Search Results (6)

In his Middle Commentary on Posterior Analytics, the great Aristotelian Commentator Ibn Rushd defines “knowledge” (scientific knowledge, epistemē, ‘ilm) as one of Aristotle’s five intellectual virtues and the faculty of reason, akin to the other virtues, in an Aristotelian way. Ibn Rushd defends the teleological argument, rooted in Aristotle’s teleological reading of nature, and supports the modal strong epistemic status of this argument, which is part of the concept of knowledge, in his early work (Short Commentary on Metaphysics), middle period work (al-Kashf) and late work (Long Commentary on Metaphysics), all in harmony with each other. Ibn Rushd, constructing the teleological argument based on the definition of knowledge, which fundamentally articulates the necessary or essential qualities inherent in objects in defense of de re modality, takes a step that seems quite radical within the context of the Aristotelian epistemic tradition to which he is affiliated: The teleological argument, strongly associated with the concept of knowledge—one of the five intellectual virtues—is presented as a form of deductive inference accessible not only to philosophers but also to ordinary public. In other words, according to him, the argument is both a philosophical and a religious way. This implies, for instance, that natural theology, typically viewed by Aquinas as an activity reserved for the higher epistemic class with talent and leisure, is seen by Ibn Rushd as a robust epistemic activity accessible to ordinary people. This new element, which can be referred to as common sense natural theology, contends that ordinary public knowledge and philosophers’ knowledge differ in details, such as whether it is a simple or complex deductive inference, while remaining the same in terms of their knowledge status. Full article

Physicians often label anatomical structure sets in Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) images with nonstandard random names. Hence, the standardization of these names for the Organs at Risk (OARs), Planning Target Volumes (PTVs), and ‘Other’ organs is a vital problem. This paper presents novel deep learning methods on structure sets by integrating multimodal data compiled from the radiotherapy centers of the US Veterans Health Administration (VHA) and Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU). These de-identified data comprise 16,290 prostate structures. Our method integrates the multimodal textual and imaging data with Convolutional Neural Network (CNN)-based deep learning approaches such as CNN, Visual Geometry Group (VGG) network, and Residual Network (ResNet) and shows improved results in prostate radiotherapy structure name standardization. Evaluation with macro-averaged F1 score shows that our model with single-modal textual data usually performs better than previous studies. The models perform well on textual data alone, while the addition of imaging data shows that deep neural networks achieve better performance using information present in other modalities. Additionally, using masked images and masked doses along with text leads to an overall performance improvement with the CNN-based architectures than using all the modalities together. Undersampling the majority class leads to further performance enhancement. The VGG network on the masked image-dose data combined with CNNs on the text data performs the best and presents the state-of-the-art in this domain. Full article

This article aims at providing some extension of the modal square of opposition in the light of Ockham’s account of modal operators. Moreover, we set forth some significant remarks on the de re–de dicto distinction and on the modal operator of contingency by means of a set-theoretic algebra called numbering semantics. This generalization starting from Ockham’s account of modalities will allow us to take into consideration whether Ockham’s account holds water or not, and in which case it should be changed. Full article

Objectives: In patients with symptomatic peripheral arterial occlusive disease (PAOD), endovascular revascularization of the superficial femoral artery (SFA) is the most frequent intervention. A major drawback of endovascular procedures is clinically driven target lesion revascularization (CD-TLR), which may cause recurrence of symptoms, re-hospitalizations, and re-interventions. Outcome studies comparing endovascular modalities are heterogeneous and focus more on intraoperative rather than preoperative aspects. Studies have not examined potential risk factors in patients’ phenotype before an intervention to prevent CD-TLR. Design: Monocentric, retrospective cohort study of 781 patients with symptomatic PAOD referred to an endovascular intervention of the SFA between 2000 and 2018. Methods: The study aim was to identify risk factors and phenotypes leading to symptomatic PAOD in patients with de novo lesions of the SFA and ≥1 CD-TLR within 12 months post-index procedure. Two groups were differentiated: patients without CD-TLR and with ≥1 CD-TLR. Patient phenotype was compared for cardiovascular (CV) risk factors, age, gender, and renal function. Results: 662 patients (84.8%) (age 73.5 ± 11.2 years; 243 women (36.7%)) with no CD-TLR were compared to 119 patients (15.2%) with ≥1 CD-TLR (age 70.9 ± 12.4 years; 55 women (46.2%)). Women, as well as subjects with dyslipidemia, had each a 1.8-time higher odds ratio of receiving multiple interventions within one year than men or subjects without dyslipidemia. Older subjects (per decade) had a lower odds ratio (0.7) for multiple interventions. Subjects with an eGFR (estimated glomerular filtration rate) <30 mL/min had 3.8 times higher and subjects with eGFR ≥30 and <60 mL/min had a 2.4 higher odds ratio of receiving multiple interventions than subjects with eGFR values ≥90 mL/min. Conclusion: Our data indicate that younger women, patients with dyslipidemia, or those with renal insufficiency are at risk for recurrent midterm CD-TLR after endovascular therapy of the SFA. Full article

Ubiquitin and ubiquitin-like modifiers, such as SUMO, exert distinct physiological functions by conjugating to protein substrates. Ubiquitination or SUMOylation of protein substrates determine the fate of modified proteins, including proteasomal degradation, cellular re-localization, alternations in binding partners and serving as a protein-binding platform, in a ubiquitin or SUMO linkage-dependent manner. DNA damage occurs constantly in living organisms but is also repaired by distinct tightly controlled mechanisms including homologous recombination, non-homologous end joining, inter-strand crosslink repair, nucleotide excision repair and base excision repair. On sensing damaged DNA, a ubiquitination/SUMOylation landscape is established to recruit DNA damage repair factors. Meanwhile, misloaded and mission-completed repair factors will be turned over by ubiquitin or SUMO modifications as well. These ubiquitination and SUMOylation events are tightly controlled by both E3 ubiquitin/SUMO ligases and deubiquitinases/deSUMOylases. In this review, we will summarize identified ubiquitin and SUMO-related modifications and their function in distinct DNA damage repair pathways, and provide evidence for responsible E3 ligases, deubiquitinases, SUMOylases and deSUMOylases in these processes. Given that genome instability leads to human disorders including cancer, understanding detailed molecular mechanisms for ubiquitin and SUMO-related regulations in DNA damage response may provide novel insights into therapeutic modalities to treat human diseases associated with deregulated DNA damage response. Full article

This study investigates to what extent structural units defined by physical and structural markers elicit different eye movement patterns when reading contrasting stimuli of music and verbal texts. Eye movements were tracked and compared in ten musicians undergoing Bachelor’s degrees as they silently read six texts and six pieces of music for piano: the music was contemporary, in modal style, and the style of the texts was informative and literary. Participants were music students at Universidad de Chile studying for Bachelor’s degrees. Information integration for both local (intrasentence/phrase) and global (intersentence/ phrase) levels of processing was assessed through regressive fixations at the first pass and re-reading stages. Memory involvement in musical and verbal processing was investigated using verbal working memory and spatial memory tasks, suggesting a link between spatial memory and the reading of contemporary music. Both local and global integrative controls vary according to the reading stages, with differences between music styles and text types. These differences relate to information intake and integrative reading mechanisms. Despite the fact that musicians used different strategies for processing verbal and musical information, no cross-patterns of individual reading strategies were observed between conditions. Although the underlying processes are different, resource-sharing between the two domains cannot be ruled out. Full article