Pulse transit time: Relationship to blood pressure

The relationships between pulse transit time (PTT) and both systolic (SBP) and diastolic blood pressure (DBP) were evaluated in 114 human subjects during rest and stress. PTT was found to covary quite consistently with SBP, but not with DBP, when blood pressure was measured both noninvasively and invasively. Pharmacological blockade of the sympathetic innervation of the heart appreciably attenuated the relationship between PTT and SBP.     

Mask maker, mask maker: The black gay subject in 1970s popular culture

Black gay artists have created a sustained body of literature that has served as a springboard for their creative and intellectual energies. In the 1980s and 1990s, black gay male textuality blossomed. The result is a minor literature establishing a black gay male sensibility and a distinctly Afro-Gay perspective. The political and poetic influence of these works is demonstrated visually in Looking For Langston by Isaac Julien, in Tongues Untied by the late Marlon Riggs, and to a lesser extent, Paris is Burning by Jennie Livingston. These documentaries seek to further a strategy of black gay representation. This essay explores the historical precedents for such outpouring. By situating pre-1980s representations of black gay men, I examine images of the black gay subject in the popular literature and culture of the 1970s, especially in one of the most popular works of the decade, Victor Dodson’s book, Black and Gay. I will also mention the ways in which contemporary writers, poets, film artists, and theater and performance ensembles such as Pomo Afro Homo allow black gay men to perform satirical roles that signify upon those earlier characterizations, images, and depictions, which seek to further marginalize them and, through performance, exhaust those contradictory conditions, silence often misnamed.     

Of mice and men: virtual Hebb-Williams mazes permit comparison of spatial learning across species

We developed a computer-generated virtual environment to test humans, for the first time, on the Hebb-Williams mazes. The goal was to provide a standardized test that could be used to directly compare human performance with that of C57BL/6J mice performing in real versions of the mazes. Such a comparison seems crucial if conclusions regarding genetic manipulations of rodents are to be mapped onto human cognitive disorders. The learning curves across species were strikingly similar, lending support to the rodent model of human spatial memory. Humans learned faster than rodents in both the acquisition and the test portions of the protocol, and females of both species were less efficient in solving these problems than males. These results represent the first modern comparison of human and rodent learning that uses the same test of spatial problem solving.     

中国古代的推理模型

文章主要针对中国古代语言和论证的一些重要方面进行探讨,特别地,我们重点考察了儒家和墨家的观点。我们主张使用轻型的逻辑模型方法（不引进全部的现代逻辑演算）对一些重要的概念提供解释。我们所关注的问题主要有：情景辨别和做出反应、根据合适的反应来正名、以及通过＂法＂和＂因＂两个方面讨论类的外延。我们尝试使用博弈模型来表示古代论证的实际情形,重点讨论关于对象和类之间关系的争辩。在文章的最后,我们讨论了使用博弈建模方法对于理解古代中国推理实践潜在的可能性。     

Language and executive function in self-reported impulsive aggression

The present study employed a battery of verbal tests that included a broad range of executive demands to demonstrate the differential contributions of language and executive function to the performance decrement observed in individuals who display impulsive aggressive (IA) outbursts. A profile analysis revealed that despite not differing on tasks requiring limited verbal output, the IAs deviated further from nonaggressive controls as the tasks required increasing spontaneous organization. Results suggest that language ability per se is not impaired in IAs; rather inefficient executive functioning is responsible for their significantly poorer performance on complex verbal tasks.     

Quantification of manual force control and tremor

Isometric impulse frequencies associated with active tremor and force regulation were examined in 10 patients with idiopathic Parkinson's disease (PD) and in 10 older adults (OAs) who performed an isometric tracing task. The authors decoupled and analyzed the data to determine whether PD-related tremor in the thumb and in the index finger during isometric force control are related and whether PD impairs the performance of volitional force control beyond the errors contributed by tremor. After decoupling, there were clear and robust differences in PD patients' control of isometric force that could not be attributed to action-tremor error. Those errors, which occurred in the absence of movement, suggest impairment in coordinated recruitment and derecruitment of motor units during a fine-motor task.