Daily rhythms are a ubiquitous feature of living systems. Generally, these rhythms are not just passive consequences of cyclic fluctuations in the environment, but instead originate within the organism. In mammals, including humans, the master pacemaker controlling 24‐hour rhythms is localized in the suprachiasmatic nuclei of the hypothalamus. This circadian clock is responsible for the temporal organization of a wide variety of functions, ranging from sleep and food intake, to physiological measures such as body temperature, heart rate and hormone release. (...) The retinal circadian clock was the first extra‐SCN circadian oscillator to be discovered in mammals and several studies have now demonstrated that many of the physiological, cellular and molecular rhythms that are present within the retina are under the control of a retinal circadian clock, or more likely a network of hierarchically organized circadian clocks that are present within this tissue. BioEssays 30:624–633, 2008. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to argue that the hybrid formalism fits naturally in the context of David Lewis’s counterfactual logic and that its introduction into this framework is desirable. This hybridization enables us to regard the inference “The pig is Mary; Mary is pregnant; therefore the pig is pregnant” as a process of updating local information (which depends on the given situation) by using global information (independent of the situation). Our hybridization also has the following technical advantages: (i) (...) it preserves the completeness and decidability of Lewis’s logic; (ii) it allows us to characterize the Limit Assumption as a proof-rule with some side-conditions; and (iii) it enables us to establish a general Kripke completeness result by using the proof-rule corresponding to the Limit Assumption. Keywords Counterfactual logic - David Lewis - Contextually definite description - Hybrid logic - Arthur Prior - The limit assumption - Strong completeness - Decidability - Bisimulation - Pure completeness. (shrink)

Pierre Gassendi is widely known as a reviver of Epicurean atomism. But he was also regarded as an accomplished astronomer by his contemporaries. Along with the life-long observational pursuits, Gassendi developed his theories of the causes underlying celestial motions. In elaborating them, he absorbed seveal ideas coming from the astronomy of Johannes Kepler. Moreover, Gassendi went further to incorporate some theological principles from the Keplerian cosmology, especially the idea that God is a Geometer. The present paper thus explores Kepler's influence (...) on the philosophy of Gassendi in both astronomical and theological spheres. (shrink)

One of the problems we face in many-valued logic is the difficulty of capturing the intuitive meaning of the connectives introduced through truth tables. At the same time, however, some logics have nice ways to capture the intended meaning of connectives easily, such as four-valued logic studied by Belnap and Dunn. Inspired by Dunn’s discovery, we first describe a mechanical procedure, in expansions of Belnap-Dunn logic, to obtain truth conditions in terms of the behavior of the Truth and the False, (...) which gives us intuitive readings of connectives, out of truth tables. Then, we revisit the notion of functional completeness, which is one of the key notions in many-valued logic, in view of Dunn’s idea. More concretely, we introduce a generalized notion of functional completeness which naturally arises in the spirit of Dunn’s idea, and prove some fundamental results corresponding to the classical results proved by Post and Słupecki. (shrink)

Researchers typically use the “big five” traits as a standard way to describe personality. Evaluation of personality is generally conducted using self-report questionnaires that require participants to respond to a large number of test items. To minimize the burden on participants, this paper proposes an alternative method of estimating multidimensional personality traits from only a single word. We constructed a system that can convert a sound-symbolic word that intuitively expresses personality traits into information expressed by 50 personality-related adjective pairs. This (...) system can obtain information equivalent to the adjective scales using only a single word instead of asking many direct questions. To achieve this, we focused on SSWs in Japanese that have the association between linguistic sounds and meanings and express diverse and complex aspects of personality traits. We evaluated the prediction accuracy of the system and found that the multiple correlation coefficients for 48 personality-related adjective pairs exceeded 0.75, indicating that the model could explain more than half of the variations in the data. In addition, we conducted an evaluation experiment in which participants rated the appropriateness of the system output using a seven-point scale. The average score for 50 personality-related adjective pairs was 1.25. Thus, we believe that this system can contribute to the field of personality computing, particularly in terms of personality evaluation and communication. (shrink)

Genome maintenance requires various nucleoid-associated factors in prokaryotes. Among them, the SMC protein has been thought to play a static role in the organization and segregation of the chromosome during cell division. However, recent studies have shown that the bacterial SMC is required to align left and right arms of the emerging chromosome and that the protein dynamically travels from origin to Ter region. A rod form of the SMC complex mediates DNA bridging and has been recognized as a machinery (...) responsible for DNA loop extrusion, like eukaryotic condensin or cohesin complexes, which act as chromosome organizers. Attention is now turning to how the prototype of the complex is loaded on the entry site and translocated on chromosomal DNA, explaining its overall conformational changes at atomic levels. Here, we review and highlight recent findings concerning the prokaryotic SMC complex and discuss possible mechanisms from the viewpoint of protein architecture. Recent studies show dynamic movements of the prokaryotic SMC protein complex: initial loading, translocation on DNA for bacterial chromosome organization. The recent structural models of the protein also provide a new vision for the structure-function relationship. (shrink)

This paper deals with two main topics: One is a semantical investigation for a bimodal language with a modal operator \blacksquare associated with the intersection of the accessibility relation R and the inequality ≠. The other is a generalization of some of the former results to general extended languages with modal operators. First, for our language L\sb{\square\blacksquare}, we prove that Segerberg's theorem (equivalence between finite frame property and finite model property) fails and establish both van Benthem-style and Goldblatt-Thomason-style characterizations. We (...) extract the notion of \blacksquare-realizer (a generalization of bulldozing) as an essence from the proofs of our results. Second, we generalize the notion of \blacksquare-realizer and prove quite general versions of these semantical characterization results. The known and previously unknown characterization results for almost all of the languages extended with modal operators already proposed will be immediate corollaries. (shrink)

正しいから証明できるのか、証明できるから正しいのか。数学にとって証明とは何か、正しさとは何なのかは数学基礎論の根本的な問題である。様相論理を軸とした、証明と真理に関わる数学基礎論の古典的な結果から最先 端の議論までを解説した。.

We develop intuitionistic public announcement logic over intuitionistic \({\textbf{K}}\), \({{\textbf{K}}}{{\textbf{T}}}\), \({{\textbf{K}}}{{\textbf{4}}}\), and \({{\textbf{S}}}{{\textbf{4}}}\) with distributed knowledge. We reveal that a recursion axiom for the distributed knowledge is _not_ valid for a frame class discussed in [ 12 ] but valid for the restricted frame class introduced in [ 20, 26 ]. The semantic completeness of the static logics for this restricted frame class is established via the concept of pseudo-model.

In this paper, we discuss uniform versions of some axioms of second order arithmetic in the context of higher order arithmetic. We prove that uniform versions of weak weak König's lemma WWKL and Σ01 separation are equivalent to over a suitable base theory of higher order arithmetic, where is the assertion that there exists Φ2 such that Φf1 = 0 if and only if ∃x0 for all f. We also prove that uniform versions of some well-known theorems are equivalent to (...) or the axiom of the existence of the Suslin operator. (shrink)

Self-determination is a central concept in the field of bioethics and the most critical decision among the myriad of decisions concerning medical care is the decision to choose to die; “self-determination of death.” The purpose of this paper is to clarify the basic positions on self-determination of death held by present Japanese people and we tentatively sorted these positions into 10 arguments. We discuss the problems and implications of these positions revealed within our present review and conclude that a society (...) needs to deny unnecessary intrusion and tolerance for different views might be a keyword in our oncoming society. (shrink)

The inositol phosphate metabolism network has been found to be much more complex than previously thought, as more and more inositol phosphates and their metabolizing enzymes have been discovered. Some of the inositol phosphates have been shown to have biological activities, but little is known about their signal transduction mechanisms except for that of inositol 1,4,5‐trisphosphate. The recent discovery, however, of a number of binding proteins for inositol high polyphosphate [inositol 1,3,4,5‐tetrakisphosphate (IP4), inositol 1,3,4,5,6‐pentakisphosphate, or inositol hexakisphosphate] enables us to (...) speculate on the physiological function of these compounds. In this article we focus on two major issues: (1) the roles of inositol high polyphosphates in vesicular trafficking, especially exocytosis, and (2) pleckstrin homology domaincontaining IP4 binding proteins involved in the Ras signaling pathway. (shrink)

The discipline of nursing has long maintained that is has a unique contribution to make within the health care arena. This assertion of uniqueness lies in great part in the discipline's claim to a distinct body of knowledge. Nursing knowledge is characterized by diverse and multiple forms of knowing and underpins the work of all nurses, regardless of field of practice. Unfortunately, it has been challenging for the discipline to take full ownership of its epistemological diversity, largely due to factors (...) such as competing worldviews, and ideological and binary positioning. A philosophical middle ground stance is proposed as a way for the discipline to contemplate, discuss and develop nursing knowledge; a middle space that provides the freedom to consider competing worldviews while still allowing for the discipline to fully express itself in all of its epistemological diversity. In being able to enact its multiple forms of knowledge in a creative and open space that is open to different ideas and worldviews, not only can nursing take full ownership of its practice and its unique knowledge, it can also demonstrate how best to navigate an increasingly polarized world. In a world that is increasingly fixated on binary solutions and dualistic points of view, it is time for nursing to celebrate its epistemological diversity. (shrink)

In this paper, we show within ${\mathsf{RCA}_0}$ that both the Jordan curve theorem and the Schönflies theorem are equivalent to weak König’s lemma. Within ${\mathsf {WKL}_0}$ , we prove the Jordan curve theorem using an argument of non-standard analysis based on the fact that every countable non-standard model of ${\mathsf {WKL}_0}$ has a proper initial part that is isomorphic to itself (Tanaka in Math Logic Q 43:396–400, 1997).