Role Of Facts Research Articles

Teaching facts or teaching thinking? The potential of hooks’ ‘engaged pedagogy’ for teaching politics in a ‘post-truth’ moment

ABSTRACT The rise of populism has sparked a debate about the role of facts in public discourse. How should higher education teachers respond? This article reviews the literature on approaches to teaching and identifies and problematises a tension between emphases on facts and thinking. It then outlines the current ‘post-truth’ challenge, which suggests reasserting the importance of facts. The institutional, disciplinary and personal context of the article are considered before it proposes hooks’ (1994) ‘engaged pedagogy’ as a prescient response to the current post-truth moment. That approach provides an anti-authoritarianism that has the potential to break down barriers between teachers (experts) and students (trainee experts), accommodate different ways of knowing, and promote collective science. This is illustrated with an example of teaching practice from a first-year undergraduate seminar on politics in ethnically divided societies, which highlights how, despite its limitations, engaged pedagogy can facilitate the incorporation of facts within thinking.

Global Villain, but Local Hero? A Linguistic Analysis of Climate Narratives from the Fossil Fuel Sector

Abstract This paper offers a linguistic approach to narrative analysis, illustrated through a quantitative/qualitative lexico-semantic study of sustainability reports by BP, Equinor, ConocoPhillips, and ExxonMobil. It contributes novel insights into how major CO2 emitters present themselves in climate narratives. My aim is, first, to show how the basic components of narratives (Complication, Reaction, and Resolution) and the classic character set (victim, villain, and hero) may be identified through linguistic features, and second, to consider how the special nature of climate change impacts on the enactment of this character set. The study considers whether the companies acknowledge their reputation as villains in the global climate narrative, or whether they are discursively shying away from this script. I find that the reports share a basic climate narrative, representing a techno-optimistic approach to maintaining a profitable business in a carbon-constrained society, with gas representing a narrative Complication as well as a Resolution. The global villain role is acknowledged, but typically softened through a dual villain/hero role. The hero role in fact turned out to be the most conspicuous in the material.

The challenges of becoming and being a clinician manager: a qualitative exploration of the perception of medical doctors in senior leadership roles at a large Australian health service

BackgroundIn Australia, activity-based funding models have emphasized the need for hospitals to be accountable for their clinical performance. Clinician managers, with medical backgrounds are essential to ensuring high quality clinical performance and operational management of hospital services. The purpose of this study is to 1. Identify factors influencing doctors to become clinician managers in the Australian healthcare setting. 2. Understand the pathways and challenges faced by doctors in becoming clinician managers.MethodsWe undertook a qualitative study with semi-structured interviews of 18 clinician managers (who have medical practitioner backgrounds) with formal leadership administrative roles. Interview transcripts were analysed with systematic text condensation.ResultsAll eligible participants approached in this context, agreed to participate and over 80% of the participants were male. We identified five themes: ‘Motivations for leadership’, ‘Pathways to managerial role’, ‘Challenges faced in management roles’, ‘Credibility through clinical practice’ and ‘Management skill cultivation and support’. Clinician managers progressed from being doctors to leadership roles through being encouraged to take on roles, while others felt pressure to take on leadership roles even if this was not a personal goal. Clinician managers described challenges such as feeling under-prepared, maintaining respect form colleagues through still participating in a clinical load, along with juggling priorities such as administrative tasks, managing budgets and performance managing other doctors.ConclusionsThere needs to be an intentional and more structured approach to training and supporting clinician managers that considers the complex challenges faced by individuals (especially women) as they progress into these roles in the Australian tertiary health services context. There is a need to consider ways of supporting clinician managers to focus on management skills, effective mentorship and address perceptions around losing respect from colleagues if clinician managers cease their clinical loads. Further research is needed among the female medical workforce, along with research to understand if maintaining clinical loads when undertaking a clinical management role in fact leads to better effectiveness in contributing to better patient safety and quality outcomes. Such evidence may assist in addressing these social pressures among clinician managers, and contribute to addressing gender inequality among the clinical management workforce.

Pedagogia e Infâncias: um estado de alerta

A presente resenha tem por objetivo tecer comentários acerca do livro Pesquisas e Pedagogia: Educação para as diferenças, organizado por Alex Barreiro, Nélia Aparecida da Silva Cavalcante e Ana Lúcia Goulart de Faria. A obra apresenta catorze artigos de pesquisadores, pesquisadoras, professores e professoras que têm como objetivo evidenciar a premência de estudos no tocante à Educação Infantil, sobretudo no âmbito de uma educação de qualidade, respeitando as diversidades e que seja decolonial. A união de ciência e pesquisa é primordial para que as desigualdades presentes na realidade brasileira sejam ceifadas. Não se pode perder de vista que só com uma mudança radical no sistema educacional a Educação poderá cumprir de fato e de direito seu papel social.

The role of FACT in managing chromatin:disruption, assembly, or repair?

FACT (FAcilitates Chromatin Transcription) has long been considered to be a transcription elongation factor whose ability to destabilize nucleosomes promotes RNAPII progression on chromatin templates. However, this is just one function of this histone chaperone, as FACT also functions in DNA replication. While broadly conserved among eukaryotes and essential for viability in many organisms, dependence on FACT varies widely, with some differentiated cells proliferating normally in its absence. It is therefore unclear what the core functions of FACT are, whether they differ in different circumstances, and what makes FACT essential in some situations but not others. Here, we review recent advances and propose a unifying model for FACT activity. By analogy to DNA repair, we propose that the ability of FACT to both destabilize and assemble nucleosomes allows it to monitor and restore nucleosome integrity as part of a system of chromatin repair, in which disruptions in the packaging of DNA are sensed and returned to their normal state. The requirement for FACT then depends on the level of chromatin disruption occurring in the cell, and the cell's ability to tolerate packaging defects. The role of FACT in transcription would then be just one facet of a broader system for maintaining chromatin integrity.

Facts, principles, and global justice: does the ‘real world’ matter?

ABSTRACT The world is undeniably full of injustice. Many feel that much political philosophy is practically impotent and engaged instead in overly abstract theorising insufficiently sensitive to the realities of the world. One response to this concern is David Miller’s influential model of evidence-based political philosophy, which claims to be sensitive to empirical evidence from the social sciences, takes seriously people’s opinions, and defends the role of facts in grounding normative principles. Using various examples from the field of global justice, one of Miller’s key areas of work, I show that Miller’s method is unconvincing on two-levels. His theoretical argument for fact-dependence is flawed, and his practical argument for an opinion-sensitive political theory is either guilty of status quo bias or, in an attempt to escape it, becomes self-defeating. While the paper is primarily critical, I endeavour also to draw out the implications of my critiques for the role of the ‘real world’ in theorising.

Histone chaperone FACT is essential to overcome replication stress in mammalian cells

The histone chaperone FACT is upregulated during mammary tumorigenesis and necessary for the viability and growth of breast tumor cells. We established that only proliferating tumor cells are sensitive to FACT knockdown, suggesting that FACT functions during DNA replication in tumor cells but not in normal cells. We hypothesized that the basal level of replication stress defines the FACT dependence of cells. Using genetic and chemical tools, we demonstrated that FACT is needed to overcome replication stress. In the absence of FACT during replication stress, the MCM2-7 helicase dissociates from chromatin, resulting in the absence of ssDNA accumulation, RPA binding, and activation of the ATR/CHK1 checkpoint response. Without this response, stalled replication forks are not stabilized, and new origin firing cannot be prevented, leading to the accumulation of DNA damage and cell death. Thus, we propose a novel role for FACT as a factor preventing helicase dissociation from chromatin during replication stress.

A Review Paper on the Role of FACTS and Resilient AC Distribution Systems in the Development of an Intelligent Power System

A Review Paper on the Role of FACTS and Resilient AC Distribution Systems in the Development of an Intelligent Power System

FACT caught in the act of manipulating the nucleosome.

The organization of genomic DNA into nucleosomes profoundly affects all DNA-related processes in eukaryotes. The histone chaperone ‘FAcilitates Chromatin Transcription’ (FACT, consisting of subunits SPT16 and SSRP11) promotes both disassembly and reassembly of nucleosomes during gene transcription, DNA replication, and repair2. The mechanism by which FACT causes these opposing outcomes is unknown. Here we report two cryo-EM structures of human FACT in complex with partially assembled ‘sub-nucleosomes’, with supporting biochemical and hydrogen-deuterium exchange (HDX) data. FACT is engaged in extensive interactions with nucleosomal DNA and all histones. The large DNA-binding surface on FACT appears to be protected by the C-terminal domains of both subunits, and this inhibition is released by interaction with H2A-H2B, allowing FACT-H2A-H2B to dock onto a (H3-H4)2-DNA complex3. SPT16 binds nucleosomal DNA and tethers H2A-H2B through its C-terminal domain by acting as a placeholder for DNA. SSRP1 also contributes to DNA binding, and can assume two conformations, depending on whether a second H2A-H2B dimer is present. Our data suggest a compelling mechanism for how FACT maintains chromatin integrity during polymerase passage, by facilitating H2A-H2B dimer removal, stabilizing intermediate ‘subnucleosomal’ states, and promoting nucleosome reassembly. Our findings reconcile discrepancies regarding the many roles of FACT and underscore the dynamic interactions between histone chaperones and nucleosomes.

Ways of pointing to artworks: a Wittgensteinian approach = Formas de apuntar a las obras de arte: un enfoque wittgensteiniano

Abstract: The aim of P. Kivy’s recent De Gustibus: Arguing about Taste and Why We Do It (2015) is to answer to the very same question in terms of an emphasis on belief based on «phenomenological» (if not also ontological) «art-realism». Those who disagree on taste do so because they (explicitly or implicitly) see, in judgments relating to properties of artworks, the expression of beliefs, some of which are «true», and true in virtue of correctly reporting «facts» (non-aesthetic art-relevant facts, aesthetic art-relevant facts, or art value facts), and they try to convince others of what they think is «real» about art. Kivy follows the traces of this phenomenology of «beautiful» found in Hume’s work (and vs. Kant’s work). The main criticism is that it is actually possible to defend an alternative approach to understanding art in terms of «aspects» (an allegedly ‘anti-realist’ concept), so as to take account of rationality, disputes and the role of facts regarding judgments of taste. Kivy does not concede enough attention to the aesthetic experiences of seeing now what we were unable to see before (the «dawning» of an aspect), for example.Key words: Kivy, taste, phenomenology, belief, aesthetics, Wittgenstein.Resumen: El objetivo del reciente De Gustibus. Arguing about Taste and Why We Do It (2015), de P. Kivy es responder a la pregunta incluida en el título de su libro en términos de un énfasis en la creencia que se basa en un realismo en arte «fenomenológico» (si no también ontológico): quienes que disputan sobre «gusto» suelen hacerlo porque ellos (explícita o implícitamente) ven los juicios concernientes a las propiedades de las obras de arte como expresando creencias, algunas de las cuales son verdaderas, y verdaderas en virtud de reportar hechos correctamente (hechos no estéticos relevantes para el arte, hechos estéticos relevantes para el arte o hechos de valor artístico), y tratan de convencer a otros de lo que ellos piensan que es ‘real’ sobre el arte. Kivy sigue el rastro de esa fenomenología de ‘lo bello’ a partir de la obra de Hume (y contra la obra de Kant). Mi crítica principal es que es posible defender un enfoque alternativo de la comprensión del arte en términos de aspectos (un concepto supuestamente «antirrealista») a fin de tener en cuenta la racionalidad, las disputas y el papel de los hechos con respecto a los juicios de gusto. Kivy no presta suficiente atención a las experiencias estéticas de ver ahora lo que no podíamos ver antes (el «aparecer» de un aspecto), por ejemplo.Palabras claves: Kivy, gusto, fenomenología, creencia, estética, Wittgenstein.

How “Facts” Shaped Modern Disciplines

This history of the concept of fact reveals that the fact-oriented practices of German physicists and historians derived from common origins. The concept of fact became part of the German language remarkably late. It gained momentum only toward the end of the eighteenth century. I show that the concept of fact emerged as part of a historical knowledge tradition, which comprised both human and natural empirical study. Around 1800, parts of this tradition, including the concept of fact, were integrated into the epistemological basis of several emerging disciplines, including physics and historiography. During this process of discipline formation, the concept of fact remained fluid. I reveal this fluidity by unearthing different interpretations and roles of facts in different German contexts around 1800. I demonstrate how a fact-based epistemology emerged at the University of Göttingen in the late eighteenth century, by focusing on universal historian August Ludwig Schlözer and the experimentalist Georg Christoph Lichtenberg. In a time of scientific and political revolutions, they regarded facts as eternal knowledge, contrasting them with short-lived theories and speculations. Remarkably, Schlözer and Lichtenberg construed facts as the basis of Wissenschaft, but not as Wissenschaft itself. Only after 1800, empirically minded German physicists and historians granted facts self-contained value. As physics and historiography became institutionalized at German universities, the concept of fact acquired different interpretations in different disciplinary settings. These related to fact-oriented research practices, such as precision measurement in physics and source criticism in historiography.

FACT and Ubp10 collaborate to modulate H2B deubiquitination and nucleosome dynamics.

Monoubiquitination of histone H2B (H2B-Ub) plays a role in transcription and DNA replication, and is required for normal localization of the histone chaperone, FACT. In yeast, H2B-Ub is deubiquitinated by Ubp8, a subunit of SAGA, and Ubp10. Although they target the same substrate, loss of Ubp8 and Ubp10 cause different phenotypes and alter the transcription of different genes. We show that Ubp10 has poor activity on yeast nucleosomes, but that the addition of FACT stimulates Ubp10 activity on nucleosomes and not on other substrates. Consistent with a role for FACT in deubiquitinating H2B in vivo, a FACT mutant strain shows elevated levels of H2B-Ub. Combination of FACT mutants with deletion of Ubp10, but not Ubp8, confers increased sensitivity to hydroxyurea and activates a cryptic transcription reporter, suggesting that FACT and Ubp10 may coordinate nucleosome assembly during DNA replication and transcription. Our findings reveal unexpected interplay between H2B deubiquitination and nucleosome dynamics.

Chapter 5: Fake News and Alternative Facts – A Constructivist Critique of the Current Right-Wing Populist Will to Truth

This chapter focuses on rhetorical strategies employed in right-wing populist discourses like the talk about “fake news” and “alternative facts” most prominently used in the Trump campaign and in the first year of his presidency. We discuss what is at stake in current politics regarding the relation between power and truth and propose some perspectives for critical reflection. First, we explore the concept of truth from a pragmatist and constructivist perspective. We argue that there is a fundamental and necessary distinction between relativism and arbitrariness. Second, we consider the role of facts and scientific results in culture and society and the role that markets play in the distribution and dissemination of information and beliefs in a consumer society. We refer to Foucault’s critical concept of the “will to truth” in order to argue that there are standards and procedures regarding facts and beliefs in modern society – e.g., practices that have shown their relative success in the hard and soft sciences – that must be defended against arbitrary assults by right-wing propaganda. We conclude by considering the necessary connection between a plurastic concept of truth and democratic politics in the face of the current right-wing attempts to establish a regime of truth that is fundamentally detrimental to democracy.

Democracy as Group Discussion and Collective Action: Facts, Values, and Strategies in Canadian and American Rural Landscapes

This article focuses on the theoretical and conceptual issues that reside at the intersection of deliberation and action. Looking at the Antigonish Movement and the USDA's farmer discussion groups and schools of philosophy in the 1930s and 1940s, the article identifies salient points about the ways in which institutional leaders developed programs that attended to concerns about the role of facts, values, and strategies by embedding deliberative talk within collaborative efforts through education and community development initiatives.

The motivations for Walter Burley’s theory of the proposition

ABSTRACTWalter Burley (born c. 1275; died. c. 1344) claims throughout his career that the mind can make a statement (propositio) out of things. Since things include entities that exist outside of the mind, Burley appears to be claiming that the mind can form a statement out of things that exist outside of it. Most scholars of Burley offer a deflationary reading of this claim, arguing that it confuses two distinct but closely related philosophical issues: the nature of propositional content, on the one hand, and the role of facts in a compelling account of truth, on the other. But I argue that Burley means exactly what he says: that the mind can, quite literally, form statements out of things that exist outside of it. In Burley’s account, statements of this sort function as the propositional contents of our thoughts and written or uttered sentences. This account of propositional content is motivated by three more fundamental theses to which Burley is committed: referentialism, compositionality, and a claim about truth-conditionality I call intellectualism.

Effect of Work Life Balance & Antecedent Variable on Intention to Stay (A Study of Female Employees in High Performing Banks in Jakarta)

This research raised a topic about Work-Life Balance (WLB) and the antecedent variable towards Intention to Stay. This study was conducted on 154 female respondents who worked as bank employees in the best performing banks in Jakarta by purposive sampling method as married women whose have children and has been working more than 3 years. WLB which stated in respondent perception found that is positively influenced towards Intention to Stay, where Management of Dual Role and The Organizational Support Practices is the antecedent variable of WLB. Consequently, Management of Dual Role in fact is not influenced towards Intention to Stay meanwhile The Organizational Support Practices still influenced 10 % of Alpha. The interesting finding in this research known that WLB influenced by Management of Dual Role used house-maid service and The Organizational Support Practices have not touched the support towards Dual Role Women. It is described that the organization has not been supported the WLB issue.

A Role for FACT in Repopulation of Nucleosomes at Inducible Genes

Xenobiotic drugs induce Pleiotropic Drug Resistance (PDR) genes via the orthologous Pdr1/Pdr3 transcription activators. We previously identified the Mediator transcription co-activator complex as a key target of Pdr1 orthologs and demonstrated that Pdr1 interacts directly with the Gal11/Med15 subunit of the Mediator complex. Based on an interaction between Pdr1 and the FACT complex, we show that strains with spt16 or pob3 mutations are sensitive to xenobiotic drugs and display diminished PDR gene induction. Although FACT acts during the activation of some genes by assisting in the nucleosomes eviction at promoters, PDR promoters already contain nucleosome-depleted regions (NDRs) before induction. To determine the function of FACT at PDR genes, we examined the kinetics of RNA accumulation and changes in nucleosome occupancy following exposure to a xenobiotic drug in wild type and FACT mutant yeast strains. In the presence of normal FACT, PDR genes are transcribed within 5 minutes of xenobiotic stimulation and transcription returns to basal levels by 30–40 min. Nucleosomes are constitutively depleted in the promoter regions, are lost from the open reading frames during transcription, and the ORFs are wholly repopulated with nucleosomes as transcription ceases. While FACT mutations cause minor delays in activation of PDR genes, much more pronounced and significant defects in nucleosome repopulation in the ORFs are observed in FACT mutants upon transcription termination. FACT therefore has a major role in nucleosome redeposition following cessation of transcription at the PDR genes, the opposite of its better-known function in nucleosome disassembly.

Control of Transcriptional Elongation

Elongation is becoming increasingly recognized as a critical step in eukaryotic transcriptional regulation. Although traditional genetic and biochemical studies have identified major players of transcriptional elongation, our understanding of the importance and roles of these factors is evolving rapidly through the recent advances in genome-wide and single-molecule technologies. Here, we focus on how elongation can modulate the transcriptional outcome through the rate-liming step of RNA polymerase II (Pol II) pausing near promoters and how the participating factors were identified. Among the factors we describe are the pausing factors--NELF (negative elongation factor) and DSIF (DRB sensitivity-inducing factor)--and P-TEFb (positive elongation factor b), which is the key player in pause release. We also describe the high-resolution view of Pol II pausing and propose nonexclusive models for how pausing is achieved. We then discuss Pol II elongation through the bodies of genes and the roles of FACT and SPT6, factors that allow Pol II to move through nucleosomes.

Boosting Passage Retrieval through Reuse in Question Answering

Question Answering (QA) is an emerging important field in Information Retrieval. In a QA system the archive of previous questions asked from the system makes a collection full of useful factual nuggets. This paper makes an initial attempt to investigate the reuse of facts contained in the archive of previous questions to help and gain performance in answering future related factoid questions. It models the role of facts in questions through discourse transition of user question answering process, and presents approaches to identify and extract these facts with the help of lexical semantic resources. Strategies to implement the reuse of facts to boost query generation in the passage retrieval stage of a QA system as well as ideas on system evaluation are discussed.

The role of FACT in making and breaking nucleosomes

FACT is a roughly 180kDa heterodimeric protein complex important for managing the properties of chromatin in eukaryotic cells. Chromatin is a repressive barrier that plays an important role in protecting genomic DNA and regulating access to it. This barrier must be temporarily removed during transcription, replication, and repair, but it also must be rapidly restored to the original state afterwards. Further, the properties of chromatin are dynamic and must be adjusted as conditions dictate. FACT was identified as a factor that destabilizes nucleosomes in vitro, but it has now also been implicated as a central factor in the deposition of histones to form nucleosomes, as an exchange factor that swaps the histones within existing nucleosomes for variant forms, and as a tether that prevents histones from being displaced by the passage of RNA polymerases during transcription. FACT therefore plays central roles in building, maintaining, adjusting, and overcoming the chromatin barrier. This review summarizes recent results that have begun to reveal how FACT can promote what appear to be contradictory goals, using a simple set of binding activities to both enhance and diminish the stability of nucleosomes. This article is part of a Special Issue entitled: Histone chaperones and Chromatin assembly.