Toward Cultural Oncology: The Evolutionary Information Dynamics of Cancer

'Racial' disparities among cancers, particularly of the breast and prostate, are something of a mystery. For the US, in the face of slavery and its sequelae, centuries of interbreeding have greatly leavened genetic differences between 'Blacks' and 'whites', but marked contrasts in disease prevalence and progression persist. 'Adjustment' for socioeconomic status and lifestyle, while statistically accounting for much of the variance in breast cancer, only begs the question of ultimate causality. Here we propose a more basic biological explanation that extends the theory of immune cognition to include elaborate tumor control mechanisms constituting the principal selection pressure acting on pathologically mutating cell clones. The interplay between them occurs in the context of an embedding, highly structured, system of culturally specific psychosocial stress which we find is able to literally write an image of itself onto disease progression. The dynamics are analogous to punctuated equilibrium in simple evolutionary proces

Biological limits to reduction in rates of coronary heart disease: a punctuated equilibrium approach to immune cognition, chronic inflammation, and pathogenic social hierarchy

On both empirical and theoretical grounds we find that a particular form of social hierarchy, here characterized as 'pathogenic', can, from the earliest phases of life, exert a formal analog to evolutionary selection pressure, literally writing a permanent image of itself upon immune function as chronic vascular inflammation and its consequences. The staged nature of resulting disease emerges 'naturally' as an analog to punctuated equilibrium in evolutionary theory. Exposure differs according to the social constructs of race, class, and ethnicity, accounting in large measure for observed population-level differences in rates of coronary heart disease affecting industrialized societies. The system of American Apartheid, which enmeshes both majority and minority communities in a construct of pathogenic hierarchy, appears to present a severe biological limit to ultimate possible reductions in rates of coronary heart disease and related disorders for powerful as well as subordinate subgroups

Vaccine strategy when the smallpox model fails: 1. immune cognition, Malaria and the Fulani

We begin to examine the implications of IR Cohen's work on immune cognition [1-3] for vaccine strategies when simple elicitation of sterilizing immunity fails, as is the case for HIV, tuberculosis, and malaria. Cohen's approach takes on a special importance in the context of recent work by Nisbett et al. [4] showing clearly that central nervous system (CNS) cognition is not universal, but rather differs fundamentally for populations having different cultural systems. A growing body of evolutionary anthropology indeed suggests that such effects are inevitable, since culture is as much a part of human biology 'as the enamel on our teeth.' Thus a successful vaccine strategy for use when the smallpox model fails must address a condensation of sociocultural and immune cognition, in the same sense that neuroimmunology and immunogenetics describe the condensation of CNS and genetic 'languages' with immune function. We reinterpret recent studies of African cultural variation in immune response to malaria from this perspective

Chronic infection: punctuated interpenetration and pathogen virulence

We apply an information dynamics formalism to the Levens and Lewontin vision of biological interpenetration between a 'cognitive condensation' including immune function embedded in social and cultural structure on the one hand, and an established, highly adaptive, parasite population on the other. We iterate the argument, beginning with direct interaction between cognitive condensation and pathogen, then extend the analysis to second order 'mutator' mechanisms inherent both to immune function and to certain forms of rapid pathogen antigenic variability. The methodology, based on the Large Deviations Program of applied probability, produces synergistic cognitive/adaptive 'learning plateaus' that represent stages of chronic infection, and, for human populations, is able to encompass the fundamental biological reality of culture omitted by other approaches. We conclude that, for 'evolution machine' pathogens like HIV and malaria, simplistic magic bullet 'medical' drug, vaccine, or behavior modification interventions which do not address the critical context of overall living and working conditions may constitute selection pressures triggering adaptations in life history strategy resulting in marked increase of pathogen virulenc

Darwin's Rainbow: Evolutionary radiation and the spectrum of consciousness

Evolution is littered with paraphyletic convergences: many roads lead to functional Romes. We propose here another example - an equivalence class structure factoring the broad realm of possible realizations of the Baars Global Workspace consciousness model. The construction suggests many different physiological systems can support rapidly shifting, sometimes highly tunable, temporary assemblages of interacting unconscious cognitive modules. The discovery implies various animal taxa exhibiting behaviors we broadly recognize as conscious are, in fact, simply expressing different forms of the same underlying phenomenon. Mathematically, we find much slower, and even multiple simultaneous, versions of the basic structure can operate over very long timescales, a kind of paraconsciousness often ascribed to group phenomena. The variety of possibilities, a veritable rainbow, suggests minds today may be only a small surviving fraction of ancient evolutionary radiations - bush phylogenies of consciousness and paraconsciousness. Under this scenario, the resulting diversity was subsequently pruned by selection and chance extinction. Though few traces of the radiation may be found in the direct fossil record, exaptations and vestiges are scattered across the living mind. Humans, for instance, display an uncommonly profound synergism between individual consciousness and their embedding cultural heritages, enabling efficient Lamarkian adaptation

Multipath induced errors in meteorological Doppler/interferometer location systems

One application of an RF interferometer aboard a low-orbiting spacecraft to determine the location of ground-based transmitters is in tracking high-altitude balloons for meteorological studies. A source of error in this application is reflection of the signal from the sea surface. Through propagating and signal analysis, the magnitude of the reflection-induced error in both Doppler frequency measurements and interferometer phase measurements was estimated. The theory of diffuse scattering from random surfaces was applied to obtain the power spectral density of the reflected signal. The processing of the combined direct and reflected signals was then analyzed to find the statistics of the measurement error. It was found that the error varies greatly during the satellite overpass and attains its maximum value at closest approach. The maximum values of interferometer phase error and Doppler frequency error found for the system configuration considered were comparable to thermal noise-induced error

Quantum Mechanics on Spacetime I: Spacetime State Realism

What ontology does realism about the quantum state suggest? The main extant view in contemporary philosophy of physics is wave-function realism. We elaborate the sense in which wave-function realism does provide an ontological picture; and defend it from certain objections that have been raised against it. However, there are good reasons to be dissatisfied with wave-function realism, as we go on to elaborate. This motivates the development of an opposing picture: what we call spacetime state realism; a view which takes the states associated to spacetime regions as fundamental. This approach enjoys a number of beneficial features, although, unlike wave-function realism, it involves non-separability at the level of fundamental ontology. We investigate the pros and cons of this non-separability, arguing that it is a quite acceptable feature; even one which proves fruitful in the context of relativistic covariance. A companion paper discusses the prospects for combining a spacetime-based ontology with separability, along lines suggested by Deutsch and HaydenComment: LaTeX; 29 pages, 1 Fig. Forthcoming in the British Journal for the Philosophy of Scienc

Pre-emphasis determination for an S-band constant bandwidth FM/FM station

Telemetry bands are being reassigned to UHF at 1500 and 2200 MHz. Conversion primarily requires changes in equipment used in RF link, while many of same subcarrier oscillators, mixer amplifiers, and frequency discriminators can be used