Vestibular ontogeny: Measuring the influence of the dynamic environment

In comparison to other special senses, we are only meagerly informed about the development of vestibular function and the mechanisms that may operate to control or influence the course of vestibular ontogeny. Perhaps one contributing factor to this disparity is the difficulty of evaluating vestibular sense organs directly and noninvasively. The present report describes a recently developed direct noninvasive vestibular function test that can be used to address many basic questions about the developing vestibular system. More particularly, the test can be used to examine the effects of the dynamic environment (e.g. gravitational field and vibration) on vestibular ontogeny

The neural processing of moral sensitivity to issues of justice and care.

The empirical and theoretical consideration of ethical decision making has focused on the process of moral judgment; however, a precondition to judgment is moral sensitivity, the ability to detect and evaluate moral issues [Rest, J. R. (1984). The major components of morality. In W. Kurtines & J. Gewirtz (Eds.), Morality, moral behaviour, and moral development (pp. 24–38). New York, NY: Wiley]. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and contextually standardized, real life moral issues, we demonstrate that sensitivity to moral issues is associated with activation of the polar medial prefrontal cortex, dorsal posterior cingulate cortex, and posterior superior temporal sulcus (STS). These activations suggest that moral sensitivity is related to access to knowledge unique to one\u27s self, supported by autobiographical memory retrieval and social perspective taking. We also assessed whether sensitivity to rule-based or “justice” moral issues versus social situational or “care” moral issues is associated with dissociable neural processing events. Sensitivity to justice issues was associated with greater activation of the left intraparietal sulcus, whereas sensitivity to care issues was associated with greater activation of the ventral posterior cingulate cortex, ventromedial and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, and thalamus. These results suggest a role for access to self histories and identities and social perspectives in sensitivity to moral issues, provide neural representations of the subcomponent process of moral sensitivity originally proposed by Rest, and support differing neural information processing for the interpretive recognition of justice and care moral issues

Status Report of the DPHEP Study Group: Towards a Global Effort for Sustainable Data Preservation in High Energy Physics

Data from high-energy physics (HEP) experiments are collected with significant financial and human effort and are mostly unique. An inter-experimental study group on HEP data preservation and long-term analysis was convened as a panel of the International Committee for Future Accelerators (ICFA). The group was formed by large collider-based experiments and investigated the technical and organisational aspects of HEP data preservation. An intermediate report was released in November 2009 addressing the general issues of data preservation in HEP. This paper includes and extends the intermediate report. It provides an analysis of the research case for data preservation and a detailed description of the various projects at experiment, laboratory and international levels. In addition, the paper provides a concrete proposal for an international organisation in charge of the data management and policies in high-energy physics

Maintaining Diversity of Integrated Rice and Fish Production Confers Adaptability of Food Systems to Global Change

Rice and fish are preferred foods, critical for healthy and nutritious diets, and provide the foundations of local and national economies across Asia. Although transformations, or "revolutions," in agriculture and aquaculture over the past half-century have primarily relied upon intensified monoculture to increase rice and fish production, agroecological approaches that support biodiversity and utilize natural processes are particularly relevant for achieving a transformation toward food systems with more inclusive, nutrition-sensitive, and ecologically sound outcomes. Rice and fish production are frequently integrated within the same physical, temporal, and social spaces, with substantial variation amongst the types of production practice and their extent. In Cambodia, rice field fisheries that strongly rely upon natural processes persist in up to 80% of rice farmland, whereas more input and infrastructure dependent rice-shrimp culture is expanding within the rice farmland of Vietnam. We demonstrate how a diverse suite of integrated production practices contribute to sustainable and nutrition-sensitive food systems policy, research, and practice. We first develop a typology of integrated production practices illustrating the nature and degree of: (a) fish stocking, (b) water management, (c) use of synthetic inputs, and (d) institutions that control access to fish. Second, we summarize recent research and innovations that have improved the performance of each type of practice. Third, we synthesize data on the prevalence, outcomes, and trajectories of these practices in four South and Southeast Asian countries that rely heavily on fish and rice for food and nutrition security. Focusing on changes since the food systems transformation brought about by the Green Revolution, we illustrate how integrated production practices continue to serve a variety of objectives to varying degrees: food and nutrition security, rural livelihood diversification and income improvement, and biodiversity conservation. Five shifts to support contemporary food system transformations [i.e., disaggregating (1) production practices and (2) objectives, (3) utilizing diverse metrics, (4) valuing emergent, place-based innovation, (5) building adaptive capacity] would accelerate progress toward Sustainable Development Goal 2, specifically through ensuring ecosystem maintenance, sustainable food production, and resilient agricultural practices with the capacity to adapt to global change.This work was undertaken as part of the CGIAR Research Program on Fish Agri-Food Systems (FISH) led by WorldFish with contribution from the CGIAR Research program on Water Land and Ecosystems (WLE) led by the International Water Management Institute. Both these programs are supported by contributors to the CGIAR Trust Fund. Additional funding support for this work was provided by the Australian Government and the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research grant work was provided by the Australian Centre for International Research through the Development of Rice Fish Systems in the Ayeyarwady Delta, Myanmar (ACIAR project FIS/2016/135). The support through the United States Agency for International Development under Cooperative Agreement No. AID-OAA-L-14-00006 and KAES contribution number 20-317-J and grant number AID-442-IO12-00001 are duly acknowledged. Photo credits: Anon., Finn Thilsted, Anon., Anon., Todd Brown (Figure 1)

First human impacts and responses of aquatic systems: a review of palaeolimnological records from around the world

Lake sediments constitute natural archives of past environmental changes. Historically, research has focused mainly on generating regional climate records, but records of human impacts caused by land use and exploitation of freshwater resources are now attracting scientific and management interests. Long-term environmental records are useful to establish ecosystem reference conditions, enabling comparisons with current environments and potentially allowing future trajectories to be more tightly constrained. Here we review the timing and onset of human disturbance in and around inland water ecosystems as revealed through sedimentary archives from around the world. Palaeolimnology provides access to a wealth of information reflecting early human activities and their corresponding aquatic ecological shifts. First human impacts on aquatic systems and their watersheds are highly variable in time and space. Landscape disturbance often constitutes the first anthropogenic signal in palaeolimnological records. While the effects of humans at the landscape level are relatively easily demonstrated, the earliest signals of human-induced changes in the structure and functioning of aquatic ecosystems need very careful investigation using multiple proxies. Additional studies will improve our understanding of linkages between human settlements, their exploitation of land and water resources, and the downstream effects on continental water

Modeling and Simulating Terrorist Decision-making: A "Performance Moderator Function" Approach to Generating Virtual Opponents

An elusive goal in virtual training environments is to be able to dial up the opponent of choice -- e.g., the Iraqi Republican Guard, an Hamastype of Suicide Bomber, or the clandestine minions of Bin Laden, as a few examples. In researching alternative ways to offer such a "dial up" capability, our focus thus far is to analyze actual organizations to identify "individual differences" in the form of Performance Moderator Function scorecards and a hierarchical game theoretic approach that captures the situation, organization, population, ideologic/motivation, strategic, and tactical layers of their decision making. We are also crafting a tool that can use the scorecards to semi-automatically assemble and deploy non-traditional SemiAutomated Forces or agents on a virtual battlefield. As an initial proof of concept test, we have manually applied the approach to a scenario involving a bank bomber approaching a vehicle checkpoint. The results to date indicate the approach seems to be a useful representational formalism for generic, implementation-free models of terrorist organizations and the behavior of their members. Our next steps will be to scale up the approach and try to implement it as a terrorist generator for an existing virtual reality training environment

Interview de Mohsen Abdolvahab, cinéaste, FICA Vesoul 2017.

Interview réalisée dans le cadre du cours « Archive, patrimoine et médiation culturelle » du master de la filière « Communication et Formation Interculturelles » (CFI) de l’Inalco, lors du 23e Festival International des Cinémas d'Asie de Vesoul (FICA). [Bio] Mohsen Abdolvahab est né en 1957 à Téhéran. D’abord monteur sur des films documentaires et de fiction dès les années 80, il produit plusieurs films. Il a réalisé plus de 20 court métrages et documentaires. Il coréalise deux films avec R. Bani-Etemad : "Gilaneh" (Prix NETPAC FICA 2006) et "Mainline"."Please don't Disturb" fut son premier long métrage de fiction indépendant, "Being Born" ("Be Donya Amadan"), son deuxième, était en compétition au FICA Vesoul 2017 [Résumé] Pari, réalisateur de cinéma, et Fahrad, actrice de théâtre vivent heureux avec leur fils à Téhéran. Ils ont pour projet d’acheter un appartement. La troupe de théâtre dont Fahrad fait partie craint que la pièce qu’ils sont en train de monter soit interdite. Quand Fahrad découvre qu’elle est enceinte, le jeune couple pense qu’il est raisonnable de ne pas accueillir un deuxième enfant dans leur famille. Ils rencontrent un premier médecin qui accepte de pratiquer un avortement. Fahrad revient sur leur décision, convaincue qu’il est inhumain de tuer cet enfant à naître et qu’il apportera encore plus de bonheur à leur famille. Pour cela, elle renonce à un rôle important qu’un metteur en scène vient de lui proposer. Chacun campe sur sa position et de fortes tensions naissent… Le film traite d’un sujet universel, celui de l’avortement, d’une actualité brûlante dans bien des pays. Ce portrait de la classe moyenne iranienne aborde aussi les problèmes de la liberté et de la censure. (Source FICA