Series Of Random Events Research Articles

Wilhelm Dilthey's Thoughts on Understanding, Hermeneutics and Communication

Wilhelm Dilthey, a towering figure in the realm of philosophy, dedicated his life's work to unravelling the complexities of human experience. Dilthey believed that life is not merely a series of random events, but a tapestry woven from these experiences, which collectively influence our perspectives and sense of being. By examining Dilthey's thoughts on communication as a process of shared knowledge and meaning making, we gain valuable insights into how we bridge the gap between different perspectives and forge deeper connections. Through a quantitative approach and literature review Dilthey's perspectives are analyzed. Dilthey believed a text goes beyond its literal meaning; it symbolizes deeper significance. Understanding the true depth of a symbol requires venturing beyond its surface meaning and delving into its historical context. Symbols are not merely arbitrary signs; they are often imbued with layers of meaning accumulated over time. These layers reflect the cultural, social, and political landscapes from which the symbol emerged. To fully grasp the symbolic meaning, then, requires an exploration of its historical journey. Despite the occasional inclusion of natural science objects in humanities, Dilthey saw a clear distinction between the two. He saw understanding as a process of grasping the intended meaning rooted in life experiences. Therefore, Dilthey's concept of meaning is historical highlighting the significance of personal and collective life experiences in interpretation.

Fragmented Emergency: Sirens, Cellphones, and Sonic Spatialization in Israel

Israel’s civil defense apparatus relies upon a technologically advanced alarm system. Once a rocket is detected, a cellphone app alerts the residents of the targeted area, and only the sirens located close by start wailing. The ability to isolate hundreds of such “alert zones” from one another during conflagrations with the Gaza Strip has been celebrated as the key to Israel’s civil and economic resilience. Yet, when the history of this technology is examined, a different picture also emerges. Civil society in Israel has often contested the fragmentation of the country into distinct alert zones and surfaced the social and political inequalities it enhances. By following these claims, this article shows how Israel designed the alert zone system to crumble the traditional notion of emergency and turn it from a collective into an individual experience. The article argues that Israel has shifted the meaning of war, for its citizens, from a political crisis into a series of random events, thus naturalizing the perpetual conflict with the Palestinians, stifling any effective demand for resolving it, and cementing an individualized form of state sovereignty.

On the Epidemiological Evolution of Colistin-ResistantAcinetobacter Baumanniiin the City of Valencia: An Agent-Based Modelling Approach

Antibiotic resistance is one of the greatest public health threats today, mainly due to the non-rational use of antibiotics.Acinetobacter baumanniiis an example of a microorganism with high antibiotic resistance that has developed rapidly in recent years. Consequently, only a few lastresort antibiotics, such as colistin, are currently effective against it. In this work, we propose a random agent-based computational model to describe the evolution of colistin-resistantA. baumanniiin the population of Valencia (Spain) and to predict its impact both on the whole population and by age groups. The agent- based model uses a synthetic population of individuals with a vector of characteristics or state variables. These variables change over time based on a series of random events with certain conditional probabilities. The synthetic population statistical features and the probabilities have been found in demographic and hospital databases. One of these probabilities, the probability of infection by a resistant strain, has been modeled using random differential equations. The model takes into account antibiotic consumption as the primary driving force of variation and assumes non-rewersibility of resistance as the worst-case scenario. The agent-based model calibration and the selection of a real-world representative set of solutions have been carried out using the Partide Swarm Optimization evolutionary algorithm. This approach takes into account the inherent stochasticity of the model and the uncertainty of the data. Finally, projections of the incidence and absolute cases of colistin-resistantA. baumanniihave been performed. Our results suggest that, if the same consumption pattern continues, the ervolution of the colistin-resistant strain proportion will be exponential, exceeding 50% in 2025. Additionally, the results reveal that, despite the low incidence in Valencian hospitals, the impact on people over 60 years old will be more significant in terms of the number of cases. Based on these findings, it can be deduced that colistin will cense to be an effective antibiotic in the coming years, negatively impacting the human population, especially the most advanced age groups.

Comparison between Utsu's and Vere-Jones' aftershocks model by means of a computer simulation based on the acceptance–rejection sampling of von Neumann

In this research, a new algorithm for generating a stochastic earthquake catalog is presented. The algorithm is based on the acceptance–rejection sampling of von Neumann. The result is a computer simulation of earthquakes based on the calculated statistical properties of each zone. Vere-Jones states that an earthquake sequence can be modeled as a series of random events. This is the model used in the proposed simulation. Contrariwise, Utsu indicates that the mainshocks are special geophysical events. The algorithm has been applied to zones of Chile, China, Spain, Japan, and the USA. This allows classifying the zones according to Vere-Jones' or Utsu's model. The results have been quantified relating the mainshock with the largest aftershock within the next 5days (which has been named as Bath event). The results show that some zones fit Utsu's model and others Vere-Jones'. Finally, the fraction of seismic events that satisfy certain properties of magnitude and occurrence is analyzed.

The Subjective Consequences of Experiencing Random Events

<p>In everyday life, one’s experience is usually highly structured, coherent, and predictable, a regularity stemming from the many constraints (e.g., cultural and physical constraints) operating upon the natural and social worlds. Consider that events that are experienced in an office meeting are usually not experienced in the great outdoors, and vice versa. This predictability of the outside world is capitalized upon by the brain, which is highly prospective and incessantly extracts meaningful patterns from event sequences. Despite these considerations, to our knowledge there have been no investigations into the ways that the brain copes with experiences that violate this structured regularity. Here we demonstrate a novel paradigm designed to tax this prospective system (by presenting the brain with a rapid series of random events) and show that such exposure reliably induces negative affect. Participants are exposed to <em>Rapid, Random Semantic Activation</em> (RRSA) prior to completing a mood scale; compared to a mood baseline, RRSA yields a consistent pattern of negative affect. This pattern did not emerge in a control group that completed a task with identical stimuli. While previous research has focused on randomness in terms of humans’ ability to produce and detect random sequences, our paradigm explores this issue as it relates to human experience. Our findings are consistent with the idea that, due to the prospective nature of the brain and one’s “epistemic needs” (Kruglanski, 1980), gross violations in the regularity of experience produce some form of negative subjective experience.<strong></strong></p><p><br /><strong></strong></p>

The Ecomorphic Principle: Not Just Convergence Anymore

Cuvier's “Principle of Correlation of Parts,” recognized that organisms evolve features in adaptive complexes. Each is interrelated, and reflects the many requirements of that ecology. Because the number of mechanical solutions is limited in taxa with shared morphological backgrounds, the same ones appear often and encompass the spectrum of organismal morphology and physiology. These results show that solutions in the fossil record are finite and limited. Identifying such relationships allows prediction of solutions that will arise in phylogenetically dissimilar organisms facing similar ecological challenges. These observations and evolutionary processes align as the Ecomorphic Principle. This is not a series of random events, but predictable, correlated responses to ecological challenges. This predictive capability transforms study of fossil ecomorphs into experimentally derived results. Examination of these datasets allows us to formulate questions that identify evolutionary patterns. These ideas are best tested by examining the repeatability of evolutionary “experiments” compared to outcome. Most extremely, response similarity to comparable stimuli is widespread across taxa, and results in remarkable resemblances among groups. Saber-tooth carnivores typify an ecomorphic series re-evolving character complexes that permit them to occupy comparable ecological niches. These communities reappear through the Cenozoic whenever climactic cycling returns environmental conditions to those favoring the saber-tooth adaptation; our examples are taken mainly from these animals.

Longitudinal Study of Recurrent Metastatic Melanoma Cell Lines Underscores the Individuality of Cancer Biology

Recurrent metastatic melanoma provides a unique opportunity to analyze disease evolution in metastatic cancer. Here, we followed 8 patients with an unusually prolonged history of metastatic melanoma, who developed a total of 26 recurrences over several years. Cell lines derived from each metastasis were analyzed by comparative genomic hybridization and global transcript analysis. We observed that conserved, patient-specific characteristics remain stable in recurrent metastatic melanoma even after years and several recurrences. Differences among individual patients exceeded within-patient lesion variability, both at the DNA copy number (p<0.001) and RNA gene expression level (p<0.001). Conserved patient-specific traits included expression of several cancer/testis antigens and the c-kit proto-oncogene throughout multiple recurrences. Interestingly, subsequent recurrences of different patients did not display consistent or convergent changes toward a more aggressive disease phenotype. Finally, sequential recurrences of the same patient did not descend progressively from each other, as irreversible mutations, such as homozygous deletions were frequently not inherited from previous metastases. This study suggests that the late evolution of metastatic melanoma, which dramatically turns an indolent disease into a lethal phase, is prone to preserve case-specific traits over multiple recurrences and occurs through a series of random events that do not follow a consistent step-wise process.

Quantitative connection between polyglutamine aggregation kinetics and neurodegenerative process in patients with Huntington’s disease

BackgroundDespite enormous progress in elucidating the biophysics of aggregation, no cause-and-effect relationship between protein aggregation and neurodegenerative disease has been unequivocally established. Here, we derived several risk-based stochastic kinetic models that assess genotype/phenotype correlations in patients with Huntington’s disease (HD) caused by the expansion of a CAG repeat. Fascinating disease-specific aspects of HD include the polyglutamine (polyQ)-length dependence of both age at symptoms onset and the propensity of the expanded polyQ protein to aggregate. In vitro, aggregation of polyQ peptides follows a simple nucleated growth polymerization pathway. Our models that reflect polyQ aggregation kinetics in a nucleated growth polymerization divided aggregate process into the length-dependent nucleation and the nucleation-dependent elongation. In contrast to the repeat-length dependent variability of age at onset, recent studies have shown that the extent of expansion has only a subtle effect on the rate of disease progression, suggesting possible differences in the mechanisms underlying the neurodegenerative process.ResultsUsing polyQ-length as an index, these procedures enabled us for the first time to establish a quantitative connection between aggregation kinetics and disease process, including onset and the rate of progression. Although the complexity of disease process in HD, the time course of striatal neurodegeneration can be precisely predicted by the mathematical model in which neurodegeneration occurs by different mechanisms for the initiation and progression of disease processes. Nucleation is sufficient to initiate neuronal loss as a series of random events in time. The stochastic appearance of nucleation in a cell population acts as the constant risk of neuronal cell damage over time, while elongation reduces the risk by nucleation in proportion to the increased extent of the aggregates during disease progression.ConclusionsOur findings suggest that nucleation is a critical step in gaining toxic effects to the cell, and provide a new insight into the relationship between polyQ aggregation and neurodegenerative process in HD.

Measuring and Modeling Repeat and Near-Repeat Burglary Effects

We develop a mathematical framework aimed at analyzing repeat and near-repeat effects in crime data. Parsing burglary data from Long Beach, CA according to different counting methods, we determine the probability distribution functions for the time interval τ between repeat offenses. We then compare these observed distributions to theoretically derived distributions in which the repeat effects are due solely to persistent risk heterogeneity. We find that risk heterogeneity alone cannot explain the observed distributions, while a form of event dependence (boosts) can. Using this information, we model repeat victimization as a series of random events, the likelihood of which changes each time an offense occurs. We are able to estimate typical time scales for repeat burglary events in Long Beach by fitting our data to this model. Computer simulations of this model using these observed parameters agree with the empirical data.

Disruption and reconstruction: narrative insights into the experience of family members caring for a relative diagnosed with serious mental illness.

The findings of a study investigating carers' accounts about serious mental illness occurring in their family are presented. The narrative form is a primary means of ordering, structuring, and communicating illness experiences, reflecting some of the processes that carers intend to master and understand. Psychotic episodes entail a frightening disruption that forces carers to face fundamental existential, moral, and psychological issues because they call into question the continuity of lives and life-projects. This study has explored how carers articulate the consequences of a devastating experience and turn it into a meaningful event that can in some way be incorporated into the course of their life. Two types of narrative structure were identified. In stories of restitution or reparation, the experience of the event is transformed into phenomena having meaning, occupying a place in carers' lives. In chaotic and frozen narratives, the illness remains a series of random events. The effects on coping of these two narrative types were explored, as well as gender-related themes and beliefs about mastery and control. Therapeutic implications are discussed and also possible connections to other research constructs (for example, Expressed Emotion). It is argued that the concept of illness must be approached from a systemic, multidetermined perspective that includes our narrative constructions.

1/f noise produced by the random motion of the carriers crossing potential barriers in semiconductors

A new model for 1/f noise is discussed. When carriers in a semiconductor are separated by a potential barrier into two groups, some of the carriers climb over the barrier and move into the other group as a series of random events. If one group is in a trap, the number of the carriers in the trap varies with time. The probability of the occurrence of the first return to the initial state is in inverse proportion to the cube root value of the number of random events. The number of carriers is proportionate to the electric charge. The charge induces change in the resistance in the local area near the trap. The area is so small that the semiconductor shows the small resistance change of a square wave form. The distribution of the random square wave is represented by the Poisson distribution and its autocorrelation function has a Lorentzian spectrum. The characteristic of first return to the initial state shows that the probability of the Lorentzian spectrum is in inverse proportion to the wavelength. A 1/f spectrum is obtained by the superposition of the spectra.

A kinetic analysis of the germination of fungal spores

A kinetic analysis is performed for the description of the germination of fungal spores. The present stochastic model assumes that the germination process under consideration can be simulated by a series of random events. The transition of a fungal spore from one state to another is governed by probabilistic laws. The present analysis yields a differential equation describing the evolution of the probability distribution of the number of spores in each state. The variations of the mean and the variance of the number of germinated spores as a function of time are derived. The applicability of the present stochastic model is examined by analysing the germination of Rhizopus oligosporus spores.

Tumor Biology and Oncology

The role of surgery in the management of human neoplasias is constantly undergoing reevaluation. Less surgical radicality reduces mutilating side-effects without a decrease in long-term survival if adjuvant chemotherapy is given. On the other hand, the surgical excision of isolated metastases helps to maintain curative intent even in the presence of residual disease after chemotherapy. Many experimental and clinical observations point to a predilection of circulating tumor cells for certain organs. Thus, the metastatic process is not simply a series of random events but rather governed by anatomical determinants such as venous and lymphatic drainage of the primary tumor and also by the intrinsic metastatic potential of the tumor cells themselves. The complex biology of metastasis is discussed with special reference to the surgical removal of isolated metastases.