Science and subjectivity

Science has been under attack in the last thirty years, and recently a number of prominent scientists have been busy fighting back. Here, an argument is presented that the `science wars' stem from an unreasonably strict adherence to the reductive method on the part of science, but that weakening this stance need not imply a lapse into subjectivity. One possible method for formalising the description of non-separable, contextually dependent complex systems is presented. This is based upon a quantum-like approach.

From cultural studies to cultural science

This paper, first presented at a symposium on the 'past, present and future of cultural studies,' traces disciplinary changes in the study of culture from the perspective of 'cultural science', a term that was used by some of the earliest practitioners of cultural studies, including Raymond Williams. The paper goes on to describe some of the present moment, including work on the creative industries, show that a new version of cultural science is needed, based on evolutionary principles, in dialogue with the evolutionary approach in economics that was called for a century ago by Thorstein Veblen. This evolutionary turn, or 'cultural science 2.0,' it is argued, offers a radical and challenging future for cultural studies.

Rostering ambulance services

This paper developed a model for rostering ambulance crew in order to maximise the coverage throughout a planning horizon and minimise the number of ambulance crew. Rostering Ambulance Services is a complex task, which considers a large number of conflicting rules related to various aspects such as limits on the number of consecutive work hours, the number of shifts worked by each ambulance staff and restrictions on the type of shifts assigned. The two-stage models are developed using nonlinear integer programming technique to determine the following sub-problems: the shift start times; the number of staff required to work for each shift; and a balanced schedule of ambulance staff. At the first stage, the first two sub-problems have been solved. At the second stage, the third sub-problem has been solved using the first stage outputs. Computational experiments with real data are conducted and the results of the models are presented.

A Cultural Science Manifesto (in Mandarin)

We propose that a general analytic framework for cultural science can be constructed as a generalization of the generic micro meso macro framework proposed by Dopfer and Potts (2008). This paper outlines this argument along with some implications for the creative industries research agenda.

Translation of addictions science into practice : update and future directions.

Recent advances in the understanding of the genetic, neurochemical, behavioral and cultural underpinnings of addiction have led to rapid advances in the understanding of addiction as a disease. In fact, advances in basic science and the development of new pharmacological and behavioral therapies associated with them are appearing faster than can be assimilated not only by clinical researchers but practitioners and policy makers as well. Translation of science-based addictions knowledge into improved prevention, assessment and treatment, and communication of these changes to researchers and practitioners are significant challenges to the field. The general aim of this book is to summarize current and potential linkages between advances in addiction science and innovations in clinical practice. Whilst this book is primarily focused on translation, it also encompasses some scientific advances that are relevant to dissemination, and the book is itself a tool for disseminating innovative thinking. The goal is to generate interest in application opportunities from both recent research and theoretical advances.

Kinematics of intracellular chlamydiae provide evidence for contact-dependent development

A crucial process of chlamydial development involves differentiation of the replicative reticulate body (RB) into the infectious elementary body (EB). We present experimental evidence to provide support for a contact-dependent hypothesis for explaining the trigger involved in differentiation. We recorded live-imaging of Chlamydia trachomatis-infected McCoy cells at key times during development and tracked the temporospatial trajectories of individual chlamydial particles. We found that movement of the particles is related to development. Early to mid-developmental stages involved slight wobbling of RBs. The average speed of particles increased sharply at 24 h postinfection (after the estimated onset of RB to EB differentiation). We also investigated a penicillin-supplemented culture containing EBs, RBs, and aberrantly enlarged, stressed chlamydiae. Near-immobile enlarged particles are consistent with their continued tethering to the chlamydial inclusion membrane (CIM). We found a significantly negative, nonlinear association between speed and size/type of particles, providing further support for the hypothesis that particles become untethered near the onset of RB to EB differentiation. This study establishes the relationship between the motion properties of the chlamydiae and developmental stages, whereby wobbling RBs gradually lose contact with the CIM, and RB detachment from the CIM is coincidental with the onset of late differentiation.

Modeling corneal surfaces with rational functions for high-speed videokeratoscopy data compression

High-speed videokeratoscopy is an emerging technique that enables study of the corneal surface and tear-film dynamics. Unlike its static predecessor, this new technique results in a very large amount of digital data for which storage needs become significant. We aimed to design a compression technique that would use mathematical functions to parsimoniously fit corneal surface data with a minimum number of coefficients. Since the Zernike polynomial functions that have been traditionally used for modeling corneal surfaces may not necessarily correctly represent given corneal surface data in terms of its optical performance, we introduced the concept of Zernike polynomial-based rational functions. Modeling optimality criteria were employed in terms of both the rms surface error as well as the point spread function cross-correlation. The parameters of approximations were estimated using a nonlinear least-squares procedure based on the Levenberg-Marquardt algorithm. A large number of retrospective videokeratoscopic measurements were used to evaluate the performance of the proposed rational-function-based modeling approach. The results indicate that the rational functions almost always outperform the traditional Zernike polynomial approximations with the same number of coefficients.

Cardiac state diagnosis using higher order spectra of heart rate variability

Heart rate variability (HRV) refers to the regulation of the sinoatrial node, the natural pacemaker of the heart, by the sympathetic and parasympathetic branches of the autonomic nervous system. Heart rate variability analysis is an important tool to observe the heart's ability to respond to normal regulatory impulses that affect its rhythm. A computer-based intelligent system for analysis of cardiac states is very useful in diagnostics and disease management. Like many bio-signals, HRV signals are nonlinear in nature. Higher order spectral analysis (HOS) is known to be a good tool for the analysis of nonlinear systems and provides good noise immunity. In this work, we studied the HOS of the HRV signals of normal heartbeat and seven classes of arrhythmia. We present some general characteristics for each of these classes of HRV signals in the bispectrum and bicoherence plots. We also extracted features from the HOS and performed an analysis of variance (ANOVA) test. The results are very promising for cardiac arrhythmia classification with a number of features yielding a p-value < 0.02 in the ANOVA test.