Ecological psychology is radical enough: A reply to radical enactivists

Ecological psychology is one of the most influential theories of perception in the embodied, anti-representational, and situated cognitive sciences. However, radical enactivists claim that Gibsonians tend to describe ecological information and its ‘pick up’ in ways that make ecological psychology close to representational theories of perception and cognition. Motivated by worries about the tenability of classical views of informational content and its processing, these authors claim that ecological psychology needs to be “RECtified” so as to explicitly resist representational readings. In this paper, we argue against this call for RECtification. To do so, we offer a detailed analysis of the notion of perceptual information and other related notions such as specificity and meaning, as they are presented in the specialized ecological literature. We defend that these notions, if properly understood, remain free of any representational commitment. Ecological psychology, we conclude, does not need to be RECtified

On the Curvature Invariants of the Massive Banados-Teitelboim-Zanelli Black Holes and Their Holographic Pictures

In this paper, the curvature structure of a (2+1)-dimensional black hole in the massive-charged-Born-Infeld gravity is investigated. The metric that we consider is characterized by four degrees of freedom which are the mass and electric charge of the black hole, the mass of the graviton field, and a cosmological constant. For the charged and neutral cases separately, we present various constraints among scalar polynomial curvature invariants which could invariantly characterize our desired spacetimes. Specially, an appropriate scalar polynomial curvature invariant and a Cartan curvature invariant which together could detect the black hole horizon would be explicitly constructed. Using algorithms related to the focusing properties of a bundle of light rays on the horizon which are accounted by the Raychaudhuri equation, a procedure for isolating the black hole parameters, as the algebraic combinations involving the curvature invariants, would be presented. It will be shown that this technique could specially be applied for black holes with zero electric charge, contrary to the cases of solutions of lower-dimensional non-massive gravity. In addition, for the case of massive (2+1)-dimensional black hole, the irreducible mass, which quantifies the maximum amount of energy which could be extracted from a black hole through the Penrose process would be derived. Therefore, we show that the Hawking temperatures of these black holes could be reduced to the pure curvature properties of the spacetimes. Finally, we comment on the relationship between our analysis and the novel roles it could play in numerical quark-gluon plasma simulations and other QCD models and also black hole information paradox where the holographic correspondence could be exploited.Comment: v3; 25 pages; 11 figures; 105 reference

Seeing spin dynamics in atomic gases

The dynamics of internal spin, electronic orbital, and nuclear motion states of atoms and molecules have preoccupied the atomic and molecular physics community for decades. Increasingly, such dynamics are being examined within many-body systems composed of atomic and molecular gases. Our findings sometimes bear close relation to phenomena observed in condensed-matter systems, while on other occasions they represent truly new areas of investigation. I discuss several examples of spin dynamics that occur within spinor Bose-Einstein gases, highlighting the advantages of spin-sensitive imaging for understanding and utilizing such dynamics.Comment: Chapter in upcoming Review Volume entitled "From Atomic to Mesoscale: The Role of Quantum Coherence in Systems of Various Complexities" from World Scientifi

Image processing for plastic surgery planning

This thesis presents some image processing tools for plastic surgery planning. In particular, it presents a novel method that combines local and global context in a probabilistic relaxation framework to identify cephalometric landmarks used in Maxillofacial plastic surgery. It also uses a method that utilises global and local symmetry to identify abnormalities in CT frontal images of the human body. The proposed methodologies are evaluated with the help of several clinical data supplied by collaborating plastic surgeons

Matched detectors as definers of force

Although quantum states nicely express interference effects, outcomes of experimental trials show no states directly; they indicate properties of probability distributions for outcomes. We prove categorically that probability distributions leave open a choice of quantum states and operators and particles, resolvable only by a move beyond logic, which, inspired or not, can be characterized as a guess. By recognizing guesswork as inescapable in choosing quantum states and particles, we free up the use of particles as theoretical inventions by which to describe experiments with devices, and thereby replace the postulate of state reductions by a theorem. By using the freedom to invent probe particles in modeling light detection, we develop a quantum model of the balancing of a light-induced force, with application to models and detecting devices by which to better distinguish one source of weak light from another. Finally, we uncover a symmetry between entangled states and entangled detectors, a dramatic example of how the judgment about what light state is generated by a source depends on choosing how to model the detector of that light.Comment: 30 pages, 4 figs, LaTeX; new Introduction; new material in Secs. 4 & 5; new Sec. 6; 1 new figure, added reference

Simulations of Alice Electrodynamics on a Lattice

In this paper we present results of numerical simulations and some (analytical) approximations of a compact U(1)\ltimes\ZZ_2 lattice gauge theory, including an extra bare mass term for Alice fluxes. The subtle interplay between Alice fluxes and (Cheshire) magnetic charges is analysed. We determine the phase diagram and some characteristics of the model in three and four dimensions. The results of the numerical simulations in various regimes, compare well with some analytic approximations.Comment: 17 pages, 16 figures; minor change