Earth jurisprudence, wild law, emergent law :the emerging field of ecology and law - part 1

Abstract The article does two things. First, it explores the emerging field of ecology and law through the examination of Earth Jurisprudence developed in the work of Berry, Cullinan, and Burdon. Second, it puts this Earth Jurisprudence and the emerging field of ecology and law in connection with the wide ranging philosophical work of Deleuze & Guattari. Earth Jurisprudence and the emerging field of ecology and law are introduced through the exploration of four themes that characterise the field of study: a critique of the dominant western worldview and image of thought; a new philosophy of nature widely informed by contemporary science and cosmology; a new relation to the Earth and nature in affectual intensities, image of thinking, and investment of the social field; and, the realisation of the necessity and centrality of a fundamental reconceptualization of legality and governance. The Earth Jurisprudence of Berry, Cullinan, and Burdon (particularly Cullinan’s Wild Law: A Manifesto for Earth Justice) is then explored substantively in Cullinan’s reconceptualization of legality, the Grand Jurisprudence that informs Earth Jurisprudence, the Earth Jurisprudence of the promotion of mutual ecocentric human-Earth enhancement, the development of Earth rights, the reconceptualization of property and land, and the Wild Law that Earth Jurisprudence produces as the outcome of its creativity. Earth Jurisprudence and the emerging field of ecology and law are a far-reaching development within legal studies, with potentially profound implications for our contemporary conceptualisation of legality and governance and the creation of a concept of law for a new Earth. When put into connection with the wide ranging philosophical joint work of Deleuze & Guattari there emerge striking commonalities, convergences, and a common jurisprudential project of the creation of a legality for a new Earth. The article concludes with the argument that the work of Deleuze & Guattari could provide a key resource for the development of Earth Jurisprudence and the emerging field of ecology and law, particularly the Deleuze & Guattari jurisprudential concept of emergent law. Keywords Deleuze & Guattari, Earth Jurisprudence, Ecology, Emergent Law, Great Jurisprudence, Wild La

Associative Recognition: Exploring the Contributions of Recollection and Familiarity

Episodic memory refers to the storage and retrieval of information about events in our past. According to dual process models, episodic memory is supported by familiarity which refers to the rapid and automatic sense of oldness about a previously encoded stimulus, and recollection which refers to the retrieval of contextual information, such as spatial, temporal or other contextual details that bring a specific item to mind. To be clear, familiarity is traditionally assumed to support recognition of item information, whereas recollection supports the recognition of associative information. Event Related Potential (ERP) studies provide support for dual process models, by demonstrating qualitatively distinct patterns of neural activity associated with familiarity (Mid-Frontal old/new effect) and recollection (Left-Parietal old/new effect). In the current thesis, ERPs were used to address two important questions regarding associative recognition – namely, the function of the neural signal supporting recollection and whether familiarity can contribute to the retrieval of novel associative information. The first series of experiments was aimed at addressing how recollection operates by employing a recently developed continuous source task designed to directly measure the accuracy of retrieval success. To date, the function of recollection has been fiercely debated, with some arguing that recollection reflects the operation of a continuous retrieval process, whereby test cues always elicit some information from memory. Alternatively, recollection may reflect the operation of a thresholded process that allows for retrieval failure, whereby test cues sometimes elicit no information from memory at all. In the current thesis, the Left Parietal effect was found to be sensitive to the precision of memory responses when recollection succeeded, but was entirely absent when recollection failed. The result clarifies the nature of the neural mechanism underlying successful retrieval whilst also providing novel evidence in support of threshold models of recollection. The second series of experiments addressed whether familiarity could contribute to the retrieval of novel associative information. Recent associative recognition studies have suggested that unitization (whereby multi-component stimuli are encoded as a single item rather than as a set of associated parts) can improve episodic memory by increasing the availability of familiarity during retrieval. To date, however, ERP studies have failed to provide any evidence of unitization for novel associations, whereas behavioural support for unitization is heavily reliant on model specific measures such as ROC analysis. Over three separate associative recognition studies employing unrelated word pairs, the magnitude of the Mid-Frontal old/new effect was found to be modulated by encoding instructions designed to manipulate the level of unitization. Importantly, the results also suggest that different encoding strategies designed to manipulate the level of unitization may be more successful than others. Finally, the results also revealed that differences in behavioural performance and modulation of the Mid-Frontal old/new effect between unitized and non-unitized instructions is greater for unrelated compared to related word pairs. In essence, the results suggest that unitization is better suited to learning completely novel associations as opposed to word pairs sharing a pre-existing conceptual relationship. Overall, the data presented in this thesis supports dual process accounts of episodic memory, suggesting that at a neural level of analysis, recollection is both thresholded and variable, whilst also supporting the assumption that familiarity can contribute to successful retrieval of novel associative information. The results have important implications for our current understanding of cognitive decline and the development of behavioural interventions aimed at alleviating associative deficits

Recognising object-oriented software design quality : a practitioner-based questionnaire survey

Design quality is vital if software is to be maintainable. What practices do developers actually use to achieve design quality in their day-to-day work and which of these do they find most useful? To discover the extent to which practitioners concern themselves with object-oriented design quality and the approaches used when determining quality in practice, a questionnaire survey of 102 software practitioners, approximately half from the UK and the remainder from elsewhere around the world was used. Individual and peer experience are major contributors to design quality. Classic design guidelines, well-known lower level practices, tools and metrics all can also contribute positively to design quality. There is a potential relationship between testing practices and design quality. Inexperience, time pressures, novel problems, novel technology, and imprecise or changing requirements may have a negative impact on quality. Respondents with most experience are more confident in their design decisions, place more value on reviews by team leads and are more likely to rate design quality as very important. For practitioners, these results identify the techniques and tools that other practitioners find effective. For researchers, the results highlight a need for more work investigating the role of experience in the design process and the contribution experience makes to quality. There is also the potential for more in-depth studies of how practitioners are actually using design guidance, including Clean Code. Lastly, the potential relationship between testing practices and design quality merits further investigation

APT-II training in CADASIL: Can a Behavioral Treatment Build Cognitive Reserve?

A single-subject, multiple-baseline across behaviors study examined the effectiveness of a modified version of Attention Process Training – II (APT-II) to treat attention in an individual with a history of multiple ischemic small-vessel infarcts and a diagnosis of probable CADASIL [cerebral autosomal dominant arteriopathy with subcortical infarcts and leukoencoephalopathy]. Results are examined with respect to the utility of APT-II to effect both short and long-term cognitive changes in an individual at risk for developing dementia, and the clinical and theoretical implications are discussed

Differentiating ‘the user’ in DSR: Developing demand side response in advanced economies

This paper reports on the current state of Demand Side Response (DSR) in the UK – an early adoptor amongst advanced economies – and the role of the end user in determining its future. Through 21 expert interviews we establish the current state of DSR, and expectations for its development. Whilst non-domestic DSR appears healthy, if fragile, domestic DSR is considered to be currently unviable, it's future success dependant on market innovations. In following how that situation is expected to change, we highlight key assumptions about prospective end users. These assumptions are shaping the efforts of the industry actors tasked with delivering DSR. We identify two visions of the user, one passive whilst technologies automate on their behalf, the other integrated to the point of themselves being an automaton. We detail a series of concerns about the limitations of these user visions, and the ability of industry to reach beyond them towards a more differentiated view. We conclude with a call to broaden the institutional landscape tasked with delivering DSR, in order to foster a greater diversity of end user roles, and ultimately greater demand responsiveness from a broader user base

Compensation of trial-to-trial latency jitter reveals the parietal retrieval success effect to be both variable and thresholded in older adults

JM was supported by the SINAPSE Postdoctoral and Early Career Researcher Exchange (PECRE) grant: SFC project code H11004. GO is partly supported by Seed Fund for Basic Research from The University of Hong Kong (201804159003). DD is a member of the SINAPSE collaboration (www.sinapse.ac.uk), a pooling initiative funded by the Scottish Funding Council and the Chief Scientific Office of the Scottish Executive.Although the neural mechanism supporting episodic recollection has been well characterized in younger adults, exactly how recollection is supported in older adults remains unclear. The electrophysiological correlate of recollection-the parietal retrieval success effect-for example, has been shown to be sensitive to both the amount of information recollected and the accuracy of remembered information in younger adults. To date, there is mixed evidence that parietal effect also scales with the amount of information remembered in older adults whilst there is little evidence that the same mechanism is sensitive to the accuracy of recollected information. Here, we address one potential concern when investigating Event Related Potentials (ERPs) among older adults-namely, the greater potential for single-trial latency variability to smear and reduces the amplitudes of averaged ERPs. We apply a well-established algorithm for correcting single-trial latency variability, Residual Iteration Decomposition Analysis (RIDE), to investigate whether the parietal retrieval success effect among older adults is sensitive to retrieval accuracy. Our results reveal that similar to younger adults, older adult parietal retrieval success effects scale with the accuracy of recollected information-i.e., is greater in magnitude when recollected information is of high accuracy, reduced in magnitude when accuracy is low, and entirely absent when guessing. The results help clarify the functional significance of the neural mechanism supporting recollection in older adults whilst also highlighting the potential issues with interpreting average ERPs in older adult populations.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Toward the Development of a Cognitive-Linguistic Model of Semantic Dementia: Evidence from Lexical Processing

Semantic Dementia (SD) results in progressive cognitive-linguistic impairment. Little is known regarding the interaction of phonological and semantic processes in SD. However, preserved lexical-phonological processing may be critical for language recovery in this population. We propose a temporal model illustrating the cascading decline of semantic and lexical factors in SD. We report data in support of this model from auditory lexical decision, where a subtle deficit produced “reversal of the concreteness effect” despite accurate lexical decisions. Integrity of semantic processing correlated strongly with lexical decision ability. These findings illustrate the contribution of preserved phonology to lexical processing in SD