Universal Explanation Research Articles

CHN1 promotes epithelial\u2013mesenchymal transition via the Akt/GSK-3\u03b2/Snail pathway in cervical carcinoma

BackgroundMetastasis and invasion are crucial in determining the mortality of cervical carcinoma (CC) patients. The epithelial–mesenchymal transition (EMT) is now a universal explanation for the mechanisms of tumor metastasis. Α-chimeric protein (α-chimaerin, CHN1) plays an important role in the regulation of signal transduction and development. However, the molecular regulatory relationships between CHN1 and CC progression in relation to EMT have not yet been identified.MethodsThe expression of CHN1 in CC tissues, adjacent tissues, and lymph node metastases from CC patients was detected by immunohistochemistry. Upregulation and knockdown of CHN1 were achieved by transfection of CC cells. The effect of CHN1 on cell proliferation was determined by CCK-8 and plate clone formation assays. Changes in migration and invasion capabilities were evaluated using scratch migration and transwell invasion assays. The effect of CHN1 overexpression and interference on xenograft tumor growth was determined by tumor weight and pathological analyses. The expression of EMT-related mRNAs was measured by qRT-PCR in transfected CC cells. EMT-related proteins and Akt/GSK-3β/Snail signaling pathway-related proteins were also evaluated by western blotting.ResultsCHN1 was overexpressed in CC tissues and was associated with lymph node metastasis and low survival in CC patients. Overexpression of CHN1 promoted cell proliferation, migration, and invasion in CC cells. In contrast, silencing of CHN1 inhibited these phenomena. Overexpression of CHN1 promoted tumor formation in an in vivo xenograft tumor mouse model, with increased tumor volumes and weights. In addition, CHN1 induced the expression of EMT-related transcription factors, accompanied by the decreased expression of epithelial markers and increased expression of mesenchymal markers. The Akt/GSK-3β/Snail signaling pathway was activated by overexpression of CHN1 in vitro, and activation of this pathway was inhibited by the signaling pathway inhibitor LY294002.ConclusionThese results suggest that CHN1 promotes the development and progression of cervical carcinoma via the Akt/GSK-3β/Snail pathway by inducing EMT.

The first ALMA survey of protoplanetary discs at 3 mm: demographics of grain growth in the Lupus region

ABSTRACT We present the first ALMA survey of protoplanetary discs at 3 mm, targeting 36 young stellar objects in the Lupus star-forming region with deep observations (sensitivity 20–50 $\mu$Jy beam−1) at ∼0.35 arcsec resolution (∼50 au). Building on previous ALMA surveys at 0.89 and 1.3 mm that observed the complete sample of Class II discs in Lupus at a comparable resolution, we aim to assess the level of grain growth in the relatively young Lupus region. We measure 3 mm integrated fluxes, from which we derive disc-averaged 1–3 mm spectral indices. We find that the mean spectral index of the observed Lupus discs is $\alpha _\mathrm{1-3\, mm}=2.23\pm 0.06$, in all cases $\alpha _\mathrm{1-3\, mm}\lt 3.0$, with a tendency for larger spectral indices in the brightest discs and in transition discs. Furthermore, we find that the distribution of spectral indices in Lupus discs is statistically indistinguishable from that of the Taurus and Ophiuchus star-forming regions. Assuming the emission is optically thin, the low values $\alpha _\mathrm{1-3\, mm}\le 2.5$ measured for most discs can be interpreted with the presence of grains larger than 1 mm. The observations of the faint discs in the sample can be explained without invoking the presence of large grains, namely through a mixture of optically thin and optically thick emission from small grains. However, the bright (and typically large) discs do inescapably require the presence of millimetre-sized grains in order to have realistic masses. Based on a disc mass argument, our results challenge previous claims that the presence of optically thick substructures may be a universal explanation for the empirical millimetre size-luminosity correlation observed at 0.89 mm.

Una isla llamada serendipia: definiciones ético pedagógicas en el proyecto filosofar con niñxs.

This text proposes some lines of reflection and action related to a project that links philosophy and childhood, whose pedagogical and investigative activity has been developed in the province of Córdoba, Argentina, for more than twenty-five years. To do this we recover an experience of workshops with children and adults, in a continuous process of reflection on childhood and how children think about themselves. That experience focuses on imagining a particular space and time – living together on an island where adults cannot be found--and from there question the forms of decision making and participation – of political action – that children perform in the territories they inhabit. Here it is proposed that the circumstance of incompleteness regarding issues such as politics and sexuality encompass all age situations and, therefore, it is more appropriate to let ourselves be traversed by restlessness and doubt than to accept a preconceived world in which problems quickly find answers, and what you do not know or cannot be located in a fixed category is unknown, ignored, or remains hidden. We propose to start by not postulating any pre-conceived notions regarding childhoods--thinking of them as hypotheses with unexplored names, bodies and thoughts to get to know. Likewise, it is assumed that reflection on teaching practice relocates philosophy teachers as intellectuals who keep universal explanations in their “professorial pockets,” and reinvent themselves by dealing with specific problems, the small discoveries one makes through exchanges with others--those others that, as in the case of children, there is much to learn about and from. This is the ethical and political task that emerges from a continuous reflection on shared action. Welcome, then, to the island where everything is to be decided and participated in, the island of Serendipity.

Critical junctures, agrarian change, and the (re)production of vulnerability in a marginalised Indigenous society

• Many societies globally and throughout Papua New Guinea have experienced significant capitalist-driven agrarian change. • The Bedamuni have remained marginal to the extractive industry-led development seen throughout the country. • The Bedamuni have experienced (non-capitalist) agrarian change, which has increased their socioecological vulnerability. • I explore key historical and contemporary critical junctures and show how vulnerability has been (re)produced over time. • I problematise essentialist, universal narratives about the drivers of vulnerability in marginalised Indigenous societies. Marginalised agrarian societies are suggested to be the most vulnerable to environmental hazards and other perturbations. There are competing explanations for this phenomenon, which include: a lack of development, global environmental change, and the development process itself, or capitalism more specifically. All three causal arguments are compelling, but typically offer only partial explanations. With most societies experiencing significant capitalist-driven agrarian change over the last few centuries (e.g., depeasantisation, dispossession, proletarianisation), the critical agrarian change literature is biased towards these studies. Here I explore one of the most marginalised societies in Papua New Guinea, the Bedamuni People of Western Province. After 60 years of Western contact, at the time of fieldwork (2018), they remained shifting horticulturalist who had not been disposed of their land, had no commodity production and very limited opportunities for paid work. By exploring agrarian change within Bedamuni society since first Western contact (1962) and the arrival of missionaries (1968), and employing the concept of critical junctures, I critically unpack some of the root causes of heightened socioecological vulnerability. In the Bedamuni case study, and likely in many other societies, it is not just lack of development, environmental change, or the development process itself, it is all these things, and more, concomitantly. With the resource and commodity frontier almost upon them, and many Bedamuni desiring it to come, it is critical to understand the root causes of growing hunger. I argue that the development approach being driven by powerful actors will not meaningfully address this crisis and, in fact, may exacerbate the processes and factors that have produced heightened socioecological vulnerability. This paper problematises essentialist, universal narratives about the drivers of vulnerability in marginalised Indigenous societies in the global South. Whilst universal explanations can be insightful, we must not forget the centrality and specificity of space and place in development research.

The crime decline in cross-national context: a panel analysis of homicide rates within latent trajectory groups

ABSTRACT During the 1990s, the United States and other wealthy democracies experienced a decline in homicide rates. However, not all nations shared this trend. Despite disparate homicide patterns, researchers usually examine the average effect of correlates on homicide, potentially obscuring the impact of heterogeneity within large samples. The current study addresses this implicit homogeneity assumption by identifying three distinct latent trajectory groups of homicide trends among 77 nations from 1989 to 2010. To examine differences in the correlates of homicide trends, we analyse the impact of demographic and economic influences on homicide rates in separate fixed-effects panel regression analyses for each trajectory group as well as for the overall sample. We find that demographic and economic forces impact homicide rates differently across subsets of nations. Our findings suggest that universal explanations of 1990s cross-national homicide trends are misleading, as the same set of factors influence homicide rates differently across national contexts.

Offense Narrative Roles of Turkish Offenders.

The study of offense narratives emphasizes the agency of the offender which brings psychology closer to law. As an effort to create a standardized and quantitative method to evaluate offender narratives, Youngs and Canter developed the Narrative Roles Questionnaire (NRQ) based on the content analyses of the crime narratives of offenders in UK prisons. The current study aims to investigate the applicability of offense narrative roles framework among Turkish offenders. The application of the offense narrative roles model to a non-Western country is the first step toward the acceptance of criminal narrative theory as a universal explanation of criminal behavior. A translation of the NRQ was administered to 468 Turkish male inmates who have committed a wide range of offenses from fraud to murder. The results of an MDS analysis yielded four roles, namely Professional, Revenger, Hero, and Victim, echoing the original formulation proposed by Youngs and Canter. The reliability coefficients of scales derived for these roles were all at desired levels. The results support the applicability of the NRQ framework in a non-English context.

Angle-resolved Rabi flopping in strong-field dissociation of molecules

Rabi flopping is a paradigm of two-level quantum systems in the presence of an oscillatory driving field. Different from atoms, the Rabi flopping in a molecule depends on its bond length and orientation with respect to the light polarization direction. Here we explore the Rabi flopping in the strong-field dissociation of ${\mathrm{H}}_{2}{}^{+}$ in which the two lowest electronic states are photon coupled. ${\mathrm{H}}_{2}{}^{+}$ aligned along different angles experiences different laser intensities, building the Rabi flopping with angle-dependent frequencies. During the laser-${\mathrm{H}}_{2}{}^{+}$ interaction, the electron completes different fractions of Rabi flopping for ${\mathrm{H}}_{2}{}^{+}$ aligned in different directions, leading to the angular nodes and maxima in the dissociative proton momentum distribution. Our study reveals that one-photon dissociation undergoes the alternation of absorbing and emitting one photon, instead of the one-off photon absorption. This study also provides a universal explanation for the angular distribution of the dissociative fragments in strong laser fields.

Evolutionary explanations for religion: An interdisciplinary critical review

Some form of religion exists in every documented society on earth. However, ‘religion’ is a multifaceted phenomenon commonly including aspects, such as rituals, myths, rules and regulations concerning ethical behaviour, social practices and some form of belief in the supernatural (e.g. gods, spirits or souls). Due to its pervasiveness, many researchers of biological and cultural evolution have suggested that religion needs a universal evolutionary explanation. However, most proposed explanations have either treated religion as a single all-encompassing entity or only focused on a single or a few aspects of religion. We propose, instead, to carry out an extensive review of such suggested evolutionary explanations with the express aim of pairing up proposed explanations with religious components in order to form a more comprehensive depiction of causation and how religion and human cognition both have evolved, each influenced by the other. We also propose to summarise predictions and hypotheses that spring from each explanation, with the express aim of stating how each may be evaluated and tested. Crucially, different aspects of religion may have different explanations and different explanations may apply to several aspects of religion. Proposed explanations will be summarised in a series of thematically oriented scientific articles, as well as in a summary monograph. Our dual competencies, in evolutionary theory and religious studies, provide us with a unique opportunity to evaluate these issues from both a natural and a humanistic point of view.

Information, signs, knowledge and intelligence

Understanding the special role of information in scientific knowledge formation is simultaneously accompanied by a high level of uncertainty regarding the nature of both information and knowledge. There are many approaches to information that can be constructively applied in some special areas of activity but remain completely useless in others. Against the background of such “informational diversity”, many researchers more often had the idea of the need for a universal explanation of the information phenomenon. The need to solve this problem is intuitively substantiated by the fact that the formation of information and its application create the foundation for many processes of self-organization and control in systems of various nature: chemical, biological, social, technical, and others. From the same point of view, the concept of information is often referred to as the primary one when explaining other also little understood phenomena: signs, semantics, knowledge, psyche, intelligence, mind, consciousness, self-awareness, mathematics, probability, and others. The universal concept of information and concepts derived from it can become a set of tools for formalized analysis from common conceptual positions of information processes in various scientific fields. The article presents the results of research, within the framework of which a universal information concept was obtained using a set of basic statements (axiomatic approach) and means of terminological, graphic, mathematical formalization (means of overcoming uncertainties). The information phenomenon is presented as a special result of the interaction of physical objects: the property of an object acquired during interaction contains the characteristics of another object. This approach to explaining the nature of information (attributive-transfer nature of information, ATNI), made it possible to determine the components of the process of its formation: informational impact, information carrier, essence, and semantics of information. With their help, derived concepts are defined: information environment and its characteristics; cybernetic system, the formalized model of its controlled behavior and security criteria; signs and their relationship with information; knowledge and intelligence of the cybernetic system. The applicability of the proposed approach to the analysis of processes in information environments of various natures: protein, neural, computer, has been tested.

Volunteering for the environment in China

This contribution argues that Aihwa Ong’s approach to the urban as problem-space is a powerful and underutilized conceptual tool for studying contemporary urban worlds. Drawing on fieldwork with an environmental nongovernmental organization in Dalian, China, it suggests that environmental volunteering signaled important shifts in the specification of citizen-subjects and in what counted as effective urban governance. Making sense of such urban assemblages required flexible methodological tools, and Ong’s approach of the urban as a terrain of problematization offers this. This conceptual and methodological move facilitates a middle-range theoretical approach that accounts for patterns and emergent paradigms while allowing for contingency, not forcing complex assemblages into singular or universal explanations. It is this kind of anthropology and ethnographic analysis that enables better understandings of our contemporary (global) urban worlds.

Universal non-resonant explanation to charmoniumlike structures Z_c(3885) and Z_c(4025)

Different from the usual tetraquark assignment to charged Z_c(3885) and Z_c(4025) charmoniumlike structures, in this letter we propose a universal non-resonant explanation to decode these Z_c’s, which is based on a special dynamical behavior of e^+e^-rightarrow D^{(*)}{bar{D}}^*pi . Our study shows that Z_c(3885) and Z_c(4025) are only the reflection from the P-wave charmed meson D_1(2420) involved in e^+e^-rightarrow D^{(*)}{bar{D}}^*pi . Obviously, the present work provides a unique perspective, which can be examined by future experiments like BESIII and BelleII.

“It’s The End of Bank Branching As We Know It (And We Feel Fine)”

Banks are closing branches at an unprecedented rate. In various countries up to four out of five branches have been closed, while in the US over 11,000 branches representing eleven percent of its peak stock in 2009 have been closed so far. To differentiate between various explanations for this fundamental transformation, we comprehensively study branching dynamics across 36 OECD countries, 2,744 US counties, and 84,494 US branches over up to 26 years. While technological factors explain some of the change in branch numbers across countries, counties, and individual banks, bank fragility and consolidation surprisingly determine an even larger component of branching dynamics. Interestingly, online banking capabilities play a less important role than internal processing technology. While large banks rely on technology to shed branches, small banks close branches when fragile or consolidating. No single factor by itself offers a universal explanation for the secular de-branching of banks.

Origin of Open‐Circuit Voltage Turnover in Organic Solar Cells at Low Temperature

While the efficiency of organic solar cells (OSCs) has increased considerably in recent years, there remains a significant gap between the experimental open‐circuit voltage (VOC) and the theoretical limit. Understanding the origin of this energy loss is important for the future development of OSCs, with temperature‐dependent measurement of VOC an important approach to help unlock the underlying physics. Interestingly, previous studies have observed a reduction in VOC at low temperature that has been attributed by different studies to different phenomena. To resolve this issue, herein the temperature dependence of VOC of various polymer‐based OSC systems covering a range of acceptor types (fullerene, polymer, and non‐fullerene small molecule) as well as device architectures (conventional, inverted, blend and bilayer) is studied. Across all systems studied, VOC reduction at low temperatures is associated with high parasitic leakage current, providing a universal explanation for this phenomenon in OSCs. Moreover, it is shown that leakage current, which causes complexity in the analysis and raises reliability concerns in potential applications, can be suppressed by varying device architecture, providing an effective approach for analyzing the true temperature dependence of VOC.

Rhizosphere priming effect on N mineralization in vegetable and grain crop systems

The rhizosphere priming effect (RPE) is the change in decomposition of soil organic matter caused by root activity, and it can be affected by plant species, nutrient availability, and by many other factors. Although plant and soil nitrogen (N) are likely to greatly influence RPE and vice-versa, not much is known about these relationships. There is a need for more research, particularly in N-fertilized cropping systems. We examined the RPE on soil N mineralization in a 42-day greenhouse experiment. The experiment included three vegetable crops (broccoli, lettuce, and spinach) and two grain crops (sunflower and maize) and an unplanted control. These plantings were crossed with two fertilization treatments: fertilized (100 kg ha−1 of N) and unfertilized. We evaluated NO3−, NH4+, microbial N, and mobilized N, plant biomass, plant tissue N, and %RPE by planting treatment. We found that vegetables almost completely depleted NO3− in both fertilized and unfertilized soils, whereas grain crops did not. Further, vegetables took up more than twice as much N in their aboveground tissue compared to grain crops under N fertilization. Both vegetables and crops produced RPEs on N mineralization. Nitrogen fertilization significantly enhanced the RPE for vegetable crops but not for grain crops. This result corroborates the assertion that plants with higher N concentration in their tissues tend to produce a higher RPE than plants with lower N concentration. The RPE of vegetable crops were significantly enhanced with N fertilization. Our data strongly rejects the “N-mining” hypothesis which would predict a much reduced RPE with N fertilization, and suggest that this hypothesis is not a universal explanation for the observed priming phenomena.

What breeds conspiracy antisemitism? The role of political uncontrollability and uncertainty in the belief in Jewish conspiracy.

Belief in conspiracy theories about Jews is a prototypical example of how a naïve theory can serve as a universal explanation of "all the bad things happening in society." Such a theory often arises in times of political unrest that tend to breed feelings of uncertainty in politics and a lack of control over politics. As both uncertainty (a sense-making deficit) and lack of control (an agency deficit) can relate to conspiracy-based antisemitism, this research examines which of the two processes plays a pivotal role in the belief in Jewish conspiracy. Specifically, we hypothesize that political uncontrollability, rather than political uncertainty, is a critical factor in triggering conspiracy theories about groups. In Study 1 (N = 812) we found that lack of control, but not uncertainty, in the political domain predicted belief in Jewish conspiracy, and subsequently led to increased discriminatory attitudes toward Jews. The results of longitudinal Study 2 (N = 476) revealed that only political uncontrollability led to an increase in conspiracy-related stereotypes of Jews. In Study 3 (N = 172) we found that experimental induction of political uncontrollability increased belief in Jewish, German, and Russian conspiracy, whereas induction of political uncertainty did not. Finally, Study 4 (N = 370) replicated this pattern in another cultural context with more general measures of uncontrollability and uncertainty. It was lack of personal control, rather than uncertainty, that increased belief in Jewish conspiracy-and indirectly predicted other conspiracy theories. Our findings consistently support the critical role of political uncontrollability, not uncertainty, in triggering a conspiracy theory of Jews. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Strict proof and applicable range of the quarter-wavelength model for microwave absorbers

In the research and applications on microwave absorption materials and electromagnetic absorbers, the quarter-wavelength model is widely used in describing the dependence of the reflection loss (RL) peak frequency on electromagnetic parameters and thickness, and in the preparation and design of microwave absorption materials. However, strict proof regarding this model based on transmission line theory is lacking. Moreover, a deviation between the absorption peaks obtained from the RL results and those from the quarter-wavelength model is observed in some materials, for which a universal and reasonable theoretical explanation is also lacking. Hence, in this work, we derive strict proof of the quarter-wavelength model based on transmission line theory, and develop a revised equation for this model to explain the above-mentioned deviation. The revised equation could well fit the deviations observed in our experimental results. Combined with the experimental results, we also discuss the applicable ranges for the quarter-wavelength model and the revised equation. Moreover, the results of this work show that the appropriate value of the phase angle is effective in reducing the absorber thickness.

A Review of the Ongoing Decline of the White-Tailed Jackrabbit

The distribution and abundance of the white-tailed jackrabbit Lepus townsendii have declined significantly since 1950, continuing a trend that began in some regions of its range in the late 1800s. We reviewed museum records and the literature to evaluate the status of the white-tailed jackrabbit in each state and province in its historical range and evaluated possible reasons for its decline. Our evaluation revealed its extirpation or decline throughout much of its range, but its legal or conservation status does generally not reflect this precarious status. We note its extirpation in Missouri, Kansas and Oklahoma, and potential extirpation in British Columbia, Oregon, Illinois, and Wisconsin. We classified the white-tailed jackrabbit to be broadly extirpated in Iowa, Minnesota, Washington, Nebraska and California, and declining with local extirpations in Wyoming, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, and South Dakota. We consider it to be a relict in Ontario, and possibly declining in Alberta, Saskatchewan, North Dakota, Idaho, and Montana. We consider only Manitoba to have a possibly stable population. Determining the reasons for the species' reduced distribution is difficult, as the decline appears to be due to multiple factors, none of which provide a universal explanation. We dismissed road kills, recreational hunting, disease and parasites, and competition with black-tailed jackrabbits Lepus californicus as causes of the widespread population declines and extirpations. We concluded that habitat alterations and climate change are overriding factors, and that past depredation measures and increased predator populations have likely contributed to the decline. These hypotheses require further testing. We recommend more research on the distribution, abundance, ecology, and population dynamics of white-tailed jackrabbits, and management that includes a frank appraisal of the species' status, the potential for grassland restoration, and programs to reintroduce populations into prairie preserves and restored grasslands.

BITERNARY OPPOSITION AS AN ELEMENT OF MULTIPOLAR SOCIO-CULTURAL SYSTEM DESCRIPTION LANGUAGE IN POSTSTRUCTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY

The target of research is the structuralist and poststructuralist paradigm of describing and explaining cultural constants through binary or ternary semiotic codes. The author’s hypothesis, based on anthropological theories of V. Turner and Cl. Levi-Strauss as well as those of contemporary South American anthropologists E. V. de Castro and E. Kohn, is that socio-cultural oppositions must be considered not as binary but as ternary ones. The main aim is to trace the influence of structuralism and poststructuralism on the construction of binary, ternary, tetrary schemes of coordination and subordination of elements of complex «neuro»-systems in Ethnology and Social Anthropology. The originality of the study lies, first, in clarification of the formal components of binarism and its derivatives (such as «monodualism», «monotrialism», and «bitrialism», the latter being introduced into scholarly circulation for the first time) as an approach that claims to be a universal explanation of the existence of cultural constants, and, secondly, in author’s suggestion to replace the discrete horizontal and vertical planar projections of the «primitive ontology», produced by binary and ternary oppositions, with the one integrating them into three, namely tridimensional, «bitriplet». Conclusion: in social sciences logical binarism of structuralism together with post-structuralism were replaced by tetrary, monodual, bitriple semiotic schemes with a large number of poles and fractional scale divisions of the states of analyzed systems that are able to capture and describe not only two-dimensional but three-dimensional statically-balanced and dynamically-non-balanced states of complex metaphysical, mytho-ritual, and social systems.

A Review of the Ongoing Decline of the White-Tailed Jackrabbit

Abstract The distribution and abundance of the white-tailed jackrabbit Lepus townsendii have declined significantly since 1950, continuing a trend that began in some regions of its range in the late 1800s. We reviewed museum records and the literature to evaluate the status of the white-tailed jackrabbit in each state and province in its historical range and evaluated possible reasons for its decline. Our evaluation revealed its extirpation or decline throughout much of its range, but its legal or conservation status does generally not reflect this precarious status. We note its extirpation in Missouri, Kansas and Oklahoma, and potential extirpation in British Columbia, Oregon, Illinois, and Wisconsin. We classified the white-tailed jackrabbit to be broadly extirpated in Iowa, Minnesota, Washington, Nebraska and California, and declining with local extirpations in Wyoming, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, and South Dakota. We consider it to be a relict in Ontario, and possibly declining in Alberta, Saskatchewan, North Dakota, Idaho, and Montana. We consider only Manitoba to have a possibly stable population. Determining the reasons for the species' reduced distribution is difficult, as the decline appears to be due to multiple factors, none of which provide a universal explanation. We dismissed road kills, recreational hunting, disease and parasites, and competition with black-tailed jackrabbits Lepus californicus as causes of the widespread population declines and extirpations. We concluded that habitat alterations and climate change are overriding factors, and that past depredation measures and increased predator populations have likely contributed to the decline. These hypotheses require further testing. We recommend more research on the distribution, abundance, ecology, and population dynamics of white-tailed jackrabbits, and management that includes a frank appraisal of the species' status, the potential for grassland restoration, and programs to reintroduce populations into prairie preserves and restored grasslands.

Cosmic inflation without inflaton

We propose a novel explanation for universe’s inflationary period. We argue that when the Einstein–Hilbert action is supplemented by an infinite tower of higher-curvature terms — selected order by order by the criterium that they give rise to a well-posed cosmological evolution — the usual Big Bang characteristic of Einstein gravity is replaced by a singularity-free period of exponential growth of the scale factor, which is gracefully connected with standard late-time [Formula: see text]CDM cosmology. No inflaton or any additional fields besides the metric are required.