Cynic cosmopolitanism

Recently, British Prime Minister Theresa May made a bold anti-cosmopolitan claim: 'If you believe you are a citizen of the world, you are a citizen of nowhere. You don't understand what citizenship means'. Given that many have never found nationalism particularly appealing, some have been moved to become citizens of the world after hearing these lines. But how is one to become a cosmopolitan? The answer is found in the history of philosophy. Cosmopolitanism has taken many forms. There are moral, political, legal, economic and cultural cosmopolitanisms. A form that has not received much attention is therapeutic cosmopolitanism. The focus of this form is on how being a world-citizen entails certain health benefits. I argue that therapeutic cosmopolitanism is both the original and best way of being a world-citizen. To do so, I summarize the present taxonomy of cosmopolitanisms and show how therapeutic cosmopolitanism contrasts with these options. I use classical Cynicism as the primary example of therapeutic cosmopolitanism. Instead of the universalist humanism and supranational communitarianism that characterizes cosmopolitan options, Cynic cosmopolitanism employs extreme naturalism. I show how being a Cynic cosmopolitan is the preferable way of rejecting nationalists of all stripes

Gait recognition based on shape and motion analysis of silhouette contours

This paper presents a three-phase gait recognition method that analyses the spatio-temporal shape and dynamic motion (STS-DM) characteristics of a human subject’s silhouettes to identify the subject in the presence of most of the challenging factors that affect existing gait recognition systems. In phase 1, phase-weighted magnitude spectra of the Fourier descriptor of the silhouette contours at ten phases of a gait period are used to analyse the spatio-temporal changes of the subject’s shape. A component-based Fourier descriptor based on anatomical studies of human body is used to achieve robustness against shape variations caused by all common types of small carrying conditions with folded hands, at the subject’s back and in upright position. In phase 2, a full-body shape and motion analysis is performed by fitting ellipses to contour segments of ten phases of a gait period and using a histogram matching with Bhattacharyya distance of parameters of the ellipses as dissimilarity scores. In phase 3, dynamic time warping is used to analyse the angular rotation pattern of the subject’s leading knee with a consideration of arm-swing over a gait period to achieve identification that is invariant to walking speed, limited clothing variations, hair style changes and shadows under feet. The match scores generated in the three phases are fused using weight-based score-level fusion for robust identification in the presence of missing and distorted frames, and occlusion in the scene. Experimental analyses on various publicly available data sets show that STS-DM outperforms several state-of-the-art gait recognition methods

Complexity Analysis of Spontaneous Brain Activity in Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder: Diagnostic Implications

Background: Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is defined as the most common neurobehavioral disorder of childhood, but an objective diagnostic test is not available yet to date. Neurophychological, neuroimaging, and neurophysiological research offer ample evidence of brain and behavioral dysfunctions in ADHD, but these findings have not been useful as a diagnostic test. Methods: Whole-head magnetoencephalographic recordings were obtained from 14 diagnosed ADHD patients and 14 healthy children during resting conditions. Lempel-Ziv complexity (LZC) values were obtained for each channel and child and averaged in five sensor groups: anterior, central, left lateral, right lateral, and posterior. Results: Lempel-Ziv complexity scores were significantly higher in control subjects, with the maximum value in anterior region. Combining age and anterior complexity values allowed the correct classification of ADHD patients and control subjects with a 93% sensitivity and 79% specificity. Control subjects showed an age-related monotonic increase of LZC scores in all sensor groups, while children with ADHD exhibited a nonsignificant tendency toward decreased LZC scores. The age-related divergence resulted in a 100% specificity in children older than 9 years. Conclusions: Results support the role of a frontal hypoactivity in the diagnosis of ADHD. Moreover, the age-related divergence of complexity scores between ADHD patients and control subjects might reflect distinctive developmental trajectories. This interpretation of our results is in agreement with recent investigations reporting a delay of cortical maturation in the prefrontal corte

Master of Science

thesisThis thesis describes the design, modeling, and gait control of a new bounding/rolling quadruped robot called the roll-U-ped. The robot has four uniquely-designed compliant legs for bounding gait locomotion, and the legs can reconfigure for passive and powered rolling. One of the main advantages of such a design is versatility as the robot can efficiently and quickly traverse over flat and downhill terrain via rolling and then transition to running for traveling over more complex terrain with a bounding gait. The contributions of this work are: (1) a detailed description of the robot design, (2) modeling and simulation of bounding motion, (3) investigation of bounding gait effectiveness using sinusoidal control inputs and inputs obtained from machine learning, and (4) prototype development and performance evaluation. Specifically, the prototype robot utilizes 3D-printed compliant legs for dynamic running and rolling, and the dual-purpose leg design minimizes the number of joints. Two functional prototypes are developed with on-board embedded electronics and a single-board computer running the Robot Operating System for motion control and evaluation. Simulations of the bounding gait locomotion are shown and compared to the performance of the prototype designs. Additionally, the robot's running motion is investigated for two types of inputs: a sinusoidal trajectory and a learned gait using the Q-learning technique, where results demonstrate effective running and rolling behavior. For example, using sinusoidal inputs, the robot can run with a bounding gait over a flat and stiff sandpaper-like surface at speeds of up to 0.21 m/s. On the other hand, over a flat and tacky-cushioned surface, the speed is measured at 0.14 m/s. Simulation results for Q-learning show gait speeds of 0.22 m/s for the tacky-cushioned surface, where experiments on the physical system yielded a gait speed of 0.15 m/s. For powered rolling, the robot was able to reach a speed of 0.53 m/s over a flat-smooth surface. The results demonstrate proof-of-concept of the design and feasibility of using machine learning to determine inputs for effective running locomotion. Finally, possible future improvements to the design, modeling, and motion control of the robot are discussed

Patient Education on Naloxone and Fentanyl Testing

To educate patients on the importance of naloxone use to prevent unintended opioid overdoses and deaths. To provide community resources for fentanyl testing and destigmatize their use

Everybody works but Father

https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mmb-vp/4364/thumbnail.jp