The Projective Consciousness Model and Phenomenal Selfhood

We summarize our recently introduced Projective Consciousness Model (PCM) (Rudrauf et al., 2017) and relate it to outstanding conceptual issues in the theory of consciousness. The PCM combines a projective geometrical model of the perspectival phenomenological structure of the field of consciousness with a variational Free Energy minimization model of active inference, yielding an account of the cybernetic function of consciousness, viz., the modulation of the field’s cognitive and affective dynamics for the effective control of embodied agents. The geometrical and active inference components are linked via the concept of projective transformation, which is crucial to understanding how conscious organisms integrate perception, emotion, memory, reasoning, and perspectival imagination in order to control behavior, enhance resilience, and optimize preference satisfaction. The PCM makes substantive empirical predictions and fits well into a (neuro)computationalist framework. It also helps us to account for aspects of subjective character that are sometimes ignored or conflated: pre-reflective self-consciousness, the first-person point of view, the sense of minenness or ownership, and social self-consciousness. We argue that the PCM, though still in development, offers us the most complete theory to date of what Thomas Metzinger has called “phenomenal selfhood.

Precharacterization Report for Instrumented Fuel Assembly (IFA)-527

This report is a resource document covering the rationale, design, fabrication, and preirradiation characterization of instrumented fuel assembly (IFA)-527. This assembly is being irradiated in the Halden Boiling Water Reactor (HBWR) in Norway as part of the Experimental Support and Development of Single-Rod Fuel Codes Program conducted by Pacific Northwest laboratory (PNL) and sponsored by the Fuel Behavior Research Branch of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). Data from this assembly will be used to better understand light water reactor (LWR) fuel behavior under normal operating conditions

The Aesthetic Book of Decadent Literature, 1870-1914

This dissertation argues for a reading of English Aesthetic and Decadent literature within the context of the limited-edition, artistically produced aesthetic book. Within studies in print culture and the history of the book, late nineteenth-century England is an established center in the revival of fine arts printing owing to the influence of the Chiswick Press, the Daniel Press, the Kelmscott Press, the Doves Press, the Vale Press, and the Eragny Press. Yet little scholarly attention has been paid to the overlap of these efforts in artistic book design with the literature of the Aesthetic and later Decadent movements. In the first chapter, I argue that Pre-Raphaelite artist and poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s Poems (1870) was the first book of literature that sought to be a total art object, designed and illustrated by Rossetti himself. I also discuss Simeon Solomon’s A Vision of Love Revealed in Sleep (1871) as the first aesthetic book of symbolist literature that was based on Rossetti’s Poems. The second chapter focuses on Aesthetic theorist Walter Pater’s collaboration with the printer Charles Henry Olive Daniel in their production of An Imaginary Portrait (1894) as a limited-edition book. I suggest the way that Pater’s story, within the context of Daniel’s printed volume, can be read to show that people who had a highly-refined aesthetic sensibility often constituted a rare and even an elite psychological type. I show that his work frequently centers on representations of same-sex desire, and I suggest that Pater’s Aesthetic theory is also a theory of queer personhood. The third chapter concentrates on Charles Ricketts’s and William Llewellyn Hacon’s Vale Press. I show that the aesthetic book has a particular valence when it is also a work of Decadent literature. Within Decadence as a literary movement, an ironic appropriation of Aestheticism allows a community of writers to portray same-sex desire as as a style of artifice against nature. Once Aestheticism becomes associated with effeminacy and psychological androgyny, the aesthetic book of Decadent literature becomes the model of a rare, refined, and collectible object that prefigures the community formation of queer outsider identities

Patient perceptions of text-messages, email, and video in dermatologic surgery patients

Introduction: We developed dermatology patienteducation videos and a post-operative text messageservice that could be accessed universally via webbasedapplications. A secondary outcome of thestudy was to assess patient opinions of text-messages,email, and video in the health care setting which isreported here.Methods: An investigator-blinded, randomized,controlled intervention was evaluated in 90 nonmelanomaMMS patients at Wake Forest BaptistDermatology. Patients were randomized 1:1:1:1 forexposure to: 1) videos with text messages, 2) videosonly,3) text messages-only, or 4) standard of care.Assessment measures were obtained by the use ofREDCap survey questions during the follow up visit.Results: 1) 67% would like to receive an email withinformation about the procedure beforehand2) 98% of patients reported they would like otherdoctors to use educational videos as a form of patienteducation3) 88% of our patients think it is appropriate forphysicians to communicate to patients via textmessage in certain situations.Conclusion: Nearly all patients desired physicians touse text-messages and video in their practice and themajority of patients preferred to receive an email withinformation about their procedure beforehand