Gait change in tongue movement

During locomotion, humans switch gaits from walking to running, and horses from walking to trotting to cantering to galloping, as they increase their movement rate. It is unknown whether gait change leading to a wider movement rate range is limited to locomotive-type behaviours, or instead is a general property of any rate-varying motor system. The tongue during speech provides a motor system that can address this gap. In controlled speech experiments, using phrases containing complex tongue-movement sequences, we demonstrate distinct gaits in tongue movement at different speech rates. As speakers widen their tongue-front displacement range, they gain access to wider speech-rate ranges. At the widest displacement ranges, speakers also produce categorically different patterns for their slowest and fastest speech. Speakers with the narrowest tongue-front displacement ranges show one stable speech-gait pattern, and speakers with widest ranges show two. Critical fluctuation analysis of tongue motion over the time-course of speech revealed these speakers used greater effort at the beginning of phrases—such end-state-comfort effects indicate speech planning. Based on these findings, we expect that categorical motion solutions may emerge in any motor system, providing that system with access to wider movement-rate ranges.

COVID-19 PANDEMIC: DIRECTED OR NATURAL FLUCTUATION THAT CHANGES THE WORLD

The article presents a synergetic interpretation of the nature, mechanism, and role of the Covid-19 pandemic as a fluctuation that has undergone nucleation in the global system. The choice of methodological bases of our research is due to the fact that synergetics is considered today one of the new promising ways to understand the processes taking place in society, in social systems at the turning points of their development. We assume that this Covid-19 pandemic became the critical fluctuation that quickly spread throughout the world. Today, the global system is in a state of imbalance, in which old connections and structures have been destroyed or are being destroyed, and new ones have not yet been formed. As a result, it fell into the bifurcation zone, where further development becomes unpredictable. The modern world is facing another challenge of history. Therefore, today it is extremely important to determine the range of possible attractors of further evolution of the global system and, at the same time, those that are achievable and favorable to humanity. From a philosophical point of view, we can talk about being that appears before our eyes, about the birth of a new reality in which we have to live. It was found that the synergetic methodology involves the creation (consciously) of the necessary conditions for the introduction into the system of the desired fluctuation with signs of a new desired quality, and promote its nucleation. This will lead to the formation of new organizational integrity and the transition to a new evolutionary channel of development. That is why today, various conspiracy theories about the origin of the Covid-19 pandemic are actively spreading. The attitude to them is ambiguous. However, several facts force us to analyze them and draw appropriate conclusions carefully. It is noted that the lack of reliable information does not yet allow us to give an unambiguous answer about the nature of this fluctuation. However, there is no doubt that it has become a powerful factor in forming a new reality, a bifurcation transition to a new – and, so far, not clearly defined – attractor of the evolution of the global system.

Multicomponent fluctuation spectrum at the quantum critical point in CeCu6−xAgx

Quantum critical points (QCPs) are widely accepted as a source of a diverse set of collective quantum phases of matter. The basic nature of a QCP is manifested in the critical fluctuation spectrum which in turn is determined by the adjacent phases and associated order parameters. Here we show that the critical fluctuation spectrum of CeCu5.8Ag0.2 can not be explained by fluctuations associated with a single wave vector. Interestingly, when the critical fluctuations at wave vectors corresponding to the incommensurate antiferromagnetic order adjacent to the QCP are separated they are found to be three dimensional and to obey the scaling behavior expected for long wavelength fluctuations near an itinerant antiferromagnetic QCP. Without this separation, E/T scaling with a fractional exponent is observed. Together these results demonstrate that a multicomponent fluctuation spectrum is a previously unexplored route to obtaining E/T scaling at a QCP.