Strange Case Research Articles

Excess and Donation: From the Restricted Economy of Being to the An-Economy of the Gift (Or, the intriguing story of six pesos)

In the context of the recent publication of Donner le tempts II, we question the status of the gift, its singularity, its relationship, beyond the intentional structure of decision and consciousness, with the general problematic of democracy and the archive, of Khora as an enigma that haunts the same Onto-Theo-Cosmological conjugation of metaphysics and logocentrism, to show that the question about the gift is also the question about history and about the very possibility of democracy, beyond the capitalist logic of accumulation and valuation. We end up referring to the strange case of the ‘six pesos’ thematized in Miguel Angel Asturias's novel, Hombres de maiz, as a case of the incalculable. Far from an instrumental account, but also from a providential version of the gift, we try to show it as an event always already inscribed in the abyss of our exchange relations, a possibility contained in its own impossibility.

Strange case of a suspected foreign body after cephalic pancreatoduodenectomy.

Strange case of a suspected foreign body after cephalic pancreatoduodenectomy.

Questioning the Design of Non-Inferiority Trials: The Strange Case for Therapeutic Drug Monitoring Absence in Phase III Trials.

Questioning the Design of Non-Inferiority Trials: The Strange Case for Therapeutic Drug Monitoring Absence in Phase III Trials.

Post-neoliberalism? The strange case of the new English Freeports

ABSTRACT Neoliberalism has lost its hegemonic status in the global system but neoliberal ideas and practices persist. Post-Brexit UK offers a useful case study of how these operate in a post-hegemonic context. The UK government's vision of free trading ‘Global Britain' crashed against the reality of an increasingly geoeconomic world. Freeports were an initiative designed to boost trade and to develop poorer regions. This paper adapts Fairclough’s Critical Discourse Analysis to analyse how the different Freeport discourses interact with material power as the policy develops. It divides this into three levels: national political discourse, national policy discourse and local political and policy discourse (with a case study of one Freeport). At the national level, the Brexiteers forged a discourse that combined neoliberalism, Brexit discourse and ‘levelling up’. When translated to policy this was significantly moderated due to legal commitments and geoeconomic pressures. At the local level, the policy was significantly reframed with little emphasis on trade and more on traditional local development concerns. The contradictions of the initial political discourse opened a space for other actors to reshape the policy. More broadly, this story suggests that global geoeconomic pressures may restrict the role of free trade zones in the developed world.

Strange Case of Dr. Bidder and Mr. Entrant: Consumer Preference Inconsistencies in Costly Price Offers

Consumers make price offers to sellers in a variety of domains, such as when buying cars or houses or when bidding in auctions for airline upgrades, art, or collectibles. Submitting an offer typically entails administrative, waiting, and opportunity costs. Making such costly price offers involves two intertwined decisions—in addition to determining how much to offer, consumers must also decide whether to make an offer in the first place. We examine the impact of offer-submission costs on consumer behavior using a series of incentive-compatible experiments. Our findings reveal a preference inconsistency, whereby the preferences implied by one of the decisions do not align with the preferences implied by the other. In particular, potential buyers enter more often than their offer amounts would predict based on standard economic models. This preference inconsistency is robust to two interventions designed to help consumers make offer-amount and entry decisions—(1)the provision of interactive-feedback decision aids and (2)the sequencing of the two sub-decisions in the normative order. Neither of these interventions resolves the inconsistency. Instead, the patterns of results suggest that consumers approach the offer-amount and entry decisions as if they were unrelated. We discuss the implications of our findings for the design of offer-submission interfaces, as well as for econometric attempts to infer consumer preferences from offer and bidding data.

Experts or Authorities? The Strange Case of the Presumed Epistemic Superiority of Artificial Intelligence Systems

The high predictive accuracy of contemporary machine learning-based AI systems has led some scholars to argue that, in certain cases, we should grant them epistemic expertise and authority over humans. This approach suggests that humans would have the epistemic obligation of relying on the predictions of a highly accurate AI system. Contrary to this view, in this work we claim that it is not possible to endow AI systems with a genuine account of epistemic expertise. In fact, relying on accounts of expertise and authority from virtue epistemology, we show that epistemic expertise requires a relation with understanding that AI systems do not satisfy and intellectual abilities that these systems do not manifest. Further, following the Distribution Cognition theory and adapting an account by Croce on the virtues of collective epistemic agents to the case of human-AI interactions we show that, if an AI system is successfully appropriated by a human agent, a hybrid epistemic agent emerges, which can become both an epistemic expert and an authority. Consequently, we claim that the aforementioned hybrid agent is the appropriate object of a discourse around trust in AI and the epistemic obligations that stem from its epistemic superiority.

Quo Vadis, Historical International Relations? Geopolitical Marxism and the Promise of Radical Historicism

John Maclean’s 1988 call “Marxism and IR: A Strange Case of Mutual Neglect” has generated a rich bounty of Marxist studies and paradigms in International Relations (IR). This cross-pollination merged in the 1990s with the “historical turn” and shaped the sub-fields of International Historical Sociology and International Political Economy. But has it left its mark on how IR is practised today? We argue that while Marxism has spoken significantly to the discipline, mainstream IR, even Historical IR, has been largely impervious to Marxist arguments, drawing the standard charge of economism and structuralism. Rectifying these critiques, we suggest that conventional historical studies of “the international” remain methodologically and substantively impoverished. We exemplify this by showing how leading Historical IR studies of “systems change” fail to explain the inside/outside and public/private differentiations constitutive of the modern international order and to integrate the “levels of analysis” they presuppose. We further argue that this rejection has been facilitated by influential Marxist IR paradigms, which ultimately privilege structuralism over historicism: While Neo-Gramscians initially mobilised “historicism” to dissolve claims about the “sameness” of international relations across time and space, the approach became identified with the reified master-category of “hegemony”. Uneven and Combined Development, in turn, has gravitated towards matching Neo-realism’s claim to theoretical universality by insisting on transhistorical model-building and nomological “grand theory”. Both approaches remain over-sociologised and fail to address international politics. Drawing on radically historicist Political Marxism, this article shows how its substantive socio-political premises explain the historical formation of the contemporary international order and re-unite the “levels of analysis” theoretically to provide a framework for non-reductionist and non-economistic accounts of historical international relations. This requires an answer to the agentic challenge of Neo-Classical Realism by reincorporating grand strategy, diplomacy, and international politics into a reformulated perspective of Geopolitical Marxism to track the full historicity of the making of international orders.

The Strange Case of Jekyll and Hyde: Analysis of R/ToastMe and R/RoastMe Users on Reddit

The Strange Case of Jekyll and Hyde: Analysis of R/ToastMe and R/RoastMe Users on Reddit

Violating positivist precepts: a Comtean look into The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Violating positivist precepts: a Comtean look into The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

MALDI-TOF as a powerful tool for identifying and differentiating closely related microorganisms: the strange case of three reference strains of Paenibacillus polymyxa

Accurate identification and typing of microbes are crucial steps in gaining an awareness of the biological heterogeneity and reliability of microbial material within any proprietary or public collection. Paenibacillus polymyxa is a bacterial species of great agricultural and industrial importance due to its plant growth-promoting activities and production of several relevant secondary metabolites. In recent years, matrix-assisted laser desorption ionisation time-of-flight mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF MS) has been widely used as an alternative rapid tool for identifying, typing, and differentiating closely related strains. In this study, we investigated the diversity of three P. polymyxa strains. The mass spectra of ATCC 842T, DSM 292, and DSM 365 were obtained, analysed, and compared to select discriminant peaks using ClinProTools software and generate classification models. MALDI-TOF MS analysis showed inconsistent results in identifying DSM 292 and DSM 365 as belonging to P. polimixa species, and comparative analysis of mass spectra revealed the presence of highly discriminatory biomarkers among the three strains. 16S rRNA sequencing and Average Nucleotide Identity (ANI) confirmed the discrepancies found in the proteomic analysis. The case study presented here suggests the enormous potential of the proteomic-based approach, combined with statistical tools, to predict and explore differences between closely related strains in large microbial datasets.

Narrative Identity and the Redemptive Self: An Intellectual Autobiography, with Occasional Critique

<p>In this intellectual autobiography, I trace the development of the idea of narrative identity as manifest in personality and developmental psychology. As far as my own work in this area is concerned, the story begins in the early 1980s when my students and I struggled to understand the meaning of Erik Erikson’s concept of identity. Early work on a life-story model of identity aimed to situate the concept within the rapidly transforming field of personality psychology, first articulated as an alternative to the ascending conception of the Big Five traits. Eventually, I turned my attention to the redemptive life stories told by highly generative American adults, as my understanding of narrative identity came to be more fully contextualized in culture and history. While hundreds of nomothetic, hypothesis-testing studies of narrative identity have been conducted in the past two decades, the concept has also proven useful in the realm of psychobiography, as illustrated in my case studies of the redemptive life story constructed by the American President George W. Bush, and in my research into the strange case of President Donald J. Trump, whose most striking psychological attribute may be the near total absence of a narrative identity.</p>

It is possible a co-infection with two atypical pathogens? A strange case report

“Atypical” pneumonias are clinically distinct and fo not tipically present with high fever, productive cough or lobar consolidation. The primary etiological agents include Mycoplasma Pneumoniae, Chlamydia Pneumoniae and Legionella Pneumophila. This case report details a young asthmatic patient who developed a dual infection with Chlamydia Pneumoniae and Mycoplasma Pneumoniae, which exacerbated the patient’s asthma symptoms, resulting in significant complications. A literature review highlights the potential for such atypical infections to aggravate respiratory conditions in patients with pre-existing asthma. Clinical management involving antibiotic therapy and respiratory support, led to a gradual resolution of symptoms. This case underscores the importance of considering atypical infections in differential diagnosis of asthmatic patients experiencing acute symptom worsening.

ОБ ОСОБЕННОСТЯХ ХУДОЖЕСТВЕННОГО ПЕРЕВОДА (НА ПРИМЕРЕ АНАЛИЗА МАЛОЙ ПРОЗЫ Р.Л. СТИВЕНСОНА)

The article examines translations of R.L. Stevenson’s story “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” and the story “The Bottle Imp”. The dialectical connection between the general trends in the development of the genre and the individual characteristics of the author’s style in the short prose of R.L. Stevenson is traced. An attempt has been made to identify not only the most characteristic methods, techniques and transformations in the translations of the famous author’s short prose, but also new, little-studied ways of conveying the features of the style, typology and poetics of the above-mentioned works. The relevance of the research is due to the insufficient study of the problems of translating R.L. Stevenson’s short prose, as well as the scientific novelty of the proposed approach, which allows us to identify new facets of the author’s style and take a fresh look at the features of translating his works. The practical significance of the work lies in the fact that the results obtained can be used in the development of methodological recommendations for the translation of short prose, as well as in further research in this area. As a result of the study the peculiarities of translation of units of the background context, which is carried out by a variety of lexical, semantic and stylistic means, have been revealed.

Da Rejeição Total à Atração Fatal: O Estranho Caso do Retrato Judiciário (‘Mugshot’) nos Setores da Ciência, da Filosofia e da Arte

From Total Rejection to Fatal Attraction: The Strange Case of Mugshots in Science, Philosophy and Art.The ways science, philosophy and art have dealt for almost two hundred years with ‘mugshots’ (American designation nowadays globally used for judiciary portraits with criminal identification purposes) are often paradoxical and/or deeply emotional and extreme, ranging from total rejection or absolute oblivion to strong fascination and almost fatal attraction. This paper starts by retrospectively identifying and shortly analysing the main approaches of science to mugshots (especially anthropology, criminology and medicine) since their advent in the second half of the 19th century, simultaneously focusing on the evolution of the historical, political and social contexts of this approach until contemporary times. The referred evolution is then used to approach the second scrutinized sector, i. e. analysing (the role of) mugshots in philosophical terms and as bio-political instruments of power in the same period Finally yet importantly, the article emphasizes the way the ‘mugshots theme’ eventually fascinated major artists in the 20th and 21st centuries and how its dissemination and popularity exponentially grew through the 20th and 21st century media explosion, namely TV and social networks.

Strange Case of the Spin-off and the Classic: An Intertextual Analysis of Valerie Martin’s Mary Reilly

This article aims to analyze Valerie Martin’s novel Mary Reilly (1990) in the context of intertextuality and claims that her work creates a dialogue with its pre-text. Before the analysis, this paper presents a short historical overview of intertextual theories, from the ancient ideas regarding this matter, through the theories that contributed to the coining of the term, to the three directions in which the notion of intertextuality developed – structuralist, poststructuralist, and socio-political. Martin’s text is analyzed in regard to Gerard Genette’s notion of transtextuality, concentrating mainly on one of its categories, hypertextuality; however, the study employs also the theory of spin-offs, arguing that Martin’s text very directly leads the reader towards its one intertextual source. Mary Reilly initiates a dialogue with its main pre-text, Robert Louis Stevenson’s novella Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) by redirecting the focus of the already familiar to the reader story and presenting aspects previously omitted in the classic. This text introduces a very specific dynamic between the figures of a father and a daughter. Their relationship is present on the level of the story, but also on the level of authorship, discussing the situation of a female writer. Moreover, this spin-off creates a space for once silenced characters, such as members of the working class, to be finally heard.

Monsters in Mirrors: Duality, Triangulation, and Multiplicity in Two Adaptations of Jekyll and Hyde

Jacques Derrida’s theory of deconstruction provides an ideal means of appreciating and interrogating the duality central to both Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and its adaptations. Moreover, because deconstruction exposes binary oppositions as artificial and constrictive, it enables us to advance beyond them toward multiplicity, a term used by Gilles Deleuze for a complex, ever-changing, multipart structure that transcends unity. Roy Ward Baker’s Dr Jekyll and Sister Hyde (1971) and episodes of Showtime’s Penny Dreadful (2014–2016) offer fresh ways to think about—and beyond—the duality of culture’s most famously divided pair. The binary oppositions that organize each text are innovative, as are the ways in which these oppositions are reversed and conflated. Ultimately, these adaptations employ triangulation to deconstruct themselves, thereby demonstrating the limitations and instability of duality, as well as the possibilities of multiplicity.

The strange case of enhancing the resistivity by extended sintering time in (Bi0.5Na0.5)TiO3–BaTiO3 solid solution

With the presence of volatile elements in the composition of a ceramic material, longer sintering time presumably creates more vacancies. In the case of (Bi0.5Na0.5)TiO3–BaTiO3 lead-free piezoelectric ceramics and when batched and calcined with a Bi2O3 deficient stoichiometry, there can be a surprising increase in resistivity with increasing sintering time. It is deduced that the extended sintering time reduces the concentration of bismuth vacancies (and the ionically compensating oxygen vacancies). This is also associated with a decrease of depolarization temperature, Td, and possibly a change in dielectric polarization phenomena from normal to relaxor ferroelectric. These observations do not occur in pure (Bi0.5Na0.5)TiO3, suggesting that they are actually facilitated by the Ba2+ content in the solid solution BNT−BT. Microstructural observations indicate the formation of BaTi2O5 secondary phase which considerably grows as sintering goes on. With more Ti4+ being incorporated to the secondary phase, the stoichiometry of the solid solution can be restored, so is the resistivity and the observed trends in decreased Td.

The Strange Case of Orotic Acid: The Different Expression of Pyrimidines Biosynthesis in Healthy Males and Females.

Orotic acid (OA) is an intermediate metabolite of pyrimidine nucleotide biosynthesis and represents a minor diet constituent. The measurement of urinary orotic acid is useful in confirming the diagnosis of hereditary metabolic diseases. Moreover, it could be of interest to know how the physiological concentration of this metabolite changes in relation to different conditions of clinical normality. The purpose of this study was to determine the orotic acid concentration in the urine of healthy patients, to observe normal oroticuria and to evaluate if the expression of pyrimidine intermediate biosynthesis differs between healthy males and females. The orotic acid concentration in urine was performed via the ICH M10-validated analytical method. Unexpectedly, females showed a greater oroticuria than males in pediatric age (0-10); conversely, we did not find significant differences until 70 years of age. The LC-MS/MS method was suitable for use in the differential diagnosis of hereditary metabolic disease and metabolic monitoring of anticancer drug-induced toxicity. The analytical protocol was found to be rapid and ideal, and was used in the routine analysis of a clinical chemistry laboratory. The biochemical aspects related to the expression of pyrimidine biosynthesis should be further investigated in light of the obtained results.

A strange case of pleuritic pain in the third trimester of pregnancy.

Pulmonary sequestration is an uncommon congenital malformation of the lung, generally diagnosed in childhood or adolescence, corresponding to dysplastic lung tissue not communicating with the rest of vascular or bronchial lung system but receiving an arterial blood supply from systemic arteries. Currently, surgical resection is usually indicated in order to prevent or treat related symptoms or complications, although controversy exists regarding its use in asymptomatic patients and adults. We present the case of a 32-year-old pregnant woman with acute chest pain and vomiting diagnosed with intralobar sequestration at 32+2 weeks of gestation and treated with pulmonary lobectomy after giving birth by cesarean section at 33+0 weeks of gestation.

Ciência e moralidade vitorianas em o Médico e o monstro, de Robert Louis Stevenson (1886)

ABSTRACT This article analyzes how Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) depicts the relationship between science and morality (secular or religious) in his 1886 novella The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. For this purpose, I analyze the setting choice (London) and some characteristics of late Victorian Gothic fiction that constitute the negative aesthetics of which Stevenson’s characters are formed. Then, I analyze how the negative aesthetic juxtaposes with an order that is both scientific and moralist in a cultural context in which the reading public is obsessed with crime. Eventually, I discuss the theories of 19th-century philosophers and scientists, such as Herbert Spencer (1820-1903), Cesare Lombroso (1835-1909), and Francis Galton (1822-1911), in an attempt to understand Stevenson’s novella from an allegedly scientific point of view. I conclude that Hyde/Jekyll was “destined” to fail since both late Victorian science and morality were prone to condemn the “unfit”.