1,418 research outputs found

    Cutting'aesthetic teeth' : Flannery O'Connor's habit of art

    No full text
    Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Centro de Comunicação e ExpressãoEste trabalho foi sugerido pela afirmação de Flannery O'Connor que sua "dedicação estética" nasceu através do contato com Art and Scholasticism de Jacques Maritain. O propósito foi chegar a uma interpretação do sentido da frase. Uma investigação detalhada foi feita do conteúdo de Art and Scholasticism, posteriormente contrastada com os resultados de uma pesquisa feita em seus ensaios e suas cartas, o que revelou numerosos ecos de diversos trechos constando no texto de Maritain. Três pontos principais foram escolhidos como critérios na análise do hábito artístico de O'Connor: 1) a prática de arte implica uma luta; 2) a arte somente pode ser percebida pelos sentidos; e 3) a prática de arte exige do artista a dedicação indivisa à obra nascente. O estudo conclui que, para O'Connor, o brotar da dentição estética, através da leitura de Art and Scholasticism, significou que, ao perceber na análise da natureza da arte algo com que podia concordar, ela reconheceu tanto sua própria capacidade de tornar-se uma artista literária, quanto sua vontade de assumir a tarefa de desenvolver em sua pessoa o hábito de arte

    Factor structure and psychometric properties of the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale among Chinese adolescents

    No full text
    Objectives: Resilience refers to psychological characteristics that promote effective coping and positive adaptation in adversity. This study investigated the factor structure and psychometric properties of the Chinese version of the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC) among adolescents

    PRICE-FIXING OVERCHARGES: LEGAL AND ECONOMIC EVIDENCE

    No full text
    This paper surveys hundreds of published social-science studies of private, hard-core cartels that contain 699 observations of long-run overcharges. The primary finding is that the median cartel overcharge for all types of cartels over all time periods is 25%: 19% for domestic cartels, 32% for international cartels, and 31% for all successful cartels. Thus, international cartels have historically been about 68% more effective in raising prices than domestic cartels. Cartel overcharges are skewed to the high side, pushing the mean overcharge for all types of cartels over all time periods to 42%. "Peak" cartel overcharges are typically double those of the long-run averages. These results are generally consistent with the few, more limited, previously published works that survey cartel overcharges. There is no evidence that convicted cartels are markedly less effective than unpunished ones. The results of a second survey of final verdicts in decided U.S. horizontal collusion cases, only three of which were international cartels, show an average median overcharge of 21% and an average mean overcharge of 30%. Outside the United States, 62 decisions of competition commissions cited median average overcharges of 25% and a mean of 47%. There are three significant policy implications. First, there is a view among some antitrust writers that there is little evidence that cartels raise prices significantly for a period long enough to justify the height of current U.S. cartel penalties. This survey's results, which are based upon an extraordinarily large amount of data spanning a broad swath of history of all types of private cartels, sharply contradict these views. In fact, the data suggest that U.S. penalties ought to be increased. Mean overcharges are three times as high as the level presumed by the U.S. Sentencing Commission. Surprisingly, bid rigging was no more injurious than other forms of collusion, which suggests that the USSC should amend its Guidelines that currently treat bid rigging more harshly than other forms of collusion. Second, the principal antitrust authorities abroad often base their typical or maximum fines on a 10% harm presumption. Average fines imposed since 1995 by Canada and the EU on identical cartels have been lower than U.S. government fines, yet overcharges generated by cartels discovered outside the United States are higher than North America-centered cartels. Consequently, anticartel laws and fine-setting practices abroad are in even greater need of strengthening. Third, cartels with multi-continental price effects are the most harmful type. Despite the evident increases in cartel detection rates and the size of monetary fines and penalties in the past decade, a good case can be made that current global anticartel regimes are under-deterring. While the recent worldwide trend towards the intensification of cartel penalties has been desirable, global cartels are more difficult to detect, have less fear from entry of rivals, achieve higher levels of sales and profitability, and systematically receive weaker corporate sanctions than comparable domestic cartels. Antitrust sanctions worldwide should be higher for global cartels than for other types.International Relations/Trade,

    Beta-amyloid interacts with and activates the longform phosphodiesterase PDE4D5 in neuronal cells to reduce cAMP availability

    No full text
    Inhibition of the cyclic-AMP degrading enzyme phosphodiesterase type 4 (PDE4) in the brains of animal models is protective in Alzheimer's disease (AD). We show for the first time that enzymes from the subfamily PDE4D not only colocalize with beta-amyloid (Aβ) plaques in a mouse model of AD but that Aβ directly associates with the catalytic machinery of the enzyme. Peptide mapping suggests that PDE4D is the preferential PDE4 subfamily for Aβ as it possesses a unique binding site. Intriguingly, exogenous addition of Aβ to cells overexpressing the PDE4D5 longform caused PDE4 activation and a decrease in cAMP. We suggest a novel mechanism where PDE4 longforms can be activated by Aβ, resulting in the attenuation of cAMP signalling to promote loss of cognitive function in AD

    Forward Genetic Screens in Zebrafish Identify Pre-mRNA-Processing Pathways Regulating Early T Cell Development

    No full text
    SummaryLymphocytes represent basic components of vertebrate adaptive immune systems, suggesting the utility of non-mammalian models to define the molecular basis of their development and differentiation. Our forward genetic screens in zebrafish for recessive mutations affecting early T cell development revealed several major genetic pathways. The identification of lineage-specific transcription factors and specific components of cytokine signaling and DNA replication and/or repair pathways known from studies of immunocompromised mammals provided an evolutionary cross-validation of the screen design. Unexpectedly, however, genes encoding proteins required for pre-mRNA processing were enriched in the collection of mutants identified here. In both zebrafish and mice, deficiency of the splice regulator TNPO3 impairs intrathymic T cell differentiation, illustrating the evolutionarily conserved and cell-type-specific functions of certain pre-mRNA-processing factors for T cell development

    Hyper-code revisited : unifying program source, executable and data

    No full text
    The technique of hyper-programming allows program representations held in a persistent store to contain embedded links to persistent code and data. In 1994, Connor et al proposed extending this to hyper-code, in which program source, executable code and data are all represented to the user in exactly the same form. Here we explore the concept of hyper-code in greater detail and present a set of abstract language-independent operations on which various concrete systems can be based. These operations (explode, implode, evaluate, root and edit) are provided by a single user interface tool that subsumes the functions of both an object browser and a program editor. We then describe a particular implementation using PJama (persistent Java) and examine the impact of several language features on the resulting system

    Geometric and information-theoretic approaches to high-dimensional search

    No full text
    This thesis comprises a brief introduction along with a presentation of ten selected research papers, the primary author of each being the candidate
    corecore