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How does airway surface liquid composition vary in different pulmonary diseases, and how can we use this knowledge to model microbial infections?
Get PDFGrowth environment greatly alters many facets of pathogen physiology, including pathogenesis and antimicrobial tolerance. The importance of host-mimicking environments for attaining an accurate picture of pathogen behaviour is widely recognised. Whilst this recognition has translated into the extensive development of artificial cystic fibrosis (CF) sputum medium, attempts to mimic the growth environment in other respiratory disease states have been completely neglected. The composition of the airway surface liquid (ASL) in different pulmonary diseases is far less well characterised than CF sputum, making it very difficult for researchers to model these infection environments. In this review, we discuss the components of human ASL, how different lung pathologies affect ASL composition, and how different pathogens interact with these components. This will provide researchers interested in mimicking different respiratory environments with the information necessary to design a host-mimicking medium, allowing for better understanding of how to treat pathogens causing infection in these environments
Resilience : conceptualisations and challenges for effective heatwave public health planning
Get PDFObjectives
This article examines diverse perspectives on heatwave resilience in public health planning, interviewing stakeholders from various sectors. It identifies challenges, including operational, political, economic, and cultural aspects, hindering effective strategies. The study advocates for a holistic approach to heatwave resilience, emphasising interdisciplinary research and collaboration for targeted interventions. Enhancing resilience is crucial to mitigating adverse health impacts and safeguarding vulnerable populations during heatwaves.
Conceptualisations of resilience related to heatwave public health planning and heatwave resilience vary significantly. There is a need to unveil the multifaceted nature of resilience in the context of heatwaves and identify key challenges that hinder effective public health planning efforts.
Study design
Qualitative study to explore key stakeholders' conceptualisations of resilience and highlight challenges and opportunities needed for greater heatwave resilience and public health planning.
Methods
Interviews were conducted with a diverse group of key stakeholders involved in local, regional, and national heatwave planning, academics, civil sector and private sector representatives.
Results
The findings of this study highlight diverse conceptualisations of resilience. Conceptualisations of resilience mainly differ on the following: ‘whom’; ‘what’; ‘how’; ‘when’; and ‘why’. This analysis shows that the concept of resilience is well understood but has different functions. The analysis of challenges revealed several key problems, such as operational and technical; political and governance; organisational and institutional; economic; linguistic; cultural, social, and behavioural; and communication, information, and awareness. These significantly hinder effective heatwave public health planning strategies.
Conclusions
The study emphasises the need for a holistic and integrated approach to heatwave resilience. Addressing these challenges is crucial for enhancing heatwave public health planning. This study provides valuable insights into the complexities of heatwave resilience, offering guidance for different sectors of society to develop targeted interventions and strategies. The development of new resilience interdisciplinary and intersectoral research, practice, and governance will prove crucial to ongoing efforts to strengthen national heatwave resilience public health planning. By fostering resilience, societies can mitigate the adverse impacts of heatwaves and safeguard the health and well-being of vulnerable populations
Marcus on forms of judgment and the theoretical orientation of the mind
Get PDFIn Belief, Inference, and the Self-Conscious Mind (BISCM), Eric Marcus analyses and responds to a core set of puzzles concerning belief and inference. Most centrally on offer are: an explanation of non-evidential/non-observational doxastic self-knowledge, an explanation of the unintelligibility of Moore-Paradoxical statements, an account of inference (built on an interpretation of the ‘Taking Condition’) fit to solve the Lewis Carroll regress, and an account of what constitutes the unity of the rational mind.
Marcus’ answers depend on viewing beliefs as essentially self-known and expressible (through asserting their contents (“P”), or avowing them in a self-ascription (“I believe that P”)). Beliefs are also held to (metaphysically) necessarily exclude their contradictories, and (metaphysically) necessitate their implications. Or at least they do in their paradigm form; when they are ‘in mind’ (an important theoretical concept Marcus makes much use of throughout the book. In this paradigmatic form, Marcus terms them judgments.
A significant achievement of BISCM is in how, despite the strength of these and other core commitments (theses variously acknowledged to be “very strong”, “wildly unpopular”, and “singularly anachronistic”, Marcus remains utterly clear-eyed about the need to pass the plausibility test. Nowhere, for example, does he lose sight of the fact that we are “distinctively liable to irrationality”, including to self-deception (which is analysed in terms of both belief and the doxastic self-knowledge which essentially accompanies it on Marcus’ view, being ‘out of mind’). A second, and related strength is in the connections Marcus traces between both expressive and rational mental capacities. This is relatively rare in many of the literatures Marcus is engaging with, especially in the first half of the book. Marcus (building on earlier work) shows how such a synthesis can bear serious fruit, not least in his excellent analysis of Moore-Paradoxical unintelligibility.
There is a lot one could say about what is exciting and valuable about each element of Marcus’ discussion. And inevitably for a book so bold and full of riches, there is also a lot one might question about these elements. But as Marcus emphasises, what is on offer is “… not a collection of discrete solutions to putatively separate problems [but] a unified conception of the mind in its theoretical orientation”. And what I want to press him on is a big-picture question: what are the boundaries, and what is the internal structure, of the mind's ‘theoretical’ orientation? For, for all the important and detailed work throughout the book, in which a general conception of believing is suggested, tested, refined, and applied, I don't yet have a stable sense of Marcus’ answers to these questions
Watching it motivates me to become stronger : virtual influencers' impact on consumer self-improvement product preferences
No full textWe explore the effectiveness of virtual influencers in promoting self-improvement products. Four studies demonstrate that compared with human influencers, virtual influencers can increase consumers’ self-improvement product preferences because of the realistic threats depicted by virtual influences. Moreover, this effect weakens or disappears when consumers and influencers are in a cooperative relationship, or when consumers are self-affirmed. By innovatively exploring virtual influencers’ impact on consumers’ perceptions of realistic threats, we enrich the antecedents of self-improvement product preferences, and provide implications for research and marketing practices
Surface phase diagrams from nested sampling
No full textStudies in atomic-scale modeling of surface phase equilibria often focus on temperatures near zero Kelvin due to the challenges in calculating the free energy of surfaces at finite temperatures. The Bayesian-inference-based nested sampling (NS) algorithm allows for modeling phase equilibria at arbitrary temperatures by directly and efficiently calculating the partition function, whose relationship with free energy is well known. This work extends NS to calculate adsorbate phase diagrams, incorporating all relevant configurational contributions to the free energy. We apply NS to the adsorption of Lennard-Jones (LJ) gas particles on low-index and vicinal LJ solid surfaces and construct the canonical partition function from these recorded energies to calculate ensemble averages of thermodynamic properties, such as the constant-volume heat capacity and order parameters that characterize the structure of adsorbate phases. Key results include determining the nature of phase transitions of adsorbed LJ particles on flat and stepped LJ surfaces, which typically feature an enthalpy-driven condensation at higher temperatures and an entropy-driven reordering process at lower temperatures, and the effect of surface geometry on the presence of triple points in the phase diagrams. Overall, we demonstrate the ability and potential of NS for surface modeling
A Commentary on Ovid, Remedia Amoris
No full textThe Ovidian Renaissance seems to have left the Remedia Amoris behind. The poem has remained marginal, read either as a reversal of the Ars Amatoria's teaching that brings the world of Ovidian elegy to a banal end, or as an over-determined supplement to the Ars which ironically fails in its ostensible aim of 'curing' the dissatisfied lover. While recent work has explored how the poem functions not just as a palinode to, but also as a continuation of, the Ars, the critical status quo continues to present it as a minor appendage rather than as an important chapter in Ovid's project as a poet of desire. Victoria Rimell's commentary resets critical perspectives by reading the Remedia as distinctive and original, and as a pivotal text within Ovid's oeuvre as a whole. In her immersive, creatively interpretative guide to the poem, the Remedia emerges as an intricate work that interacts with medical texts, works on rhetoric, law, magic and ritual, philosophical thinking about self-discipline, the irrational, consolation and therapy for the soul, as well as with Greco-Roman satire, lyric, epigram, and traditions of didactic and erotodidactic verse. The poem, Rimell argues, is a key node in Ovid's development of a poetics of paradox, reversibility, and auto-immunity
On an apparently innocuous difference in two versions of Gini’s coefficient of inequality : a symposium
No full textThe Gini coefficient is a leading measure of inequality and is widely employed in the social sciences as a summary statistic for income or wealth distributions. In this symposium we combine three contributions – presenting a conversation, really – about the foundations of the Gini coefficient. The differences, expressed within the boundaries of the congenial esteem that we have for one another, are centred around an appropriate formula for the Gini. To the immediate query as to why we simply do not use Gini’s own formula and conclude the matter with that, there are two responses. Firstly, Gini himself proposed no fewer than thirteen versions of his measure, rendering that approach inconclusive. Less flippantly, this discussion is not so much about the choice of a specific formula. Rather, it is about what we are trying to capture when measuring inequality and what the appropriate role of a particular philosophical axiom, one that is often involved in inequality measurement – the population principle, is in this context
Book Review of Polygamy, policy and postcolonialism in English marriage law; a critical feminist analysis by Naqvi, Z. B.
No full textZainab Naqvi’s exploration of polygamy makes a significant contribution to an issue largely overlooked in contemporary literature on the treatment of diverse forms of marriage within English law. Drawing on new empirical data and case law analysis, Naqvi delves into the intersections between postcolonialism and human rights within the context of polygamous marriages. She critiques the treatment of women in such marriages under English law, situating this treatment effectively and powerfully within imperialist and orientalist discourses