USSR Space Life Sciences Digest. Index to issues 1-4

This document is an index to issues 1 to 4 of the USSR Space Life Sciences Digest and is arranged in three sections. In section 1, abstracts from the first four issues are grouped according to subject; please note the four letter codes in the upper right hand corner of the pages. Section 2 lists the categories according to which digest entries are grouped and cites additional entries relevant to that category by four letter code and entry number in section 1. Refer to section 1 for titles and other pertinent information. Key words are indexed in section 3

Artificial Immune Systems - Models, algorithms and applications

Copyright © 2010 Academic Research Publishing Agency.This article has been made available through the Brunel Open Access Publishing Fund.Artificial Immune Systems (AIS) are computational paradigms that belong to the computational intelligence family and are inspired by the biological immune system. During the past decade, they have attracted a lot of interest from researchers aiming to develop immune-based models and techniques to solve complex computational or engineering problems. This work presents a survey of existing AIS models and algorithms with a focus on the last five years.This article is available through the Brunel Open Access Publishing Fun

Apperceptive patterning: Artefaction, extensional beliefs and cognitive scaffolding

In “Psychopower and Ordinary Madness” my ambition, as it relates to Bernard Stiegler’s recent literature, was twofold: 1) critiquing Stiegler’s work on exosomatization and artefactual posthumanism—or, more specifically, nonhumanism—to problematize approaches to media archaeology that rely upon technical exteriorization; 2) challenging how Stiegler engages with Giuseppe Longo and Francis Bailly’s conception of negative entropy. These efforts were directed by a prevalent techno-cultural qualifier: the rise of Synthetic Intelligence (including neural nets, deep learning, predictive processing and Bayesian models of cognition). This paper continues this project but first directs a critical analytic lens at the Derridean practice of the ontologization of grammatization from which Stiegler emerges while also distinguishing how metalanguages operate in relation to object-oriented environmental interaction by way of inferentialism. Stalking continental (Kapp, Simondon, Leroi-Gourhan, etc.) and analytic traditions (e.g., Carnap, Chalmers, Clark, Sutton, Novaes, etc.), we move from artefacts to AI and Predictive Processing so as to link theories related to technicity with philosophy of mind. Simultaneously drawing forth Robert Brandom’s conceptualization of the roles that commitments play in retrospectively reconstructing the social experiences that lead to our endorsement(s) of norms, we compliment this account with Reza Negarestani’s deprivatized account of intelligence while analyzing the equipollent role between language and media (both digital and analog)

Race: the difference that makes a difference

During the last two decades, critical enquiry into the nature of race has begun to enter the philosophical mainstream. The same period has also witnessed the emergence of an increasingly visible discourse about the nature of information within a diverse range of popular and academic settings. What is yet to emerge, however, is engagement at the interface of the two disciplines – critical race theory and the philosophy of information. In this paper, I shall attempt to contribute towards the emergence of such a field of enquiry by using a reflexive hermeneutic (or interpretative) approach to analyze the concept of race from an information-theoretical perspective, while reflexively analyzing the concept of information from a critical race-theoretical perspective. In order to facilitate a more concrete enquiry, the concept of information formulated by cyberneticist Gregory Bateson and the concept of race formulated by philosopher Charles W Mills will be placed at the centre of analysis. Crucially, both concepts can be shown to have a connection to the critical philosophy of Immanuel Kant, thereby justifying their selection as topics of examination on critical reflexive hermeneutic grounds

Simultaneous Robotic Manipulation and Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging: Feasibility in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders

An unanswered question concerning the neural basis of autism spectrum disorders (ASD) is how sensorimotor deficits in individuals with ASD are related to abnormalities of brain function. We previously described a robotic joystick and video game system that allows us to record functional magnetic resonance images (FMRI) while adult humans make goal- directed wrist motions. We anticipated several challenges in extending this approach to studying goal-directed behaviors in children with ASD and in typically developing (TYP) children. In particular we were concerned that children with autism may express increased levels of anxiety as compared to typically developing children due to the loud sounds and small enclosed space of the MRI scanner. We also were concerned that both groups of children might become restless during testing, leading to an unacceptable amount of head movement. Here we performed a pilot study evaluating the extent to which autistic and typically developing children exhibit anxiety during our experimental protocol as well as their ability to comply with task instructions. Our experimental controls were successful in minimizing group differences in drop-out due to anxiety. Kinematic performance and head motion also were similar across groups. Both groups of children engaged cortical regions (frontal, parietal, temporal, occipital) while making goal- directed movements. In addition, the ASD group exhibited task- related correlations in subcortical regions (cerebellum, thalamus), whereas correlations in the TYP group did not reach statistical significance in subcortical regions. Four distinct regions in frontal cortex showed a significant group difference such that TYP children exhibited positive correlations between the hemodynamic response and movement, whereas children with ASD exhibited negative correlations. These findings demonstrate feasibility of simultaneous application of robotic manipulation and functional imaging to study goal-directed motor behaviors in autistic and typically developing children. The findings also suggest the presence of marked changes in neural activation during a sensorimotor task requiring goal- directed movement

Complete integrability of information processing by biochemical reactions

Statistical mechanics provides an effective framework to investigate information processing in biochemical reactions. Within such framework far-reaching analogies are established among (anti-) cooperative collective behaviors in chemical kinetics, (anti-)ferromagnetic spin models in statistical mechanics and operational amplifiers/flip-flops in cybernetics. The underlying modeling -- based on spin systems -- has been proved to be accurate for a wide class of systems matching classical (e.g. Michaelis--Menten, Hill, Adair) scenarios in the infinite-size approximation. However, the current research in biochemical information processing has been focusing on systems involving a relatively small number of units, where this approximation is no longer valid. Here we show that the whole statistical mechanical description of reaction kinetics can be re-formulated via a mechanical analogy -- based on completely integrable hydrodynamic-type systems of PDEs -- which provides explicit finite-size solutions, matching recently investigated phenomena (e.g. noise-induced cooperativity, stochastic bi-stability, quorum sensing). The resulting picture, successfully tested against a broad spectrum of data, constitutes a neat rationale for a numerically effective and theoretically consistent description of collective behaviors in biochemical reactions.Comment: 24 pages, 10 figures; accepted for publication in Scientific Report

USSR Space Life Sciences Digest, issue 1

The first issue of the bimonthly digest of USSR Space Life Sciences is presented. Abstracts are included for 49 Soviet periodical articles in 19 areas of aerospace medicine and space biology, published in Russian during the first quarter of 1985. Translated introductions and table of contents for nine Russian books on topics related to NASA's life science concerns are presented. Areas covered include: botany, cardiovascular and respiratory systems, cybernetics and biomedical data processing, endocrinology, gastrointestinal system, genetics, group dynamics, habitability and environmental effects, health and medicine, hematology, immunology, life support systems, man machine systems, metabolism, musculoskeletal system, neurophysiology, perception, personnel selection, psychology, radiobiology, reproductive system, and space biology. This issue concentrates on aerospace medicine and space biology