17,277 research outputs found
A New Theory of Consciousness: The Missing Link - Organization
What is consciousness and what is the missing link between the sensory input and the cortical centre in the brain for consciousness? In the literature there are more than a million pages written about consciousness. The perspectives range from the field of metaphysics to those of quantum mechanics. However, no one today has produced a theory which is universally accepted. Consciousness is “something” which the majority of humans know that they posses, they use it when they want to understand their environment. However, no individual human knows whether other humans also posses consciousness. unless some tests such as she is looking at me, he is talking etc., are performed. We are caught in an intellectual sort of recursive carousel – we need consciousness to understand consciousness. To understand consciousness we have to understand the mechanism of its function, which is to effectively organize sensory inputs from our environment. Consciousness is the outcome of the process of organizing these sensory inputs. This implies that organization is an act which precedes consciousness. Since every activity in nature is to organize/disorganize, what is the element which compels this action? I am proposing that just like energy is the physical element that causes action, there is another physical element I have called it NASCIUM which has the capacity to cause organization. This is the missing link. Understanding the nature of organization, i.e. nascium, will enhance our capability to understand consciousness
Reduction of gait abnormalities in type 2 diabetic patients due to physical activity: a quantitative evaluation based on statistical gait analysis
The aim of this study is the objective assessment of gait abnormalities in diabetic patients and the quantification of the benefits of physical activity in improving the gait quality. Patients were equipped with foot-switches and knee goniometers and were asked to walk at their natural pace for 2.5 minutes. A statistical gait analysis was performed extracting from hundreds of strides the ‘atypical' cycles, i.e. the cycles which do not show the usual sequence of gait phases (heel contact, flat foot contact, push off, swing), the duration of the heel contact phase and the knee kinematics in the sagittal plane. A sample population of 27 non-neuropathic type 2 diabetic patients was examined before and after attending a light-intensity physical activity program that lasted four months. A fuzzy classifier was used to assign a score to the gait abnormalities of each patient in baseline conditions and after the program completion. More than 50% of the subjects reduced significantly their gait abnormalities and, on the average, the most frequent improvements were the reduction of atypical cycles and heel contact duration. Furthermore we found that, in basal conditions, the left side is more affected by gait abnormalities than the right one (P < 0.003
Conformations Of A Model Protein Revealed By An Aggregating Cuᴵᴵ Porphyrin: Sensing The Difference
Aggregated t-CuP binds to poly-L-glutamate through supramolecular interactions, revealing itself to be an extremely sensitive probe for the major conformations of the polymeric scaffold
Redox control of multidrug resistance and Its possible modulation by antioxidants
Clinical efficacy of anticancer chemotherapies is dramatically hampered by multidrug resistance (MDR) dependent on inherited traits, acquired defence against toxins, and adaptive mechanisms mounting in tumours. There is overwhelming evidence that molecular events leading to MDR are regulated by redox mechanisms. For example, chemotherapeutics which overrun the first obstacle of redox-regulated cellular uptake channels (MDR1, MDR2, and MDR3) induce a concerted action of phase I/II metabolic enzymes with a temporal redox-regulated axis. This results in rapid metabolic transformation and elimination of a toxin. This metabolic axis is tightly interconnected with the inducible Nrf2-linked pathway, a key switch-on mechanism for upregulation of endogenous antioxidant enzymes and detoxifying systems. As a result, chemotherapeutics and cytotoxic by-products of their metabolism (ROS, hydroperoxides, and aldehydes) are inactivated and MDR occurs. On the other hand, tumour cells are capable of mounting an adaptive antioxidant response against ROS produced by chemotherapeutics and host immune cells. The multiple redox-dependent mechanisms involved in MDR prompted suggesting redox-active drugs (antioxidants and prooxidants) or inhibitors of inducible antioxidant defence as a novel approach to diminish MDR. Pitfalls and progress in this direction are discussed
Structural Properties of the Disordered Spherical and other Mean Field Spin Models
We extend the approach of Aizenman, Sims and Starr for the SK-type models to
their spherical versions. Such an extension has already been performed for
diluted spin glasses. The factorization property of the optimal structures
found by Guerra for the SK model, which holds for diluted models as well, is
verified also in the case of spherical systems, with the due modifications.
Hence we show that there are some common structural features in various mean
field spin models. These similarities seem to be quite paradigmatic, and we
summarize the various techniques typically used to prove the structural
analogies and to tackle the computation of the free energy per spin in the
thermodynamic limit.Comment: 24 page
The ESO Spectroscopic facility
We present the concept of a novel facility dedicated to massively-multiplexed
spectroscopy. The telescope has a very wide field Cassegrain focus optimised
for fibre feeding. With a Field of View (FoV) of 2.5 degrees diameter and a
11.4m pupil, it will be the largest etendue telescope. The large focal plane
can easily host up to 16.000 fibres. In addition, a gravity invariant focus for
the central 10 arc-minutes is available to host a giant integral field unit
(IFU). The 3 lenses corrector includes an ADC, and has good performance in the
360-1300 nm wavelength range. The top level science requirements were developed
by a dedicated ESO working group, and one of the primary cases is high
resolution spectroscopy of GAIA stars and, in general, how our Galaxy formed
and evolves. The facility will therefore be equipped with both, high and low
resolution spectrographs. We stress the importance of developing the telescope
and instrument designs simultaneously. The most relevant R\&D aspect is also
briefly discussed.Comment: 6 pages 4 figures , presented at IAU Symposium 334 "rediscovering our
galaxy
Target motion estimation via a multistatic FSR
The focus of this paper is on the estimation of the kinematic parameters of moving targets
via a MIMO Forward Scatter Radar (FSR) system. A sub-optimum estimation technique is considered
that exploits the information concerning the time instants at which the target crosses the individual
baselines to retrieve the motion parameters. The accuracy of such technique is firstly investigated
from a theoretical point of view and then the effectiveness of the proposed approach is demonstrated
by applying it to live MIMO FSR data. Shown results prove the practical applicability of the proposed
technique
Diversity of Rainfall Thresholds for early warning of hydro-geological disasters
Abstract. For early warning of disasters induced by precipitation (such as floods and landslides), different kinds of rainfall thresholds are adopted, which vary from each other, on the basis on adopted hypotheses. In some cases, they represent the occurrence probability of an event (landslide or flood), in other cases the exceedance probability of a critical value for an assigned indicator I (a function of rainfall heights), and in further cases they only indicate the exceeding of a prefixed percentage a critical value for I, indicated as Icr. For each scheme, it is usual to define three different criticality levels (ordinary, moderate and severe), which are associated to warning levels, according to emergency plans. This work briefly discusses different schemes of rainfall thresholds, focusing attention on landslide prediction, with some applications to a real case study in Calabria region (southern Italy)
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