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‘The Penny Drops’: investigating insight through the medium of cryptic crosswords
Get PDFA new protocol for eliciting insight (’Aha!’/Eureka) moments is proposed, involving the solving of British-style cryptic crosswords. The mechanics of cryptic crossword clues are briefly explained, and the process is set into the insight literature, with parallels being drawn between several different types of cryptic crossword clues and other insight-triggering problems such as magic,jokes, anagrams, rebus and remote association puzzles (RAT), as well as ‘classic’ thematic or spatial challenges. We have evidence from a previous survey of cryptic crossword solvers that the ‘Aha!’ moment is the most important driver of continued participation in this hobby, suggesting that the positive emotional ‘payback’ has an energizing effect on a participant’s motivation to continue solving.
Given the success with which a good quality cryptic crossword elicits ‘Aha!’ moments, cryptics should prove highly valuable in exploring insight under lab conditions. We argue that the crossword paradigm overcomes many of the issues which beset other insight problems: for example, solution rates of cryptic crossword clues are high; new material can easily be commissioned,leading to a limitless pool of test items; and each puzzle contains clues resembling a wide variety of insight problem types, permitting a comparison of heterogeneous solving mechanisms within the same medium. Uniquely among insight problems,
considerations of expertise also come into play, allowing us to explore how crossword solving experts handle the deliberate misdirection of the cryptic clue more effectively than non-expert, but equally experienced, peers.
Many have debated whether there is such a thing as an ‘insight problem’ per se: typically, problems can be solved with or without insight, depending on the context. We argue that the same is true for cryptic crosswords, and that the key to the successful triggering of insight may lie in both the difficulty of the challenge and the degree to which misdirection has been used. Future research is outlined which explores the specific mechanisms of clue difficulty. This opens the way to an exploration of potential links between solving constraints and the experiencing of the ‘Aha!’ moment, which may shed light on the cognitive processes involved in insight solution
N-Leucinyl benzenesulfonamides as structurally simplified leucyl-tRNA synthetase inhibitors
Get PDFN-Leucinyl benzenesulfonamides have been discovered as a novel class of potent inhibitors of E. coli leucyl-tRNA synthetase. The binding of inhibitors to the enzyme was measured by using isothermal titration calorimetry. This provided information on enthalpy and entropy contributions to binding, which, together with docking studies, were used for structure–activity relationship analysis. Enzymatic assays revealed that N-leucinyl benzenesulfonamides display remarkable selectivity for E. coli leucyl-tRNA synthetase compared to S. aureus and human orthologues. The simplest analogue of the series, N-leucinyl benzenesulfonamide (R = H), showed the highest affinity against E. coli leucyl-tRNA synthetase and also exhibited antibacterial activity against Gram-negative pathogens (the best MIC = 8 μg/mL, E. coli ATCC 25922), which renders it as a promising template for antibacterial drug discovery
The Effect of Control Variables on the Saving Motives of the Pomak Household
No full textPeople have many different reasons for saving money for short or long time. The purpose of this
study is to investigate whether age, gender, educational level, children’s presence and monthly income are
variables affecting the saving motives of Pomak households. It was found that age and gender were
significant multivariate factors influencing the saving motives. Furthermore, educational level was found to
have a moderator effect on the impact of gender on the safety and self-esteem motives. These results may be
useful in designing public policies to encourage increases in household saving rates by emphasizing saving
for more personal desires, besides a precautionary or retirement saving purpose
Traditional Medicine: The Case for it's Inclusion in Sustainable Development. No One Should be Left Behind
Get PDFThis research takes an interdisciplinary approach to examine how developing and least-developed countries can advance considerably towards achieving the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Successful collective action for achieving this Agenda is dependent on the realisation of Goal 3, which aims to ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages (without leaving anyone behind) by eradicating the epidemics of malaria, tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS and other chronic communicable and noncommunicable diseases by 2030.
The Agenda aims to achieve this by promoting universal health coverage and access to affordable essential medicines for these diseases that predominantly impact developing and least-developed countries through (a) the negotiation of a binding convention on drug research and development (R&D) that prioritises the needs of developing and least-developed countries, and delinks the cost of R&D from the end prices of medicines; and (b) the reinforcement of the full use by developing and least-developed countries of the flexibilities contained in the Agreement on the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights 1994 (TRIPS flexibilities).
To achieve the primary objective of progress towards sustainable development by 2030 in developing and least-developed countries, this research has four ancillary objectives. First, it critically assesses the effectiveness of the strategy of utilising TRIPS flexibilities and negotiating a convention on drug R&D in promoting universal health coverage and delivering timely access to medicines in developing and least-developed countries by 2030. Secondly, it examines whether traditional medicine can contribute to achieving sustainable development by promoting universal health coverage and providing treatments for malaria, tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS. Thirdly, it determines whether there are challenges to using traditional medicine for health care and if so, proffers solutions. Fourthly and intimately connected with the latter, it considers how traditional medicine can be appropriately integrated into the health systems of developing and least-developed countries.
Essentially, this research argues that relying on the use of TRIPS flexibilities by developing and least-developed countries to promote access to medicines is problematic and that there are great complexity and uncertainty surrounding the conclusion of a binding convention on drug R&D in time for meeting the 2030 date for global progress towards sustainable development. The research finds that traditional medicine has immense potential to contribute towards attaining sustainable development by promoting universal health coverage and access to affordable medicines, and on this note, proposes its integration into the national healthcare systems of developing and least-developed countries as a complementary tool to the use of TRIPS flexibilities and (probably) a convention on drug R&D. It concludes that there is need for developing and least-developed countries to formulate national policies on traditional medicine; regulate
traditional medicine practices and therapies; educate and licence traditional medicine practitioners; and enact domestic legislation for the conservation of biological diversity and sustainable use of its components, as well as for the protection of traditional medical knowledge and the fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising from its utilisation with indigenous and local communities in order to appropriately exploit traditional medicine's potential for sustainable development
‘Humming-tops’ and ‘Steampunk synergies’: Dickens’s Journalism and Non-Fiction since the turn of the Twenty-First Century
Get PDFThis article opens a special edition of the journal 'Nineteenth-Century Prose' dedicated to the non-fiction of Charles Dickens, in particular his work as a writer for magazines and periodicals, and as an editor, responsable for the 'humming-top' of a weekly magazine, for over twenty years (1850-70). It offers a review of the field, outlining a critical history of Dickens's journalism since the late 1990s, explaining, analysing and critiquing its shape and contours. It concludes with a review of the digital manifestations of interest in this side of Dickens's output, which seek to establish 'steampunk synergies' between the technological revolutions of the mid-Victorian era and those of our own. The Bibliography serves as a finding list for future researchers in this area
THE ROLE, INDEPENDENCE AND ACCOUNTABILITY OF THE AUDITOR GENERAL: A COMPARATIVE CONSTITUTIONAL ANALYSIS
Get PDFThe Auditor General plays a key role in the constitutional framework that is designed to support good governance. This article critically reviews the constitutional position of the Auditor General. It assesses the extent to which, in practice, office-holders enjoy the necessary individual and institutional independence and security of tenure to enable them to carry out their constitutional mandate, especially in the face of efforts by some political leaders and senior public officials (‘politically exposed persons’ (PEPs)) to abuse their position through acts of corruption and misuse of public office. It also explores the effectiveness of the support and accountability mechanisms for Auditors General. In doing so, the article reviews the position of the Auditor General in the constitutions of a number of Anglophone African states
‘Loss of self-control’: the cultural lag of sexual infidelity and the transformative promise of the fear defence
Get PDFTopological Data Analysis as Image Steganalysis Technique
No full textImage Steganography is the technique of hiding sensitive data (secrete message) inside cover images in a way that no suspicion occurs to attackers, while steganalysis is the technique of detecting the embedded data by unauthorized persons. As a first step of detecting hidden data, distinguishing between original (Images without secrete message) and Stego (Images contain secrete message) is important. In this paper we design and propose a novel scheme based on the emerging field of Topological Data Analysis (TDA) concept of persistent homological (PH) invariants (e.g. No. of connected components), associated with certain image features. Selected group of Uniform Local Binary Pattern (LBP), which is a texture descriptor, codes representing the image features used to construct a sequence of simplicial complexes (SC) from an increasing sequence of distance thresholds (T). We calculate the corresponding non-increasing sequence of homological invariants which shows the speed at which the constructed sequence of SCs terminates. This approach is sensitive to differentiate original images from stego images. We test this approach on two different embedding techniques which are Traditional Least Significant Bits (TLSB) embedding technique, spatial Universal Wavelet Relative Distortion (S-UNIWARD) and LSB-Witness embedding technique together with a large number of images chosen randomly from large database of images. Preliminary results show that the PH sequence defines a discriminates criterion for steganalysis purpose with over 90% classification accuracy
A Directional Distance Function Approach to Void the Non-Archimedean in DEA
Get PDFOver the past years, the data envelopment analysis (DEA) methodology has registered widespread use among researchers from many fields. Furthermore, it is important to note that the non-Archimedean infinitesimal, , is a key concept in DEA models. Nevertheless, it is known that some computational difficulties arise when using in DEA. In this short communication, we show how the non-Archimedean may be voided using a directional distance function approach. Thus, our approach avoids choosing a real number ( or ) as a value for or estimating the same
