Cabling, contact structures and mapping class monoids

In this paper we discuss the change in contact structures as their supporting open book decompositions have their binding components cabled. To facilitate this and applications we define the notion of a rational open book decomposition that generalizes the standard notion of open book decomposition and allows one to more easily study surgeries on transverse knots. As a corollary to our investigation we are able to show there are Stein fillable contact structures supported by open books whose monodromies cannot be written as a product of positive Dehn twists. We also exhibit several monoids in the mapping class group of a surface that have contact geometric significance.Comment: 62 pages, 32 figures. Significant expansion of exposition and more details on some argument

An Overview of the Microgravity Science Glovebox (MSG) Facility, and the Gravity-Dependent Phenomena Research Performed in the MSG on the International Space Station (ISS)

No abstract availabl

Effect of Tillage Tools on Improving Corn Yields from a Compacted Soil

An experiment was conducted on a 2-5% sloping Mercer silt loam soil on a farm in Bourbon/Harrison Counties where very poor corn was grown in 1984 because of soil compaction and drought. Soil test levels of the experimental area were: pH 4.8. and 99, 316, 2070. and 120 lbs/A of P, K, Ca, and Mg, respectively. Examination of the field showed that the compacted zone occurred uniformly in the 0-5 inch surface layer of soil. Cause of this compacted layer was thought to be due to excessive disk tillage in prior years when preparing the field for tobacco production and to winter grazing of a wheat cover crop. The objective of the experiment was to evaluate the influence of fall or spring plowing with a paraplow. chisel plow, or moldboard plow on plowsole bulk density and corn production

Decoding Guilty Minds

A central tenet of Anglo-American penal law is that in order for an actor to be found criminally liable, a proscribed act must be accompanied by a guilty mind. While it is easy to understand the importance of this principle in theory, in practice it requires jurors and judges to decide what a person was thinking months or years earlier at the time of the alleged offense, either about the results of his conduct or about some elemental fact (such as whether the briefcase he is carrying contains drugs). Despite the central importance of this task in the administration of criminal justice, there has been very little research investigating how people go about making these decisions, and how these decisions relate to their intuitions about culpability. Understanding the cognitive mechanisms that govern this task is important for the law, not only to explore the possibility of systemic biases and errors in attributions of culpability but also to probe the intuitions that underlie them. In a set of six exploratory studies reported here, we examine the way in which individuals infer others’ legally relevant mental states about elemental facts, using the framework established over fifty years ago by the Model Penal Code (“MPC”). The widely adopted MPC framework delineates and defines the four now-familiar culpable mental states: purpose, knowledge, recklessness, and negligence. Our studies reveal that with little to no training, jury-eligible Americans can apply the MPC framework in a manner that is largely congruent with the basic assumptions of the MPC’s mental state hierarchy. However, our results also indicate that subjects’ intuitions about the level of culpability warranting criminal punishment diverge significantly from prevailing legal practice; subjects tend to regard recklessness as a sufficient basis for punishment under circumstances where the legislatures and courts tend to require knowledge

Parsing the Behavioral and Brain Mechanisms of Third-Party Punishment

The evolved capacity for third-party punishment is considered crucial to the emergence and maintenance of elaborate human social organization and is central to the modern provision of fairness and justice within society. Although it is well established that the mental state of the offender and the severity of the harm he caused are the two primary predictors of punishment decisions, the precise cognitive and brain mechanisms by which these distinct components are evaluated and integrated into a punishment decision are poorly understood. Using a brain-scanning technique known as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we implemented a novel experimental design to functionally dissociate the mechanisms underlying evaluation, integration, and decision. This work revealed that multiple parts of the brain – some analytic, some subconscious or emotional – work in a systematic pattern to decide blameworthiness, assess harms, integrate those two decisions, and then ultimately select how a person should be punished. Specifically, harm and mental state evaluations are conducted in two different brain networks and then combined in the medial prefrontal and posterior cingulate areas of the brain, while the amygdala acts as a pivotal hub of the interaction between harm and mental state. This integrated information is then used by the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex when the brain is making a decision on punishment amount. These findings provide a blueprint of the brain mechanisms by which neutral third parties make punishment decisions

Speech Communication

Contains research objectives and three research projects.U. S. Air Force (Electronic Systems Division) under Contract AF 19(604)-6102National Science Foundation (Grant G-16526)National Institutes of Health (Grant MH-04737-02

Parsing the Behavioral and Brain Mechanisms of Third-Party Punishment.

UnlabelledThe evolved capacity for third-party punishment is considered crucial to the emergence and maintenance of elaborate human social organization and is central to the modern provision of fairness and justice within society. Although it is well established that the mental state of the offender and the severity of the harm he caused are the two primary predictors of punishment decisions, the precise cognitive and brain mechanisms by which these distinct components are evaluated and integrated into a punishment decision are poorly understood. Using fMRI, here we implement a novel experimental design to functionally dissociate the mechanisms underlying evaluation, integration, and decision that were conflated in previous studies of third-party punishment. Behaviorally, the punishment decision is primarily defined by a superadditive interaction between harm and mental state, with subjects weighing the interaction factor more than the single factors of harm and mental state. On a neural level, evaluation of harms engaged brain areas associated with affective and somatosensory processing, whereas mental state evaluation primarily recruited circuitry involved in mentalization. Harm and mental state evaluations are integrated in medial prefrontal and posterior cingulate structures, with the amygdala acting as a pivotal hub of the interaction between harm and mental state. This integrated information is used by the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex at the time of the decision to assign an appropriate punishment through a distributed coding system. Together, these findings provide a blueprint of the brain mechanisms by which neutral third parties render punishment decisions.Significance statementPunishment undergirds large-scale cooperation and helps dispense criminal justice. Yet it is currently unknown precisely how people assess the mental states of offenders, evaluate the harms they caused, and integrate those two components into a single punishment decision. Using a new design, we isolated these three processes, identifying the distinct brain systems and activities that enable each. Additional findings suggest that the amygdala plays a crucial role in mediating the interaction of mental state and harm information, whereas the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex plays a crucial, final-stage role, both in integrating mental state and harm information and in selecting a suitable punishment amount. These findings deepen our understanding of how punishment decisions are made, which may someday help to improve them

Speech Communication

Contains reports on three research projects.U.S. Air Force (Air Force Cambridge Research Center, Air Research and Development Command) under Contract AF 19(604)-2061National Science Foundatio

Speech Communication

Contains research objectives and reports on three research projects.U.S. Air Force (Air Force Cambridge Research Center, Air Research and Development Command) under Contract AF19(604)-6102National Science Foundatio