A “smoking gun” for explicit top-down neocortical mechanisms that directly drive bottom-up processes that describe memory, attention, etc. The top-down mechanism considered are macrocolumnar EEG firings in neocortex, as described by a statistical mechanics of neocortical interactions (SMNI), developed as a magnetic vector potential A. The bottom-up process considered are Ca2+ waves prominent in...

Governments make policy decisions in the same areas in quite different institutions. Some assign policymaking responsibility to institutions designed to be insulated from myopic partisan and electoral pressures and others do not. In this study, we claim that differences in political context and institutional design constrain the policy choices governments make. Testable propositions based on an...

Aug 6 and 9 mark the anniversaries of atomic bombings Hiroshima Nagasaki, where roughly 140 000 74 people died, respectively. Last year saw 75th anniversary, but it passed largely unnoticed by most world, which was perhaps understandably preoccupied with all-too-present threat COVID-19. Nuclear war is low in people's priorities. But according to World Economic Forum Global Risks Report 2021, we...

R enal fibrosis, characterized by glomerulosclerosis and tubulointerstitial fibrosis, is the final common pathway of a wide variety of chronic kidney diseases (CKD). Regardless of the underlying disorder and whether the injury is sustained, the kidney will follow a doomsday path of fibrogenesis, a condition characterized by excessive extracellular matrix accumulation. Can we do anything to slow...

For over a decade, we have heard predictions that avian influenza A(H5N1) may be nearing pandemicity and that the pandemic will be catastrophic when it arrives. These predictions derive from a belief that A(H5N1) may be only a few mutations away from full adaptation to transmissibility [1] and from its allegedly high propensity to infect and to kill people. The World Health Organization (WHO) h...

We suggest that mechanized multi-agent deontic logics might be appropriate vehicles for engineering trustworthy robots. Mechanically checked proofs in such logics can serve to establish the permissibility (or obligatoriness) of agent actions, and such proofs, when translated into English, can also explain the rationale behind those actions. We use the logical framework Athena to encode a natura...

Nathan Sears had begun a strikingly ambitious intellectual project of reimagining international relations and world order, almost from the ground up. saw that we were in new era human history, an existential risk. We face threats global civilisation collapse, possibly even extinction, our own making. These anthropogenic risks include nuclear weapons, biological weapons—especially engineered pan...

The world's largest crystal ball is in Washington D.C. It weighs 48.5kg (106.8lb). Yet even this massive sphere cannot predict our future.1 We hope to be happy but, as recent events remind us, we should prepare for the worst. extent of that preparation, nationally and personally, subject much current discussion with considerable application power hindsight. Pandemics are uncommon but other majo...

Not only does fiction offer a powerful medium to explore hopes and fears about climate change imagine potential solutions, it also provides means broaden the range of voices roadmapping way forward. Given that readers will find themselves currently in middle pandemic, an ongoing emergency, global economic recession, they might be forgiven for wanting kick back with book on lighter side. Yet acr...

The “through” in Bill Tomlinson’s title suggests a perspective that ascribes a fundamental role for information technology (IT) as an agency of environmental sustainability. The alternative—that IT also acts as agency of unsustainable practices—is also represented in Tomlinson’s description of the relationship between human behaviors and environmental conditions—especially climate change. Nonet...