An explanation of humour by the principles of the associative S-R theory of reinforcement

Pleasure experienced in humour is not simply reinforcement due to performing a reaction followed by drive reduction. Gratification in humour is, primarily, in not performing a reaction that is not followed by reinforcement. At the operational level, humour is a close contact of two distinct, interfering reactions (humour as intervening variable). Deductive coverage of this empirical law by a broader theory is achieved by subsuming the contiguity of two reactions into a form of dissipation of reactive inhibition. This is also the main hypothesis of this work: humour is gratification caused by sudden dissipation of reactive inhibition (humour as hypothetical construct

The attitudes of students of psychology in grading knowledge and creativity

Starting from Gilford’s differentiation of thinking into convergent and divergent, research was carried out into the attitudes of the students of psychology towards quality and the objectivity of professor’s gradings, representation of certain elements of grading, as well as the ways of forming the final grade on an exa

Apoptotic cell-based therapies against transplant rejection: role of recipient’s dendritic cells

One of the ultimate goals in transplantation is to develop novel therapeutic methods for induction of donor-specific tolerance to reduce the side effects caused by the generalized immunosuppression associated to the currently used pharmacologic regimens. Interaction or phagocytosis of cells in early apoptosis exerts potent anti-inflammatory and immunosuppressive effects on antigen (Ag)-presenting cells (APC) like dendritic cells (DC) and macrophages. This observation led to the idea that apoptotic cell-based therapies could be employed to deliver donor-Ag in combination with regulatory signals to recipient’s APC as therapeutic approach to restrain the anti-donor response. This review describes the multiple mechanisms by which apoptotic cells down-modulate the immuno-stimulatory and pro-inflammatory functions of DC and macrophages, and the role of the interaction between apoptotic cells and APC in self-tolerance and in apoptotic cell-based therapies to prevent/treat allograft rejection and graft-versus-host disease in murine experimental systems and in humans. It also explores the role that in vivo-generated apoptotic cells could have in the beneficial effects of extracorporeal photopheresis, donor-specific transfusion, and tolerogenic DC-based therapies in transplantation

Small-Signal Modeling of Phase-Shifted Digital PWM in Interleaved and Multilevel Converters

In this article, small-signal modeling of digital pulsewidth modulators (DPWMs) used in multicell voltage source converters (VSCs) is addressed. In addition to sampling and computation, DPWM introduces delay, which impairs VSC's dynamic performance and robustness. In order to take into account the influence of modulation delay, an accurate small-signal representation of DPWM is necessary. Here, modeling of multisampled bipolar and unipolar phase-shifted DPWMs for single-, double-, and multi-update strategies is presented. The simplest multilevel modulation of single-cell full-bridge VSCs, unipolar DPWM, is also covered by the analysis. The derived operating-point-dependent small-signal DPWM models are verified using simulated and experimental frequency response measurements up to four times the Nyquist frequency. Comparisons are also made with the models conventionally considered in the literature. Additionally, an approximate method is presented to model the influence of dead time on DPWM's small-signal dynamics. For the purposes of showcasing the importance of the proposed DPWM models, high-frequency admittance of a VSC employing multisampled multiupdate unipolar DPWM is modeled and verified in simulations and experiments