‘Pushing Through’ in Plato’s Sophist: A New Reading of the Parity Assumption

At a crucial juncture in Plato’s Sophist, when the interlocutors have reached their deepest confusion about being and not-being, the Eleatic Visitor proclaims that there is yet hope. Insofar as they clarify one, he maintains, they will equally clarify the other. But what justifies the Visitor’s seemingly oracular prediction? A new interpretation explains how the Visitor’s hope is in fact warranted by the peculiar aporia they find themselves in. The passage describes a broader pattern of ‘exploring both sides’ that lends insight into Plato’s aporetic method

Auditory-visual virtual reality as a diagnostic and therapeutic tool for cynophobia

International audienceTraditionally, virtual reality exposure-based treatment concentrates primarily on the presentation of a high fidelity visual experience. However, adequately combining the visual and the auditory experience provides a powerful tool to enhance sensory processing and modulate attention. We present the design and usability testing of an auditory-visual interactive environment for investigating virtual reality exposurebased treatment for cynophobia. The specificity of our application is that it involves 3D sound, allowing the presentations and spatial manipulation of a fearful stimulus in the auditory modality, in the visual modality, and both. We conducted an evaluation test with 10 dog fearful participants in order to assess the capacity of our auditory-visual virtual environment to generate fear reactions. The specific perceptual characteristics of the dog model that were implemented in the virtual environment were highly arousing, suggesting that virtual reality is a promising tool to treat cynophobia

Brain State-dependent Functional Hemispheric Specialization in Men but not in Women

Hemispheric specialization is reliably demonstrated in patients with unilateral lesions or disconnected hemispheres, but is inconsistent in healthy populations. The reason for this paradox is unclear. We propose that functional hemispheric specialization in healthy participants depends upon functional brain states at stimulus arrival (FBS). Brain activity was recorded from 123 surface electrodes while 22 participants (11 women) performed lateralized lexical decisions (left hemisphere processing) on neutral and emotional (right hemisphere processing) words. We determined two classes of stable FBS, one with right anterior-left posterior orientations (RA-LP maps) and one with left anterior-right posterior orientations (LA-RP maps). Results show that functional hemispheric specialization is dependent upon the class of FBS and gender. Of those with LA-RP maps, only men showed a strong emotional word advantage (EWA) after left visual field (right hemisphere) presentation, but no EWA after right visual field (left hemisphere) presentation. Subsequent to all other brain states, there was an almost equal EWA after presentation to either visual field. Only about half of the FBS in men led to the pattern of functional hemispheric specialization. We suggest that ‘split-brain' research may be marginally describable by a model, but only in exceptional situations, while in connected brains this functional hemispheric specialization is only one of many dynamic state

Scottish water - a public sector success story

This article will explore the development of Scottish Water, a public corporation providing water and sewerage services to most homes and businesses in Scotland. It will trace the development of the sector from municipal provision prior to the 1990s, through regional boards, to a single corporation. It will analyse the role of Government in setting policy objectives and charging principles, within an overarching context of a novel ‘Hydro Nation’ strategy; and the activities of all of Scottish Water’s regulators – for prices, environmental protection, drinking water quality and consumer protection – but especially the independent economic regulator. It will assess the regulatory process,and the maturing regulatory relationship, as Scottish Water moved from amongst the lowest, to amongst the best, of its benchmarked comparators – evidencing private sector efficiency in the public sector. It will examine a recent initiative in negotiated settlements through the establishment of a Customer Forum; and draw conclusions reflecting on the need for a more nuanced debate (where some private sector participation can work along with public provision) but overall, the potential for a public service provider to contribute fully to public policy goals

Fast Modal Sounds with Scalable Frequency-Domain Synthesis

International audienceAudio rendering of impact sounds, such as those caused by falling objects or explosion debris, adds realism to interactive 3D audiovisual applications, and can be convincingly achieved using modal sound synthesis. Unfortunately, mode-based computations can become prohibitively expensive when many objects, each with many modes, are impacted simultaneously. We introduce a fast sound synthesis approach, based on short-time Fourier Tranforms, that exploits the inherent sparsity of modal sounds in the frequency domain. For our test scenes, this "fast mode summation" can give speedups of 5-8 times compared to a time-domain solution, with slight degradation in quality. We discuss different reconstruction windows, affecting the quality of impact sound "attacks". Our Fourier-domain processing method allows us to introduce a scalable, real-time, audio processing pipeline for both recorded and modal sounds, with auditory masking and sound source clustering. To avoid abrupt computation peaks, such as during the simultaneous impacts of an explosion, we use crossmodal perception results on audiovisual synchrony to effect temporal scheduling. We also conducted a pilot perceptual user evaluation of our method. Our implementation results show that we can treat complex audiovisual scenes in real time with high quality

O papel da sensibilização no sucesso do programa de revitalização da linguagem orientado à comunidade: uma experiência do programa BASAL em Cameroon

This paper aims at showing the importance of sensitisation in the success of a language revitalisation programme based on community-geared approach. Driving some experiences from BASAL (Basic Standardisation of all Unwritten African Languages), the paper shows that without a well-organised and strategic campaign which allows the researcher to get into direct contact with community members and community leaders in order to gain participation, the project would fail. When a linguist, researcher and outsider settles in a community in the perspective of developing their language, he must first find some strategies that will help him to nurture a conducive environment if he wishes to succeed. This requires sensitisation of local people. The main goal of sensitisation is to capture responsiveness of the native speakers and convince them to contribute and collaborate through their effective participation and empowerment toward success in the development of their language.Este trabalho tem como objetivo demonstrar a importância da sensibilização no sucesso de um programa de revitalização da linguagem baseado em uma abordagem orientada à comunidade. Partindo de algumas experiências com o BASAL (Basic Standardisation of all Unwritten African Languages ou Normatização Básica de todas as Línguas Africanas Não Escritas), o trabalho demonstra que, sem uma campanha estratégica que permita que o pesquisador entre em contato direto com membros e líderes da comunidade, a fim de negociar sua participação, o projeto irá fracassar. Quando um pesquisador, linguista e estrangeiro se estabelece numa comunidade na perspectiva de desenvolver a linguagem dessa comunidade, primeiro ele precisa estabelecer estratégias que o auxiliarão a nutrir um ambiente favorável se ele deseja ser bem sucedido. Esse sucesso exige a sensibilização do povo local. O principal objetivo da sensibilização é capturar a capacidade de resposta dos falantes nativos e convencê-los a contribuir e colaborar através de sua participação efetiva e esforço em conseguir sucesso no desenvolvimento de sua língua

Alien Registration- Delmon, Eliza (Portland, Cumberland County)

https://digitalmaine.com/alien_docs/22006/thumbnail.jp