Orientation in space using the sense of smell

Several studies reported that respiration interacts with olfactory perception. Therefore, in the pilot study of this experiment series human breathing was investigated during an olfactory experiment. Breathing parameters (respiratory minute volume, respiratory amplitude, and breathing rate) were quantified in response to odor stimulation and olfactory imagery. We provide evidence that respiration changed during smelling and during olfactory imagery in comparison to the baseline condition. In conclusion, olfactory perception and olfactory imagery both have an impact on the human respiratory profile, which is hypothesized to be based on a common underlying mechanism named sniffing. Our findings underline that for certain aspects of olfactory research it may be necessary to control and/or monitor respiration during olfactory stimulation. The human ability to localize odors has been investigated in a limited number of studies, but the findings are contradictory. We hypothesized that this was mainly due to differential effects of olfactory and trigeminal stimulation. Only few substances excite selectively the olfactory system. One of them is hydrogen sulphide (H2S). In contrast, most odorants stimulate both olfactory and trigeminal receptors of the nasal mucosa. The main goal of this study was to test the human ability to localize substances, which excite the olfactory system selectively. For this purpose we performed localization experiment using low and high concentrations of the pure odorant H2S, the olfactory-trigeminal substance isoamyl acetate (IAA), and the trigeminal substance carbon dioxide (CO2). In preparation for the localization study a detection experiment was carried out to ensure that subjects perceived the applied stimuli consciously. The aim of the detection study was to quantify the human sensitivity in response to stimulation with H2S, IAA, and CO2. We tested healthy subjects using an event-related experimental design. The olfactory stimulation was performed using an olfactometer. The results showed that humans are able to detect H2S in low concentration (2 ppm) with moderate sensitivity, and possess a high sensitivity in response to stimulation with 8ppm H2S, 50% v/v CO2, and 17.5% v/v IAA. The localization experiment revealed that subjects can localize H2S neither in low nor in high concentrations. In contrast to that, subjects possess an ability to localize both IAA and CO2 stimuli. These results clearly demonstrate that humans are able to localize odorants which excite the trigeminal system, but they are not able to localize odors that stimulate the olfactory system exclusively, in spite of consciously perceiving the stimuli

Digital Presentation of Bulgarian Lexical Heritage. Towards an Electronic Historical Dictionary

The article presents the results of the project “ICT Tools for Historical Linguistic Studies”, funded by the European Social Fund, OP Human Resources. The main project goal was to elaborate electronic tools for creating a Historical Dictionary of Diachronic Type that should present the history of the Bulgarian words from their first written occurrence until today. By the end of the project the team (Faculty of Slavic Studies at Sofia University, Institute for Bulgarian Language, BAS and PAM Publishing Company, Sofia) had at their disposal a set of Old Bulgarian Unicode fonts, meant for publishing medieval texts and a convertor that converts non-Unicode documents into the new standard. The convertor allowed the participants to create in a relatively short time a Diachronic text corpus of Bulgarian medieval texts, containing already more than 90 texts dated from the 10th to the 18th century. The corpus software enables editing the texts and turned out to be an excellent tool for preparing electronic editions of the Old Bulgarian (OCS) manuscripts. In addition to the corpus an electronic dictionary of Old Bulgarian is available, which contains the digitized version of Старобългарски речник, produced by IBL. Both tools are accessible on the project website at the address histdict.uni-sofia.bg. The Standard of the Historical Dictionary took shape during the project course and respective software for elaborating new dictionary entries was designed and tested. The article also displays screenshots that demonstrate the functionalities of both the corpus and dictionary software.The article presents the results of the project “ICT Tools for Historical Linguistic Studies”, funded by the European Social Fund, OP Human Resources

An embodied and grounded perspective on concepts

By the mainstream view in psychology and neuroscience, concepts are informational units, rather stable, and are represented in propositional format. In the view I will outline, instead, concepts correspond to patterns of activation of the perception, action and emotional systems which are typically activated when we interact with the entities they refer to. Starting from this embodied and grounded approach to concepts, I will focus on different research lines and present some experimental evidence concerning concepts of objects, concepts of actions, and abstract concepts. I will argue that, in order to account for abstract concepts, embodied and grounded theories should be extended

IDENTIFYING NARRATOR’S NEGOTIATION IN THE PROGRAM OF DISCOVERY CHANNEL A STUDY CASE OF THE BERMUDA TRIANGLE EXPOSED

Proses komunikasi merupakan bentuk negosiasi antara penutur dan pendengar untuk menyampaikan tujuan atau maksud tertentu baik secara eksplisit maupun implisit. Dalam skripsi ini, penulis tertarik menganalisa bagaimana seorang penutur menegosiasikan sikap-sikap yang ia miliki ke dalam ujarannya. Penulis memilih video dari Discovery Channel yang berjudul ‘The Bermuda Triangle Exposed’ sebagai bahan penelitian. Fokus skripsi ini adalah cara narator video tesebut melibatkan sikapnya terhadap apa yang ia bahas. Penulis menggunakan teori utama appraisal system dengan mood system sebagai teori pembantu. Penulis membatasi pembahasan persoalan hanya pada analisa terhadap attitude items yang ia temukan dalam ujaran penutur. Tujuan skripsi yaitu mendeskripsikan bentuk attitude items yang ditemukan dalam ujaran narator video ‘The Bermuda Triangle Exposed’ serta menyimpulkan sikap yang sebenarnya dimiliki oleh narator tersebut. Data yang digunakan berupa kalimat atau ujaran penutur yang mengandung attitude items. Metode pengambilan contoh menggunakan purposive sampling technique dan teori Sudaryanto (1993) yaitu metode simak bebas libat cakap. Dalam menganalisis data, penulis menggunakan teori appraisal system dari Martin and Rose (2003). Selain itu, untuk memudahkan penganalisaan, penulis menggunakan teori mood system dari Gerot and Wignel (1994) dan Halliday and Matthiessen (2004). Hasil dari analisa menyebutkan bahwa secara keseluruhan, narator cenderung menyatakan sikap gelisah dan merasa tidak aman terhadap kekuatan Segitiga Bermuda. Selain itu, lebih dari setengah attitude items merupakan appreciation yang berarti penulis lebih memfokuskan sikapnya pada penilaian tentang Segitiga Bermuda baik secara fisik maupun sifat. Narator juga cenderung lebih menggunakan kata-kata yang justru menguatkan informasi yang ia sampaikan daripada menggunakan kata-kata yang melemahkannya. Selain itu, narrator menggunakan projecting a clause untuk menyampaikan sumber ujaran nya dan memberi batasan jelas terhadap opini yang bukan miliknya sendiri

Gravitational Waves: completeness and connectedness by geodesics

Only few months ago some physicists gave the official announcement that gravitational waves exist, but, from a geometrical point of view, they have always been ``real objects'' and their properties have been widely investigated. The aim of this talk is introducing generalized plane waves and discussing some of their properties such as geodesic connectedness and geodesic completeness.Universidad de Málaga, Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Facing human rights attributes of copyright in Europe in the context of the EU Digital Single Market

The principle of equality as a fundamental norm in law and political philosophy, Jurysprudencja 8., Wojciechowski B., Bekrycht T., Cern K.M., (eds.), Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego, Łódź 2017The project was financed by National Science Centre Poland (decision no. DEC-2012/05/B/HS5/01111)

Evidential Probabilities and Credences

Enjoying great popularity in decision theory, epistemology, and philosophy of science, Bayesianism as understood here is fundamentally concerned with epistemically ideal rationality. It assumes a tight connection between evidential probability and ideally rational credence, and usually interprets evidential probability in terms of such credence. Timothy Williamson challenges Bayesianism by arguing that evidential probabilities cannot be adequately interpreted as the credences of an ideal agent. From this and his assumption that evidential probabilities cannot be interpreted as the actual credences of human agents either, he concludes that no interpretation of evidential probabilities in terms of credence is adequate. I argue to the contrary. My overarching aim is to show on behalf of Bayesians how one can still interpret evidential probabilities in terms of ideally rational credence and how one can maintain a tight connection between evidential probabilities and ideally rational credence even if the former cannot be interpreted in terms of the latter. By achieving this aim I illuminate the limits and prospects of Bayesianism

Upper Bounds for the Betti Numbers of a given Hilbert Function

From a Macaulay's paper it follows that a lex-segment ideal has the greatest number of generators (the 0-th Betti number \b_0) among all the homogeneous ideals with the same Hilbert function. In this paper we prove that this fact extends to every Betti number, in the sense that all the Betti numbers of a minimal free resolution of a lex segment ideal are bigger than or equal to the ones of any homogeneous ideal with the same Hilbert function.Comment: 18 pages, plain te