Upright posture and the meaning of meronymy: A synthesis of metaphoric and analytic accounts

Cross-linguistic strategies for mapping lexical and spatial relations from body partonym systems to external object meronymies (as in English ‘table leg’, ‘mountain face’) have attracted substantial research and debate over the past three decades. Due to the systematic mappings, lexical productivity and geometric complexities of body-based meronymies found in many Mesoamerican languages, the region has become focal for these discussions, prominently including contrastive accounts of the phenomenon in Zapotec and Tzeltal, leading researchers to question whether such systems should be explained as global metaphorical mappings from bodily source to target holonym or as vector mappings of shape and axis generated “algorithmically”. I propose a synthesis of these accounts in this paper by drawing on the species-specific cognitive affordances of human upright posture grounded in the reorganization of the anatomical planes, with a special emphasis on antisymmetrical relations that emerge between arm-leg and face-groin antinomies cross-culturally. Whereas Levinson argues that the internal geometry of objects “stripped of their bodily associations” (1994: 821) is sufficient to account for Tzeltal meronymy, making metaphorical explanations entirely unnecessary, I propose a more powerful, elegant explanation of Tzeltal meronymic mapping that affirms both the geometric-analytic and the global-metaphorical nature of Tzeltal meaning construal. I do this by demonstrating that the “algorithm” in question arises from the phenomenology of movement and correlative body memories—an experiential ground which generates a culturally selected pair of inverse contrastive paradigm sets with marked and unmarked membership emerging antithetically relative to the transverse anatomical plane. These relations are then selected diagrammatically for the classification of object orientations according to systematic geometric iconicities. Results not only serve to clarify the case in question but also point to the relatively untapped potential that upright posture holds for theorizing the emergence of human cognition, highlighting in the process the nature, origins and theoretical validity of markedness and double scope conceptual integration

Autonomy Infused Teleoperation with Application to BCI Manipulation

Robot teleoperation systems face a common set of challenges including latency, low-dimensional user commands, and asymmetric control inputs. User control with Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCIs) exacerbates these problems through especially noisy and erratic low-dimensional motion commands due to the difficulty in decoding neural activity. We introduce a general framework to address these challenges through a combination of computer vision, user intent inference, and arbitration between the human input and autonomous control schemes. Adjustable levels of assistance allow the system to balance the operator's capabilities and feelings of comfort and control while compensating for a task's difficulty. We present experimental results demonstrating significant performance improvement using the shared-control assistance framework on adapted rehabilitation benchmarks with two subjects implanted with intracortical brain-computer interfaces controlling a seven degree-of-freedom robotic manipulator as a prosthetic. Our results further indicate that shared assistance mitigates perceived user difficulty and even enables successful performance on previously infeasible tasks. We showcase the extensibility of our architecture with applications to quality-of-life tasks such as opening a door, pouring liquids from containers, and manipulation with novel objects in densely cluttered environments

Poznawcze przesłanki semiozy zorientowanej na mit

This article addresses the cognitive premises of designation units denoting mythic concepts in a variety of texts and discourses. The article focuses on myth-oriented semiosis as a cognitive and cultural phenomenon reflected in the semantic transformations of lingual signs, resulting in the development of noematic senses relevant to the states of affairs in diverse worldviews or modelled alternative realities. This article provides an analysis of the basic cognitive models and procedures responsible for irrational cognition. The reconstructed cognitive models are then discussed in terms of their correspondence with the universal patterns of open system interaction and information exchange.Ten artykuł dotyczy poznawczych przesłanek jednostek desygnacyjnych oznaczających mityczne pojęcia w różnych tekstach i dyskursach. Artykuł koncentruje się na semiozie zorientowanej na mit jako zjawisku poznawczym i kulturowym odzwierciedlonym w semantycznych przekształceniach znaków językowych, co skutkuje rozwojem noematycznych zmysłów związanych ze stanami rzeczy w różnych światopoglądach lub modelowanych alternatywnych rzeczywistościach. Ten artykuł zawiera analizę podstawowych modeli i procedur poznawczych odpowiedzialnych za irracjonalne poznanie. Zrekonstruowane modele poznawcze są następnie omawiane pod kątem ich zgodności z uniwersalnymi wzorcami interakcji otwartego systemu i wymiany informacji

Boundary-Conforming Finite Element Methods for Twin-Screw Extruders using Spline-Based Parameterization Techniques

This paper presents a novel spline-based meshing technique that allows for usage of boundary-conforming meshes for unsteady flow and temperature simulations in co-rotating twin-screw extruders. Spline-based descriptions of arbitrary screw geometries are generated using Elliptic Grid Generation. They are evaluated in a number of discrete points to yield a coarse classical mesh. The use of a special control mapping allows to fine-tune properties of the coarse mesh like orthogonality at the boundaries. The coarse mesh is used as a 'scaffolding' to generate a boundary-conforming mesh out of a fine background mesh at run-time. Storing only a coarse mesh makes the method cheap in terms of memory storage. Additionally, the adaptation at run-time is extremely cheap compared to computing the flow solution. Furthermore, this method circumvents the need for expensive re-meshing and projections of solutions making it efficient and accurate. It is incorporated into a space-time finite element framework. We present time-dependent test cases of non-Newtonian fluids in 2D and 3D for complex screw designs. They demonstrate the potential of the method also for arbitrarily complex industrial applications

A review of convex approaches for control, observation and safety of linear parameter varying and Takagi-Sugeno systems

This paper provides a review about the concept of convex systems based on Takagi-Sugeno, linear parameter varying (LPV) and quasi-LPV modeling. These paradigms are capable of hiding the nonlinearities by means of an equivalent description which uses a set of linear models interpolated by appropriately defined weighing functions. Convex systems have become very popular since they allow applying extended linear techniques based on linear matrix inequalities (LMIs) to complex nonlinear systems. This survey aims at providing the reader with a significant overview of the existing LMI-based techniques for convex systems in the fields of control, observation and safety. Firstly, a detailed review of stability, feedback, tracking and model predictive control (MPC) convex controllers is considered. Secondly, the problem of state estimation is addressed through the design of proportional, proportional-integral, unknown input and descriptor observers. Finally, safety of convex systems is discussed by describing popular techniques for fault diagnosis and fault tolerant control (FTC).Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version