Based on the Lotka–Volterra system, a pest-natural enemy model with nonlinear feedback control as well as nonlinear action threshold is introduced. The model characterizes the implementation of comprehensive prevention and control measures when the pest density reaches the nonlinear action threshold level depending on the pest density and its change rate. The mortality rate of the pest is a saturation function that strictly depends on their density while the release of natural enemies is also a nonlinear pulse (...) term depending on the density of real-time natural enemies. The exact impulsive and phase sets are given. The definition and properties of the Poincaré map corresponding to the pulse points on the phase set are provided. We investigate the existence and stability of boundary and interior order-1 periodic solution. The theoretical analysis developed in the present paper combined with nonlinear controlling measures as well as nonlinear action threshold methods and techniques laid the foundation for the establishment and analysis of other state-dependent feedback control models. (shrink)

Single-pulse and repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation are used in clinical practice for diagnostic and therapeutic purposes. However, rTMS-based therapies that lead to a significant and sustained reduction in neuropsychiatric symptoms remain scarce. While it is generally accepted that the stimulation frequency plays a crucial role in producing the therapeutic effects of rTMS, less attention has been dedicated to determining the role of the electric field strength. Conventional threshold-based intensity selection approaches, such as the resting motor threshold, produce (...) variable stimulation intensities and electric fields across participants and cortical regions. Insufficient standardization of electric field strength may contribute to the variability of rTMS effects and thus therapeutic success. Computational approaches that can prospectively optimize the electric field and standardize it across patients and cortical targets may overcome some of these limitations. Here, we discuss these approaches and propose that electric field standardization will be instrumental for translational science frameworks aimed at deciphering the subcellular, cellular, and network mechanisms of rTMS. Advances in understanding these mechanisms will be important for optimizing rTMS-based therapies in psychiatry. (shrink)

Unstable Accumulating Activator models for cellular size control propose an activator that accumulates in a size-dependent manner and triggers cell cycle progression once it has reached a certain threshold. Having a short half life makes such an activator responsive to changes in cell size and makes specific predictions for how cells respond to perturbation. In particular, it explains the curious phenomenon of excess mitotic delay. Excess mitotic delay, first observed in Tetrahymena in the '50s, is a phenomenon in which (...) a pulse of protein synthesis inhibition causes a delay in mitotic entry that is longer than the pulse and that gets longer the later in the cell cycle the pulse is delivered. The interpretation of this phenomenon championed by Zeuthen and Mitchison in the '60s and '70s is that an unstable activator of mitosis is degraded during the pulse and has to be resynthesized to a threshold level to trigger mitosis; small cells have more time to resynthesize the activator before mitosis and so suffer less excess delay, whereas, large cells have less time thus suffer greater excess delay. Fifty years later, with our detailed understanding of cell cycle biochemistry, we can identify and test candidate Unstable Accumulating Activators. Here I review the field and further develop this concept. Excess mitotic delay, the phenomenon in which inhibition of protein synthesis causes a longer delay than the pulse of inhibition, is consistent with cell size control by an unstable accumulating activator, but not a stable activator. (shrink)

ObjectiveThe effects and possible mechanisms of cerebellar high-frequency repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation on swallowing-related neural networks were studied using resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging.MethodA total of 23 healthy volunteers were recruited, and 19 healthy volunteers were finally included for the statistical analysis. Before stimulation, the cerebellar hemisphere dominant for swallowing was determined by the single-pulse TMS. The cerebellar representation of the suprahyoid muscles of this hemisphere was selected as the target for stimulation with 10 Hz rTMS, 100% resting motor (...) threshold, and 250 pulses, with every 1 s of stimulation followed by an interval of 9 s. The motor evoked potential amplitude of the suprahyoid muscles in the bilateral cerebral cortex was measured before and after stimulation to evaluate the cortical excitability. Forty-eight hours after elution, rTMS was reapplied on the dominant cerebellar representation of the suprahyoid muscles with the same stimulation parameters. Rs-fMRI was performed before and after stimulation to observe the changes in amplitude of low-frequency fluctuation and regional homology at 0.01–0.08 Hz, 0.01–0.027 Hz, and 0.027–0.073 Hz.ResultsAfter cerebellar high-frequency rTMS, MEP recorded from swallowing-related bilateral cerebral cortex was increased. The results of rs-fMRI showed that at 0.01–0.08 Hz, ALFF was increased at the pons, right cerebellum, and medulla and decreased at the left temporal lobe, and ReHo was decreased at the left insular lobe, right temporal lobe, and corpus callosum. At 0.01–0.027 Hz, ALFF was decreased at the left temporal lobe, and ReHo was decreased at the right temporal lobe, left putamen, and left supplementary motor area.ConclusionRepetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation of the swallowing cortex in the dominant cerebellar hemisphere increased the bilateral cerebral swallowing cortex excitability and enhanced pontine, bulbar, and cerebellar spontaneous neural activity, suggesting that unilateral high-frequency stimulation of the cerebellum can excite both brainstem and cortical swallowing centers. These findings all provide favorable support for the application of cerebellar rTMS in the clinical practice. (shrink)

Long time delay before lasing in a II-VI laser diode has been observed. Due to this delay, a nominal threshold current increases as the width of applied current pulse becomes shorter. This delay is attributed to the internal Q switching caused by the balance of injected carriers, temperature rise and gain-guiding. By fitting the calculated data to the experimental ones, rates of refractive index change with carrier concentration and with temperature have been estimated.

Here we elucidate a paradox: how a single chemoattractant‐receptor system in two individuals is used for communication despite the seeming inevitability of self‐excitation. In the filamentous fungus Neurospora crassa, genetically identical cells that produce the same chemoattractant fuse via the homing of individual cell protrusions toward each other. This is achieved via a recently described “ping‐pong” pulsatile communication. Using a generic activator‐inhibitor model of excitable behavior, we demonstrate that the pulse exchange can be fully understood in terms of two (...) excitable systems locked into a stable oscillatory pattern of mutual excitation. The most puzzling properties of this communication are the sudden onset of oscillations with final amplitude, and the absence of seemingly inevitable self‐excitation. We show that these properties result directly from both the excitability threshold and refractory period characteristic of excitable systems. Our model suggests possible molecular mechanisms for the ping‐pong communication. (shrink)

In the present study, we have demonstrated hysteresis phenomena in the excitability of single, enzymatically dissociated guinea pig ventricular myocytes. Membrane potentials were recorded with patch pipettes in the whole-cell current clamp configuration. Repetitive stimulation with depolarizing current pulses of constant cycle length and duration but varying strength led to predictable excitation (1:l) and non-excitation (1:0) patterns depending on current strength. In addition, transition between patterns depended on the direction of current intensity change and stable hysteresis loops were obtained in (...) stimulus:response pattern vs. current intensity plots in 14 cells. Increase of pulse duration and decrease of stimulation rate contributed to a reduction in hysteresis loop areas. Changes in amplitude and shape of the subthreshold responses during the transitions from one stable pattern to the other, suggested that activity led to an increase in membrane resistance, particularly in the voltage domain between resting potential, and threshold. Therefore, we modelled the dynamic behaviour of the single cells as a function of diastolic membrane resistance, using previously published analytical solutions. Numerical iteration of the analytical model equations closely reproduced the experimental hysteresis loops in both qualitative and quantitative ways. In particular, the effect of stimulation frequency on the model was similar to the experimental findings. The overall study suggests that the excitability pattern of guinea pig ventricular myocytes accounts for hysteresis and bistabilities when current intensity is allowed to fluctuate around threshold levels. (shrink)

Short-term limb immobilization results in skeletal muscle decline, but the underlying mechanisms are incompletely understood. This study aimed to determine the neurophysiologic basis of immobilization-induced skeletal muscle decline, and whether repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation could prevent any decline. Twenty-four healthy young males underwent unilateral limb immobilization for 72 h. Subjects were randomized between daily rTMS using six 20 Hz pulse trains of 1.5 s duration with a 60 s inter-train-interval delivered at 90% resting Motor Threshold, or Sham rTMS (...) throughout immobilization. Maximal grip strength, EMG activity, arm volume, and composition were determined at 0 and 72 h. Motor Evoked Potentials were determined daily throughout immobilization to index motor excitability. Immobilization induced a significant reduction in motor excitability across time. The rTMS intervention increased motor excitability at 0 h. Despite daily rTMS treatment, there was still a significant reduction in motor excitability, loss in EMG activity, and a loss of maximal grip strength after immobilization. Interestingly, the increase in biceps and posterior forearm skinfold thickness with immobilization in Sham treatment was not observed following rTMS treatment. Reduced MEPs drive the loss of strength with immobilization. Repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation cannot prevent this loss of strength but further investigation and optimization of neuroplasticity protocols may have therapeutic benefit. (shrink)

An eight hundred‐square‐foot house greets me and a licensed practical nurse. We walk on uneven, disintegrating concrete steps before entering the patient's daughter's home, and we can see a haze of cigarette smoke before we enter the living room. Although the patient is old enough for retirement, she tells me that, if it were up to her, she would still be working. Noticing the medical equipment occupying her room—oxygen, pulse oximeter, and blood pressure machine—I am reminded that our health (...) system is trying, like many other systems across the country, to manage people's chronic illness better by bringing technology into patients’ homes in hopes of preventing hospital readmissions. For this patient, the hope is that, if she gets symptoms that suggest another exacerbation of her chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, she can manage it herself. If I hadn't spent hundreds of hours in patients’ homes, I would have a low threshold for ordering home‐based nursing and telehealth; it would often seem like a good solution. (shrink)

The Threshold of the Visible World advances a revolutionary new political aesthetic--Kaja Silverman explores the possibilities for looking beyond the restrictive mandates of the self, and the normative aspects of the cultural image-repertoire. She provides a detailed account of the social and psychic forces which constrain us to look and identify in normative ways, and the violence which that normativity implies. Accounting for these phenomena on both a conscious and an unconcious level, Silverman analyzes the psychic and textual conditions (...) under which our "field of vision" can be expanded. The title of this book is taken from Lacan's essay on the mirror stage. In that text, Lacan writes that "the mirror-image would seem to be the threshold of the visible world." He thereby suggests that the visible world has no existence as such until the infant subject has access to an image of self. Lacan intimates that the mirror provides the frame through which one relates to others within the domain of vision, stressing the priority of narcissism and the ego over all other libidinal transactions. The Threshold of the Visible World provides a psychic, social and political specification of Lacan's claim, and most particularly of its implications for the subject's relations to the social other. This is accomplished through examination of the ego, as well as two other categories at the center of Lacan's account of the mirror stage: ideality and identification. This book is an ethical-political project which leads to the re-elaboration of a number of crucial theoretical categories--Silverman offers an account of the bodily ego, of identification, of idealization, of the gaze, of the look, and of the "photographic." The Threshold of the Visible World leads as well to the formulation of a fresh model for conceptualizing sexual, racial and class "difference," and the terms under which it might be dismantled. This book thus seeks to apprehend the field of vision through the frame of a different kind of bodily ego, and discover the pleasures to be derived from corporeal transport. (shrink)

Clearly written for the beginning student, this text provides an introduction to Asian philosophy as found in India, China, and Japan. Its thematic approach covers the most significant questions in the areas of Oriental metaphysics, ontology, epistemology, and ethics as it successfully integrates historical and regional approaches. In addition to providing a solid basis for a sound grasp of the major teachings and leading figures and schools in Oriental thought, readings from Indian, Chinese, and Japanese sources help the student gain (...) some familiarity with primary sources. (shrink)

Robert Brain traces the origins of artistic modernism to specific technologies of perception developed in late-nineteenth-century laboratories. Brain argues that the thriving fin-de-siècle field of “physiological aesthetics,” which sought physiological explanations for the capacity to appreciate beauty and art, changed the way poets, artists, and musicians worked and brought a dramatic transformation to the idea of art itself.

Despite the prominence of thresholds in theories of distributive justice, there is no general account of what sort of role is played by the idea of a threshold within such theories. This has allowed an ongoing lack of clarity and misunderstanding around views that employ thresholds. In this article, I develop an account of the concept of thresholds in distributive justice. I argue that this concept contains three elements, which threshold views deploy when ranking possible distributions. These elements (...) are (i) the level of the threshold, (ii) what constitutes the value of the threshold, and (iii) how benefits above and below the threshold must be allocated. I highlight three contributions that this particular account of thresholds makes: it clarifies the nature of the shift that occurs at the threshold; it resolves a common misunderstanding about headcount principles; and it shows how the arbitrariness objection can be met. (shrink)

Introduction: Critical realism, hegelian dialectic and the problems of philosophy preliminary considerations -- Objectives of the book -- Dialectic : an initial orientation -- Negation -- Four degrees of critical realism -- Prima facie objections to critical realism -- On the sources and general character of the hegelian dialectic -- On the immanent critique and limitations of the hegelian dialectic -- The fine structure of the hegelian dialectic -- Dialectic : the logic of absence, arguments, themes, perspectives, configurations -- Absence (...) -- Emergence -- Contradiction I : Hegel and Marx -- Contradiction II : misunderstandings -- On the materialist diffraction of dialectic -- Dialectical arguments and the unholy trinity -- Dialectical motifs : tina formation, mediation, concrete universality, etc -- On the generalized theory of the dialectical remark, the failure of detachment, and the presence of the past -- Dialectical critical naturalism -- Towards a real definition of dialectic -- Dialectical critical realism and the dialectic of freedom -- Ontology -- The dialectic of truth -- On the emergence and derivability of dialecticized transcendental realism -- 1m realism : non-identity -- 2e realism : negativity -- Space, time and tense -- Social science, explanatory critique, emancipatory axiology -- 3l realism : totality -- 4d realism : agency -- The dialectic of desire to freedom -- Dialectical critical realism and the dialectics of critical realism -- Metacritical dialectics : irrealism and its consequences -- Irrealism -- The problems of philosophy and their resolution -- Contradictions of the critical philosophy -- Dilemmas of the beautiful soul and the unhappy consciousness -- Master and slave : from dialectics of reconciliation to dialectics of liberation -- The metacritique of the hegelian dialectic -- Marxian dialectic i: the rational kernel in the mystical shell -- Marxian dialectic ii: the mystical shell in the rational kernel -- Metacritical dialectics : philosophical ideologies, their sublation and explanation -- The consequences of irrealism -- Diffracted and retotalized dialectics -- Dialectic as the pulse of freedom. (shrink)

Le Souffle de la Terre/The Pulse of the Earth is an on-going sound work (1996–20–) by the artist L. Abenavoli. She outlines the sonification methods employed in the making of the work in an analysis of its technical and conceptual features. The work is described in terms of her artistic objectives.

A small consortium of philosophers has begun work on the implications of epistemic networks (Zollman 2008 and forthcoming; Grim 2006, 2007; Weisberg and Muldoon forthcoming), building on theoretical work in economics, computer science, and engineering (Bala and Goyal 1998, Kleinberg 2001; Amaral et. al., 2004) and on some experimental work in social psychology (Mason, Jones, and Goldstone, 2008). This paper outlines core philosophical results and extends those results to the specific question of thresholds. Epistemic maximization of certain types does show (...) clear threshold effects. Intriguingly, however, those effects appear to be importantly independent from more familiar threshold effects in networks. (shrink)

This paper provides an axiomatic analysis of sufficientarian social evaluation. Sufficientarianism has emerged as an increasingly important notion of distributive justice. We propose a class of principles that we label generalized critical-level sufficientarian orderings. The distinguishing feature of our new class is that its members exhibit constant critical levels of well-being that are allowed to differ from the threshold of sufficiency. Our basic axiom assigns priority to those below the threshold, a property that is shared by numerous other (...) sufficientarian approaches. When combined with the well-known strong Pareto principle and the assumption that there be a constant critical level, the axiom implies that the critical level cannot be below the threshold. The main results of the paper are characterizations of our new class and an important subclass. As a final observation, we identify the generalized critical-level sufficientarian orderings that permit us to avoid the repugnant conclusion and the sadistic conclusion, which are known as two fundamental challenges in population ethics. (shrink)

Application of egalitarian and prioritarian accounts of health resource allocation in low‐income countries have both been criticized for implying distribution outcomes that allow decreasing/undermining health gains and for tolerating unacceptable standards of health care and health status that result from such allocation schemes. Insufficient health care and severe deprivation of health resources are difficult to accept even when justified by aggregative efficiency or legitimized by fair deliberative process in pursuing equality and priority oriented outcomes. I affirm the sufficientarian argument that, (...) given extreme scarcity of public health resources in low‐income countries, neither health status equality between populations nor priority for the worse off is normatively adequate. Nevertheless, the threshold norm alone need not be the sole consideration when a country's total health budget is extremely scarce. Threshold considerations are necessary in developing a theory of fair distribution of health resources that is sensitive to the lexically prior norm of sufficiency. Based on the intuition that shares must not be taken away from those who barely achieve a minimal level of health, I argue that assessments based on standards of minimal physical/mental health must be developed to evaluate the sufficiency of the total resources of health systems in low‐income countries prior to pursuing equality, priority, and efficiency based resource allocation. I also begin to examine how threshold sensitive health resource assessment could be used in the Philippines. (shrink)

_Dialectic_ is now widely regarded as a classic of contemporary philosophy. This book, first published in 1993, sets itself three main aims: the development of a general theory of dialectic, of which Hegelian dialectic can be seen to be a special case; the dialectical enrichment and deepening of critical realism, viz. into the system of dialectical critical realism; and the outline of the elements of a totalizing critique of Western philosophy. The first chapter clarifies the rational core of Hegelian dialectic. (...) Chapter two then proceeds to develop a general theory of dialectic. Isolating the fallacy of 'ontological monovalence', Roy Bhaskar then shows how absence and other negating concepts such as contradiction have a legitimate and necessary ontological employment. He then goes on to give a synoptic account of key dialectical concepts such as the concrete universal; to sketch the further dialectical development of critical naturalism through an account of what he calls four-planar social being; and following consideration of the dialectical critique of analytical reason, he moves on to the real definition of dialectic as absenting absence and in the human sphere, the axiology of freedom. Chapter three extends and deepens critical realism’s characteristic concerns with ontology, science, social science and emancipation not only into the realms of negativity and totality, but also into the fields of reference and truth, spatio-temporality, tense and process, the logic of dialectical universalizability and on to the plane of ethics, where it articulates a combination of moral realism and ethical naturalism, whereby consideration of elemental desire involves commitment to the eudaimonistic society. This is then followed by a sublime discussion of key moments in the trajectory of Western philosophy, the tradition of which can now be seen to be based on what the author calls the unholy trinity of the epistemic fallacy or the reduction of being to knowledge, primal squeeze or the collapse of structure and alethic truth, and ontological monovalence. (shrink)

_Threshold Concepts on the Edge_ explores new directions in threshold concept research and practice and is of relevance to teachers, learners, educational researchers and academic developers.

Recent trends in psychiatry involve a transition from categorical to dimensional frameworks, in which the boundary between health and pathology is understood as a difference in degree rather than as a difference in kind. A major tenet of dimensional approaches is that no qualitative distinction can be made between health and pathology. As a consequence, these approaches tend to characterize such a threshold as pragmatic or conventional in nature. However, dimensional approaches to psychopathology raise several epistemological and ontological issues. (...) First, we review major sources of evidence usually recruited in support of the dimensional trend (focusing on clinical observation and biological data), and we show that these are connected to different conceptualizations of how dimensional traits extend across health and pathology. Second, we criticize two unquestioned assumptions that stand at the core of the dimensional trend: a) that there is continuity from health to pathology at the symptomatic level; b) that such continuity reflects an underlying continuity in the genetic liability for pathological conditions. Third, we argue against the idea of a conventional threshold by showing that such a view implies a linear relationship between the genotype and the phenotype. Fourth, drawing on epigenetics and developmental biology, we offer a characterization of mental disorders as stable and dynamic constellations of multi-level variables that differ qualitatively from ‘healthy states’. We conclude by showing that our account has several theoretical advantages over both categorical and dimensional approaches. Notably, it provides crucial insights into psychological development over time and individual differences, with major implications in terms of intervention and clinical decision-making. (shrink)

Artist Meghan Moe Beitiks considers her first-person perspective of entanglements of light and air during the 2020–21 pandemic from her position in academia and Florida.

The threshold problem is the task of adequately answering the question: “Where does the threshold lie between knowledge and lack thereof?” I start this paper by articulating two conditions for solving it. The first is that the threshold be neither too high nor too low; the second is that the threshold accommodate the significance of knowledge. In addition to explaining these conditions, I also argue that it is plausible that they can be met. Next, I argue (...) that many popular accounts of knowledge cannot meet them. In particular, I lay out a number of problems that standard accounts of knowledge face in trying to meet these conditions. Finally, near the end of this paper, I argue that there is one sort of account that seems to evade these problems. This sort of account, which is called a cluster account of knowledge, says that knowledge is to be accounted for in terms of truth, belief and a cluster of epistemic properties and also that knowledge doesn’t require having all members of the cluster, but merely some subset. (shrink)

Despite the prominence of thresholds and limits in theories of distributive justice, there is no general account of their role within such theories. This has allowed an ongoing lack of clarity and misunderstanding around threshold views in distributive justice. In this thesis, I develop an account of the conceptual structure of such views. Such an account helps understand and characterize threshold views, can subsume what may seem to be different debates about such views under one conceptual header, and (...) can be used to further examine and develop patterns of justice that draw on thresholds. In light of this account, I propose a novel characterization of sufficientarianism which sheds new light on the distinctiveness of sufficientarianism as a distributive principle and on the common objections to sufficientarianism. Moreover, I examine and defend limitarianism, which is the view that people should not have more than a certain amount of wealth. In particular, I argue in favour of limitarianism as a midlevel principle for guiding institutional design and individual actions and, furthermore, as a specification of what a just allocation of wealth requires under epistemic constraints. (shrink)

When discussing the changing sense of reality around 1900 in the cultural arts the lexicon of early modernism reigns supreme. This essay contends that a critical condition for the possibility of many of the turn of the century modernist movements in the arts can be found in exchange of instruments, concepts, and media of representation between the sciences and the arts. One route of interaction came through physiological aesthetics, the attempt to ‘elucidate physiologically the nature of our Aesthetic feelings’ and (...) explain how works of art achieve their effects. Physiological aesthetics provided the terms for new formalist languages of art and criticism, and in some instances suggested optimistic, even utopian, possibilities for art to remake human individuals and societies.Keywords: Physiology; Psychology; Evolution; Aesthetics; Modernism; Art history. (shrink)

Mental-threshold egalitarianism, well-known examples of which include Jeff McMahan’s two-tiered account of the wrongness of killing and Tom Regan’s theory of animal rights, divides morally considerable beings into equals and unequals on the basis of their individual mental capacities. In this paper, I argue that the line that separates equals from unequals is unavoidably arbitrary and implausibly associates an insignificant difference in empirical reality with a momentous difference in moral status. In response to these objections, McMahan has proposed the (...) introduction of an intermediate moral status. I argue that this move ultimately fails to address the problem. I conclude that, if we are not prepared to give up moral equality, our full and equal moral status must be grounded in a binary property that is not a threshold property. I tentatively suggest that the capacity for phenomenal consciousness is such a property, and a plausible candidate. (shrink)

It is common practice in intergenerational justice to set fixed thresholds determining what qualifies as justice. Static definitions of how much and what to save for future generations, however, overestimate human epistemological limits and predictive capacity in regard to uncertainty in social- and ecosystems. Long-term predictions cannot account for the inherent range of contingent variables at play, especially according to contemporary theories of punctuated equilibrium. It is argued that policies deliberately testing ecological limits as currently conceived must be excluded from (...) political calculations to minimize current actions from foreclosing future life quality and options. To better reduce harms to present and future generations and support the stability of just institutions (and the stable environments they depend on) as Rawls and others demand, polities can overcompensate resource allocation to environmental sustainability. Focus on reducing environmental harms benefits both current and future generations, reconciling distributive versus intergenerational justice trade-offs. (shrink)

After spinal cord injury (SCI), motoneuron death occurs at and around the level of injury which induces changes in function and organization throughout the nervous system, including cortical changes. Muscle affected by SCI may consist of both innervated (accessible to voluntary drive) and denervated (inaccessible to voluntary drive) muscle fibers. Voluntary activation measured with transcranial magnetic stimulation (VATMS) can quantify voluntary cortical/subcortical drive to muscle but is limited by technical challenges including suboptimal stimulation of target muscle relative to its antagonist. (...) The motor evoked potential (MEP) in the biceps compared to the triceps (i.e., MEP ratio) may be a key parameter in the measurement of biceps VATMS after SCI. We used paired pulse TMS, which can inhibit or facilitate MEPs, to determine whether the MEP ratio affects VATMS in individuals with tetraplegia. Ten individuals with tetraplegia following cervical SCI and ten non-impaired individuals completed single pulse and paired pulse VATMS protocols. Paired pulse stimulation was delivered at 1.5, 10, and 30 ms inter-stimulus intervals (ISI). In both the SCI and non-impaired groups, the main effect of the stimulation pulse (paired pulse compared to single pulse) on VATMS was not significant in the linear mixed-effects models. In both groups for the stimulation parameters we tested, the MEP ratio was not modulated across all effort levels and did not affect VATMS. Linearity of the voluntary moment and superimposed twitch moment relation was lower in SCI participants compared to non-impaired. Poor linearity in the SCI group limits interpretation of VATMS. Future work is needed to address methodological issues that limit clinical application of VATMS. (shrink)

If you believe that there are restrictions on what we as moral agents can do to others, but that these restrictions can give way in the face of competing considerations, then you believe in thresholds for rights. In this dissertation I develop an account of thresholds for rights, in defence of a position which is often stated but rarely explained or defended. I begin with the obvious question: How much needs to be at stake before a right's claim is overridden? (...) ;Less obvious, but equally crucial, are questions about the distribution of the total which needs to be at stake. After developing a framework for answering that question, in subsequent chapters I deal with other factors which may influence our judgements about the overridability of rights' claims, including the numbers and identities of the agents involved. (shrink)

This paper seeks to elucidate Jean-Luc Nancy’s and Søren Kierkegaard’s shared understanding of faith by providing a phenomenology of faith. This is accomplished by applying Nancy’s conception of experience to Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling, of which this paper thus offers a phenomenological reading in order to analyse the experience of faith its pseudonymous author relates. In doing so, however, we will discover that faith belongs to a realm of experience that is more fundamental than, and thus takes priority over, the (...) lived-experience of classical phenomenology: it is an experience of life as a whole that as such forms the basis on which things are subsequently lived in experience. Faith is therefore held up as the prime example of the phenomenologically primary sense of “experience”: namely, the experience in which a life lived consists, the experience of undergoing life itself; the experience that, as Nancy puts it enigmatically, is existence. Since classical phenomenology fails to think this experience that makes its lived-experiences possible, the paper suggests that phenomenology should turn itself into poetics: namely, a discourse on the creative forms of life that constitute all lived-experiences. To that end, the paper proceeds in four steps: the first step consists in an exposition of the phenomenological framework used ; the second and third steps consist in applications of said framework to Kierkegaard’s understanding of faith; the fourth and final step draws on Nancy to spell out the consequences of the preceding analysis. (shrink)

Jean-Luc Nancy is a philosopher. He is not simply a “thinker” or a “theorist”. Of course, philosophers spend their time thinking, often in the most theoretical and abs...

Touching on Nancy and Derrida offers a glimpse not only into the thesis both of Jean-Luc Nancy's critique of touch and of Derrida's Le Toucher, but also into the threshold of a technology of (the) sense to come. This glimpse is an interrogation, and one that is both historic and historical, in the sense that Derrida, in addressing Jean-Luc Nancy's work, has presented us with an encyclopedic history of touch in the philosophic tradition from Aristotle to Nancy, one in (...) which what Derrida calls “transcendental archifacticity” is accorded its proper value, and within which any seeming anthropological privilege, as an inherent aspect of the Phenomenological Reduction is, as Derrida says, ‘overshadowed.’ Such an overshadowing is both strategic, in terms of a historical phenomenological project, and tactical, in Derrida's investigative sense: tactical in terms of implementation, manifestation, manipulation (i.e. through the application of the hand, manus) and in terms of tact, tactility; to which must be tacked on, à la Nancy, con-tact, ‘with touch,’ a ‘with-touch’ in which a béance, a gash or dash, opens out in-between, ‘at the very point’ to use Derrida's repeated specification, of bifurcation and of con-tact, at the junction point of the ‘spacing out’ of a laminated différance con-noting more than it has or had ever done in Derrida's work itself. *. (shrink)

How, and how well, do people switch between exploration and exploitation to search for and accumulate resources? We study the decision processes underlying such exploration/exploitation trade‐offs using a novel card selection task that captures the common situation of searching among multiple resources (e.g., jobs) that can be exploited without depleting. With experience, participants learn to switch appropriately between exploration and exploitation and approach optimal performance. We model participants' behavior on this task with random, threshold, and sampling strategies, and find (...) that a linear decreasing threshold rule best fits participants' results. Further evidence that participants use decreasing threshold‐based strategies comes from reaction time differences between exploration and exploitation; however, participants themselves report non‐decreasing thresholds. Decreasing threshold strategies that “front‐load” exploration and switch quickly to exploitation are particularly effective in resource accumulation tasks, in contrast to optimal stopping problems like the Secretary Problem requiring longer exploration. (shrink)

The temporal widths of a light pulse as measured in different inertial frames are shown to have a relation more complicated than that of a simple time dilatation. The result is compared with the dilatation in the twin paradoxGedanken experiment. The light pulse measurement requires two observers in two different frames. The measurements of the observers are compared. For the twin experiment a comparison is made between two clocks which have undergone different histories between the two points at (...) which their world lines intersect. (shrink)

Categorical perception (CP) is said to occur when a continuum of equally spaced physical changes is perceived as unequally spaced as a function of category membership (Harnad, S. (Ed.) (1987). Psychophysical and cognitive aspects of categorical perception: A critical overview. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). A common suggestion is that CP for color arises because perception is qualitatively distorted when we learn to categorize a dimension. Contrary to this view, we here report that English speakers show no evidence of lowered discrimination (...) thresholds at the boundaries between blue and green categories even though CP is found at these boundaries in a supra-threshold task. Furthermore, there is no evidence of different discrimination thresholds between individuals from two language groups (English and Korean) who use different color terminology in the blue-green region and have different supra-threshold boundaries. Our participants' just noticeable difference (JND) thresholds suggest that they retain a smooth continuum of perceptual space that is not warped by stretching at category boundaries or by within-category compression. At least for the domain of color, categorical perception appears to be a categorical, but not a perceptual phenomenon. (shrink)

Impurism says that practical factors encroach on knowledge. An important version of impurism is called ‘Threshold-Impurism,’ which says that practical factors encroach on the threshold that rational credence must pass in order for one to have knowledge. A prominent kind of argument for Threshold-Impurism is the so-called ‘principle-based argument,’ which relies on a principle of fallibilism and a knowledge-action principle. This paper offers a new challenge against Threshold-Impur- ism. I attempt to show that the two principles (...) Threshold-Impurists are committed to—KJ and Fallibilism—are jointly in tension with a widely-held principle of credence that’s called ‘Truth-Directedness,’ in the sense that the former two principles cannot both apply to those who know the third. This tension constitutes a serious challenge to Threshold-Impurists, because it leaves them two options, both of which are undesirable: denying Truth-Directedness, or accepting Truth-Directedness and accepting that whether KJ and Fallibilism apply to a person depends on whether she knows Truth-Directedness. (shrink)

The search for the best wellness practice has promoted the development of devices integrating different technologies and guided meditation. However, the final effects on the electrical activity of the brain remain relatively sparse. Here, we have analyzed of the alpha and theta electroencephalographic oscillations during the realization of the arrest reaction when a chromotherapy session performed in a dedicated room [Rebalance device], with an ergonomic bed integrating pulsed-wave light stimulation, guided breathing, and body scan exercises. We demonstrated that the PWL (...) induced an evoked-related potential characterized by the N2-P3 components maximally recorded on the fronto-central areas and accompanied by an event-related synchronization of the delta–theta–alpha oscillations. The power of the alpha and theta oscillations was analyzed during repeated ARs testing realized along with the whole RB session. We showed that the power of the alpha and theta oscillations was significantly increased during the session in comparison to their values recorded before. Of the 14 participants, 11 and 6 showed a significant power increase of the alpha and theta oscillations, respectively. These increased powers were not observed in two different control groups who stayed passively outside or inside the RB room but without any type of stimulation. These preliminary results suggest that PWL chromotherapy and guided relaxation induce measurable electrical brain changes that could be beneficial under neuropsychiatric perspectives. (shrink)

This article critically examines the legal arguments presented on behalf of Charlie Gard’s parents, Connie Yates and Chris Gard, based on a threshold test of significant harm for intervention into the decisions made jointly by holders of parental responsibility. It argues that the legal basis of the argument, from the case of Ashya King, was tenuous. It sought to introduce different categories of cases concerning children’s medical treatment when, despite the inevitable factual distinctions between individual cases, the duty of (...) the judge in all cases to determine the best interests of the child is firmly established by the case law. It argues that the focus should not have been on a threshold for intervention but on whether his parents had established that the therapy they wanted was a viable alternative therapeutic option. In the April hearing, Charlie’s parents relied on the offer of treatment from a US doctor; by July they had an independent panel of international experts supporting their case although by this time the medical evidence was that it was too late for Charlie. One of Charlie’s legacies for future disputes may be that his case highlighted the need for evidence as to whether the treatment parents want for their child is a viable alternative therapeutic option before a court can determine which therapeutic option is in the best interests of the child. (shrink)

Ever want to be famous? They didn't. It just sorta happened. Playing for friends at a pizzeria one day - full-on, massive world tour the next. Insane to a power of ten. Then, right in the middle the madness, they crash and burn. The reality of life is - stuff happens... Now, their fans are asking - what is it going to take to get pop music's latest 'phenomenon' back together? Can it even be done? In the fast paced, high-pressure (...) world that is pop music, will their passion be enough to ensure that our five accidental superstars will find their way back to doing what they were so amazingly good at? This is a story of unimaginable gain, devastating loss, and the remarkable ability of five friends, to overcome it all... (shrink)