Fixing pornography’s illocutionary force: Which context matters?

Functions of the Nonverbal in CMC: Emoticons and Illocutionary Force

The term 'emoticons'—short for 'emotion icons'—refers to graphic signs, such as the smiley face, that often accompany computer-mediated textual communication. They are most often characterized as iconic indicators of emotion, conveyed through a communication channel that is parallel to the linguistic one. In this article, it is argued that this conception of emoticons fails to account for some ...

Context Matters

Midbrain dopamine neurons are thought to encode the difference between predicted and actual reward on conditioning tasks. Successful models assumed a simple form of prediction that depended only on currently available information. In this issue of Neuron, Nakahara and colleagues record from dopamine neurons in alert monkeys and show that the neurons can encode predictions that are not so restri...

Which gauge matters?

I present a new interpretation of the Aharonov–Bohm by identifying an overlooked physical field: the current field. The interpretation is non-arbitrary, completely local, deterministic, and separable. I then consider the connection between theoretical methodology and fundamental ontology by considering Earman’s call to consider gauge matters. I conclude that we should be clear about which gauge...

Antibiotic efficacy-context matters.

Antibiotic lethality is a complex physiological process, sensitive to external cues. Recent advances using systems approaches have revealed how events downstream of primary target inhibition actively participate in antibiotic death processes. In particular, altered metabolism, translational stress and DNA damage each contribute to antibiotic-induced cell death. Moreover, environmental factors s...

ABO incompatibility: which one matters?