We assessed the 29 winning essays of the Bigelow Institute of Consciousness Studies (BICS) contest using an evidence hierarchy approach adopted by many scientific fields. Two independent judges rated ...the target essays for their quality of scientific evidence, reproducibility, and replicability using an evidence hierarchy adapted from several published models that accommodate both qualitative and quantitative evidence. According to our criteria, six essays (20.7%) were categorized as the highest level of scientific evidence, four essays (13.8%) were categorized at a medium level of scientific evidence, whereas the remaining 19 essays (65.5%) were considered a low level of scientific evidence. The overall agreement of the essay rankings between the present authors' classifications of evidence quality and the rating system used by the BICS judges was only 44.8%, with a nonsignificant Spearman's rho correlation of.03. This result indicates extremely little concordance (overlap) of the two evaluation systems, which corroborates prior research on the critical shortcomings of evidence hierarchies. The essays representing the highest level of scientific evidence per our criteria involved near-death experiences and mental mediumship. For other anomalies that ostensibly support the survival hypothesis (e.g., physical mediumship or electronic voice phenomena), more studies with refined experimental designs are needed to improve their quality of evidence as defined in current scientific terms. Important considerations and future research directions are likewise discussed.
В настоящей статье подвергается критическому анализу категория памяти в романах Владимира Шарова, таких как: Репетиции (1992), До и во время (1992), Старая девушка (1998), Воскрешение Лазаря (2002) и ...Будь как дети (2008). Шаров описывает «неомифическую» реальность, в которой художественные герои посредством передачи личных воспоминаний, запечатленных в тексте и передаваемых из поколения в поколение, обретают возможность не только продлить память о себе, но и достичь практического бессмертия. От бумажного дневника, содержащего все мельчайшие детали из жизненного опыта, описанные в хронологическом порядке, до протоколов допросов, которые хранятся в архивах НКВД — текст становится самым важным хранилищем памяти, благодаря которому герои шаровских романов «возвращают к жизни». Анализ произведений Владимира Шарова позволяет подчеркнуть важную эсхатологическую составляющую, на основе которой память отождествлена с бессмертием, а забвение (то есть, полное исчезновение индивидуума из социума) — со смертью.
Long-Lived Trees Are Not Immortal Munné-Bosch, Sergi
Trends in plant science,
September 2020, 2020-09-00, 20200901, Letnik:
25, Številka:
9
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Separating out the different effects of ageing on long-lived trees remains challenging. Herein current approaches used to explore senescence in millennial trees are highlighted. Molecular and ...biochemical analyses of the vascular cambium provide novel insight into the extent to which millennial trees can withstand the wear and tear of ageing.
In the first half, I suggest that Kant’s conception of our moral life goes through a significant shift after 1793, with reverberations in his eschatology. The earlier account, based on the postulate ...of immortality, describes our moral life as an endless pursuit of the highest good, but all this changes in the later account, and I point out three possible reasons for this change of heart. In the second half, I explore how the considerations Kant brings up to argue for his accounts can inform our process of formulating positions with respect to the afterlife. I argue that, in the absence of a convincing theoretical proof for or against the afterlife as well as apodictically certain knowledge of how demanding the moral law is, the Kantian strategy would be to ask which account of our moral life delivers the kind of contentment that can sustain our moral resolve. I also point out a way theists might be able to find contentment despite their moral failures by imagining God’s moral kenosis.
The Struldbrugs episode occupies Chapter X at the end of Part III of Gulliver’s Travels. It features Immortals while Gulliver is in Luggnagg. It has often been read as an almost autonomous episode, ...and sometimes described as a fable. But it is nonetheless integrated into a narrative that has its own logic and structure. Its narrative construction leads to a reading that is different from that of Gulliver within the text. The philosophical reflection on death and immortality is inserted at a point that makes sense in the general economy of the work. Probably written last, the episode is set in a double time, in and out of a narrative sequence, within a travel narrative and outside a sequence of adventures. The Struldbrugs ultimately evoke the characters of literature, both mortal and immortal.
Resurrecting the nepeš Wright, Jim
Interpretation (Richmond),
07/2021, Letnik:
75, Številka:
3
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Our culture’s approach to dementia typically focuses on preserving the person as they once were. Mental exercises, special diets, and entire memory care facilities are designed to maintain the ...“previous person.” As important as this is to family and friends, it can be challenging and burdensome to the person who is living with dementia, a person who may not recall, or want to recall, their past life. This essay asserts that the emphasis on maintaining the previous person (and the resultant de-emphasis on honoring the new person) often results from a belief in our innate permanence, particularly the belief in our immortal, immutable soul. Because of this insistence on innate immortality, we tend to undervalue those who fail to live up to the expectations of permanence. The author calls for a renewed emphasis on nepeš, ancient Israel’s concept of the mortal, fleeting human life. By acknowledging our impermanence, we may be able to better identify with and value those who live with dementia and design environments that honor and enable people who are becoming someone new.
In this paper we present cellular senescence as the ultimate driver of the aging process, as a "causal nexus" that bridges microscopic subcellular damage with the phenotypic, macroscopic effect of ...aging. It is important to understand how the various types of subcellular damage correlated with the aging process lead to the larger, visible effects of anatomical aging. While it has always been assumed that subcellular damage (cause) results in macroscopic aging (effect), the bridging link between the two has been hard to define. Here, we propose that this bridge, which we term the "causal nexus", is in fact cellular senescence. The subcellular damage itself does not directly cause the visible signs of aging, but rather, as the damage accumulates and reaches a critical mass, cells cease to proliferate and acquire the deleterious "senescence-associated secretory phenotype" (SASP) which then leads to the macroscopic consequences of tissue breakdown to create the physiologically aged phenotype. Thus senescence is a precondition for anatomical aging, and this explains why aging is a gradual process that remains largely invisible during most of its progression. The subcellular damage includes shortening of telomeres, damage to mitochondria, aneuploidy, and DNA double-strand breaks triggered by various genetic, epigenetic, and environmental factors. Damage pathways acting in isolation or in concert converge at the causal nexus of cellular senescence. In each species some types of damage can be more causative than in others and operate at a variable pace; for example, telomere erosion appears to be a primary cause in human cells, whereas activation of tumor suppressor genes is more causative in rodents. Such species-specific mechanisms indicate that despite different initial causes, most of aging is traced to a single convergent causal nexus: senescence. The exception is in some invertebrate species that escape senescence, and in non-dividing cells such as neurons, where senescence still occurs, but results in the SASP rather than loss of proliferation plus SASP. Aging currently remains an inevitable endpoint for most biological organisms, but the field of cellular senescence is primed for a renaissance and as our understanding of aging is refined, strategies capable of decelerating the aging process will emerge.
TERT promoter mutations reactivate telomerase, allowing for indefinite telomere maintenance and enabling cellular immortalization. These mutations specifically recruit the multimeric ETS factor GABP, ...which can form two functionally independent transcription factor species: a dimer or a tetramer. We show that genetic disruption of GABPβ1L (β1L), a tetramer-forming isoform of GABP that is dispensable for normal development, results in TERT silencing in a TERT promoter mutation-dependent manner. Reducing TERT expression by disrupting β1L culminates in telomere loss and cell death exclusively in TERT promoter mutant cells. Orthotopic xenografting of β1L-reduced, TERT promoter mutant glioblastoma cells rendered lower tumor burden and longer overall survival in mice. These results highlight the critical role of GABPβ1L in enabling immortality in TERT promoter mutant glioblastoma.
•The β1L tetramer-forming isoform of GABP activates the mutant TERT promoter•β1L disruption induces telomere loss and death only in TERT promoter mutant cells•Disruption of β1L reduces tumor growth and prolongs survival in xenografted mice•GABPβ1L is a potential therapeutic target for TERT promoter mutant glioblastoma
TERT promoter mutations generate a binding site for GABP and reactivate TERT expression. Mancini et al. show that GABPβ1L, among GABP subunits, is specifically required for the function of TERT promoter mutants, and disrupting GABPβ1L causes telomere loss and cell death exclusively in TERT promoter mutant cells.
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![“[T]he most mortifying sigh...](http://api.summon.serialssolutions.com/2.0.0/image/issn/XR4PS5YY4K/0291-3798/small "“[T]he most mortifying sight” : retour vers les Struldbrugs dans Gulliver’s Travels")
