bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Space to Reason
Authors: Knauff Markus
Published: October 2013

An argument against the role of visual imagination in reasoning that proposes a spatial theory of human thought, supported by empirical and computational evidence.

Many scholars believe that visual mental imagery plays a key role in reasoning. In Space to Reason, Markus Knauff argues against this view, proposing that visual images are not relevant for reasoning and can even impede the process. He also argues against the claim that human thinking is solely based on abstract symbols and is completely embedded in language. Knauff proposes a third way to think about human reasoning that relies on supramodal spatial layout models, which are more abstract than pictorial images and more concrete than linguistic representations. He argues that these spatial layout models are at the heart of human thought, even thought about nonspatial relations in the world.

For Knauff the visual images that we so often associate with reasoning are only in the foreground of conscious experience. Behind the images, the actual logical work is carried out by reasoning-specific operations on these spatial layout models. Knauff also offers a solution to the problem of indeterminacy in human reasoning, introducing the notion of a preferred layout model, which is one layout model among others that has the best chance of being mentally constructed and thus guides the further process of thought. Knauff's "space to reason" theory covers the functional, the algorithmic, and the implementational level of analysis and is corroborated by psychological experiments, functional brain imaging, and computational modeling.
The Neural Basis of Free Will
Authors: Tse Peter Ulric
Published: October 2013

A neuroscientific perspective on the mind–body problem that focuses on how the brain actually accomplishes mental causation.

The issues of mental causation, consciousness, and free will have vexed philosophers since Plato. In this book, Peter Tse examines these unresolved issues from a neuroscientific perspective. In contrast with philosophers who use logic rather than data to argue whether mental causation or consciousness can exist given unproven first assumptions, Tse proposes that we instead listen to what neurons have to say.

Tse draws on exciting recent neuroscientific data concerning how informational causation is realized in physical causation at the level of NMDA receptors, synapses, dendrites, neurons, and neuronal circuits. He argues that a particular kind of strong free will and “downward” mental causation are realized in rapid synaptic plasticity. Such informational causation cannot change the physical basis of information realized in the present, but it can change the physical basis of information that may be realized in the immediate future. This gets around the standard argument against free will centered on the impossibility of self-causation. Tse explores the ways that mental causation and qualia might be realized in this kind of neuronal and associated information-processing architecture, and considers the psychological and philosophical implications of having such an architecture realized in our brains.
Elements of Argumentation
Authors: Besnard Philippe , Hunter Anthony
Published: October 2013

Background and techniques for formalizing deductive argumentation in a logic-based framework for artificial intelligence.

Logic-based formalizations of argumentation, which assume a set of formulae and then lay out arguments and counterarguments that can be obtained from these formulae, have been refined in recent years in an attempt to capture more closely real-world practical argumentation. In Elements of Argumentation, Philippe Besnard and Anthony Hunter introduce techniques for formalizing deductive argumentation in artificial intelligence, emphasizing emerging formalizations for practical argumentation. Besnard and Hunter discuss how arguments can be constructed, how key intrinsic and extrinsic factors can be identified, and how these analyses can be harnessed for formalizing argumentation for use in real-world problem analysis and decision making.

The book focuses on a monological approach to argumentation, in which there is a set of possibly conflicting pieces of information (each represented by a formula) that has been collated by an agent or a pool of agents. The role of argumentation is to construct a collection of arguments and counterarguments pertaining to some particular claim of interest to be used for analysis or presentation.

Elements of Argumentation is the first book to elucidate and formalize key elements of deductive argumentation. It will be a valuable reference for researchers in computer science and artificial intelligence and of interest to scholars in such fields as logic, philosophy, linguistics, and cognitive science.
The Equilibrium Manifold
Authors: Balasko Yves
Published: October 2013

A leading scholar in the field presents post-1970s developments in the theory of general equilibrium, unified by the concept of equilibrium manifold.

In The Equilibrium Manifold, noted economic scholar and major contributor to the theory of general equilibrium Yves Balasko argues that, contrary to what many textbooks want readers to believe, the study of the general equilibrium model did not end with the existence and welfare theorems of the 1950s. These developments, which characterize the modern phase of the theory of general equilibrium, led to what Balasko calls the postmodern phase, marked by the reintroduction of differentiability assumptions and the application of the methods of differential topology to the study of the equilibrium equation.

Balasko's rigorous study demonstrates the central role played by the equilibrium manifold in understanding the properties of the Arrow-Debreu model and its extensions. Balasko argues that the tools of differential topology articulated around the concept of equilibrium manifold offer powerful methods for studying economically important issues, from existence and uniqueness to business cycles and economic fluctuations. After an examination of the theory of general equilibrium's evolution in the hundred years between Walras and Arrow-Debreu, Balasko discusses the properties of the equilibrium manifold and the natural projection. He highlights the important role of the set of no-trade equilibria, the structure of which is applied to the global structure of the equilibrium manifold. He also develops a geometric approach to the study of the equilibrium manifold.

Applications include stability issues of adjustment dynamics for out-of-equilibrium prices, the introduction of price-dependent preferences, and aspects of time and uncertainty in extensions of the general equilibrium model that account for various forms of market frictions and imperfections. Special effort has been made at reducing the mathematical technicalities without compromising rigor. The Equilibrium Manifold makes clear the ways in which the postmodern” developments of the Arrow-Debreu model improve our understanding of modern market economies.
The Development and Testing of Heckscher-Ohlin Trade Models
Authors: Baldwin Robert E.
Published: October 2013

A review of the theoretical twists and turns in the development of the Heckscher-Ohlin model and an empirical assessment of the basic model and three related theorems.

No names are more closely associated with modern trade theory than Eli Heckscher and Bertil Ohlin. The basic Heckscher-Ohlin proposition, according to which a country exports factors in abundant supply and imports factors in scarce supply, is a key component of modern trade theory. In this book, Robert Baldwin traces the development of the HO model, describing the historical twists and turns that have led to the basic modern theoretical model in use today. Baldwin not only presents a clear and cohesive view of the model's evolution but also reviews the results of empirical tests its various versions. Baldwin, who published his first theoretical article on the HO model in 1948, first surveys the development of the HO model and then assesses empirical tests of its predictions. Most discussions of empirical work on HO models confine themselves to the basic theorem, but Baldwin devotes a chapter to empirical tests of three related propositions: the Stolper-Samuelson theorem; the Rybczynski theorem; and the factor price equalization theorem. He concludes that the formulation and testing of these later models have improved economists' understanding of the forces shaping international trade, but that many empirical trade economists (himself included) were so enamored of the elegant but highly unrealistic factor price equalization models developed from the insights of Heckscher and Ohlin that they have neglected investigation of other models without this relationship.
Pragmatism and Reference
Authors: Boersema David
Published: October 2013

An argument that a pragmatist approach to reference offers a corrective to the prevailing analytic views on the topic.

Despite a recent revival of interest in pragmatist philosophy, most work in the analytic philosophy of language ignores insights offered by classical pragmatists and contemporary neopragmatists. In Pragmatism and Reference, David Boersema argues that a pragmatist perspective on reference presents a distinct alternative—and corrective—to the prevailing analytic views on the topic. Boersema finds that the pragmatist approach to reference, with alternative understandings of the nature of language, the nature of conceptualization and categorization, and the nature of inquiry, is suggested in the work of Wittgenstein and more thoroughly developed in the works of such classical and contemporary pragmatists as Charles Peirce and Hilary Putnam.

Boersema first discusses the descriptivist and causal theories of reference—the received views on the topic in analytic philosophy. Then, after considering Wittgenstein's approach to reference, Boersema details the pragmatist approach to reference by nine philosophers: the “Big Three,” of classical pragmatism, Peirce, William James, and John Dewey; three contemporary American philosophers, Putnam, Catherine Elgin, and Richard Rorty; and three important continental philosophers, Umberto Eco, Karl-Otto Apel, and Jürgen Habermas. Finally, Boersema shows explicitly how pragmatism offers a genuinely alternative account of reference, presenting several case studies on the nature and function of names. Here, he focuses on conceptions of individuation, similarity, essences, and sociality of language.

Pragmatism and Reference will serve as a bridge between analytic and pragmatist approaches to such topics of shared concern as the nature and function of language.
Protocol Politics
Authors: DeNardis Laura
Published: October 2013

What are the global implications of the looming shortage of Internet addresses and the slow deployment of the new IPv6 protocol designed to solve this problem?

The Internet has reached a critical point. The world is running out of Internet addresses. There is a finite supply of approximately 4.3 billion Internet Protocol (IP) addresses—the unique binary numbers required for every exchange of information over the Internet—within the Internet's prevailing technical architecture (IPv4). In the 1990s the Internet standards community selected a new protocol (IPv6) that would expand the number of Internet addresses exponentially—to 340 undecillion addresses. Despite a decade of predictions about imminent global conversion, IPv6 adoption has barely begun.

Protocol Politics examines what's at stake politically, economically, and technically in the selection and adoption of a new Internet protocol. Laura DeNardis's key insight is that protocols are political. IPv6 intersects with provocative topics including Internet civil liberties, US military objectives, globalization, institutional power struggles, and the promise of global democratic freedoms. DeNardis offers recommendations for Internet standards governance, based not only on technical concerns but on principles of openness and transparency, and examines the global implications of looming Internet address scarcity versus the slow deployment of the new protocol designed to solve this problem.
The Computer Boys Take Over
Authors: Ensmenger Nathan L.
Published: October 2013

The contentious history of the computer programmers who developed the software that made the computer revolution possible.

This is a book about the computer revolution of the mid-twentieth century and the people who made it possible. Unlike most histories of computing, it is not a book about machines, inventors, or entrepreneurs. Instead, it tells the story of the vast but largely anonymous legions of computer specialists—programmers, systems analysts, and other software developers—who transformed the electronic computer from a scientific curiosity into the defining technology of the modern era. As the systems that they built became increasingly powerful and ubiquitous, these specialists became the focus of a series of critiques of the social and organizational impact of electronic computing. To many of their contemporaries, it seemed the “computer boys” were taking over, not just in the corporate setting, but also in government, politics, and society in general.

In The Computer Boys Take Over, Nathan Ensmenger traces the rise to power of the computer expert in modern American society. His rich and nuanced portrayal of the men and women (a surprising number of the “computer boys” were, in fact, female) who built their careers around the novel technology of electronic computing explores issues of power, identity, and expertise that have only become more significant in our increasingly computerized society.

In his recasting of the drama of the computer revolution through the eyes of its principle revolutionaries, Ensmenger reminds us that the computerization of modern society was not an inevitable process driven by impersonal technological or economic imperatives, but was rather a creative, contentious, and above all, fundamentally human development.
Ships and Science
Authors: Ferreiro Larrie D.
Published: October 2013

The first book to portray the birth of naval architecture as an integral part of the Scientific Revolution, examining its development and application across the major shipbuilding nations of Europe.

"Naval architecture was born in the mountains of Peru, in the mind of a French astronomer named Pierre Bouguer who never built a ship in his life." So writes Larrie Ferreiro at the beginning of this pioneering work on the science of naval architecture. Bouguer's monumental book Traité du navire (Treatise of the Ship) founded a discipline that defined not the rules for building a ship but the theories and tools to predict a ship's characteristics and performance before it was built. In Ships and Science, Ferreiro argues that the birth of naval architecture formed an integral part of the Scientific Revolution. Using Bouguer's work as a cornerstone, Ferreiro traces the intriguing and often unexpected development of this new discipline and describes its practical application to ship design in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Drawing on previously untapped primary-source and archival information, he places the development of naval architecture in the contexts of science, navy, and society, across the major shipbuilding nations of Britain, France, Spain, the Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark, and Italy.

Ferreiro describes the formulation of the three major elements of ship theory (the science of explaining the physical behavior of a ship): maneuvering and sail theory, ship resistance and hydrodynamics, and stability theory. He considers the era's influential books on naval architecture and describes the professionalization of ship constructors that is the true legacy of this period. Finally, looking from the viewpoints of both the constructor and the naval administrator, he explains why the development of ship theory was encouraged, financed, and used in naval shipbuilding. A generous selection of rarely seen archival images accompanies the text.
Foundational Issues in Linguistic Theory
Authors: Keyser Samuel Jay
Published: October 2013

Essays by leading theoretical linguists—including Noam Chomsky, B. Elan Dresher, Richard Kayne, Howard Lasnik, Morris Halle, Norbert Hornstein, Henk van Riemsdijk, and Edwin Williams—reflect on Jean-Roger Vergnaud's influence in the field and discuss current theoretical issues

Jean-Roger Vergnaud's work on the foundational issues in linguistics has proved influential over the past three decades. At MIT in 1974, Vergnaud (now holder of the Andrew W. Mellon Professorship in Humanities at the University of Southern California) made a proposal in his Ph.D. thesis that has since become, in somewhat modified form, the standard analysis for the derivation of relative clauses. Vergnaud later integrated the proposal within a broader theory of movement and abstract case. These topics have remained central to theoretical linguistics. In this volume, essays by leading theoretical linguists attest to the importance of Jean-Roger Vergnaud's contributions to linguistics. The essays first discuss issues in syntax, documenting important breakthroughs in the development of the principles and parameters framework and including a famous letter (unpublished until recently) from Vergnaud to Noam Chomsky and Howard Lasnik commenting on the first draft of their 1977 paper “Filters and Controls.” Vergnaud's writings on phonology (which, the editors write, “take a definite syntactic turn”) have also been influential, and the volume concludes with two contributions to that field. The essays, rewarding from both theoretical and empirical perspectives, not only offer insight into Vergnaud's impact on the field but also describe current work on the issues he introduced into the scholarly debate.

Contributors Joseph Aoun, Elabbas Benmamoun, Cedric Boeckx, Noam Chomsky, B. Elan Dresher, Robert Freidin, Morris Halle, Norbert Hornstein, Richard S. Kayne, Samuel Jay Keyser, Howard Lasnik, Yen-hui Audrey Li, M. Rita Manzini, Karine Megerdoomian, David Michaels, Henk van Riemsdijk, Alain Rouveret, Leonardo M. Savoia, Jean-Roger Vergnaud, Edwin Williams
Product Variety and the Gains from International Trade
Authors: Feenstra Robert C.
Published: October 2013

An examination of the methods to measure the product variety of imports and the gains from trade due to product variety.

The application of the monopolistic competition model to international trade by Elhanan Helpman, Paul Krugman, and Kelvin Lancaster was one of the great achievements of international trade theory in the 1970s and 1980s. Monopolistic competition models have required new empirical methods to implement their theoretical insights, however, and in this book Robert Feenstra describes methods that have been developed to measure the product variety of imports and the gains from trade that are due to product variety.

Feenstra first considers the consumer benefits from having access to new import varieties of differentiated products, and examines a recent method to estimate the elasticity of substitution (the extent of differentiation across products) and to use that information to construct the gains from import variety. He then examines claims of producer benefit from export variety, arguing that the self-selection of the more productive firms (as the low-productivity firms exit the market) can be interpreted as a gain from product variety. He makes use of a measurement of product variety known as the extensive margin of exports and imports. Finally, he considers an alternative approach to quantifying the gains due to product variety by comparing real GDP calculated with and without the extensive margin of trade.
Cultivating Science, Harvesting Power
Authors: Henke Christopher R.
Published: October 2013

How agricultural scientists and growers in California have cooperated—and struggled—in shaping the state's multi-billion-dollar farm industry.

Just south of San Francisco lies California's Salinas Valley, the heart of a multi-billion dollar agricultural industry that dominates U. S. vegetable production. How did the sleepy valley described in the stories of John Steinbeck become the nation's “salad bowl”? In Cultivating Science, Harvesting Power, Christopher R. Henke explores the ways that science helped build the Salinas Valley and California's broader farm industry. Henke focuses on the case of University of California “farm advisors,” scientists stationed in counties throughout the state who have stepped forward to help growers deal with crises ranging from labor shortages to plagues of insects. These disruptions in what Henke terms industrial agriculture's “ecology of power” provide a window onto how agricultural scientists and growers have collaborated—and struggled—in shaping this industry. Through these interventions, Henke argues, science has served as a mechanism of repair for industrial agriculture. Basing his analysis on detailed ethnographic and historical research, Henke examines the history of state-sponsored farm advising—in particular, its roots in Progressive Era politics—and looks at both past and present practices by farm advisors in the Salinas Valley. He goes on to examine specific examples, including the resolution of a farm labor crisis during World War II at the Spreckels Sugar Company, the use of field trials for promoting new farming practices, and farm advisors' and growers' responses to environmental issues. Beyond this, Henke argues that the concept of repair is broadly applicable to other cases and that expertise can be deployed more generally to encourage change for the future of American agriculture.
Austere Realism
Authors: Horgan Terence E. , Potrč Matjaž
Published: October 2013

A provocative ontological-cum-semantic position asserting that the right ontology is austere in its exclusion of numerous common-sense and scientific posits and that many statements employing such posits are nonetheless true.

The authors of Austere Realism describe and defend a provocative ontological-cum-semantic position, asserting that the right ontology is minimal or austere, in that it excludes numerous common-sense posits, and that statements employing such posits are nonetheless true, when truth is understood to be semantic correctness under contextually operative semantic standards. Terence Horgan and Matjaz Potrc argue that austere realism emerges naturally from consideration of the deep problems within the naive common-sense approach to truth and ontology. They offer an account of truth that confronts these deep internal problems and is independently plausible: contextual semantics, which asserts that truth is semantically correct affirmability. Under contextual semantics, much ordinary and scientific thought and discourse is true because its truth is indirect correspondence to the world. After offering further arguments for austere realism and addressing objections to it, Horgan and Potrc consider various alternative austere ontologies. They advance a specific version they call “blobjectivism”—the view that the right ontology includes only one concrete particular, the entire cosmos (“the blobject”), which, although it has enormous local spatiotemporal variability, does not have any proper parts.

The arguments in Austere Realism are powerfully made and concisely and lucidly set out. The authors' contentions and their methodological approach—products of a decade-long collaboration—will generate lively debate among scholars in metaphysics, ontology, and philosophy.
The Allure of Machinic Life
Authors: Johnston John
Published: October 2013

An account of the creation of new forms of life and intelligence in cybernetics, artificial life, and artificial intelligence that analyzes both the similarities and the differences among these sciences in actualizing life.

In The Allure of Machinic Life, John Johnston examines new forms of nascent life that emerge through technical interactions within human-constructed environments—“machinic life”—in the sciences of cybernetics, artificial life, and artificial intelligence. With the development of such research initiatives as the evolution of digital organisms, computer immune systems, artificial protocells, evolutionary robotics, and swarm systems, Johnston argues, machinic life has achieved a complexity and autonomy worthy of study in its own right. Drawing on the publications of scientists as well as a range of work in contemporary philosophy and cultural theory, but always with the primary focus on the “objects at hand”—the machines, programs, and processes that constitute machinic life—Johnston shows how they come about, how they operate, and how they are already changing. This understanding is a necessary first step, he further argues, that must precede speculation about the meaning and cultural implications of these new forms of life.

Developing the concept of the “computational assemblage” (a machine and its associated discourse) as a framework to identify both resemblances and differences in form and function, Johnston offers a conceptual history of each of the three sciences. He considers the new theory of machines proposed by cybernetics from several perspectives, including Lacanian psychoanalysis and “machinic philosophy.” He examines the history of the new science of artificial life and its relation to theories of evolution, emergence, and complex adaptive systems (as illustrated by a series of experiments carried out on various software platforms). He describes the history of artificial intelligence as a series of unfolding conceptual conflicts—decodings and recodings—leading to a “new AI” that is strongly influenced by artificial life. Finally, in examining the role played by neuroscience in several contemporary research initiatives, he shows how further success in the building of intelligent machines will most likely result from progress in our understanding of how the human brain actually works.

Bradford Books imprint
Closer
Authors: Kozel Susan , Eeuwens Adam
Published: October 2013

As our computers become closer to our bodies, perspectives from phenomenology and dance can help us understand the wider social uses of digital technologies and design future technologies that expand our social, physical, and emotional exchanges.

In Closer, Susan Kozel draws on live performance practice, digital technologies, and the philosophical approach of phenomenology. Trained in dance and philosophy, Kozel places the human body at the center of explorations of interactive interfaces, responsive systems, and affective computing, asking what can be discovered as we become closer to our computers—as they become extensions of our ways of thinking, moving, and touching.

Performance, Kozel argues, can act as a catalyst for understanding wider social and cultural uses of digital technology. Taking this one step further, performative acts of sharing the body through our digital devices foster a collaborative construction of new physical states, levels of conscious awareness, and even ethics. We reencounter ourselves and others through our interactive computer systems. What we need now are conceptual and methodological frameworks to reflect this.

Kozel offers a timely reworking of the phenomenology of French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty. This method, based on a respect for lived experience, begins by listening to the senses and noting insights that arrive in the midst of dance, or quite simply in the midst of life. The combination of performance and phenomenology offered by Closer yields entwinements between experience and reflection that shed light on, problematize, or restructure scholarly approaches to human bodies using digital technologies.

After outlining her approach and methodology and clarifying the key concepts of performance, technologies, and virtuality, Kozel applies phenomenological method to the experience of designing and performing in a range of computational systems: telematics, motion capture, responsive architectures, and wearable computing.

The transformative potential of the alchemy between bodies and technologies is the foundation of Closer. With careful design, future generations of responsive systems and mobile devices can expand our social, physical, and emotional exchanges.
The Boundaries of Babel
Authors: Moro Andrea
Published: October 2013

An exploration of what research at the intersection of contemporary theoretical linguistics and the cognitive neurosciences can reveal about the constraints on the apparently chaotic variation in human languages.

In The Boundaries of Babel, Andrea Moro tells the story of an encounter between two cultures: contemporary theoretical linguistics and the cognitive neurosciences. The study of language within a biological context has been ongoing for more than fifty years. The development of neuroimaging technology offers new opportunities to enrich the "biolinguistic perspective" and extend it beyond an abstract framework for inquiry. As a leading theoretical linguist in the generative tradition and also a cognitive scientist schooled in the new imaging technology, Moro is uniquely equipped to explore this.

Moro examines what he calls the "hidden" revolution in contemporary science: the discovery that the number of possible grammars is not infinite and that their number is biologically limited. This radical but little-discussed change in the way we look at language, he claims, will require us to rethink not just the fundamentals of linguistics and neurosciences but also our view of the human mind. Moro searches for neurobiological correlates of "the boundaries of Babel"—the constraints on the apparent chaotic variation in human languages—by using an original experimental design based on artificial languages. He offers a critical overview of some of the fundamental results from linguistics over the last fifty years, in particular regarding syntax, then uses these essential aspects of language to examine two neuroimaging experiments in which he took part. He describes the two neuroimaging techniques used (positron emission topography, or PET, and functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI), but makes it clear that techniques and machines do not provide interesting data without a sound theoretical framework. Finally, he discusses some speculative aspects of modern research in biolinguistics regarding the impact of the linear structure of linguistics expression on grammar, and more generally, some core aspects of language acquisition, genetics, and evolution.
Locality in Vowel Harmony
Authors: Nevins Andrew
Published: October 2013

A view of the locality conditions on vowel harmony, aligning empirical phenomena within phonology with the principles of the Minimalist program.

Vowel harmony results from a set of restrictions that determine the possible and impossible sequences of vowels within a word. The study of syntax begins with the observation that the words of a sentence cannot go in just any order, and the study of phonology begins with the same observation for the consonants and vowels of a word. In this book, Andrew Nevins investigates long-distance relations between vowels in vowel harmony systems across a range of languages, with the aim of demonstrating that the locality conditions that regulate these relations can be attributed to the same principle that regulates long-distance syntactic dependencies. He argues that vowel harmony represents a manifestation of the Agree algorithm for feature-valuation (formulated by Chomsky in 2000), as part of an overarching effort to show that phonology can be described in terms of the principles of the Minimalist program. Nevins demonstrates that the principle of target-driven search, the phenomenon of defective intervention, and the principles regulating the size of the domain over which dependencies are computed apply to both phonological and syntactic phenomena. Locality in Vowel Harmony offers phonologists new evidence that viewing vowel harmony through the lens of relativized minimality has the potential to unify different levels of linguistic representation and different domains of empirical inquiry in a unified framework. Moreover, Nevins's specific implementation of the locality of dependencies represents a major advance in understanding constraints on possible harmonic languages.An online tool on the MIT Press Web site demonstrates the algorithm for calculating vowel harmony with the derivations exemplified in the book.
Introducing Arguments
Authors: Pylkkänen Liina
Published: October 2013

A compositional theory of verbal argument structure that explores how “noncore” arguments are introduced into argument structures and examines cross-linguistic variation in introducing arguments.

This concise work offers a compositional theory of verbal argument structure in natural languages that focuses on how arguments that are not “core” arguments of the verb (arguments that are not introduced by verbal roots themselves) are introduced into argument structures. Liina Pylkkänen shows that the type of argument structure variation that allows additional noncore arguments is a pervasive property of human language and that most languages have verbs that exhibit this behavior. It would be natural to hypothesize that the grammatical elements that allow for this variation are the same in different languages, but Pylkkänen, citing the differences between the inventories of verbs that allow additional arguments in English and Venda, shows the difficulties in this assumption. Either the noncore arguments are introduced by different elements with different distributions, she argues, or the introducing elements are the same and some other factor is responsible for the distributional difference.

Distinguishing between these two types of explanations and articulating the properties of argument-introducing elements is the essence of Pylkkänen's theory. Investigating the grammatical elements that allow the addition of noncore arguments, Pylkkänen argues that the introduction of additional arguments is largely carried by seven functional heads. Following Chomsky, she claims that these belong to a universal inventory of functional elements from which a particular language must make its selection. Cross-linguistic variation, she argues, has two sources: selection; and the way a language packages the selected elements into syntactic heads.
Cogent Science in Context
Authors: Rehg William
Published: October 2013

A proposal for an interdisciplinary, context-sensitive framework for assessing the strength of scientific arguments that melds Jürgen Habermas's discourse theory and sociological contextualism.

Recent years have seen a series of intense, increasingly acrimonious debates over the status and legitimacy of the natural sciences. These “science wars” take place in the public arena—with current battles over evolution and global warming—and in academia, where assumptions about scientific objectivity have been called into question. Given these hostilities, what makes a scientific claim merit our consideration? In Cogent Science in Context, William Rehg examines what makes scientific arguments cogent—that is, strong and convincing—and how we should assess that cogency. Drawing on the tools of argumentation theory, Rehg proposes a multidimensional, context-sensitive framework both for understanding the cogency of scientific arguments and for conducting cooperative interdisciplinary assessments of the cogency of actual scientific arguments. Rehg closely examines Jürgen Habermas's argumentation theory and its implications for understanding cogency, applying it to a case from high-energy physics. A series of problems, however, beset Habermas's approach. In response, Rehg outlines his own “critical contextualist” approach, which uses argumentation-theory categories in a new and more context-sensitive way inspired by ethnography of science.
The Cosmetic Gaze
Authors: Wegenstein Bernadette
Published: October 2013

How the act of looking at our own and others' bodies is informed by the techniques, expectations, and strategies of body modification.

If the gaze can be understood to mark the disjuncture between how we see ourselves and how we want to be seen by others, the cosmetic gaze—in Bernadette Wegenstein's groundbreaking formulation—is one through which the act of looking at our bodies and those of others is already informed by the techniques, expectations, and strategies (often surgical) of bodily modification. It is, Wegenstein says, also a moralizing gaze, a way of looking at bodies as awaiting both physical and spiritual improvement. In The Cosmetic Gaze, Wegenstein charts this synthesis of outer and inner transformation.

Wegenstein shows how the cosmetic gaze underlies the “rebirth” celebrated in today's makeover culture and how it builds upon a body concept that has collapsed into its mediality. In today's beauty discourse—on reality TV and Web sites that collect “bad plastic surgery”—we yearn to experience a bettered self that has been reborn from its own flesh and is now itself, like a digitally remastered character in a classic Hollywood movie, immortal.

Wegenstein traces the cosmetic gaze from eighteenth-century ideas about physiognomy through television makeover shows and facial-recognition software to cinema—which, like our other screens, never ceases to show us our bodies as they could be, drawing life from the very cosmetic gaze it transmits.
The Crucible of Consciousness
Authors: Torey Zoltan
Published: October 2013

An interdisciplinary examination of the evolutionary breakthroughs that rendered the brain accessible to itself.

In The Crucible of Consciousness, Zoltan Torey offers a theory of the mind and its central role in evolution. He traces the evolutionary breakthrough that rendered the brain accessible to itself and shows how the mind-boosted brain works. He identifies what it is that separates the human's self-reflective consciousness from mere animal awareness, and he maps its neural and linguistic underpinnings. And he argues, controversially, that the neural technicalities of reflective awareness can be neither algorithmic nor spiritual—neither a computer nor a ghost in the machine.

The human mind is unique; it is not only the epicenter of our knowledge but also the outer limit of our intellectual reach. Not to solve the riddle of the self-aware mind, writes Torey, goes against the evolutionary thrust that created it. Torey proposes a model that brings into a single focus all the elements that make up the puzzle: how the brain works, its functional components and their interactions; how language evolved and how syntax evolved out of the semantic substrate by way of neural transactions; and why the mind-endowed brain deceives itself with entelechy-type impressions.

Torey first traces the language-linked emergence of the mind, the subsystem of the brain that enables it to be aware of itself. He then explores this system: how consciousness works, why it is not transparent to introspection, and what sense it makes in the context of evolution.

The “consciousness revolution” and the integrative focus of neuroscience have made it possible to make concrete formerly mysterious ideas about the human mind. Torey's model of the mind is the logical outcome of this, highlighting a coherent and meaningful role for a reflectively aware humanity.
Flow Cytometry–Based Cytotoxicity and Antibody Binding Assay
Authors: Alheim Mats
Published: October 2013

Human leukocyte antigen (HLA) antibodies with the ability to activate complement are associated with an increased risk of early antibody‐mediated graft rejection in kidney transplantation (KTx). Detection of these potentially harmful complement‐fixing HLA antibodies is commonly performed via the complement‐dependent cytotoxicity (CDC) assay according to protocols that were developed as early as 40 years ago. The read‐out for this assay is based on manual scoring by visual inspection of cells under a fluorescence microscope. CDC is often used in combination with the flow cytometry–based lymphocyte crossmatch assay (FCXM), which, with high sensitivity, detects HLA antibody binding. Here we describe a new approach wherein both cytotoxicity and antibody binding can be simultaneously assessed with flow cytometry. Two strategies are described, using either magnetic bead–enriched T and B lymphocytes or bulk peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) as donor target cells. Curr. Protoc. Cytom. 66:6.34.1‐6.34.11. © 2013 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Multiparameter Analysis of Apoptosis Using Lab‐on‐a‐Chip Flow Cytometry
Authors: Wlodkowic Donald , Skommer Joanna , Akagi Jin , Fujimura Yoo , Takeda Kazuo
Published: October 2013

The age of microfluidic flow cytometry (µFCM) is fast becoming a reality. One of the most exciting applications of miniaturized chip‐based cytometers is multivariate analysis using sampling volumes as small as 10 µl while matching the multiparameter data collection of conventional flow cytometers. We outline several innovative protocols for analyzing caspase‐dependent cell death and cell cycle (DNA‐content) profile using a fully integrated microfluidic flow cytometry system, Fishman‐R. The first protocol describes the use of a new plasma membrane–permeability marker, DRAQ7, and the fluorogenic caspase substrate PhiPhiLux to track caspase activation during programmed cell death. Also outlined is the use of DRAQ7 fluorochrome in conjunction with the mitochondrial membrane potential–sensitive probe TMRM to track dissipation of inner mitochondrial cross‐membrane potential. Another protocol adds the ability to measure dissipation of mitochondrial inner membrane potential (using TMRM probe) in relation to the cell cycle profile (using DRAQ5 probe) in living leukemic cells. Finally, we describe the combined use of fluorogenic caspases substrate PhiPhiLux with DRAQ5 probe to measure caspase activation in relation to the cell cycle profile in living tumor cells. Curr. Protoc. Cytom. 66:9.42.1‐9.42.15. © 2013 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
A novel active power quality compensator topology with DC voltage balancer for electrified railways
Authors: Soe Win Tint , Hiraki Eiji , Tanaka Toshihiko
Published: October 2013

This paper proposes a novel active power quality compensator (APQC) topology with a DC voltage balancer for electrified railways. The APQC is composed of a three‐leg structure with two common DC capacitors. Two legs perform as two half‐bridge inverters, which compensate the unbalanced active, reactive, and harmonic currents on the source side in the traction substation. The third leg controls two common DC capacitor voltages with a small amount of the output currents. Therefore, the current rating of the third leg can be reduced as compared to that of the already proposed three‐leg structured APQC. In the control algorithm of the two half‐bridge inverters, a strategy based on constant DC capacitor voltage control is used, which does not need any calculation blocks of the unbalanced active, reactive, and harmonic components of the load current to perform the APQC operation. Thus we offer the simplest algorithm for the proposed APQC. The basic principle of the proposed APQC topology with the DC voltage balancer is discussed in detail, and then confirmed by digital computer simulation using the PSIM software. A prototype experimental model is constructed and tested. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed APQC can achieve balanced and sinusoidal source currents on the primary side of the Scott transformer in traction substations for electrified railways. © 2013 Institute of Electrical Engineers of Japan. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Improvement of saturation property of iron powder core by flux homogenizing structure
Authors: Umetani Kazuhiro
Published: October 2013

A new core structure is proposed to improve the saturation property of an inductor made of iron powder core. In the conventional structure made of a single core material, converging flux lines cause local magnetic saturation at the inner side of the corners of the magnetic path. Therefore, the conventional inductor shows worse saturation property than expected from its core material. This degradation mechanism is solved in the proposed core structure through homogenization of the flux distribution at the corners. Experiments are performed to evaluate the flux homogenization and improvement of the saturation property. Results show a homogenized flux distribution in the proposed core structure. Furthermore, the flux level improved by 28% while the inductance decreased by 40% of its initial value. Both these results are consistent with theoretical expectations, except that a larger improvement is found in the experiment compared to the 16% improvement predicted by numerical calculation. © 2013 Institute of Electrical Engineers of Japan. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Preoperative Education in Cholecystectomy in the Context of a Multimodal Protocol of Perioperative Care: A Randomized, Controlled Trial
Authors: de Aguilar‐Nascimento José E. , Leal Fernando S. , Dantas Daniela C. S. , Anabuki Nadia T. , de Souza Amanda M. C. , Silva e Lima Verônica P. , Tanajura Guilherme H. , Canevari Mariana
Published: October 2013

Background

Preoperative education is a key point in multimodal protocols of perioperative care. We investigated whether preoperative education for patients undergoing open cholecystectomy would reduce the incidence of perioperative symptoms.

Methods

This was a randomized, single‐blinded, clinical trial that included adult (18–65 years old) candidates for elective open cholecystectomy. All patients took part in the ERAS/ACERTO protocol of perioperative care except that only the intervention group received preoperative education. The main endpoints of the study were the presence and intensity of postoperative symptoms (e.g., nausea, vomiting, pain) measured by a visual analogue scale, 24 h after the operation.

Results

A total of 74 patients (34 in the intervention group, 40 in the control group) completed the study. The intervention group had significantly lower median (interquartile range) scores for nausea [0 (4) vs. 2.5 (5.8), p = 0.04] and pain [0.2 (2.3) vs. 3.1 (3.45), p < 0.01] than the controls. High well‐being (score ≥6) was reported by 79.4 % (27 patients) of the intervention group in contrast to 57.5 % (23 patients) of the controls (p = 0.04).

Conclusions

Preoperative education is highly effective in the context of a multimodal protocol for enhancing the recovery of patients submitted to open cholecystectomy.
Acute Hand and Wrist Injuries Sustained during Recreational Mountain Biking: A Prospective Study
Authors: Bush Kevin , Meredith Steve , Demsey Daniel
Published: October 2013

Background

Recreational mountain biking continues to increase in popularity and is a significant source of traumatic injury, including injuries to the hand and wrist.

Methods

A prospective survey of all hand and wrist injuries sustained while participating in recreational mountain biking presenting to the emergency department at the Municipality of Whistler and the District of Squamish was conducted over a 12-month consecutive period.

Results

An analysis of 765 unique emergency department visits with 1,079 distinct injuries was performed. Of these injuries, 511 were sustained to the upper limb. Injury to the metacarpal and metacarpal phalangeal joints was the most common hand injury (52) followed by proximal phalanx and proximal interphalangeal joint (20).

Conclusions

Mountain biking is a frequent source of a variety of upper limb trauma, and preventative efforts are necessary to minimize the burden of these injuries.