Sophisticated Theory Research Articles

Artificial Intelligence Methods.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is at the forefront of driving pivotal changes across diverse fields. AI holds the potential to make profound impacts on addressing contemporary healthcare challenges. This chapter aims to provide an overview of AI methodologies, centering on the foundational principles of various AI techniques, their varied applications, and the challenges that arise within this dynamic field. Importantly, this chapter is crafted as a crucial primer for medical practitioners and students striving to connect sophisticated AI theories with their concrete applications.

The development and applications of multidimensional biomolecular spectroscopy illustrated by photosynthetic light harvesting.

The parallel and synergistic developments of atomic resolution structural information, new spectroscopic methods, their underpinning formalism, and the application of sophisticated theoretical methods have led to a step function change in our understanding of photosynthetic light harvesting, the process by which photosynthetic organisms collect solar energy and supply it to their reaction centers to initiate the chemistry of photosynthesis. The new spectroscopic methods, in particular multidimensional spectroscopies, have enabled a transition from recording rates of processes to focusing on mechanism. We discuss two ultrafast spectroscopies - two-dimensional electronic spectroscopy and two-dimensional electronic-vibrational spectroscopy - and illustrate their development through the lens of photosynthetic light harvesting. Both spectroscopies provide enhanced spectral resolution and, in different ways, reveal pathways of energy flow and coherent oscillations which relate to the quantum mechanical mixing of, for example, electronic excitations (excitons) and nuclear motions. The new types of information present in these spectra provoked the application of sophisticated quantum dynamical theories to describe the temporal evolution of the spectra and provide new questions for experimental investigation. While multidimensional spectroscopies have applications in many other areas of science, we feel that the investigation of photosynthetic light harvesting has had the largest influence on the development of spectroscopic and theoretical methods for the study of quantum dynamics in biology, hence the focus of this review. We conclude with key questions for the next decade of this review.

Multidimensional Growth: Conceptualizing Human Development across Various Indices Case Study: Sierra Leone

An individual's economic, social, emotional, and cognitive growth are only a few of the many facets that make up the complicated and multidimensional idea of development. The need to reframe human development as a multidimensional construct that captures the complex interactions among these multiple dimensions is evident, even in the face of the abundance of indices and frameworks that seek to quantify human progress. In light of the fact that Sierra Leone has recently experienced serious development obstacles, this qualitative case study seeks to investigate the idea of multidimensional growth and its implications for human development in that nation. With 30 participants from a range of backgrounds including policymakers, development practitioners, and community leaders this study uses a purely qualitative methodology to investigate their perspectives on human development in Sierra Leone through in-depth interviews and focus groups. The research uses a phenomenological method to better understand people's lived experiences and perspectives on human development in Sierra Leone. The results of this research demonstrate that human development in Sierra Leone is a multifaceted and intricate concept that defies easy summarization into a single framework or index. The individual accounts of the participants emphasize the significance of taking into account several aspects of human development, such as cognitive, social, emotional, and economic development, along with the connections and interplay among these aspects. A variety of issues, such as institutional and policy frameworks, societal norms and values, historical and cultural contexts, and human development in Sierra Leone are all revealed by the study. Policies and practices will be greatly impacted by the study's conclusions. The report emphasizes the necessity for legislators and development professionals to embrace a more comprehensive and integrated approach to development programming by stressing the significance of a multifaceted approach to human development. The study's findings highlight the need for more sophisticated and situation-specific theories of human development that take into consideration the diversity and complexity of human experiences in various social and cultural contexts. With its more in-depth and contextualized explanation of the idea in the Sierra Leonean context, this study adds to the body of knowledge already available on human development. The study's conclusions call attention to the need for more comprehensive and multifaceted approaches to development programs, which has ramifications for the field of development studies as a whole. In the end, the research shows how critical it is to prioritize the perspectives and experiences of people and communities in development law and policy.

The Vitality of the Binary Gender Norm: The Entanglements of Wine Production, Biosociocultural Indicators, Reggaeton, Masculinities, Normality in Schools, and Water Management

This article presents the binary gender norm (BGN) as an active and lively concept. To show how gender happens and manifests more as an entanglement than as individual cases in particular communities or locations, the study examines this operation in the context of six apparently unrelated case studies produced simultaneously between 2019 and 2021. Addressing the topics of wine production, biosociocultural indicators, reggaeton, masculinities, normality in schools, and water management, these case studies help show how the binary gender norm maintains itself in invisible ways and responds to any methodological practice employed. How does gender persist as an implacable force that produces stigmatized differences among humans, and why does it seem normal? How is it that, despite all the sophisticated theories and research practices, the binary gender norm finds a way to become gender again? The binary gender norm is familiar but illogical; it is also mutable, sympathetic, and playful. Situated in post-humanist thinking, this article presents a theoretical and methodological discussion on how the binary gender norm shapes itself to continue framing lives.

What Should Sociologists Do?

This essay underscores the importance of public sociology and the critical and policy outcomes it encourages. The work also notes the importance of translating sophisticated theory and high quality, intricate methods for public consumption. The essay concludes by reviewing the growth of public sociology in the field at large and the special focus Sociological Forum has built in this area since 2015.

Metz on Enhancement: A Relational Critique

AbstractThaddeus Metz’s groundbreaking book A Relational Moral Theory provides a sophisticated moral theory hailing from the Global South. In this book, one of the theses he defends is that biotechnological enhancement is generally morally impermissible. This article, written for a book symposium on A Relational Moral Theory, primarily demonstrates how Metz’s criticisms presented in his book fail to convince. Furthermore, we explore some possible objections from Metzian deontology against enhancement and also show that these do not imply that enhancement is intrinsically wrong. Finally, we showed how Metzian ethics offers good reasons to support rather than oppose enhancement.

The Representational Role of Sophisticated Theories

Abstract Dewar (2019) argues that removing excess structure via “sophistication” can have explanatory benefits to removing excess structure via “reduction.” In this paper, I argue that a more robust reason to prefer sophisticated theories is that they have representational benefits.

Global constitutionalism and the People’s Republic of China: Dignity as the “fundamental basis” of the legal system?

Abstract The People’s Republic of China has declared dignity to be a foundational norm of its legal system, as institutionalized through a suite of constitutional and legislative reforms. Indeed, the 2017–21 period saw the adoption of some of the most far-reaching statutes in the history of the PRC, the centerpiece of which is the new Civil Code (2021). In both structure and content, provisions of the Civil Code comprise a quasi-constitutional charter of rights. Indeed, many Chinese scholars do treat the Civil Code as such, developing sophisticated constitutional theory along the way. At the core of these claims is dignity, which occupies a prominent position within the Civil Code, and from which a host of additional rights, including unenumerated rights, can be derived. After situating these developments in light of global constitutional practice, we examine the emergence of dignity as an officially sanctioned commitment device, and analyze the pertinent scholarly discourse, structure, and content of the new Civil Code, and the various roles that the Communist Party of China, the National People’s Congress, and the Supreme People’s Court are expected to perform in supervising the work of the judiciary in operationalizing the Civil Code. We conclude that while the PRC has not fully embraced the dignity norm in the way other constitutional systems have, it has nonetheless permitted significant discursive debates that deserve to be analyzed comparatively.

The diachronic change of research article abstract difficulty across disciplines: a cognitive information-theoretic approach

Text difficulty refers to the ease with which a text can be read and understood, and the difficulty of research article abstracts has long been a hot topic. Previous studies have found that research article abstracts are difficult to read in general and that abstracts have gradually become more and more difficult. However, the widely used measurements, such as FRE and SMOG, have long been criticized in that they use only simplistic and surface-level indicators as proxies for complex cognitive processes of reading, and the sophisticated cognitive theory and Natural Language Processing/machine learning-based methods seem not that easy to use and interpret. A theoretically sound and methodologically neat measurement of text difficulty should be called for. Besides, the diachronic changes of abstract difficulty across disciplines have been under-researched. To address these issues, this study adopted a cognitive information-theoretic approach to investigate the diachronic change of text difficulty of research article abstracts across the areas of natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities. 1890 abstracts were sampled over a period of 21 years, and two indexes, i.e. entropy from information theory and mean dependency distance from cognitive science, were employed for the calculation of cognitive encoding/decoding difficulty. The results show that in general, the cognitive encoding difficulty of abstracts has been increasing in the past two decades, while the cognitive decoding difficulty of abstracts has been decreasing. Regarding the disciplinary variations, the humanities show no significant diachronic change in encoding difficulty, and the social sciences show no significant diachronic change in decoding difficulty. These phenomena can be attributed to the traits of abstracts, the nature of academic knowledge, the cognitive mechanism in human languages and the features of different disciplines. This study has implications for the innovations in theories and methods of measurement of text difficulty, as well as an in-depth understanding of the disciplinary variations in academic writing and the essence of research article abstracts for research article writers, readers, the scientific community, and academic publishers.

Drift surface solver for runaway electron current dominant equilibria during the current quench

Runaway electron current generated during the current quench phase of tokamak disruptions could result in severe damage to future high performance devices. To control and mitigate such runaway electron current, it is important to accurately describe the runaway electron current dominated equilibrium, based on which further stability analysis could be carried out. In this paper, we derive a Grad–Shafranov-like equation solving for the axisymmetric drift surfaces of the runaway electrons instead of the magnetic flux surfaces for the simple case that all runaway electrons share the same parallel momentum. This new equilibrium equation is then numerically solved with simple rectangular wall with ITER-like and MAST-like geometry parameters. The deviation between the drift surfaces and the flux surfaces is readily obtained, and runaway electrons are found to be well confined even in regions with open field lines. The change of the runaway electron parallel momentum is found to result in a horizontal current center displacement without any changes in the total current or the external field. The runaway current density profile is found to affect the susceptibility of such displacement, with flatter profiles result in more displacement by the same momentum change. With up–down asymmetry in the external poloidal field, such displacement is accompanied by a vertical displacement of runaway electron current. It is found that this effect is more pronounced in smaller, compact device and weaker poloidal field cases. The above results demonstrate the dynamics of current center displacement caused by the momentum space change in the runaway electrons, and pave a way for more sophisticated runaway current equilibrium theory in the future with more realistic consideration on the runaway electron momentum distribution. This new equilibrium theory also provides foundation for future stability analysis of the runaway electron current.

Boggy Slough: A Forest, a Family, and a Foundation for Land Conservation by Jonathan K. Gerland

Reviewed by: Boggy Slough: A Forest, a Family, and a Foundation for Land Conservation by Jonathan K. Gerland Kenna Lang Archer Boggy Slough: A Forest, a Family, and a Foundation for Land Conservation. By Jonathan K. Gerland. (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2022. Pp. x, 360. $45.00, ISBN 978-1-62349-995-2.) Jonathan K. Gerland’s Boggy Slough: A Forest, a Family, and a Foundation for Land Conservation is a popular history that combines the beautiful production of a coffee-table book with the methodology and theory of a more traditional history. The book explores the eponymous Boggy Slough Conservation Area, a 19,055-acre tract of hardwood and pine forest in East Texas. Gerland considers the broader economic and social history of the region—discussing land use among the Hasinai Caddo, detailing early efforts at settlement by Europeans and Americans, and deconstructing the productionist mind-set that shaped the region during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. To this framework he adds a natural history that gives tangible form to the landscape using detailed taxonomic references and well-chosen photographs. This interdisciplinary approach works very well. After establishing the broader historical context in chapters 1 and 2, Gerland zeroes in on Thomas Lewis Latane Temple, whose descendants shaped the development of the land from the late nineteenth century to the creation of the conservation area in 2013. Subsequent chapters detail the [End Page 170] Temples’ work with the Southern Pine Lumber Company and identify the forces that shaped their holdings over the course of a century, with a special focus on railroads, ranching, game management, and the challenges of the Great Depression. The final two chapters examine the personalities that shaped Boggy Slough and the processes that ultimately created the conservation area. The book’s topical organization (for example, a chapter on enclosure is followed by a chapter on game management, and then another on land sales) creates occasional issues with repetition, and the narrative does jump around chronologically, but these are minor issues. Gerland’s story flows well, and the book never gets lost in proverbial meanderings. Gerland does not ground this book in a single, overriding argument. Instead, his goal is to describe the history of land use in Boggy Slough while also highlighting enduring connections between the land and the Temple family. He accomplishes these aims by centering “the inseparability of Boggy Slough’s natural and social history” (p. 27). For example, Gerland states more than once that the people living on and working in Boggy Slough shaped the land and were also shaped by the land. This is a basic idea but an important one, and it is a foundational framework for the field of environmental history. Gerland also engages this idea of “inseparability” by articulating sophisticated historical theories. For example, he discusses the power of names and what it means socially and culturally for different groups to name the land or to see their names stripped from the landscape. Gerland has made a valuable contribution to the environmental history of Texas with Boggy Slough. Some readers may feel overwhelmed by the amount of detail in the interior chapters, but the book is well written and well researched, and the content never becomes inaccessible. Indeed, Gerland moves easily between scientific and historical analysis and writes as competently about scientific processes as he does about economic structures. Moreover, the photographs, many of them taken by Gerland himself, add dimension to the portrayal of bottomland forests and the individuals who have shaped the region. Gerland has done credit to Boggy Slough with this compelling portrait. Kenna Lang Archer Angelo State University Copyright © 2023 The Southern Historical Association

Skepticism Is Wrong for General Reasons

Abstract According to Michael Bergmann’s “intuitionist particularism,” our position with respect to skeptical arguments is much the same as it was with respect to Zeno’s paradoxes of motion prior to our developing sophisticated theories of the continuum. We observed ourselves move, and that closed the case in favor of the ability to move, even if we had no general theory about that ability. We observe ourselves form justified beliefs, and that closes the case in favor of the ability to form justified beliefs, even if we have no general theory about that ability. I think this is a mistake. Our position with respect to skeptical arguments is like our current position with respect to Zeno’s paradoxes. Mathematics shows where Zeno’s reasoning goes wrong and provisions explanations of the ability to move. Epistemology shows where the skeptic’s reasoning goes wrong and provisions explanations of the ability to form justified beliefs.

L’imperceptible – Merleau-Ponty

What does the imperceptible mean? Is not such a question unavoidable for Maurice Merleau-Ponty, who is an illustrious thinker of perception? In this paper, I demonstrate that the French philosopher, in his published texts and unpublished manuscripts, provides an insightful reflection regarding the phenomenon of imperceptibility, which permeates some main domains of his thought. I underscore that his approach is articulated on two intimately related concepts, namely the imperceptible and the imperception. I start by unveiling Merleau-Ponty’s archetypal refusal of two extreme philosophical positions that conceive of the imperceptible, on the one hand, as a purely factitious or factual entity, and, on the other hand, as a radical and absolute reality. This approach leads me to discuss Merleau-Ponty’s keynote conception, namely an imperceptibility that appears paradoxically at work for perception. I show that such an interdependence between imperception and perception typically takes for him the form of a specific chiasm, of which I scrutinize several notable expressions. Lastly, I address Merleau-Ponty’s insightful sketch of an even further sophisticated theory, wherein imperception would be eventually reintegrated within perception itself.

Pair-Reaction Dynamics in Water: Competition of Memory, Potential Shape, and Inertial Effects.

When described by a one-dimensional reaction coordinate, pair-reaction rates in a solvent depend, in addition to the potential barrier height and the friction coefficient, on the potential shape, the effective mass, and the friction relaxation spectrum, but a rate theory that accurately accounts for all of these effects does not exist. After a review of classical reaction-rate theories, we show how to extract all parameters of the generalized Langevin equation (GLE) and, in particular, the friction memory function from molecular dynamics (MD) simulations of two prototypical pair reactions in water, the dissociation of NaCl and of two methane molecules. The memory exhibits multiple time scales and, for NaCl, pronounced oscillatory components. Simulations of the GLE by Markovian embedding techniques accurately reproduce the pair-reaction kinetics from MD simulations without any fitting parameters, which confirms the accuracy of the approximative form of the GLE and of the parameter extraction techniques. By modification of the GLE parameters, we investigate the relative importance of memory, mass, and potential shape effects. Neglect of memory slows down NaCl and methane dissociation by roughly a factor of 2; neglect of mass accelerates reactions by a similar factor, and the harmonic approximation of the potential shape gives rise to slight acceleration. This partial error cancellation explains why Kramers' theory, which neglects memory effects and treats the potential shape in harmonic approximation, describes reaction rates better than more sophisticated theories. In essence, all three effects, friction memory, inertia, and the potential shape nonharmonicity, are important to quantitatively describe pair-reaction kinetics in water.

Wicked Flesh: Black Women, Intimacy, and Freedom in the Atlantic World

Wicked Flesh: Black Women, Intimacy, and Freedom in the Atlantic World

Award for Distinguished Scientific Early Career Contributions to Psychology: Dylan G. Gee.

The Early Career Awards, given for the first time in 1974, recognize the large number of excellent early career psychologists. Recipients of this award may not have held a doctoral degree for more than nine years. For distinguished contributions to the study of neurodevelopmental mechanisms linking early adversity and mental health. Grounded in sophisticated theory and rigorous methodology, Dylan Gee's work has elucidated the ways in which early experiences become biologically embedded to shape emotional learning and behavior. Her scientific creativity and innovation have advanced translation of knowledge about the developing brain to optimize evidence-based interventions for youth with anxiety and stress-related psychopathology. Alongside her theoretical and empirical contributions to developmental psychopathology, she is a powerful voice for societal change whose research has had a notable impact on policy related to children's mental health. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

A Mixed-Methods Systematic Review Regarding Musical Universality in Academic Literature.

Music Universality is a widely discussed phenomenon within areas of psychology as well as ethnomusicology, and these disciplines often differ in their interpretations of universality. Evolutionary psychology in particular is guided by an empirical scientific philosophy that argues musicality is innate within human nature. However, ethnomusicology is often guided by interpretive research designs that preserve the nuance of universality to argue that the experience of music is highly. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to reconcile these differing perspectives in an interdisciplinary systematic review method that utilizes thematic analysis and meta-analysis of appropriate studies in order to answer two common discourses on musicality: the extent to which innate musicality verses cultural factors affects musical perception and how music can be utilized to communicate messages cross-culturally. The meta-analysis demonstrated that cultural factors serve as a more consistent factor that influences musical perception than any theory of innate, universal musicality, yet the thematic analysis was more divisive in its conclusions regarding music’s ability to facilitate cross-cultural communication, implying that the phenomenon is not yet well understood in the most recent literature. These findings indicate that both types of disciplines are converging in their conclusions regarding perceptual factors of music experience that refutes the universality argument, but other topics like cross-cultural communication lack the scientific rigor to create a unified theory of such a phenomenon. Therefore, despite the differences in academic philosophy, these fields are increasingly utilizing scientific evidence along with interpretive evidence to develop more sophisticated theories of human musicality.

Redefining Reciprocity: Appointment Edicts and Political Thought in Medieval China.

This article uses a large corpus of previously understudied documents-i.e., appointment edicts of medieval China-to reveal how real-time negotiation between the imperial court and its provincial officials gave rise to two sophisticated theories of political reciprocity that impose limits on the sovereign. The first, well-studied in existent scholarship, claimed that the ruler was obliged to appoint worthy officials to promote the well-being of the commoners. The second, which this article excavates, stated instead that the ruler, while enjoying the services of the employed officials, was obliged to repay the services properly, sometimes even at the cost of commoners.

High-capacity hydrogen storage in zirconium decorated zeolite templated carbon: Predictions from DFT simulations

The hydrogen (H2) storage capacity of Zirconium (Zr) decorated zeolite templated carbon (ZTC) has been investigated using sophisticated density functional theory (DFT) simulations. The analysis shows that the Zr atom gets bonded with ZTC strongly with binding energy (BE) of −3.92 eV due to electron transfer from Zr 4d orbital to C 2p orbital of ZTC. Each Zr atom on ZTC can attach 7H2 molecules with average binding energy of −0.433 eV/H2 providing gravimetric wt% of 9.24, substantially above the limit of 6.5 wt% set by the DoE of the United States of America. The H2 molecules are involved via Kubas interaction with Zr atom, which involves the charge transfer between Zr 4d orbital and H 1s orbital with interaction energy higher than physisorption but lower than chemisorption. The structural integrity of the system is confirmed via molecular dynamics (MD) simulations at room temperature and at highest desorption temperature of 500 K. We have investigated the chances of metal clustering by computing diffusion energy (ED) barrier for the movement of Zr atom, and we obtained via calculation, we can infer that the presence of ED barrier of ∼2.36 eV may prevent the possibility. As the system ZTC has been synthesized, Zr doped ZTC is stable, existence of sufficient diffusion barrier prevents the clustering and adsorption energy and wt% of H2 are within the range prescribed by DoE, we feel that Zr decorated ZTC can be fabricated as promising hydrogen storage material for fuel cell applications.

Michael L. Raposa Plays with Peirce, Love, and Signs: Review Essay on Theosemiotic: Religion, Reading, and the Gift of Meaning

Michael L. Raposa Plays with Peirce, Love, and Signs: Review Essay on <i>Theosemiotic: Religion, Reading, and the Gift of Meaning</i>