1,289 research outputs found

    Study and Correlation of Belt and Cambrian Arkoses near Limespur, Montana

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    In the vicinity of Limespur, Montana, a siding along the Northern Pacific Railroad near Whitehall, Montana, occurs a characteristic type of arkose where­ in many small red mineral grains are distributed throughout the rock mass. It is in this respect that this arkose differs from other arkoses in the surrounding region

    Picturing Number in the Central Middle Ages.

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    Numeracy was as highly valued as literacy in the schools of Latin-speaking Europe around the year 1000, and the skills inculcated by masters, engendering specific modes of seeing and imagining, had demonstrable impact on contemporary visual culture. The trivium—grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic—continued to be taught as the foundation of learning, but the quadrivium, the four disciplines of number—arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music—received new emphasis. Two of the era’s greatest intellects, Gerbert of Aurillac (Pope Sylvester II; c.940–1003) and Abbo of Fleury (c.944–1004), gained renown for their mathematical prowess and charismatic teaching. They educated a generation of Europe's powerful elites—including Emperor Otto III—and a host of anonymous clerics, monks, and priests. In the closed economy of the central middle ages, these men were also the primary patrons, makers, and viewers of objects. Works of the time, like the Pericope Book of Henry II, reveal new qualities when examined through the lens of number. This project is located at the cathedral school of Reims and the monastery school of Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire (Fleury)—where Gerbert and Abbo were masters, epicenters of a pan-European network of exchange linking monastic, episcopal, and lay institutions. Numeric knowledge was drawn from late antique and early medieval tracts by such figures as Boethius, Calcidius, Macrobius, Martianus Capella, Cassiodorus, Isidore of Seville, and Bede. Manuscript copies of these works produced and used at Reims and Fleury c.1000 give evidence of active engagement with their content, visual as well as verbal. Diagrammatic images earlier devised to explicate numeric concepts were now adapted and artfully elaborated for classroom use. This is evident in important introductions to the quadrivial disciplines prepared by Abbo (Explanatio in Calculo Victorii), Abbo’s student Byrhtferth of Ramsey (Enchiridion), and Gerbert (Isagoge geometriae). Accompanying images to these tracts are witness to contemporary notions of materiality, sight, and the limits of representation. Students of arithmetic became freshly attuned to placement and order. Computistic study developed an active, agile, and "curious" eye, while the practice of geometry exercised the intellectual eye, sharpening it, according to Gerbert, "for contemplating spiritual things and truths."PHDHistory of ArtUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/116774/1/mcnameme_1.pd

    Just out of reach : access to equity in Australian higher education

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    This paper provides an account of access and equity in Australian higher education across the period of recent Federal Labor governments and specifically of the discourses and practices surrounding A Fair Chance For All: Higher Education That\u27s Within Everyone\u27s Reach, Labor\u27s latest policy on equal access to Australian higher education. The paper positions such an account within Australia\u27s changing national and global economic condition, and the influence of New Right ideologies that proffer efficient and effective public sector management practices and market freedoms that have witnessed a privatisation and peeling back of the welfare state. The paper argues that while Federal Labor has clearly established social justice on the agenda of Australian higher education, it is a justice mediated by particular economic and managerial practices which tend to limit equity to issues of access and place broader equity concerns for higher education just out of reach

    Alternative pathways to traditional destinations : higher education for disadvantaged Australians

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    In 1985, the Higher Education Equity Program was introduced by the Australian Government to improve the participation of those persons from social groups traditionally under-represented within higher education. In 1990, the program was incorporated within A Fair Chance For All which provided more specific details of the government\u27s desire for a system-wide approach to equity issues. One result has been the proliferation of access and equity programs conducted by universities around the country and aimed at redressing the disadvantage of potential students. The alleged success of these programs is based on greater participation in and graduation from Australian universities by individuals from targeted disadvantaged groups. The research reported here, however, would suggest that such programs are prone to co-opt the language of equity and social justice, dependent as they are on satisfying statistically-orientated program performance indicators in order to receive recurrent government funding. Further, the paper argues that success in achieving equity within Australian higher education will remain limited unless the structural arrangements that work to construct social inequalities in mainstream higher education are addressed

    Ethics, evidence based sports medicine, and the use of platelet rich plasma in the English Premier League

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    The use of platelet rich plasma (PRP) as a novel treatment is discussed in the context of a qualitative research study comprising 38 interviews with sports medicine practitioners and other stakeholders working within the English Premier League during the 2013-16 seasons. Analysis of the data produced several overarching themes: conservatism versus experimentalism in medical attitudes; therapy perspectives divergence; conflicting versions of appropriate evidence; subcultures; community beliefs/practices; and negotiation of medical decision-making. The contested evidence base for the efficacy of PRP is presented in the context of a broader professional shift towards evidence based medicine within sports medicine. Many of the participants while accepting this shift are still committed to casuistic practices where clinical judgment is flexible and does not recognize a context-free hierarchy of evidentiary standards to ethically justifiable practice. We also discuss a tendency in the data collected to consider the use of deceptive, placebo-like, practices among the clinician participants that challenge dominant understandings of informed consent in medical ethics. We conclude that the complex relation between evidence and ethics requires greater critical scrutiny for this emerging specialism within the medical community

    Evidence for Model-based Computations in the Human Amygdala during Pavlovian Conditioning

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    Contemporary computational accounts of instrumental conditioning have emphasized a role for a model-based system in which values are computed with reference to a rich model of the structure of the world, and a model-free system in which values are updated without encoding such structure. Much less studied is the possibility of a similar distinction operating at the level of Pavlovian conditioning. In the present study, we scanned human participants while they participated in a Pavlovian conditioning task with a simple structure while measuring activity in the human amygdala using a high-resolution fMRI protocol. After fitting a model-based algorithm and a variety of model-free algorithms to the fMRI data, we found evidence for the superiority of a model-based algorithm in accounting for activity in the amygdala compared to the model-free counterparts. These findings support an important role for model-based algorithms in describing the processes underpinning Pavlovian conditioning, as well as providing evidence of a role for the human amygdala in model-based inference

    Study on Doping Prevention: A map of Legal, Regulatory and Prevention Practice Provisions in EU 28

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    Historically, anti-doping efforts have focused on the detection and deterrence of doping in elite and competitive sport. There is, however, a growing concern that doping is occurring outside the organised sporting system; giving rise to the belief that the misuse of doping agents in recreational sport has become a societal problem and a public health issue that must be addressed. The EU Commission awarded a contract (EAC/2013/0617) to a Consortium to undertake this Study with the aim of developing the evidence-base for policies designed to combat doping in recreational sport. Fourteen internationally recognised experts shaped the Study which comprised (i) the collection of primary data through a structured survey, and (ii) secondary data through literature searches and website analysis. All 28 Member States participated in the information-gathering process. Specifically, this involved a systematic study of the ethical considerations, legal position, prevention research landscape, and current practise in relation to the prevention of doping in recreational sport. The Study provides a comprehensive overview of current practice and legislation as it applies to the prevention of doping and promotes and supports the sharing of best practices in the EU regarding the fight against doping in recreational sport. It concludes with seven recommendations for future action that focus on the need for a coordinated response in relation to the problems arising from doping in recreational sport

    Trajectories through semantic spaces in schizophrenia and the relationship to ripple bursts

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    Human cognition is underpinned by structured internal representations that encode relationships between entities in the world (cognitive maps). Clinical features of schizophrenia-from thought disorder to delusions-are proposed to reflect disorganization in such conceptual representations. Schizophrenia is also linked to abnormalities in neural processes that support cognitive map representations, including hippocampal replay and high-frequency ripple oscillations. Here, we report a computational assay of semantically guided conceptual sampling and exploit this to test a hypothesis that people with schizophrenia (PScz) exhibit abnormalities in semantically guided cognition that relate to hippocampal replay and ripples. Fifty-two participants [26 PScz (13 unmedicated) and 26 age-, gender-, and intelligence quotient (IQ)-matched nonclinical controls] completed a category- and letter-verbal fluency task, followed by a magnetoencephalography (MEG) scan involving a separate sequence-learning task. We used a pretrained word embedding model of semantic similarity, coupled to a computational model of word selection, to quantify the degree to which each participant's verbal behavior was guided by semantic similarity. Using MEG, we indexed neural replay and ripple power in a post-task rest session. Across all participants, word selection was strongly influenced by semantic similarity. The strength of this influence showed sensitivity to task demands (category > letter fluency) and predicted performance. In line with our hypothesis, the influence of semantic similarity on behavior was reduced in schizophrenia relative to controls, predicted negative psychotic symptoms, and correlated with an MEG signature of hippocampal ripple power (but not replay). The findings bridge a gap between phenomenological and neurocomputational accounts of schizophrenia

    Distinct replay signatures for prospective decision-making and memory preservation

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    Theories of neural replay propose that it supports a range of functions, most prominently planning and memory consolidation. Here, we test the hypothesis that distinct signatures of replay in the same task are related to model-based decision-making (“planning”) and memory preservation. We designed a reward learning task wherein participants utilized structure knowledge for model-based evaluation, while at the same time had to maintain knowledge of two independent and randomly alternating task environments. Using magnetoencephalography and multivariate analysis, we first identified temporally compressed sequential reactivation, or replay, both prior to choice and following reward feedback. Before choice, prospective replay strength was enhanced for the current task-relevant environment when a model-based planning strategy was beneficial. Following reward receipt, and consistent with a memory preservation role, replay for the alternative distal task environment was enhanced as a function of decreasing recency of experience with that environment. Critically, these planning and memory preservation relationships were selective to pre-choice and post-feedback periods, respectively. Our results provide support for key theoretical proposals regarding the functional role of replay and demonstrate that the relative strength of planning and memory-related signals are modulated by ongoing computational and task demands
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