Melatonin, the neuro‐hormone synthesized during the night, has recently seen an unexpected extension of its functional implications toward type 2 diabetes development, visual functions, sleep disturbances, and depression. Transgenic mouse models were instrumental for the establishment of the link between melatonin and these major human diseases. Most of the actions of melatonin are mediated by two types of G protein‐coupled receptors, named MT1 and MT2, which are expressed in many different organs and tissues. Understanding the pharmacology and function of mouse (...) MT1 and MT2 receptors, including MT1/MT2 heteromers, will be of crucial importance to evaluate the relevance of these mouse models for future therapeutic developments. This review will critically discuss these aspects, and give some perspectives including the generation of new mouse models. (shrink)

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)

Staging, writing, editing – war. In the sequence of these three acts, the path of this essay unfolds. From the play La guerre de Troie n’aura pas lieu we get the idea that war is a spectral presence hovering everywhere. As difficult as it is to see, it appears inescapable. Its ambivalence questions the human gaze itself in its in-ability to see war coming, even when the signs are more than evident. The analysis of the regimes of visibility that, yesterday (...) as today, superintend the event of a conflict constitutes the point of arrival of this interrogation. (shrink)

Over the last 25 years, suicide attacks have become an alarming threat. They are a political tool which has been adopted by several organizations in Sri Lanka, Palestine and the Occupied Territories, Turkey, Chechnya, Afghanistan, Pakistan and, in particular, by the Al-Qaeda-led insurgency in Iraq in its struggle against the US and its allies. Recent analyses have traced back the use of suicide terrorism to its `strategic logic': organizations and their militants resort to suicide attacks mainly because they view this (...) form of violence as an efficient weapon for their revolutionary and nationalist campaigns. An explanation based on the paradigm of rational choice theory or instrumental rationality alone is, however, insufficient. This article suggests the importance of combining the paradigm of instrumental rationality with that of axiological rationality. Only this kind of explanation is able to clarify the crucial role played by those cultural and symbolic elements which justify and encourage the martyrdom of suicide attackers. Moreover, by adopting a multi-causal analysis of the armed organizations, their constituencies and the attackers, as well as of their interaction, the article outlines a theoretical model of the most important social mechanisms underlying the use of suicide tactics. (shrink)

The recent edition, established in 2005 by Giuseppina Matino, of the Panegyricus on Emperor Anastasius by Procopius from Gaza gives the opportunity to discuss about the ecdotical methods until now adopted for the constitutio textus of Procopian works. The errors present in the Italian translation show the complexity of the text often rich in images and figures.

L'articolo si propone di mostrare come il sermo esegetico bernardiano sia volto all'amplificazione della dimensione emotiva, amplificazione che determina un'emergenza di senso rispetto al normale livello di comunicazione: la parola, nell'ermeneutica di Bernardo, non è segno linguistico il cui significato sia univocamente coglibile dall'intelletto, ma, caricandosi della sua materialità, dilata e moltiplica retoricamente gli echi emotivi che può produrre, dischiudendo nella dimensione affettiva la sua verità. Lo stile retorico di Bernardo viene quindi analizzato attraverso l'elaborazione di una metodologia di lettura (...) che, riproducendo graficamente la struttura sintattica di alcuni passi dei Sermones super Cantica Canticorum e ispirandosi al principio guida della priorità degli affetti , consente di sottoporre a verifica l'ipotesi iniziale. (shrink)

In this paper, we report on an experiment with The Walking Dead (TWD), which is a narrative-driven adventure game with morally charged decisions set in a post-apocalyptic world filled with zombies. This study aimed to identify physiological markers of moral decisions and non-moral decisions using infrared thermal imaging (ITI). ITI is a non-invasive tool used to capture thermal variations due to blood flow in specific body regions that might be caused by sympathetic activity. Results show that moral decisions seem to (...) elicit a significant decrease in temperature in the chin region 20 seconds after participants are presented with a moral decision. However, given the small sample involved, and the lack of significance in other regions, future studies might be needed to confirm the results obtained in this work. (shrink)

This study aimed to evaluate if eye blinks can be used to discriminate players with different performance in a session of Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) Tetris. To that end, we developed a state-of-the-art method for blink extraction from EAR measures, which is robust enough to be used with data collected by a low-grade webcam such as the ones widely available on laptop computers. Our results show a significant decrease in blink rate per minute (blinks/m) during the first minute of playing (...) Tetris. After having defined 3 groups of proficiency based on in-game performance (Novices, Intermediates, and Experts) we found out that expert players display a significantly lower decrease in blinks/m compared to novices during the first minute of gameplay, which shows that Tetris players' proficiency can be detected by looking at eye blinks/m variations during the early phase of a game session. This difference in blinks/m is observed throughout the entire game session, which supports the general conclusion that proficient Tetris players have a lower decrease in blinks/m, even when playing more difficult levels. Finally, we offer some interpretations of this effect and the relationship that our results may have with the visual cognitive workload experienced during the gameplay. (shrink)

Asomatognosia designates the experience that one’s body has faded from awareness. It is typically a somaesthetic experience but may target the visual modality. Frequently associated symptoms are the loss of ownership or agency over a limb. Here, we elaborate on the rigorous nosographic classification of asomatognosia and introduce a structured interview to capture both its core symptoms and associated signs of bodily estrangement. We additionally report the case of a pure left-sided hemiasomatognosia occurring after surgical removal of a meningioma in (...) the right atrium. Despite the wide lesions of the right angular gyrus and of the temporo-parietal junction, the patient did not present visuospatial deficits or bodily awareness disorders other than hemiasomatognosia. The patient and 10 matched controls’ motor imagery was formally assessed with a limb laterality task in which they had to decide whether hands and feet presented under different angles of rotation depicted a left or a right limb. Bayesian statistics showed that patient’s reaction times were significantly impaired exclusively for the left foot and especially for mental rotations requiring somatomotor rather than visual limb representations. This was in accordance with a more enduring left-sided hemiasomatognosia for the lower limbs confined to the somesthetic modality. Our findings shed new light on motor imagery in asomatognosia and encourage the future use of the structured interview introduced here. In addition, the limb laterality task may capture phenomenological elements of a case by chronometric means. This allows a more standardized reporting of phenomenological detail and improves communication across different clinical facilities. (shrink)

Individuals differ in their ability to feel their own and others’ internal states, with those that have more autistic and less empathic traits clustering at the clinical end of the spectrum. However, when we consider semantic competence, this group could compensate with a higher capacity to imagine the meaning of words referring to emotions. This is indeed what we found when we asked people with different levels of autistic and empathic traits to rate the degree of imageability of various kinds (...) of words. But this was not the whole story. Individuals with marked autistic traits demonstrated outstanding ability to imagine theoretical concepts, i.e., concepts that are commonly grasped linguistically through their definitions. This distinctive characteristic was so pronounced that, using tree-based predictive models, it was possible to accurately predict participants’ inclination to manifest autistic traits, as well as their adherence to autistic profiles – including whether they fell above or below the diagnostic threshold – from their imageability ratings. We speculate that this quasi-perceptual ability to imagine theoretical concepts represents a specific cognitive pattern that, while hindering social interaction, may favor problem solving in abstract, non-socially related tasks. This would allow people with marked autistic traits to make use of perceptual, possibly visuo-spatial, information for “higher” cognitive processing. (shrink)

The author proposes that the anonymous letter dated May 19, 1641, which Mersenne delivered to Descartes, should be attributed to Thomas Hobbes. Although the text is known, it is usually considered not so much in itself as for Descartes’s two replies, which contain important clarifications on the proof of God’s existence. Hobbes’ hand is revealed by various thematic, conceptual, and lexical analogies and, above all, by the presence of two doctrines characteristic of his thought: 1) the denial of the existence (...) of intellectual ideas; 2) the assertion that the nature of God can only be described by the proposition “God exists”. Attribution to Hobbes of the May 19 th 1641 letter throws new light on the debate that followed Descartes’s Meditations as well as on Mersenne’s role. (shrink)

Pierre Bayle (1647–1706) is often considered one of the staunchest defenders of toleration, especially in the domain of religion. His Commentaire philosophique, published in 1686, one year after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, argued for a broad idea of toleration, to be extended with no exceptions to all sects and religions. However, his thought can hardly be reduced to an exaltation of the “rights of the conscience,” for he realized very soon that such an exaltation risks bringing forth (...) religious fanatism, which in turn is the cause of religious wars and acts of violence. Toleration, in these conditions, is only a political remedy for the sickness of the human mind. (shrink)

In this study, we predict the different levels of performance in a Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) Tetris session based on the score and the number of matches played by the players. Using the first 45 seconds of gameplay, a Random Forest Classifier was trained on the five keys used in the game obtaining a ROC_AUC score of 0.80. Further analysis revealed that the number of down keys (forced drop) and the number of left keys (left translation) are the most relevant (...) keys in this task, showing that by merely including the data from these two keys our Random Forest Classifier reached a ROC_AUC score of 0.83.We conclude that the keylogger data during the early phases of a game session can be successfully used to predict performance in longer sessions of Tetris. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Advances in Peircean Mathematics: The Colombian School ed. by Fernando ZalameaGianluca CaterinaFernando Zalamea (Ed.) Advances in Peircean Mathematics: The Colombian School Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, 2022. 212 pp. (incl. index).The volume Advances in Peircean Mathematics is an important, very much needed contribution towards a deeper understanding of the impact of Peirce's work especially in the fields of mathematics, logic, and semiotic. It fills a gap in the current (...) literature by recasting some of [End Page 373] Peirce's profound mathematical insights into a formal framework. This is a finely edited editorial project, which summarizes the work of more than two decades done by a group of scholars—the Colombian School—lead by Fernando Zalamea, a pioneer of Peirce studies, and pragmatism in general, in Latin America.The structure of the volume unfolds in three dense chapters, each corresponding to a specific mathematical context connected to various aspects of Peirce's work. Broadly speaking, in the first chapter, Gustavo Arengas proposes the theory of higher category theory as a natural framework to represent the main traits of Peirce's semiotic; in the second chapter, Francisco Vargas develops a thorough set-theoretical model of Peirce's continuum; in the third chapter, Arnold Oostra, in a truly Peircean spirit, formalizes the notion of Intuitionistic Existential Graphs, emphasizing the idea that intuitionistic logic is the most natural context to represent and understand Peirce's diagrammatic logic. The fourth and last chapter, penned by Zalamea, provides the reader with a solid summary of the main results presented in the volume along with a robust road map to navigate through the technical details of the text.Mathematics, as implied by the title of the volume, is at the core of this project, and the authors do not shy away from the complexity, details, and depth of it in order to shed light on some of the most fundamental and groundbreaking nature of Peirce's ideas. That level of rigor and formal soundness is certainly one of the strengths of the volume, although readers who may not be acquainted with at least some basic notions of category theory or with the mathematics of Peirce's work, may find some of the text a bit terse—this is not a casual reading and it does require a certain level of commitment in order to appreciate the depth of the provided insights. On the other hand, all the background material is clearly laid out, making the volume a self-contained work which can be thoroughly enjoyed by a general audience.The real upshot of recasting some of Peirce's intuitions within the fabric of formal mathematics is not only that of providing the instruments to clarify those ideas, but also that of highlighting the role that Peirce's work has been playing in the development of modern mathematics in many relevant aspects, from the very genesis of category theory—which today is widely regarded as a necessary and unifying language in several fields of the mathematical and physical sciences—to the development of non-standard analysis, just to mention a few of them.An elegant instance of such perspective is offered by Gustavo Arengas in the first chapter, where it is argued that ∞-categories can be used to model the natural order of hierarchies implicit in Peirce's conception of the basic triadic relation between sign, object, and interpreter. What, at first glance, may seem just a simple analogy, unfolds onto a methodical and enlightening analysis of Peirce's semiotic, as the author builds [End Page 374] the connections with the relevant categorical constructions in a precise manner. Most of the rest of the chapter focuses on Peirce's notions of the pragmatic and pragmaticist maxim, and the use of basic structures such as monads, limits, presheaves and sheaves as the natural environment to better convey their meaning, both from a mathematical and a philosophical perspective. The reader will find it interesting to realize that, by delving deeper into the understanding of the relational nature of category theory, a great chunk of Peirce's work can be seen as fundamentally intertwined with the apparatus and the language of modern mathematics... (shrink)

We show that a form of dependence known as G-dependence admits a very natural finite axiomatization, as well as Armstrong relations. We also give an explicit translation between functional dependence and G-dependence.

Inquisitive first-order logic, InqBQ, is a system which extends classical first-order logic with formulas expressing questions. From a mathematical point of view, formulas in this logic express properties of sets of relational structures. This paper makes two contributions to the study of this logic. First, we describe an Ehrenfeucht–Fraïssé game for InqBQ and show that it characterizes the distinguishing power of the logic. Second, we use the game to study cardinality quantifiers in the inquisitive setting. That is, we study what (...) statements and questions can be expressed in InqBQ about the number of individuals satisfying a given predicate. As special cases, we show that several variants of the question how many individuals satisfy α(x) are not expressible in InqBQ, both in the general case and in restriction to finite models. (shrink)

Classical first-order logic \ is commonly used to study logical connections between statements, that is sentences that in every context have an associated truth-value. Inquisitive first-order logic \ is a conservative extension of \ which captures not only connections between statements, but also between questions. In this paper we prove the disjunction and existence properties for \ relative to inquisitive disjunction Open image in new window and inquisitive existential quantifier \. Moreover we extend these results to several families of theories, (...) among which the one in the language of \. To this end, we initiate a model-theoretic approach to the study of \. In particular, we develop a toolkit of basic constructions in order to transform and combine models of \. (shrink)

Classical first-order logic \ is commonly used to study logical connections between statements, that is sentences that in every context have an associated truth-value. Inquisitive first-order logic \ is a conservative extension of \ which captures not only connections between statements, but also between questions. In this paper we prove the disjunction and existence properties for \ relative to inquisitive disjunction Open image in new window and inquisitive existential quantifier \. Moreover we extend these results to several families of theories, (...) among which the one in the language of \. To this end, we initiate a model-theoretic approach to the study of \. In particular, we develop a toolkit of basic constructions in order to transform and combine models of \. (shrink)

Nella conferenza su Le cinéma et la nouvelle psychologie Merleau-Ponty introduce una singolare, ma decisiva notazione sull’arte filmica, legandola alla nozione di “ritmo”. Tale nozione dà avvio a una riflessione sull’immagine e sul rapporto tra l’immagine e lo sguardo dello spettatore al cinema. Nel presente articolo, l’uso che Merleau-Ponty ne fa e il senso di questa operazione saranno letti in riferimento alla riflessione di Émile Benveniste sul ritmo e ad alcune annotazioni contenute nei corsi di Merleau-Ponty al Collège de France, (...) di qualche anno successivi alla conferenza, su Le monde sensible et le monde de l’expression e quello sulle Recherches sur l’usage littéraire du langage. Dans le texte de sa conférence sur Le cinéma et la nouvelle psychologie, Merleau-Ponty introduit une lecture, singulière mais décisive, de l’art filmique, en la rapprochant de la notion de « rythme ». Cette notion engage une réflexion sur l’image et sur le rapport entre l’image et le regard du spectateur au cinéma. Dans cet article, l’utilisation que Merleau-Ponty en fait et le sens de cette opération seront lus à partir de la réflexion d’Émile Benveniste sur le rythme et à partir de certaines notes présentes dans les cours de Merleau-Ponty au Collège de France sur Le monde sensible et le monde de l’expression et sur les Recherches sur l’usage littéraire du langage, qui suivent de quelques années la conférence.In the text of his lecture on “Film and the new psychology,” Merleau-Ponty introduces a singular and decisive reading of filmic art, approaching the notion of “rhythm.” This notion engages in a reflection on image and on the relation between the image and the gaze of the spectator at the cinema. In this article, Merleau-Ponty’s actual usage of this notion and the meaning of this operation will be read starting from the reflection of Émile Benveniste on rhythm as well as certain notes presented in Merleau-Ponty’s courses at the Collège de France on The sensible world and the world of expression and Research on the literary usages of language, that follow some years after the lecture. (shrink)

Gianluca Di Muzio develops a novel objection to theism.

Inquisitive first order logic is an extension of first order classical logic, introducing questions and studying the logical relations between questions and quantifiers. It is not known whether is recursively axiomatizable, even though an axiomatization has been found for fragments of the logic. In this paper we define the \—classical antecedent—fragment, together with an axiomatization and a proof of its strong completeness. This result extends the ones presented in the literature and introduces a new approach to study the axiomatization problem (...) for fragments of the logic. (shrink)

We prove that every quasi-Hopfian finitely presented structure _A_ has a _d_- \(\Sigma _2\) Scott sentence, and that if in addition _A_ is computable and _Aut_(_A_) satisfies a natural computable condition, then _A_ has a computable _d_- \(\Sigma _2\) Scott sentence. This unifies several known results on Scott sentences of finitely presented structures and it is used to prove that other not previously considered algebraic structures of interest have computable _d_- \(\Sigma _2\) Scott sentences. In particular, we show that every (...) right-angled Coxeter group of finite rank has a computable _d_- \(\Sigma _2\) Scott sentence, as well as any strongly rigid Coxeter group of finite rank. Finally, we show that the free projective plane of rank 4 has a computable _d_- \(\Sigma _2\) Scott sentence, thus exhibiting a natural example where the assumption of quasi-Hopfianity is used (since this structure is not Hopfian). (shrink)

Professor Latham has written a thought-provoking commentary1 on my paper about advance directives.2 I am grateful for this opportunity to integrate the debate on the moral binding nature of these manifestations of will.