Some aspects of performance at a psychokinetic task

Psychokinetic phenomena are currently anomalous with respect to physics. They are not generally accepted as genuine nor are their possible physical mechanisms understood. It is argued here that a certain class of psychokinetic phenomena, termed "directly detectable" psychokinetic effects, are likely to yield possibly important insights into the physical mechanisms mediating psychokinetic phenomena generally. The current use within parapsychological research of randomly behaving psychokinetic target systems is criticised on several grounds. They are of limited scope for use in delineation of physical mechanisms involved in psychokinesis, and their intrinsic characteristics prevent subjects from utilising their possible capacity to learn to produce larger magnitude effects. It is argued that instrumented directly detectable psychokinetic tasks have characteristics which may allow subjects to treat their psychokinetic ability as akin to a normal skill which can be improved with continued practice, using an experimental paradigm similar to that used in the biofeedback training of physiological functions. The task used in this work was a microscopic form of psychokinetic metal-bending, whereby subjects produce pulse-like electrical outputs in a ceramic piezoelectric element used as psychokinetic target. Subjects were not allowed to touch the target and many effects were obtained under witnessed conditions with subjects situated several metres from it. One pilot and three principal longitudinal training studies were performed with a total of seventeen subjects. Six of the seventeen subjects showed significant improvement in their psychokinetic performance in the training studies, one showed a non-significant increase. The other ten failed to show any convincing signs of psychokinetic output. Three of the successful subjects did not show convincing signs of voluntary control over their effects, three did. Large individual differences were found including different rates of learning and levels of initial and final ability. This research was performed by Julian David Isaacs in preparation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and was submitted in 1984.

Submission for the degree of Doctor of Science in the University of Aston in Birmingham

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Submission for the degree of Doctor of Science

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Submission for the degree of Doctor of Science

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Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Science. Book by G.F.A Harding; P.M. Jeavons, Photosensitive Epilepsy also included.

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Submission for the degree of Doctor of Science at Aston University

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Submission for the degree of Doctor of Science at Aston University

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Bound volume of work submitted for the degree of Doctor of Science (also one book and five paper-back reports included)

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Research of Influence of Medication Preparations on the Process of Renewal of the Broken Equilibrium of Man Organism on the Doctor of Phytotherapy Workstation

In the given work by authors new approach to the exposure of degree of influencing of medications of vegetable origin in a time of renewal of broken equilibrium of man organism is offered. During realization of the given approach it is suggested to use the mathematical vehicle of.

Chaucer and the Disconsolations of Philosophy: Boethius, Agency, and Literary Form in Late Medieval Literature

This study argues that Chaucer's poetry belongs to a far-reaching conversation about the forms of consolation (philosophical, theological, and poetic) that are available to human persons. Chaucer's entry point to this conversation was Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy, a sixth-century dialogue that tried to show how the Stoic ideals of autonomy and self-possession are not simply normative for human beings but remain within the grasp of every individual. Drawing on biblical commentary, consolation literature, and political theory, this study contends that Chaucer's interrogation of the moral and intellectual ideals of the Consolation took the form of philosophical disconsolations: scenes of profound poetic rupture in which a character, sometimes even Chaucer himself, turns to philosophy for solace and yet fails to be consoled. Indeed, philosophy itself becomes a source of despair. In staging these disconsolations, I contend that Chaucer asks his readers to consider the moral dimensions of the aspirations internal to ancient philosophy and the assumptions about the self that must be true if its insights are to console and instruct. For Chaucer, the self must be seen as a gift that flowers through reciprocity (both human and divine) and not as an object to be disciplined and regulated.

Chapter one focuses on the Consolation of Philosophy. I argue that recent attempts to characterize Chaucer's relationship to this text as skeptical fail to engage the Consolation on its own terms. The allegory of Lady Philosophy's revelation to a disconsolate Boethius enables philosophy to become both an agent and an object of inquiry. I argue that Boethius's initial skepticism about the pretentions of philosophy is in part what Philosophy's therapies are meant to respond to. The pressures that Chaucer's poetry exerts on the ideals of autonomy and self-possession sharpen one of the major absences of the Consolation: viz., the unanswered question of whether Philosophy's therapies have actually consoled Boethius. Chapter two considers one of the Consolation's fascinating and paradoxical afterlives: Robert Holcot's Postilla super librum sapientiae (1340-43). I argue that Holcot's Stoic conception of wisdom, a conception he explicitly links with Boethius's Consolation, relies on a model of agency that is strikingly similar to the powers of self-knowledge that Philosophy argues Boethius to posses. Chapter three examines Chaucer's fullest exploration of the Boethian model of selfhood and his ultimate rejection of it in Troilus and Criseyde. The poem, which Chaucer called his "tragedy," belonged to a genre of classical writing he knew of only from Philosophy's brief mention of it in the Consolation. Chaucer appropriates the genre to explore and recover mourning as a meaningful act. In Chapter four, I turn to Dante and the House of Fame to consider Chaucer's self-reflections about his ambitions as a poet and the demands of truth-telling.

Concise Encyclopaedia of Philosophy of Language, ed. P.V. Lamarque, Pergamon 1997, ISBN: 978-0080429915 and, Readings in the Philosophy of Language, ed. P. Ludlow, The MIT Press, 1997, ISBN: 978-0262621144 [Book review]

Abstract not available

Studies of Protein-Protein and Protein-Water Interactions by Small Angle X-Ray Scattering, Terahertz Spectroscopy, ASMOS, And Computer Simulation

The protein folding problem has been one of the most challenging subjects in biological physics due to its complexity. Energy landscape theory based on statistical mechanics provides a thermodynamic interpretation of the protein folding process. We have been working to answer fundamental questions about protein-protein and protein-water interactions, which are very important for describing the energy landscape surface of proteins correctly. At first, we present a new method for computing protein-protein interaction potentials of solvated proteins directly from SAXS data. An ensemble of proteins was modeled by Metropolis Monte Carlo and Molecular Dynamics simulations, and the global X-ray scattering of the whole model ensemble was computed at each snapshot of the simulation. The interaction potential model was optimized and iterated by a Levenberg-Marquardt algorithm. Secondly, we report that terahertz spectroscopy directly probes hydration dynamics around proteins and determines the size of the dynamical hydration shell. We also present the sequence and pH-dependence of the hydration shell and the effect of the hydrophobicity. On the other hand, kinetic terahertz absorption (KITA) spectroscopy is introduced to study the refolding kinetics of ubiquitin and its mutants. KITA results are compared to small angle X-ray scattering, tryptophan fluorescence, and circular dichroism results. We propose that KITA monitors the rearrangement of hydrogen bonding during secondary structure formation. Finally, we present development of the automated single molecule operating system (ASMOS) for a high throughput single molecule detector, which levitates a single protein molecule in a 10 µm diameter droplet by the laser guidance. I also have performed supporting calculations and simulations with my own program codes.

Exact Solution of Bayes and Minimax Change-Detection Problems

The challenge of detecting a change in the distribution of data is a sequential decision problem that is relevant to many engineering solutions, including quality control and machine and process monitoring. This dissertation develops techniques for exact solution of change-detection problems with discrete time and discrete observations. Change-detection problems are classified as Bayes or minimax based on the availability of information on the change-time distribution. A Bayes optimal solution uses prior information about the distribution of the change time to minimize the expected cost, whereas a minimax optimal solution minimizes the cost under the worst-case change-time distribution. Both types of problems are addressed. The most important result of the dissertation is the development of a polynomial-time algorithm for the solution of important classes of Markov Bayes change-detection problems. Existing techniques for epsilon-exact solution of partially observable Markov decision processes have complexity exponential in the number of observation symbols. A new algorithm, called constellation induction, exploits the concavity and Lipschitz continuity of the value function, and has complexity polynomial in the number of observation symbols. It is shown that change-detection problems with a geometric change-time distribution and identically- and independently-distributed observations before and after the change are solvable in polynomial time. Also, change-detection problems on hidden Markov models with a fixed number of recurrent states are solvable in polynomial time. A detailed implementation and analysis of the constellation-induction algorithm are provided. Exact solution methods are also established for several types of minimax change-detection problems. Finite-horizon problems with arbitrary observation distributions are modeled as extensive-form games and solved using linear programs. Infinite-horizon problems with linear penalty for detection delay and identically- and independently-distributed observations can be solved in polynomial time via epsilon-optimal parameterization of a cumulative-sum procedure. Finally, the properties of policies for change-detection problems are described and analyzed. Simple classes of formal languages are shown to be sufficient for epsilon-exact solution of change-detection problems, and methods for finding minimally sized policy representations are described.