Routes Of Inquiry Research Articles

Assessing Fluid Intolerance with Doppler Ultrasonography: A Physiological Framework.

Ultrasonography is becoming the favored hemodynamic monitoring utensil of emergentologists, anesthesiologists and intensivists. While the roles of ultrasound grow and evolve, many clinical applications of ultrasound stem from qualitative, image-based protocols, especially for diagnosing and managing circulatory failure. Often, these algorithms imply or suggest treatment. For example, intravenous fluids are opted for or against based upon ultrasonographic signs of preload and estimation of the left ventricular ejection fraction. Though appealing, image-based algorithms skirt some foundational tenets of cardiac physiology; namely, (1) the relationship between cardiac filling and stroke volume varies considerably in the critically ill, (2) the correlation between cardiac filling and total vascular volume is poor and (3) the ejection fraction is not purely an appraisal of cardiac function but rather a measure of coupling between the ventricle and the arterial load. Therefore, management decisions could be enhanced by quantitative approaches, enabled by Doppler ultrasonography. Both fluid ‘responsiveness’ and ‘tolerance’ are evaluated by Doppler ultrasound, but the physiological relationship between these constructs is nebulous. Accordingly, it is argued that the link between them is founded upon the Frank–Starling–Sarnoff relationship and that this framework helps direct future ultrasound protocols, explains seemingly discordant findings and steers new routes of enquiry.

Evaluating How and Why the Environmental Context Shapes the Course of Development Across the Adult Lifespan

There is a long-standing literature that has documented the importance of both the immediate and distal context in impacting mental and physical health across the adult lifespan. The goal of this symposium is to bring together a collection of papers that target the extent to which the immediate and distal context as measured through objective and subjective indicators relate to pertinent outcomes of mental and physical health. Staben and colleagues use an intensive longitudinal design in middle-aged adults to show that objective and subjective indicators of the neighborhood are associated with higher levels of and are protective against the impact of monthly adversity on mental health and well-being. Munoz and colleagues evaluate associations between objective and subjective early-life neighborhood contexts and whether they play a role in cognitive function at midlife. They find that poorer age-five self-report conditions were associated with lower working memory. Osuna and colleagues examine how both neighborhood and housing conditions play a role on psychological well-being. They find that housing and neighborhood safety conditions are associated with depressive symptoms over time. Piazza and colleagues examine associations between daily financial thoughts, SES, and indices of emotional and physical health. They find that individuals who reported more daily financial thoughts also reported more negative affect and physical symptoms. The discussion by Crimmins will integrate the four papers by highlighting the importance of how different forms of context can impact development in adulthood and old age, particularly in relation to health and well-being and consider future routes of inquiry.

Multidisciplinary Research as a Complex System

Collaborative research has become increasingly prominent since the mid-20th century. This article aspires to offer a fundamental ontology of a multidisciplinary research system. As a point of departure, we consider disciplinarity as a restricted language code as noted by Bernstein. The impetus for collaboration is found in a research problem’s transcendence of disciplinary bounds. This article makes several propositions that diverge from the consensus position regarding the formation and dynamics of a multidisciplinary system. Most notably that such a system adheres to the constituent elements of what could be regarded as a complex system, including an ensemble of elements, interactions between these elements, local disorder followed by the emergence of robust order and system memory. We propose that the internal communications and subsequent self-organization of such a system may be conceptualized as orientation signals, or ‘stigmergy’, analogous to those observed in swarms. System robustness, we argue, is a function of the individual researcher’s local autonomy and is, paradoxically, augmented by the weakness of communications across disciplinary bounds, along with the lack of central organization and the emphasis on research novelty. System memory, we argue, manifests itself in the ability of a researcher to change her/his route of inquiry, based on environmental feedback, whereby new information becomes incorporated into the adjusted research methodology. We propose that an emergent intelligence, at the level of the system, expresses itself in the unconcealment of the ‘form’ of the metaproblem. The theoretical model is empirically illustrated using, as an example, the contemporary field of renewable energy research, which is an area primed for collaborative research. It is anticipated that an improved understanding of multidisciplinary research systems provides insights into certain strengths particular to less integrated and self-organized forms of collaborative research along with a framework with which to improve the design and fostering of such systems.

Object-Oriented Diaspora Sensibilities, Disidentification, and Ghostly Performance

Object-Oriented Diaspora Sensibilities, Disidentification, and Ghostly Performance

Fanon via Lacan, or: Decolonization by Psychoanalytic Means … ?

ABSTRACT Lacanian psychoanalysis is often considered antithetical to Frantz Fanon's decolonizing political project. This paper argues, by contrast, that by exploring hitherto under-explored aspects of the Fanon-Lacan relation we are able to re-articulate many of Fanon's most crucial political insights. The paper adopts three routes of enquiry. Firstly, it investigates Fanon's earliest citations of Lacan, noting how Fanon utilizes Lacan's ideas of historically-situated forms of madness, (mis)recognition, paranoia and psychic causality. Secondly, it highlights a series of conceptual affinities that exist between the work of the two theorists including idea of sociogeny, the importance of symbolic (or social) structure, the notion of fantasy and of a social (or transindividual) unconscious. Thirdly, it provides an instructive example of how Fanon's theorizations of colonial oppression might be supplemented by means of Lacanian social theory especially in respect of how the colonized are positioned as "non-subjects" relative to the master-signifier of whiteness.

Toward a Two-Route Interpretation of Parmenidean Inquiry

In this paper I challenge the orthodox view regarding the number of routes of inquiry in Parmenides’s poem. The narrating goddess in Fragment 2 identifies ‘the only routes of inquiry there are for knowing,’ (i) guided by the ‘[. . .] is [. . .]’ and (ii) guided by ‘what-is-not as such.’ In Fragment 6, the goddess considers taking (iii) ‘both to be and not to be’ to be ‘the same and not the same,’ and most modern commentators hold that this constitutes a third route. I argue instead that this interpretation entails missing the routes’ fundamental interconnections, and that the goddess describes only two. To show this, I consider Fragments 2 and 6 before turning to key notions in Doxa, particularly the constitutive ontological kinds ‘light’ and ‘night,’ to account for the second, mortal route. Mortals have missed the being of these two, and I develop an account of the inquiry that is guided by this insight.

Artificial Intelligence and Artificial Sociality

The paper aims to formulate theoretical and methodological foundations as well as basic research questions for studying intervention of artificial intelligence in everyday life of medical and life sciences in the 21 century. It is an invitation for professional philosophical, theoretical and methodological discussion about the necessity and reality of artificial intelligence in contemporary medical/life sciences and medicine. The authors commence with a proposition of their definitions of ‘artificial intelligence’ (AI) and ‘artificial sociality’ (AS). The next section of the paper deals with a review of basic trends in medical/life sciences and medicine. In what follows the authors debate two problems related to incorporation of AI in reality of current medicine. The first is the potential revision of the principles developed in western medicine; the second is the alteration of the contents and forms of medical education. The authors theorize the dynamic interplay between structural expansion and cultural contraction of medicine and life sciences in current practices of higher education and explore how this introduces an essential tension between the necessity and reality for medical professionals to work with AI. The paper shows that attending to institutional dynamics serves as a critical and timely extension of disciplinary/cross/anti-disciplinary critiques of science and medicine, not only since the current inclusion agenda of the AI in medicine may do little to address the real concerns of a medical profession in the XXI century but also because it may inadvertently undermine the institutional recognition and epistemic acceptance of new anti-disciplinary vista for studying AI per se. In conclusion the authors underline basic outcomes of the discussion and propose further routes for inquiry and research.

On the research of time past: the hunt for the substrate of memory.

The search for memory is one of the oldest quests in written human history. For at least two millennia, we have tried to understand how we learn and remember. We have gradually converged on the brain and looked inside it to find the basis of knowledge, the trace of memory. The search for memory has been conducted on multiple levels, from the organ to the cell to the synapse, and has been distributed across disciplines with less chronological or intellectual overlap than one might hope. Frequently, the study of the mind and its memories has been severely restricted by technological or philosophical limitations. However, in the last few years, certain technologies have emerged, offering new routes of inquiry into the basis of memory. The 2016 Kavli Futures Symposium was devoted to the past and future of memory studies. At the workshop, participants evaluated the logic and data underlying the existing and emerging theories of memory. In this paper, written in the spirit of the workshop, we briefly review the history of the hunt for memory, summarizing some of the key debates at each level of spatial resolution. We then discuss the exciting new opportunities to unravel the mystery of memory.

Stephen Barber, Performance Projections: Film and the Body in Action

‘Interdisciplinary’ persists as a watchword in academia, typically sought in research strategies, by funding bodies and interview panels. It is something desired for both genuine and perhaps more cynical reasons, but often obfuscated by the very institutional nature of the university. Stephen Barber announces early on that Performance Projections: Film and the Body in Action is concerned with the multiplicity of interconnections between performance and film, and thereafter he is absolutely focused on expressing the variety and complexity of their interweaving. The book is broad-ranging and ambitiously far-reaching in its scope, a genuine and impressive interdisciplinary undertaking that moves from performance art to clandestine musical performance, from Eadweard Muybridge’s precinematic experiments to smartphone footage of the Occupy movement, from 1930s Berlin to 1970s Japan. Barber’s perspectives on the intersections of performance, film and space combine aesthetics, politics, history and technology. Chapters focus on in-between sites of performance (rooftops, courtyards, underground); the multiple surfaces of and marks made by/on the body; riot and protest performance; and the impact of digital media. As a result the connections and possibilities offered go far beyond film and performance; the threads of the book’s interests link with the work of many varied disciplinary fields, such as urban landscapes (especially representations and histories of Berlin), political activism and cultural memory. Of course the study of film is in many ways inherently interdisciplinary, and in making my way through Performance Projections I was keenly reminded of Raymond Durgnat’s expression of cinema as a ‘Mongrel muse’, ‘a potpourri of art forms, sharing elements in common with each, but weaving them into a pattern of its own’.1 A determinedly interdisciplinary study such as this certainly brings out the richness of film’s connectiveness, reminding the reader of its deep entanglements in other artistic mediums and routes of inquiry, but for me there is also a question hovering over the book concerning the loss of specificity that the spread of such an approach might entail.

Aristotle’s Way away from Parmenides’ Way. A Case of Scientific Controversy and Ancient Humour

Abstract In Physics Α, Aristotle introduces his science of nature and devotes a substantial part of the investigation to refuting the Eleatics’ theses, and to resolving their arguments, against plurality and change. In so doing, Aristotle also dusts off Parmenides’ metaphor of the routes of inquiry and uses it as one of the main schemes of his book. Aristotle’s goal, I argue, is to present his own physical investigation as the only correct route, and to show that Parmenides’ “way of truth” is instead both wrong and a sidetrack. By revisiting Parmenides’ metaphor of the route, Aristotle twists it against him, distorts it and uses this distortion as a source of fun and of some mockery of Parmenides himself. Thereby, Physics Α gives us a taste of Aristotle’s biting humour and of his practice of the “virtue” of wit (eutrapelia).

Fluid Philosophy

Philosophy’s elaboration of concepts and theories has long depended on an earth-bound lexicon of continents and grounds, islands, terrains, reference-points and touchstones. This way of thinking about our being-in-the-world betrays our condition as humans, ‘forgetting’ that we are creatures born into movement and subject to constant flux. But what if we were to change the element within which we think, and relinquish our parcels of conceptual ground in order to remain open to the element of water and its associated qualities of fluidity? The work of performance artists Douglas Wright, Lemi Ponifasio, Michael Parmenter, Nina Nawalowalo and Sam Trubridge, all currently living in New Zealand, and several of whom have ancestral ties to Pacific Islands (Samoa and Fiji), reflects a common readiness to re-think the human condition in terms of the sea so that, for the space of a performance, our being-in-the-world becomes a being-in-the-water. From a confrontation with the immanence of ecological breakdown, to the interactions between moving bodies and a liquid medium, each work demonstrates ways of thinking that set adrift our ideas, call into question the solid ground on which we walk and navigate new routes of enquiry and discovery on seas both rich and strange. By proposing relationships between humans and the sea inside and out, between humans and the Pacific, these performing philosophers remind us that the first step in redressing imbalances in the world is to connect with the world and to relate to that ocean—without trying to make it ours. To relate also means to be, and to let be.

BETWEEN THE MEDUSAN AND THE PYGMALIAN: SWINBURNE AND SCULPTURE

Two marble statues, each representing a reclining, sleeping nude of somewhat indeterminate sex, sit at the heart of Swinburne's early collections of poetry: the HellenisticSleeping Hermaphrodite(Figure 1) in hisPoems and Ballads(1866) and Michelangelo's allegorical figureLa Notte(Figure 2) in his “In San Lorenzo” sonnet inSongs before Sunrise(1871). Swinburne's dealings with theHermaphroditehave had a long and ever increasing bibliography; his fascination with Michelangelo's sculpture has, to my knowledge, not yet provoked much scholarly attention. This imbalance may partly be ascribed to the immediate sex appeal of theHermaphrodite– this “late Romantic freak,” as Camille Paglia appropriately called it (413) – which in the gendered critical discourse of the 1990s has given rise to a whole range of exciting explorations of Swinburne and the body, Swinburne and androgyny, Swinburne and poetic blindness. The Michelangelo statue was, however, turned into a poetic and political monument by Swinburne under far less erotically charged circumstances in the volume dedicated to Guiseppe Mazzini, and opens for different routes of inquiry.

C-Reactive Protein and Coronary Disease

Inflammation has been proposed as a contributor to different stages in the pathogenesis of coronary heart disease (CHD), including the lifelong process of atherogenesis, the acute atherothrombotic event that causes ischemic necrosis in acute myocardial infarction, and the myocardial damage after ischemia.1,2 C-reactive protein (CRP), an acute-phase plasma protein synthesized by the liver, is the most extensively studied systemic marker of inflammation.3 Since the original report of an association between modest increases in baseline circulating CRP and subsequent cardiovascular outcomes in patients with unstable angina at the initial examination,4,5 CRP has been the focus of intense investigation. Measurement of CRP has been advocated as a means of improving cardiovascular risk prediction.6 Because CRP binds to low-density lipoprotein (LDL)7 and is present in atherosclerotic plaques,8 there is also considerable interest in whether CRP may play a direct causal role in CHD (and, by implication, could be an important therapeutic target for disease prevention). As discussed below, the evidence relating to this hypothesis has been derived from several different routes of enquiry, including observational epidemiology, human genetic studies, experimental and animal models, and randomized clinical trials of statins. Collectively, several recent findings, such as those in this issue of Circulation from Koike et al9 on human CRP transgenic rabbits, have reduced the likelihood that CRP itself is a major causal mediator in CHD. In this editorial, we briefly summarize the strengths and limitations of the available data, with an emphasis on the recent major findings. Article see p 2088 In regard to observational epidemiology, the first population-based prospective study of CRP concentration and CHD risk appeared in 1996.10 By 2009, >50 additional such studies had been reported.11–14 The rapid appearance of epidemiological studies on CRP has been facilitated greatly by the relative stability …

The Were -Subjunctive in British Rural Dialects: Marrying Corpus and Questionnaire Data

This paper examines the were-subjunctive in British rural dialects in the light of data from two sources: the Survey of English Dialects (SED) questionnaire, and the Leeds Corpus of English Dialect (LCED), consisting of transcribed recordings made at the same time as the data was gathered for the questionnaire. We begin by surveying previous work on the subjunctive in general, and the were-subjunctive in dialect grammar in particular (section 1), culminating in a discussion of the SED data on the were-subjunctive. We then move on in section 2 to pose two hypotheses: firstly that the SED does not provide a complete picture of this phenomenon and thus corpus data may be of use enriching it; secondly a "null" hypothesis that no were-subjunctive is consistently marked in the dialects in question. We then look at the methodology and data used (section 3), describing the source of our data, the LCED. We also note some potential difficulties (3.1) before moving on to discuss the choice of an area of England to examine (3.2) and of texts to analyse (3.3). In section 3.4 we describe the mark-up scheme used in the analysis of the texts, and in 3.5 the process of annotation and extraction of results form the texts. These results are presented in section 4. We consider the corpus data in relation to the questionnaire data (4.1), and to our two hypotheses (4.2 and 4.3). In our Conclusion (section 5) we summarise the implications of this study and consider some possible future routes of enquiry into the were-subjunctive in the rural dialects of England.

The Hebridean Blackhouse on the Isle of Barra

The Hebridean blackhouse is a well-known part of the eighteenth and nineteenth century landscape of the Western Isles, described by numerous early travellers and preserved for posterity at Arnol in Lewis. Survey and excavation of blackhouses on the Isle of Barra, however, suggests that here at least, the majority of blackhouses did not conform to the 'norm' of a long building with accommodation shared by animals and humans. Despite the large families of the Catholic population of Barra, the houses are shorter and provide less internal space than blackhouses further north in the island chain. Animals were more often housed in separate byres. Similarly, the human use of space in the Barra blackhouses shows some variations from the pattern described by nineteenth century sources. As to the origins of the blackhouse, unexcavated sites on Barra suggest two possible future routes of enquiry.

Discourses of Order and Their Disruption: The Texts of the South African Truth & Reconciliation Commission

This paper asserts that selected texts of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission possess a powerful political potential in their ability to challenge and refute historical relations of racialised power in South Africa. The prospective political efficacy of these texts is seen as residing in their critical ability to subvert and challenge the predominant understandings, discourses and representations of Apartheid, or the ‘old’, South Africa. Three overlapping routes of enquiry are explored in this regard. Firstly, the political efficacy of such texts is seen as arising from their role in terms of the recovery of previously repressed histories. This recovery enlarges the archive of South Africa's past and contributes to the constitution of a new body of knowledge, from which credible standpoints of resistance and opposition may be articulated. A second explanation highlights the fact these texts are able to exert a form of discursive critique upon the predominant practices and representations of both former and reigning social orders. This level of critique enables us, in Foucautt's (1981) terms to restore to political discourses their nature as contextual and discontinuous practices of construction as opposed to naturally-occurring, seamlessly-unified, purely significatory instances of language. The last account engages more directly with the radical and transgressive nature of these texts, with their affective and ultimately symptomatic qualities. It is here suggested that these texts have earned their extraordinary visceral charge, their special power and horror, for many South Africans, precisely because they have exposed and stretched to the limit the boundaries of the past discursive order, of what had been known, what was understood and what could be represented in the Apartheid State.