Mapping Continents, Inhabited Quarters and The Four Seas. Divisions of the World and the Ordering of Spaces in Latin-Christian, Arabic-Islamic and Chinese Cartography in the Twelfth to Sixteenth Centuries. A Critical Survey and Analysis

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 295-367 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christoph Mauntel ◽  
Klaus Oschema ◽  
Jean-Charles Ducène ◽  
Martin Hofmann

Abstract This paper explores the presence and development of large-scale geographic categories in pre-modern cartography (twelfth to sixteenth centuries) in a combination of comparative and transcultural perspectives. Analysing Latin-Christian, Arabic-Islamic and Chinese maps, we demonstrate the varying degrees of importance accorded to large-scale geographic structures. The choice of related as well as independent traditions allows for the identification of specific emphases which reflect the influence of the respective cultural backgrounds and strategies applied in the ordering of space. While the analysed Chinese material concentrates on a geographical space that was perceived to form an ideal political and cultural unity without representing the entire physical world, Latin-Christian and Arabic-Islamic traditions share the focus on the whole “oecumene” that they both inherited from antique models. However, only Latin-Christian maps consistently and explicitly present a tripartite world that resonates with Trinitarian structures in Christian thought.

2017 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 4747-4750
Author(s):  
Devin Hardy

Many attempts have been made at the unification of General Relativity (GR) and Quantum Theory (QT), but there is a fundamental error made with these attempts, as we will discuss. What is the point of such theories? Well, obviously to describe the physical world we live in. QT describes what happens on the tiny scale, and GR describes what happens to bodies on a large scale. The fundamental error in unifying the two subjects is that QT doesn’t provide the physical happenings for GR to work, or in other words, QT describes why the world is the way it is, but not how, and this does not philosophically suffice in GR. Must we simply give up, in that the subjects are two different entities? I think the answer is that we mustn’t. I think that we should put one theory in terms of the basic mechanics of the other, perhaps by simplifying, or perhaps by taking the physical reality to be our guide. Do I believe QT describes the world? Accurately. Do I believe that QT is the physical truth? Of course not… it is simply a mathematical construct to provide a model that allows for us to predict future outcomes. I will begin very simplistic, but the goal for the first part of the paper is to Classically describe the physical mechanics of QT. I will stick with particles in their ground state, and hence no translational motion.


Author(s):  
Katherine Clarke

This is a book about the multiple worlds that Herodotus creates in his narrative. The constructed landscape in Herodotus’ work incorporates his literary representation of the natural world from the broadest scope of continents right down to the location of specific episodes. His ‘charging’ of those settings through mythological associations and spatial parallels adds further depth and resonance. The physical world of the Histories is in turn altered by characters in the narrative whose interactions with the natural world form part of Herodotus’ inquiry, and add another dimension to the meaning given to space, combining notions of landscape as physical reality and as constructed reality. Geographical space is not a neutral backdrop, nor simply to be seen as Herodotus’ ‘creation’, but it is brought to life as a player in the narrative, the interaction with which reinforces the positive or negative characterizations of the protagonists. Analysis of focalization is embedded in this study of Herodotean geography in two ways—firstly, in the configurations of space contributed by different viewpoints on the world; and secondly, in the opinions about human interaction with geographical space which emerge from different narrative voices. The multivocal nature of the narrative complicates whether we can identify a single ‘Herodotean’ world, still less one containing consistent moral judgements. Furthermore, the mutability of fortune renders impossible a static Herodotean world, as successive imperial powers emerge. The exercise of political power, manifested metaphorically and literally through control over the natural world, generates a constantly evolving map of imperial geography.


Author(s):  
Stephen Grossberg

The book is the culmination of 50 years of intensive research by the author, who is broadly acknowledged to be the most important pioneer and current research leader who models how brains give rise to minds, notably how neural circuits in multiple brain regions interact together to generate psychological functions. The book provides a unified understanding of how, where, and why our brains can consciously see, hear, feel, and know about the world, and effectively plan and act within it. It hereby embodies a revolutionary Principia of Mind that clarifies how autonomous adaptive intelligence is achieved, thereby providing mechanistic explanations of multiple mental disorders, biological bases of morality, religion, and the human condition, as well as solutions to large-scale problems in machine learning, technology, and Artificial Intelligence. Because brains embody a universal developmental code, unifying insights also emerge about all living cellular tissues and about how mental laws reflect laws of the physical world.


2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 103-106
Author(s):  
ASTEMIR ZHURTOV ◽  

Cruel and inhumane acts that harm human life and health, as well as humiliate the dignity, are prohibited in most countries of the world, and Russia is no exception in this issue. The article presents an analysis of the institution of responsibility for torture in the Russian Federation. The author comes to the conclusion that the current criminal law of Russia superficially and fragmentally regulates liability for torture, in connection with which the author formulated the proposals to define such act as an independent crime. In the frame of modern globalization, the world community pays special attention to the protection of human rights, in connection with which large-scale international standards have been created a long time ago. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international acts enshrine prohibitions of cruel and inhumane acts that harm human life and health, as well as degrade the dignity.Considering the historical experience of the past, these standards focus on the prohibition of any kind of torture, regardless of the purpose of their implementation.


1993 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 165-177
Author(s):  
Karen Harding

Ate appearances deceiving? Do objects behave the way they do becauseGod wills it? Ate objects impetmanent and do they only exist becausethey ate continuously created by God? According to a1 Ghazlli, theanswers to all of these questions ate yes. Objects that appear to bepermanent are not. Those relationships commonly tefemed to as causalare a result of God’s habits rather than because one event inevitably leadsto another. God creates everything in the universe continuously; if Heceased to create it, it would no longer exist.These ideas seem oddly naive and unscientific to people living in thetwentieth century. They seem at odds with the common conception of thephysical world. Common sense says that the universe is made of tealobjects that persist in time. Furthermore, the behavior of these objects isreasonable, logical, and predictable. The belief that the univetse is understandablevia logic and reason harkens back to Newton’s mechanical viewof the universe and has provided one of the basic underpinnings ofscience for centuries. Although most people believe that the world is accutatelydescribed by this sort of mechanical model, the appropriatenessof such a model has been called into question by recent scientificadvances, and in particular, by quantum theory. This theory implies thatthe physical world is actually very different from what a mechanicalmodel would predit.Quantum theory seeks to explain the nature of physical entities andthe way that they interact. It atose in the early part of the twentieth centuryin response to new scientific data that could not be incorporated successfullyinto the ptevailing mechanical view of the universe. Due largely ...


Author(s):  
J. Robert G. Williams

What is representation? How do the more primitive aspects of our world come together to generate it? How do different kinds of representation relate to one another? This book identifies the metaphysical foundations for representational facts. The story told is in three parts. The most primitive layer of representation is the ‘aboutness’ of sensation/perception and intention/action, which are the two most basic modes in which an individual and the world interact. It is argued that we can understand how this kind of representation can exist in a fundamentally physical world so long as we have an independent, illuminating grip on functions and causation. The second layer of representation is the ‘aboutness’ of (degrees of) belief and desire, whose representational content goes far beyond the immediate perceptable and manipulable environment. It is argued that the correct belief/desire interpretation of an agent is the one which makes their action-guiding states, given their perceptual evidence, most rational. The final layer of representation is the ‘aboutness’ of words and sentences, human artefacts with representational content. It is argued that one can give an illuminating account of the conditions under which a compositional interpretation of a public language like English is correct by appeal to patterns emerging from the attitudes conventionally expressed by sentences. The three-layer metaphysics of representation resolves long-standing underdetermination puzzles, predicts and explains patterns in the way that concepts denote, and articulates a delicate interactive relationship between the foundations of language and thought.


Epidemiologia ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 315-324
Author(s):  
Juan M. Banda ◽  
Ramya Tekumalla ◽  
Guanyu Wang ◽  
Jingyuan Yu ◽  
Tuo Liu ◽  
...  

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to spread worldwide, an unprecedented amount of open data is being generated for medical, genetics, and epidemiological research. The unparalleled rate at which many research groups around the world are releasing data and publications on the ongoing pandemic is allowing other scientists to learn from local experiences and data generated on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, there is a need to integrate additional data sources that map and measure the role of social dynamics of such a unique worldwide event in biomedical, biological, and epidemiological analyses. For this purpose, we present a large-scale curated dataset of over 1.12 billion tweets, growing daily, related to COVID-19 chatter generated from 1 January 2020 to 27 June 2021 at the time of writing. This data source provides a freely available additional data source for researchers worldwide to conduct a wide and diverse number of research projects, such as epidemiological analyses, emotional and mental responses to social distancing measures, the identification of sources of misinformation, stratified measurement of sentiment towards the pandemic in near real time, among many others.


2021 ◽  
Vol 56 (1) ◽  
pp. 112-130 ◽  
Author(s):  
Haifeng Huang

AbstractFor a long time, since China’s opening to the outside world in the late 1970s, admiration for foreign socioeconomic prosperity and quality of life characterized much of the Chinese society, which contributed to dissatisfaction with the country’s development and government and a large-scale exodus of students and emigrants to foreign countries. More recently, however, overestimating China’s standing and popularity in the world has become a more conspicuous feature of Chinese public opinion and the social backdrop of the country’s overreach in global affairs in the last few years. This essay discusses the effects of these misperceptions about the world, their potential sources, and the outcomes of correcting misperceptions. It concludes that while the world should get China right and not misinterpret China’s intentions and actions, China should also get the world right and have a more balanced understanding of its relationship with the world.


Nanophotonics ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (9) ◽  
pp. 3003-3010
Author(s):  
Jiacheng Shi ◽  
Wen Qiao ◽  
Jianyu Hua ◽  
Ruibin Li ◽  
Linsen Chen

AbstractGlasses-free augmented reality is of great interest by fusing virtual 3D images naturally with physical world without the aid of any wearable equipment. Here we propose a large-scale spatial multiplexing holographic see-through combiner for full-color 3D display. The pixelated metagratings with varied orientation and spatial frequency discretely reconstruct the propagating lightfield. The irradiance pattern of each view is tailored to form super Gaussian distribution with minimized crosstalk. What’s more, spatial multiplexing holographic combiner with customized aperture size is adopted for the white balance of virtually displayed full-color 3D scene. In a 32-inch prototype, 16 views form a smooth parallax with a viewing angle of 47°. A high transmission (>75%) over the entire visible spectrum range is achieved. We demonstrated that the displayed virtual 3D scene not only preserved natural motion parallax, but also mixed well with the natural objects. The potential applications of this study include education, communication, product design, advertisement, and head-up display.


npj Vaccines ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nikolaos C. Kyriakidis ◽  
Andrés López-Cortés ◽  
Eduardo Vásconez González ◽  
Alejandra Barreto Grimaldos ◽  
Esteban Ortiz Prado

AbstractThe new SARS-CoV-2 virus is an RNA virus that belongs to the Coronaviridae family and causes COVID-19 disease. The newly sequenced virus appears to originate in China and rapidly spread throughout the world, becoming a pandemic that, until January 5th, 2021, has caused more than 1,866,000 deaths. Hence, laboratories worldwide are developing an effective vaccine against this disease, which will be essential to reduce morbidity and mortality. Currently, there more than 64 vaccine candidates, most of them aiming to induce neutralizing antibodies against the spike protein (S). These antibodies will prevent uptake through the human ACE-2 receptor, thereby limiting viral entrance. Different vaccine platforms are being used for vaccine development, each one presenting several advantages and disadvantages. Thus far, thirteen vaccine candidates are being tested in Phase 3 clinical trials; therefore, it is closer to receiving approval or authorization for large-scale immunizations.


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