Language Aspect in Education As an Aspect of Intercultural Rivalry

This article considers how the modern phenomena of multilingualism, multiculturalism and media diversity are different from those of previous periods. With the promotion of multiculturalism as a constructive interaction of cultures, the “clash of civilizations” is also actively discussed as is the fact that, despite the expansion of compulsory multilingualism in education, the dominance of only one language is consistently growing, including officially multilingual Europe. In this regard, it is important to consider such sociocultural processes against wider sociopolitical, cultural and philosophical contexts. The mobility of modern people and their communication with each other is much greater than before, but the language barrier is overcome not so much by their multilingualism or a new lingua franca (English), but by the creation of tourist and business infrastructures, whose employees learn several foreign languages, and only in a small necessary amount. In addition, a small number of professional translators are used when and where a highly qualified translation with a very precise semantic understanding is required. In the future this role might well belong to translation machines. With these realities, as well as with some of the rights of the child, the obligatory study of two or more languages, in most cases the English, provides a stark contrast. The main justification for such a policy is that it supposedly increases the chances of employment. Yet this is an ideological construct, the implementation of which is consuming an ever-increasing proportion of budgetary funds and personal time of students and teachers. Keywords: education, bilingualism, multilingualism, values, intercultural communication, intercultural rivalr

Stabilization of higher-order vortices and multi-hump solitons in media with synthetic nonlocal nonlinearities

We address the evolution of higher-order excited states, such as vortex and multi-hump solitons, in nonlocal media with synthetic, competing focusing and defocusing nonlinearities with different nonlocal transverse scales. We reveal that introduction of suitable competing effects makes possible the stabilization of vortex solitons with topological charge m>2, as well as one-dimensional multi-hump solitons with number of humps p>4, all of which are highly unstable in natural nonlocal materials with focusing nonlinearities.Comment: 14 pages, 5 figures, to appear in Physical Review

The utility of Magnetoencephalography in multiple sclerosis – A systematic review

Introduction: Magnetoencephalography (MEG), allows for a high degree temporal and spatial accuracy in recording cortical oscillatory activity and evoked fields. To date, no review has been undertaken to synthesise all MEG studies in Multiple Sclerosis (MS). We undertook a Systematic Review of the utility of MEG in MS. / Methods: We identified MEG studies carried out in MS using EMBASE, Medline, Cochrane, TRIP and Psychinfo databases. We included original research articles with a cohort of minimum of five multiple sclerosis patients and quantifying of at least one MEG parameter. We used a modified version of the JBI (mJBI) for case-control studies to assess for risk of bias. / Results: We identified 30 studies from 13 centres involving at least 433 MS patients and 347 controls. We found evidence that MEG shows perturbed activity (most commonly reduced power modulations), reduced connectivity and association with altered clinical function in Multiple Sclerosis. Specific replicated findings were decreased motor induced responses in the beta band, diminished increase of gamma power after visual stimulation, increased latency and reduced connectivity for somatosensory evoked fields. There was an association between upper alpha connectivity and cognitive measures in people with MS. Overall studies were of moderate quality (mean mJBI score 6.7). / Discussion: We find evidence for the utility of MEG in Multiple Sclerosis. Event-related designs are of particular value and show replicability between centres. At this stage, it is not clear whether these changes are specific to Multiple Sclerosis or are also observable in other diseases. Further studies should look to explore cognitive control in more depth using in-task designs and undertake longitudinal studies to determine whether these changes have prognostic value

Cortical beta oscillations reflect the contextual gating of visual action feedback

In sensorimotor integration, the brain needs to decide how its predictions should accommodate novel evidence by 'gating' sensory data depending on the current context. Here, we examined the oscillatory correlates of this process by recording magnetoencephalography (MEG) data during a new task requiring action under intersensory conflict. We used virtual reality to decouple visual (virtual) and proprioceptive (real) hand postures during a task in which the phase of grasping movements tracked a target (in either modality). Thus, we rendered visual information either task-relevant or a (to-be-ignored) distractor. Under visuo-proprioceptive incongruence, occipital beta power decreased (relative to congruence) when vision was task-relevant but increased when it had to be ignored. Dynamic causal modelling (DCM) revealed that this interaction was best explained by diametrical, task-dependent changes in visual gain. These novel results suggest a crucial role for beta oscillations in the contextual gating (i.e., gain or precision control) of visual vs proprioceptive action feedback, depending on concurrent behavioral demands

The frustrated Brownian motion of nonlocal solitary waves

We investigate the evolution of solitary waves in a nonlocal medium in the presence of disorder. By using a perturbational approach, we show that an increasing degree of nonlocality may largely hamper the Brownian motion of self-trapped wave-packets. The result is valid for any kind of nonlocality and in the presence of non-paraxial effects. Analytical predictions are compared with numerical simulations based on stochastic partial differential equationComment: 4 pages, 3 figures