Name der Zeitschrift: Byzantinische Zeitschrift Jahrgang: 107 Heft: 1 Seiten: 253-292.

Researchers in the fields of sign language and gesture studies frequently present their participants with video stimuli showing actors performing linguistic signs or co-speech gestures. Up to now, such video stimuli have been mostly controlled only for some of the technical aspects of the video material, leaving open the possibility that systematic differences in video stimulus materials may be concealed in the actual motion properties of the actor’s movements. Computer vision methods such as OpenPose enable the fitting of body-pose models (...) to the consecutive frames of a video clip and thereby make it possible to recover the movements performed by the actor in a particular video clip without the use of a point-based or markerless motion-tracking system during recording. The OpenPoseR package provides a straightforward and reproducible way of working with these body-pose model data extracted from video clips using OpenPose, allowing researchers in the fields of sign language and gesture studies to quantify the amount of motion pertaining only to the movements performed by the actor in a video clip. These quantitative measures can be used for controlling differences in the movements of an actor in stimulus video clips or, for example, between different conditions of an experiment. In addition, the package also provides a set of functions for generating plots for data visualization, as well as an easy-to-use way of automatically extracting metadata from large sets of video files. (shrink)

The study examines the ontological similarity between the concept of competitor orientation and questionable intelligence-gathering efforts. Respondents from the hotel industry were surveyed with self-administered questionnaires. Exploratory factor analysis was carried out to identify the structure underlying variables of market orientation and ethical judgment on questionable intelligence-gathering efforts. The results suggest that the surveyed hotel managers are unable to distinguish the legitimate tactics of competitor orientation from the questionable practice of industrial espionage.

The purpose of this valuable book is to consider recent cultural trends in bioethics from a Catholic perspective. Bioethics is intended for a lay audience interested in understanding bioethical issues from a Catholic perspective.

Range and Cotton (1995) showed that many of the articles reviewed in their study did not include a line specifying institutional review board-approved procurement of informed parental permission and child assent for child research. Range and Cotton stated that the absence of the line suggests a lack of sensitivity to permission/assent issues, implied that many authors of the articles did not obtain permission/assent, and said those who did but did not report it were camouflaging those who did not. In this (...) article, the logic of these points is refuted, the ethics of the Range and Cotton study are questioned, and its potential divisiveness is lamented. (shrink)

Psychologists have traditionally approached phenomenology by describing perceptual states, typically in the context of vision. The control of actions has often been described as 'automatic', and therefore lacking any specific phenomenology worth studying. This article will begin by reviewing some historical attempts to investigate the phenomenology of action. This review leads to the conclusion that, while movement of the body itself need not produce a vivid conscious experience, the neural process of voluntary action as a whole has distinctive phenomenological consequences. (...) The remainder of the article tries to characterise this phenomenology. First, the planning of actions is often conscious, and can produce a characteristic executive mode of awareness. Second, our awareness of action often arises from the process of matching what we intended to do with what actually happened. Failures of this matching process lead to particularly vivid conscious experience, which we call 'error awareness'. These features of action phenomenology can be directly related to established models of motor control. This allows an important connection between phenomenology and neuroscience of action. Third, whereas perceptual phenomenology is normally seen as caused or driven by the sensory stimulus, a much more fluid model is required for phenomenology of action. Several experimental results suggest that phenomenology of action is partly a post hoc reconstruction, while others suggest that our awareness of action represents an integration of several processes at multiple levels of motor processing. Fourth, and finally, studies of the phenomenology of action, unlike those of perception, show a strong linkage between primary awareness and secondary awareness or self-consciousness: awareness of action is specifically and inextricably awareness of my action. We argue that the concepts of agency and of proprioaction are fundamental to this linkage. For these reasons, action represents a much more promising field than perception for attacking the problematic question of the relation between primary and secondary consciousness. Some promising directions for future research are indicated. (shrink)

Saccadic chronostasis refers to the subjective temporal lengthening of the first visual stimulus perceived after an eye movement. It has been quantified using a duration discrimination task. Most models of human duration discrimination hypothesise an internal clock. These models could explain chronostasis as a transient increase in internal clock speed due to arousal following a saccade, leading to temporal overestimation. Two experiments are described which addressed this hypothesis by parametrically varying the duration of the stimuli that are being judged. Changes (...) in internal clock speed predict chronostasis effects proportional to stimulus duration. No evidence for proportionality was found. Two further experiments assessed the appropriateness of the control conditions employed. Results indicated that the chronostasis effect is constant across a wide range of stimulus durations and does not reflect the pattern of visual stimulation experienced during a saccade, suggesting that arousal is not critical. Instead, alternative processes, such as one affecting the onset of timing are implicated. Further research is required to select between these alternatives. (shrink)

The target article by Wiggins and Wilbanks (2019) reports on the history and typology of the models of citizen science emerging in health and biomedical research with the rapid dispersion and repur...

This concise anthology of primary sources designed for use in an ancient philosophy survey ranges from the Presocratics to Plato, Aristotle, the Hellenistic philosophers, and the Neoplatonists. The Second Edition features an amplified selection of Presocratic fragments in newly revised translations by Richard D. McKirahan. Also included is an expansion of the Hellenistic unit, featuring new selections from Lucretius and Sextus Empiricus as well as a new translation, by Peter J. Anderson, of most of Seneca's _De Providentia_. The selections from (...) Plotinus have also been expanded. (shrink)

A Catholic physician practices in a world that condones the use of contraception. In the effort to be morally consistent, Catholic physicians are faced with questions about the extent to which their participation in providing contraceptives constitutes immoral cooperation in evil. Particular challenges face resident physicians, who practice under attending physicians and within the constraints of local and specialty-wide training requirements. The author examines the nature of the moral act of referring for contraception and argues that, in limited cases, there (...) is a moral distinction between a referral and an intra-residency patient transfer, and the latter may be morally licit according to the principle of material cooperation. National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 12.2 (Summer 2012): 283–309. (shrink)

This essay attempts to show that Plato’s thought makes important contributions to libertarian theory. Plato diagnoses the state as essentially a state of mind, one in which irrational desires replace natural reason as a guide to ethical conduct. The statist mindset is therefore marked by profound self-deception about what is truly good. Importantly, Plato contends that this self-deception plagues the rulers of the state as much as, or more than, the subjects. They mistakenly believe that wielding unjust power will bring (...) them happiness, when in fact it brings them misery. The aim of Plato’s philosophy is to convince aspiring rulers of that truth. (shrink)

The aim of this book is “to point how far the Arabian philosophers succeeded in their attempt to integrate the Semitic and Muslim conception of revelation with Greek wisdom.” The problem is precisely that which confronted the Catholic theologians of the 13th century. Seeing the efforts of the Arabian philosophers side by side with the achievement of St. Thomas we can better appreciate what St. Thomas succeeded in doing.

The contributors to The Moral of the Story, all preeminent political theorists, are unified by their concern with the instructive power of great literature. This thought-provoking combination of essays explores the polyvalent moral and political impact of classic world literatures on public ethics through the study of some of its major figures-including Shakespeare, Dante, Cervantes, Jane Austen, Henry James, Joseph Conrad, Robert Penn Warren, and Dostoevsky. Positing the uniqueness of literature's ability to promote dialogue on salient moral and intellectual virtues, (...) editor Henry T. Edmonson III has culled together a wide-ranging exploration of such fundamental concerns as the abuse of authority, the nature of good leadership, the significance of "middle class virtues" and the needs of adolescents. This collection reinvigorates the study of classic literature as an endeavor that is not only personally intellectually satisfying, but also an inimitable and unique way to enrich public discourse. (shrink)

Although the E-Z Reader model accounts well for eye-tracking data, it will be judged by new predictions and consistency with evidence from brain imaging methodologies. The stage architecture proposed for lexical access seems somewhat arbitrary and calculated timings are conservatively slow. There are certain effects in the literature that seem incompatible with the model.

BackgroundAlthough the number of reporting guidelines has grown rapidly, few have gone through an updating process. The STARD statement (Standards for Reporting Diagnostic Accuracy), published in 2003 to help improve the transparency and completeness of reporting of diagnostic accuracy studies, was recently updated in a systematic way. Here, we describe the steps taken and a justification for the changes made.ResultsA 4-member Project Team coordinated the updating process; a 14-member Steering Committee was regularly solicited by the Project Team when making critical (...) decisions. First, a review of the literature was performed to identify topics and items potentially relevant to the STARD updating process. After this, the 85 members of the STARD Group were invited to participate in two online surveys to identify items that needed to be modified, removed from, or added to the STARD checklist. Based on the results of the literature review process, 33 items were presented to the STARD Group in the online survey: 25 original items and 8 new items; 73 STARD Group members (86 %) completed the first survey, and 79 STARD Group members (93 %) completed the second survey.Then, an in-person consensus meeting was organized among the members of the Project Team and Steering Committee to develop a consensual draft version of STARD 2015. This version was piloted in three rounds among a total of 32 expert and non-expert users. Piloting mostly led to rewording of items. After this, the update was finalized. The updated STARD 2015 list now consists of 30 items. Compared to the previous version of STARD, three original items were each converted into two new items, four original items were incorporated into other items, and seven new items were added.ConclusionsAfter a systematic updating process, STARD 2015 provides an updated list of 30 essential items for reporting diagnostic accuracy studies. (shrink)

The neuroscience of language studies the relationship between linguistic phenomena and the structure and functioning of the human brain. In this chapter, the authors focus on the neural basis supporting the remarkable human capacity to effortlessly assemble single words into more complex hierarchical structures, thus enabling the production and comprehension of unbounded arrays of different linguistic expressions. They begin with a brief discussion of language as a biological system that includes a historical sketch of the understanding of language in the (...) brain. The authors provide an overview of the early days of brain‐syntax research in neuropsychology, primarily on the basis of lesion studies. They end with a reflection on the impact that Noam Chomsky's ideas have had on the neuroscience of language. (shrink)

Hsiao has recently developed what he considers a ‘simple and straightforward’ argument for the moral permissibility of corporal punishment. In this article we argue that Hsiao's argument is seriously flawed for at least two reasons. Specifically, we argue that a key premise of Hsiao's argument is question-begging, and Hsiao's argument depends upon a pair of false underlying assumptions, namely, the assumption that children are moral agents, and the assumption that all forms of wrongdoing demand retribution.

The ovarian tumor (otu) gene behaves as if it encodes a product (OGP) which is required during several early steps in the transformation of oogonia into functional oocytes. The ovarian phenotypes produced by various EMS‐induced mutations can be explained as graded responses by individual mutant germ cells to the different levels of functionally active OGP they themselves synthesize. In addition, genetic evidence suggests that otu also encodes a second product that is utilized late in oogenesis. Molecular studies of the otugene (...) demonstrate that it does transcribe at least two ovaryspecific RNAs. The possible function of the otu product in the cellular divisions that give rise to the oocyte and its sister nurse cells is discussed. (shrink)

Nanoethics seeks to examine the potential risks and rewards of applications of nanotechnology. This up-to-date anthology gives the reader an introduction to and basic foundation in nanotechnology and nanoethics, and then delves into near-, mid-, and far-term issues. Comprehensive and authoritative, it: -/- - Goes beyond the usual environmental, health, and safety (EHS) concerns to explore such topics as privacy, nanomedicine, human enhancement, global regulation, military, humanitarianism, education, artificial intelligence, space exploration, life extension, and more -/- -Features contributions from forty (...) preeminent experts from academia and industry worldwide, reflecting diverse perspectives -/- -Includes seminal works that influence nanoethics today -/- -Encourages an informed, proactive approach to nanoethics and advocates addressing new and emerging controversies before they impede progress or impact our welfare -/- This resource is designed to promote further investigations and a broad and balanced dialogue in nanoethics, dealing with critical issues that will affect the industry as well as society. While this will be a definitive reference for students, scientists in academia and industry, policymakers, and regulators, it's also a valuable resource for anyone who wants to understand the challenges, principles, and potential of nanotechnology. (shrink)

§ 1. Introduction. Perhaps the most surprising recent development in complexity theory is the discovery that the class NP can be characterized using a form of randomized proof checker that only examines a constant number of bits of the “proof” that a string is in a language [6, 5, 31, 3, 4]. More specifically, writing ∣x∣ for the length of a string x, a language L in the class NP of languages recognizable in Nondeterministic polynomial time is traditionally given by (...) a polynomial p and a polynomial-time predicate P such that a string x is in L iff there is some string y satisfying P, where ∣y∣ ≤ p. Intuitively, we can think of a string y as a possible proof that x ϵ L, with the predicate P some kind of proof checker that distinguishes good proofs from bad ones. A string x is therefore in a language L ϵ NP if there is a short proof that x ϵ L, and not in L otherwise. The surprising discovery is that the deterministic proof checker that reads the entire input and proof can be replaced by a probabilistic verifier that on input x and possible proof y, where y is presented in a certain way, flips at most O coins and reads at most a constant number of bits of x and y. Obviously, a probabilistic verifier that does not read the whole proof will sometimes make mistakes. However, the surprising and essentially non-intuitive mathematical fact is that for each language L in NP, it is possible to find a polynomial q and verifier V flipping a logarithmic number of coins and reading a constant number of bits such that, for any x ϵ L, there exists y with ∣y∣ ≤ q and with V accepting with probability 1 and, for x ∉ L, there is no y with ∣y∣ ≤ q and with V accepting with probability ≥ 1/4. This idea canalsobeextended to PSPACE [10, 9], using a game that alternates between two players instead of a proof presented by a “single player.”. (shrink)

As identity and authenticity discourses increasingly saturate everyday life, so too have these concepts spread across the humanities and social sciences literatures. Many scholars may be interested in identity and authenticity, but lack knowledge of paradigmatic or disciplinary approaches to these concepts. This volume offers readers insight into social constructionist approaches to identity and authenticity. It focuses on the processes of identification and authentication, rather than on subjective experiences of selfhood. There are no attempts to settle what authentic identities are. (...) On the contrary, contributors demonstrate that neither identities nor their authenticity have a single or fixed meaning. Chapters provide exemplars of contemporary research on identity and authenticity, with significant diversity among them in terms of the identities, cultural milieu, geographic settings, disciplinary traditions, and methodological approaches considered. Contributors introduce readers to a number of established and emerging identity groups from sites around the world, from yogis and punks to fire dancers and social media influencers. Their conceptual work stretches from the micro-analytic to the ethno-national as authors employ a variety of qualitative methods including ethnographic fieldwork, interviewing, and the collection and analysis of naturally-occurring interactions. Several of the chapters look directly at identification and authentication, while others focus on the social and cultural backdrops that structure these practices-what unites them is the adoption of social constructionist sensibilities. This book will appeal to anyone interested in understanding identity and authenticity. (shrink)

Hand function improvement in stroke survivors in the chronic stage usually plateaus by 6 months. Brain-computer interface (BCI)-guided robot-assisted training has been shown to be effective for facilitating upper-limb motor function recovery in chronic stroke. However, the underlying neuroplasticity change is not well understood. This study aimed to investigate the whole-brain neuroplasticity changes after 20-session BCI-guided robot hand training, and whether the changes could be maintained at the 6-month follow-up. Therefore, the clinical improvement and the neurological changes before, immediately after, (...) and 6 months after training were explored in 14 chronic stroke subjects. The upper-limb motor function was assessed by Action Research Arm Test (ARAT) and Fugl-Meyer Assessment for Upper-Limb (FMA), and the neurological changes were assessed using resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging. Repeated-measure ANOVAs indicated that long-term motor improvement was found by both FMA (F[2,26]= 6.367,p= 0.006) and ARAT (F[2,26]= 7.230,p= 0.003). Seed-based functional connectivity analysis exhibited that significantly modulated FC was observed between ipsilesional motor regions (primary motor cortex and supplementary motor area) and contralesional areas (supplementary motor area, premotor cortex, and superior parietal lobule), and the effects were sustained after 6 months. The fALFF analysis showed that local neuronal activities significantly increased in central, frontal and parietal regions, and the effects were also sustained after 6 months. Consistent results in FC and fALFF analyses demonstrated the increase of neural activities in sensorimotor and fronto-parietal regions, which were highly involved in the BCI-guided training.Clinical Trial Registration:This study has been registered atClinicalTrials.govwith clinical trial registration number NCT02323061. (shrink)