Many individuals with disabling conditions have difficulty with gait and balance control that may result in a fall. Exoskeletons are becoming an increasingly popular technology to aid in walking. Despite being a significant aid in increasing mobility, little attention has been paid to exoskeleton features to mitigate falls. To develop improved exoskeleton stability, quantitative information regarding how a user reacts to postural challenges while wearing the exoskeleton is needed. Assessing the unique responses of individuals to postural perturbations while wearing an (...) exoskeleton provides critical information necessary to effectively accommodate a variety of individual response patterns. This report provides kinematic and neuromuscular data obtained from seven healthy, college-aged individuals during posterior support surface translations with and without wearing a lower limb exoskeleton. A 2-min, static baseline standing trial was also obtained. Outcome measures included a variety of 0 dimensional measures such as center of pressure RMS, peak amplitude, velocities, pathlength, and electromyographic RMS, and peak amplitudes. These measures were obtained during epochs associated with the response to the perturbations: baseline, response, and recovery. T-tests were used to explore potential statistical differences between the exoskeleton and no exoskeleton conditions. Time series waveforms of the COP and EMG data were also analyzed. Statistical parametric mapping was used to evaluate the 1D COP and EMG waveforms obtained during the epochs with and without wearing the exoskeleton. The results indicated that during quiet stance, COP velocity was increased while wearing the exoskeleton, but the magnitude of sway was unchanged. The OD COP measures revealed that wearing the exoskeleton significantly reduced the sway magnitude and velocity in response to the perturbations. There were no systematic effects of wearing the exoskeleton on EMG. SPM analysis revealed that there was a range of individual responses; both behaviorally and among neuromuscular activation patterns. Using both the OD and 1D measures provided a more comprehensive representation of how wearing the exoskeleton impacts the responses to posterior perturbations. This study supports a growing body of evidence that exoskeletons must be personalized to meet the specific capabilities and needs of each individual end-user. (shrink)

The Monographs produced by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) apply rigorous procedures for the scientific review and evaluation of carcinogenic hazards by independent experts. The Preamble to the IARC Monographs, which outlines these procedures, was updated in 2019, following recommendations of a 2018 expert Advisory Group. This article presents the key features of the updated Preamble, a major milestone that will enable IARC to take advantage of recent scientific and procedural advances made during the 12 years since (...) the last Preamble amendments. The updated Preamble formalizes important developments already being pioneered in the Monographs Programme. These developments were taken forward in a clarified and strengthened process for identifying, reviewing, evaluating and integrating evidence to identify causes of human cancer. The advancements adopted include strengthening of systematic review methodologies; greater emphasis on mechanistic evidence, based on key characteristics of carcinogens; greater consideration of quality and informativeness in the critical evaluation of epidemiological studies, including their exposure assessment methods; improved harmonization of evaluation criteria for the different evidence streams; and a single-step process of integrating evidence on cancer in humans, cancer in experimental animals and mechanisms for reaching overall evaluations. In all, the updated Preamble underpins a stronger and more transparent method for the identification of carcinogenic hazards, the essential first step in cancer prevention. (shrink)

Pancreatitis is a complex, progressively destructive inflammatory disorder. Alcohol was long thought to be the primary causative agent, but genetic contributions have been of interest since the discovery that rare PRSS1, CFTR and SPINK1 variants were associated with pancreatitis risk. We now report two associations at genome-wide significance identified and replicated at PRSS1-PRSS2 and X-linked CLDN2 through a two-stage genome-wide study. The PRSS1 variant likely affects disease susceptibility by altering expression of the primary trypsinogen gene. The CLDN2 risk allele is (...) associated with atypical localization of claudin-2 in pancreatic acinar cells. The homozygous CLDN2 genotype confers the greatest risk, and its alleles interact with alcohol consumption to amplify risk. These results could partially explain the high frequency of alcohol-related pancreatitis in men. © 2012 Nature America, Inc. All rights reserved. (shrink)

Dual task is known to affect postural stabilty in children. We explored the effect of visual tasks on postural control in dyslexic and in age-matched non-dyslexic children. Thirty dyslexic children (mean age: 9.80 ± 0.28 years) were compared with thirty non-dyslexic children (mean age: 9.92 ± 0.35 years). All children underwent ophthalmologic and optometric evaluation. Eye movements were recorded by a video-oculography system (EyeBrain ® T2) and postural sway was recorded simultaneously by a force platform (TechnoConept®). Both groups of children (...) performed fixations, pursuits, pro- and anti-saccades tasks. Dyslexic children showed significantly poor near fusional vergence ranges (convergence and divergence) with respect to the non-dyslexic children. During the postural task, quality of fixation and anti-saccade performance in dyslexic children were significantly worse compared to non-dyslexic children. In contrast, the number of catch-up saccades during pursuits and the latency of pro-and anti-saccades were similar in both groups of children examined. Concerning postural quality, dyslexic children were more unstable than age-matched non-dyslexic children. For both groups of children tested we also observed that executing saccades (pro- and anti-saccades) reduced postural values significantly in comparison with fixation and pursuit tasks. The impairment in convergence and divergence fusional capabilities could be due to an immaturity in cortical structures controlling the vergence system. The poor oculomotor performance reported in dyslexic children suggested a deficit in allocating visual attention and their postural instability observed is in line with the cerebellar impairment previously reported in dyslexic children. Finally, pro- or anti-saccades reduce postural values compared to fixation and pursuit tasks in both groups of children tested, suggesting a different influence of visual tasks on postural control according to their attentional demand. (shrink)

The untimely passing of Reverend Canon Dr Christopher Newell, AM, came as a shock to many in the bioethics world. As well as an obituary, this article notes a number of important themes in his work, and provides a select bibliography. Christopher's major contribution to this field is that he was one of a handful of scholars who made disability not only an acceptable area of bioethics—indeed a vital, central, fertile area of enquiry. Crucially Christopher emphasised that where we do (...) ethics is actually in everyday life—while we mourn his passing, his rich work and example will continue to inspire bioethical inquiry. (shrink)

The humanities- in their conceptual and intellectual specificity, disciplinary rigor, and ethical, social, and political potential- are very much in need of defense and rearticulation in our time, particularly from a perspective that moves beyond the political and philosophical reductions of identity politics. Leaving aside polemics, Flynn asserts that discourses in the humanities will find real ethical-political purchase when they engage with the material events in art, literature, and social life that call for humanistic reflection.

Largely by the use of allegory, Ayn Rand's novel The Fountainhead repurposes and reinterprets the religious morality of Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus to espouse an Objectivist, rather than theist, view of salvation and damnation. The Faustian narrative no longer belongs to Faustus alone, but is read against itself in order to theorize that giving up one's ego and independence, rather than giving up one's membership to the societal collective, is the straightest road to perdition.

Continental Philosophy Beyond "the" Continent / Brian Treanor -- Prometheus' Gift of Fire and Technics: Contemplating the Meaning of Fire, Affect, and Californian Pyrophytes in the Pyrocene / Marjolein Oele -- The West as Slaughterbench: Thinking without Revolutions in the American West / Christopher Lauer -- The End of the West: The Time of Apocalypse in the Westerns of Cormac McCarthy / Amanda Parris -- The Trees of the West: Our Elders, Our Teachers / Andrew Jussaume -- Thinking Wolves / (...) Thomas Thorpe -- Robert Smith, Entropic Art, and the West / Shannon M. Mussett -- "Westering" and "BreakingThrough": Zen Buddhism on Cannery Row / Gerard Kuperus -- Life in Interregnum: Deleuze, Guattari, and Atleo / Russell Duvernoy -- Monstrous Topologies: Edward Abbey, Reiner Schürmann, and the Fate of the American West / Josh Hayes -- Turtle Island Anarchy / Jason Wirth. (shrink)

Christopher Arciszewski, Arian mercenary and man of many facets, conducted a journal in which, it is suspected, he described military campaigns, the state of the colony and other interesting phenomena he was able to observe during his time of service in Brazil. In 1641, Gerard Vossius was completing his magnum opus De theologia. In Chapter 8 of the first volume, Vossius discusses the “cult of the demon” among various peoples. As an example the Netherlander erudite provides a colorful description of (...) such a cult among the Brazilian Tapuya tribe. Since the author never traveled to Brazil, he makes use of the observations of Christopher Arciszewski. How does an Arian, brought up in an atmosphere of intense pluralism and far-reaching tolerance towards other belief systems, react when he encounters, first-hand, a culture utterly different, and completely alien to him? His presentation of a hierarchically constructed morality existent among various cannibalistic tribes is, in a sense, an intellectual breakthrough. Instead of treating the nativescollectively as one homogenous culture, as simply “savages”, Arciszewski distinguishes between various cultural units, and treats them individually. The nobleman attempts to convey their own views of morality not on the basis of European ethical systems, but on the local ones in place. In his day, such ideas were nearly unthinkable for most educated Europeans. Cannibalism of any kind was perceived as godless behavior, a sort of devilry, which would eventually be abolished with coming of the “light of Christianity” to the New World and the inevitable Europeanization of the natives. The reader can marvel at the extent to which Arciszewski is willing go in his relativism, to the point of sympathizing with the Tapuya. He allows them to explain to the reader the functioning of theirendo-cannibalistic culture. Arciszewski adds to the rationalization of cannibalism a detailed description of the death-rite among the Tapuya, presenting these ceremonial customs in accordance with their own beliefs, as something potentially interesting for humanistic intellectuals back in the Old World. Vossius’ book also discusses the question of the tribe’s spiritual beliefs: their conceptions of good and evil, deities, etc. The reader once again witnesses Arciszewski’s readiness to accept beliefs and deities completely unknown to European religion. The author does not prima facie discount the possibility that the “universal laws” operating in the Old World have no place in the Brazilian wilderness. His philosophical outlook, demonstrated by his rationalization of what had before been considered “magical” or “irrational”, is surely a foreshadowing of the rationalism of Enlightenment, whose modes of thinking constitute the core-foundation for alllater philosophical and scientific inquiry. Arciszewski, as an Arian brother par excellence, essentially operated with such conceptual tools as relativism, toleration and universalism, and his intellectual arsenal did not altogether differ from our own. As such, Arciszewski, and Europeans like him, helped free the Western worldview of its mediaeval philosophically limited conceptions of the cosmos, and propelled it in new directions of inquiry. This led eventually to a decided shifting of the European worldview away from superstition towards reason: the most definitively crucial moment in European intellectual history. (shrink)

Christopher Arciszewski (1592–1656), Arian mercenary and man of many facets, conducted a journal in which, it is suspected, he described military campaigns, the state of the colony and other interesting phenomena he was able to observe during his time of service in Brazil. In 1641, Gerard Vossius was completing his magnum opus De theologia. In Chapter 8 of the first volume, Vossius discusses the “cult of the demon” among various peoples. As an example the Netherlander erudite provides a colorful description (...) of such a cult among the Brazilian Tapuya tribe. Since the author never traveled to Brazil, he makes use of the observations of Christopher Arciszewski. How does an Arian, brought up in an atmosphere of intense pluralism and far-reaching tolerance towards other belief systems (or at least imbued with a strong relativism), react when he encounters, first-hand, a culture utterly different, and completely alien to him? His presentation of a hierarchically constructed morality existent among various cannibalistic tribes is, in a sense, an intellectual breakthrough. Instead of treating the nativescollectively as one homogenous culture, as simply “savages”, Arciszewski distinguishes between various cultural units, and treats them individually. The nobleman attempts to convey their own views of morality not on the basis of European ethical systems, but on the local ones in place. In his day, such ideas were nearly unthinkable for most educated Europeans. Cannibalism of any kind was perceived as godless behavior, a sort of devilry, which would eventually be abolished with coming of the “light of Christianity” to the New World and the inevitable Europeanization of the natives. The reader can marvel at the extent to which Arciszewski is willing go in his relativism, to the point of sympathizing with the Tapuya. He allows them to explain to the reader the functioning of theirendo-cannibalistic culture. Arciszewski adds to the rationalization of cannibalism a detailed description of the death-rite among the Tapuya, presenting these ceremonial customs in accordance with their own beliefs, as something potentially interesting for humanistic intellectuals back in the Old World. Vossius’ book also discusses the question of the tribe’s spiritual beliefs: their conceptions of good and evil, deities, etc. The reader once again witnesses Arciszewski’s readiness to accept beliefs and deities completely unknown to European religion. The author does not prima facie discount the possibility that the “universal laws” operating in the Old World have no place in the Brazilian wilderness. His philosophical outlook, demonstrated by his rationalization of what had before been considered “magical” or “irrational”, is surely a foreshadowing of the rationalism of Enlightenment, whose modes of thinking constitute the core-foundation for alllater philosophical and scientific inquiry. Arciszewski, as an Arian brother par excellence, essentially operated with such conceptual tools as relativism, toleration and universalism, and his intellectual arsenal did not altogether differ from our own. As such, Arciszewski, and Europeans like him, helped free the Western worldview of its mediaeval philosophically limited conceptions of the cosmos, and propelled it in new directions of inquiry. This led eventually to a decided shifting of the European worldview away from superstition towards reason: the most definitively crucial moment in European intellectual history. (shrink)

Penguins jumping off a cliff, economic forecasters and financial advisors speculating against a currency, and farmers using traditional methods in India are all practising social learning. Such learning from the behavior of others may and does lead to herds, crashes, and booms. These issues have become, over the last ten years, an exciting field of research in theoretical and applied economics, finance, and in other social sciences. This book provides both an informal introduction and in-depth insights into the subject. Each (...) chapter is devoted to a separate issue: individuals learn from the observations of actions, the outcomes of these actions, and from what others say. They may delay or make an immediate decision; they may compete against others or gain from cooperation; they make decisions about investment, crop choices, and financial investments. The book highlights the similarities and the differences between the various cases. (shrink)

Murayama and Jach rightfully aim to conceptualize motivation as an emergent property of a dynamic system of interacting elements. However, they do not embrace the ontological and paradigmatic constraints of the dynamic systems approach. They therefore miss the very process of emergence and how it can be formally modeled and tested by specific types of computer simulation.

We propose a class [I,S] of loss functions for modeling the imprecise preferences of the decision maker in Bayesian Decision Theory. This class is built upon two extreme loss functions I and S which reflect the limited information about the loss function. We give an approximation of the set of Bayes actions for every loss function in [I,S] and every prior in a mixture class; if the decision space is a subset of R, we obtain the exact set.

A l'occasion du soixantieme anniversaire d'Alain de Libera, une trentaine de collegues de France et de l'etranger ont souhaite, par une serie d'etudes d'histoire de la philosophie et de metaphysique, saluer son oeuvre scientifique et lui offrir un temoignage d'amitie. L'histoire de la metaphysique etant l'un des points cardinaux du travail philosophique d'Alain de Libera, a qui l'on doit notamment de magistraux ouvrages sur les universaux, il a semble judicieux d'etudier ces entites mineures mais neanmoins indispensables qui viennent completer la (...) substance pour constituer l'individu: les proprietes accidentelles. La question des accidents est ici etudiee sur la longue duree - d'Aristote a la metaphysique analytique contemporaine, avec une attention particuliere portee aux discussions medievales - et sous ses differents aspects: ontologique, semantique, epistemologique et psychologique. Sont ainsi abordes des problemes philosophiques aussi fondamentaux que ceux induits par les categories aristoteliciennes de qualite et de relation, les tropes, la causalite, l'individuation. (shrink)

Developmental dyscalculia (DD) is a pervasive difficulty affecting number processing and arithmetic. It is encountered in around 6% of school-aged children. While previous studies have mainly focused on general cognitive functions, the present paper aims to further investigate the hypothesis of a specific numerical deficit in dyscalculia. The performance of 10- and 11-year-old children with DD characterised by a weakness in arithmetic facts retrieval and age-matched control children was compared on various number comparison tasks. Participants were asked to compare a (...) quantity presented in either a symbolic (Arabic numerals, number words, canonical dots patterns) or a nonsymbolic format (noncanonical dots patterns, and random sticks patterns) to the reference quantity 5. DD children showed a greater numerical distance effect than control children, irrespective of the number format. This favours a deficit in the specialised cognitive system underlying the processing of number magnitude in children with DD. Results are discussed in terms of access and representation deficit hypotheses. (shrink)

Human expression is open-ended, versatile, and diverse, ranging from ordinary language use to painting, from exaggerated displays of affection to micro-movements that aid coordination. Here we present and defend the claim that this expressive diversity is united by an interrelated suite of cognitive capacities, the evolved functions of which are the expression and recognition of informative intentions. We describe how evolutionary dynamics normally leash communication to narrow domains of statistical mutual benefit, and how expression is unleashed in humans. The relevant (...) cognitive capacities are cognitive adaptations to living in a partner choice social ecology; and they are, correspondingly, part of the ordinarily developing human cognitive phenotype, emerging early and reliably in ontogeny. In other words, we identify distinctive features of our species' social ecology to explain how and why humans, and only humans, evolved the cognitive capacities that, in turn, lead to massive diversity and open-endedness in means and modes of expression. Language use is but one of these modes of expression, albeit one of manifestly high importance. We make cross-species comparisons, describe how the relevant cognitive capacities can evolve in a gradual manner, and survey how unleashed expression facilitates not only language use, but also novel behaviour in many other domains too, focusing on the examples of joint action, teaching, punishment, and art, all of which are ubiquitous in human societies but relatively rare in other species. Much of this diversity derives from graded aspects of human expression, which can be used to satisfy informative intentions in creative and new ways. We aim to help reorient cognitive pragmatics, as a phenomenon that is not a supplement to linguistic communication and on the periphery of language science, but rather the foundation of the many of the most distinctive features of human behaviour, society, and culture. (shrink)

■ Evidence from functional neuroimaging studies on resting state suggests that there are two distinct anticorrelated cortical systems that mediate conscious awareness: an “extrinsic” system that encompasses lateral fronto-parietal areas and has been linked with processes of external input (external awareness), and an “intrinsic” system which encompasses mainly medial brain areas and..

Dans l'histoire de la philosophie, la question du temps a été abordée selon deux tendances opposées : le temps de la nature avec Aristote et le temps de la conscience avec Augustin. Ces deux formes irréductibles l'une à l'autre ont vu leur relation se complexifier, notamment avec la théorie de la relativité au début du XXe siècle, puis la mécanique quantique, qui ont bousculé notre perception et compréhension du temps. Cet ouvrage, écrit par des scientifiques et des philosophes, se concentre (...) plus particulièrement sur le concept de " temps naturel ", examiné à la lumière de ses utilisations en sciences, qui semblent remettre en cause son unité. Physique, biologie, sciences cognitives, paléontologie, philosophie sont ici convoquées, chacune de ces disciplines disposant d'instruments spécifiques de mesure et de définition d'échelles de temps. Que nous apprennent-elles sur la " nature du temps ", sur ses propriétés comme la continuité ou l'irréversibilité? Quel statut doit-on donner aux différences entre les échelles utilisées pour observer les phénomènes? Telles sont quelques-unes des questions abordées dans ce livre, nouvelle incursion dans les mystères du temps. (shrink)

Notre réponse à la question de l'échec constitue aujourd'hui un problème pour la philosophie. Convaincus de ses prétendues vertus par des psys et des coachs pourtant peu convaincants sur ses tenants et ses aboutissants, nous nous méprenons en effet gravement sur l'échec. Dans une insatiable logique de la réussite, l'envie qui est la nôtre d'en tirer parti crée le besoin de le rendre autre qu'il n'est. Fût-il cuisant, fût-il complet, nous n'en parlons plus que comme d'un insuccès, nous ne le (...) pensons plus que comme une chance. Qui ne sait toutefois que les réussites dans la vie ne font pas forcément la réussite de la vie, ni les échecs son échec? Fermons donc l'oreille au nihilisme afin de rouvrir les yeux sur ces truismes : le bonheur n'est pas plus la réussite que la réussite le succès ; et si rater sa vie ne signifie pas nécessairement la gâcher, on ne peut manquer de la manquer au regard de l'inexorable loi de l'échec. Cela ressaisi, le seul désir qui mérite d'être cultivé ici-bas est d'échouer pour arriver, mieux : d'arriver â s'échouer. Aussi l'idée de l'échec conduit-elle in fine à entrer dans le registre de la marine, pour y envisager ex nunc notre existence comme une traversée. (shrink)

En philosophie, la question de la solitude a toujours été laissée à sa solitude de question. Les hommes n'ont cependant jamais manqué ni de se trouver ni de se penser seuls. Certes, nul d'entre nous n'est seul à être ni seul à être seul. Mais chacun est pour lui-même le seul non seulement à se sentir l'être, mais encore à connaître le double principe présidant à l'être seul. Car seul l'être peut être seul et seul l'être seul peut être. Sous (...) cette lumière crue, une fois dépouillée de ses oripeaux que sont l'isolement et l'esseulement auxquels on la réduit aussi fréquemment qu'injustement, la solitude nue pourrait bien s'avérer le nom approprié de l'être et le dernier mot de l'individuation de l'ego. C'est là du moins la chose même que doit-nous faire voir une phénoménologie de la solitude qui puisse entendre ces deux mots : solus ipse. (shrink)

BACKGROUND: Through their action on the locus coeruleus, ␣ 2-adrenoceptor agonists induce rapidly reversible sedation while partially preserving cognitive brain functions. Our goal in this observational study was to map brain regions whose activity is modified by clonidine infusion so as to better understand its loci of action, especially in relation to sedation. METHODS: Six ASA I–II right-handed volunteers were recruited. Electroencephalogram (EEG) was monitored continuously. After a baseline H215O activation scan, clonidine infusion was started at a rate ranging from (...) 6 to 10 ␮g ⅐ kgϪ1 ⅐ h Ϫ1. A sequence of 11 similar scans was then performed at 8 min intervals. Plasma clonidine concentration was measured. Using statistical parametric mapping, we sought linear correlations between normalized regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF), an indicator of regional brain activity, and plasma clonidine concentration or spindle EEG activity. RESULTS: Clonidine induced clinical sedation and EEG patterns (spindles) comparable to early stage nonrapid eye movement sleep. A significant negative linear correlation between clonidine concentration and rCBF or spindle activity was observed in the thalamus, prefrontal, orbital and parietal association cortex, posterior cingulate cortex, and precuneus. CONCLUSIONS: The EEG patterns and decreases in rCBF of specific brain regions observed during clonidine-induced sedation are similar to those of early stage nonrapid eye movement sleep. Patterns of deactivated brain regions are also comparable to those observed during general anesthesia or vegetative state, reinforcing the hypothesis that alterations in the activity of a common network occur during these modified conscious states. (shrink)

Condemned to exist beyond his essence, since he is only what he does and can always become what he is not or not to be what he is any more, man is, for Sartre, condemned to freedom without condition which constitutes, not his nature, but his condition. Free of anything apart from not being free, since he chooses neither to be, nor the necessity to choose the being that he must make himself be, man, however, is always already determined by (...) his condition: thrown in to a world where he acknowledges his own condition. Far from calling into question the integrity of his autonomy of choice, this ontological conditioning is for the Being-itself the ground on which the need for his engagement appears and, therefore also the plenitude of his freedom. As tragic as that which one considers controlled by fate, for Sartre, the human condition thus means being condemned to freedom. (shrink)

This book is the first collective study of this major figure in the intellectual and political life of 12th-century Europe to appear for thirty years. Based on the latest research, thirteen contributions by leading experts in the field provide an overview of John of Salisbury’s place in the political debates that marked the reign of Henry II in England as well as of his place in the history of the Church. They also offer a detailed introduction to his philosophical works (...) ‘(Metalogicon’, ‘Entheticus’), his political thought (‘Policraticus’) and his writing of history (‘Historia pontificalis’). 0Contributors include Julie Barrau, David Bloch, Karen Bollermann, Cédric Giraud, Christophe Grellard, Laure Hermand-Schebat, Frédérique Lachaud, Constant Mews, Clare Monagle, Cary Nederman, Ronald Pepin, Yves Sassier, and Sigbjørn Sønnesyn.0. (shrink)