with high functional task alignment? Pulmonary and critical care medicine (PCCM) attending physicians from four academic institutions in the Denver, Colorado, area and internal medicine residents from the University of Colorado participated in this mixed-methods study. A hemoptysis simulator was constructed by connecting a 3-D-printed airway model to a manikin that may be intubated. Attending PCCM physicians evaluated the simulator through surveys and qualitative interviews. Attendings were surveyed to determine simulation content and appropriate assessment criteria for a hemoptysis simulation. Based on these criteria, expert and novice performance on the simulator was assessed. The manikin-based hemoptysis simulator demonstrated adequate physical resemblance, high functional alignment, and strong affective fidelity. It was universally preferred over a virtual reality simulator by 10 PCCM attendings. Twenty-seven attendings provided input on assessment criteria and established that assessing management priorities (eg, airway protection) was preferred to a skills checklist for hemoptysis management. Three experts outperformed six novices in hemoptysis management on the manikin-based simulator in all management categories assessed, supporting construct validity of the simulation. Creation of a hemoptysis simulator with appropriate content, high functional task alignment, and strong affective fidelity was successful using 3-D-printed airway models and existing manikins. This approach can overcome barriers of cost and availability for simulation of high-acuity, low-occurrence procedures.

The Royal Armoury: Venomics and antivenomics of king cobra (Ophiophagus hannah) from the Indian Western Ghats

Despite being famous as ‘the king’ of the snake world, the king cobra (Ophiophagus hannah) has remained a mysterious species, particularly with respect to its venom ecology. In contrast, venom research has largely focussed on the ‘big four’ snakes that are greatly responsible for the burden of snakebite in the Indian subcontinent. This study aims to bridge the current void in our understanding of the O. hannah venom by investigating its proteomic, biochemical, pharmacological, and toxinological profiles via interdisciplinary approaches. Considering their physical resemblance, the king cobra is often compared to the spectacled cobra (Naja naja). Comparative venomics of O. hannah and N. naja in this study provided interesting insights into their venom compositions, activities, and potencies. Our findings suggest that the O. hannah venom, despite being relatively less complex than the N. naja venom, is equally potent. Finally, our in vitro and in vivo assays revealed that both Indian polyvalent and Thai Red Cross monovalent antivenoms completely fail to neutralise the O. hannah venom. Our findings provide guidelines for the management of bites from this clinically important yet neglected snake species in India.

Clade-specific forebrain cytoarchitectures of the extinct Tasmanian tiger

The thylacine, or Tasmanian tiger, is the largest of modern-day carnivorous marsupials and was hunted to extinction by European settlers in Australia. Its physical resemblance to eutherian wolves is a striking example of evolutionary convergence to similar ecological niches. However, whether the neuroanatomical organization of the thylacine brain resembles that of canids and how it compares with other mammals remain unknown due to the scarcity of available samples. Here, we gained access to a century-old hematoxylin-stained histological series of a thylacine brain, digitalized it at high resolution, and compared its forebrain cellular architecture with 34 extant species of monotremes, marsupials, and eutherians. Phylogenetically informed comparisons of cortical folding, regional volumes, and cell sizes and densities across cortical areas and layers provide evidence against brain convergences with canids, instead demonstrating features typical of marsupials, and more specifically Dasyuridae, along with traits that scale similarly with brain size across mammals. Enlarged olfactory, limbic, and neocortical areas suggest a small-prey predator and/or scavenging lifestyle, similar to extant quolls and Tasmanian devils. These findings are consistent with a nonuniformity of trait convergences, with brain traits clustering more with phylogeny and head/body traits with lifestyle. By making this resource publicly available as rapid web-accessible, hierarchically organized, multiresolution images for perpetuity, we anticipate that additional comparative insights might arise from detailed studies of the thylacine brain and encourage researchers and curators to share, annotate, and preserve understudied material of outstanding biological relevance.

Familiarity From Facial Appearance Leads to Hypoalgesia

Social context has been shown to influence pain perception. This study aimed to broaden this literature by investigating whether relevant social stimuli, such as faces with different levels of intrinsic (based on physical resemblance to known individuals) and episodic (acquired through a previous experience) familiarity, may lead to hypoalgesia. We hypothesized that familiarity, whether intrinsic or acquired through experience, would increase pain threshold and decrease pain intensity. Sixty-seven participants underwent pain induction (the cold pressor test) viewing previously seen faces (Episodic Group) or new faces (Non-episodic Group) that differed in the level of intrinsic familiarity (high vs low). Pain threshold was measured in seconds, while pain intensity was measured on a rating scale of 0 to 10. The results did not show an effect of episodic familiarity. However, compared to low, high intrinsic familiar faces had an attenuating effect on pain intensity, even after controlling for pain expectation. These results suggest that physical features conveying a higher feeling of familiarity induce a top-down hypoalgesic modulation, in line with the idea that familiarity may signal safety and that the presence of familiar others reduce perceived threat-related distress. This study provides further evidence on the social modulation of pain and contributes to the literature on first impressions' influence on social behavior. PerspectiveConsistent with the idea that familiar others signal safety and reduce the sense of threat, facial features conveying familiarity induce a top-down hypoalgesic modulation. This knowledge may contribute to understanding differences in pain perception in experimental and clinical contexts.

Where salience goes beyond authenticity

Abstract: This meta-analysis builds on and extends Chernikova, Heitzmann, Stadler, et al.’s (2020) meta-analysis on simulation-based learning in higher education by summarizing the findings of 214 empirical studies. The main focus of the current meta-analysis was to investigate the role of prior knowledge and design features, namely (1) the authenticity of simulated scenarios (as both functional correspondence with a real task and a physical resemblance of the environment) and (2) the salience of relevant information in moderating the effects of simulation-based learning on facilitating complex skills in higher education. The analysis identified that the salience of relevant information contributes significantly to explaining the variation in the effectiveness of simulation-based learning environments. We conclude that authenticity and salience can be assessed independently of each other, and both can be considered important design features in creating effective simulation-based learning environments to meet the needs of learners with different levels of prior knowledge.

FAMILIES, SIMILARITIES AND MULTI‐FAITH FUTURES: RE‐IMAGINING ISLAM AND MUSLIMS IN LESSING AND NOVALIS

ABSTRACTIn G. E Lessing's Nathan der Weise (1779) Muslims are represented alongside Jews and Christians. These relationships are framed in terms of shared human morality and the shared biology of family, expressed through physical resemblance, rather than through similarities or differences of faith. Ultimately, it is the biological fact of consanguine family, not religion, which forms the basis of future human relationships. The Early Romantic Novalis, by contrast, sketches a figurative, interfaith family in Heinrich von Ofterdingen (1801). This accommodates Christians and Muslims within a universal model of ‘aesthetic’ human religiosity, which nonetheless allows each faith to maintain distinctive, even mutually conflicting beliefs, and thus envisions a more pluralistic unity. Modelling interfaith relationships around familial similarities offers a tempting alternative to the mutual alienation and ‘othering’ of critical Orientalism, although this approach can fixate upon normative characteristics and deflect attention from the distinctiveness of differing faiths. Both writers locate their Muslim characters within differing trajectories of historical progress: for Lessing, humanity's future is grounded in a common humanity rooted in shared biology, with Islam rendered incidental or obscure, whereas Novalis envisions a pluralistic, multi‐perspectival future, marked by shifting, re‐imaginable familial relationships, within which Muslims can retain core aspects of their faith.

Characterizing external visualization in mathematics education research: a scoping review

External visualization (i.e., physically embodied visualization) is central to the teaching and learning of mathematics. As external visualization is an important part of mathematics at all levels of education, it is diverse, and research on external visualization has become a wide and complex field. The aim of this scoping review is to characterize external visualizations in recent mathematics education research in order to develop a common ground and guide future research. A qualitative content analysis of the full texts of 130 studies published between 2018 and 2022 applied a deductive-inductive coding procedure to assess four dimensions: visualization product or process, type of visualization, media, and purpose. The analysis revealed different types of external visualizations including visualizations with physical resemblance ranging from pictorial to abstract visualizations as well as three types of visualizations with structural resemblance: length, area, and relational visualizations. Future research should include measures of visualization products or processes to help explain the demands and affordances that different types of visualizations present to learners and teachers.

Atmospheric aging increases the cytotoxicity of bare soot particles in BEAS-2B lung cells

Soot particles (SP) are ubiquitous components of atmospheric particulate matter and have been shown to cause various adverse health effects. In the atmosphere, freshly emitted SP can be coated by condensed low-volatility secondary organic and inorganic species. In addition, gas-phase oxidants may react with the surface of SP. Due to the chemical and physical resemblance of SP carbon backbone with polyaromatic hydrocarbon species and their potent oxidation products, we investigated the biological responses of BEAS-2B lung epithelial cells following exposure to fresh- and photochemically aged-SP at the air–liquid interface. A comprehensive physical and chemical aerosol characterization was performed to depict the atmospheric transformations of SP, showing that photochemical aging increased the organic carbon fraction and the oxidation state of the SP. RNA-sequencing and qPCR analysis showed varying gene expression profiles for fresh- and aged-SP. Exposure to aged-SP increased DNA damage, oxidative damage, and upregulation of NRF2-mediated oxidative stress response genes compared to fresh-SP. Furthermore, aged-SP augmented inflammatory cytokine secretion and activated AhR-response, as evidenced by increased expression of AhR-responsive genes. These results indicate that oxidative stress, inflammation, and DNA damage play a key role in the cytotoxicity of SP in BEAS-2B cells, where aging leads to higher toxic responses. Collectively, our results suggest that photochemical aging may increase SP toxicity through surface modifications that lead to an increased toxic response by activating different molecular pathways.

Optimal channel strategy of luxury brands in the presence of online marketplace and copycats

The strategic interaction between authentic luxury brands and their copycats has evolved since the proliferation of online marketplaces. Using a game-theoretic framework, we examine how an authentic luxury brand, observing the strategic behavior of its competing copycats, should make its optimal entry decision to a third-party online marketplace. Our findings reveal that the authentic luxury brand does not sell on the online marketplace when either the quality or the physical resemblance of the copycat to the authentic luxury brand is high. This contributes to the related literature by offering an explanation for the increasing quality of copycats amid the e-commerce boom —improving the quality of the copycat can deter the authentic luxury brand from selling on the online marketplace. Furthermore, by comparing our equilibrium outcome with the benchmark case where the authentic luxury brand does not consider selling on the online marketplace at all, we show that the authentic luxury brand’s potential entry to the online marketplace is sufficient to induce the copycat to improve its quality and lower its price, thereby improving the aggregate consumer surplus. In addition, the online marketplace can always be better off allowing the entry of the copycat if there is no external enforcement against copycats. We show that our key results are valid in various extensions and they offer multiple managerial implications.

Dzīvnieku sugu nosaukumi kaķu vārdos

The article provides an analysis of cat names or felinonyms, where these cat names are derived from a name of an animal species. From the data set of 19,592 felinonyms, these are approximately 5.4%. 92 names of animal species appear within cat names. In the majority of cases, these felinonyms are derived from the lexeme ‘kaķis’ (cat), but the other 26 names of animal species are given once in each case. The article aims to find out the motivations behind the will to derive the cat’s name from a name of an animal species. Respondents have answered the question: Why have you chosen this particular name for your cat? Even though the motivations for the choice could be various, there is no doubt that it is the closeness of Latvians to nature that counts. The dominant motivation to choose the name of an animal species for a cat is its physical resemblance to the species in question. The second most popular motivation for this group of felinonyms is linked to the behaviour of the cat; moreover, in some cases, both the physical appearance and the behavior are said to motivate the choice of the name. Other factors that have influenced the choice of the felinonyms are the compliance of the name, euphony, owner’s hobbies, interests, and dreams, the will to have a specific felinonym, etc. The owners of cats have chosen existing names from the language or created occasionalisms. The majority of these names have been derived and created from simple names, but there are also suffix derivatives, ending derivatives, compounds, and subordinate word-groups. The research in socio-onomastics in zoonyms allows us to conclude that cat names are not simply derived from fauna semantics since the names of animal species within felinonyms can also appear indirectly or, in other cases, the linkage to the fauna could also be only presumed.

Analysis of tip leakage flow unsteadiness in a transonic turbine cascade using data-driven modal decomposition methods

The evolution of tip leakage flow and subsequent vortical structures is accompanied by inherent unsteadiness. This paper presents a novel characterization for the unsteady dynamics of turbine tip flow using data-driven, i.e., equation-free modal decomposition methods, which are applied to the hybrid Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes/large eddy simulation data at a transonic condition. By combining these techniques, the identified eigen-tuples (eigenvalues, eigenvectors, and time evolution) are well determined, and the differences between the obtained patterns (modes) are also pronounced. The snapshot proper orthogonal decomposition (POD) analysis can isolate the large-scale fluctuating structures that populate the rear part of the suction-side, which is mainly attributed to the shock-induced vortex instability. Similar to the turbulence cascade, macro-scale coherent structures that correspond to the tip leakage vortex shedding phenomena and the subsequently transitional and noisy parts closely related to the dissipation can be well derived by a quadruple reconstruction. Three dynamic mode decomposition (DMD) variants including the amplitude selecting-DMD method, the DMD with criterion method, and the sparsity promoting (SP)-DMD method are also compared in extracting dominant modes from the periodic tip flow, and the SP-DMD method which can distill modes of broadband frequencies and low dissipation is proved to be more conducive to representing and reconstructing the complex tip flow. Additional spectral-kernel-based POD (SPOD) analysis that can identify the similar primary unsteadiness frequencies as the DMD method is also encompassed in this study. Specifically, although it manifests that a physical resemblance of the pattern of pressure fluctuations to tip eddy unsteadiness can be captured by all these approaches, the behavior of small-scale vortical interaction downstream of the trailing edge can be clearly isolated with the intrinsic Karman-type vortex layer shedding process via DMD and SPOD approaches, which also demonstrates that these two techniques are more favorable to decomposing the complex tip flows into uncoupled single-frequency coherent structures compared to the conventional POD method. On this basis, resulting modes of velocity components have been accounted for verifying their contributions to the turbulent kinetic energy fields. The ensuing observations can offer a glimpse of the complex dynamics in the tip region, which also sheds light on features previously masked by conventional analysis approaches.

Accepting Human-like Avatars in Social and Professional Roles

Humans report perceptions of unease or eeriness as humanoid/android robots and digital avatars approach human-like physical resemblance, a phenomenon alluded by the Uncanny Valley theory. This study extends the discussions on interactions and acceptance of digital avatars with findings from three experiments. In the first, perceptive evaluation of actors in clips from computer-generated animation and a live-action version of the same movie was examined. In the second experiment, we considered short clips with highly realistic digital avatars to measure recognition ability, the extent of eeriness, and specific physical features identified as unreal. The fixation area and pupil size variation recorded using an eye tracker were analyzed to infer attention to the body, face, and emotional response, respectively. Building on these findings, the third experiment looked at acceptance in roles requiring human skill, empathy, and cognitive ability. The results show that based on perceptions from physical attributes, the eeriness scores diverge from the uncanny valley theory as human-likeness increases. The realistic CGI and mocap technology could have helped cross the valley. Visual attention inferred from gaze behavior was similar for live-action and CGI. At the same time, we observe pupil size changes reflecting emotions like eeriness when the avatars either talked or smiled. Proficiency and acceptance scores were lower for roles requiring complex social cognition processes, such as friends and judicial decision-making. Interestingly, real-life stereotypes of gender roles were transferred to digital avatars too. The findings suggest an ambiguity in accepting human-like avatars in social and professional interactions, emphasizing the need for a multi-dimensional approach when applying the uncanny valley theory. A detailed and contextual examination is imperative as technological advancements have placed humans closer to co-existing with digital or physical android/humanoid robots.