PRESENTISM,PERSISTENCE AND COMPOSITION

Pace Benovsky's ‘Presentism and Persistence,’ presentism is compatible with perdurantism, tropes and bundle‐of‐universals theories of persisting objects. I demonstrate how the resemblance, causation and precedence relations that tie stages together can be accommodated within an ersatzer presentist framework. The presentist account of these relations is then used to delineate a presentist‐friendly account of the inter‐temporal composition required for making worms out of stages. The defense of presentist trope theory shows how properties with indexes other than t may be said to exist at t. This involves an account of how times other than t exist at t, and how times may be multiply located at any given time. Benovsky's objection to bundles of universals is shown to assume that a bundle of properties must have the properties of its element properties.     

The Geneva affective picture database (GAPED): a new 730-picture database focusing on valence and normative significance

In emotional research, efficient designs often rely on successful emotion induction. For visual stimulation, the only reliable database available so far is the International Affective Picture System (IAPS). However, extensive use of these stimuli lowers the impact of the images by increasing the knowledge that participants have of them. Moreover, the limited number of pictures for specific themes in the IAPS database is a concern for studies centered on a specific emotion thematic and for designs requiring a lot of trials from the same kind (e.g., EEG recordings). Thus, in the present article, we present a new database of 730 pictures, the Geneva Affective PicturE Database, which was created to increase the availability of visual emotion stimuli. Four specific negative contents were chosen: spiders, snakes, and scenes that induce emotions related to the violation of moral and legal norms (human rights violation or animal mistreatment). Positive and neutral pictures were also included: Positive pictures represent mainly human and animal babies as well as nature sceneries, whereas neutral pictures mainly depict inanimate objects. The pictures were rated according to valence, arousal, and the congruence of the represented scene with internal (moral) and external (legal) norms. The constitution of the database and the results of the picture ratings are presented.     

Clamped Corticosterone (B) Reveals the Effect of Endogenous B on Both Facilitated Responsivity to Acute Restraint and Metabolic Responses to Chronic Stress

To determine the effects of both corticosterone (B) and chronic stressors on acute ACTH responses to restraint, young male rats were exposed to streptozotocin-induced diabetes, cold (5-7 degreesC) or intracerebroventricular (icv) neuropeptide Y (NPY) for 5 d and then exposed to restraint within 2 h after lights on. Two groups of rats were studied: intact and adrenalectomized replaced with B pellets that maintained plasma B in the normal mean 24-h range of intact rats. In addition to ACTH and B responses to restraint on d 5, body weight, food intake, fat depots, glucose and other hormones were measured to determine the role of stress-induced elevations in B on energy balance. ACTH responses to restraint were normal in intact rats subjected to diabetes or cold. By contrast, there was no ACTH or B response to restraint in NPY-infused intact rats. All 3 groups of chronically stimulated adrenalectomized rats with clamped B had facilitated ACTH responses to restraint compared to their treatment controls. Overall food intake increased in all groups of stressed rats; however, augmented intake occurred only during the light in intact rats and equally in the light and dark in B-clamped rats. White adipose depot weights were decreased by both diabetes and cold and increased by NPY in intact rats; the decreases with cold and increases with NPY were both blunted and changes in fat stores were not significant in adrenalectomized, B-clamped rats. We conclude that: 1. diabetes- and cold-induced facilitation of restraint-induced afferent input to hypothalamic control of the hypothalamo-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis is opposed in intact rats by the elevated feedback signal of B secretion; 2. NPY does not induce facilitation of afferent stress pathways; 3. chronic stimulation of the HPA axis induces acute hyperresponsiveness of hypothalamic neurons to restraint provided that the afferent input of this acute stimulus is not prevented by B feedback; 4. stimulus-induced elevations in B secretion result in day-time feeding; 5. insensitivity of both caloric efficiency and white fat stores to chronic stress in adrenalectomized, B-clamped rats results from loss of normally variable B levels.