Now, some 55 years after its discovery in bovine red cells, carbonic anhydrase (CA), in all its varied forms, continues to challenge and intrigue physiologists, biochemists and molecular geneticists. This is so because of an increasing awareness of the many apparently diverse functions of the different CA isozymes encoded by this large multigene family, the continuing discovery of new CA, or CA‐related, genes, and the extensive variation in their hormonal control, cellular expression and subcellular localization.

The larval arms of echinoid plutei are used for locomotion and feeding. They are composed of internal calcite skeletal rods covered by an ectoderm layer bearing a ciliary band. Skeletogenesis includes an autonomous molecular differentiation program in primary mesenchyme cells (PMCs), initiated when PMCs leave the vegetal plate for the blastocoel, and a patterning of the differentiated skeletal units that requires molecular cues from the overlaying ectoderm. The arms represent a larval feature that arose in the echinoid lineage during the (...) Paleozoic and offers a subject for the study of gene co-option in the evolution of novel larval features. We isolated new molecular markers in two closely related but differently developing species, Heliocidaris tuberculata and Heliocidaris erythrogramma. We report the expression of a larval arm-associated ectoderm gene tetraspanin, as well as two new PMC markers, advillin and carbonic anhydrase. Tetraspanin localizes to the animal half of blastula stage H. tuberculata and then undergoes a restriction into the putative oral ectoderm and future location of the postoral arms, where it continues to be expressed at the leading edge of both the postoral and anterolateral arms. In H. erythrogramma, its expression initiates in the animal half of blastulae and expands over the entire ectoderm from gastrulation onward. Advillin and carbonic anhydrase are upregulated in the PMCs postgastrulation and localized to the leading edge of the growing larval arms of H. tuberculata but do not exhibit coordinated expression in H. erythrogramma larvae. The tight spatiotemporal regulation of these genes in H. tuberculata along with other ontogenetic and phylogenetic evidence suggest that pluteus arms are novel larval organs, distinguishable from the processes of skeletogenesis per se. The dissociation of expression control in H. erythrogramma suggest that coordinate gene expression in H. tuberculata evolved as part of the evolution of pluteus arms, and is not required for larval or adult development. (shrink)

Some nuclear‐encoded proteins are imported into higher plant plastids via the endomembrane (EM) system. Compared with multi‐protein Toc and Tic translocons required for most plastid protein import, the relatively uncomplicated nature of EM trafficking led to suggestions that it was the original transport mechanism for nuclear‐encoded endosymbiont proteins, and critical for the early stages of plastid evolution. Its apparent simplicity disappears, however, when EM transport is considered in light of selective constraints likely encountered during the conversion of stable endosymbionts into (...) fully integrated organelles. From this perspective it is more parsimonious to presume the early evolution of post‐translational protein import via simpler, ancestral forms of modern Toc and Tic plastid translocons, with EM trafficking arising later to accommodate glycosylation and/or protein targeting to multiple cellular locations. This hypothesis is supported by both empirical and comparative data, and is consistent with the relative paucity of EM‐based transport to modern primary plastids. (shrink)

Highlights Merleau-Ponty’s interest in film and connects it to his aesthetic theory.

The time of half-sleep : Merleau-Ponty between Husserl and Proust -- Ad limina philosophiae : Merleau-Ponty and the "introduction" to Hegel's Phenomenology of spirit -- Nature : variations on the theme -- The thinking of the sensible.

We analyse the structure of propositional proofs in the sequent calculus focusing on the well-known procedures of Interpolation and Cut Elimination. We are motivated in part by the desire to understand why a tautology might be ‘hard to prove’. Given a proof we associate to it a logical graph tracing the flow of formulas in it . We show some general facts about logical graphs such as acyclicity of cut-free proofs and acyclicity of contraction-free proofs , and we give a (...) proof of a strengthened version of the Craig Interpolation Theorem based on flows of formulas. We show that tautologies having minimal interpolants of non-linear size must have proofs with certain precise structural properties. We then show that given a proof Π and a cut-free form Π′ associated to it , certain subgraphs of Π′ which are logical graphs correspond to subgraphs of Π which are logical graphs for the same sequent. This locality property of cut elimination leads to new results on the complexity of interpolants, which cannot follow from the known constructions proving the Craig Interpolation Theorem. (shrink)

The Philosopher and the Moviemaker.Merleau-Ponty and the Thinking of CinemaAs its subtitle indicates, the present article is devoted to the relations between Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy and the thinking of cinema. The first section focuses on two topics, each underlying the lecture on cinema given by Merleau-Ponty in 1945. On the one hand, we find the reflection about the peculiarities of expression in film and cinematic image; on the other, we see the convergence between the inspiration of cinema and that of (...) philosophy, which Merleau-Ponty sees as a significant characteristic of his time. This is a convergence in which the nouvelle vague’s cinema will recognise itself and which Christian Metz will retrospectively confirm. Moreover, by developing both of these topics, the author finds a way to interpret Merleau-Ponty’s lecture as an undeclared polemical response to Henri Bergson’s famous negative judgement on cinema. The second section focuses on the question of movement in cinema, putting together further references to cinema made by Merleau-Ponty in posthumous or unpublished writings such as the notes for the 1952-53 course on “The Sensible World and the World of Expression.” The third section focuses on Merleau-Ponty’s later reflection about vision and images. This section shows how the peculiar noveltyof cinema is more and more understood by Merleau-Ponty not only as historically convergent with a new way of conceiving philosophy, but as a symptom of the new ontology he was trying to formulate philosophically.Il filosofo e il cineasta.Merleau-Ponty e il pensiero del cinemaCome sottolinea il suo sottotitolo, il presente articolo è dedicato alle relazioni fra la filosofi a di Maurice Merleau-Ponty e il pensiero del cinema. La prima sezione si concentra su due argomenti, ognuno ravvisabile nella conferenza sul cinema tenuta da Merleau-Ponty nel 1945. Da una parte, troviamo la riflessione sulle peculiarità dell’espressione filmica e dell’immagine cinematografica; dall’altra, la convergenza fra l’ispirazione del cinema e quella della filosofia, che Merleau-Ponty vede come una significativa caratteristica del proprio tempo: una convergenza in cui il cinema della nouvelle vague riconoscerà se stesso e che Christian Metz retrospettivamente confermerà. Inoltre, sviluppando entrambi gli argomenti, l’autore trova modo di interpretare la conferenza di Merleau-Ponty come una non dichiarata risposta polemica al celebre giudizio negativo sul cinema formulato da Henri Bergson. La seconda sezione si concentra sulla questione del movimento nel cinema, riunendo ulteriori riferimenti di Merleau-Ponty al cinema in scritti postumi o inediti, come le note per il corso del 1952-1953 su “Il mondo sensibile e il mondo dell’espressione”. La terza sezione si concentra sulla riflessione dell’ultimo Merleau-Ponty sulla visione e le immagini. Ciò mostra come la peculiare novità del cinema sia sempre più compresa da Merleau-Ponty non solo come storicamente convergente con un nuovo modo di concepire la filosofia, ma come un sintomo della nuova ontologia che egli stava cercando di formulare filosoficamente. (shrink)

Succinct representation and fast access to large amounts of data are challenges of our time. This unique book suggests general approaches of 'complexity of descriptions'. It deals with a variety of concrete topics and bridges between them, while opening new perspectives and providing promising avenues for the 'complexity puzzle'.

In The Flesh of Images, Mauro Carbone analyzed Merleau-Ponty's interest in film as it relates to his aesthetic theory. Philosophy-Screens broadens the work undertaken in this earlier book, looking at the ideas of other twentieth-century thinkers concerning the relationship between philosophy and film, and also extending that analysis to address the wider proliferation of screens in the twenty-first century. In the first part of the book, Carbone examines the ways that Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Lyotard, and Deleuze grappled with the philosophical significance (...) of cinema as a novel aesthetic medium unfolding in the twentieth century. He then considers the significance of this philosophical framework for understanding the digital revolution, in particular the extent to we are increasingly and comprehensively connected with screens. Smart phones, tablets, and computers have become a primary referential optical apparatus for everyday life in ways that influence the experience not only of seeing but also of thinking and desiring. Carbone's Philosophy-Screens follows Deleuze's call for "a philosophy-cinema" that can account for these fundamental changes in perception and aesthetic production, and adapts it to twenty-first century concerns. (shrink)

We develop a combinatorial model to study the evolution of graphs underlying proofs during the process of cut elimination. Proofs are two-dimensional objects and differences in the behavior of their cut elimination can often be accounted for by differences in their two-dimensional structure. Our purpose is to determine geometrical conditions on the graphs of proofs to explain the expansion of the size of proofs after cut elimination. We will be concerned with exponential expansion and we give upper and lower bounds (...) which depend on the geometry of the graphs. The lower bound is computed passing through the notion of universal covering for directed graphs. In this paper we present ground material for the study of cut elimination and structure of proofs in purely combinatorial terms. We develop a theory of duplication for directed graphs and derive results on graphs of proofs as corollaries. (shrink)

For animal research that causes sentient nonhuman animal suffering to be justifiable, I believe that two conditions must be met. First, harming animals for human benefit must be morally justified; this is the speciesism justification. Second, animal research must have utility—that is, it must produce useful, empirically valid knowledge that successfully increases our understanding of human illness and treatments and that could not reasonably be obtained through other means; this is the utility justification. In other words, (some) animals must be (...) sufficiently different from humans in morally relevant ways to allow the morality of speciesism, and (some) animals must be sufficiently similar to humans biologically for cross‐species extrapolation to have utility. Both conditions are necessary, and neither by itself is sufficient to justify animal experimentation. I focus exclusively on the utility justification. I do not defend the morality of using animals in experiments, nor do I review the alternatives and refinements that can minimize laboratory animal suffering. I will argue that I and the medical scientists with whom I work have a sound rationale to continue the work we do. (shrink)

Many times in mathematics there is a natural dichotomy betweendescribing some object from the inside and from the outside. Imaginealgebraic varieties for instance; they can be described from theoutside as solution sets of polynomial equations, but one can also tryto understand how it is for actual points to move around inside them,perhaps to parameterize them in some way. The concept of formalproofs has the interesting feature that it provides opportunities forboth perspectives. The inner perspective has been largely overlooked,but in fact (...) lengths of proofs lead to new ways to measure informationcontent of mathematical objects. The disparity between minimallengths of proofs with and without ``lemmas'' provides an indicationof internal symmetry of mathematical objects and their descriptions.A principal observation of this paper is that mathematicalstructures can be embedded into spaces of logical formulae and inheritadditional structure from proofs. We shall look at finitely-generatedgroups, rational numbers and SL(2,Z), and examples fromtopology and analysis. (shrink)

While corporate social responsibility is recognized as taking on various national meanings and practices, research has not sufficiently investigated how multinational companies simultaneously achieve global CSR integration and local CSR adaptation. Building on a qualitative case study carried out at ASICS, an MNC headquartered in Japan, we show how this organizational dilemma may be solved through hybridization work, a form of institutional work performed by CSR managers in subsidiaries to combine and adapt different institutional approaches to CSR. By developing the (...) notion of hybridization work, we contribute by revealing a set of practices that contribute to institutional change within organizations and enriching the study of CSR organizational change and international business by showing how hybridization Work leads to a greater organizational integration between core and periphery, and by identifying the triggering factors for subsidiary initiative in CSR. (shrink)

«È ancora necessario, oggi in Italia, sforzarsi di sottolineare l’importanza e l’attualità del pensiero di Jan Patočka?» – si chiede Mauro Carbone presentando questo volume.

The logical flow graphs of sequent calculus proofs might contain oriented cycles. For the predicate calculus the elimination of cycles might be non-elementary and this was shown in [Car96]. For the propositional calculus, we prove that if a proof of k lines contains n cycles then there exists an acyclic proof with O(k n+l ) lines. In particular, there is a polynomial time algorithm which eliminates cycles from a proof. These results are motivated by the search for general methods on (...) proving lower bounds on proof size and by the design of more efficient heuristic algorithms for proof search. (shrink)

Traces of Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s constant philosophical interest in cinema have been multiplying since the mid-1990s. These traces lead us to understand that such an interest was implicitly linked to the effort of ontologically rehabilitating the screen understood as the condition of possibility of our vision. Therefore I believe that the late Merleau-Ponty was trying to elaborate a conception of our way of seeing that can no longer be shaped on the representative window model, but rather on the screen model. In (...) this light, my aim is to develop, specify, and update Merleau-Ponty’s insights concerning the screen as a decisive element of our visual experiences. In such a perspective, it is no doubt very important to reflect on the modified spatio-temporality of desire at work in our present relations to screens. This is what I try to do in the second part of my paper. Indeed, concerning the way in which nowadays screens surround and accompany us at every turn, in which we live through them, we can state something similar to what Merleau-Ponty wrote about modern painting in Eye and Mind, that is to say that the novelty of that way of painting gave him “a feeling of mutation within the relations of man and Being.”. (shrink)

BackgroundWhile neighborhood safety and stranger danger have been mostly canonized to play a part in parents’ physical activity avoidance, less is known about the impact of parental stress and perceived risk on children’s PA avoidance and consequently on children’s level of PA and wellbeing. Understanding the contributors to children’s wellbeing during pandemic disease is the first critical step in contributing to children’s health during epidemic diseases.MethodsThis study employed 276 healthy children, aged 10–12 years, and their parents. Data were collected in (...) October and November 2020, about 9 months after the local closing of schools due to the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic. Parents and children answered a separate set of questions. Besides the demographic information, the parents responded to questions on their stress level, perceived risk of COVID-19, and PA avoidance for children. Children responded to questions on their PA and wellbeing in the last week. Data were analyzed using SmartPLS and IBM SPSS 22.ResultsThe result of the study supported the four directional research hypotheses of the sequential study model. As hypothesized, parents’ stress and perceived risk levels of COVID-19 negatively affected children’s PA. The PA level was shown to predict children’s wellbeing and mental health. Housing type, parents’ job security, number of siblings, number of members living together in-home, and history of death or hospitalization of relatives or family members due to COVID-19 were found to be associated with parents’ stress and children’s mental health.ConclusionThis study sheds light on parents’ role in children’s wellbeing and mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic. Parents with higher stress and high restrictive behaviors might put their children at risk of mental disorders in the end. (shrink)

One point that definitions of art experience disagree about is whether this kind of experience is qualitatively different from experiences related to ordinary objects and everyday contexts. Here, we follow an ecological approach assuming that art experience has its own specific quality that is, not least, determined by typical contexts of art presentation. Practically, we systematically observe typical phenomena of experiencing art in ecologically valid or real-world settings such as museum contexts. Based on evidences gained in this manner, we emulate (...) and implement essential properties of ecological contexts (e.g., free choice of viewing distance and time, large scale of artworks and exhibition-like context) in controlled laboratory experiments. We found, for instance, that for large scale paintings by Pollock and Rothko preferred viewing distances as well as distances inducing most intense art experiences including Aesthetic Aha insights were much larger than typical viewing distances realized in lab studies. Following Carbon’s (2019) terminology of measurement strategies of art experience, the combined use of “Path #1” (real-world context) and “Path #2” (mildly controlled, still ecologically valid settings and contexts), enables us to understand and investigate much closer what is really happening when people experience art. (shrink)

The ability to read emotions in faces helps humans efficiently assess social situations. We tested how this ability is affected by aspects of familiarization with face masks and personality, with a focus on emotional intelligence. To address aspects of the current pandemic situation, we used photos of not only faces per se but also of faces that were partially covered with face masks. The sample, the size of which was determined by an a priori power test, was recruited in Germany (...) and consisted of healthy individuals of different ages [M = 24.8 years]. Participants assessed the emotional expressions displayed by six different faces determined by a 2 × 3 design. Each person was presented with six different emotional displays with or without a face mask. Accuracy and confidence were lower with masks—in particular for the emotion disgust but also for happiness, anger, and sadness. When comparing the present data collected in July 2021 with data from a different sample collected in May 2020, when people first started to familiarize themselves with face masks in Western countries during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, we did not detect an improvement in performance. There were no effects of participants’ emotional intelligence, sex, or age regarding their accuracy in assessing emotional states in faces for unmasked or masked faces. (shrink)

Most model checking techniques for security protocols make a number of simplifying assumptions on the protocol and/or on its execution environment that greatly complicate or even prevent their applicability in some important cases. For instance, most techniques assume that communication between honest principals is controlled by a Dolev-Yao intruder, i.e. a malicious agent capable to overhear, divert, and fake messages. Yet we might be interested in establishing the security of a protocol that relies on a less unsecure channel (e.g. a (...) confidential channel provided by some other protocol sitting lower in the protocol stack). In this paper we propose a general model for security protocols based on the set-rewriting formalism that, coupled with the use of LTL, allows for the specification of assumptions on principals and communication channels as well as of complex security properties that are normally not handled by state-of-the-art security protocol analysers. By using our approach we have been able to formalise all the assumptions required by the ASW protocol for optimistic fair exchange and some of its key security properties. Besides the previously reported attacks on the protocol, we report a new attack on a patched version of the protocol. (shrink)

When imposing traffic congestion pricing around downtown commercial centers, there is a concern that commercial activities will have to consider relocating due to reduced demand, at a cost to merchants. Concerns like these were important in the debates before the introductions of congestion charges in both London and Stockholm and influenced the final policy design choices. This study introduces a sequential experimental game to study reactions to congestion pricing in the commercial sector. In the game, merchants first make location choices. (...) Consumers, who drive to do their shopping, subsequently choose where to shop. Initial responses to the introduction of congestion pricing and equilibrium selection adjustments over time are observed. These observations are compared to responses and adjustments in a condition where congestion pricing is reduced from an initially high level. Payoffs are non-linear and non-transparent, making it less than obvious that the efficient equilibrium will be selected, and introducing possibilities that participants need to discover their preferences and anchor on past experiences. We find that initial responses reflect standard inverse price–demand relations, and that adjustments over time rely on signaling by consumers leading to the efficient equilibrium. There is also evidence that priming from initial experiences influence play somewhat. We confirm that commercial activities relocate following the introduction of congestion pricing and that the adjustment process is costly to merchants. (shrink)

Undoubtedly, the tragedy of September 11, 2001 has been an unprecedented visual event. And yet, as was pointed out by an article published in Esquire in 2003, “in the most photographed and videotaped day in the history of the world, the images of people jumping were the only images that became, by consensus, taboo.” This taboo looks like the other side of what Allen Feldman calls a “temporal therapy”: “the audience was being given temporal therapy by witnessing a mechanical sequence (...) of events, over and over, which restored the linearity of time, which had been suspended with the assaults.” Still, images like the photograph that is well-known under the title of “Falling Man” could be, thanks to their peculiar temporality, a good antidote against this “temporal therapy,” which aims at the formation of a specific “collective memory, and therefore of collective forgetfulness.” On top of a study on this kind of pictures, this paper will take into account the late Merleau-Ponty’s idea of a mutual precession of reality and images as a useful tool for understanding the peculiar temporality of such pictures. (shrink)

Statements such as “X is beautiful but I don’t like how it looks” or “I like how X looks but it is not beautiful” sound contradictory. How contradictory they sound might however depend on the object X and on the aesthetic adjective being used (“beautiful”, “elegant”, “dynamic”, etc.). In our study, the first sentence was estimated to be more contradictory than the latter: If we describe something as beautiful, we often intend to evaluate its appearance, whereas it is less counterintuitive (...) to appreciate an appearance without finding it beautiful. Furthermore, statements including “beautiful” appeared more contradictory than those including “elegant” and “dynamic”, pointing to its greater evaluative component. When related to artworks, sentences could appear less contradictory due to readers’ consideration of the divergence between conventional beauty and art-related sensory pleasures that can even include negative valence. Such ambivalence might be more frequent in art-objects than in other artefacts. Indeed, in our study, sentences referring to artworks were estimated to be less contradictory compared to sentences referring to other artefacts. Meanwhile, an additional small group of graphic design students showed a less clear difference between art-related and non-art-related sentences. We discuss the potential influence of art experience and interest as well as theoretical and methodological challenges like the conceptualization of beauty. (shrink)