A closer look at prion strains

A closer look at prion strains

Prions are infectious proteins that are responsible for transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs) and consist primarily of scrapie prion protein (PrP (Sc) ), a pathogenic isoform of the host-encoded cellular prion protein (PrP (C) ). The absence of nucleic acids as essential components of the infectious prions is the most striking feature associated to these diseases. Additionally, diffe...

A Closer Look at Preduction

In a recent paper Jun Arima formalises the idea of preduc-tion { a non-monotonic schema providing a common basis for inductive and analogical reasoning. We examine some of the implications of this schema, as well as its connections with prototypes and conceptual spaces. A generalised version of his schema is motivated and developed to address diiculties with asymmetry and disjuncts.

A Closer Look at HMAC

Bellare, Canetti and Krawczyk [BCK96] show that cascading an ε-secure (fixed input length) PRF gives an O(εnq)-secure (variable input length) PRF when making at most q prefix-free queries of length n blocks. We observe that this translates to the same bound for NMAC (which is the cascade without the prefix-free requirement but an additional application of the PRF at the end), and give a matchin...

A Closer Look at Trumping1

According to Schaffer (2000a), “trumping preemption” is a category of redundant causation distinct from early and late preemption and from overdetermination. I show that the putative causal difference between causal processes in cases thought to be trumping preemption generates early preemption or overdetermination rather than trumping. I draw a novel lesson from cases thought to be trumping: t...

A closer look at follicular lymphoma.