Axons are the longest cellular structure reaching over a meter in the case of human motor axons. They have a relatively small diameter and contain several cytoskeletal elements that mediate both material and information exchange within neurons. Recently, a novel type of axonal plasticity, termed axonal radial contractility, has been unveiled. It is represented by dynamic and transient diameter changes of the axon shaft to accommodate the passages of large organelles. Mechanisms underpinning this plasticity are not fully understood. (...) Here, we first summarised recent evidence of the functional relevance for axon radial contractility, then discussed the underlying structural basis, reviewing nanoscopic evidence of the subtle changes. Two models are proposed to explain how actomyosin rings are organised. Possible roles of non‐muscle myosin II (NM‐II) in axon degeneration are discussed. Finally, we discuss the concept of periodic functional nanodomains, which could sense extracellular cues and coordinate the axonal responses. Also see the video abstract here: https://youtu.be/ojCnrJ8RCRc. (shrink)

The Liver kinase B1 with its downstream target AMP activated protein kinase (LKB1‐AMPK), and the key nutrient sensor mammalian target of rapamycin complex 1 (mTORC1) form two signaling systems that coordinate metabolic and cellular activity with changes in the environment in order to preserve homeostasis. For example, nutritional fluctuations rapidly feed back on these signaling systems and thereby affect cell‐specific functions. Recent studies have started to reveal important roles of these strategic metabolic regulators in Schwann cells for the trophic support (...) and myelination of axons. Because aberrant intermediate metabolism along with mitochondrial dysfunction in Schwann cells is mechanistically linked to nerve abnormalities found in acquired and inherited peripheral neuropathies, manipulation of the LKB1‐AMPK, and mTORC1 signaling hubs may be a worthwhile therapeutic target to mitigate nerve damage in disease. Here, recent advances in our understanding of LKB1‐AMPK and mTORC1 functions in Schwann cells are covered, and future research areas for this key metabolic signaling network are proposed. (shrink)

Background: Primary open-angle glaucoma patients exhibit widespread white matter degeneration throughout their visual pathways. Whether this degeneration starts at the pre- or post-geniculate pathways remains unclear. In this longitudinal study, we assess the progression of WM degeneration exhibited by the pre-geniculate optic tracts and the post-geniculate optic radiations of POAG patients over time, aiming to determine the source and pattern of spread of this degeneration.Methods: Diffusion-weighted MRI scans were acquired for 12 POAG patients and 14 controls (...) at two time-points 5.4 ± 2.1 years apart. Fiber density, an estimate of WM axonal density, was computed for the OTs and ORs of all participants in an unbiased longitudinal population template space. First, FD was compared between POAG patients and the controls at time-point 1 and time-point 2 independently. Secondly, repeated measures analysis was performed for FD change in POAG patients between the two time-points. Finally, we compared the rate of FD change over time between the two groups.Results: Compared to the controls, POAG patients exhibited significantly lower FD in the left OT at TP1 and in both OTs and the left OR at TP2. POAG patients showed a significant loss of FD between the time-points in the right OT and both ORs, while the left OR showed a significantly higher rate of FD loss in POAG patients compared to the controls.Conclusions: We find longitudinal progression of neurodegenerative WM changes in both the pre- and post-geniculate visual pathways of POAG patients. The pattern of changes suggests that glaucomatous WM degeneration starts at the pre-geniculate pathways and then spreads to the post-geniculate pathways. Furthermore, we find evidence that the trans-synaptic spread of glaucomatous degeneration to the post-geniculate pathways is a prolonged process which continues in the absence of detectable pre-geniculate degenerative progression. This suggests the presence of a time window for salvaging intact post-geniculate pathways, which could prove to be a viable therapeutic target in the future. (shrink)

A cut or crush injury to a peripheral nerve results in the degeneration of that portion of the axon isolated from the cell body. The rapid degeneration of this distal segment was for many years believed to be a process intrinsic to the nerve. It was believed that Schwann cells both phagocytosed degenerating axons and myelin sheaths and also provided growth factors to promote regeneration of the damaged axons. In recent years, it has become apparent that the degenerating (...) distal segment is invaded by monocytes from the blood. We will review the evidence that these recruited macrophages play a role in both degeneration and regeneration of peripheral nerve axons after injury and consider whether the slow degeneration and poor monocyte recruitment in the central nervous system may contribute to the poor regeneration there. (shrink)

Recent evidence indicates that inhibition of protein translation may be a common pathogenic mechanism for peripheral neuropathy associated with mutant tRNA synthetases (aaRSs). aaRSs are enzymes that ligate amino acids to their cognate tRNA, thus catalyzing the first step of translation. Dominant mutations in five distinct aaRSs cause Charcot‐Marie‐Tooth (CMT) peripheral neuropathy, characterized by length‐dependent degeneration of peripheral motor and sensory axons. Surprisingly, loss of aminoacylation activity is not required for mutant aaRSs to cause CMT. Rather, at least for (...) some mutations, a toxic‐gain‐of‐function mechanism underlies CMT‐aaRS. Interestingly, several mutations in two distinct aaRSs were recently shown to inhibit global protein translation in Drosophila models of CMT‐aaRS, by a mechanism independent of aminoacylation, suggesting inhibition of translation as a common pathogenic mechanism. Future research aimed at elucidating the molecular mechanisms underlying the translation defect induced by CMT‐mutant aaRSs should provide novel insight into the molecular pathogenesis of these incurable diseases. (shrink)

Epidemics of organophosphate‐induced delayed neuropathy (OPIDN) have paralysed thousands of people. This syndrome of nerve axon degeneration is initiated by organophosphates which react with neuropathy target esterase (NTE). Dosing experiments with adult chickens raise the possibility that OPIDN is initiated by a gain‐of‐function mechanism. By contrast, loss of NTE function by mutation causes massive apoptosis in Drosophila brain. Now, Winrow et al. show that nte−/− mice die by mid‐gestation, but nte+/− mice appear hyperactive and are more sensitive than wild‐type (...) mice to a fatal form of OP toxicity.1 Thus, different toxic syndromes may be initiated via a single target protein. BioEssays 25:742–745, 2003. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

The hereditary neurodegenerative disease spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) with childhood onset is one of the most common genetic causes of infant mortality. The disease is characterized by selective loss of spinal cord motor neurons leading to muscle atrophy and is the result of mutations in the survival motor neuron (SMN) gene. The SMN protein has been implicated in diverse nuclear processes including splicing, ribosome formation and gene transcription. Even though the genetic basis of SMA is well understood, it is not (...) clear how defects in these ubiquitous processes result in motor neuron degeneration leaving other tissues unaffected. Recent evidence from animal and cell culture models of SMA points to roles for SMN in neurite outgrowth and axonal transport. Disruption of these functions might be particularly detrimental to motor neurons given their high metabolic demands and precise connectivity requirements, thus providing a possible explanation for the specificity of motor neuron susceptibility in SMA. Understanding the molecular mechanisms of SMN activity in neuronal processes may generate new targets for future therapeutic strategies. BioEssays 27:946–957, 2005. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Abstract:Since 31 October 2018, Extinction Rebellion has advocated in numerous examples of civil disobedience across the UK in an attempt to call for further action to address climate change. Following this example, similar activism has also been seen across Europe and North America. Such activism falls within the context of climate justice (the framing of climate change as an ethical and political issue); given the disproportionate impacts that climate change has on the most vulnerable people in society, e.g., low-income communities, (...) women, and future generations. What is noticeable about Extinction Rebellion is its ability to place climate change on the social agenda, a task that has proven difficult in the age of denialism, skepticism, false-balance media reporting, and far-right politics. With reference to recent examples of civil disobedience and protests in 2019, this paper evaluates how climate justice movements, specifically Extinction Rebellion, change meanings of urban landscapes into becoming more contested places and disrupt the consciousness of everyday routines toward sustainability. This disruption and contested nature is brought about through changing the sociocultural dynamics of urban landscapes during, and after, such protests. The meanings of urban landscapes thus change from being viewed as purely sites of materialist consumption to sites of initial resistance against business-as-usual approaches to climate change leading to changes in policy. Through substantial public engagement with the narrative of climate justice, civil disobedience protests, and urban art, it is clear that urban areas “held” for a number of successive days have started to be perceived differently. This article concludes with implications for subsequent spatial disruption and civil disobedience advocating for stronger climate policy. (shrink)

The connectivity patterns of many neural circuits are highly ordered and often impressively complex. The intricate order and complexity of neuronal wiring remain not only a challenge for questions related to circuit functions but also for our understanding of how they develop with such an apparent precision. The chemotropic guidance of the growing axon by target‐derived cues represents a central paradigm for how neurons get connected with the correct target cells. However, many studies reveal a remarkable variety of important target‐independent (...) wiring mechanisms. These mechanisms include axonal sorting, axonal tiling, growth cone polarization, as well as cell‐intrinsic mechanisms underlying growth cone sprouting, and neurite branching. Our review focuses on target independent wiring mechanisms and in particular on recent progress emerging from studies on three different sensory systems: olfactory, visual, and somatosensory. We discuss molecular mechanisms that operate during axon‐axon interactions or constitute axon‐intrinsic functions and outline how they complement the well‐known target‐dependent wiring mechanisms. (shrink)

The chapter discusses the following quotation from Charles Peirce: "One of these days, perhaps, there will come a writer of opinions less humdrum than those of Dr. (Alfred Russel) Wallace, and less in awe of the learned and official world...who will argue, like a new Bernard Mandeville, that man is but a degenerate monkey, with a paranoic talent for self-satisfaction, no matter what scrapes he may get himself into, calling them 'civilization,' and who, in place of the unerring instincts of (...) other races, has an unhappy faculty for occupying himself with words and abstractions, and for going wrong in a hundred ways before he is driven, willy-nilly, into the right one. Dr. Wallace would condemn such an extravagant paradoxer." Charles Peirce, 1901 -/- . (shrink)

The Y chromosome in the XY sex-determination system is often shorter than its X counterpart, a condition attributed to degeneration after Y recombination ceases. Contrary to the traditional view of continuous, gradual degeneration, our study reveals stabilization within large mating populations. In these populations, we demonstrate that both mutant and active alleles on the Y chromosome can reach equilibrium through a mutation-selection balance. However, the emergence of a new species, particularly through the founder effect, can disrupt this equilibrium. (...) Specifically, if the male founders of a new species carry only a mutant allele for a particular Y-linked gene, this allele becomes fixed, leading to the loss of the corresponding active gene on the Y chromosome. Our findings suggest that the rate of Y-chromosome degeneration may be linked to the frequency of speciation events associated with single-male founder events. (shrink)

The essay concerns the negative end of the political argument of the Republic, that injustice—the rule of unreason—is both widespread and undesirable, and that whatever shadows of virtue or order might be found in its midst are corrupt and unstable. This claim is explained in detail in Republic 8 and 9. These passages explain recognizable faults in recognizable regimes in terms of the failure of the rule of reason and the corresponding success of the rule of non-rational forms of motivation. (...) I will first look at degenerate regimes as they appear in a less systematic way in the Ship of State passage in Republic 6 and in the discussion with Thrasymachus in book 1. I then give a general overview of the system of degenerate regimes in book 8 to examine what exactly goes wrong with them and why, and explain how the process of degeneration ought be understood as the progressive decay of the rule of reason. Finally, I argue that a close look at this decay reveals something surprising: that degenerate regimes and characters feature weak versions of virtue, shadow-virtues that are based on appearances and held in place by force. Thus in the end the whole process of degeneration ought be understood as an extended conflict between reason and appetite. (shrink)

Identification of the molecular mechanisms underlying axonal branching in vivo has begun in several neuronal systems, notably the projections formed by dorsal root ganglion (DRG) neurons or retinal ganglion cells (RGC). cGMP signalling is essential for sensory axon bifurcation at the spinal cord, whereas brain‐derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) and ephrinA signalling establish position‐dependent branching of RGC axons. In the latter system, the degradation of specific signalling components, via the ubiquitin‐proteasome system, may provide an additional mechanism involved in axon branching (...) of RGC. The process of arborisation is essential for neurons to innervate multiple targets and to build topographic maps. The various forms of branching found in different types of neurons are regulated by distinct signalling pathways activated by multiple extracellular cues in addition to axonal guidance factors. These signalling cascades, together with transcriptional programs, most likely interact and trigger the polymerisation or depolymerisation of the actin and tubulin cytoskeleton to regulate branching. (shrink)

Summary Theories of familial, racial, and national degeneration in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries have been explored by historians in the context of social and moral pathology. At the same time nerve degeneration was studied in the post mortem room and in the laboratory but links to the broader ideology of degeneration have not been investigated by scholars. This paper joins these domains by examining the concept of Wallerian degeneration. It argues that various discourses—including (...) those of the laboratory scientist, the clinician, and the social theorist—employed the term degeneration, and these discourses frequently overlapped demonstrating that degeneration was a ubiquitous fact of Victorian and Edwardian nature. (shrink)

[Accepted for publication in Lakatos's Undone Work: The Practical Turn and the Division of Philosophy of Mathematics and Philosophy of Science, special issue of Kriterion: Journal of Philosophy. Edited by S. Nagler, H. Pilin, and D. Sarikaya.] Lakatos’s analysis of progress and degeneration in the Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes is well-known. Less known, however, are his thoughts on degeneration in Proofs and Refutations. I propose and motivate two new criteria for degeneration based on the discussion in (...) Proofs and Refutations – superfluity and authoritarianism. I show how these criteria augment the account in Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes, providing a generalized Lakatosian account of progress and degeneration. I then apply this generalized account to a key transition point in the history of entropy – the transition to an information-theoretic interpretation of entropy – by assessing Jaynes’s 1957 paper on information theory and statistical mechanics. (shrink)

The scientificity of the research should be evaluated according to the methodology used in the study. However, these are usually the research areas or the institutions that are classified as scientific or non-scientific. Because of various reasons, it may turn out that the scientific institutions are not producing science, while the “non-scientists” are doing real science. In the extreme case, the official science system is entirely corrupt, consisting of fraudsters, while the real scientists have been expelled from academic institutions. Since (...) 2016-2017, there has been much talk about the “post-truth era” and the politicians who are “denying science”. However, simultaneously, many complaints about the corruption of science appeared. The outsider cannot tell who is telling the truth as it may be the case that the science fraudsters are defending themselves and these politicians are aware of the corruption. It is also untrue that the censoring or suppression of science started from 2016-2017. Suppression of science because of political and ideological reasons was present already long ago, and during the last few years, it has been increasing. The picture is highly complicated as there are many pretenders, false accusations, etc. For example, because of political reasons, someone may be set up as a pseudoscientist, the real scientist may be expelled using political accusations, justified criticism may be labelled as political pressure, etc. There is something like an inner information war ongoing in and around science. The classical philosophy of science seems unable to handle it because every formal rule can be misapplied. Science, as a whole, may be unable to persist. (shrink)

:Advocates of cosmopolitan ideals, to the extent that they engage with questions of institutional design, typically imagine replicating or refining existing, nation-state models of governance but on an international scale. This essay argues that cosmopolitan ethics need not go hand in hand with international government, and may be better served by a different approach. I explore the concept of degeneracy as a principle of institutional evaluation and design in international politics. Degeneracy is a characteristic of complex systems in which multiple (...) components of the system offer overlapping functions, and is a key component in the robustness of such systems. Non-degenerate systems, by contrast, exhibit fragility in the face of adverse conditions. When applied to systems of governance, degeneracy commends polycentricity and allows for some evaluation of the robustness of different mechanisms and forms of polycentric governance. Cosmopolitan ideals are better served by providing alternatives to existing forms of governance than by building on them. I consider some concrete policy applications of this idea, focusing on immigration and intellectual property. (shrink)

Focusing on Kentucky’s immense and world-famous Mammoth Cave, this essay considers contexts from across the nineteenth century in which subterranean darkness was envisaged as a driving force in the transformation of living things. In fact, the cave was the stage for several allied discourses of “dark degeneracy” that conjured images of both generative and destructive mutability, from the generation of animals without eyes to the apparent disintegration of some kinds of human bodies and minds through exposure to the darkness. In (...) elucidating several parallel discourses of dark degeneracy, the essay offers a distinct contribution to several bodies of scholarship by highlighting an important and hitherto neglected manifestation of an intensifying nineteenth-century focus on the how of natural processes and a growing sense of the transformative significance of the apparent cohesion of malleable bodies with their wider environments. At the same time, it evidences the influence of Mammoth Cave in forging and contributing to late nineteenth-century debates about degeneration and shows how dominant sensory hierarchies framed both popular and scientific understandings of life in the deep darkness. (shrink)

The paper follows the discursive path of one of the dominant, and yet forgotten, terms in the history of ideas - that of?degeneration.? The richness of uses and various illuminations of the term, as well as its discursive dispersion and blurring, can be seen from the mid 19th until the first decades of the 20th century. The term was almost inescapable in studies of thinkers from various fields starting in the middle of the 19th century, it was successfully adopted (...) from French, Italian and British medical terminology into the art discourse of modern European societies. By focusing on music, the given term became permanently tied to thinking about relations of music and society in the German-speaking world. In a complex discursive development of the term, the author necessarily made certain choices, paying special attention to the Austro-Hungarian psychologists, Max Nordau who carried the concept of?degeneration? from the medical to the art sphere. The debate regarding the?degeneration of music,? was developed chronologically, starting from the Second Reich. While Wagner developed a theory of?degeneration? and its overcoming through?regeneration,? he was still considered?degenerated.? The given example reveals the complexity of the problem we face when we study the concept of?degeneration of music.? The consideration is completed with a glance at the life of?degenerated? musicians and music during the Weimar Republic, that is, their interpretation in the Third Reich. (shrink)

This article explores two very different forms in which immoral conduct was problematized over the course of the 19th century. It does this by contrasting the sexual purity politics of the Vice Society and the medicalization of morality as `moral insanity'. Early in the century the Vice Society promoted coercive legislation with the aim of `suppressing vice'. From mid-century, moral insanity theories sought to grapple with vice by disaggregating `moral' from other forms of insanity. These two movements had quite distinct (...) and incompatible lines of development; and they never overtly engaged with each other. The article makes its key argument by demonstrating the way in which such dissimilar trajectories came together towards the end of the century in the `moral hygiene' movement, mobilizing discourses of `degeneration' (and `feeblemindedness') with projects promoting sexual purity. (shrink)

The Hungarian-born philosopher of science Imre Lakatos introduces the methodology of scientific research programs, and also makes a famous distinction between “progressive” and “degenerating” programs. Although Lakatos does not give extensive guidance as to whether philosophical rather than scientific theories could also be judged in this way, he does give some intriguing hints in his discussion of a debate on induction between Rudolf Carnap and Karl Popper. After considering two extant but misguided attempts to use “degenerating” as a polemical term (...) in philosophy, this article gathers the aforementioned hints from Lakatos and a few others from Alfred North Whitehead in an effort to identify what a “progressive philosophy” might look like. (shrink)

Developmental counts of axons in the splenium of the rat corpus callosum are compatible with the hypothesis that estrogen may be acting late in development to sculpt the female nervous system.

Substantial evidence implicates fast axonal transport (FAT) defects in neurodegeneration. In Alzheimer's disease (AD), it is controversial whether transport defects cause or arise from amyloid‐β (Aβ)‐induced toxicity. Using a novel, unbiased genetic screen, Morihara et al. identified kinesin light chain‐1 splice variant E (KLC1vE) as a modifier of Aβ accumulation. Here, we propose three mechanisms to explain this causal role. First, KLC1vE reduces APP transport, leading to Aβ accumulation. Second, reduced transport of APP by KLC1vE triggers an ER stress (...) response that activates the amyloidogenic pathway. Third, KLC1vE impairs transport of other KLC1 cargos that regulate amyloidogenesis, promoting Aβ retention within the secretory pathway. Collectively, KLC1vE perpetuates a vicious cycle of Aβ generation, kinase dysregulation, and global FAT impairment that inevitably leads to cellular toxicity. These concepts implicate alternative splicing of KLC1 in AD and suggest that the reciprocal influence of transport mechanisms on disease states contributes to neurodegeneration. (shrink)

The etiology of Tauopathies, a diverse class of neurodegenerative diseases associated with the Microtubule Associated Protein (MAP) Tau, is usually described by a common mechanism in which Tau dysfunction results in the loss of axonal microtubule stability. Here, we reexamine and build upon the canonical disease model to encompass other Tau functions. In addition to regulating microtubule dynamics, Tau acts as a modulator of motor proteins, a signaling hub, and a scaffolding protein. This diverse array of functions is related (...) to the dynamic nature of Tau isoform expression, post‐translational modification (PTM), and conformational flexibility. Thus, there is no single mechanism that can describe Tau dysfunction. The effects of specific pathogenic mutations or aberrant PTMs need to be examined on all of the various functions of Tau in order to understand the unique etiology of each disease state. (shrink)

The large size of the individual axons in the motor nerves of certain invertebrates has facilitated technical approaches that were not feasible elsewhere. A brief account is given of the way in which giant axons have taken and held the lead in research on the mechanism of conduction.

JIPs are JNK interacting proteins and bind to JNK cascade kinases. JIP1 and JIP3 were known to be adaptors linking cargo to Kinesin‐I, a major molecular motor for axonal transport. Recent research sheds further light on JIPs' complex roles in axonal transport, namely in activation of Kinesin‐I and in cargo release. In Drosophila, APLIP1/JIP1 allows the Kinesin‐I complex to enable cargo release through activation of JNK signaling.1 In mammalian cell culture, JIP1 is necessary and, together with UNC‐76/FEZ1, sufficient (...) for activating Kinesin‐I.2 I discuss and compare the many roles played by JIP1 and JIP3 through interactions with several distinct players, in retrograde as well as anterograde transport. BioEssays 30:10–14, 2008. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Since Popper and Lakatos, the demarcation line between science and non-science has been considered one of the fundamental issues of the philosophy of science. According to Lakatos, pseudoscience is a non-science, which appears as science, using science's public authority. Since then, mountains of texts have been published on how non-sciences, such as astrology, are not sciences. -/- But the enemy is not on the other side of the border. The enemy is in our midst. Science has been institutionalized. The best (...) way to do the pseudoscience is to fuss inside the big enterprise recognized as a science. (shrink)

The type of cognitive theory of emotion traditionally espoused by philosophers of mind makes two central claims. First, that the occurrence of propositional attitudes is essential to the occurrence of emotions. Second, that the identity of a particular emotional state depends upon the propositional attitudes that it involves. In this paper I try to show that there is little hope of developing a theory of emotion which makes these claims true. I examine the underlying defects of the programme, and show (...) that several recent variants fail to repair these defects. Furthermore, even if such a theory could be developed, it would not achieve many of the things that we look to a theory of emotion for. I argue that philosophers should turn their attention to new and more promising approaches. These have been developed by various of the special sciences, while philosophy has remained enthralled by traditional, propositional attitude psychology. (shrink)

This essay analyses the specific rhetoric of degeneration which was observable in the antisemitic polemic discourse of the last decades of 19th century. It provides an overview of the representation of Jewish art und artists as it took shape in the antisemitic literature of the Wilhelminian epoch. The growing emphasis placed by psychiatrists and racial theorists on the pathologies of the,,Jewish race“, such as hysteria or degeneration, resulted in the tendency to pathologize Jewish art and artists, which were (...) deemed responsible for the alleged decline of German culture. Mere aesthetic categories underwent a process of reduction and ideologization and were finally used for defamatory purposes, as shown in the case of the antisemitic denigration of Heinrich Heine. In order to demonstrate this, the analysis outlines the strict dichotomic logic of these argumentations, as the definition and consolidation of an ideal German essence was usually based on the construction of a degenerated Jewish identity. (shrink)

Over the years, nursing research and practice have been through remarkable transformations in response to evolving and emerging healthcare systems and practices. Regarding research, nurses moved beyond merely using the quantitative methodology to combining qualitative, quantitative and mixed methods. In practice, nurses have transitioned from the delivery of medical‐based care to nursing theory‐guided practice, evidence‐based practice, knowledge translation and transformative practice. Some domains of nursing research and practice became progressive, while others degenerated. This paper aims to examine how different domains (...) of nursing research and practice progress and degenerate using Imre Lakatos's methodology of scientific research programs. Lakatos differentiated scientific and pseudoscientific knowledge and coined the idea of scientific research programs. He believed that science in any discipline develops so that some programs are more progressive and others’ degenerative. The degeneration and progression of programs occur steadily and rationally and are determined based on the extent of development and programs’ potential to predict new solutions to old problems. Adopting this idea could enable nurses to critically analyse research programs in everyday knowledge development to use valid and legitimate programs for informing nursing practice. (shrink)

A novel conservative chaotic system with no equilibrium is investigated in this study. Various dynamics such as the conservativeness, coexistence, symmetry, and invariance are presented. Furthermore, a partial-state feedback control scheme is proposed, and the stable domain of control parameters is analyzed based on the degenerate Hopf bifurcation. In order to verify the numerical simulation analysis, an analog circuit is designed. The simulation results show that the output of the analog circuit system can reproduce the numerical simulation results and verify (...) the correctness of the theoretical analysis. (shrink)

A striking feature of John Dewey’s philosophical attitude in his later period is that for self-description, he did not prefer the term “pragmatism.” Instead, he employed such isms as “experimentalism” and “naturalism.” In the period in which he moved towards developing his own original philosophy, he even stated that “I reject root and branch to the term ‘pragmatism.’”1 As he was at the time drawn to naturalism, it might be revealing indeed that he rejects “root and branch” to “pragmatism.” Also (...) in the newly released notes for his lectures on social philosophy in China 1919, the word “pragmatism” goes without a single mention.2 The reader does not encounter the creed for a “pragmatist social... (shrink)

The laws governing degeneration of the genetic code are discussed below. Of fundamental importance in this context is the classification of the amino acids into groups on the basis of the physicochemical behaviour of their residues. From this, it is possible to formulate arithmetic relationships between the number of amino acids in the same group and the number of coding triplets.It is found that the degeneration of the genetic code obeys certain laws, the reasons for this being related (...) to the number and the qualitative properties of the amino acids and triplets. The fact that the three bases of a coding triplet have different priorities must also be a critical factor. (shrink)