The New Mind: thinking beyond the head

Throughout much of the modern period, the human mind has been regarded as a property of the brain and therefore something confined to the inside of the head—a view commonly known as ‘internalism’. But recent works in cognitive science, philosophy, and anthropology, as well as certain trends in the development of technology, suggest an emerging view of the mind as a process not confined to the brain but spread through the body and world—an outlook covered by a family of views labelled ‘externalism’. In this paper, we will suggest there is now sufficient momentum in favour of externalism of various kinds to mark a historical shift in the way the mind is understood. We dub this emerging externalist tendency the ‘New Mind’. Key properties of the New Mind will be summarised and some of its implications considered in areas such as art and culture, technology, and the science of consciousness.     

Decorrelation of quantized signals induced by filtering and requantization

In Very Long Baseline Interferometry, signals from far radio sources are simultaneously recorded at different antennas, with the purpose of investigating their physical properties. The recorded signals are generally modeled as realizations of Gaussian processes, whose power is dominated by the system noise at the receiving antennas. The actual signal coming from the radio source can be detected only after cross-correlation of the various data-streams. The signals received at each antenna are digitized after low noise amplification and frequency down-conversion, in order to allow subsequent digital post-processing. The applied quantization is coarse, 1 or 2 bits being generally associated to the signal amplitude. In modern applications the sampling is typically performed at a high rate, and subchannels are then generated by filtering, followed by decimation and requantization of the signal streams. The redigitized streams are then cross-correlated to extract the physical observables. While the classical effect of quantization has widely been studied in the past, the decorrelation induced by the filtering and requantization process is still characterized experimentally, mainly due to its inherent mathematical complexity. In the present work we analyze the above problem, and provide algorithms and analytical formulas aimed at predicting the induced decorrelation for a wide class of quantization schemes, with the unique assumption of weakly correlated signals, typically fulfilled in VLBI and radio astronomy applications.     

Schedulability analysis in hard real-time systems under thermal constraints

In this paper, we study thermal-constrained hard real-time systems, where real-time guarantees must be met without exceeding safe temperature levels within the processor. Dynamic speed scaling is one of the major techniques to manage power so as to maintain safe temperature levels. As example, we adopt a reactive speed control technique in our work. We design an extended busy-period analysis methodology to perform schedulability analysis for general task arrivals under reactive speed control with First-In-First-Out (FIFO), Static-Priority (SP), and Earliest-Deadline-First (EDF) scheduling. As a special case, we obtain a closed-form formula for the worst-case response time of jobs under the leaky-bucket task arrival model. Our data show how reactive speed control can decrease the worst-case response time of tasks in comparison with any constant-speed scheme.     

From global to local and viceversa: uses of associative rule learning for classification in imprecise environments

We propose two models for improving the performance of rule-based classification under unbalanced and highly imprecise domains. Both models are probabilistic frameworks aimed to boost the performance of basic rule-based classifiers. The first model implements a global-to-local scheme, where the response of a global rule-based classifier is refined by performing a probabilistic analysis of the coverage of its rules. In particular, the coverage of the individual rules is used to learn local probabilistic models, which ultimately refine the predictions from the corresponding rules of the global classifier. The second model implements a dual local-to-global strategy, in which single classification rules are combined within an exponential probabilistic model in order to boost the overall performance as a side effect of mutual influence. Several variants of the basic ideas are studied, and their performances are thoroughly evaluated and compared with state-of-the-art algorithms on standard benchmark datasets.     

Synthesis of 8-hydroxyquinoline functionalised DO3A ligand and Eu(III) and Er(III) complexes: Luminescence properties

The synthesis of a new DO3A-based macrocyclic ligand bearing a 8-hydroxyquinoline residue together with the preparation of its Eu³⁺ and Er³⁺ neutral complexes are described. In a previous report [F. Rizzo, A. Papagni, F. Meinardi, R. Tubino, M. Ottonelli, G.F. Musso, G. Dellepiane, Synth. Met. 147 (2004) 143], we have shown that lanthanide complexes display very high stability combined with a good luminescence in aqueous solution under UV radiation, which indicate an energy transfer process from the excited 8-hydroxyquinoline moiety to the metal. In this work, we correlate the ability to transfer the energy from the sensitizer to lanthanide ion with pH behaviour of the antenna. Furthermore, the variation of pH in Eu³⁺ complex supports the hypothesis of presence of charge-transfer transitions. The good solubility and sensitized emission in different solvents (organic and water) are very important aspects for their technologic applications as luminescent probes or NIR-emitting devices.     

Theoretical analysis and performance limits of noncoherent sequencedetection of coded PSK

A theoretical performance analysis of noncoherent sequence detection schemes previously proposed by the authors for combined detection and decoding of coded M-ary phase-shift keying (M-PSK) is presented. A method for the numerical evaluation of the pairwise error probability-for which no closed-form expressions exist-is described, the classical union bound is computed, and results are compared with computer simulations. An upper bound on this pairwise error probability is also presented. This upper bound may be effectively used for the definition of an equivalent distance, which may be useful in exhaustive searches for optimal codes. Using this bound, it is proven that, in the general coded case, the considered noncoherent decoding schemes perform as close as desired to an optimal coherent receiver when a phase memory parameter is sufficiently large. In the case of differentially encoded M-PSK, a simple expression of the asymptotic bit-error probability is derived, which is in agreement with simulations for high as well as low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR)     

Triggering steam explosions of single drops of a molten ferrosilicon alloy with a simple encapsulated mechanical impactor

We have developed a simple and inexpensive encapsulated mechanical impactor that can be operated under water. The unit reproducibly generates upward-directed pressure transients in the water with peaks of approximately 0.13 MPa measured 100 mm above its surface. These pulses have been used to trigger steam explosions of drops of a molten ferrosilicon alloy when they are either just above the unit in free fall through the water or shortly after they land on its surface. The impactor is study, reliable, safe, and environmentally neutral and resets for reuse within seconds. Compared to other triggering techniques, the impactor does not generate light, bubbles, or strong water motion that obscure or appreciably affect the initiation or early stages of the steam explosions. This permits good imaging and measurements at essentially all times during the triggering and subsequent development of the explosions.     

On trellis-based truncated-memory detection

We propose a general framework for trellis-based detection over channels with infinite memory. A general truncation assumption enables the definition of a trellis diagram, which takes into account a considered portion of the channel memory and possible coding memory at the transmitter side. It is shown that trellis-based maximum a posteriori (MAP) symbol detection algorithms, in the form of forward-backward (FB) algorithms, can be derived on the basis of this memory-truncation assumption. A general approach to the design of truncated-memory (TM) FB algorithms is proposed, and two main classes of algorithms, characterized by coupled and decoupled recursions, respectively, are presented. The complexity of the derived TM-FB algorithms is analyzed in detail. Moreover, it is shown that MAP sequence detection algorithms, based on the Viterbi algorithm, follow easily from one of the proposed classes. Looking backward at this duality between MAP symbol detection algorithms and MAP sequence detection algorithms, it is shown that previous solutions for one case can be systematically extended to the other case. The generality of the proposed framework is shown by considering various examples of stochastic channels. New detection algorithms, as well as generalizations of solutions previously published in the literature, are embedded in the proposed framework. The obtained results do suggest that the performance of the proposed detection algorithms ultimately depends on the truncation depth, almost regardless of the specific detection strategy.     

Electric power distribution and environment: interference of power installation magnetic fields on computer systems

The present study analyzes the electromagnetic interference produced on visual display units (VDUs) in domestic and industrial environments. The main sources of disturbance may be identified in three-phase lines, unbalanced currents, currents in earthing systems, proximity of power installations, proximity of railway tracks, and presence of harmonics on the neutral conductor. Magnetic-field interference for PCs is practically limited to the deflection of the cathode-ray tube (CRT) electron beam. The vertical magnetic field determines a horizontal electron beam motion. The distortion depends linearly on magnetic field intensity and on the difference between the frequency of the CRT vertical raster scan and the frequency of the interfering magnetic field. Herein are analyzed two actual cases of interference produced by the DC-supply line of a metropolitan tram network and by the public electric power distribution network.     

Estimation of dietary intake of pesticide residues by the Italian population during 1997

In 1997 the Italian monitoring programme for pesticide residues in food comprised 7951 samples of 152 different foods for which a total of 275 pesticides were analysed. For 90 pesticides, the National Estimated Daily Intakes (NEDIs) were calculated by using the 90th percentile value and the food consumption data for the general Italian population. The calculated NEDIs were found to represent only a small portion of the respective Acceptable Daily Intake (ADI).