The Replication Argument for Incompatibilism

In this paper, I articulate an argument for incompatibilism about moral responsibility and determinism. My argument comes in the form of an extended story, modeled loosely on Peter van Inwagen’s “rollback argument” scenario. I thus call it “the replication argument.” As I aim to bring out, though the argument is inspired by so-called “manipulation” and “original design” arguments, the argument is not a version of either such argument—and plausibly has advantages over both. The result, I believe, is a more convincing incompatibilist argument than those we have considered previously

Recognizing Emotions in a Foreign Language

Expressions of basic emotions (joy, sadness, anger, fear, disgust) can be recognized pan-culturally from the face and it is assumed that these emotions can be recognized from a speaker's voice, regardless of an individual's culture or linguistic ability. Here, we compared how monolingual speakers of Argentine Spanish recognize basic emotions from pseudo-utterances ("nonsense speech") produced in their native language and in three foreign languages (English, German, Arabic). Results indicated that vocal expressions of basic emotions could be decoded in each language condition at accuracy levels exceeding chance, although Spanish listeners performed significantly better overall in their native language ("in-group advantage"). Our findings argue that the ability to understand vocally-expressed emotions in speech is partly independent of linguistic ability and involves universal principles, although this ability is also shaped by linguistic and cultural variables

Occupational therapy, loneliness and social isolation : a thematic review of the literature

Background/Aims: Loneliness and social isolation are thought to have a negative impact on health and wellbeing. There is little literature that provides an explicit focus on loneliness and social isolation in occupational therapy practice. The aim of this study was to explore themes related to loneliness and social isolation in occupational therapy-related literature and consider the implications for practice. Methods: CINAHL, Medline, Pub Med, AMed, PsycINFO, TRIP Database, and Science direct and Web of science databases were used to identify articles pertaining to occupational therapy, loneliness and social isolation. Results: A total of 20 articles were included and three themes were identified: loneliness and social isolation are detrimental to health and wellbeing; factors associated with increased loneliness and social isolation; factors that protect against the impact of loneliness and social isolation. Conclusions: Loneliness and social isolation have a significant impact on the health and wellbeing of the people occupational therapists work with. Occupational therapy practice should include the recognition and assessment of loneliness and social isolation, and interventions to help reduce any impacts on health and wellbeing

The mixed problem for the Laplacian in Lipschitz domains

We consider the mixed boundary value problem or Zaremba's problem for the Laplacian in a bounded Lipschitz domain in R^n. We specify Dirichlet data on part of the boundary and Neumann data on the remainder of the boundary. We assume that the boundary between the sets where we specify Dirichlet and Neumann data is a Lipschitz surface. We require that the Neumann data is in L^p and the Dirichlet data is in the Sobolev space of functions having one derivative in L^p for some p near 1. Under these conditions, there is a unique solution to the mixed problem with the non-tangential maximal function of the gradient of the solution in L^p of the boundary. We also obtain results with data from Hardy spaces when p=1.Comment: Version 5 includes a correction to one step of the main proof. Since the paper appeared long ago, this submission includes the complete paper, followed by a short section that gives the correction to one step in the proo

Mycobacterium tuberculosis Responds to Chloride and pH as Synergistic Cues to the Immune Status of its Host Cell

PubMed ID: 23592993This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited

Emotional persistence in online chatting communities

How do users behave in online chatrooms, where they instantaneously read and write posts? We analyzed about 2.5 million posts covering various topics in Internet relay channels, and found that user activity patterns follow known power-law and stretched exponential distributions, indicating that online chat activity is not different from other forms of communication. Analysing the emotional expressions (positive, negative, neutral) of users, we revealed a remarkable persistence both for individual users and channels. I.e. despite their anonymity, users tend to follow social norms in repeated interactions in online chats, which results in a specific emotional "tone" of the channels. We provide an agent-based model of emotional interaction, which recovers qualitatively both the activity patterns in chatrooms and the emotional persistence of users and channels. While our assumptions about agent's emotional expressions are rooted in psychology, the model allows to test different hypothesis regarding their emotional impact in online communication.Comment: 34 pages, 4 main and 12 supplementary figure

Survey of the quality of experimental design, statistical analysis and reporting of research using animals

For scientific, ethical and economic reasons, experiments involving animals should be appropriately designed, correctly analysed and transparently reported. This increases the scientific validity of the results, and maximises the knowledge gained from each experiment. A minimum amount of relevant information must be included in scientific publications to ensure that the methods and results of a study can be reviewed, analysed and repeated. Omitting essential information can raise scientific and ethical concerns. We report the findings of a systematic survey of reporting, experimental design and statistical analysis in published biomedical research using laboratory animals. Medline and EMBASE were searched for studies reporting research on live rats, mice and non-human primates carried out in UK and US publicly funded research establishments. Detailed information was collected from 271 publications, about the objective or hypothesis of the study, the number, sex, age and/or weight of animals used, and experimental and statistical methods. Only 59% of the studies stated the hypothesis or objective of the study and the number and characteristics of the animals used. Appropriate and efficient experimental design is a critical component of high-quality science. Most of the papers surveyed did not use randomisation (87%) or blinding (86%), to reduce bias in animal selection and outcome assessment. Only 70% of the publications that used statistical methods described their methods and presented the results with a measure of error or variability. This survey has identified a number of issues that need to be addressed in order to improve experimental design and reporting in publications describing research using animals. Scientific publication is a powerful and important source of information; the authors of scientific publications therefore have a responsibility to describe their methods and results comprehensively, accurately and transparently, and peer reviewers and journal editors share the responsibility to ensure that published studies fulfil these criteria

Hydrodynamic Luminescence in a Model Diesel Injector Return Valve

A sample of unadditized diesel fuel was passed through an optically accessible model diesel injector return valve, which consisted of two successive nozzles connected to an intermediate fuel gallery. The first nozzle was cylindrical, while the second nozzle was stepped. The fuel was observed to produce a multi-phase, cavitating flow and a luminous blue-violet emission at the entrance to the second nozzle hole. The flow in the upstream intermediate fuel gallery and the first nozzle hole remained single-phase. Spectral analysis of the luminous emission revealed a spectrum with thermal features containing broad spectral lines and peaks at 358 nm, 389 nm, 405 nm, 412 nm, 430 nm and 475 nm, suggesting that the emission was dominated by π* → π transitions in the alkylated mono-, di-, and tri-aromatics, with additional spectral contributions from CH, C2, C3 and hydrogen (H)

AIM CIPS PMC tracking wind product retrieval approach and first assessment

The refined Cloud Imaging and Particle-Size (CIPS) cloud wind tracking algorithm is elaborated and the wind product is assessed against the Navy Operational Global Atmospheric Prediction System - Advanced Level Physics and High Altitude (NOGAPS-ALPHA) winds and the horizontal wind model (HWM14) climatological winds. Multiple searching frame sizes are adopted to generate the preliminary wind sets which are then merged and further edited based on the clustering of the similar wind directions (&plusmn;20&deg;). The mean values of the clusters within the sampling grids of 1.5 &deg; &times; 1.5 &deg; or 4.5 &deg; &times; 4.5 &deg; are taken as the final wind product. At the coincidences the CIPS and NOGAPS winds show a moderate degree of deterministic consistency. We have further shown that on the orbit-to-orbit basis when the NOGAPS modeled ice and CIPS measured ice correlate better, the wind agreement is also better. The difference in the two wind sets is most likely attributed to the NOGAPS temperature being deviated from the true temperature that will affect the geostrophic component of the winds and also to the fact that the CIPS winds are often ageostrophic and are cascaded into smaller scales. The CIPS zonal (westward) winds are decreased and then reversed in early June and late August whereas in the core of the season they are stronger. This overall variation pattern is shared by both NOGAPS and HWM14 zonal winds. Both NOGAPS and HWM14 zonal winds exhibit ~8&ndash;10 m/s difference between cases using all local times (LTs) and the CIPS LT range 13&ndash;23 h due to the dominant diurnal migrating tides, and this may partially interpret the weaker CIPS zonal winds. The meridional (equatorward) winds do not follow any established intra-seasonal variation pattern but rather the variability is susceptible to the sampling longitudes/latitudes. </div

Soliton pair dynamics in patterned ferromagnetic ellipses

Confinement alters the energy landscape of nanoscale magnets, leading to the appearance of unusual magnetic states, such as vortices, for example. Many basic questions concerning dynamical and interaction effects remain unanswered, and nanomagnets are convenient model systems for studying these fundamental physical phenomena. A single vortex in restricted geometry, also known as a non-localized soliton, possesses a characteristic translational excitation mode that corresponds to spiral-like motion of the vortex core around its equilibrium position. Here, we investigate, by a microwave reflection technique, the dynamics of magnetic soliton pairs confined in lithographically defined, ferromagnetic Permalloy ellipses. Through a comparison with micromagnetic simulations, the observed strong resonances in the subgigahertz frequency range can be assigned to the translational modes of vortex pairs with parallel or antiparallel core polarizations. Vortex polarizations play a negligible role in the static interaction between two vortices, but their effect dominates the dynamics.Comment: supplemental movies on http://www.nature.com/nphys/journal/v1/n3/suppinfo/nphys173_S1.htm