Commentary on Multiple Personality and Channeling

In her paper, Multiple Personality and Channeling, Dr. Rogers compares and contrasts the two phenomena, tries to outline some distinctions between them, and expresses concern lest persons who have the ability to channel be pathologized for their capacity to engage in a creative social activity which is currently very much in vogue (p.11 ) (1). I appreciate her efforts and here will offer some additional observations and reflections from my own work and experience

Iatrongenic creation of new alter personalities

p. 083-091The initial assessment of a patient suffering multiple personality disorder (MPD) rarely discloses the full complexity of that patient's system of personalities. Like most other mental disorders, MPD reveals its inner structure gradually, in the course of the uncovering process of therapy. This common sense observation, however, is often disregarded due to the widespread concern that the very procedures designed to alleviate and integrate MPD may augment rather than reduce its complexity. This paper will review factors inherent in the treatment, the patient, and the therapist that may contribute to an actual increment in the patient 's complexity or to the appearance that this has occurred. Most apparent creations of new alter personalities reflect the use of personality formation to cushion the traumatic impact of the treatment, which is inherently painful, or to protect against intercurrent traumata. Others (the majority) represent in fact the discovery of preexisting but previously unrecognized alters. Some alters emerge in response to therapists' errors in technique or inappropriate behaviors

A colorful look at climate sensitivity

The radiative response to warming, and to changing concentrations of CO2, is studied in spectral space. If relative humidity does not change with temperature, clear-sky emissions over spectral intervals in which water vapor is optically thick become independent of surface temperature, giving rise to the idea of spectral masking. It is demonstrated that this idea allows one to derive simple, physically informative, and surprisingly accurate, expressions for the clear sky radiative forcing, radiative response to warming and hence climate sensitivity. Extending these concepts to include the effects of clouds, leads to the expectation that (i) clouds damp the clear-sky response to forcing, (ii) that diminutive clouds near the surface, which are often thought to be unimportant, may be particularly effective at enhancing the clear-sky sensitivity over deep moist tropical boundary layers; and (iii) even small changes in high-clouds over deep moist regions in the tropics makes these regions radiatively more responsive to warming that previously believed. The analysis demonstrates that the net effect of clouds on warming is ambiguous, justifying the assertion that the clear-sky (fixed RH) climate sensitivity – which after accounting for clear-sky surface albedo feedbacks, is about 3 K – provides a reasonable prior for Bayesian updates accounting for how clouds are distributed, how they they might change, and for deviations associated with changes in relative humidity with temperature. These effects are best assessed by quantifying the distribution of clouds and water vapor, and how they change, in temperature, rather than geographic spac

Hydrogels by irradiation of a synthetic heparinoid polyelectrolyte

Gamma irradiation of aqueous solutions of a synthetic heparinoid polyelectrolyte results in the formation of hydrogels, varying in water content and mechanical strength. The equilibrium water content and the mechanical strength of the hydrogels are dependent on the initial polyelectrolyte concentration, the molecular weight of the polyelectrolyte, the percentage of double bonds in the polyelectrolyte and the radiation dose.\ud \ud The polyelectrolyte hydrogels do not deplete Antithrombin III from blood and there is no activation of factor XII according to an in vitro kallikrein generation test. However, in a very sensitive test for factor XII activation (contact promoted shortening of the thrombotest) a slight activation of this factor was observed

Temperature-dependence of the clear-sky feedback in radiative-convective equilibrium

Abstract We quantify the temperature-dependence of the clear-sky climate sensitivity in a one-dimensional radiative-convective equilibrium model. The atmosphere is adjusted to fixed surface temperatures between 280 and 330 K while preserving other boundary conditions in particular the relative humidity and the CO2 concentration. We show that an out-of-bounds usage of the radiation scheme rapid radiative transfer model for GCMs (RRTMG) can lead to an erroneous decrease of the feedback parameter and an associated ?bump? in climate sensitivity as found in other modeling studies. Using a line-by-line radiative transfer model, we find no evidence for a strengthening of the longwave radiative feedback for surface temperatures between 305 and 320 K. However, the line-by-line simulations also show a slight decrease in climate sensitivity when surface temperatures exceed 310 K. This decrease is caused by water-vapor masking the radiative forcing at the flanks of the CO2 absorption band, which reduces the total radiative forcing by about 18%

Changes in the tropical lapse rate due to entrainment and their impact on climate sensitivity

The tropical temperature in the free troposphere deviates from a theoretical moist-adiabat. The overall deviations are attributed to the entrainment of dry surrounding air. The deviations gradually approach zero in the upper troposphere, which we explain with a buoyancy-sorting mechanism: the height to which individual convective parcels rise depends on parcel buoyancy, which is closely tied to the impact of entrainment during ascent. In higher altitudes, the temperature is increasingly controlled by the convective parcels that are warmer and more buoyant because of weaker entrainment effects. We represent such temperature deviations from moist-adiabats in a clear-sky one-dimensional radiative-convective equilibrium model. Compared with a moist-adiabatic adjustment, having the entrainment-induced temperature deviations lead to higher clear-sky climate sensitivity. As the impact of entrainment depends on the saturation deficit, which increases with warming, our model predicts even more amplified surface warming from entrainment in a warmer climate. © 2021. The Authors