235 research outputs found

    Reliability analysis and resilience measure of complex systems in shock events

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    The working environment of complex systems is complex and variable, and their performance is often affected by various shock events during the service phase. In this paper, first, considering that the system performance will be affected by shocks again in the process of maintenance, the reliability changes and fault process of complex systems are discussed. Second, the performance change processes of complex systems are analyzed under multiple shocks and maintenance. Then, based on performance loss and recovery, this paper analyzes the reliability and resilience of complex systems under the intersecting process of multiple shocks and maintenance. Considering the direct and indirect losses caused by shocks, as well as maintenance costs, the changes in total costs are analyzed. Finally, the practicability of the proposed model is checked by using a specific welding robot system

    A case study exploration of the therapeutic phenomena of projective identification, transference and countertransference : a brief therapy with a patient with psychotic anxiety

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    Bibliography: leaves 68-74.This dissertation reviews the concepts of projective identification, transference and countertransference from an Object Relations theoretical perspective. The developmental mother-infant relationship is explored as a model for understanding the therapist-patient interaction in both its normal and pathological forms . Projective identification is used to illuminate the workings of transference and countertransference. W.R. Bion's conception of the mother-therapist as 'Container' and infant-patient as 'Contained' is presented as pivotal to understanding that interaction. Failures in projective identification - and therefore in symbolic functioning - are explored, with particular focus given to psychotic and psychosomatic manifestations in patients. The relevance of transference and countertransference phenomena to brief psychotherapy is also considered. These concepts are then applied to a specific therapeutic case. The patient was seen as an in-and outpatient over a 5 month period 1-3 times per week. The patient's history and a brief formulation are presented, followed by a discussion of how the above-mentioned theoretical issues manifested in the therapy. The patient operated on the border between psychosis and neurosis and communicated in primitive pre-verbal and powerful symbolic ways. Case illustrations focus on the interplay between her psyche and soma, the impact of the hospital setting as well as particular transference and countertransference difficulties incurred

    Categorical Ontology of Complex Systems, Meta-Systems and Theory of Levels: The Emergence of Life, Human Consciousness and Society

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    Single cell interactomics in simpler organisms, as well as somatic cell interactomics in multicellular organisms, involve biomolecular interactions in complex signalling pathways that were recently represented in modular terms by quantum automata with ‘reversible behavior’ representing normal cell cycling and division. Other implications of such quantum automata, modular modeling of signaling pathways and cell differentiation during development are in the fields of neural plasticity and brain development leading to quantum-weave dynamic patterns and specific molecular processes underlying extensive memory, learning, anticipation mechanisms and the emergence of human consciousness during the early brain development in children. Cell interactomics is here represented for the first time as a mixture of ‘classical’ states that determine molecular dynamics subject to Boltzmann statistics and ‘steady-state’, metabolic (multi-stable) manifolds, together with ‘configuration’ spaces of metastable quantum states emerging from complex quantum dynamics of interacting networks of biomolecules, such as proteins and nucleic acids that are now collectively defined as quantum interactomics. On the other hand, the time dependent evolution over several generations of cancer cells --that are generally known to undergo frequent and extensive genetic mutations and, indeed, suffer genomic transformations at the chromosome level (such as extensive chromosomal aberrations found in many colon cancers)-- cannot be correctly represented in the ‘standard’ terms of quantum automaton modules, as the normal somatic cells can. This significant difference at the cancer cell genomic level is therefore reflected in major changes in cancer cell interactomics often from one cancer cell ‘cycle’ to the next, and thus it requires substantial changes in the modeling strategies, mathematical tools and experimental designs aimed at understanding cancer mechanisms. Novel solutions to this important problem in carcinogenesis are proposed and experimental validation procedures are suggested. From a medical research and clinical standpoint, this approach has important consequences for addressing and preventing the development of cancer resistance to medical therapy in ongoing clinical trials involving stage III cancer patients, as well as improving the designs of future clinical trials for cancer treatments.\ud \ud \ud KEYWORDS: Emergence of Life and Human Consciousness;\ud Proteomics; Artificial Intelligence; Complex Systems Dynamics; Quantum Automata models and Quantum Interactomics; quantum-weave dynamic patterns underlying human consciousness; specific molecular processes underlying extensive memory, learning, anticipation mechanisms and human consciousness; emergence of human consciousness during the early brain development in children; Cancer cell ‘cycling’; interacting networks of proteins and nucleic acids; genetic mutations and chromosomal aberrations in cancers, such as colon cancer; development of cancer resistance to therapy; ongoing clinical trials involving stage III cancer patients’ possible improvements of the designs for future clinical trials and cancer treatments. \ud \u

    Experimental and numerical modelling investigations into coal mine rockbursts and gas outbursts

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    Rockbursts and gas outbursts are a longstanding hazard in underground coal mining due to their sudden occurrences and high consequences. These hazards are becoming prominent due to the increase in mining depth, difficult mining conditions, and adverse gas pressure conditions. Several researchers have proposed different theories, mechanisms, and indices to determine the rockbursts and gas outbursts liability but most of them focus on only some aspects of the complex engineering system for the ease to represent them using partial differential equations. They have often ignored the dynamics of changing mining environment, coal seam heterogeneity and stochastic variations in the rock properties. Most of the indices proposed were empirical and their suitability to different mining conditions is largely debated. To overcome the limitations of previous theories, mechanisms and indices, a probabilistic risk assessment framework was developed in this research to mathematically represent the complex engineering phenomena of rockbursts and gas outbursts for a heterogeneous coal seam. An innovative object-based non-conditional simulation approach was used to distribute lithological heterogeneity occurring in the coal seam to respect their geological origin. The dynamically changing mining conditions during a longwall top coal caving mining (LTCC) was extracted from a coupled numerical model to provide statistically sufficient data for probabilistic analysis. The complex interdependencies among several parameters, their stochastic variations and uncertainty were realistically implemented in the GoldSim software, and 100,000 equally likely scenarios were simulated using the Monte Carlo method to determine the probability of rockbursts and gas outbursts. The results obtained from the probabilistic risk assessment analysis incorporate the variations occurring due to lithological heterogeneity and give a probability for the occurrence of rockbursts, coal and gas outbursts, and safe mining conditions. The framework realistically represents the complex mining environment, is resilient and results are reliable. The framework is generic and can be suitably modified to be used in different underground mining scenarios, overcoming the limitations of earlier empirical indices used.Open Acces

    Metaphor and Metanoia: Linguistic Transfer and Cognitive Transformation in British and Irish Modernism

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    This dissertation contributes to the critical expansions that Douglas Mao and Rebecca L. Walkowitz identify as New Modernist Studies. This expansion is temporal, spatial, and vertical. I engage with the effects Modernist texts have “above” the page: lived experience. I examine the structural similarity of linguistic metaphor and the mind as considered by cognitive scientists. Identifying the human mind as linguistic and language as an artifact of the human mind, my research extrapolates upon what I call the “psycho-ecology” of reading, a self-representational knot between text and mind that constitutes lived experience. Far from being an abstraction, psycho-ecology is concrete: atypical textual engagement is equated with a transformation in perception. The prologue traces a lineage between Modernism, phenomenology, and the cognitive sciences. The first chapter considers the relationship between two narrative levels in Oscar Wilde’s novel The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890). The second chapter considers temporal experimentation in Virginia Woolf’s novel To the Lighthouse (1927) in relation to Martin Heidegger’s formulation of being as that which discloses our experience with language as temporal and finite. The third chapter examines the “sentimental information” of James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake (1939) from a phenomenological approach to information theory. The final chapter analyzes Samuel Beckett’s Endgame (1957) as a zero-player game that discloses the limits of agency in psycho-ecology. The dissertation follows a trajectory beginning with the intimacy a reader has with alphanumeric text towards the increasing experience of illiteracy when encountering new languages such as digital code

    An investigation into the breakdown products of cuprizone and the inflammatory role of RAW 264.7 macrophages in an in vitro culture system

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    The cuprizone mouse model is commonly used to study axonal demyelination/remyelination events that are associated with diseases such as multiple sclerosis (MS). The aetiology of MS remains unclear, but this inflammatory condition involves the crosstalk between neuronal and immune cells. Cuprizone (CPZ) is a reversible demyelinating, toxic, copper-chelating drug that inhibits cell growth and promotes oligodendrocyte death. RAW 264.7 macrophages are innate immune cells that were used in this thesis due to their role in demyelinating diseases. In vivo, following oral ingestion, CPZ is hydrolysed by the acid in the stomach to form the breakdown products, cyclohexanone and oxalyldihydrazide. This thesis tested the hypothesis that one of the breakdown products of CPZ, oxalyldihydrazide, is responsible for the release of pro-inflammatory cytokines, altered morphology and viability of RAW 264.7 macrophages. This hypothesis was tested using enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISAs) for tumour necrosis factor alpha (TNF-a), interleukin 1 beta (IL-1b) and the viability of the cells through the Trypan blue assay. Furthermore, it was hypothesised that protein arginine methylation would change based on the activation status of the RAW 264.7 cells, which was tested using Western blotting. This thesis is important due to the lack of research investigating the roles of the specific breakdown products of CPZ and their effects on cellular viability, morphology, and cytokine production in RAW 264.7 macrophages. This thesis provides methodological considerations that should be acknowledged when optimising protocols in all aspects of cell culture work, when working with immune cells. Pyroptosis was identified as a potential explanation of the collective data obtained in this thesis including the morphological changes and cytokine production in the RAW 264.7 macrophages. This cellular death pathway could be attributed to the apparent toxic nature of CPZ and an overreactive immune system in some disease states. Further cellular work and animal studies are required to discern the effect of the breakdown products of CPZ, which should be compared to human glial cells from MS patients. Such comparative studies will assist in understanding the pathological events associated with demyelination, which could identify more therapeutic targets for numerous demyelinating diseases

    Complex trauma: A composite case study exploring responses to complex trauma across a lifespan

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    The Therapist’s Pregnancy: Toward a Therapeutic Fourth A Two-Paper Examination

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    This two-paper dissertation reports on the findings of a qualitative study that was designed to capture the clinical dynamics that emerge when a therapist becomes pregnant during treatment. Raphael-Leff (2004), a psychoanalyst known for her research on pregnancy as well as her own psychoanalytic theory of mothering orientation, has outlined procreative mysteries, or anxieties, that are deemed universal by pregnant women. She defines them as anxieties about formation, containment, preservation, transformation, and separation. Pregnant therapists are not immune to these anxieties, and in some instances, may even feel them to a greater degree. While there have been some empirical studies that have captured the pregnant therapist’s perspective, it is a sparse amount in comparison to the vast number of women therapists who become pregnant, and there have been to my knowledge no studies that have actually interviewed clients of pregnant therapists. This study seeks to begin to redress that crucial missing perspective by interviewing the clients of pregnant therapists, as well as first-time, formerly pregnant therapists. Using both object relations and intersubjective theories as a conceptual lens, this two-paper dissertation aims to uncover some of the processes of conscious and unconscious communication that comprise the therapeutic dyad when the therapist is pregnant. Additionally, it seeks to offer guidelines on what both practitioners and supervisors might expect when a therapist becomes pregnant during treatment. The first paper will look at the coded results of this qualitative study and its emergent themes. The second paper will expand on the findings and look at particular object relations and intersubjective theories that can be important in understanding and working with this particular “intrusion in the analytic space” (Fenster, 1983). In the second paper, I will introduce a concept I am calling “the fourth” which represents not only the therapist’s pregnancy in a literal sense, but also the figurative, symbolic, conscious and unconscious meaning which the therapist and patient each attach to the pregnancy as well as new motherhood, and their co-created meaning

    In the mind of the mother: mental representation of the internal space of the mother, self and therapist in borderline states

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    People with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) have a particular difficulty in forming and maintaining close relationships. The Relational Affective Model (Mizen, 2014) proposes that intimate relationships activate claustro-agoraphobic anxieties as the person alternately seeks and flees emotional closeness. The therapeutic relationship is a specialised kind of intimate relationship in which claustro-agoraphobic anxieties are likely to be activated in a process which psychoanalysis understands as transference. The understanding and working through of this transference is the mutative factor proposed in psychodynamic therapies. This study explored participants’ mental representation of the internal psychic space of the other. Ten people with a diagnosis of BPD were asked to describe themselves and significant others, including their therapist in order to understand more about (1) their mental representations of the internal space of the other; (2) their relationship with their therapist with reference to internal space. and (3) the implications for the Relational Affective Model and clinical understanding of BPD. Using a mixed qualitative methodology four broad but distinct ways of describing internal space states emerged: positive, negative, nondescript and merged, which I have termed Alpha, Omega, Non-Alpha and Merged. Case study analyses for the four participants who provided interviews at the beginning and end of their treatment were conducted to attempt to highlight any changes in the internal space states identified. A thematic analysis of therapist descriptions indicated participants were positively engaged with their therapist. Negative internal space (Omega) descriptions of self and mother did not transfer to the relationship with the therapist in the early stages of therapy. The implications for the Relational Affective Model are considered

    Dismantling the self : exploring the infinite becomings in Orlan's body of work

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    Ankara : The Department of Communication and Design and the Institute of Economics and Social Sciences of Bilkent University, 2010.Thesis (Master's) -- Bilkent University, 2010.Includes bibliographical references leaves 178-183.This study is an attempt to elaborate the significance of multimedia and performance artist Orlan’s body and identity altering practices along the lines of Deleuzian theory, and to explore the points of overlap and resonances between their projects. It focuses on a range of conceptual resources, primarily Deleuze's formulations together with Guattari on ‘becoming’ to explore the artist’s fluid states of being that are always in the process of transition and her body’s constantly changing nature as a transformative experience. It also includes their theories of ‘rhizome’, ‘machinic assemblages’ and ‘body without organs’ to provide insights into her work as a form of expanded art practice that enables proliferating connections and collective arrangements, as well as to characterize it as a non-dualistic process that is no longer contingent on binary divisions.Baykan, BurcuM.S
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