Slowed canonical progress in large fields of science

In many academic fields, the number of papers published each year has increased significantly over time. Policy measures aim to increase the quantity of scientists, research funding, and scientific output, which is measured by the number of papers produced. These quantitative metrics determine the career trajectories of scholars and evaluations of academic departments, institutions, and nations. Whether and how these increases in the numbers of scientists and papers translate into advances in knowledge is unclear, however. Here, we first lay out a theoretical argument for why too many papers published each year in a field can lead to stagnation rather than advance. The deluge of new papers may deprive reviewers and readers the cognitive slack required to fully recognize and understand novel ideas. Competition among many new ideas may prevent the gradual accumulation of focused attention on a promising new idea. Then, we show data supporting the predictions of this theory. When the number of papers published per year in a scientific field grows large, citations flow disproportionately to already well-cited papers; the list of most-cited papers ossifies; new papers are unlikely to ever become highly cited, and when they do, it is not through a gradual, cumulative process of attention gathering; and newly published papers become unlikely to disrupt existing work. These findings suggest that the progress of large scientific fields may be slowed, trapped in existing canon. Policy measures shifting how scientific work is produced, disseminated, consumed, and rewarded may be called for to push fields into new, more fertile areas of study.

Insights into the ancestry evolution of the Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex from analysis of Mycobacterium riyadhense

Current evolutionary scenarios posit the emergence of Mycobacterium tuberculosis from an environmental saprophyte through a cumulative process of genome adaptation. Mycobacterium riyadhense, a related bacillus, is being increasingly isolated from human clinical cases with tuberculosis-like symptoms in various parts of the world. To elucidate the evolutionary relationship between M. riyadhense and other mycobacterial species, including members of the M. tuberculosis complex (MTBC), eight clinical isolates of M. riyadhense were sequenced and analyzed. We show, among other features, that M. riyadhense shares a large number of conserved orthologs with M. tuberculosis and shows the expansion of toxin/antitoxin pairs, PE/PPE family proteins compared with other non-tuberculous mycobacteria. We observed M. riyadhense lacks wecE gene which may result in the absence of lipooligosaccharides (LOS) IV. Comparative transcriptomic analysis of infected macrophages reveals genes encoding inducers of Type I IFN responses, such as cytosolic DNA sensors, were relatively less expressed by macrophages infected with M. riyadhense or M. kansasii, compared to BCG or M. tuberculosis. Overall, our work sheds new light on the evolution of M. riyadhense, its relationship to the MTBC, and its potential as a system for the study of mycobacterial virulence and pathogenesis.

The Playing Field Is Uneven

Chapter 17 argues that the economic playing field in the United States is not level. Rather, the process is characterized by cumulative advantage and disadvantage. Those starting off with advantages or disadvantages with respect to their social class background will tend to experience a cumulative process of escalating advantage or disadvantage. This includes the quality of education one receives, the acquisition of human capital, the likelihood of being exposed to crime or environmental hazards, and the overall quality of life. In addition, race plays a prominent role in the process of cumulative inequality.

Surface and Latent Meanings in Male’s Suicide Notes: A Two-Legged Qualitative Study

This study aims to investigate the phenomenon of suicide, which is a global health problem, by utilizing suicide notes. Our main concern in this article is to understand why a person leaves suicide notes before committing suicide; indeed, this question may shed light on particular personal characteristics of the note-leavers. 12 documents containing suicide notes, belonging to Turkish males, were obtained from Prosecutor office. By using an inductive and interpretative method, firstly, we conducted a semantic level analysis; and subsequently, we deeply analyzed the data by conducting latent level analyses from a Lacanian point of view. At the end of this cumulative process, we labelled the latent themes as ‘ambivalence of emotions’, ‘issues associated with separation’ and ‘issues associated with the Law’. Within the scope of those findings, a diagnostic discussion was provided. This discussion designated a picture of narcissism in addition to a psychotic structure, specifically paranoia.

Financing innovations in the contemporary world

As a practical application of new ideas, innovation is a multidimensional, complex, dynamic, long-term, and cumulative process based on organizational decision-making, from the stage of a new idea's emergence to its final implementation. There is a strong positive correlation between innovation and economic growth. Access to finance is a key driver of new innovative ventures' creation, survival, and growth. On the other hand, the lack of financial resources prevents and inhibits the growth and development of new innovative companies. This paper considers bootstrapping, crowdfunding, and mezzanine financing as widely accepted, specific innovation funding sources worldwide.

Heutagogy as a Concept of Online Education in Higher School

From the synergistic approach position, an attempt to reflect on the main axiological problems of the online education in higher school in the format of the heutagogy concept, representing the semantic system of the education modern subject regulation and self-learning intentions, is made in the article. In the triad of pedagogy-andragogy-heutagogy, the authors reveal the means, motivation, focus of the subject’s learning, teacher’s role at each stage of education, they describe the values of the personality, possessing a formative and guiding beginning; having a consistently significant character for a person, which allows expediently organizing an educational process, bearing a controlled nature. The dynamic context of the subject’s values development is presented in the article with the knowledge accumulation cumulative process; it is described by the main mechanisms that determine the student’s semantic picture appearance. For the pedagogical science institutionalization, the article reminds of the individual social inheritance essential attribute. Verification of the pedagogical knowledge different scale and its growth became possible due to the concept value retrospective analysis from the position of three main directions development: social, theoretical, methodological, which made it possible to answer the main question of technologies: how to discover the semantic intentions of the subject, to reflect them, to initiate their appearance, to transfer into self-actualization mode in heutagogy format.

INFORMATIZATION AS A CATALYST FOR TRANSITION TO THE KNOWLEDGE SOCIETY

The article considers that informatization is a cumulative process, since it is informatization that enhances the quality of interaction between engineering and technology, socio-economic relations and forms, building up the basis for macro generations in socio-economic systems and transforming social production at each stage of development. These dependencies are reflected in the authors’ method of analyzing the current information cycle. The proposed methodology has become one of the blocks building up the authors’ general algorithm for the analysis and management of the current information cycle, involving a comprehensive analysis and development of areas and methods for managing interphase and inter-stage transitions within the current transition period to the knowledge society.

From Goats to Ganymedes

This chapter provides the first scholarly assessment of how Edward II developed a reputation for having engaged in sexual relationships with his male favourites. Edward’s reputation for non-specific sexually transgressive behaviour developed during his reign; however, the first writer to explicitly state that this transgression constituted sex with men was Christopher Marlowe. Following the publication of Marlowe’s Edward II, discourse concerning Edward and his favourites in texts of all genres shifted towards consensus that their relationships were sexual. As well as documenting the cumulative process by which narratives of sexual transgression were shaped, this chapter provides new insights into the significance of Marlowe’s work, and into the ways in which drama as a genre enabled his historiographical innovation.