Trần Đức Thảo. A Marxist Theory of the Origins of Human Language

This paper will explore Trần Đức Thảo’s (Từ Sơn, Bắc Ninh, September 26th, 1917 – Paris, April 24th, 1993) work from historical, philosophical, and linguistic points of view. Most notably it will focus on Thảo’s Recherches sur l’origine du langage et de la conscience (1973). According to Marx and Engels, Thảo argued that language was originally constituted during collective cooperative activities. And he also suggested that human specific skills appeared for the first time with the production of first tools. To him, language arose as gestural and verbal indication involved in task-oriented cooperative activities already in hominid societies. Trying to integrate Piaget’s child development psychology with the findings of Spirkin’s anthropology, Thảo described six stages of evolution of genus Homo

Transient spatiotemporal chaos in a diffusively and synaptically coupled Morris-Lecar neuronal network

Thesis (M.S.) University of Alaska Fairbanks, 2014Transient spatiotemporal chaos was reported in models for chemical reactions and in experiments for turbulence in shear flow. This study shows that transient spatiotemporal chaos also exists in a diffusively coupled Morris-Lecar (ML) neuronal network, with a collapse to either a global rest state or to a state of pulse propagation. Adding synaptic coupling to this network reduces the average lifetime of spatiotemporal chaos for small to intermediate coupling strengths and almost all numbers of synapses. For large coupling strengths, close to the threshold of excitation, the average lifetime increases beyond the value for only diffusive coupling, and the collapse to the rest state dominates over the collapse to a traveling pulse state. The regime of spatiotemporal chaos is characterized by a slightly increasing Lyapunov exponent and degree of phase coherence as the number of synaptic links increases. In contrast to the diffusive network, the pulse solution must not be asymptotic in the presence of synapses. The fact that chaos could be transient in higher dimensional systems, such as the one being explored in this study, point to its presence in every day life. Transient spatiotemporal chaos in a network of coupled neurons and the associated chaotic saddle provide a possibility for switching between metastable states observed in information processing and brain function. Such transient dynamics have been observed experimentally by Mazor, when stimulating projection neurons in the locust antennal lobe with different odors

Comments on the Chiral Symmetry Breaking in Soft Wall Holographic QCD

In this paper we describe qualitatively some aspects of the holographic QCD. Inspired by a successfull 4D description, we try to separate the Confinement and the Chiral Symmetry Breaking dynamics. We also discuss the realization of the baryons as skyrmions in Soft Wall Holographic QCD, and the issue of the Vector Meson Dominance

W-types in setoids

W-types and their categorical analogue, initial algebras for polynomial endofunctors, are an important tool in predicative systems to replace transfinite recursion on well-orderings. Current arguments to obtain W-types in quotient completions rely on assumptions, like Uniqueness of Identity Proofs, or on constructions that involve recursion into a universe, that limit their applicability to a specific setting. We present an argument, verified in Coq, that instead uses dependent W-types in the underlying type theory to construct W-types in the setoid model. The immediate advantage is to have a proof more type-theoretic in flavour, which directly uses recursion on the underlying W-type to prove initiality. Furthermore, taking place in intensional type theory and not requiring any recursion into a universe, it may be generalised to various categorical quotient completions, with the aim of finding a uniform construction of extensional W-types.Comment: 17 pages, formalised in Coq; v2: added reference to formalisatio