The notion of the ‘principles of law’ in the light of the idea of ‘essentially contested concepts’

Pomimo istnienia wielu opracowań dotyczących teoretycznych właściwości „zasad prawa” żadna z koncepcji obecnych w polskim porządku prawnym nie została dotąd uznana za dominującą i bezsprzecznie trafniejszą niż pozostałe. Podobna sytuacja panuje w światowej teorii prawa. W niniejszym opracowaniu podjęto próbę zbadania przyczyn tego stanu rzeczy przez zaprezentowanie założeń mało znanej w nauce polskiej idei „pojęć co do istoty kwestionowanych” (essentially contested concepts – ECC), stworzonej przez Waltera B. Galliego i zastosowanie jej do analizy pojęcia zasad prawa. Istnieją dwie główne możliwe interpretacje idei. Zależnie od poglądów przyjętych w tej kwestii, może ona pełnić rolę analitycznego wzorca opisującego typowy zestaw cech charakteryzujących pojęcia wyjątkowo w nauce sporne, w świetle których warto je wraz z otaczającą dyskusją przestudiować. Drugą możliwość stanowi uznanie jej za ontologiczną „hipotezę wyjaśniającą”, zgodnie z którą każdemu ECC z konieczności towarzyszy nierozstrzygalność debaty o właściwy sposób użycia. Niezależnie od zajętego stanowiska, prześwietlenie „zasad prawa” z wykorzystaniem metodologii ECC pozwala pełniej spojrzeć na dotyczącą ich dyskusję z perspektywy „zewnętrznej”. To zaś pozwala sformułować tezę, że argumentacja za konkretnymi koncepcjami zasad powinna w większym stopniu obejmować użyteczność uważanej za słuszną teorii niż konwencjonalne z natury argumenty dotyczące tego, czym zasady w rzeczywistości są.Despite many studies on the theoretical properties of the ‘principles of law’ none of the theories proposed has been recognised as a leading or more accurate one than others. The paper is an attempt to examine the reasons for this, by examining the notion of the ‘principles of law’ in the light of the idea of ‘essentially contested concepts’ (ECC), introduced by Walter B. Gallie. This concept is little known in Polish legal scholarship. Depending on the views regarding its nature, the ‘essentially contested concept’ may be seen as an analytic framework pointing at its attributes and the attributes of a dispute about it, or as an ontological ‘explanatory hypothesis’ attributing to certain concepts a natural impossibility of reaching an agreement as to the proper use of these concepts. Regardless of the adopted view, the analysis of the ‘principles of law’ as an essentially contested concept provides a possibility to cast a glance at the discussion concerning their theoretical nature from an ‘external’, or independent point of view. This in turn allows for a thesis that the argumentation for a specific way of use of the concept of ‘principles’ should, to a greater extent than it is done by statements concerning the true nature of ‘principles’, which are the conventional by nature, advocate the suitability and utility of the theories proposed

Fuzzy determination of informative frequency band for bearing fault detection

Detecting early faults in rolling element bearings is a crucial measure for the health maintenance of rotating machinery. As faulty features of bearings are usually demodulated into a high-frequency band, determining the informative frequency band (IFB) from the vibratory signal is a challenging task for weak fault detection. Existing approaches for IFB determination often divide the frequency spectrum of the signal into even partitions, one of which is regarded as the IFB by an individual selector. This work proposes a fuzzy technique to select the IFB with improvements in two aspects. On the one hand, an IFB-specific fuzzy clustering method is developed to segment the frequency spectrum into meaningful sub-bands. Considering the shortcomings of the individual selectors, on the other hand, three commonly-used selectors are combined using a fuzzy comprehensive evaluation method to guide the clustering. Among all the meaningful sub-bands, the one with the minimum comprehensive cost is determined as the IFB. The bearing faults, if any, can be detected from the demodulated envelope spectrum of the IFB. The proposed fuzzy technique was evaluated using both simulated and experimental data, and then compared with the state-of-the-art peer method. The results indicate that the proposed fuzzy technique is capable of generating a better IFB, and is suitable for detecting bearing faults

Nonparametric Covariate Adjustment for Receiver Operating Characteristic Curves

The accuracy of a diagnostic test is typically characterised using the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve. Summarising indexes such as the area under the ROC curve (AUC) are used to compare different tests as well as to measure the difference between two populations. Often additional information is available on some of the covariates which are known to influence the accuracy of such measures. We propose nonparametric methods for covariate adjustment of the AUC. Models with normal errors and non-normal errors are discussed and analysed separately. Nonparametric regression is used for estimating mean and variance functions in both scenarios. In the general noise case we propose a covariate-adjusted Mann-Whitney estimator for AUC estimation which effectively uses available data to construct working samples at any covariate value of interest and is computationally efficient for implementation. This provides a generalisation of the Mann-Whitney approach for comparing two populations by taking covariate effects into account. We derive asymptotic properties for the AUC estimators in both settings, including asymptotic normality, optimal strong uniform convergence rates and MSE consistency. The usefulness of the proposed methods is demonstrated through simulated and real data examples

Effects of Dreissena polymorpha and Pyganodon grandis on algal density

General EcologyInvasive species often compete with native species for various resources. This study investigated how an invasive species in Douglas Lake, the zebra mussel, and a native species, freshwater clams, would impact algal communities through their feeding habits. We set up aquaria with different treatments of clams and zebra mussels in the boatwell at the University of Michigan Biological Station (UMBS) and monitored algal populations through chlorophyll-a levels. The zebra mussel treatment had the highest chlorophyll-a levels and the zebra mussel and clams treatment had the lowest chlorophyll-a levels on Day 4. The higher levels of chlorophyll-a may be due to the selective feeding of zebra mussels while the lower levels of chlorophyll-a may be due to the non-selective feeding of native clams. Our findings may be useful to understand how zebra mussels are affecting algal populations and how that may in turn affect native clam populations.https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/147908/1/Obuchowski_2018.pd

When genome-based approach meets the “Old but Good”: revealing genes involved in the antibacterial activity of Pseudomonas sp. P482 against soft rot pathogens

Dickeya solani and Pectobacterium carotovorum subsp. brasiliense are recently established species of bacterial plant pathogens causing black leg and soft rot of many vegetables and ornamental plants. Pseudomonas sp. strain P482 inhibits the growth of these pathogens, a desired trait considering the limited measures to combat these diseases. In this study, we determined the genetic background of the antibacterial activity of P482, and established the phylogenetic position of this strain. Pseudomonas sp. P482 was classified as Pseudomonas donghuensis. Genome mining revealed that the P482 genome does not contain genes determining the synthesis of known antimicrobials. However, the ClusterFinder algorithm, designed to detect atypical or novel classes of secondary metabolite gene clusters, predicted 18 such clusters in the genome. Screening of a Tn5 mutant library yielded an antimicrobial negative transposon mutant. The transposon insertion was located in a gene encoding an HpcH/HpaI aldolase/citrate lyase family protein. This gene is located in a hypothetical cluster predicted by the ClusterFinder, together with the downstream homologs of four nfs genes, that confer production of a non-fluorescent siderophore by P. donghuensis HYS(T). Site-directed inactivation of the HpcH/HpaI aldolase gene, the adjacent short chain dehydrogenase gene, as well as a homolog of an essential nfs cluster gene, all abolished the antimicrobial activity of the P482, suggesting their involvement in a common biosynthesis pathway. However, none of the mutants showed a decreased siderophore yield, neither was the antimicrobial activity of the wild type P482 compromised by high iron bioavailability. A genomic region comprising the nfs cluster and three upstream genes is involved in the antibacterial activity of P. donghuensis P482 against D. solani and P. carotovorum subsp. brasiliense. The genes studied are unique to the two known P. donghuensis strains. This study illustrates that mining of microbial genomes is a powerful approach for predictingthe presence of novel secondary-metabolite encoding genes especially when coupled with transposon mutagenesis

Empirical Likelihood Inference for the Area Under the ROC Curve

For a continuous-scale diagnostic test, the most commonly used summary index of the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve is the area under the curve (AUC) that measures the accuracy of the diagnostic test. In this paper we propose an empirical likelihood approach for the inference of AUC. We first define an empirical likelihood ratio for AUC and show that its limiting distribution is a scaled chi-square distribution. We then obtain an empirical likelihood based confidence interval for AUC using the scaled chi-square distribution. This empirical likelihood inference for AUC can be extended to stratified samples and the resulting limiting distribution is a weighted sum of independent chi-square distributions. We also conduct simulation studies to compare the relative performance of the proposed empirical likelihood based interval with the existing normal approximation based intervals and bootstrap intervals for AUC

Two-dimensional frontal plane projection angle can identify subgroups of patellofemoral pain patients who demonstrate dynamic knee valgus

Background Identifying individuals with patellofemoral pain who demonstrate similar modifiable factors including dynamic knee valgus may be useful in establishing subgroups of patients that can undergo individualised management strategies. However, a lack of objective assessment criteria means that the findings are of limited value to clinicians aiming to distinguish between patients with and without altered frontal plane knee kinematics. Therefore, the aim of the study was to investigate dynamic knee valgus in individuals with and without patellofemoral pain by determining frontal plane knee alignment during functional activity. Methods Thirty recreationally active individuals with patellofemoral pain and 30 non-injured individuals had frontal plane knee alignment assessed via two-dimensional analysis of the frontal plane projection angle during single limb stance and single limb squats to 60° of knee flexion. Findings Individuals with patellofemoral pain demonstrated excessive frontal plane knee alignment (P = .003; ES = 0.68) compared to uninjured participants during single limb squats. In addition, assessing frontal plane knee alignment using two-dimensional analysis had fair specificity and sensitivity of discriminating patellofemoral pain injury. Interpretation Clinical quantification of two-dimensional frontal plane knee alignment may be utilised to subgroup patients with patellofemoral pain that display dynamic knee valgus during single limb squats. Furthermore, this may be a useful clinical tool to determine individuals that may be at risk of developing pain in the future

Scoring ultrasound synovitis in Rheumatoid Arthritis: a EULAR-OMERACT Ultrasound Taskforce–Part 2: reliability and application to multiple joints of a standardized consensus-based scoring system

Objectives: To test the reliability of new ultrasound (US) definitions and quantification of synovial hypertrophy (SH) and power Doppler (PD) signal, separately and in combination, in a range of joints in patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) using the European League Against Rheumatisms–Outcomes Measures in Rheumatology (EULAR-OMERACT) combined score for PD and SH. Methods: A stepwise approach was used: (1) scoring static images of metacarpophalangeal (MCP) joints in a web-based exercise and subsequently when scanning patients; (2) scoring static images of wrist, proximal interphalangeal joints, knee and metatarsophalangeal joints in a web-based exercise and subsequently when scanning patients using different acquisitions (standardised vs usual practice). For reliability, kappa coefficients (κ) were used. Results: Scoring MCP joints in static images showed substantial intraobserver variability but good to excellent interobserver reliability. In patients, intraobserver reliability was the same for the two acquisition methods. Interobserver reliability for SH (κ=0.87) and PD (κ=0.79) and the EULAR-OMERACT combined score (κ=0.86) were better when using a ‘standardised’ scan. For the other joints, the intraobserver reliability was excellent in static images for all scores (κ=0.8–0.97) and the interobserver reliability marginally lower. When using standardised scanning in patients, the intraobserver was good (κ=0.64 for SH and the EULAR-OMERACT combined score, 0.66 for PD) and the interobserver reliability was also good especially for PD (κ range=0.41–0.92). Conclusion: The EULAR-OMERACT score demonstrated moderate-good reliability in MCP joints using a standardised scan and is equally applicable in non-MCP joints. This scoring system should underpin improved reliability and consequently the responsiveness of US in RA clinical trials

Seismic multiple events – a study on signals’ separation

In this paper we investigate an issue of multiple seismic events. Such events might occur in the case of both natural and mine-induced seismicity. In this paper we investigate an issue whether the distances between two overlapping impulses can be derived from a noisy seismic vibration measurement if the impulses are not equally spaced in time. Such distances might be therefore used for localization of the events or even for detection if more than one event occurred. The methodology is based on minimum entropy deconvolution (MED) and automatic peak finding. Simulated data analysis are performed in order to examine MED with different distances between events. Moreover, comprehensive simulated data analysis provide recommendations regarding MED filter size