Emotional Backing and the Feeling of Deep Disagreement

This paper discusses Toulmin’s (1964) concept of backing with respect to the emotional mode of arguing. Specifically, I examine an example from Fogelin (1985) where emotional backing justifies a warrant concerning when we should judge that a person is being pig-headed. While his treatment of this kind of argument can be supported by contemporary emotion science, it needs to be supplemented by therapeutic techniques whether or not our goal is to rationally resolve such arguments. This is shown through a comparison with an analysis of an emotional argument from Gilbert (1997). The introduction of psychotherapy into argumentation theory raises the question of the extent to which ordinary arguers can use such techniques. This is an issue I have explored before (Friemann, 2002) in terms of intractable quarrels. Seeing how psychotherapeutic techniques can be used in an intractable quarrel, I ask whether or not this is fruitful in the context of Fogelin’s idea of a deep disagreement

Inhibitor binding mode and allosteric regulation of Na+-glucose symporters.

Sodium-dependent glucose transporters (SGLTs) exploit sodium gradients to transport sugars across the plasma membrane. Due to their role in renal sugar reabsorption, SGLTs are targets for the treatment of type 2 diabetes. Current therapeutics are phlorizin derivatives that contain a sugar moiety bound to an aromatic aglycon tail. Here, we develop structural models of human SGLT1/2 in complex with inhibitors by combining computational and functional studies. Inhibitors bind with the sugar moiety in the sugar pocket and the aglycon tail in the extracellular vestibule. The binding poses corroborate mutagenesis studies and suggest a partial closure of the outer gate upon binding. The models also reveal a putative Na+ binding site in hSGLT1 whose disruption reduces the transport stoichiometry to the value observed in hSGLT2 and increases inhibition by aglycon tails. Our work demonstrates that subtype selectivity arises from Na+-regulated outer gate closure and a variable region in extracellular loop EL5

Predicting the elasto-plastic response of short fiber composites using deep neutral networks trained on micro-mechanical simulations

The mechanical modeling of short fiber composites has proven to be difficult. This is partly owing to the high degree of anisotropy and fiber discontinuity. Being able to accurately predict the behavior of short fiber composites with varying fiber orientations and fiber volume fractions is highly relevant in the design and production of injection molded parts. It has therefore become popular to abandon classical constitutive models in favor of data driven models. Artificial neural networks is a popular and efficient method of using large amounts of data to teach an algorithm the underlying rules of a phenomenon, enabling it to make predictions for data it has never before encountered. In this work a recurrent deep neural network model utilizing Gated Recurrent Units (GRU) is trained to predict the elasto-plastic stress response of a short fiber composite material given the strain path. The model is designed to have the ability to make predictions for arbitrary fiber orientations and varying fiber volume fractions. The training data is generated by performing micro-mechanical simulations utilizing mean field methods in the commercially available software digimat-mf. The strain data is generated by a random walk scheme in strain space. The finished model performs well, and the mean error for a typical load cycle usually stays below 10% of the matrix yield stress

Substrate-bound outward-open structure of a Na+-coupled sialic acid symporter reveals a new Na+ site

Many pathogenic bacteria utilise sialic acids as an energy source or use them as an external coating to evade immune detection. As such, bacteria that colonise sialylated environments deploy specific transporters to mediate import of scavenged sialic acids. Here, we report a substrate-bound 1.95 Å resolution structure and subsequent characterisation of SiaT, a sialic acid transporter from Proteus mirabilis. SiaT is a secondary active transporter of the sodium solute symporter (SSS) family, which use Na+ gradients to drive the uptake of extracellular substrates. SiaT adopts the LeuT-fold and is in an outward-open conformation in complex with the sialic acid N-acetylneuraminic acid and two Na+ ions. One Na+ binds to the conserved Na2 site, while the second Na+ binds to a new position, termed Na3, which is conserved in many SSS family members. Functional and molecular dynamics studies validate the substrate-binding site and demonstrate that both Na+ sites regulate N-acetylneuraminic acid transport

Dialectical Obligations of Serial Arguers

Conference Papers and Commentary.I examine the concept of the relationship negotiation dialogue (Weger Jr. 2003) in the context of serial arguing (Trapp and Hoff 1985). Between argument episodes, marital partners experiencing difficulty may think about entering counseling, or terminating their relationship. Removed from the dialogical context, such judgments involve the notions of argument as inquiry (Blair 2004; 1992; Johnson 2000) and argument0 (Hample 1992). I explore the dialectical obligations of a person who decides to end his relationship

Reducing Conflict Between Ordinary People by Third Party Interventions

Conference Papers and Commentary