Clinical Insights about Mental Difference

Self-actualization is sought by all people. Experience with mental difference, both as a patient and as a staff member in a mental hospital leads to a greater understanding of the meaning and nature of this difference. It arises from variations in biographical experience, social interactions, personal frame and self-choice. Providing the mentally different with the responsibility of at least limited choice empowers them while affirming their human dignity and worth

Optical scattering for security applications

Laser Surface Authentication (LSA) has emerged in recent years as a potentially disruptive tracking and authentication technology. A strong need for such a solution in a variety of industries drove the implementation of the technology faster than the scientific understanding could keep up. The drive to miniaturise and simplify, the need to be robust against real-world problems like damage and misuse, and not least, intellectual curiosity, make it clear that a firmer scientific footing is important as the technology matures. Existing scattering and biometric work are reviewed, and LSA is introduced as a technology. The results of field-work highlight the restrictions which are encountered when the technology is applied. Analysis of the datasets collected in the trial provide, first, an indication of the performance of LSA under real-world conditions and, second, insight into the potential shortcomings of the technique. Using the particulars of the current sensor’s geometry, the LSA signal is characterised. Measurements are made of the decorrelation of the signature with linear and rotational offsets, and it is concluded that while surface microstructure has a strong impact on the rate of decorrelation, this dependency is not driven by the surface’s feature size. A new series of experiments examine that same decorrelation for interference effects with different illumination conditions, and conclude that laser speckle is not an adequate explanation for the phenomenon. The results of this experimental work inform a mathematical description of LSA based on a combination of existing bi-static scattering models used in physics and ray-tracing, which is implemented numerically. The results of the model are found to be a good fit to experimental work, and new predictions are made about LSA

Homotopifikspunkter og Nielsen-teori

Et fikspunkt for en selvavbildning f: X -> X er et punkt x som oppfyller likningen f(x) = x. Mengden av fikspunkter kalles Fix(f). I fikspunktteori studeres egenskapene til Fix(f) for forskjellige f og X. Man deler mengden av fikspunker for en selvavbildning inn i ekvivalensklasser, såkalte fikspunktklasser. I Nielsen-teori studeres tallene R(f) (Reidemeister-tallet), N(f) (Nielsen-tallet) og L(f) (Lefschetz-tallet). R(f) er det totale antallet fikspunktklasser, mens N(f) er antallet essensielle fikspunktklasser, de som ikke forsvinner under homotopi. Disse tallene er alle homotopiinvariante. Når X er en mangfoldighet kan vi gjøre en videre generalisering av Reidemeister-tallet, og se på Reidemeister-trasen, ikke et tall, men et element i en bestemt fri abelsk gruppe. Målet med oppgaven er å vise en formel for Reidemeister-trasen og å vise homotopiinvarians av denne ved hjelp av formelen. Oppgaven avsluttes med en utvidelse av formelen til å gjelde for visse endelige CW-komplekser

“Waves of Edema” seem implausible

No abstract available

The acquaintance inference with 'seem'-reports

Some assertions give rise to the acquaintance inference: the inference that the speaker is acquainted with some individual. Discussion of the acquaintance inference has previously focused on assertions about aesthetic matters and personal tastes (e.g. 'The cake is tasty'), but it also arises with reports about how things seem (e.g. 'Tom seems like he's cooking'). 'Seem'-reports give rise to puzzling acquaintance behavior, with no analogue in the previously-discussed domains. In particular, these reports call for a distinction between the specific acquaintance inference (that the speaker is acquainted with a specific individual) and the general acquaintance inference (that the speaker is acquainted with something or other of relevance). We frame a novel empirical generalization -- the specific with stage-level generalization -- that systematizes the observed behavior, in terms of the semantics of the embedded 'like'-clause. We present supporting experimental work, and explain why the generalization makes sense given the evidential role of 'seem'-reports. Finally, we discuss the relevance of this result for extant proposals about the semantics of 'seem'-reports. More modestly, it fills a gap in previous theories by identifying which reports get which of two possible interpretations; more radically, it suggests a revision of the kind of explanation that should be given for the acquaintance behavior in question

Are hadrons simpler than they seem?

I briefly review a systematic approximation scheme of QCD in which the quark model picture of hadrons emerges at lowest order. A linear A^0 potential arises if Gauss' law is solved with a non-vanishing boundary condition at spatial infinity. Similarly to the Dirac case one can describe relativistic states including any number of particle pairs (sea quarks) using valence wave functions, whose norms give {\em inclusive} probability densities. Provided \alpha_s(Q^2) freezes in the infrared, perturbative corrections to the S-matrix can be calculated in the usual way, but with states bound by the linear \order{\alpha_s^0} potential instead of plane waves in the in and out states.Comment: 4 pages. Talk presented at the 3rd Workshop on the QCD Structure of the Nucleon (QCD-N'12), 22-26 October 2012 in Bilbao, Spai

Clinical solutions: not always what they seem?

Brenner and colleagues, in their article published in Critical Care, showed elevated levels of the reactive carbonyl species (RCS) methylglyoxal (MG) in the circulation of patients with septic shock. We commend the authors’ bravery in launching this molecule into a field well-populated with biomarkers and where clinical diagnosis persists as the ‘gold standard’

Can stellar activity make a planet seem misaligned?

Several studies have shown that the occultation of stellar active regions by the transiting planet can generate anomalies in the high-precision transit light curves, and these anomalies may lead to an inaccurate estimate of the planetary parameters (e.g., the planet radius). Since the physics and geometry behind the transit light curve and the Rossiter- McLaughlin effect (spectroscopic transit) are the same, the Rossiter-McLaughlin observations are expected to be affected by the occultation of stellar active regions in a similar way. In this paper we perform a fundamental test on the spin-orbit angles as derived by Rossiter-McLaughlin measurements, and we examine the impact of the occultation of stellar active regions by the transiting planet on the spin-orbit angle estimations. Our results show that the inaccurate estimation on the spin-orbit angle due to stellar activity can be quite significant (up to 30 degrees), particularly for the edge-on, aligned, and small transiting planets. Therefore, our results suggest that the aligned transiting planets are the ones that can be easily misinterpreted as misaligned owing to the stellar activity. In other words, the biases introduced by ignoring stellar activity are unlikely to be the culprit for the highly misaligned systems.Comment: 8 pages, 8 figures, accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysic

Baker's First-person Perspectives: They Are Not What They Seem

Lynne Baker's concept of a first-person perspective is not as clear and straightforward as it might seem at first glance. There is a discrepancy between her argumentation that we have first-person perspectives and some characteristics she takes first-person perspectives to have, namely, that the instances of this capacity necessarily persist through time and are indivisible and unduplicable. Moreover, these characteristics cause serious problems concerning personal identity

Why labor income shares seem to be constant?

The common assumptions that labor income share does not change over time or across countries and that factor income shares are equal to the elasticity of output with respect to factors have had important implications for economic theory. However, there are various theoretical reasons why the elasticity of output with respect to reproducible factors should be correlated with the stage of development. In particular, the behavior of international trade and capital flows and the existence of factor saving innovations imply such a correlation. If this correlation exists and if factor income shares are equal to the elasticity of output with respect to factors then the labor income share must be negatively correlated with the stage of development. We propose an explanation for why labor income share has no correlation with income per capita: the existence of a labor intensive sector which produces non tradable goods.Factor Income Shares, Elasticity of output with respect to factors, two sector model