Emotion at the Edge

It is a modernist article of faith that emotion belongs to the human subject—that it is possessed by this subject from within. We find this view espoused by thinkers as various as Descartes, Hume, and Kant. It is also found in the conventional belief that emotions have their seat “in the heart.” In this essay I explore an alternative paradigm whereby emotion exists as much, if not more, at the outer edges of the subject: in expressive gestures and other forms of what I call “exophany,” i.e., the showing-forth of emotion from without. Instead of concerning ourselves with the endogeny of emotions—its internal generation in the body, brain, or soul—I look at the peripherality of emotions. Examining concrete examples, I demonstrate that emotions are transmissible thanks to their capacity for being located at the edges of our lives.

Investment Cash Flow Sensitivity and Tobin’s Q: The Case of Advanced Emerging Markets in Latin America

This paper examines whether the capital market and the internal generation of cash flows bring relevant information to decisions on corporate investments. For this investigation, we used data from 255 companies located in four Latin American (LA) countries: Brazil, Chile, Mexico and Peru (BCMP countries). The analysis period is from 2000 to 2017. The results indicate that cash flow represents one of the main drivers of corporate investments. In contrast, there were no indications that the capital market translates into a mechanism for transmitting useful information to firm managers about investments. Other drivers of value identified are associated with sales, cash and cash equivalents, and asset tangibility.

Specification of Trace Metal Contamination for Image Sensors

CMOS image sensors can suffer from background noise in absence of any light. In order to suppress this it is important to keep this noise, referred to as dark-current low. This implies that the internal generation current should be very low. Trace metal impurities have been reported to increase the generation current. In this study the trap-assisted generation current contributions due to 7 different metal impurities have been calculated. It was concluded that Cu and Mn impurities yield the highest generation current contribution.

CAP support as a source of capital and labour productivity – analytical considerations

The level of internal generation of financial funds, i.e. savings, is limited by the achieved productivity and profitability of production. As aside not, it appears easier to overcome the income problem as the basis for that generation of savings by means of interventionism and the underlying transfer of funds from other fields of operation through the national and EU budget to the agricultural holdings. This is a supplementation of the internally generated funds. In the paper, the authors will signal the basic relations between the savings (and external subsidies), investments and increase in production capital of an agricultural producer and an increase of its labour productivity as a basis of growth of income. The goal is to demonstrate the following relations in this respect that form an intrinsic circuitous movement with mutual interdependencies. For the proof of legitimacy, an analytical model with empirical illustrations will be used. Keywords: agricultural producers, income, efficiency, transfers, subsidies and support for agriculture

Improving the Sound Pressure Level of Two-Dimensional Audio Actuators by Coating Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes on Piezoelectric Films

As devices for amplifying or transforming electronic signals into audible signals through electromechanical operations, acoustic actuators in the form of loudspeakers are usually solid structures in three dimensional space. Recently there has been increasing demand for mobile electronic devices, such as mobile phones, to become smaller, thinner, and lighter. In contrast to a three dimensional audio system with magnets, we have invented a new type of flexible two dimensional device by utilizing the reverse piezoelectric effect in certain piezoelectric materials. Crystalline piezoelectric materials show electromechanical interaction between the mechanical state and the electrically-charged state. The piezoelectric effect is a reversible process in that materials exhibiting the direct piezoelectric effect (the internal generation of electrical charge resulting from an applied mechanical force) also exhibit the reverse piezoelectric effect (the internal generation of a mechanical strain resulting from an applied electrical field). We have adopted the plasma surface treatment in order to put coating materials on the surface of piezoelectric film. We compared two kinds of coating material, indium tin oxide and single-walled carbon nanotube, and found that single-walled carbon nanotube shows better performance. The results showed improvement of output power in a wider range of operating frequency; for the surface resistance of 0.5 kΩ/square, the single-walled CNT shows the range of operating frequency to be 0.75–17.5 kHz, but ITO shows 2.5–13.4 kHz. For the surface resistance of 1 kΩ/square, single-walled CNT shows the range of operating frequency to be 0.81–17 kHz, but ITO shows it cannot generate audible sound.