Keeping the door open: romantic science and the experience of self

The thesis positions three modem thinkers working in different areas of the human sciences - William James, Ludwig Binswanger and Oliver Sacks - within a framework of romantic science. Romantic science is a term which is developed explicitly in the work of Sacks and also illuminates the central concerns of James and Binswanger. As such, romantic science provides a useful framework in which to discuss conceptual changes in the medical humanities (a branch of the human sciences directed to patient care) since the late nineteenth century. The introduction explores romantic science, firstly, as a modem tradition of research and inquiry in the human and natural sciences, beginning with the ferment of intellectual activity in late eighteenth-century Germany, and, secondly, as a genre of writing, which fuses discontinuous discourses in an attempt to compensate for the inadequacies of more conventional modes of scientific understanding. My central theoretical interest is to trace significant shifts in the terminology of 'the self' in modem manifestations of romantic science. Each of the three thinkers considered in the thesis is both theorist and practitioner (Binswanger was and Sacks is a professional physician and James consulted with private patients), which makes for a peculiar blend of theory directed towards practical ends. Theoretical issues of the self implicate a range of intersubjective problems concerning therapeutic practice. As such, the thesis is also concerned centrally with theories of reading which help to activate the self

Quantum measures and the coevent interpretation

This paper first reviews quantum measure and integration theory. A new representation of the quantum integral is presented. This representation is illustrated by computing some quantum (Lebesgue)${}^2$ integrals. The rest of the paper only considers finite spaces. Anhomomorphic logics are discussed and the classical domain of a coevent is studied. Pure quantum measures and coevents are considered and it is shown that pure quantum measures are strictly contained in the extremal elements for the set of quantum measures bounded above by one. Moreover, we prove that any quantum measure on a finite event space \ascript can be transferred to an ordinary measure on an anhomomorphic logic \ascript ^*. In this way, the quantum dynamics on \ascript can be described by a classical dynamics on the larger space \ascript ^*.Comment: one file submitte

Allopurinol and oxypurinol are hydroxyl radical scavengers

AbstractAllopurinol is a scavenger of the highly reactive hydroxyl radical (k2 approx. 109 M−1s−1). One product of attack of hydroxyl radical upon allopurinol is oxypurinol, which is a major metabolite of allopurinol. Oxypurinol is a better hydroxyl radical scavenger than is allopurinol (k2 approx. 4 × 109 M−1s−1) and it also reacts with the myeloperoxidase-derived oxidant hypochlorous acid. Hence the protective actions of allopurinol against reperfusion damage after hypoxia need not be entirely due to xanthine oxidase inhibition

Refining Anger: Summarising the self-report measurement of anger

The current paper presents a five-factor measurement model of anger summarising scores on public-domain self-report measures of anger. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses of self-report measures of anger (UK, n=500; USA, n=625) suggest five replicable latent anger factors: anger-arousal, anger-rumination, frustration-discomfort, anger-regulation, and socially constituted anger. Findings suggested a 5-factor interpretation provided the best fit of the data. We also report evidence of measurement invariance for this 5-factor model of anger across gender, age, and ethnicity. The findings suggest a useful and parsimonious account of anger, summarising over 50 years of research around the self-report measurement of anger

Cosmological perturbations and classical change of signature

Cosmological perturbations on a manifold admitting signature change are studied. The background solution consists in a Friedmann-Lemaitre-Robertson- Walker (FLRW) Universe filled by a constant scalar field playing the role of a cosmological constant. It is shown that no regular solution exist satisfying the junction conditions at the surface of change. The comparison with similar studies in quantum cosmology is made.Comment: 35 pages, latex, 2 figures available at [email protected], to appear in Physical Review

Barrel swirl breakdown in spark-ignition engines: insights from particle image velocimetry measurements

Particle image velocimetry (PIV) has been used here to study the formation and breakdown of barrel swirl ('tumble') in a production geometry, four-stroke, four-valve, motored, spark-ignition, optically accessed internal combustion (IC) engine. The barrel swirl ratio (BSR) of the cylinder head could be enhanced by means of a port face inducer gasket so that the flow processes taking place at low and high swirl ratios could be investigated conveniently. Double-exposed images from planes both parallel and perpendicular to the cylinder axis were recorded at selected crank angles through the induction and compression strokes at a motored engine speed of 1000 r/min, with a wide open throttle, for both high and low BSR cases. The recorded images were interrogated by digital autocorrelation to give two-dimensional maps of instantaneous velocity. In both high and low BSR cases, a barrel or tumbling vortex motion is generated during induction, which is shown to persist throughout the majority of the compression stroke. The details of barrel swirl formation during induction and its subsequent modification during compression, however, differ strongly between the two cases. These differences can be explained qualitatively in terms of two main events; the first being competition during induction between vortices of unequal strength and the second being competition between the large-scale swirl motion and the local flow field generated by piston motion during compression. In the low barrel swirl case, significant dissipation occurs owing to these interactions and consequently the large-scale motion exhibits lower mean velocities and undergoes significant distortion. In the case of high BSR, the competition effects are minimized and a single ordered vertical vortex exhibiting high velocity magnitudes is observed to avoid piston induced distortion. It then moves into the apex of the pent roof combustion chamber where it survives as a single ordered vortex until at least 40° crank angle (CA) before top dead centre (TDC). Limitations and developments of the PIV technique are discussed

Refining Anger: Summarizing the Self-Report Measurement of Anger

The current paper presents a five-factor measurement model of anger summarizing scores on public-domain self-report measures of anger. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses of self-report measures of anger (UK, n = 500; USA, n = 625) suggest five replicable latent anger factors: anger-arousal, anger-rumination, frustration-discomfort, anger-regulation, and socially constituted anger. Findings suggested a 5-factor interpretation provided the best fit of the data. We also report evidence of measurement invariance for this 5-factor model of anger across gender, age, and ethnicity. The findings suggest a useful and parsimonious account of anger, summarizing over 50 years of research around the self-report measurement of anger

Hamiltonian quantization of General Relativity with the change of signature

We show in this article how the usual hamiltonian formalism of General Relativity should be modified in order to allow the inclusion of the Euclidean classical solutions of Einstein's equations. We study the effect that the dynamical change of signature has on the superspace and we prove that it induces a passage of the signature of the supermetric from ($-+++++$) to ($+-----$). Next, all these features are more particularly studied on the example of minisuperspaces. Finally, we consider the problem of quantization of the Euclidean solutions. The consequences of different choices of boundary conditions are examined.Comment: 32 pages, GCR-93/11/01, To appear in Phys. Rev.

Quantum correlation functions and the classical limit

We study the transition from the full quantum mechanical description of physical systems to an approximate classical stochastic one. Our main tool is the identification of the closed-time-path (CTP) generating functional of Schwinger and Keldysh with the decoherence functional of the consistent histories approach. Given a degree of coarse-graining in which interferences are negligible, we can explicitly write a generating functional for the effective stochastic process in terms of the CTP generating functional. This construction gives particularly simple results for Gaussian processes. The formalism is applied to simple quantum systems, quantum Brownian motion, quantum fields in curved spacetime. Perturbation theory is also explained. We conclude with a discussion on the problem of backreaction of quantum fields in spacetime geometry.Comment: 30 pages, latex; minor changes, added some explanations and refeence

Reply Comment: Comparison of Approaches to Classical Signature Change

We contrast the two approaches to ``classical" signature change used by Hayward with the one used by us (Hellaby and Dray). There is (as yet) no rigorous derivation of appropriate distributional field equations. Hayward's distributional approach is based on a postulated modified form of the field equations. We make an alternative postulate. We point out an important difference between two possible philosophies of signature change --- ours is strictly classical, while Hayward's Lagrangian approach adopts what amounts to an imaginary proper ``time" on one side of the signature change, as is explicitly done in quantum cosmology. We also explain why we chose to use the Darmois-Israel type junction conditions, rather than the Lichnerowicz type junction conditions favoured by Hayward. We show that the difference in results is entirely explained by the difference in philosophy (imaginary versus real Euclidean ``time"), and not by the difference in approach to junction conditions (Lichnerowicz with specific coordinates versus Darmois with general coordinates).Comment: 10 pages, latex, no figures. Replying to - "Comment on `Failure of Standard Conservation Laws at a Classical Change of Signature'", S.A. Hayward, Phys. Rev. D52, 7331-7332 (1995) (gr-qc/9606045