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Corruption and life satisfaction: evidence from a transition survey
Get PDFFighting corruption cannot lie exclusively on appropriate formal institutions. It also requires social support and public engagement. Particularly in countries under institutional and economic transition. We embrace the recent perspective arguing that higher quality of life conditions makes people better citizens, more civically committed and more conformed to institutional rules. Accordingly, we study whether life satisfaction is a predictor of individuals’ corruption aversion across 28 former socialist countries from Eastern Europe and Central Asia. We use data from the third wave of the Life in Transition Survey (2015-2016). 2SLS estimations suggest that individuals reporting higher scores of life satisfaction are more averse to corruption. Our results are robust to a series of sensitivity analyses. Additionally, we estimate predicted values of corruption aversion for different levels of institutional trust across low and high life satisfaction groups. We find that when institutional trust is very low, its impact on corruption aversion does not differ between life satisfaction groups. As institutional trust increases so does corruption aversion and this occurs even more amongst the group of respondents with high life satisfaction
Neural and cognitive underpinnings of counterintuitive science and maths reasoning in adolescence
Get PDFReasoning about counterintuitive concepts in science and maths is thought to require suppressing naïve theories, prior knowledge or misleading perceptual cues through inhibitory control. Neuroimaging research has shown recruitment of prefrontal cortex regions during counterintuitive reasoning, which has been interpreted as evidence of inhibitory control processes. However, the results are inconsistent across studies and have not been directly compared to behaviour or brain activity during inhibitory control tasks. In this functional magnetic resonance imaging study, 34 adolescents (aged 11-15 years) answered science and maths problems and completed response inhibition tasks (simple and complex go/no-go) and an interference control task (numerical Stroop). Increased blood-oxygen level dependent (BOLD) signal was observed in parietal (Brodmann area (BA) 40) and prefrontal (BA 8, 45/47) cortex regions in counterintuitive problems compared to control problems, where no counterintuitive reasoning was required, and in two parietal clusters when comparing correct counterintuitive reasoning to giving the incorrect intuitive response. There was partial overlap between increases in BOLD signal in the complex response inhibition and interference control tasks and the science and maths contrasts. However, multivariate analyses suggested overlapping neural substrates in the parietal cortex only, in regions typically associated with working memory and visuospatial attentional demands rather than specific to inhibitory control. These results highlight the importance of using localiser tasks and a range of analytic approach to investigate to what extent common neural networks underlie performance of different cognitive tasks and suggests visuospatial attentional skills may support counterintuitive reasoning in science and maths
Anomalous density, sound velocity, and structure of pressure-induced amorphous quartz
Get PDFThe study of quartz and other silica systems under pressure is one of the most prolific domains of research over the past 50 years because of their applications in material science and fundamental relevance to planetary interiors. The characterization of the amorphous state is essential for the comprehension of pressure-induced amorphization of minerals, the metamorphism observed in shocked materials, and the study of melt structures under pressure. Here, we measured in situ, under static compression the density, sound velocities, and electronic structure of quartz as it passes through its pressure-induced amorphization transition. The transition pressure could be derived from the abrupt increase in density and sound velocity at 24 GPa, and from strong changes in the silicon L2,3 edge and oxygen K edge between 22 and 27 GPa observed in x-ray Raman scattering data, confirming previous results from x-ray diffraction. Above this pressure, our data show an anomalous behavior in density, sound velocity, and electronic fine structure compared to the cold compressed glass and other silica polymorphs. The pressure-induced amorphous quartz has a lower density relative to that of the compressed glass, consistent with the lower average coordination inferred from a different signature in the Si L2,3 and O K electronic absorption edges measured by x-ray Raman scattering spectroscopy. This behavior sheds light on the pressure limit of tetrahedral units in SiO2 components and the existence of polyamorphism in network-forming materials, and highlights the possibility to discriminate between different amorphous states with x-ray Raman scattering spectroscopy
From local to upper capture: the Chinese experiment of administrative courts
Get PDFFor decades, it has remained difficult for Chinese citizens to challenge government decisions through administrative litigation, as local governments control the crucial fiscal and personnel resources of the courts. In 2014, the Supreme People's Court announced the decision to allow the newly integrated railway transport courts (RTCs) to accept and hear administrative cases. Unlike the local people's courts (LPCs), the RTCs are under the direct administration of the provincial high courts. Drawing on a unique dataset of more than 238,000 first-instance judgment records between 2015 and 2019, we study whether the RTCs' incorporation into the adjudication of administrative cases has improved Chinese citizens' chances of winning their cases. Our multivariate regression analysis shows that only at the primary level are the RTCs more likely than the LPCs to side with citizens. Moreover, the primary RTCs' pro-plaintiff effect becomes statistically insignificant when the cases concerned are filed against government agencies from higher administrative levels. We also find suggestive evidence indicating provincial governments' implicit influence over the RTCs. Overall, China's experiment of administrative courts has achieved partial success. The RTCs' leverage to evade the capture by local government agencies may remain constrained given their embeddedness in the current Chinese political system
Expectation-based blindness: predictions about object categories gate awareness of focally attended objects
Get PDFSelective attention gates access to conscious awareness, resulting in surprising failures to notice clearly visible but unattended objects (“inattentional blindness”). Here, we demonstrate that expectations can have a similar effect, even for fully attended objects (“expectation-based blindness”). In three experiments, participants (N=613) were presented with rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) streams at fixation and had to identify a target object indicated by a cue. Target category was repeated for the first 19 trials but unexpectedly changed on trial 20. The probability of correct target reports on this surprise trial was substantially lower than on preceding and subsequent trials. This impairment was present for switches between target letters and digits, and also for changes between human and animal face images. In contrast, no drop in accuracy was observed for novel target objects from the same category as previous targets. These results demonstrates that predictions about object categories affect visual awareness. Objects that are task-relevant and focally attended often fail to get noticed when their category changes unexpectedly
Transfer learning and magnetic resonance imaging techniques for the deep neural network-based diagnosis of early cognitive decline and dementia
Get PDFCombining neuroimaging technologies and deep networks has gained considerable attention over the last few years. Instead of training deep networks from scratch, transfer learning methods have allowed retraining deep networks, which were already trained on massive data repositories, using a smaller dataset from a new application domain, and have demonstrated high performance in
several application areas. In the context of a diagnosis of neurodegenerative disorders, this approach can potentially lessen the dependence of the training process on large neuroimaging datasets, and reduce the length of the training, validation, and testing process on a new dataset. To this end, the paper investigates transfer learning of deep networks, which were trained on ImageNet data, for the diagnosis of dementia. The designed networks are modifications of the AlexNet and VGG16 Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) and are retrained
to classify Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI), Alzheimer's disease (AD) and normal patients using Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI) and Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) data. An empirical evaluation using DTI and MRI data from the ADNI database supports the potential of transfer learning methods in the detection of early degenerative changes in the brain. Diagnosis of AD was achieved with an accuracy of 99.75% and a 0.995 Matthews correlation coefficient (MCC) score using transfer learning of VGG models retrained on DTI scans. Early cognitive decline was predicted with an accuracy of 93.88% and an MCC equal to 0.8602 by VGG models processing MRI data. The proposed models can be used as additional tools to support a quick and efficient diagnosis of MCI, AD and other neurodegenerative disorders
Immunobiology of tubercle bacilli and prospects of immunomodulatory drugs to tackle tuberculosis (TB) and other non-tubercular mycobacterial infections
Get PDFThe COVID-19 pandemic has set back progress made on antimicrobial resistance (AMR). Without urgent re-focus, we risk slowing down drug discovery and providing treatment for drug resistant Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Unique in its immune evasion, dormancy and resuscitation, the causal pathogens of tuberculosis (TB) have demonstrated resistance to antibiotics with efflux pumps and the ability to form biofilms. Repurposing drugs is a prospective avenue for finding new anti-TB drugs. There are many advantages to discovering novel targets of an existing drug, as the pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic properties have already been established, they are cost-efficient and can be commercially accelerated for the new development. One such group of drugs are non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) that are originally known for their ability to supress the host proinflammatory responses. In addition to their anti-inflammatory properties, some NSAIDs have been discovered to have antimicrobial modes of action. Of particular interest is Carprofen, identified to inhibit the efflux mechanism and disrupt biofilm formation in mycobacteria. Due to the complexities of host-pathogens interactions in the lung microbiome, inflammatory responses must carefully be controlled alongside the in vivo actions of the prospective anti-infectives. This critical review explores the potential dual role of a selection of NSAIDs, as an anti-inflammatory and anti-tubercular adjunct to reverse the tide of antimicrobial resistance in existing treatments
Apes in the Plan: an unpublished typescript by Jonathan Lethem
Get PDFApes in the Plan is a typescript by the US novelist Jonathan Lethem, stored at the Beinecke Library at Yale University. This typescript comprises a complete unpublished novel, written c.1983-1986. Part I of the present article describes this text, identifies key precursors, explains its likely aesthetic sources and clarifies its place in literary and cultural history. Part II then integrates this text into the longer narrative of Lethem’s oeuvre by highlighting and analysing specific continuities between this text and Lethem’s later, published work. The analysis thus contributes to the understanding of Lethem’s work as a whole, by emphasising the continuity of certain themes and motifs from an earlier stage than has previously been recognised. The analysis demonstrates that even as Lethem left behind Apes in the Plan as a piece of juvenilia, he also continued to work with prominent aspects of this text, including character names, science fictional features, social critique, an interest in animal life, and a heightened awareness of language. An advocate of cultural 'second use', Lethem would find a second use for some of the elements that he had first deployed in Apes in the Plan
The specter of slavery in the British Art Museum
No full textIn Pieter Wonder’s oil painting, Patrons and Lovers of Art (1830), considered to be an idealised prefiguration of London’s National Gallery, we can identify sixteen British gentlemen collectors and connoisseurs, and forty-four Old Master and British paintings which are today considered collection highlights of major art museums across Europe and North America. This essay focuses on the lives of two of Wonder’s sitters in order to better understand how transatlantic slavery is deeply ingrained in Britain’s cultural past. The painting provides a useful springboard for considering the cultural legacies of slave-ownership, highlighting the myriad connections between the brutal system of colonial slavery and the world of aesthetics and taste, and encouraging reflection about a history that has for so long remained silent. In uncovering the sources of wealth which helped to facilitate the development and lavish display of such grand collections, it becomes possible to reconsider our understanding of the history of art collecting in the early decades of the nineteenth century. The essay argues that today art museums across Europe and North America are faced with an urgent moral imperative to acknowledge and better understand the extent of their debt to transatlantic slavery
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