Private languages and private theorists

Simon Blackburn objects that Wittgenstein's private language argument overlooks the possibility that a private linguist can equip himself with a criterion of correctness by confirming generalizations about the patterns in which his private sensations occur. Crispin Wright responds that appropriate generalizations would be too few to be interesting. But I show that Wright's calculations are upset by his failure to appreciate both the richness of the data and the range of theories that would be available to the private linguist

Mental Rotation in Human Infants: A Sex Difference

A sex difference on mental-rotation tasks has been demonstrated repeatedly, but not in children less than 4 years of age. To demonstrate mental rotation in human infants, we habituated 5-month-old infants to an object revolving through a 240° angle. In successive test trials, infants saw the habituation object or its mirror image revolving through a previously unseen 120° angle. Only the male infants appeared to recognize the familiar object from the new perspective, a feat requiring mental rotation. These data provide evidence for a sex difference in mental rotation of an object through three-dimensional space, consistently seen in adult populations

Mental Rotation of Dynamic, Three-Dimensional Stimuli by 3-Month-Old Infants

Mental rotation involves transforming a mental image of an object so as to accurately predict how the object would look if it were rotated in space. This study examined mental rotation in male and female 3-month-olds, using the stimuli and paradigm developed by Moore and Johnson (2008). Infants were habituated to a video of a three-dimensional object rotating back and forth through a 240° angle around the vertical axis. After habituation, infants were tested both with videos of the same object rotating through the previously unseen 120° angle, and with the mirror image of that display. Unlike females, who fixated the test displays for approximately equal durations, males spent significantly more time fixating the familiar object than the mirror-image object. Because familiarity preferences like this emerge when infants are relatively slow to process a habituation stimulus, the data support the interpretation that mental rotation of dynamic three-dimensional stimuli is relatively difficult—but possible—for 3-month-old males. Interpretation of the sex differences observed in 3- and 5-month-olds’ performances is discussed

Persona to persona studies

 A foundational review and study of the emergence of persona studies from online culture and the concept of persona, the article explores the past and current directions in research. It serves as a form of introduction to the concepts of both persona and persona studies

Optimal control of motorsport differentials

Modern motorsport limited slip differentials (LSD) have evolved to become highly adjustable, allowing the torque bias that they generate to be tuned in the corner entry, apex and corner exit phases of typical on-track manoeuvres. The task of finding the optimal torque bias profile under such varied vehicle conditions is complex. This paper presents a nonlinear optimal control method which is used to find the minimum time optimal torque bias profile through a lane change manoeuvre. The results are compared to traditional open and fully locked differential strategies, in addition to considering related vehicle stability and agility metrics. An investigation into how the optimal torque bias profile changes with reduced track-tyre friction is also included in the analysis. The optimal LSD profile was shown to give a performance gain over its locked differential counterpart in key areas of the manoeuvre where a quick direction change is required. The methodology proposed can be used to find both optimal passive LSD characteristics and as the basis of a semi-active LSD control algorithm

Youth and the communication of Risk: developing connections between cancer council Australia and contemporary online youth culture

Through two focus groups, the project investigated how youth culture perceives online communication of risk. In two 90-minute sessions, investigators gaged the range of online activities that nine 18 - 24 year old university students engaged with. Through a guided discussion the participants explored how they would relate to the communication of health risk more generally and cancer risk more specifically.Participants’ online activity is very high and a range of social media forms are part of their everyday lives. In contrast, their use of traditional media is almost non-existent. Their relationship to accessing and being aware of health information demonstrated a range of views that pointed to quite new and different relationships to health and health professionals. To intersect with their online movements in the communication of health risk demands a sophisticated knowledge of their own searching patterns.Key ideas generated from the focus groups include: that it might be advantageous to group health risk beyond the specificity of cancer for online success; that an online persona would be useful to provide a face for the communication of risk; that a multi-platform campaign to raise the profile of a persona would be useful; and that success means moving between the serious and the light-hearted in a way that makes the persona a complete person of interest for them