Effectiveness of osteopathic care in the treatment of infant positional posterior plagiocephaly

Introduction. Posterior Positional plagiocephaly (PPP) is a cranial deformation seen in infants. The case number increased since 1992, following the supine sleeping advice. Most of the time several factors are combining together, leading to a multi-level lack of mobility of the infant, thus leading to the cranial deformation. Studies show this deformation to be linked with perturbations in various fields.Objective. This study aims to assess the efficacy of osteopathic care on the severity of the PPP.Materials and methods. 100 infants were recruited in an osteopathic practice in Lyon (France). All the infants followed the same study protocol; however, the treatment was individualized. Three consultations occurred with a 15 days′ interval over 30 days′ period. Craniometric measurements were realized with Mimos® craniometer on each consultation.Results. The mean severity of the PPP was 10,1 mm at Day 0. At day 30, this average was down to 6 mm. It is a significant (p<0,001) clinical and statistical decrease. Out of the 100 infants, 98 had a decreased deformation while two stagnated.Conclusions. As every infant is unique, every plagiocephaly is different, thus the treatment was not standardised. This study suggest some effectiveness for osteopathic care in the cranial asymmetry of infants with PPP. Other studies should be done, some with a control group, in order to compare our results with spontaneous evolution of plagiocaphaly.

International Arbitration As A Spontaneous Legal Order

Methodological Individualism (or better, praxeology) is essential to understand social phenomena. Praxeology should be applied not only to the study of the social process but also to the study of the different aspects of this process, such as Economics, Law, and Institutions. Hence, social sciences, including the Law (and International Arbitration within it) should therefore be studied from Methodological Individualism. There have been very few attempts to draw up a legal theory of arbitration. The lack of a comprehensive theory capable of explaining Arbitration’s foundation may have undesired results, both with regard to its (mal-) functioning and its future survival. We argue in this paper that praxeology, as the science that studies the logic of human action, and the theory of the spontaneous evolution of institutions, is the only methodology that can explain International Arbitration integrally. International arbitration is a means by which international disputes can be definitely resolved, pursuant to the parties’ agreement, by impartial, non-public decision-makers, appointed by or for the parties, applying neutral judicial procedures that provide the parties an opportunity to be heard. Today it is the main mechanism for solving international disputes involving States, individuals, and/or corporations. International arbitration is also a social-juridical institution of spontaneous evolution. Key Words: Austrian School of Economics, Methodological Individualism, International Arbitration, Spontaneous Market Order, Social Evolution of Institutions JEL Classification: K4, K19, K33 Resumen: El Individualismo Metodológico (o, si se prefiere, la praxeología) es imprescindible para entender los fenómenos sociales. La praxeología se debe aplicar no sólo al estudio del proceso social sino también al estudio de los distintos aspectos de este proceso, como son la Economía, el Derecho y las Instituciones. Por tanto, las ciencias sociales, incluyendo el Derecho (y dentro del mismo el Arbitraje Internacional) deben ser estudiadas desde el Individualismo Metodológico. Hasta ahora ha habido muy pocos intentos de construir una teoría jurídica del arbitraje. La falta de una teoría exhaustiva capaz de explicar el fundamento del Arbitraje puede tener resultados poco deseables, tanto respecto a su (mal) funcionamiento como respecto a su supervivencia futura. En este artículo argumentamos que la praxeología, como la ciencia que estudia la lógica de la acción humana, así como la teoría de la evolución espontánea de las instituciones, es la única metodología que puede explicar el Arbitraje internacional de forma integral. El arbitraje internacional es una vía por la que las controversias internacionales se pueden resolver de forma definitiva, conforme al acuerdo de las partes, por terceros imparciales y privados, designados por o para las partes, y aplicando procedimientos jurídicos neutrales que brindan a las mismas el derecho de audiencia. Actualmente, es el principal mecanismo utilizado para resolver controversias internacionales que involucran a Estados, individuos, y/o corporaciones. El Arbitraje Internacional es además una institución jurídico-social de evolución espontánea. Palabras clave: Escuela Austriaca de Economía, Individualismo Metodológico, Arbitraje Internacional, Orden Espontáneo de Mercado, Teoría Evolutiva de las Instituciones. Clasificación JEL: K4, K19, K33

Steering complex networks toward desired dynamics

We consider networks of dynamical units that evolve in time according to different laws, and are coupled to each other in highly irregular ways. Studying how to steer the dynamics of such systems towards a desired evolution is of great practical interest in many areas of science, as well as providing insight into the interplay between network structure and dynamical behavior. We propose a pinning protocol for imposing specific dynamic evolutions compatible with the equations of motion on a networked system. The method does not impose any restrictions on the local dynamics, which may vary from node to node, nor on the interactions between nodes, which may adopt in principle any nonlinear mathematical form and be represented by weighted, directed or undirected links. We first explore our method on small synthetic networks of chaotic oscillators, which allows us to unveil a correlation between the ordered sequence of pinned nodes and their topological influence in the network. We then consider a 12-species trophic web network, which is a model of a mammalian food web. By pinning a relatively small number of species, one can make the system abandon its spontaneous evolution from its (typically uncontrolled) initial state towards a target dynamics, or periodically control it so as to make the populations evolve within stipulated bounds. The relevance of these findings for environment management and conservation is discussed.

Enhancing network modularity to mitigate catastrophic forgetting

Catastrophic forgetting occurs when learning algorithms change connections used to encode previously acquired skills to learn a new skill. Recently, a modular approach for neural networks was deemed necessary as learning problems grow in scale and complexity since it intuitively should reduce learning interference by separating functionality into physically distinct network modules. However, an algorithmic approach is difficult in practice since it involves expert design and trial and error. Kashtan et al. finds that evolution under an environment that changes in a modular fashion leads to the spontaneous evolution of a modular network structure. In this paper, we aim to solve the reverse problem of modularly varying goal (MVG) to obtain a highly modular structure that can mitigate catastrophic forgetting so that it can also apply to realistic data. First, we confirm that a configuration with a highly modular structure exists by applying an MVG against a realistic dataset and confirm that this neural network can mitigate catastrophic forgetting. Next, we solve the reverse problem, that is, we propose a method that can obtain a highly modular structure able to mitigate catastrophic forgetting. Since the MVG-obtained neural network can relatively maintain the intra-module elements while leaving the inter-module elements relatively variable, we propose a method to restrict the inter-module weight elements so that they can be relatively variable against the intra-module ones. From the results, the obtained neural network has a highly modular structure and can learn an unlearned goal faster than without this method.

Capturing Spotaneous Software Evolution in a Social Coding Platform With Project-as-a-City Concept

Social coding platforms (SCPs) have realized spontaneous software evolution, where new source code and ideas are spontaneously proposed by altruistic developers. Although there are many projects operated by active communities performing spontaneous evolution, it is yet unclear that how such successful projects and communities have been formed and governed. This article proposes a method that can investigate the history of every project in the SCP. Introducing the concept of project as a city, the authors consider every project in the SCP as a city, where a government and citizens develop a city through collaborative activities. This research then identifies essential attributes that characterize a state of a city. For each attribute, the authors develop metrics that quantify the state S(p; t) of a project p at time t. An experimental evaluation investigating GitHub projects of famous code editors shows that the proposed metrics well visualize the history of the projects from essential perspectives of a city.