Rudimentary Forms Research Articles

Social and economic interdependence as a basis for peaceful between-group relationships in nonhuman primates and humans.

Glowacki asserts that interdependent relationships beyond group boundaries are exceptionally rare among nonhuman mammals. However, rudimentary forms of interdependence can be seen in primate species that form multilevel societies, that is, core social units embedded within higher-level grouping categories. Studies of primate multilevel societies can enrich discussions about the evolutionary origins of peaceful between-group interactions in humans.

Why did humans surpass all other primates? Are our brains so different? Part 1.

This review is based on a conference presented in June 2023. Its main objective is to explain the cognitive differences between humans and non-human primates (NHPs) focusing on characteristics of their brains. It is based on the opinion of a clinical neurologist and does not intend to go beyond an overview of this complex topic. As language is the main characteristic differentiating humans from NHPs, this review is targeted at their brain networks related to language. NHPs have rudimentary forms of language, including primitive lexical/semantic signs. Humans have a much broader lexical/semantic repertory, but syntax is the most important characteristic, which is probably unique to Homo sapiens. Angular gyrus, Broca's area, temporopolar areas, and arcuate fascicle, are much more developed in humans. These differences may explain why NHPs did not develop a similar language to ours. Language had a profound influence on all other higher nervous activities.

Insights into Materials, Physics, and Applications in Flexible and Wearable Acoustic Sensing Technology.

Sound plays a crucial role in the perception of the world. It allows to communicate, learn, and detect potential dangers, diagnose diseases, and much more. However, traditional acoustic sensors are limited in their form factors, being rigid and cumbersome, which restricts their potential applications. Recently, acoustic sensors have made significant advancements, transitioning from rudimentary forms to wearable devices and smart everyday clothing that can conform to soft, curved, and deformable surfaces or surroundings. In this review, the latest scientific and technological breakthroughs with insightful analysis in materials, physics, design principles, fabrication strategies, functions, and applications of flexible and wearable acoustic sensing technology are comprehensively explored. The new generation of acoustic sensors that can recognize voice, interact with machines, control robots, enable marine positioning and localization, monitor structural health, diagnose human vital signs in deep tissues, and perform organ imaging is highlighted. These innovations offer unique solutions to significant challenges in fields such as healthcare, biomedicine, wearables, robotics, and metaverse. Finally, the existing challenges and future opportunities in the field are addressed, providing strategies to advance acoustic sensing technologies for intriguing real-world applications and inspire new research directions.

Emergence of the honorific register in Tibetic languages

Abstract This article presents the first diachronic investigation of the honorific register in Tibetic languages. Although all historically attested Tibetic languages possess at least some rudimentary forms used to convey respect to others, no reconstruction of their origins has been previously attempted. In the article, the distinction is made between primary or simple honorifics and secondary or complex honorifics that are derived from the primary ones. It is argued that primary honorifics evolved from common lexical units by metaphorical extension and, strengthened through their use in ceremonial contexts, were eventually re-interpreted as expressing social deixis, originally with respect to the royal family, later extended to other persons of higher social standing.

Non-Territorial Autonomy and the Legal Protection of the Symbols of Religious Organizations and National Minorities in Serbia

This paper scrutinizes the history of legal rules that regulate the appearance and use of state symbols as well as the evolution of the legal protection of symbols of national minorities and religious organizations. Furthermore, it analyses the history of nonterritorial cultural and religious autonomy arrangements in Serbia. It investigated to what extent the institutional arrangements of non-territorial autonomy contributed to the legal protection of the mentioned symbols. The first hypothesis is that certain rudimentary forms of non-territorial autonomy existed in Serbia during the 19th and the first half of the 20th century. However, the focus of legislators in this period was on the regulation and protection of state symbols. In the second half of the 20th century, the preconditions for the development of the protection of national minorities were created, while the scope of the rights of religious organizations was significantly reduced. It was only at the beginning of the 21st century that the collective right to non-territorial autonomy was constituted. At the same time, constitutional and legal provisions protected the right of national minorities to choose and use symbols, which leads to the conclusion that the existing institutional arrangement of non-territorial autonomy contributed to better legal protection of the symbols of national minorities. On the other hand, there is room for additional improvement in the legal protection and regulation of the use of the symbols of religious organizations.

Artificial intelligence in oncology: chances and pitfalls.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has been available in rudimentary forms for many decades. Early AI programs were successful in niche areas such as chess or handwriting recognition. However, AI methods had little practical impact on the practice of medicine until recently. Beginning around 2012, AI has emerged as an increasingly important tool in healthcare, and AI-based devices are now approved for clinical use. These devices are capable of processing image data, making diagnoses, and predicting biomarkers for solid tumors, among other applications. Despite this progress, the development of AI in medicine is still in its early stages, and there have been exponential technical advancements since 2022, with some AI programs now demonstrating human-level understanding of image and text data. In the past, technical advances have led to new medical applications with a delay of a few years. Therefore, now we might be at the beginning of a new era in which AI will become even more important in clinical practice. It is essential that this transformation is humane and evidence based, and physicians must take a leading role in ensuring this, particularly in hematology and oncology.

Prolactin and the evolution of male pregnancy

Prolactin (PRL) is a multifunctional hormone of broad physiological importance, and is involved in many aspects of fish reproduction, including the regulation of live birth (viviparity) and both male and female parental care. Previous research suggests that PRL also plays an important reproductive role in syngnathid fishes (seahorses, pipefish and seadragons), a group with a highly derived reproductive strategy, male pregnancy - how the PRL axis has come to be co-opted for male pregnancy remains unclear. We investigated the molecular evolution and expression of the genes for prolactin and its receptor (PRLR) in an evolutionarily diverse sampling of syngnathid fishes to explore how the co-option of PRL for male pregnancy has impacted its evolution, and to clarify whether the PRL axis is also involved in regulating reproductive function in species with more rudimentary forms of male pregnancy. In contrast to the majority of teleost fishes, all syngnathid fishes tested carry single copies of PRL and PRLR that cluster genetically within the PRL1 and PRLRa lineages of teleosts, respectively. PRL1 gene expression in seahorses and pipefish is restricted to the pituitary, while PRLRa is expressed in all tissues, including the brood pouch of species with both rudimentary and complex brooding structures. Pituitary PRL1 expression remains stable throughout pregnancy, but PRLRa expression is specifically upregulated in the male brood pouch during pregnancy, consistent with the higher affinity of pouch tissues for PRL hormone during embryonic incubation. Finally, immunohistochemistry of brood pouch tissues reveals that both PRL1 protein and PRLRa and Na+/K+ ATPase-positive cells line the inner pouch epithelium, suggesting that pituitary-derived PRL1 may be involved in brood pouch osmoregulation during pregnancy. Our data provide a unique molecular perspective on the evolution and expression of prolactin and its receptor during male pregnancy, and provide the foundation for further manipulative experiments exploring the role of PRL in this unique form of reproduction.

Co-expression Gene Networks and Machine-learning Algorithms Unveil a Core Genetic Toolkit for Reproductive Division of Labour in Rudimentary Insect Societies.

The evolution of eusociality requires that individuals forgo some or all their own reproduction to assist the reproduction of others in their group, such as a primary egg-laying queen. A major open question is how genes and genetic pathways sculpt the evolution of eusociality, especially in rudimentary forms of sociality-those with smaller cooperative nests when compared with species such as honeybees that possess large societies. We lack comprehensive comparative studies examining shared patterns and processes across multiple social lineages. Here we examine the mechanisms of molecular convergence across two lineages of bees and wasps exhibiting such rudimentary societies. These societies consist of few individuals and their life histories range from facultative to obligately social. Using six species across four independent origins of sociality, we conduct a comparative meta-analysis of publicly available transcriptomes. Standard methods detected little similarity in patterns of differential gene expression in brain transcriptomes among reproductive and non-reproductive individuals across species. By contrast, both supervised machine learning and consensus co-expression network approaches uncovered sets of genes with conserved expression patterns among reproductive and non-reproductive phenotypes across species. These sets overlap substantially, and may comprise a shared genetic "toolkit" for sociality across the distantly related taxa of bees and wasps and independently evolved lineages of sociality. We also found many lineage-specific genes and co-expression modules associated with social phenotypes and possible signatures of shared life-history traits. These results reveal how taxon-specific molecular mechanisms complement a core toolkit of molecular processes in sculpting traits related to the evolution of eusociality.

Magnetic field-driven particle assembly and jamming for bistable memory and response plasticity.

Unlike classic synthetic stimulus-responsive and shape-memory materials, which remain limited to fixed responses, the responses of living systems dynamically adapt based on the repetition, intensity, and history of stimuli. Such plasticity is ubiquitous in biology, which is profoundly linked to memory and learning. Concepts thereof are searched for rudimentary forms of "intelligent materials." Here, we show plasticity of electroconductivity in soft ferromagnetic nickel colloidal supraparticles with spiny surfaces, assembling/disassembling to granular conducting micropillars between two electrodes driven by magnetic field B. Colloidal jamming leads to conduction hysteresis and bistable memory upon increasing and subsequently decreasing B. Abrupt B changes induce larger conduction changes than gradual B-changes. Periodic B pulsing drives to frequency-dependent facilitation or suppression of conductivity compared to exposing the same constant field. The concepts allow remotely controlled switching plasticity, illustrated by a rudimentary device. More generally, we foresee adaptive functional materials inspired by response plasticity and learning.

Temperamental and physiological regulatory capacity in infancy: Links with toddler behavior problems

Although correlates of temperamental regulatory processes in childhood have been well established, there is considerably less work examining correlates and moderators of rudimentary forms of temperamental regulation in infancy. We examined whether infants’ physiological regulation indexed via changes in respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) across phases of the Still-Face Paradigm moderated the association between maternal-reported infant regulatory capacity at 8 months (N = 50, Mage = 8.51 months, SDage = 0.28 months, 25 girls) and behavior problems at 14 months. We found that cardiac vagal regulation from baseline to still-face moderated the relation between infant regulatory capacity at 8 months and behavior problems at 14 months. Among infants who displayed relatively high cardiac vagal regulation from baseline to still-face, regulatory capacity was negatively associated with behavior problems. There was no relation between regulatory capacity and behavior problems among infants who displayed average or relatively low cardiac vagal regulation. We speculate that high levels of regulatory capacity and cardiac vagal regulation may allow infants to focus their attention outward and cope with emotionally evocative environmental demands as they arise even in the absence of external regulation provided by their caregivers.

The Ontogeny of Vocal Sequences: Insights from a Newborn Wild Chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii)

Observations of early vocal behaviours in non-human primates (hereafter primates) are important for direct comparisons between human and primate vocal development. However, direct observations of births and perinatal behaviour in wild primates are rare, and the initial stages of behavioural ontogeny usually remain undocumented. Here, we report direct observations of the birth of a wild chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii) in Budongo Forest, Uganda, including the behaviour of the mother and other group members. We monitored the newborn’s vocal behaviour for approximately 2 hours and recorded 70 calls. We categorised the vocalisations both qualitatively, using conventional call descriptions, and quantitatively, using cluster and discriminant acoustic analyses. We found evidence for acoustically distinct vocal units, produced both in isolation and in combination, including sequences akin to adult pant hoots, a vocal utterance regarded as the most complex vocal signal produced by this species. We concluded that chimpanzees possess the capacity to produce vocal sequences composed of different call types from birth, albeit in rudimentary forms. Our observations are in line with the idea that primate vocal repertoires are largely present from birth, with fine acoustic structures undergoing ontogenetic processes. Our study provides rare and valuable empirical data on perinatal behaviours in wild primates.

From Deliberation to Pure Mobilisation? The Case of National Consultations in Hungary

Abstract National or supranational consultations on general policy questions are unusual phenomena. Nevertheless, they seem to play an important role in the political life of the community either because they might be considered as rudimentary forms of deliberative practices or because they are important strategic tools in the hands of political actors. Given this salience of consultations from both normative­deliberative and descriptive-strategic perspectives, it is surprising that academic analyses of national consultations are scarce. This paper tries to fill this gap in the literature by focusing on one of the most well­known examples of nation-wide consultations, the series of national consultations in Hungary. It aims to present why national consultations gradually lost their deliberative character and how they have been transformed into a strategic instrument for mobilising supporters.

Evolution of plasticity: metabolic compensation for fluctuating energy demands at the origin of life.

Phenotypic plasticity of physiological functions enables rapid responses to changing environments and may thereby increase the resilience of organisms to environmental change. Here, we argue that the principal hallmarks of life itself, self-replication and maintenance, are contingent on the plasticity of metabolic processes ('metabolic plasticity'). It is likely that the Last Universal Common Ancestor (LUCA), 4 billion years ago, already possessed energy-sensing molecules that could adjust energy (ATP) production to meet demand. The earliest manifestation of metabolic plasticity, switching cells from growth and storage (anabolism) to breakdown and ATP production (catabolism), coincides with the advent of Darwinian evolution. Darwinian evolution depends on reliable translation of information from information-carrying molecules, and on cell genealogy where information is accurately passed between cell generations. Both of these processes create fluctuating energy demands that necessitate metabolic plasticity to facilitate replication of genetic material and (proto)cell division. We propose that LUCA possessed rudimentary forms of these capabilities. Since LUCA, metabolic networks have increased in complexity. Generalist founder enzymes formed the basis of many derived networks, and complexity arose partly by recruiting novel pathways from the untapped pool of reactions that are present in cells but do not have current physiological functions (the so-called 'underground metabolism'). Complexity may thereby be specific to environmental contexts and phylogenetic lineages. We suggest that a Boolean network analysis could be useful to model the transition of metabolic networks over evolutionary time. Network analyses can be effective in modelling phenotypic plasticity in metabolic functions for different phylogenetic groups because they incorporate actual biochemical regulators that can be updated as new empirical insights are gained.

The Origins of the Personal Type of Narrative in D. N. Mamin-Sibiryak’s Shorter Prose

Based on D. N. Mamin-Sibiryak’s shorter prose (essays, stories), the author distinguishes various types of narrative, i.e. first and third person narration and a personal type of narration. In several stories of the essay type, special markers of the presence of the personal narrator stand out expressed in characteristic motifs of admiration, interest, and curiosity. The author proves that during the period of the so-called “second debut” (1881–1882), Mamin began with the development of the form of a personal narrator, most characteristic of the genre of the essay, and gradually switched to the auctorial type of narrative, typical already of the genre of the story and assuming the form of an objective narrator author. It is also noted that in the form of an auctorial narration, Mamin successfully mastered the device of non-personal direct speech, or the speech interference of the character and the narrator author, which brings us to the rudimentary forms of “personal” narrative. From about the mid-1880s, the tendency towards a personal narrative became apparent, which is most noticeable in the stories Korobkin, Doctor Osokin’s Amendment and Simply, which focus on the state of the split consciousness of the character who finds himself in a situation of “man in front of a mirror” (M. M. Bakhtin) and acts as a direct subject of cognition. In the works of the same period (stories Between Us, The Old Fife, and others) a personal type of narration emerges clearly, which continues logically in the stories of the 1900s (Influenza. Monologue, A Dumpling and a Blot). The writer pays attention to the situation of the relationship between the character and the stereotyped nickname imposed on him, a certain “foreign” word-nomination, which leads to an increase in the act of self-awareness of the character and an intensification of the personal narrative. Finally, the article concludes that the development of a personal point of view in the narrative structure of the story leads Mamin-Sibiryak to the emergence of a new genre form, i.e. a personal “monologue” or “diary”, as well as to focus on the aesthetic potential of receptive poetics, which reveals points of convergence with genre variation of Chekhov’s “discovery story”.

Trauma and place identity: the breaking and repairing of place attachment in the mind of an adolescent with developmental trauma

ABSTRACT This paper illustrates features of psychoanalytic psychotherapy with a young adolescent who had experienced adverse childhood events, culminating in cumulative trauma. This led to the atrophying of her ‘sense of place’ and ‘place identity’, both integral to the development of a sense of self. The patient’s memory of places seemed to have been pulverised and required the contact and containment of the adult mind of the therapist to find recomposition. A therapeutic relationship developed, thanks to the sharing of objects and places which had become fragmented in the patient’s mind. There was a need for locations, paths, places, indeed entire nations needed to be emotionally recomposed in the transference, to assume rudimentary but thinkable forms. The psychotherapy made it possible to find part of my young patient’s memory through play, and the value of intensive but short-term work became evident. Psychotherapy allowed partial repair of the capacity for place attachment, which facilitated the exploration of the external world, the possibility of attachment to new places, and the construction of new place identities, alongside her developing sense of herself.

The evolutionary stages of the complexity of biological catalysts mark and clarify the phases of the origin of the genetic code: A model for the origin of the reading frame with codons from proto-mRNAs with different frames

I analyse the origin of the genetic code in the light of the evolution of biological catalysts. I discuss the rudimentary forms that the genetic code assumed in the presence of a catalysis performed by ions or by low molecular weight molecules, such as nucleotide coenzymes. However, it is only with the advent of a mixed polymer made of RNA and peptides - covalently linked - that the genetic code took on a clearer form. Indeed, the first true form of coding appeared. Furthermore, interacting peptidated RNAs promoted an extremely rudimentary form of protein synthesis. This stage evolved into a stage in which proto-mRNAs guided interactions among peptidated RNAs aimed at the synthesis of peptidated RNAs having an active catalytic function. Finally, the invasion of aminoacylated proto-tRNAs with specific amino acids, coming from amino acid metabolism, and recognising only three bases on these proto-mRNAs with reading frames larger than three bases, would have triggered the birth of actual mRNAs, i.e. the origin of codons. All this would have linked the metabolism of amino acids to the origin of mRNAs and therefore to the origin of the organization of the genetic code, as maintained by the coevolution theory of the genetic code.

Why study turn‐taking sequences in interspecies interactions?

AbstractThe “turn‐taking” system, a notion referring to the dynamics of verbal exchanges in face‐to‐face interaction, is often presented as the hallmark of human language (Levinson, 2016). However, recent works have investigated turn‐taking mechanisms in several nonhuman taxa, thus referring to the moment‐by‐moment coordinated alternation of actions or vocalizations, for instance in primates or birds. These findings have been interpreted as evidence of elementary forms of sequence organization in the animal world, and therefore as evidences of an evolutionary pathway, leading from very rough forms of signal alternation, to the complex multimodal and conversational turn‐taking system used by humans. This article first reviews and discusses these findings. It then makes the case for going beyond the study of uniquelyintra‐specific forms of communication and interaction. It argues that considering interspecies interaction is of interest for social sciences in general, and linguistics scholarship in particular, at least in two respects. First, on an empirical level, to investigate a widespread phenomenon, namely ordinary human‐animal interactions, as it occurs mostly in domestic settings—a topic that has been relatively neglected in the study of social interaction so far (for a range of reasons that we shall touch on). Secondly, on a more speculative level, it assumes that ordinary interspecies interactions, especially as they unfold with domestic pets or wild animals in natural settings (vs. in experimental settings), are a valuable locus to explore rudimentary forms of sequence organization, that are neither governed by linguistic and cultural norms, nor entirely the product of stereotypical species‐related behavioral patterns. We posit that fundamental principles of sociality are to be found in the contextual adjustments of multimodal actions and in the emergence of meaning in interspecies interactions.

Proto‐proteins in Protocells

AbstractPhase separation, and coacervates in particular, may have played a key role in the transition from an abiotic to a biotic world, in providing early membrane‐less compartments and promoting metabolism. Herein, we highlight another potential role of coacervates in providing the milieu in which short abiotically formed peptides evolved gradually into structured, functional proteins. Coacervates, amyloids, and other rudimentary forms of self‐assembly enable short peptides to form supramolecular structures, thus providing the level of structural pre‐organization and complexity needed for biochemical function. Coacervates, however, are unique in also enabling co‐assembly of peptides and nucleic acids, and in promoting the acquisition of helical structures. These two properties, combined with their potential to promote the synthesis of biopolymers, make coacervates a feasible springboard for the emergence of the early nucleic acids binding proteins. Herein, we outline this putative evolutionary scenario and the evidence supporting it, also regarding the emergence of cationic amino acids that are critical to coacervate formation.

Human cerebral organoids and consciousness: a double-edged sword

Human cerebral organoids (HCOs) are three-dimensional in vitro cell cultures that mimic the developmental process and organization of the developing human brain. In just a few years this technique has produced brain models that are already being used to study diseases of the nervous system and to test treatments and drugs. Currently, HCOs consist of tens of millions of cells and have a size of a few millimeters. The greatest limitation to further development is due to their lack of vascularization. However, recent research has shown that human cerebral organoids can manifest the same electrical activity and connections between brain neurons and EEG patterns as those recorded in preterm babies. All this suggests that, in the future, HCOs may manifest an ability to experience basic sensations such as pain, therefore manifesting sentience, or even rudimentary forms of consciousness. This calls for consideration of whether cerebral organoids should be given a moral status and what limitations should be introduced to regulate research. In this article I focus particularly on the study of the emergence and mechanisms of human consciousness, i.e. one of the most complex scientific problems there are, by means of experiments on HCOs. This type of experiment raises relevant ethical issues and, as I will argue, should probably not be considered morally acceptable.

Under the Eye of Others (the Socialized Interpretation of Shame in the History of Ethics)

The main purpose of the article is to reconstruct the development of a socialized interpretation of shame in the Western philosophical tradition from antiquity up to the 17th century. Along with the standard methods of conducting research in the history of philosophy (critical, comparative, hermeneutical, etc.), the author resorts to a strategy of identifying the historical sources and rudimentary forms of contemporary theoretical approaches to understanding moral phenomena. With regard to shame, there are three such approaches, or three interpretations: socialized (identifying shame with negative feelings about a real or imagined loss of face), anthropological (identifying shame with a painful reaction to the generic imperfection of a person in the sphere of corporeality) and desocialized (identifying shame with negative feelings of an individual generated by the awareness of the worthlessness of his own moral character). Studying the development of each of them requires an understanding of how they historically interacted with each other. The first detailed description of shame from the socialized perspective was proposed by Aristotle. In it, shame appears as a fear of disrepute or suffering from it, that is, a negative feeling that presupposes that other people know that an individual has committed an objectively vicious act or that he does not have some objectively valuable quality. Aristotle viewed shame as a less perfect moral trait than virtue (in contemporary socialized conceptions of shame, guilt is usually its more perfect alternative). Thomas Aquinas relies on the Aristotelian understanding of shame, but: a) connects it with the anthropological interpretation proposed by Augustine, b) makes a special emphasis on the fact that shame is appropriate only in the case of the sinfulness of the act. The early modern socialized conceptions of shame are characterized by a movement from doubt about the reasonableness of this feeling to its partial or complete rehabilitation. At the same time, R. Descartes, B. Spinoza and J. Locke, unlike Aristotle and Thomas, approve of shame not only because it is an imperfect counterpart of virtue, but also in connection with its positive social role (as a means of social discipline and an expression of sociability). Although early modern thinkers discuss moral emotions of self-assessment that are not mediated by the “eye of others” (repentance, remorse), they do not oppose them to shame