Becoming … in the Midst/Wide-Awake/In-Between: An In-Process Narrative Inquiry

Using the frame of the artist’s in-process critique, this article presents the author’s ongoing theoretical inquiries and reflections on a narrative inquiry. Drawing on Clandinin and Connelly’s conceptions and Maxine Greene’s writings on aesthetic education, narrative inquiry is explored as a methodology where being in the midst requires wide-awakeness to ourselves and the Other— it is a space of fluidity and possibility. By considering narrative inquiry as an active, relational, and incessant process of meaning-making, the author comes to re/consider the constructivist underpinnings of her previous work with different theories that have allowed her to create new understandings of narrative practice. Through a relational and processual ontology, possibilities for narrative inquiry emerge as a productive shift in narrative inquiry toward becoming

Collateral damage from agricultural netting to open-country bird populations in Thailand

Nets are used across a wide variety of food production landscapes to control avian pests typically resulting in deaths of entangled birds. However, the impact of nets on bird populations is a human–wildlife conflict that remains mostly unquantified. Here, we examined the scale of netting in the central plains of Thailand, a region dominated by ricefields, among which aquaculture ponds are increasingly interspersed. Nets/exclusion types, number of individual birds and species caught were recorded on 1312 road-survey transects (2-km length × 0.4-km width). We also interviewed 104 local farmers. The transect sampling took place in late- September 2020, and from December 2020 to April 2021. Each survey transect was visited only once. We found 1881 nets and barriers of parallel cords on 196 (15%) of the transects. Counts of nets and barriers were ~13 times higher than expected in aquaculture ponds based on their areal proportion, and vertical nets were the most commonly observed type (n = 1299). We documented 735 individuals of at least 45 bird species caught in the nets and parallel cords, including many species not regarded as pests. Approximately 20% of individuals caught in ricefields and 95% at aquaculture ponds were non-target bycatch. Our interviews suggested that 55% of respondents thought nets were ineffective while only 6% thought they were effective. We suggest imposing a ban on netting, considering other mitigation strategies to reduce conflicts such as promoting the use of parallel cords, and prioritizing conservation actions with community participation. Further studies should investigate the efficacy of less deleterious deterrents

Neuronal Coherence Agent for Shared Intentionality : A Hypothesis of Neurobiological Processes Occurring during Social Interaction

Funding Information: No foundation that funded this research. Publisher Copyright: © 2021 by the author.The present interdisciplinary study discusses the physical foundations of the neurobiological processes occurring during social interaction. The review of the literature establishes the difference between Intentionality and Intention, thereby proposing the theoretical basis of Shared Intentionality in humans. According to the present study, Shared Intentionality in humans (Goal-directed coherence of biological systems), which is the ability among social organisms to instantly select just one stimulus for the entire group, is the outcome of evolutionary development. Therefore, this interaction modality should be the preferred, archetypal, and most propagated modality in organisms, attributed to the Model of Hierarchical Complexity Stage 3. This characteristic of biological systems facilitates the training of the new members of the group and also ensures efficient cooperation among the members of the group without requiring communication. In humans, Shared Intentionality contributes to the learning of newborns. The neurons of a mature organism may teach the neonate neurons regarding the fitting reactions to the excitatory inputs of the specific structural organization. This enables the neonate neurons to develop a Long-Term Potentiation that links particular stimuli with specific embodied sensorimotor neural networks. The present report discusses three possible neuronal coherence agents that could involve quantum mechanisms in cells, thereby enabling the distribution of the quality of goal-directed coherence in biological systems (Shared Intentionality in humans). Recently reported case studies conducted online with the task of conveying the meaning of numerosity to the children of age 18–33 months revealed the occurrence of Shared Intentionality in mother-child dyads in the absence of sensory cues between the two, which promoted cognitive development in the children. The findings of these case studies support the concept of physical foundations and the hypothesis of the neurophysiological process of social interaction proposed in the present study.publishersversionPeer reviewe

Parikh and Wittgenstein

A survey of Parikh’s philosophical appropriations of Wittgensteinian themes, placed into historical context against the backdrop of Turing’s famous paper, “On computable numbers, with an application to the Entscheidungsproblem” (Turing in Proc Lond Math Soc 2(42): 230–265, 1936/1937) and its connections with Wittgenstein and the foundations of mathematics. Characterizing Parikh’s contributions to the interaction between logic and philosophy at its foundations, we argue that his work gives the lie to recent presentations of Wittgenstein’s so-called metaphilosophy (e.g., Horwich in Wittgenstein’s metaphilosophy. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2012) as a kind of “dead end” quietism. From early work on the idea of a feasibility in arithmetic (Parikh in J Symb Log 36(3):494–508, 1971) and vagueness (Parikh in Logic, language and method. Reidel, Boston, pp 241–261, 1983) to his more recent program in social software (Parikh in Advances in modal logic, vol 2. CSLI Publications, Stanford, pp 381–400, 2001a), Parikh’s work encompasses and touches upon many foundational issues in epistemology, philosophy of logic, philosophy of language, and value theory. But it expresses a unified philosophical point of view. In his most recent work, questions about public and private languages, opportunity spaces, strategic voting, non-monotonic inference and knowledge in literature provide a remarkable series of suggestions about how to present issues of fundamental importance in theoretical computer science as serious philosophical issues

Process as Outcome: Methods of Engagement with the Nonhuman Object/thing/material

Through creative practice and exegetical writing, this research communicates two main propositions: 1) objects, things, and materials of the material world should be seen as “nonhuman”; and 2) doing so impacts the methods that come to be used in thinking, making, and showing art

Electrospinning Novel Aligned Polymer Fiber Structures for Use in Neural Tissue Engineering

A suitable tissue scaffold to support and assist in the repair of damaged tissues or cells is important for success in clinical trials and for injury recovery. Electrospinning can create a variety of polymer nanofibers and microfibers, and is being widely used to produce experimental tissue scaffolds for neural applications. This dissertation examines various approaches by which electrospinning is being used for neural tissue engineering applications for the repair of injuries to the central nervous system (CNS) and the peripheral nervous system (PNS). Due to the poor regeneration of neural tissues in the event of injury, tissue scaffolds are being used to promote the recovery and restoration of neural function. Next generation scaffolds using bioactive materials, conductive polymers, and coaxial fiber structures are now being developed to improve the recovery of motor functions in in vivo studies. This dissertation includes fabrication techniques, the results of neural cell cultures performed both in vivo and in vitro on electrospun fiber scaffolds, examines barriers to full functional recovery, and future directions for electrospinning and neural tissue engineering. Aligned, free-standing fiber scaffolds using poly-L-lactic acid (PLLA) were developed as an in vitro model to study cell interaction on free-standing fiber scaffolds in vivo. Stages were designed to allow for the formation of free-standing fiber scaffolds that were not supported by an underlying surface. Fibers were spun across the columns of the stages to produce free-standing fiber scaffolds. The scaffolds were then used for in vitro cell culture using chick dorsal root ganglia (DRG). Fiber scaffolds were also spun on a flat substrate and used for in vitro cell studies for comparison. The axonal outgrowth observed for DRG cells cultured on free-standing fiber scaffolds was comparable to those grown on fibers with an underlying surface, indicating that cells follow the alignment of fibers even without an underlying support. Electrospinning coaxial fibers is a more complex application of electrospinning techniques that has been explored here as a method of creating a core-sheath fiber structure to act as a scaffold across glial scar tissue present in spinal cord injuries (SCIs). Here, we looked at altering the basic electrospinning set-up to spin core-sheath fibers. The core was spun with a conductive polymer, poly(3,4-ethyelenedixoythiophene): poly(styrene sulfonate) (PEDOT:PSS) and the sheath was spun PLLA to create coaxial fibers with a conductive core and an insulating sheath. A conductive polymer was used so that electrical stimulation could be applied along the fibers during cell culture to examine if the additional external stimulation would further assist in axonal outgrowth when combined with the topographical cues of the fiber scaffolds. This allows for the combination of electrical stimulation with the topographical guidance provided by aligned fiber scaffolds to improve axonal outgrowth and functional recovery in vivo

Professional Ethics and the Lawyer’s Duty to Self

This Article asserts that although much attention has been paid to immoral conduct and the means to prevent it, the greater hazard to lawyers generally is that of amoral conduct. The appropriate safeguard against amorality is greater concern for the lawyer’s duty to self

Quantum-enhanced imaging with SPAD array cameras

(English) Entangled photon pairs can enhance optical imaging capabilities. Phase imaging allows detecting fine detail of transparent samples without potentially invasive fluorescent labelling, and here entanglement enables a higher signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) than possible with only classical light. Spatial correlations from spontaneous parametric down conversion (SPDC) photon pair sources can also be used to increase spatial resolution and robustness to noise and aberrations in imperfect optical systems. Quantum imaging therefore represents a powerful approach to push imaging science beyond its current limits. Until recently, the principal barrier to implementing useful quantum imaging schemes based on entangled photons has been technological, as scalable image sensors capable of multi-photon imaging were unavailable. However, this situation has changed with the development of single photon avalanche diode (SPAD) array cameras, as well as efficient high brightness entangled photon pair sources based on SPDC. These advances have led to the required components now approaching relative technological maturity, opening the window towards engineering useful and scalable systems that exploit entanglement in order to improve optical imaging. In this thesis, we show the development of a quantum imaging platform able to perform practical and fast spatially resolved multi-photon coincidence imaging with high SNR. Special focus is placed on wide-field entanglement-enhanced phase imaging capability, in order to extend experimental sensitivity beyond limits imposed by classical light. The main components of our platform are: sources of hyper-entangled photon pairs, a large field-of-view optical imaging system with phase measurement capabilities, and coincidence imaging using SPAD array cameras. More specifically, the thesis describes: •The first realization of a wide-field entanglement-enhanced phase imager. Wide-field here refers to the ability to acquire images across the entire field-of-view simultaneously (i.e. without need for pixel-to-pixel scanning, sometimes also called full-field). Quantum-enabled super-sensitivity in phase imaging beyond the capability of equivalent classical measurement is demonstrated by careful experimental noise and resource analysis methods. Our system’s capabilities were tested through several sample measurements corresponding to use cases with real-world relevance, including nanometre-scale feature step heights in transparent material, biomedical protein microarrays, as well as birefringent phase samples. •The development of general experimental and numerical tools to calculate photon pair coincidence images and videos from SPAD array cameras, with photon-counting and time-tagging readout modalities, as well as the retrieval of phase images resulting from multi-photon entanglement interference, by adapting techniques from interferometry and holography. We performed also a detailed study and optimization of the influence of different experimental parameters resulting image quality factors. •The evolution and optimization of our system towards real-time quantum imaging capability. Acquisition speed is a key element of usefulness, and in this thesis we integrate, first, a visible-wavelength entangled photon source, and second, a novel time-tagging SPAD array camera. The resulting entanglement-enabled imager presents an improvement by at least four orders of magnitude in measurement speed compared to previous state-of-the-art demonstrations, resulting in the ability to record ~Hz frame rate entangled photon pair coincidence videos. We show that this system, besides phase imaging, has additional applications in the form of real-time entangled state fidelity monitoring, and real-time point spread function characterization of optical systems, which has important applicability to adaptive optical imaging.(Español) Los pares de fotones entrelazados pueden mejorar la capacidad de obtención de imágenes. La formación de imágenes de fase permite detectar detalles de muestras transparentes con alta precisión y sin necesitar marcas fluorescentes potencialmente invasivas. Además, el entrelazamiento permite una mayor relación señal-ruido (SNR, por sus siglas en inglés) de la que es posible utilizando luz clásica. Las correlaciones espaciales de las fuentes de pares de fotones basadas en conversión paramétrica descendente espontánea (SPDC, por sus siglas en inglés) también pueden ser empleadas para aumentar la resolución espacial, y la robustez frente al ruido y a las aberraciones. Por tanto, las técnicas de captación de imagen cuántica son una potente estrategia para impulsar el campo de la ciencia de la fotografía especializada más allá de sus límites actuales. La mayor barrera en la implementación de esquemas de captación de imágenes cuánticas basadas en fotones entrelazados es principalmente tecnológica, al carecer de sensores de imagen escalables capaces de detectar imágenes multifotónicas. No obstante, el desarrollo de cámaras de matriz de fotodiodos de avalancha de fotón único (SPAD, por sus siglas en inglés), y de fuentes de pares de fotones entrelazados de alta eficiencia y brillo, basadas en SPDC, ha cambiado el panorama actual. Estos avances han permitido que los componentes necesarios alcancen una relativa madurez tecnológica, lo que abre una ventana de oportunidad para la ingeniería de sistemas útiles que aprovechan el entrelazamiento para mejorar la imagen óptica. En esta tesis, mostramos el desarrollo de una plataforma de captación de imágenes cuántica práctica y rápida, capaz de generar imágenes mediante el uso de coincidencias multifotónicas. Principalmente, nos centramos en la capacidad de formar imágenes de fase de campo amplio, mejoradas por entrelazamiento. Los componentes principales de nuestra plataforma son: fuentes de pares de fotones hiperentrelazados, un sistema óptico de imagen con un gran campo de visión y capacidad de medición de fase, y formación de imagen mediante la detección en coincidencias utilizando cámaras SPAD. Específicamente, la tesis describe: - La primera realización de un sistema de captación de imágenes de fase en configuración de campo amplio mejorado por entrelazamiento. Utilizando métodos de análisis del ruido y de los recursos, se logró demostrar la supersensibilidad en la medición de fase facilitada por iluminación con luz cuántica. Las capacidades de nuestro sistema se probaron con medidas correspondientes a ejemplos del mundo real, por ejemplo, midiendo microarreglos ultrafinos (grosor de nm) en materiales transparentes, muestras biomédicas de microarrays de proteínas, y de fase birrefringente. - El desarrollo de herramientas numéricas y experimentales generales para calcular imágenes y vídeos de coincidencias de pares de fotones con cámaras SPAD, con modos de lectura de conteo de fotones y etiquetado de tiempo. Además, se desarrolló la recuperación de imágenes de fase del entrelazamiento, adaptando técnicas de interferometría y holografía. Asimismo, se realizó un estudio detallado sobre la influencia de diferentes parámetros experimentales en los factores de calidad de imagen. La evolución y optimización de nuestro sistema hacia la formación de imágenes cuánticas en tiempo real. Se integró primero una fuente de fotones entrelazados de longitud de onda visible y, seguidamente, una nueva cámara SPAD con marcado temporal. El sistema resultante presenta una mejora de al menos cuatro órdenes de magnitud en la velocidad de medición en comparación con otras demostraciones. Esto confiere al sistema la capacidad de grabar vídeos de coincidencias de pares de fotones entrelazados con una tasa de fotogramas de Hz. Este sistema, además de medir la fase, tiene aplicaciones para monitorizar tanto la fidelidad de estados de entrelazamiento como la caracterización de la función de dispersión de punto.Postprint (published version