Kremlin Calling?: An investigation into the geopolitical narratives of selected European radical right parties regarding Russia

Rising to prominence following the 2008 financial crisis, the European radical right has become a popular topic within both mainstream and academic debate. Now boasting a powerful presence in many European states, the political tradition has presented a myriad of existential threats to the continent’s liberal status quo. Among these new challenges is a widespread desire to reassess relations with Russia. Also eager to take advantage of Europe’s ongoing uncertainty, the Kremlin has shown great interest in engaging with radical right parties as part of its geopolitical resurgence. This relationship has drawn the attention of a fledgling body of literature, which has noted Russia’s willingness to fund and support these groups. Despite this, research has yet to investigate why exactly many radical right parties have been willing to engage with Moscow. This is all the more surprising given the literature’s discussion of a shared illiberalism, with studies continuing to focus solely on Russia’s export of such beliefs. As such, this study attempts to rectify this issue by directly engaging with Russia policies found in the literature of four radical right parties. Such information is subject to a methodology embracing both critical geopolitics and narrative analysis, with radical right theory lending itself to an explicitly ‘spatiotemporal’ understanding of international relations. The study finds that rather than embracing sheer opportunism, the parties have incorporated Russia into vivid narratives bound by desires to “revolt against the modern world”. Simultaneously, national circumstances ensure that this ‘template’ has been manipulated according to subjective needs, with party narratives now helping to challenge the seemingly ‘inevitable’ nature of the radical right-Russia relationship.https://www.ester.ee/record=b5380294*es

Emotional modulation of visual cortex activity: A functional nearinfrared spectroscopy study

Functional neuroimaging and electroencephalography reveal emotional effects in early visual cortex. Here, we used fNIRS to examine haemodynamic responses evoked by neutral, positive and negative emotional pictures, matched for brightness, contrast, hue, saturation, spatial frequency and entropy. Emotion content modulated amplitude and latency of oxy-, deoxy- and total haemoglobin response peaks, and induced peripheral autonomic reactions. The processing of positive and negative pictures enhanced haemodynamic response amplitude, and this effect was paralleled by blood pressure changes. The processing of positive pictures was reflected in reduced haemodynamic response peak latency. Together these data suggest early visual cortex holds amplitude-dependent representation of stimulus salience and latency-dependent information regarding stimulus valence, providing new insight into affective interaction with sensory processing

Inverted regions induced by geometric constraints on a classical encounter-controlled binary reaction

The efficiency of an encounter-controlled two-channel reaction between two independently-mobile reactants on a lattice is characterized by the mean number \rt of steps to reaction. The two reactants are distinguished by their mass with the "light" walker performing a jump to a nearest-neighbor site in each time step, while the "heavy" walker hops only with a probability $p$; we associate $p$ with the "temperature" of the system. Lattices subject to periodic and to confining boundary conditions are considered. For periodic lattices, depending on the initial state, the reaction time either falls off monotonically with $p$ or displays a local minimum with respect to $p$; occurrence of the latter signals a regime where the efficiency of the reaction effectively decreases with increasing temperature. Such behavior disappears if the jump probability of the light walker falls below a characteristic threshold value. In lattices subject to confining boundary conditions, the behavior is more complex. Depending on the initial conditions, the reaction time as a function of $p$ may increase monotonically, decrease monotonically, display a single maximum or even a maximum and minimum. These inverted regions are a consequence of a strictly classical interplay between excluded volume effects implicit in the specification of the two reaction channels, and the system's dimensionality and spatial extent. Our results highlight situations where the description of an encounter-controlled reactive event cannot be described by a single, effective diffusion coefficient. We also distinguish between the inversion region identified here and the Marcus inverted region which arises in electron transfer reactions.Comment: revtex4 manuscript, approx. 45 pages, contains 18 figures and 18 tables, uses placeins.sty fil

Following one's heart: cardiac rhythms gate central initiation of sympathetic reflexes

Central nervous processing of environmental stimuli requires integration of sensory information with ongoing autonomic control of cardiovascular function. Rhythmic feedback of cardiac and baroreceptor activity contributes dynamically to homeostatic autonomic control. We examined how the processing of brief somatosensory stimuli is altered across the cardiac cycle to evoke differential changes in bodily state. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging of brain and noninvasive beat-to-beat cardiovascular monitoring, we show that stimuli presented before and during early cardiac systole elicited differential changes in neural activity within amygdala, anterior insula and pons, and engendered different effects on blood pressure. Stimulation delivered during early systole inhibited blood pressure increases. Individual differences in heart rate variability predicted magnitude of differential cardiac timing responses within periaqueductal gray, amygdala and insula. Our findings highlight integration of somatosensory and phasic baroreceptor information at cortical, limbic and brainstem levels, with relevance to mechanisms underlying pain control, hypertension and anxiety

Fear from the heart: sensitivity to fear stimuli depends on individual heartbeats

Cognitions and emotions can be influenced by bodily physiology. Here, we investigated whether the processing of brief fear stimuli is selectively gated by their timing in relation to individual heartbeats. Emotional and neutral faces were presented to human volunteers at cardiac systole, when ejection of blood from the heart causes arterial baroreceptors to signal centrally the strength and timing of each heartbeat, and at diastole, the period between heartbeats when baroreceptors are quiescent. Participants performed behavioral and neuroimaging tasks to determine whether these interoceptive signals influence the detection of emotional stimuli at the threshold of conscious awareness and alter judgments of emotionality of fearful and neutral faces. Our results show that fearful faces were detected more easily and were rated as more intense at systole than at diastole. Correspondingly, amygdala responses were greater to fearful faces presented at systole relative to diastole. These novel findings highlight a major channel by which short-term interoceptive fluctuations enhance perceptual and evaluative processes specifically related to the processing of fear and threat and counter the view that baroreceptor afferent signaling is always inhibitory to sensory perception

Slow breathing and hypoxic challenge: cardiorespiratory consequences and their central neural substrates

Controlled slow breathing (at 6/min, a rate frequently adopted during yoga practice) can benefit cardiovascular function, including responses to hypoxia. We tested the neural substrates of cardiorespiratory control in humans during volitional controlled breathing and hypoxic challenge using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Twenty healthy volunteers were scanned during paced (slow and normal rate) breathing and during spontaneous breathing of normoxic and hypoxic (13% inspired O2) air. Cardiovascular and respiratory measures were acquired concurrently, including beat-to-beat blood pressure from a subset of participants (N = 7). Slow breathing was associated with increased tidal ventilatory volume. Induced hypoxia raised heart rate and suppressed heart rate variability. Within the brain, slow breathing activated dorsal pons, periaqueductal grey matter, cerebellum, hypothalamus, thalamus and lateral and anterior insular cortices. Blocks of hypoxia activated mid pons, bilateral amygdalae, anterior insular and occipitotemporal cortices. Interaction between slow breathing and hypoxia was expressed in ventral striatal and frontal polar activity. Across conditions, within brainstem, dorsal medullary and pontine activity correlated with tidal volume and inversely with heart rate. Activity in rostroventral medulla correlated with beat-to-beat blood pressure and heart rate variability. Widespread insula and striatal activity tracked decreases in heart rate, while subregions of insular cortex correlated with momentary increases in tidal volume. Our findings define slow breathing effects on central and cardiovascular responses to hypoxic challenge. They highlight the recruitment of discrete brainstem nuclei to cardiorespiratory control, and the engagement of corticostriatal circuitry in support of physiological responses that accompany breathing regulation during hypoxic challenge

Acute tryptophan depletion attenuates conscious appraisal of social emotional signals in healthy female volunteers

Rationale: Acute tryptophan depletion (ATD) decreases levels of central serotonin. ATD thus enables the cognitive effects of serotonin to be studied, with implications for the understanding of psychiatric conditions, including depression. Objective: To determine the role of serotonin in conscious (explicit) and unconscious/incidental processing of emotional information. Materials and methods: A randomized, double-blind, cross-over design was used with 15 healthy female participants. Subjective mood was recorded at baseline and after 4 h, when participants performed an explicit emotional face processing task, and a task eliciting unconscious processing of emotionally aversive and neutral images presented subliminally using backward masking. Results: ATD was associated with a robust reduction in plasma tryptophan at 4 h but had no effect on mood or autonomic physiology. ATD was associated with significantly lower attractiveness ratings for happy faces and attenuation of intensity/arousal ratings of angry faces. ATD also reduced overall reaction times on the unconscious perception task, but there was no interaction with emotional content of masked stimuli. ATD did not affect breakthrough perception (accuracy in identification) of masked images. Conclusions: ATD attenuates the attractiveness of positive faces and the negative intensity of threatening faces, suggesting that serotonin contributes specifically to the appraisal of the social salience of both positive and negative salient social emotional cues. We found no evidence that serotonin affects unconscious processing of negative emotional stimuli. These novel findings implicate serotonin in conscious aspects of active social and behavioural engagement and extend knowledge regarding the effects of ATD on emotional perception

Three Quasi-Local Masses

We propose a definition of quasi-local mass based on the Penrose Inequality. Two further definitions are given by measuring distortions of the exponential map.Comment: Mod. Phys. Lett. A, to appear, 8 page

Camp Rainbow Gold: New Design

Camp Rainbow Gold is a summer camp for children diagnosed with cancer. The camp has experienced substantial growth since its inception, reaching the capacity of its current site, and is exploring alternative sites. Awesome Engineering was tasked to design a new resident camp facility to meet the needs of a growing Camp Rainbow Gold as a Civil Engineering Design project. We were given a 77-acre site located two miles south of Bellevue, Idaho, and a list of facility requirements for the camp. Our job is to design the facilities as well as investigate the required permits and codes. We will design floor plans for a dining hall, an administration building, a medical facility, a multipurpose meeting facility, and recreation facilities, along with sleeping accommodations for 300 people. We will perform a detailed structural design for an arts and crafts building, drinking water and wastewater systems, and the roads and walkways throughout the camp. During the design, an emphasis will be placed on American’s Disability Act (ADA) compliance because many of the affected children have limited mobility due to their condition and its treatment