Trees, Shrubs and Grasses for Saltlands: an Annotated Bibliography

Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

Hope, Self-Denial and the Love of God: Towards a Kierkegaardian Perspective on Self-Condemnation-Unto-Death

Few events have the potential to be as destructive for individuals, groups, and communities as suicide. By drawing on the theology of Søren Kierkegaard, this article aims to elucidate a perspective which contains theo-ethical, psychological, and pastoral import for those contemplating, or faced with, the tragic prospect of guiltmotivated suicide. This is principally done by highlighting the nature and centrality, for Kierkegaard, of God’s unconditional and unchanging love in Christ. The pertinent offshoots of this for the present article are twofold: firstly, every individual is, at all times, held in being by divine love; secondly and correlatingly, the task of every human being of conforming his or her will to the selflessness of God cannot be foreclosed—put differently, perpetual love entails perpetual hope. Despite not usually being regarded as a theologian whose work is relevant to public issues, I thus claim that Kierkegaard provides resources for a robust position against individual self execution out of guilt.Peer Reviewe

The Marvel, the Moment, and the Fullness of Time: Kierkegaard’s Mystical Explorations with John Climacus and John the Silent

Interpreting the thought of Søren Kierkegaard is a notoriously difficult task. One reason for this is that some of his best-known works are written under enigmatic pseudonyms. Of interest here is Kierkegaard’s decision that two of his pseudonyms—Johannes Climacus and Johannes de Silentio—be named after early medieval saints John Climacus (579-649) and John the Silent (454-558). Historically, these figures not only lived in adjourning centuries and geographical areas, but also displayed similar preferences for long periods of monastic prayer and silence. Within Kierkegaard’s literary corpus, Johannes Climacus is first attributed to Philosophical Fragments (1844), while Johannes de Silentio is the authorial voice in Fear and Trembling (1843). This article will focus on the latter. Through an examination of concepts and motifs in Fear and Trembling and Philosophical Fragments, as well as with Kierkegaard’s self-authored Discourses, this article will suggest that Kierkegaard’s choice of medieval guises for his works may not be incidental; rather, just as the historical John Climacus and John the Silent share some poignant biographical similarities—chief among which are extensive silence and prayer before God—so too the works of their Kierkegaardian namesakes share a common message of doxological silence and divine incarnational love.Peer Reviewe

The ways our hearts tick together – A vegetative hyperscanning study involving a self-paced interpersonal motor entrainment task

Cardiac physiological synchrony between two persons is considered to be an important component of social interaction. Yet, the processes underlying physiological synchrony remain unclear. We aim to investigate these processes. 20 dyads (19 men, 21 women, age: mean 23.7, range: 18–35) engaged in a self-paced interpersonal tapping synchronization task under different conditions of blocking sensory communication channels. Applying wavelet transform coherence analysis, a significant increase in heart rate synchronization from baseline to task execution was found while there was no statistically significant difference across conditions. Furthermore, the control analysis, which assessed the synchrony between randomly combined dyads of participants showed no difference from the original dyads’ synchrony. We showed that interindividual cardiac physiological synchrony during self-paced synchronized finger tapping resulted from a task-related stimulus equally shared by all individuals. We hypothesize that by applying mental effort to the task, individuals changed into a similar mental state, altering their cardiac regulation. This so-called psychophysiological mode provoked more uniform, less variable oscillation patterns across all individuals leading to similar heart rate coherence independent of subsequent pairings. With this study, we provide new insights into heart rate coherence and highlight the importance of appropriate study design and control analysis

Reproducibility and sensitivity of detecting brain activity by simultaneous electroencephalography and near-infrared spectroscopy

The aims were (1) to determine the sensitivity and reproducibility to detect the hemodynamic responses and optical neuronal signals to brain stimulation by near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) and evoked potentials by electroencephalography (EEG) and (2) to test the effect of novel filters on the signal-to-noise ratio. This was achieved by simultaneous NIRS and EEG measurements in 15 healthy adults during visual stimulation. Each subject was measured three times on three different days. The sensitivity of NIRS to detect hemodynamic responses was 55.2% with novel filtering and 40% without. The reproducibility in single subjects was low. For the EEG, the sensitivity was 86.4% and the reproducibility 57.1%. An optical neuronal signal was not detected, although novel filtering considerably reduced nois

Transpiration by trees on land with shallow water-tables: a survey of the literature suggests that transpiration is affected by soil texture

This chapter surveys the literature relating site conditions to wateruse by stands of trees growing above shallow watertables. Analysis of the data suggests that transpiration by stands of trees is affected by Epan, depth of the watertable, planting density and soil texture

How our hearts beat together: a study on physiological synchronization based on a self-paced joint motor task

Cardiac physiological synchrony is regarded as an important component of social interaction due to its putative role in prosocial behaviour. Yet, the processes underlying physiological synchrony remain unclear. We aim to investigate these processes. 20 dyads (19 men, 21 women, age range 18-35) engaged in a self-paced interpersonal tapping synchronization task under different levels of tapping synchrony due to blocking of sensory communication channels. Applying wavelet transform coherence analysis, significant increases in heart rate synchronization from baseline to task execution were found with no statistically significant difference across conditions. Furthermore, the control analysis, which assessed synchrony between randomly combined dyads of participants showed no difference from the original dyads' synchrony. We showed that interindividual cardiac physiological synchrony during self-paced synchronized finger tapping resulted from a task-related stimulus equally shared by all individuals. We hypothesize that by applying mental effort to the task, individuals changed into a similar mental state, altering their cardiac regulation. This so-called psychophysiological mode provoked more uniform, less variable fluctuation patterns across all individuals leading to similar heart rate coherence independent of subsequent pairings. With this study, we provide new insights into cardiac physiological synchrony and highlight the importance of appropriate study design and control analysis

Systemic physiology augmented functional near-infrared spectroscopy hyperscanning: a first evaluation investigating entrainment of spontaneous activity of brain and body physiology between subjects.

Significance: Functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) enables measuring the brain activity of two subjects while they interact, i.e., the hyperscanning approach. Aim: In our exploratory study, we extended classical fNIRS hyperscanning by adding systemic physiological measures to obtain systemic physiology augmented fNIRS (SPA-fNIRS) hyperscanning while blocking and not blocking the visual communication between the subjects. This approach enables access brain-to-brain, brain-to-body, and body-to-body coupling between the subjects simultaneously. Approach: Twenty-four pairs of subjects participated in the experiment. The paradigm consisted of two subjects that sat in front of each other and had their eyes closed for 10 min, followed by a phase of 10 min where they made eye contact. Brain and body activity was measured continuously by SPA-fNIRS. Results: Our study shows that making eye contact for a prolonged time causes significant changes in brain-to-brain, brain-to-body, and body-to-body coupling, indicating that eye contact is followed by entrainment of the physiology between subjects. Subjects that knew each other generally showed a larger trend to change between the two conditions. Conclusions: The main point of this study is to introduce a new framework to investigate brain-to-brain, body-to-body, and brain-to-body coupling through a simple social experimental paradigm. The study revealed that eye contact leads to significant synchronization of spontaneous activity of the brain and body physiology. Our study is the first that employed the SPA-fNIRS approach and showed its usefulness to investigate complex interpersonal physiological changes

Determination of thoracic and lumbar spinal processes by their percentage position between C7 and the PSIS level

Accurate measurements of spinal movement require reliable determination of anatomical landmarks. Current methods of identifying these are not sufficiently reliable or valid for this purpose. A reliable and convenient method of placing markers on selected vertebra is needed to compare measurements between different testers, subjects and sessions

Effects of contact with a dog on prefrontal brain activity: A controlled trial

BACKGROUND There is a broad range of known effects of animal contact on human mental and physical health. Neurological correlates of human interaction with animals have been sparsely investigated. We investigated changes in frontal brain activity in the presence of and during contact with a dog. METHODS Twenty-one healthy individuals each participated in six sessions. In three sessions, participants had contact with a dog, and in three control sessions they interacted with a plush animal. Each session had five two-minute phases with increasing intensity of contact to the dog or plush animal from the first to the fourth phase. We measured oxygenated, deoxygenated, and total hemoglobin and oxygen saturation of the blood in the frontal lobe/frontopolar area with functional near-infrared spectroscopy (SenSmart Model X-100) to assess brain activity. FINDINGS In both conditions, the concentration of oxygenated hemoglobin increased significantly from the first to the fourth phase by 2.78 μmol/l (CI = 2.03-3.53, p < .001). Oxygenated hemoglobin concentration was 0.80 μmol/l higher in the dog condition compared to in the control condition (CI = 0.27-1.33, p = .004). Deoxygenated-hemoglobin concentration, total hemoglobin concentration, and oxygen saturation showed similar patterns. CONCLUSION Prefrontal brain activation in healthy subjects increased with the rise in interaction closeness with a dog or a plush animal. Moreover, interaction with a dog stimulated more brain activity compared to the control condition, suggesting that interactions with a dog can activate stronger attentional processes and elicit more emotional arousal than interacting with a nonliving stimulus