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The article presents a thesis on the three generations of Cakkiliyars, a Dalit community in Tamil Nadu, India, focusing on social change through oral history.

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Brief samples of the noise generated by the Bombardier SV-301-D tracked vehicle and a Bell 206 helicopter standing on 2-m-thick first-year ice were measured in water, 22 m below the vehicles. Results are presented in the form of third-octave levels, in the range 250 Hz-40 kHz. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Detecting predators is essential for survival. Given that snakes are the first of primates' major predators, natural selection may have fostered efficient snake detection mechanisms to allow for optimal defensive behavior. Here, we provide electrophysiological evidence for a brain-anchored evolved predisposition to rapidly detect snakes in humans, which does not depend on previous exposure or knowledge about snakes. To do so, we recorded scalp electrical brain activity in 7- to 10-month-old infants watching sequences of flickering animal pictures. All animals were presented in their natural background. We showed that glancing at snakes generates specific neural responses in the infant brain, that are higher in amplitude than those generated by frogs or caterpillars, especially in the occipital region of the brain. The temporal dynamics of these neural responses support that infants devote increased attention to snakes than to non-snake stimuli. These results therefore demonstrate that a single fixation at snakes is sufficient to generate a prompt and large selective response in the infant brain. They argue for the existence in humans of an inborn, brain-anchored mechanism to swiftly detect snakes based on their characteristic visual features. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Across cultures and languages, people find similarities between the products of different senses in mysterious ways. By studying what is called cross-modal correspondences, cognitive psychologists discovered that lemons are fast rather than slow, boulders are sour, and red is heavier than yellow. Are these cross-modal correspondences established via sensory perception or can they be learned merely through language? We contribute to this debate by demonstrating that early blind people who lack the perceptual experience of color also think that red is heavier than yellow but to a lesser extent than sighted do. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The European Union has played an important role in international efforts to help the Central and Eastern European nuclear sector to improve the level of safety of their power plants. This is in line with the 1992 G7 summit which called for the early closure of the older, less safe Soviet design reactors, namely the VVER-440/230 and RBMK-type reactors. The enlargement process initiated in 1997 added a new dimension which was reinforced in Agenda 2000 which put into a political perspective the issue of nuclear safety in the countries applying for accession in the EU. At the end of 1999, the decision was taken between the European Commission and the three countries operating those reactors which were deemed non-upgradable, to close those reactors. This paper looks at the key issues surrounding accession and the nuclearindustry, what progress has been made to date and what assistance isneeded in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary Animal and human studies have demonstrated that transient visual deprivation early in life, even for a very short period, permanently alters the response properties of neurons in the visual cortex and leads to corresponding behavioral visual deficits [ 1–7 ]. While it is acknowledged that early-onset and longstanding blindness leads the occipital cortex to respond to non-visual stimulation [ 8, 9 ], it remains unknown whether a short and transient period of postnatal visual deprivation is sufficient to trigger crossmodal reorganization that persists after years of visual experience. In the present study, we characterized brain responses to auditory stimuli in 11 adults who had been deprived of all patterned vision at birth by congenital cataracts in both eyes until they were treated at 9 to 238 days of age. When compared to controls with typical visual experience, the cataract-reversal group showed enhanced auditory-driven activity in focal visual regions. A combination of dynamic causal modeling with Bayesian model selection [ 10 ] indicated that this auditory-driven activity in the occipital cortex was better explained by direct cortico-cortical connections with the primary auditory cortex than by subcortical connections. Thus, a short and transient period of visual deprivation early in life leads to enduring large-scale crossmodal reorganization of the brain circuitry typically dedicated to vision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Rhythmic stimulation provides a powerful tool to objectively assess the emergence and development of cognitive functions efficiently. • Steady-state evoked potentials (SS-EPs) are particularly robust to artifacts, and thus benefit from a high signal-to-noise ratio. • SS-EPs can be used to target a broad array of cognitive and neural processes. • We provide practical guidelines and recommendations for the implementation of SS-EP studies Electroencephalography (EEG) is a non-invasive and painless recording of cerebral activity, particularly well-suited for studying young infants, allowing the inspection of cerebral responses in a constellation of different ways. Of particular interest for developmental cognitive neuroscientists is the use of rhythmic stimulation, and the analysis of steady-state evoked potentials (SS-EPs) – an approach also known as frequency tagging. In this paper we rely on the existing SS-EP early developmental literature to illustrate the important advantages of SS-EPs for studying the developing brain. We argue that (1) the technique is both objective and predictive: the response is expected at the stimulation frequency (and/or higher harmonics), (2) its high spectral specificity makes the computed responses particularly robust to artifacts, and (3) the technique allows for short and efficient recordings, compatible with infants' limited attentional spans. We additionally provide an overview of some recent inspiring use of the SS-EP technique in adult research, in order to argue that (4) the SS-EP approach can be implemented creatively to target a wide range of cognitive and neural processes. For all these reasons, we expect SS-EPs to play an increasing role in the understanding of early cognitive processes. Finally, we provide practical guidelines for implementing and analyzing SS-EP studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Consciousness remains a formidable challenge. Different theories of consciousness have proposed vastly different mechanisms to account for phenomenal experience. Here, appealing to aspects of global workspace theory, higher-order theories, social theories, and predictive processing, we introduce a novel framework: the self-organizing metarerpresentational account (SOMA), in which consciousness is viewed as something that the brain learns to do. By this account, the brain continuously and unconsciously learns to redescribe its own activity to itself, so developing systems of metarepresentations that qualify target first-order representations. Thus, experiences only occur in experiencers that have learned to know they possess certain first-order states and that have learned to care more about certain states than about others. In this sense, consciousness is the brain's (unconscious, embodied, enactive, nonconceptual) theory about itself. We introduce a novel framework dubbed the self-organizing metarepresentational account (SOMA), according to which consciousness is something that the brains learns to do. We propose representational redescription as the core mechanism through which higher-order monitoring systems learn about and characterize target first-order states. We suggest that theory of mind, self-awareness, and perceptual awareness share common prediction-driven learning mechanisms that operate over three loops: an inner loop, a perception–action loop, and a self–other loop. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]