bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Room to Move: International Financial Markets and National Welfare States
Authors: Mosley Layna
Published: July 2002

A central research question in international political economy concerns the influence of financial markets on government policy outcomes. To what extent does international capital mobility limit government policy choices? I evaluate the relationship between international financial markets and government policy outcomes, with a focus on the government bond market in developed democracies. Evidence includes interviews with financial market participants and a cross-sectional time-series analysis of the determinants of interest rates. This evaluation suggests that governments of developed democracies face strong but narrowly defined financial market pressures. Financial market participants are concerned with a few macroeconomic policy indicators, including inflation rates and government deficit/GDP ratios, but not with micropolicy indicators, such as the distribution of government spending across functional categories. In these areas, governments retain policymaking autonomy. I conclude by exploring the role of financial market influences within domestic politics and offering suggestions for further research.
The International Politics of Harmonization: The Case of Capital Market Regulation
Authors: Simmons Beth A.
Published: July 2002

The internationalization and globalization of capital markets greatly complicates the tasks of national financial regulators. It is becoming increasingly difficult, if not impossible, to regulate the activities of banking and securities firms and the broad range of transactions in which they engage on a national level. In this article I explore the process of international regulatory harmonization in capital markets, focusing especially on the mechanisms (political pressure, market pressure, and institutional arrangements) that facilitate this process. I argue that the United States and the United Kingdom are dominant players in the capital market and that the factors most relevant for understanding harmonization processes are (1) whether other jurisdictions have incentives to emulate the regulatory innovations of the dominant financial centers, and (2) whether the dominant centers experience negative externalities in the process. These two factors shed considerable light on whether harmonization will be spurred primarily by market forces or by politics; they also suggest the likely role of international institutions in the process of regulatory harmonization. The argument is illustrated using four issue areas: capital adequacy requirements for banks, anti-money laundering rules, accounting standards, and information sharing among securities regulators.
Political Culture and State Behavior: Why Germany Confounds Neorealism
Authors: Duffield John S.
Published: July 2002

During the past decade, a growing number of scholars have turned to cultural approaches to account for the foreign and security policies of states. Surprisingly, however, these scholars have devoted little attention to the concept that boasts the most venerable tradition in the field of political science, that of political culture, as a possible source of state behavior. This neglect is unjustified. Like other cultural variables, political culture promises to explain phenomena that are enigmatic from the perspective of leading noncultural theories, such as neorealism. Yet it applies to a broader range of cases than do the many alternative cultural concepts, such as strategic culture and organizational culture, that have been employed. I begin by describing an important puzzle in the international relations literature that suggests the need to consider culture as a variable: the failure of neorealism to predict German security policy after unification. I then assess the various cultural approaches used in recent years to explain state behavior. After noting the similarities in these approaches, I discuss the important differences that mark them and identify the reasons for the greater utility of political culture. Finally, I illustrate the explanatory power of the political culture approach by applying it to the case of German security policy since 1990.
A Renaissance of Color: Particle Separation and Preparation of Azurite for Use in Oil Painting
Authors: Price Michael
Published: July 2002

The discovery of a technique for the particle separation and preparation of the blue mineral pigment azurite for use in an oil painting medium aids the compari-son of colors used in the Renais-sance with modern synthetic pig-ments. Chroma or chromatic intensity is presented as the key to understanding the language of color theory. This is supported by the first images ever of azurite cut by a focused ion beam (FIB) in or-der to compare unprepared and prepared particles of the mineral and thus demonstrate the impor-tance of the preparation process. The implications of a natural pig-ment renaissance for artists and restorers are assessed.
Drawing as a Gateway to Computer-Human Integration
Authors: Quantrill Michael
Published: July 2002

In the process of creativity, digital technology offers new ways to translate and transform. The author presents his approach to drawing as a gateway to exploring these possibilities. His particular concern is with the notion of computer-human integration. He suggests that possibilities offered by such integration will enable forms of expression unique to this process to emerge. Two systems that the author has used to further his search are described. His reflections on how a particular system of computer-human integration might develop in the future are noted.
Geometric Mobiles: From Conceptualization of Motion in Space to Rational Design
Authors: Kwauk Mooson
Published: July 2002

The author uses geometrically definable shapes for mobile members in such a way that equations can be written for moment balance to yield analytical solutions for determining the suspension points of the members. This avoids the need for trial-and-error construction. Geometrically definable shapes also make it possible to use jigsaw layout of mobile members to minimize waste of materials. The author finds that these two “constraints” add an intellectual dimension to mobile-making. To facilitate the realization of a mobile maker's conceptualization of shape and motion in space, the author recommends small indoor mobiles, which can be made to respond to weak air currents such as those produced by body movement and human breath.
A Multistrategy Approach to Improving Pronunciation by Analogy
Authors: Marchand Yannick , Damper Robert I.
Published: July 2002

Pronunciation by analogy (PbA) is a data-driven method for relating letters to sound, with potential application to next-generation text-to-speech systems. This paper extends previous work on PbA in several directions. First, we have included “full” pattern matching between input letter string and dictionary entries, as well as including lexical stress in letter-to-phoneme conversion. Second, we have extended the method to phoneme-to-letter conversion. Third, and most important, we have experimented with multiple, different strategies for scoring the candidate pronunciations. Individual scores for each strategy are obtained on the basis of rank and either multiplied or summed to produce a final, overall score. Five strategies have been studied and results obtained from all 31 possible combinations. The two combination methods perform comparably, with the product rule only very marginally superior to the sum rule. Nonparametric statistical analysis reveals that performance improves as more strategies are included in the combination: this trend is very highly significant (p < 0:0005). Accordingly for letter-to-phoneme conversion, best results are obtained when all five strategies are combined: word accuracy is raised to 65.5% relative to 61.7% for our best previous result and 63.0% for the best-performing single strategy. These improvements are very highly significant (p ∼ 0 and p < 0:00011 respectively). Similar results were found for phoneme-to-letter and letter-to-stress conversion, although the former was an easier problem for PbA than letter-to-phoneme conversion and the latter was harder. The main sources of error for the multistrategy approach are very similar to those for the best single strategy, and mostly involve vowel letters and phonemes.
Towards Constructive Text, Diagram, and Layout Generation for Information Presentation
Authors: Bateman John , Kamps Thomas , Kleinz Jörg , Reichenberger Klaus
Published: July 2002

Combining elements appropriately within a coherent page layout is a well-recognized and crucial aspect of sophisticated information presentation. The precise function and nature of layout has not, however, been sufficiently addressed within computational approaches; attention is often restricted to relatively local issues of typography and text-formatting, leaving broader issues of layout unaddressed. In this paper we focus on the selection and function of layout in pages that appropriately combine textual and graphical representation styles to yield coherent presentation designs. We demonstrate that layout offers a rich resource for achieving presentational coherence, alongside more traditional resources such as text-formatting and the text-internal marking of discourse connections. We also introduce an integrated approach to layout, text, and diagram generation. Our approach is developed on the basis of a preliminary empirical investigation of professionally produced layouts, followed by implementation within a prototype information system in the area of art history.
Order Information in Working Memory: fMRI Evidence for Parietal and Prefrontal Mechanisms
Authors: Marshuetz Christy , Smith Edward E. , Jonides John , DeGutis Joseph , Chenevert Thomas L.
Published: July 2002

Working memory is thought to include a mechanism that allows for the coding of order information. One question of interest is how order information is coded, and how that code is neurally implemented. Here we report both behavioral and fMRI findings from an experiment that involved comparing two tasks, an item-memory task and an order-memory task. In each case, five letters were presented for storage, followed after a brief interval by a set of probe letters. In the case of the item-memory task, the two letters were identical, and the subject responded to the question, “Was this letter one of the items you saw?”. In the case of the order-memory task, the letters were different, and subjects responded to the question, “Are these two letters in the order in which you saw them?”. Behaviorally, items that were further apart in the sequence elicited faster reaction times and higher accuracy in the Order task. Areas that were significantly more activated in the Order condition included the parietal and prefrontal cortex. Parietal activations overlapped those involved in number processing, leading to the suggestion that the underlying representation of order and numbers may share a common process, coding for magnitude.
Transient Activity in the Human Calcarine Cortex During Visual-Mental Imagery: An Event-Related fMRI Study
Authors: Klein Isabelle , Paradis Anne-Lise , Poline Jean-Baptiste , Kosslyn Stephen M. , Le Bihan Denis
Published: July 2002

Although it is largely accepted that visual-mental imagery and perception draw on many of the same neural structures, the existence and nature of neural processing in the primary visual cortex (or area V1) during visual imagery remains controversial. We tested two general hypotheses: The first was that V1 is activated only when images with many details are formed and used, and the second was that V1 is activated whenever images are formed, even if they are not necessarily used to perform a task. We used event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (ER-fMRI) to detect and characterize the activity in the calcarine sulcus (which contains the primary visual cortex) during single instances of mental imagery. The results revealed reproducible transient activity in this area whenever participants generated or evaluated a mental image. This transient activity was strongly enhanced when participants evaluated characteristics of objects, whether or not details actually needed to be extracted from the image to perform the task. These results show that visual imagery processing commonly involves the earliest stages of the visual system.
A Cortical Mechanism for Binding in Visual Working Memory
Authors: Raffone Antonino , Wolters Gezinus
Published: July 2002

Luck and Vogel (1997) showed that the storage capacity of visual working memory is about four objects and that this capacity does not depend on the number of features making up the objects. Thus, visual working memory seems to process integrated objects rather than individual features, just as verbal working memory handles higher-order “chunks” instead of individual features or letters. In this article, we present a model based on synchronization and desynchronization of reverberatory neural assemblies, which can parsimoniously account for both the limited capacity of visual working memory, and for the temporary binding of multiple assemblies into a single pattern. A critical capacity of about three to four independent patterns showed up in our simulations, consistent with the results of Luck and Vogel. The same desynchronizing mechanism optimizing phase segregation between assemblies coding for separate features or multifeature objects poses a limit to the number of oscillatory reverberations. We show how retention of multiple features as visual chunks (feature conjunctions or objects) in terms of synchronized reverberatory assemblies may be achieved with and without long-term memory guidance.
Brain Potentials Reflect Behavioral Differences in True and False Recognition
Authors: Curran Tim , Schacter Daniel L. , Johnson Marcia K. , Spinks Ruth
Published: July 2002

People often falsely recognize nonstudied lures that are semantically similar to previously studied words. Behavioral research suggests that such false recognition is based on high semantic overlap between studied items and lures that yield a feeling of familiarity, whereas true recognition is more often associated with the recollection of details. Despite this behavioral evidence for differences between true and false recognition, research measuring brain activity (PET, fMRI, ERP) has not clearly differentiated corresponding differences in brain activity. A median split was used to separate subjects into Good and Poor performers based on their discrimination of studied targets from similar lures. Only Good performers showed late (1000-1500 msec), right frontal event-related brain potentials (ERPs) that were more positive for targets and lures compared with new items. The right frontal differences are interpreted as reflecting postretrieval evaluation processes that were more likely to be engaged by Good than Poor performers. Both Good and Poor performers showed a parietal ERP old/new effect (400-800 msec), but only Poor performers showed a parietal old/lure difference. These results are consistent with the view that the parietal and frontal ERP old/new effects reflect dissociable processes related to recollection.
The Context of Uncertainty Modulates the Subcortical Response to Predictability
Authors: Bischoff-Grethe Amanda , Martin Megan , Mao Hui , Berns Gregory S.
Published: July 2002

Implicit motor learning tasks typically involve comparisons of subject responses during a sequence versus a random condition. In neuroimaging, brain regions that are correlated with a sequence are described, but the temporal relationship of sequence versus nonsequence conditions is often not explored. We present a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study describing activation related to sequential predictability in an implicit sensorimotor learning task and the history (context) dependence of these effects. Participants regarded four squares displayed horizontally across a screen and pressed a button when any one of the four targets was illuminated in a particular color. A repeating spatial sequence with varying levels of predictability was embedded within a random color presentation. Both the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (R DLPFC) and right caudate displayed a positive correlation to increasing predictability, whereas the left posterior parietal cortex (L PPC) displayed a negative correlation. However, the activation changes within the caudate were significant when transitioning from high predictability to low predictability but not for the reverse case, suggesting a sensitivity not only to predictability but to order effects as well. These results support the hypothesized relationship between basal ganglia and visuomotor sequential learning, but demonstrate the importance of context upon sequence learning.
How Does the Brain Discriminate Familiar and Unfamiliar Faces?: A PET Study of Face Categorical Perception
Authors: Rossion Bruno , Schiltz Christine , Robaye Laurence , Pirenne David , Crommelinck Marc
Published: July 2002

Where and how does the brain discriminate familiar and unfamiliar faces? This question has not been answered yet by neuroimaging studies partly because different tasks were performed on familiar and unfamiliar faces, or because familiar faces were associated with semantic and lexical information. Here eight subjects were trained during 3 days with a set of 30 faces. The familiarized faces were morphed with unfamiliar faces. Presented with continua of unfamiliar and familiar faces in a pilot experiment, a group of eight subjects presented a categorical perception of face familiarity: there was a sharp boundary in percentage of familiarity decisions between 40% and 60% faces. In the main experiment, subjects were scanned (PET) on the fourth day (after 3 days of training) in six conditions, all requiring a sex classification task. Completely novel faces (0%) were presented in Condition 1 and familiar faces (100%) in Condition 6, while faces of steps of 20% in the continuum of familiarity were presented in Conditions 2 to 5 (20% to 80%). A principal component analysis (PCA) indicated that most variations in neural responses were related to the dissociation between faces perceived as familiar (60% to 100%) and faces perceived as unfamiliar (0 to 40%). Subtraction analyses did not disclose any increase of activation for faces perceived as familiar while there were large relative increases for faces perceived as unfamiliar in several regions of the right occipito-temporal visual pathway. These changes were all categorical and were observed mainly in the right middle occipital gyrus, the right posterior fusiform gyrus, and the right inferotemporal cortex. These results show that (1) the discrimination between familiar and unfamiliar faces is related to relative increases in the right ventral pathway to unfamiliar/novel faces; (2) familiar and unfamiliar faces are discriminated in an all-or-none fashion rather than proportionally to their resemblance to stored representations; and (3) categorical perception of faces is associated with abrupt changes of brain activity in the regions that discriminate the two extremes of the multidimensional continuum.
Split-Second Sequential Selective Activation in Human Secondary Visual Cortex
Authors: Kenemans J. Leon , Lijffijt Marijn , Camfferman Gert , Verbaten Marinus N.
Published: July 2002

This work addressed early selection based on nonspatial visual features, using event-related potentials (ERPs) with high temporal resolution and dipole-source modeling. Subjects were presented rapid sequences of gratings varying in spatial frequency and orientation, and were instructed to attend to gratings with one spatial frequency and ignore those with another. Attention effects started at 120-msec latency as anterior positivity and proceeded as posterior negativity (200 msec) and anterior negativity (265 msec). Dipole-source modeling suggested that these effects reflect the sequential selective activation of, on average, posterior dorsal–medial, posterior ventral–lateral, and anterior medial cortical areas. In contrast, stimulus-specific activity was observed well before 100-msec latency and characterized by dipoles with locations significantly posterior to those of the attention-modulated activity. These results indicate that even with highly discriminable spatial frequencies, selection is not as early as before the 100-msec latency, unlike what is often found for location selection. It is also separated in time and anatomically from the earliest stimulus-specific cortical activity. Reducing discriminability of the selection feature resulted in longer selection latencies, becoming manifest only at 175 msec as an apparent combination of posterior and anterior negativities, and in an elevated criterion for overt responding.
Impact of fMRI Acoustic Noise on the Functional Anatomy of Visual Mental Imagery
Authors: Mazard A. , Mazoyer B. , Etard O. , Tzourio-Mazoyer N. , Kosslyn S.M. , Mellet E.
Published: July 2002

One drawback of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is that the subject must endure intense noise during testing. We examined the possible role of such noise on the activation of early visual cortex during visual mental imagery. We postulated that noise may require subjects to work harder to pay attention to the task, which in turn could alter the activation pattern found in a silent environment. To test this hypothesis, we used positron emission tomography (PET) to monitor regional Cerebral Blood Flow (rCBF) of six subjects while they performed an imagery task either in a silent environment or in an “fMRI-like” noisy environment. Both noisy and silent imagery conditions, as compared to their respective baselines, resulted in activation of a bilateral frontoparietal network (related to spatial processing), a bilateral inferior temporal area (related to shape processing), and deactivation of anterior calcarine cortex. Among the visual areas, rCBF increased in the most posterior part of the calcarine cortex, but at level just below the statistical threshold. However, blood flow values in the calcarine cortex during the silent imagery condition (but not the noisy imagery condition) were strongly negatively correlated with accuracy; the more challenging subjects found the task, the more strongly the calcarine cortex was activated. The subjects made more errors in the noisy condition than in the silent condition, and a direct comparison of the two conditions revealed that noise resulted in an increase in rCBF in the anterior cingulate cortex (involved in performance monitoring) and in the Wernicke's area (required to encode the verbal cues used in the task). These results thus demonstrate a nonadditive effect of fMRI gradient noise, resulting in a slight but significant effect on both performance and the neural activation pattern.
Neural Systems for Visual Orienting and Their Relationships to Spatial Working Memory
Authors: Corbetta Maurizio , Kincade J. Michelle , Shulman Gordon L.
Published: July 2002

We investigated neural correlates of human visual orienting using event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). When subjects voluntarily directed attention to a peripheral location, we recorded robust and sustained signals uniquely from the intraparietal sulcus (IPs) and superior frontal cortex (near the frontal eye field, FEF). In the ventral IPs and FEF only, the blood oxygen level dependent signal was modulated by the direction of attention. The IPs and FEF also maintained the most sustained level of activation during a 7-sec delay, when subjects maintained attention at the peripheral cued location (working memory). Therefore, the IPs and FEF form a dorsal network that controls the endogenous allocation and maintenance of visuospatial attention. A separate right hemisphere network was activated by the detection of targets at unattended locations. Activation was largely independent of the target's location (visual field). This network included among other regions the right temporo-parietal junction and the inferior frontal gyrus. We propose that this cortical network is important for reorienting to sensory events.
H.M. Revisited: Relations between Language Comprehension, Memory, and the Hippocampal System
Authors: MacKay Donald G. , Stewart Rachel , Burke Deborah M.
Published: July 2002

Three studies tested the claim that H.M. exhibits a fipure memory deficitfl that has left his ability to comprehend language unimpaired relative to memory-normal controls. In Study 1, H.M. and memory-normal controls of comparable intelligence, education, and age indicated whether sentences were ambiguous or unambiguous, and H.M. detected ambiguities significantly less often than controls. In Study 2, participants identified the two meanings of visually presented sentences that they knew were ambiguous, and relative to controls, H.M. rarely discovered the ambiguities without help and had difficulty understanding the first meanings, experimenter requests, and his own output. Study 3 replicated these results and showed that they were not due to brain damage per se or to cohort effects: Unlike H.M., a patient with bilateral frontal lobe damage detected the ambiguities as readily as young and same-cohort older controls. These results bear on two general classes of theories in use within a wide range of neurosciences and cognitive sciences: The data favor fidistributed-memory theoriesfl that ascribe H.M.'s deficit to semantic-level binding processes that are inherent to both language comprehension and memory, over fistages-of-processing theories, fl where H.M.'s defective storage processes have no effect on language comprehension.
Do Deaf People See Better? Texture Segmentation and Visual Search Compensate in Adult but Not in Juvenile Subjects
Authors: Rettenbach Regina , Diller Gottfried , Sireteanu Ruxandra
Published: July 2002

The research concerning the visual perception in deaf subjects has led to contradictory results: Deaf subjects have been reported to show enhanced visual perceptual skills compared to hearing subjects (Neville & Lawson, 1987). On the other hand, there are indications that acoustic deprivation may produce an inferiority in all sensory modalities (Myklebust, 1964). These contradictions may be due to methodological differences: The investigators selected different conditions (e.g. attentive/nonattentive) and various samples of deaf subjects (e.g., different age, language, and aetiology groups).

In our study, we tested a large sample of deaf subjects with texture segmentation and visual search conditions, which allowed us to differentiate between visual processing with and without attentional load. All deaf subjects had profound hearing loss within the first year of life. Our results suggest that the visual processing capacity of deaf children and adolescents does not exceed that of age- and gender-matched hearing subjects. Rather, deaf school children show deficits in visual processing in conditions with and without attentional load. Age (6 to 20 years), language used (oral, sign, oral + sign), and aetiology for deafness (genetic, maternal rubella, perinatal, infection in the first year of life, unknown) did not consistently influence the results.

The deficits in visual processing were partially compensated for in adult deaf subjects. The performances of deaf and hearing adults in trials that could be solved preattentively did not differ statistically significantly, but in attention-dependent trials the deaf subjects were more efficient than the hearing controls.

We conclude that visual compensation for deafness is limited to attention-dependent tasks and does not develop until adulthood.
Improvements to the Sensitivity of Gravitational Clustering for Multiple Neuron Recordings
Authors: Baker Stuart N. , Gerstein George L.
Published: July 2002

We outline two improvements to the technique of gravitational clustering for detection of neuronal synchrony, which are capable of improving the method's detection of weak synchrony with limited data. The advantages of the enhancements are illustrated using data with known levels of synchrony and different interspike interval distributions. The novel simulation method described can easily generate such test data. An important dependence of the sensitivity of gravitational clustering to the interspike interval distribution of the analysed spike trains is described.
Minimizing Binding Errors Using Learned Conjunctive Features
Authors: Mel Bartlett W. , Fiser József
Published: July 2002

We have studied some of the design trade-offs governing visual representations based on spatially invariant conjunctive feature detectors, with an emphasis on the susceptibility of such systems to false-positive recognition errors—Malsburg's classical binding problem. We begin by deriving an analytical model that makes explicit how recognition performance is affected by the number of objects that must be distinguished, the number of features included in the representation, the complexity of individual objects, and the clutter load, that is, the amount of visual material in the field of view in which multiple objects must be simultaneously recognized, independent of pose, and without explicit segmentation. Using the domain of text to model object recognition in cluttered scenes, we show that with corrections for the nonuniform probability and nonindependence of text features, the analytical model achieves good fits to measured recognition rates in simulations involving a wide range of clutter loads, word sizes, and feature counts. We then introduce a greedy algorithm for feature learning, derived from the analytical model, which grows a representation by choosing those conjunctive features that are most likely to distinguish objects from the cluttered backgrounds in which they are embedded. We show that the representations produced by this algorithm are compact, decorrelated, and heavily weighted toward features of low conjunctive order. Our results provide a more quantitative basis for understanding when spatially invariant conjunctive features can support unambiguous perception in multiobject scenes, and lead to several insights regarding the properties of visual representations optimized for specific recognition tasks.
Formulations of Support Vector Machines: A Note from an Optimization Point of View
Authors: Lin Chih-Jen
Published: July 2002

In this article, we discuss issues about formulations of support vector machines (SVM) from an optimization point of view. First, SVMs map training data into a higher- (maybe infinite-) dimensional space. Currently primal and dual formulations of SVM are derived in the finite dimensional space and readily extend to the infinite-dimensional space. We rigorously discuss the primal-dual relation in the infinite-dimensional spaces. Second, SVM formulations contain penalty terms, which are different from unconstrained penalty functions in optimization. Traditionally unconstrained penalty functions approximate a constrained problem as the penalty parameter increases. We are interested in similar properties for SVM formulations. For two of the most popular SVM formulations, we show that one enjoys properties of exact penalty functions, but the other is only like traditional penalty functions, which converge when the penalty parameter goes to infinity.
Stationary Bumps in Networks of Spiking Neurons
Authors: Laing Carlo R. , Chow Carson C.
Published: July 2002

We examine the existence and stability of spatially localized “bumps” of neuronal activity in a network of spiking neurons. Bumps have been proposed in mechanisms of visual orientation tuning, the rat head direction system, and working memory. We show that a bump solution can exist in a spiking network provided the neurons fire asynchronously within the bump. We consider a parameter regime where the bump solution is bistable with an all-off state and can be initiated with a transient excitatory stimulus. We show that the activity profile matches that of a corresponding population rate model. The bump in a spiking network can lose stability through partial synchronization to either a traveling wave or the all-off state. This can occur if the synaptic timescale is too fast through a dynamical effect or if a transient excitatory pulse is applied to the network. A bump can thus be activated and deactivated with excitatory inputs that may have physiological relevance.
Unitary Events in Multiple Single-Neuron Spiking Activity: II. Nonstationary Data
Authors: Grün Sonja , Diesmann Markus , Aertsen Ad
Published: July 2002

In order to detect members of a functional group (cell assembly) in simultaneously recorded neuronal spiking activity, we adopted the widely used operational definition that membership in a common assembly is expressed in near-simultaneous spike activity. Unitary event analysis, a statistical method to detect the significant occurrence of coincident spiking activity in stationary data, was recently developed (see the companion article in this issue). The technique for the detection of unitary events is based on the assumption that the underlying processes are stationary in time. This requirement, however, is usually not fulfilled in neuronal data. Here we describe a method that properly normalizes for changes of rate: the unitary events by moving window analysis (UEMWA). Analysis for unitary events is performed separately in overlapping time segments by sliding a window of constant width along the data. In each window, stationarity is assumed. Performance and sensitivity are demonstrated by use of simulated spike trains of independently firing neurons, into which coincident events are inserted. If cortical neurons organize dynamically into functional groups, the occurrence of near-simultaneous spike activity should be time varying and related to behavior and stimuli. UEMWA also accounts for these potentially interesting nonstationarities and allows locating them in time. The potential of the new method is illustrated by results from multiple single-unit recordings from frontal and motor cortical areas in awake, behaving monkey.
Changes in GABABModulation During a Theta Cycle May Be Analogous to the Fall of Temperature During Annealing
Authors: Sohal Vikaas S. , Hasselmo Michael E.
Published: July 2002

Changes in GABABmodulation may underlie experimentally observed changes in the strength of synaptic transmission at different phases of the theta rhythm (Wyble, Linster, & Hasselmo, 1997). Analysis demonstrates that these changes improve sequence disambiguation by a neural network model of CA3. We show that in the framework of Hopfield and Tank (1985), changes in GABABsuppression correspond to changes in the effective temperature and the relative energy of data terms and constraints of an analog network. These results suggest that phasic changes in the activity of inhibitory interneurons during a theta cycle may produce dynamics that resemble annealing. These dynamics may underlie a role for the theta cycle in improving sequence retrieval for spatial navigation.
A Spatial Theory of Rhythmic Resolution
Authors: McLachlan Neil
Published: July 2002

Cyclic arrays, such as clock faces, have advantages over linear arrays for conceptualizing repetitive rhythmic structures. The author maps rhythms from African and Indonesian musics into cyclic arrays and analyzes them using concepts from Gestalt psychology, mathematical group theory and psycho-acoustics. The perceptual structures thus revealed exist between the different musical parts played on various instruments and contradict the usual processes of auditory segregation according to the physical locations of instrumentation. This prompts a proposal for a theory of musical despatialization to explain the psychological efficacy of these rhythms.
Religious Symbolism in Cuban Political Performance
Authors: Miller Ivor L.
Published: July 2002

When a white dove alights on his shoulder, is Fidel Castro being crowned by Obatalá, a Santería god? What is the relationship between Santería, Cuba's vibrant Afro-Caribbean religion, and Cuba's head of state?
Inner Material/Material
Authors: Tatsumi Hijikata
Published: July 2002

For the first time in English, we present many of Hijikata's aesthetic and poetic texts. These texts are put into context by Kurihara Nanako's introductory essay. The section includes an interview with Hijikata and a conversation between Hijikata and Japanese experimental theatre innovator Suzuki Tadashi.
The Bomb That Blew Up Seattle: Jason Sprinkle and the Performance of Municipal Identity
Authors: Westlake E.J.
Published: July 2002

In July 1996 a “bomb threat” in downtown Seattle resulted in the evacuation of buildings in a six-block radius, the rerouting of downtown busses, and ensuing total chaos. The threat turned out to be without substance. Was it art? Or was it terrorism? The artist's action prompted a string of performances, which played out on the stage of law the anxiety over the lack of a clear boundary between the real and the representation.
Interaction-Driven Virtual Reality Application Design (A Particular Case: El Ball del Fanalet or Lightpools)
Authors: Parés Narcís , Parés Roc
Published: July 2002

Virtual reality application design is usually guided by a content-driven strategy, which gives priority to the application's content and context. In this paper, we shall describe and study a novel strategy in VR application design that is centered on the design of the user interaction, regardless of the specific content of the application. This is especially useful in creative/artistic applications of VR. We shall present the specific case of an artistic VR application from which this strategy has emerged. This VR experience, El Ball del Fanalet or Lightpools has been successfully presented at the Miró Foundation in Barcelona (Spain).
Effects of Sensory Information and Prior Experience on Direct Subjective Ratings of Presence
Authors: Freeman Jonathan , Avons S. E. , Pearson Don E. , IJsselsteijn Wijnand A.
Published: July 2002

We report three experiments using a new form of direct subjective presence evaluation that was developed from the method of continuous assessment used to assess television picture quality. Observers were required to provide a continuous rating of their sense of presence using a handheld slider. The first experiment investigated the effects of manipulating stereoscopic and motion parallax cues within video sequences presented on a 20 in. stereoscopic CRT display. The results showed that the presentation of both stereoscopic and motion parallax cues was associated with higher presence ratings. One possible interpretation of Experiment 1 is that CRT displays that contain the spatial cues of stereoscopic disparity and motion parallax are more interesting or engaging. To test this, observers in Experiment 2 rated the same stimuli first for interest and then for presence. The results showed that variations in interest did not predict the presence ratings obtained in Experiment 1. However, the subsequent ratings of presence differed significantly from those obtained in Experiment 1, suggesting that prior experience with interest ratings affected subsequent judgments of presence. To test this, Experiment 3 investigated the effects of prior experience on presence ratings. Three groups of observers rated a training sequence for interest, presence, and 3-Dness before rating the same stimuli as used for Experiments 1 and 2 for presence. The results demonstrated that prior ratings sensitize observers to different features of a display resulting in different presence ratings. The implications of these results for presence evaluation are discussed, and a combination of more-refined subjective measures and a battery of objective measures is recommended.
Virtual Reality as Communication Tool: A Sociocognitive Analysis
Authors: Riva Giuseppe
Published: July 2002

Virtual reality (VR) is usually described by the media as a particular collection of technological hardware: a computer capable of 3-D real-time animation, a head-mounted display, and data gloves equipped with one or more position trackers. However, this focus on technology is somewhat disappointing for communication researchers and VR designers. To overcome this limitation, this paper describes VR as a communication tool: a communication medium in the case of multiuser VR and a communication interface in single-user VR. The consequences of this approach for the design and the development of VR systems are presented, together with the methodological and technical implications for the study of interactive communication via computers.
Evolving Collective Behavior in an Artificial Ecology
Authors: Ward Christopher R. , Gobet Fernand , Kendall Graham
Published: July 2002

Collective behavior refers to coordinated group motion, common to many animals. The dynamics of a group can be seen as a distributed model, each “animal” applying the same rule set. This study investigates the use of evolved sensory controllers to produce schooling behavior. A set of artificial creatures “live” in an artificial world with hazards and food. Each creature has a simple artificial neural network brain that controls movement in different situations. A chromosome encodes the network structure and weights, which may be combined using artificial evolution with another chromosome, if a creature should choose to mate. Prey and predators coevolve without an explicit fitness function for schooling to produce sophisticated, nondeterministic, behavior. The work highlights the role of species' physiology in understanding behavior and the role of the environment in encouraging the development of sensory systems.
Computational Coevolution of Antiviral Drug Resistance
Authors: Rosin Christopher D. , Belew Richard K. , Morris Garrett M. , Olson Arthur J. , Goodsell David S.
Published: July 2002

An understanding of antiviral drug resistance is important in the design of effective drugs. Comprehensive features of the interaction between drug designs and resistance mutations are difficult to study experimentally because of the very large numbers of drugs and mutants involved. We describe a computational framework for studying antiviral drug resistance. Data on HIV-1 protease are used to derive an approximate model that predicts interaction of a wide range of mutant forms of the protease with a broad class of protease inhibitors. An algorithm based on competitive coevolution is used to find highly resistant mutant forms of the protease, and effective inhibitors against such mutants, in the context of the model. We use this method to characterize general features of inhibitors that are effective in overcoming resistance, and to study related issues of selection pathways, cross-resistance, and combination therapies.
Weighting in Practice:Implications for the Use of Life‐Cycle Assessment in Decision Making
Authors: Bengtsson Magnus
Published: July 2002

This article investigates how environmental trade‐offs are handled in life‐cycle assessment (LCA) studies in some Nordic companies. Through interviews, the use and understanding of weighting methods in decision making was studied. The analysis shows that the decision makers require methods with which to aggregate and help interpret the complex information from life‐cycle inventories. They agreed that it was not their own values that should be reflected in such methods, but they were found to have different opinions concerning the value basis that should be used. The analysis also investigates the difficulties arising from using such methods. The decision makers seemed to give a broader meaning to the term weighting, and were more concerned with the comparison between environmental and other aspects than the weighting of different environmental impacts. A conclusion is that decision makers need to be more involved in modeling and interpretation. The role of the analyst should be to interpret the information needs of the decision maker, and help him or her make methodological choices that are consistent with these needs and relevant from his or her point of view. To achieve this, it is important that decision makers do not view LCA as a highly standardized calculation tool, but as a flexible process of collecting, organizing, and interpreting environmental information. Such an approach to LCA increases the chances that the results will be regarded as relevant and useful.
The Cold War Debate Continues: A Traditionalist View of Historical Writing on Domestic Communism and Anti-Communism
Authors: Haynes John Earl
Published: July 2002

This article reviews the huge Cold War-era and post-Cold War literature on American Communism and anti-Communism in the United States. These issues have long been the subject of heated scholarly debate. The recent opening of archives in Russia and other former Communist countries and the release of translated Venona documents in the United States have shed new light on key aspects of the American Communist Party that were previously unknown or undocumented. The new evidence has underscored the Soviet Union's tight control of the party and the crucial role that American Communists played in Soviet espionage. The release of all this documentation has been an unwelcome development for scholars who have long been sympathetic to the Communist movement.
A Paradox of Virtue?: “Other” Knowledges and Environment-Development Politics
Authors: Martello Marybeth Long
Published: July 2002

“Local,” “indigenous,” and “traditional” knowledge are emerging as important categories in environment-development policy-making. This paper provides an overview of international policies and programs for addressing these historically marginalized ways of knowing, and explores how the World Bank, and processes under the Convention to Combat Desertification, and the Convention on Biological Diversity are attempting to incorporate “other” knowledges and knowledge holders. The study argues that long-standing assumptions and practices of multilateral policy-making are often at odds with the new perspectives for which these knowledges presumably provide a vehicle. On the one hand, policy-making bodies cite “other” knowledges as alternatives to technocratic problem-solving methods of earlier decades because they are unique and situated, holistic and processual. On the other hand, international institutions are attempting to systematize “other” knowledges in ways that seem poised to render them standardized and universal, compartmental, and instrumental.
Indonesian Movements for the Creation of a 'National Madhhab'
Authors: Feener R. Michael
Published: July 2002

During the middle decades of the twentieth century, Indonesian Muslim scholars participated in a movement for the creation of a new "national madhhab." These unprecedented developments took place within contexts of modernity in which the epistemological structures of traditional Islamic jurisprudence, as known and practiced in Indonesia, were faced with challenges by both "Western" and Islamic reformist thought. This essay presents an overview of these developments that highlights their significance for comparative studies of modern Muslim jurisprudence, with particular reference to the works of Hasbi Ash Shiddieqy and Hazairin.
IN DEFENSE OF THE COMPARATIVE METHOD
Authors: Segal Robert
Published: July 2002

While in some disciplines the comparative method is used unhesitatingly, in others it is spurned. In the field of religious studies, the method has long been rejected, and that rejection far antedates the anti-comparativist stance of postmodernism. This article identifies the main objections commonly lodged against the method and attempts to refute them all - as mischaracterizations either of the method or of the quest for knowledge itself. The article then considers the use of the method by the two figures in religious studies still singled out as the most egregious practitioners of it: James Frazer and William Robertson Smith. In actuality, not even they turn out to be guilty of any of the objections lodged against the method. At the same time they turn out to employ the method in contrary ways. Frazer uses the method to show the similarities among religions; Smith uses it as much to show the differences. The contrasting use of the same method by its most famous practitioners shows that the method is not merely malleable but indispensable to all scholars of religion - those seeking the particularities of individual religions no less than those seeking the universals of religion.