How much baseline correction do we need in ERP research? Extended GLM model can replace baseline correction while lifting its limits

Baseline correction plays an important role in past and current methodological debates in ERP research (e.g. the Tanner v. Maess debate in Journal of Neuroscience Methods), serving as a potential alternative to strong highpass filtering. However, the very assumptions that underlie traditional baseline also undermine it, making it statistically unnecessary and even undesirable and reducing signal-to-noise ratio. Including the baseline interval as a predictor in a GLM-based statistical approach allows the data to determine how much baseline correction is needed, including both full traditional and no baseline correction as subcases, while reducing the amount of variance in the residual error term and thus potentially increasing statistical power

President Trump’s Unilateral Attempt to Cease All Implementation of the Paris Agreement and to Withdraw from It: Constitutional?

In his announcement, President Trump stated that he would comply with the withdrawal provision in the Paris Agreement. This Essay argues that, while compliance with that process may satisfy the treaty obligation, it probably does not conform to U.S. constitutional standards, and therefore, would not be binding on the United States. The argument demonstrating the failure of the President to satisfy constitutional standards proceeds as follows. Part I develops the context in which the Paris Agreement arose. Part II briefly summarizes the Paris Agreement. In Part III, I argue that President Trump’s attempt to cease implementation of the Paris Agreement and, in effect, withdraw from the treaty, does not meet U.S. standards required by the Constitution, specifically Article II, § 2, Clause 2.6 Finally, in Part IV, I consider the question posed in the title of this Essay and conclude that the answer is probably “no.” In addition, I discuss the destabilization to global governance that would result if the answer were “yes

On Tautological Globular Operads

We begin by giving a nonstandard description of the construction of the classical tautological, or endomorphism, operad $taut(X)$ on a set $X$. We then describe how globular operads are a strict generalization of classical operads. From this perspective a description is given of the analogous construction for the tautological globular operad $Taut(\mathcal{X})$ on a globular set $\mathcal{X}$ by way of describing the internal hom function for the monoids category $\textbf{Col}$, of collections and collection homomorphisms, with respect to the monoidal composition tensor product used to define globular operads.Comment: 21 page

A common misapplication of statistical inference: nuisance control with null-hypothesis significance tests

Experimental research on behavior and cognition frequently rests on stimulus or subject selection where not all characteristics can be fully controlled, even when attempting strict matching. For example, when contrasting patients to controls, variables such as intelligence or socioeconomic status are often correlated with patient status. Similarly, when presenting word stimuli, variables such as word frequency are often correlated with primary variables of interest. One procedure very commonly employed to control for such nuisance effects is conducting inferential tests on confounding stimulus or subject characteristics. For example, if word length is not significantly different for two stimulus sets, they are considered as matched for word length. Such a test has high error rates and is conceptually misguided. It reflects a common misunderstanding of statistical tests: interpreting significance not to refer to inference about a particular population parameter, but about 1. the sample in question, 2. the practical relevance of a sample difference (so that a nonsignificant test is taken to indicate evidence for the absence of relevant differences). We show inferential testing for assessing nuisance effects to be inappropriate both pragmatically and philosophically, present a survey showing its high prevalence, and briefly discuss an alternative in the form of regression including nuisance variables

How Public Is the Internet? A Conversation on the Nature of Human Interactions On-line and the Implications for Research Methods

In the past decade, ???virtual??? research???empirical investigations conducted via the Internet???has increased dramatically across a variety of disparate disciplines. Areas such as cybersecurity and encryption, digital government and citizenship, consumer health informatics, and user behavior in online spaces have emerged to become signature iSchool research areas, often shared with particular disciplinary heritages (e.g., computer science, political science and communication, public health, and sociology???respectively, but not exclusively). In addition, the field of Information Science is dominated by research developing or using emerging technologies. These new technologies often occupy a gray area in which ethical issues either have not been sufficiently well-defined or push against existing definitions. Questions surrounding the ???public??? nature of the internet and Web 2.0-era information technologies have also emerged and have become increasingly urgent given the tightening of federal, state and University regulations as they relate to the protection of human subjects. At the convergence of multiple disciplinary and methodological perspectives, Information Science researchers are well-positioned to become more active participants in both scholarly and institutional conversations regarding the appropriate risks and benefits that participants in online research studies might be subject to. Critiques of IRB inconsistencies exist, what we need is a thoughtful and thorough community response to the innately complex nature of virtual research and a map which can guide us towards the future and the study of twenty-first century systems, selves and societies. Our goal for this wildcard event, is to generate a lively and rigorous debate which accomplishes the following three goals: 1) extends the dialogue within the Information Science field concerning the beneficence and respect for participants in online research; 2) enumerates a set of best practices for iSchool researchers in relation to conducting approved research on-line and; 3) moves us towards the process of drafting an iSchool set of ethical guidelines related to virtual research

The hydrodynamic force on a rigid particle undergoing arbitrary time-dependent motion at small Reynolds number

The hydrodynamic force acting on a rigid spherical particle translating with arbitrary time-dependent motion in a time-dependent flowing fluid is calculated to O(Re) for small but finite values of the Reynolds number, Re, based on the particle's slip velocity relative to the uniform flow. The corresponding expression for an arbitrarily shaped rigid particle is evaluated for the case when the timescale of variation of the particle's slip velocity is much greater than the diffusive scale, a^2/v, where a is the characteristic particle dimension and v is the kinematic viscosity of the fluid. It is found that the expression for the hydrodynamic force is not simply an additive combination of the results from unsteady Stokes flow and steady Oseen flow and that the temporal decay to steady state for small but finite Re is always faster than the t^-½ behaviour of unsteady Stokes flow. For example, when the particle accelerates from rest the temporal approach to steady state scales as t^-2

When Do Opponents of Gay Rights Mobilize? Explaining Political Participation in Times of Backlash against Liberalism

Existing research suggests that supporters of gay rights have outmobilized their opponents, leading to policy changes in advanced industrialized democracies. At the same time, we observe the diffusion of state-sponsored homophobia in many parts of the world. The emergence of gay rights as a salient political issue in global politics leads us to ask, “Who is empowered to be politically active in various societies?” What current research misses is a comparison of levels of participation (voting and protesting) between states that make stronger and weaker appeals to homophobia. Voters face contrasting appeals from politicians in favor of and against gay rights globally. In an analysis of survey data from Europe and Latin America, we argue that the alignment between the norms of sexuality a state promotes and an individual’s personal attitudes on sexuality increases felt political efficacy. We find that individuals who are tolerant of homosexuality are more likely to participate in states with gay-friendly policies in comparison with intolerant individuals. The reverse also holds: individuals with low education levels that are intolerant of homosexuality are more likely to participate in states espousing political homophobia