Motion Sickness Manifestations and Prevention

Motion sickness is an ancient problem associated with transportation (ships and other vehicles), which is affecting humans since ages. Motion sickness is characteristically occurring during abnormal movements induced by the motion and when there is a conflict between various senses such as visual, vestibular and motor system. Depending on the type of motion, various kinds of sicknesses, such as air sickness, car sickness, train sickness, seasickness, etc. may occur. A very less per cent of individuals are highly susceptible to motion sickness and very less per cent of individuals are highly insusceptible for motion sickness. However, most of the population comes in between. The primary symptoms of motion sickness include nausea, vomiting, wanes, and cold sweating. Varieties of drugs are available to reduce susceptibility to motion sickness. However, nausea, pallor, sweating, headache, dizziness, malaise, increased salivation, apathy, drowsiness, belching, hyperventilation and stomach awareness are the other symptoms of motion sickness. Anti-cholinergics and anti-histamines are the most effective motion sickness prophylactics with apparent side effects such as dry mouth, drowsiness, and depression. There are theories and mechanisms which include intra-vestibular (Canal-Otolith) mismatch theory, sensory conflict theory, visual-vestibular mismatch theory, the poison theory, the postural instability theory, and the movement program theory. Benzodiazepines, anticholinergics, anti-histamines and monoamine antagonists have commonly used treatment regimes. The traditional way of tackling the problem is the consumption of ginger, peppermint, lemon, fennel, marjoram, rosemary, basil. This review summarizes prediction and evaluation, behavioural strategies to prevent or minimize symptoms of motion sickness and available countermeasures of motion sickness.

Introduction of Luo’s Theory - Timbre Evaluation of Musical Instruments

Luo’s theory is the first approach to an ancient problem: timbre evaluation of musical instruments and other acoustic sources. The invention of a series of timbre indexes based on rigorous mathematical definitions makes the quantitative analysis of artistic sense possible, which will benefit both instrument manufacturers and music player. A Matlab application is presented at the end of the paper.

Phyllotaxis Turns over a New Leaf – A Review

Sixty years ago in the lab adjacent to Fred Sanger (1958 Nobel Prize for protein chemistry), I discovered the cell surface hydroxyproline-rich glycoproteins. Nature keeps some of her secrets longer than others. It has taken many years to dissect the molecular function and biological role of extensins and arabinogalactan proteins (AGPs). Extensins template the formation of new cell walls. AGPs remained baffling and enigmatic until a Eureka moment when computer prediction of AGP calcium binding depicted paired glucuronic acid residues and thus the likely role of a cell surface AGP-Ca2+capacitor: In conjunction with the auxin-activated proton pump that releases bound Ca2+ it led us to formulate the Hechtian Growth Oscillator as A Global Paradigm with a pivotal role in Ca2+ homeostasis. The ramifications are profound. They cannot be shrugged off with sceptical disdain but demand critical reappraisal of current dogma. Phyllotaxis is an ancient problem; it involves an essential role for auxin and the auxin efflux “PIN” proteins together with mechanotransduction of stress-strain as phyllotactic determinants. However, a general explanation remains elusive despite much effort, particularly by mathematicians. Here we propose a novel biochemical algorithm: Hechtian oscillator transduction of cell wall stress generates phyllotactic patterns quite independent of a mathematical approach. Plants simply use different rules and follow a different route.

The emergence of integrated information, complexity, and consciousness at criticality

Using the critical Ising model of the brain, integrated information as a measure of consciousness is measured in toy models of generic neural networks. Monte Carlo simulations are run on 159 random weighted networks analogous to small 5-node neural network motifs. The integrated information generated by this sample of small Ising models is measured across the model parameter space. It is observed that integrated information, as a type of order parameter not unlike a concept like magnetism, undergoes a phase transition at the critical point in the model. This critical point is demarcated by the peaks of the generalized susceptibility of integrated information, a point where the ‘consciousness’ of the system is maximally susceptible to perturbations and on the boundary between an ordered and disordered form. This study adds further evidence to support that the emergence of consciousness coincides with the more universal patterns of self-organized criticality, evolution, the emergence of complexity, and the integration of complex systems.Author summaryUnderstanding consciousness through a scientific and mathematical language is slowly coming into reach and so testing and grounding these emerging ideas onto empirical observations and known systems is a first step to properly framing this ancient problem. This paper in particular explores the Integrated Information Theory of Consciousness framed within the physics of the Ising model to understand how and when consciousness, or integrated information, can arise in simple dynamical systems. The emergence of consciousness is treated like the emergence of other classical macroscopic observables in physics such as magnetism and understood as a dynamical phase of matter. Our findings show that the sensitivity of consciousness in a complex system is maximized when the system is undergoing a phase transition, also known as a critical point. This result, combined with a body of evidence highlighting the privelaged state of critical systems suggests that, like many other complex phenomenon, consciousness may simply follow from/emerge out of the tendency of a system to self-organize to criticality.

2. History

Poverty is an ancient problem. In the pre-modern period, poverty was synonymous with hunger, but the kind of poverty we recognize today arose with the emergence of the market economy. ‘History’ considers the range of factors acting within and across societies that had negative effects on vulnerable people in different historical periods: the agricultural societies before the 16th century; societal and governmental responses to poverty during the 16th and 17th centuries; the effects of colonialism in the 18th and 19th centuries; globalization, industrialization, and the expansion of international trade in the late 19th and early 20th centuries; and the precursors to modern anti-poverty programs after the Great Depression of the 1930s.

QUEM ESTÁ NO COMANDO? NEUROCIÊNCIA, RESSONÂNCIA E DESAFIOS PARA A TEOLOGIA

RESUMO: A relação entre corpo e alma ou entre corpo, alma e espírito é um pro­blema antigo da antropologia, inclusive na teologia cristã. A questão continua em pauta hoje diante de novas descobertas e teorias nas neurociências. Praticamente migrou para a discussão da relação entre cérebro e mente. Hoje é consenso bastante amplo que quem comanda o corpo é o cérebro. Se aceitarmos isto, quem está no comando do cérebro? Sou eu, em primeira pessoa, minha alma, minha mente? Ou seria “ele”, em terceira pessoa, nosso próprio cérebro me determinando? E como ficaria na segunda pessoa – o ser humano como estando em relação a Deus a quem o chama de “tu”? Querendo superar preconceitos contra uma neurociên­cia determinista e uma teologia despreocupada com a ciência – e estas próprias posições, onde são defendidas –, o presente artigo procura tratar da condição humana em sua liberdade sempre precária e tolhida. Recorrendo à abordagem neurobiológica e psiquiátrica de Joachim Bauer, argumenta pela importância das relações do ser humano com o outro, com Deus e com o mundo, numa forma de ressonância (Hartmut Rosa). ABSTRACT: The relationship between body and soul or between body, soul and spirit is an ancient problem of anthropology, and also of Christian theology. In view of present day discoveries and new neuroscientific theories, the issue poses itself afresh. It practically migrated to the discussion of the relationship between brain and mind. Today, there is ample consensus that it is the brain that is in charge of the body. If we accept that, then who is in charge of the brain? Is it me, in the first person, my soul, my mind? Or is it “him”, in the third person, our own brain that determines me? And how about the second person – the human being in its relationship with God whom it calls “you”? Striving to overcome prejudices against a deterministic neuroscience, on the one hand, and a theology indifferent to science – and, indeed, such positions, wherever they are held – the present article seeks to deal with the human condition in its freedom, always precarious and restrained. Referring to neurobiological and psychiatric insights from Joachim Bauer, it argues for the importance of the relationship of the human being with the other, with God and with the world, in a form of resonance (Hartmut Rosa).

Homelike Thermoregulation: How Physical Coldness Makes an Advertised House a Home

House brokers typically intuit that any type of warmth cause people to buy houses more frequently. Is this empirical reality? The authors investigated this through people’s attachment towards advertised houses. A wealth of research has now linked thermoregulation to relationships (cf. IJzerman et al., 2015), and here the authors purport that this extends to people’s relationships with house as a more novel solution to an ancient problem: Shielding from the cold. The present package tests a preregistered idea that colder temperatures increase people’s need to affiliate and, in turn, increase people’s estimations of how homely a house is (measured through communality). The hypotheses of the first two studies were partly right: The authors only found that actual lower temperatures (not motivation and through a cup and outside temperature) induced people to find a house more communal, predicted by their need to affiliate. Importantly, this even predicts whether people find the house more attractive, and increases their willingness to pay for the house (Studies 1 and Study 2). The third study did not pan out as predicted, but still affected people’s need to affiliate. The authors reason that this was caused by a methodological shortcoming (namely not directly being affected by temperature). The present work provides novel insights into how a house becomes a home.This paper was published in Journal of Experimental Social Psychology: Van Acker, B. B., Kerselaers, K., Pantophlet, J., & IJzerman, H. (2016). Homelike thermoregulation: How physical coldness makes an advertised house a home. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 67, 20-27.

A Mark of the Mental

How do thoughts get to be about the world, how do they refer to their contents? This book tackles the most tractable part of this ancient problem by offering a theory of original intentionality for (nonconceptual) sensory-perceptual representations. To pave the way, Neander discusses the role played by the notions of representation and representational content in cognitive science, and explain how it stems from combining a standard biological strategy for explaining how bodies and brains operate or function with a mainstream information-processing approach to explaining cognitive (including perceptual) capacities. The author also argues that this supports an informational version of teleosemantics, and develops the theory of content in three stages. First she elucidates how sensory-perceptual systems have response functions, and why the sensory-perceptual representations they produce may be said to refer to the causes in response to which they are, in that sense, supposed to be produced. Second, she explains how sensory-perceptual systems might therefore have functions to produce inner state changes that are both caused by and the analogs of their contents, and thus how analog relations (i.e., relations of second-order similarity) as well as causal-information relations can be content-constitutive. Finally, she discusses the notorious problem of distal content and offers a solution that ismost suited for (nonconceptual) sensory-perceptual representations. Along the way, the author solves six aspects of the content-indeterminacy problem.

Dante’s Vision

If we desire God with everything in us, how can we also love our created neighbor? Gilbert Meilaender displays Dante’s Paradiso as a resolution of this ancient problem. Jenson admires the beauty of Dante-according-according-to-Meilaender, but proposes that it must be tweaked a little to be fully satisfactory.