Chinese music therapy to treat depression in children and adolescents: The BARIT-Model

Depression is broadly considered a global epidemic. In China it ranks among the most prevalent mental disorders and is seriously affecting the younger generation (prevalence between 4% and 41%), hence the necessity to foster health education and sustainable resilience. Meta-synthetic construction resulted in a music-based model of educational therapy comprising five principles, beauty, activation, responsiveness, immersion and transformation, hence the name ‘BARIT-model’: (i) referring to anthropological, psychological and neuroscientific aesthetics, the approach benefits from the healing power of aesthetic experience, (ii) behavioural activation is widely regarded as an efficient approach to treat depression. Different from conventional cognitive behavioural therapy, the BARIT-model involves artistic activities such as music improvisation, sound scene improvisation, vocal experiments or creative variations of Chinese martial arts, (iii) responsiveness concerns the qualitative similarity of emotion and music, alongside the patients’ feeling of being ‘understood’ by what they are listening to, (iv) while depressive mood tends to occupy the whole person, music immersion can help to escape that ‘pathological cage’, (v) finally, traumatic roots of depression need therapeutic processing, such as artistic symbolisation, intermodal transformation and relabelling of traumata as potential source of creative performance. The BARIT-model is part of a comprehensive project to improve mental health in Chinese children and adolescents through arts-based methods for classroom education, which encompasses ‒ in addition to depression ‒ attention deficit hyperactivity disorders, oppositional defiant disorders, anxiety disorders, stress-related disorders and burnout syndromes, eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa or binge eating, as well as disorders related to the COVID-19 pandemic, e.g. developmental syndromes caused by lockdown and social distancing.

Kantian Hesitations around the Proper Philosophical Method

According to leading Kant scholars, in mid-1760s Kant realizes that his program for the reform of metaphysics cannot be developed by the method of conceptual analysis which he had previously considered to be more adequate than the synthetic method of the Wolffians that imitates the mathematical one. In this paper, I put into question the claim of a pre-Critical project of ‘analytical metaphysics’ by trying to show that even for the ‘pre-Critical’ Kant the proper method of metaphysics is genuinely synthetic, but the synthetic construction in question should have been prepared by a Critical and subsequent exhaustive analysis of key material-instrumental concepts of the peculiar philosophical science under question.

Biological factors in the synthetic construction of overlapping genes

Background Overlapping genes (OLGs) with long protein-coding overlapping sequences are disallowed by standard genome annotation programs, outside of viruses. Recently however they have been discovered in Archaea, diverse Bacteria, and Mammals. The biological factors underlying life’s ability to create overlapping genes require more study, and may have important applications in understanding evolution and in biotechnology. A previous study claimed that protein domains from viruses were much better suited to forming overlaps than those from other cellular organisms - in this study we assessed this claim, in order to discover what might underlie taxonomic differences in the creation of gene overlaps. Results After overlapping arbitrary Pfam domain pairs and evaluating them with Hidden Markov Models we find OLG construction to be much less constrained than expected. For instance, close to 10% of the constructed sequences cannot be distinguished from typical sequences in their protein family. Most are also indistinguishable from natural protein sequences regarding identity and secondary structure. Surprisingly, contrary to a previous study, virus domains were much less suitable for designing OLGs than bacterial or eukaryotic domains were. In general, the amount of amino acid change required to force a domain to overlap is approximately equal to the variation observed within a typical domain family. The resulting high similarity between natural sequences and those altered so as to overlap is mostly due to the combination of high redundancy in the genetic code and the evolutionary exchangeability of many amino acids. Conclusions Synthetic overlapping genes which closely resemble natural gene sequences, as measured by HMM profiles, are remarkably easy to construct, and most arbitrary domain pairs can be altered so as to overlap while retaining high similarity to the original sequences. Future work however will need to assess important factors not considered such as intragenic interactions which affect protein folding. While the analysis here is not sufficient to guarantee functional folding proteins, further analysis of constructed OLGs will improve our understanding of the origin of these remarkable genetic elements across life and opens up exciting possibilities for synthetic biology.

Using single-cell models to predict the functionality of synthetic circuits at the population scale

Mathematical modeling has become a major tool to guide the characterization and synthetic construction of cellular processes. However, models typically lose their capacity to explain or predict experimental outcomes as soon as any, even minor, modification of the studied system or its operating conditions is implemented. This limits our capacity to fully comprehend the functioning of natural biological processes and is a major roadblock for the de novo design of complex synthetic circuits. Here, using a specifically constructed yeast optogenetic differentiation system as an example, we show that a simple deterministic model can explain system dynamics in given conditions but loses validity when modifications to the system are made. On the other hand, deploying theory from stochastic chemical kinetics and developing models of the system's components that simultaneously track single-cell and population processes allows us to quantitatively predict emerging dynamics of the system without any adjustment of model parameters. We conclude that carefully characterizing the dynamics of cell-to-cell variability using appropriate modeling theory may allow one to unravel the complex interplay of stochastic single-cell and population processes and to predict the functionality of composed synthetic circuits in growing populations before the circuit is constructed.

The Economics of Insurance: A Derivatives-Based Approach

This article revisits the economics of insurance using insights from derivatives pricing and hedging. Applying this perspective, I emphasize the following insights applicable to insurance. First, I provide a valid justification for the use of arbitrage-free insurance premiums. This justification applies in both complete and incomplete markets. Second, I demonstrate the importance of diversifiable idiosyncratic risk for the determination of insurance premiums. And third, analyzing the insurance industry using the functional approach, I show the importance of derivatives and the synthetic construction of derivatives for reducing an insurance company's insolvency risk. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Financial Economics, Volume 13 is November 2021. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.

From protocells to prototissues: a materials chemistry approach

Prototissues comprise free-standing 3D networks of interconnected protocell consortia that communicate and display synergistic functions. Significantly, they can be constructed from functional molecules and materials, providing unprecedented opportunities to design tissue-like architectures that can do more than simply mimic living tissues. They could function under extreme conditions and exhibit a wide range of mechanical properties and bio-inspired metabolic functions. In this perspective, I will start by describing recent advancements in the design and synthetic construction of prototissues. I will then discuss the next challenges and the future impact of this emerging research field, which is destined to find applications in the most diverse areas of science and technology, from biomedical science to environmental science, and soft robotics.

An Exploration of a Synthetic Construction Land Use Quality Evaluation Based on Economic-Social-Ecological Coupling Perspective: A Case Study in Major Chinese Cities

Recently, with the rapid increase of urban population and industrial agglomeration, the price of construction land has increased, and construction land has become increasingly scarce. Therefore, how to improve the construction land use quality (CLUQ) becomes more and more important. The purpose of the study is to evaluate CLUQ in China’s major cities and to analyze the dominant obstacle factors for quality improvement in order to provide policy advice for construction land management. This study adapts the data from 2014 to 2016 and constructs the evaluation framework of CLUQ involving economic quality, social quality, and ecological quality of construction land to evaluate and analyze CLUQ with the synthetic evaluation model, coupling evaluation model, and obstacle diagnosis model (ECO model). This study shows that the synthetic CLUQ of 23 cities out of 36 major cities in China shows a general increasing state. The economic quality of 26 cities out of 36 major cities in China has increased, while the social and ecological quality of 20 out of 36 major cities in China has decreased. In terms of spatial characteristics, the synthetic quality in the east and southwest of China is relatively high; in terms of spatial trend, the synthetic quality in longitude increases from west to east, and it shows an inverted U-shaped state in latitude. Moreover, economic development is the main obstacle factor for the improvement of CLUQ in Hohhot, Lanzhou, Urumqi, and Changchun. Social development results in the CLUQ lagging in Beijing, Guiyang, Shanghai, Xining, and Chongqing. Ecological development has a negative impact in that of Harbin, Qingdao, and Wuhan. Furthermore. The improvement of CLUQ lies in the coupling and coordinated development of economic, social, and ecological quality. For those with a low coupling degree, the targeted suggestions are given for different types based on city’s quadrant distribution.