Real, rubber or virtual: The vision of “one’s own” body as a means for pain modulation. A narrative review

In the last few years a branch of pain research has been focussing on the modulatory effects of the vision of the body on pain perception. So, for instance, the vision of one’s own real body has been proven to induce analgesic effects. On the other hand, bodily illusions such as the rubber hand illusion have provided new tools for the study of perceptual processes during altered body ownership states. Recently, new paradigms of body ownership made use of a technology that is going places both in clinical and in experimental settings, i.e. virtual reality. While the vision of one’s own real body has been proven to yield compelling analgesic effects, slightly more controversial are those attributed to the vision of “owned” dummy bodies. This review will discuss the studies that examined the effects on pain perception of the vision of the own body, with or without body ownership illusions.

Lucrecio, "De rerum natura": Sentido y coherencia del prólogo

El prólogo del De rerum natura de Lucrecio (1.1-148) parece ser un tema gastado: ha sido tratado decenas de veces tanto por su excelente calidad como por los problemas que plantea. Pero esperamos poder dar un nuevo sentido y solución a ambos aspectos. En primer lugar, el himno a Venus no es una mera convención, sino que respira sentimiento religioso; Venus no personifica a la naturaleza, sino al placer y la felicidad y ni la hegemonía que se dice ejerce Venus, ni las plegarias que contiene el himno contradicen la teología epicúrea. Todavía más, nos parece que el himno constituye una auténtica epifanía religiosa muy propia de la teología epicúrea. En segundo lugar, suponiendo que el autor ha tomado como tema compartido los schemata o grados de dificultad de la intellectio retórica en el texto de 1.50-148, se intentan solucionar las dificultades de coherencia del texto.

Reproducing violence: Rihanna, Chris Brown and the aestheticisation of the Ciudad Juarez Femicides.

When Kate and Laura Mulleavy of Rodarte worked with MAC to create their Autumn/Winter 2010 makeup collection and based their ideas on the murdered women of Ciudad Juarez, there was a public and industry outcry which led to the withdrawal of cosmetics with names such as ‘Factory’ ‘Juarez’ and ‘Ghost Town’. Rodarte tapped into the borderland mythologies of Juarez and crated an illusory fantasy world which sought to simultaneously obliterate and venerate the dead women. One eyeshadow, ‘Bordertown’, appears to look like chunks of rotting flesh streaked with blood. The models for their catwalk show had hollow blackened eyes, green-white pallor and lips that had been bloodlessly ‘lip-erased’ with a product specifically designed for the purpose. In Spanish, maquillar is to make up, to assemble. The women in the factories are asked to repeat simple mechanical operations thousands of times a day to make up the products which will be sold by global corporations. At the same time their images are being assembled, made up and aestheticized to create a cosmetic erasure of the crimes which they are subject to. When two American women and a global company make profit from this dangerous cosmetic erasure in order to sell products, the borders between bodies, countries, art and crime become leaky through the act and the illusion of symbiosis between the women of Ciudad Juarez and the products they inspired is threatened by the haunting of exploitation. Since then, the situation has become more complex. Chris Brown got a neck tattoo, based, he says, on the promotional material produced by MAC for the Rodarte sisters campaign. The image, which is of a skull, bears a striking resemblance to the police photographs of his ex, and now current, girlfriend, superstar Rihanna. The controversy over gendered violence, race and exploitation, begun by Rodarte and MAC, came back, haunting, once again. This paper seeks to address these connections, and ask what happens when domestic violence collides with globalism, fashion and murder.

Les enjeux sémiotiques de la perception dans L’Étranger d’Albert Camus

Considered as a romantic incarnation of author’s ideas, L’Etranger put us in front of the absurd through the problematic character of Meursault, often studied and commented as subject of this philosophical attitude. The absurd presupposes a relationship between man and the world and is thus inevitably linked to perception: a sensory experience then founds the discourse of the novel, establishing Meursault as percipient/enunciator subject. We will use the resources offered by semiotics of discourse in its phenomenological version for analyzing the perceptual path of Meursault and especially to consider the question of Camus’s absurd under a new light

¡Deshagan juego! Paradojas de una lectura cómplice de la ficción policíaca en L’absolue perfection du crime de Tanguy Viel

Delusion and gamble, but also failure and disillusion are some of the most striking features of The Absolute Perfection of Crime, a novel that encloses its own reading instructions, which are intimately linked to film codes and the idea of remake. Tanguy Viel’s work manages to stage the frailness of fiction, halfway between the signified and the signifier, critical detachment and fictional illusion. Following the anthropological approach to game theory and the theory of literary genres, this paper aims to analyze the inner functioning of the representation tools at work in the novel as a means to highlight the paradoxical role granted to the reader.

Du western au crépusculaire : textualités et narrativités du genre pour une approche de l'image-fin

Notre étude porte le western crépusculaire et cherche plus précisément à extraire le « crépusculaire » du genre. L'épithète « crépusculaire », héritée du vocabulaire critique des années 1960 et 1970, définit généralement un nombre relativement restreint d'œuvres dont le récit met en scène des cowboys vieillissants dans un style qui privilégie un réalisme esthétique et psychologique, fréquemment associé à un révisionnisme historique, voire au « western pro-indien », mais qui se démarque par sa propension à filmer des protagonistes fatigués et dépassés par la marche de l'Histoire. Par un détour sur les formes littéraires ayant comme contexte diégétique l’Ouest américain (dime-novel et romans de la frontière), nous effectuons des allers et retours entre les formes épique et romanesque, entre l’Histoire et son mythe, entre le littéraire et le filmique pour mieux saisir la relation dyadique qu’entretient le western avec l’écriture, d’une part monumentale et d’autre part critique, de l’Histoire. Moins intéressée à l’esthétique des images qu’aux aspects narratologiques du film pris comme texte, notre approche tire profit des analyses littéraires pour remettre en cause les classifications étanches qui ont marqué l’évolution du western cinématographique. Nous étudions, à partir des intuitions d’André Bazin au sujet du sur-western, les modulations narratives du western ainsi que l’émergence d’une conscience critique à partir de ses héros mythologiques (notamment le cow-boy). Notre approche est à la fois épistémologique et transhistorique en ce qu’elle cherche à dégager du western crépusculaire un genre au-delà des genres, fondé sur une incitation à la narrativisation crépusculaire de la part du spectateur. Cette dernière, concentrée par une approche deleuzienne de l’image-cristal, renvoie non plus seulement à une conception existentialiste du personnage dans l’Histoire, mais aussi à une mise en relief pointue du hors-cadre du cinéma, moment de clairvoyance à la fois pragmatique et historicisant que nous définissons comme une image-fin, une image chronogénétique relevant de la contemporanéité de ses figures et de leurs auteurs.

A single theoretical framework for circular features processing in humans: orientation and direction of motion compared

Common computational principles underlie processing of various visual features in the cortex. They are considered to create similar patterns of contextual modulations in behavioral studies for different features as orientation and direction of motion. Here, I studied the possibility that a single theoretical framework, implemented in different visual areas, of circular feature coding and processing could explain these similarities in observations. Stimuli were created that allowed direct comparison of the contextual effects on orientation and motion direction with two different psychophysical probes: changes in weak and strong signal perception. One unique simplified theoretical model of circular feature coding including only inhibitory interactions, and decoding through standard vector average, successfully predicted the similarities in the two domains, while different feature population characteristics explained well the differences in modulation on both experimental probes. These results demonstrate how a single computational principle underlies processing of various features across the cortices.

Erratum: A single theoretical framework for circular features processing in humans: orientation and direction of motion compared (vol 6, pg 28, 2012)

Erratum to: A single theoretical framework for circular features processing in humans: orientation and direction of motion compared. In: Frontiers in computational neuroscience 6 (2012), 28

Inkluzja szkolna uczniów z rodzin ubogich – iluzja czy rzeczywistość?

Poverty among children and young people turns out to be a significant social problem in Poland. The complexity and multi-dimensional consequences of the impoverishment of the young generation families calls not only for social help provided by the state but also for effective actions of the school environment. The following text attempts to answer the key question phrased in the title. It may be referred to as a source of information on significant problems of the school environment reality which demand further reflection and proper action. The research was carried out in 2014 among 146 urban and rural school teachers with the use of a diagnostic survey. The main tool which helped to gather information was a questionnaire survey as well as an open interview. The survey results helped to estimate the situation in a comparative perspective of the diagnosed schools with references to the best practices from other European countries.

Análisis histórico constructivo de la iglesia de Santo Domingo de Guzmán (Pajarejos, Segovia) por medio del análisis estratigráfico constructivo

El artículo ilustra el potencial del análisis estratigráfico, un método arqueológico para leer la información contenida en los paramentos, para la obtención datos y la documentación del patrimonio arquitectónico. Las vicisitudes del método configuran un modelo especializado de carácter constructivo dentro del proceso de documentación patrimonial, más allá del conocimiento histórico y el análisis tipológico. Tomando como fuente primaria el propio edificio, se aplica un procedimiento lógico y contextualizado de los elementos legibles y tangibles, deduciendo de manera técnica el conjunto de campañas constructivas que lo han conformado hasta su estado actual. Su inclusión previa a cualquier actuación en un bien patrimonial, contribuye a mejorar el entendimiento y la toma de postura ante cualquier intervención en el bien arquitectónico. El estudio estratigráfico detallado de la iglesia románica de Santo Domingo de Guzmán (Castilla y León, España) ha demostrado claramente las virtudes del método, ante la carencia de estudios previos y la limitada disponibilidad de referencias históricas. El estudio, inédito a nivel arquitectónico, delimitó trece fases constructivas, específicas y complementarias comprendidas entre el siglo XII y la actualidad.

Faulkner revisited : narrating property, race, gender and history in William Faulkner's Go Down, Moses, Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon and Gloria Naylor's Mama Day

My thesis explores the formation of the subject in the novels of Faulkner’s Go Down, Moses, Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon, and Gloria Naylor’s Mama Day. I attach the concept of property in terms of how male protagonists are obsessed with materialistic ownership and with the subordination of women who, as properties, consolidate their manhood. The three novelists despite their racial, gendered, and literary differences share the view that identity and truth are mere social and cultural constructs. I incorporate the work of Judith Butler and other poststructuralist figures, who see identity as a matter of performance rather than a natural entity. My thesis explores the theme of freedom, which I attached to the ways characters use their bodies either to confine or to emancipate themselves from the restricting world of race, class, and gender. The three novelists deconstruct any system of belief that promulgates the objectivity of truth in historical documents. History in the three novels, as with the protagonists, perception of identity, remains a social construct laden with distortions to serve particular political or ideological agendas. My thesis gives voice to African American female characters who are associated with love and racial and gender resistance. They become the reservoirs of the African American legacy in terms of their association with the oral and intuitionist mode of knowing, which subverts the male characters’ obsession with property and with the mainstream empiricist world. In this dissertation, I use the concept of hybridity as a literary and theoretical devise that African-American writers employ. In effect, I embark on the postcolonial studies of Henry Louise Gates, Paul Gilroy, W. E. B Du Bois, James Clifford, and Arjun Appadurai in order to reflect upon the fluidity of Morrison’s and Naylor’s works. I show how these two novelists subvert Faulkner’s essentialist perception of truth, and of racial and gendered identity. They associate the myth of the Flying African with the notion of hybridity by making their male protagonists criss-cross Northern and Southern regions. I refer to Mae Gwendolyn Henderson’s article on “Speaking in Tongues” in my analysis of how Naylor subverts the patriarchal text of both Faulkner and Morrison in embarking on a more feminine version of the flying African, which she relates to an ex-slave, Sapphira Wade, a volatile female character who resists fixed claim over her story and identity. In dealing with the concept of hybridity, I show that Naylor rewrites both authors’ South by making Willow Springs a more fluid space, an assumption that unsettles the scores of critics who associate the island with authenticity and exclusive rootedness.

De l'invention au mensonge : le référent italien chez Hubert Aquin et Normand de Bellefeuille

Collection : Nouvelles études québécoises

Tutankamón

O presente trabalho pretende apresentar e descrever a metodologia processual e respectivas relexões que sustentam a criação de um artefato digital interativo construído de forma a que alguns dos elementos bidimensionais que o constituem sejam manipuladas de forma a que criem ao jogador a ilusão de tridimensionalidade. Em 1992 a Id Software com o jogo Wolfenstein 3D, introduziu uma referência visual à tridimensionalidade, utilizando para o efeito tecnologia 2D, a qual, através de um sistema de redimensionamento e posicionamento de imagens, consegui transmitir a noção de tridimensionalidade, utilizando na altura um tipo de jogo em primeira pessoa, ou seja, o jogador experiência uma campo visual que visa reproduzir a própria experiência do mundo táctil na relação que dispõe entre os espaços e objetos. Através do Processing, uma linguagem de programação que assenta no Java, estes objetivos conceptuais serão reproduzidos, que procuram, por um lado, transmitir esta aparente ilusão de tridimensionalidade e por outro não utilizar um tipo de artefacto digital que proporciona uma jogabilidade em primeira pessoa mas sim possibilitam ao jogador uma experiência visual que aborda todo o espaço em que é lhe permitido circular, no qual é lhe exposto as adversidades que precisa de superar para progredir. Para que isto seja possível o jogador assume o papel de um personagem e através da sua interação com o artefato, vai ediicando uma narrativa visual que visa o seu envolvimento com a temática representada. Como tema é utilizada uma representação da busca pelo Sarcófago do faraó da 18ª Dinastia Tutankamón (1332 - 1323 AC) pelo explorador britânico Howard Carter (1874 - 1939) cuja expedição no Vales do Reis em 1922 constitui ainda hoje a mais célebre descoberta arqueológica relacionada com Antigo Egipto. Ao longo desta Dissertação são abordados temas que visam resoluções tanto no campo técnico e tecnológico, através da programação e sua linguagem, como no campo visual e estético que visa uma conexão consciente com a temática a representar e a ser experienciada

Adaptive lighting design as a holistic approach to public lighting

Dissertação para obtenção do grau de Doutor em Design, apresentada na Universidade de Lisboa - Faculdade de Arquitetura.

El despido ineficaz en la legislación ecuatoriana

La publicación de una nueva ley, trae consigo la derogatoria total o parcial de otra ley y con ello, la imperiosa necesidad de conocer aquella reforma que cambia la realidad jurídica respecto de la materia que rige. Tal es el caso de la Ley Orgánica de Justicia Laboral y Reconocimiento del Trabajo en el Hogar, publicada en abril de 2015, que modificó el Código de Trabajo y la Ley de Seguridad Social, siendo uno de los temas más relevantes de esta reforma, el despido ineficaz. El tema de estabilidad laboral absoluta en Ecuador, era únicamente una ilusión para los trabajadores, y a palabras de un gran catedrático de la Facultad de Jurisprudencia de la Universidad de Cuenca, Doctor Jorge Morales, la estabilidad absoluta era “simples mariposas amarillas”; sin embargo, desde abril del 2015, la estabilidad absoluta pasó de la teoría a la praxis, aunque únicamente para un grupo mínimo de trabajadores, representantes sindicales y mujeres embarazadas o asociadas a su condición de maternidad;debido que, por su condición de vulnerabilidad en el marco laboral, la Reforma transformala estabilidad relativa manifestada en el despido intempestivo de estos trabajadores en ineficaz. “La ley, una vez publicada se presume conocida por todos y no podrá alegarse ignorancia por ninguna persona”, todos los ciudadanos dentro de la circunscripción para la cual rige la nueva norma, tenemos la obligación de informarnos sobre tal, siendo este, el motivo y objetivo principal de la presente investigación, otorgar a la ciudadanía un análisis profundo de la reforma laboral precisamente sobre las disposiciones que regulan la aplicación, alcance, causas y efectos del despido ineficaz.