Theoretical and empirical accounts of the interconnectedness between the manual and the mental suggest that the hand can be understood as a cognitive instrument.
Cartesian-inspired dualism enforces a ...theoretical distinction between the motor and the cognitive and locates the mental exclusively in the head. This collection, focusing on the hand, challenges this dichotomy, offering theoretical and empirical perspectives on the interconnectedness and interdependence of the manual and mental. The contributors explore the possibility that the hand, far from being the merely mechanical executor of preconceived mental plans, possesses its own know-how, enabling "enhanded" beings to navigate the natural, social, and cultural world without engaging propositional thought, consciousness, and deliberation.
The contributors consider not only broad philosophical questions—ranging from the nature of embodiment, enaction, and the extended mind to the phenomenology of agency—but also such specific issues as touching, grasping, gesturing, sociality, and simulation. They show that the capacities of the hand include perception (on its own and in association with other modalities), action, (extended) cognition, social interaction, and communication. Taken together, their accounts offer a handbook of cutting-edge research exploring the ways that the manual shapes and reshapes the mental and creates conditions for embodied agents to act in the world.
Contributors
Matteo Baccarini, Andrew J. Bremner, Massimiliano L. Cappuccio, Andy Clark, Jonathan Cole, Dorothy Cowie, Natalie Depraz, Rosalyn Driscoll, Harry Farmer, Shaun Gallagher, Nicholas P. Holmes, Daniel D. Hutto, Angelo Maravita, Filip Mattens, Richard Menary, Jesse J. Prinz, Zdravko Radman, Matthew Ratcliffe, Etiennne B. Roesch, Stephen V. Shepherd, Susan A.J. Stuart, Manos Tsakiris, Michael Wheeler
To document the clinical impact and identify the meteorological and environmental circumstances surrounding two epidemics of asthma exacerbations associated with thunderstorms in the city of ...Melbourne and to find a possible aetiology for these events.
Collection of meteorological and environmental data from the Victorian Bureau of Meteorology and the Environment Protection Authority; collection of clinical data from metropolitan emergency departments and the Victorian Ambulance Service; and study of a cohort of affected patients with asthma and a control group of asthmatics who were not affected by the storms.
Tertiary institution.
Twelve storm-affected patients with asthma and 16 asthmatics not affected by the storms.
Administration of a questionnaire, medical interview, pulmonary function tests and skin prick tests with common allergens.
Both epidemics caused a major increase in the number of hospital attendances and admissions because of asthma exacerbation (five to ten fold rise). These events could not be related to atmospheric pollution or specific meteorological features of the storms. Patients affected by the second storm were significantly more likely to suffer from hay fever (P less than 0.05), rye grass pollen allergy (P less than 0.05) and allergy to rainfall released rye grass starch granules (P less than 0.025).
Late spring thunderstorms in the city of Melbourne can trigger epidemics of asthma attacks. The seasonal nature of the phenomenon and the pattern of allergic responses found in affected patients suggest a possible aetiological role for rye grass pollen.
Volume 58 of Reviews in Mineralogy and Geochemistry presents 22 chapters covering many of the important modern aspects of thermochronology. The coverage of the chapters ranges widely, including ...historical perspective, analytical techniques, kinetics and calibrations, modeling approaches, and interpretational methods. In general, the chapters focus on intermediate- to low-temperature thermochronometry, though some chapters cover higher temperature methods such as monazite U/Pb closure profiles, and the same theory and approaches used in low-temperature thermochronometry are generally applicable to higher temperature systems. The widely used low- to medium- temperature thermochronometric systems are reviewed in detail in these chapters, but while there are numerous chapters reviewing various aspects of the apatite (U-Th)/He system, there is no chapter singularly devoted to it, partly because of several previous reviews recently published on this topic.
Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) type 1 sequences obtained from HIV-infected persons in different risk groups in Edinburgh were studied to determine the number and origin of virus variants and ...patterns of virus transmission. Phylogenetic analysis revealed that 12 of 14 hemophiliac patients who had been exposed to a single common batch of factor VIII had closely related gag gene sequences. Sequences from intravenous drug users and patients infected through heterosexual contact formed another distinct group, and 2 other hemophiliacs formed a third group. However, epidemiologic relationships inferred from analysis of the V3 region of the env gene were less conclusive, especially when the V3 loop was taken in isolation. This appears to be due to the length of time since infection and the action of selection, which has favored the independent appearance of similar V3 loop variants.
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The regioselectivity of dipolar cycloadditions of mesitonitrile oxide to various dipolarophiles in supercritical carbon dioxide can be tuned by changes in density, the magnesium bromide-mediated ...cycloaddition to pent-1-en-3-ol proceeding with higher stereoselectivity than in most conventional solvents.
Herein we report the synthesis of highly cross‐linked polymers based on divinylbenzene by heterogeneous polymerization in supercritical CO2 (scCO2). The polymers were isolated in the form of discrete ...microspheres (diameter = 1.5–5 μm) in good yields (≥90%), in the absence of any stabilizers. In the presence of a CO2‐soluble polymeric stabilizer, much smaller particles (diameter <0.5 μm) were formed in high yields (≥95%) by emulsion polymerization in scCO2.
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The wide-ranging physiology and large genetic variability observed for prokaryotes is largely attributed, not to the prokaryotic genome itself, but rather to mechanisms of lateral gene transfer. ...Cassette PCR has been used to sample the integron/gene cassette metagenome from different natural environments without laboratory cultivation of the host organism, and without prior knowledge of any target protein sequence. Since over 90% of cassette genes are unrelated to any sequence in the current databases, it is not clear whether these genes code for folded functional proteins. We have selected a sample of eight cassette-encoded genes with no known homologs; five have been isolated as soluble protein products and shown by biophysical techniques to be folded. In solution, at least three of these proteins organise as stable oligomeric assemblies. The tertiary structure of one of these, Bal32a derived from a contaminated soil site, has been solved by X-ray crystallography to 1.8
Å resolution. From the three-dimensional structure, Bal32a is found to be a member of the highly adaptable α+β barrel family of transport proteins and enzymes. In Bal32a, the barrel cavity is unusually deep and inaccessible to solvent. Polar side-chains in its interior are reminiscent of catalytic sites of limonene-1,2-epoxide hydrolase and nogalonic acid methyl ester cyclase. These studies demonstrate the viability of direct sampling of mobile DNA as a route for the discovery of novel proteins.
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A comparison of 25 hepatitis B virus (HBV) isolates for which complete genome sequences are available revealed two that occupied different positions in phylogenetic trees reconstructed from different ...open reading frames. Further analysis indicated that this incongruence was the result of recombination between viruses of different genomic and antigenic types. Both putative recombinants originated from geographic regions where multiple genotypes are known to cocirculate. A search of the sequence databases showed evidence of similar intergenotypic recombinants. These observations indicate that recombination between divergent strains may represent an important source of genetic variation in HBV.
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