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Difficult gifts: gifts to and from the popes in twelfth- and thirteenth-century England
Get PDFThis article explores how gifts, and stories about gifts, to and from the popes were treated and discussed in twelfth- and thirteenth-century England. The first part explores the intellectual context in which these stories were written, namely scriptural and classical ideas about the gift that circulated in the period, and the practical challenges faced by the papacy. The second part explores how English clerks and aristocrats utilised these gifts and stories about them. The exchange of gifts, the article argues, presented the papacy and its partners with mutually incompatible practical and ideological pressures. Despite the efforts of skilled actors such as Pope Innocent III, these challenges could only be navigated, never resolved
Oliver Ayers, Review of Kevin McGruder, Philip Payton: The Father of Black Harlem, Chichester, NY: Columbia University Press, 2021
Get PDFSally Rooney's Sapiosexuals
Get PDFThe article argues that 'sapiosexual desire' in Rooney's fiction can be understood as a complex response to economic conditions circa 2008
A novel functional role for the classic CNS neurotransmitters, GABA, glycine, and glutamate, in the kidney: potent and opposing regulators of the renal vasculature
Get PDFThe presence of a renal GABA/glutamate system has previously been described; however, its functional significance in the kidney remains undefined. We hypothesized, given its extensive presence in the kidney, that activation of this GABA/glutamate system would elicit a vasoactive response from the renal microvessels. The functional data here demonstrate, for the first time, that activation of endogenous GABA and glutamate receptors in the kidney significantly alters microvessel diameter with important implications for influencing renal blood flow. Renal blood flow is regulated in both the renal cortical and medullary microcirculatory beds via diverse signaling pathways. GABA- and glutamate-mediated effects on renal capillaries are strikingly similar to those central to the regulation of central nervous system capillaries, that is, exposing renal tissue to physiological concentrations of GABA, glutamate, and glycine led to alterations in the way that contractile cells, pericytes, and smooth muscle cells, regulate microvessel diameter in the kidney. Since dysregulated renal blood flow is linked to chronic renal disease, alterations in the renal GABA/glutamate system, possibly through prescription drugs, could significantly impact long-term kidney function.NEW & NOTEWORTHY Functional data here offer novel insight into the vasoactive activity of the renal GABA/glutamate system. These data show that activation of endogenous GABA and glutamate receptors in the kidney significantly alters microvessel diameter. Furthermore, the results show that these antiepileptic drugs are as potentially challenging to the kidney as nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs
Silica Nanoparticles and Kaolin Clay Decorated with VO2+ in Aerobic Oxidative Destruction of BTEX Contaminants
Get PDFAugmenting colour communication in English, Greek and Thai
Get PDFThe number of colour names varies across languages. To augment colour communication between speakers of different languages, we need a multilingual method to map how we perceive colours to the words we use to describe them. We evaluate the performance of a supervised colour naming model, Rotated Split Trees (RST), trained by responses from a crowdsourced colour naming experiment in English, Greek and Thai. We assess the generalizability of the model across several colour spaces where it performed best in the CIELUV. A comparison of RST with previous computational colour naming methods using independent psychophysical data in English showed that RST achieves state-of-the-art performance for basic colour categories and identifies five additional categories (n = 16) on the surface of the Munsell system. A demonstration of the performance of RST in segmenting a synthetic image across the colour gamut into colour names in English (n = 30), Greek (n = 28) and Thai (n = 46) further supports earlier findings that speakers can identify 30-50 colour names in their native language
Inflammatory mediators act at renal pericytes to elicit contraction of vasa recta and reduce pericyte density along the kidney medullary vascular network
Get PDFIntroduction: Regardless of initiating cause, renal injury promotes a potent pro-inflammatory environment in the outer medulla and a concomitant sustained decrease in medullary blood flow (MBF). This decline in MBF is believed to be one of the critical events in the pathogenesis of acute kidney injury (AKI), yet the precise cellular mechanism underlying this are still to be fully elucidated. MBF is regulated by contractile pericyte cells that reside on the descending vasa recta (DVR) capillaries, which are the primary source of blood flow to the medulla. Methods: Using the rat and murine live kidney slice models, we investigated the acute effects of key medullary inflammatory mediators TNF-α, IL-1β, IL-33, IL-18, C3a and C5a on vasa recta pericytes, the effect of AT1-R blocker Losartan on pro-inflammatory mediator activity at vasa recta pericytes, and the effect of 4-hour sustained exposure on immunolabelled NG2+ pericytes. Results and discussion: Exposure of rat and mouse kidney slices to TNF-α, IL-18, IL-33, and C5a demonstrated a real-time pericyte-mediated constriction of DVR. When pro-inflammatory mediators were applied in the presence of Losartan the inflammatory mediator-mediated constriction that had previously been observed was significantly attenuated. When live kidney slices were exposed to inflammatory mediators for 4-h, we noted a significant reduction in the number of NG2+ positive pericytes along vasa recta capillaries in both rat and murine kidney slices. Data collected in this study demonstrate that inflammatory mediators can dysregulate pericytes to constrict DVR diameter and reduce the density of pericytes along vasa recta vessels, further diminishing the regulatory capacity of the capillary network. We postulate that preliminary findings here suggest pericytes play a role in AKI
Exploring Computer Science Students’ Perception of ChatGPT in Higher Education: A Descriptive and Correlation Study
Get PDFChatGPT is an emerging tool that can be employed in many activities including in learning/teaching in universities. Like many other tools, it has its benefits and its drawbacks. If used properly, it can improve learning, and if used irresponsibly, it can have a negative impact on learning. The aim of this research is to study how ChatGPT can be used in academia to improve teaching/learning activities. In this paper, we study students’ opinions about how the tool can be used positively in learning activities. A survey is conducted among 430 students of an MSc degree in computer science at the University of Hertfordshire, UK, and their opinions about the tool are studied. The survey tries to capture different aspects in which the tool can be employed in academia and the ways in which it can harm or help students in learning activities. The findings suggest that many students are familiar with the tool but do not regularly use it for academic purposes. Moreover, students are skeptical of its positive impacts on learning and think that universities should provide more vivid guidelines and better education on how and where the tool can be used for learning activities. The students’ feedback responses are analyzed and discussed and the authors’ opinions regarding the subject are presented. This study shows that ChatGPT can be helpful in learning/teaching activities, but better guidelines should be provided for the students in using the tool
From Collapse Theorems to Proof-Theoretic Arguments
Get PDFOn some views, we can be sure that parties to a dispute over the logic of ‘exists’ are not talking past each other if they can characterise ‘exists’ as the only monadic predicate up to logical equivalence obeying a certain set of rules of inference. Otherwise, we ought to be suspicious about the reality of their disagreement. This is what we call a proof-theoretic argument. Pace some critics, who have tried to use proof-theoretic arguments to cast doubts about the reality of disagreements about the logic of ‘exists’, we argue that proof-theoretic arguments can be deployed to establish the reality of several such disagreements. Along the way, we will also utilise this technique to establish similar results about some disagreements over the logic of identity