Effect of Object Texture and Weight on Ipsilateral Corticospinal Influences During Bimanual Holding in Humans

We tested the hypothesis that the ipsilateral corticospinal system, like the contralateral corticospinal system, controls the threshold muscle length at which wrist muscles and the stretch reflex begin to act during holding tasks. Transcranial magnetic stimulation was applied over the right primary motor cortex in 21 healthy subjects holding a smooth or coarse block between the hands. Regardless of the lifting force, motor evoked potentials in right wrist flexors were larger for the smooth block. This result was explained based on experimental evidence that motor actions are controlled by shifting spatial stretch reflex thresholds. Thus, the ipsilateral corticospinal system is involved in threshold position control by modulating facilitatory influences of hand skin afferents on motoneurons of wrist muscles during bimanual object manipulation.

IFDMR Establishment – A Solution for Space Debris Mitigation and Removal

Space debris is a global mounting ultimatum to the enduring maintainability of outer space activities and ought to be managed from the very beginning; otherwise, it will be too late. Based on the last couple of years, collisions are incidents that have enhanced space debris accumulation, and the rate at which space activities have resulted in the production of debris is at a threshold position in a linear fashion. Ultimately, space has become the rendezvous of space debris. Based on the growing accumulation of debris and the emerging apprehension regarding a horrible strike and collapse of whole space programs, to remove debris is very expensive process so this paper focuses on the financial challenges and solution as well. Developing and developed countries realize the value of a competent establishment of an International Fund for Debris Mitigation and Removal (IFDMR) that could address the financial issues. Thus, this paper suggests to create incentive opportunities for remediation of space debris and penalties for its production. it would be very strong and effective mechanism to halt this mounting issue by utilizing international fund. The revenue for fund would be collected mainly from contributing member states space agencies, the proportionate contributors of debris producer like (US, RUSSIA, CHINA), and other relevant stack holders, insurance of missions, levying fee from every launching, donations from various international organizations and private entities and UN Aid etc. The fund would be operated by the Director of fund having board of directors as management team under the umbrella of UNOOSA.

‘Hospital Shields’ and the Limits of International Law

Assaults on hospitals have become part of a widespread warfare strategy, propelling numerous actors to claim that belligerents are not being held accountable for attacking medical units. Acknowledging that international humanitarian law (IHL) offers medical units protections, belligerents often claim that the hospitals were being used to shield military targets and therefore the bombing was legitimate. Tracing the history of hospital bombings alongside the development of legal articles dealing with the protection of medical units, we show how, from the early 20th century, international law has introduced a series of exceptions that legitimize attacks on hospitals that were framed as shields. Next, we demonstrate that the shielding argument justifies bombing hospitals because they have ostensibly assumed a threshold position in-between the two axiomatic poles informing the laws of war – combatants and civilians. We argue, however, that medical units tend to occupy a legal and spatial threshold during war and, since IHL does not have the vocabulary to acknowledge the liminal nature of medical units and identifies between liminality and criminality, it introduces several exceptions that help belligerents legitimize their attacks. By way of conclusion, we maintain that the only way to address the deliberate and widespread destruction of medical units is by reforming the law through the introduction of an absolute ban.

On Jane Addams’s Feminist Pragmatism

What power did Jane Addams see in a group of elderly female Hull-House clients who came searching in 1913 for a purported “Devil Baby”? Kristen Renzi argues that Addams uses the tale as a catalyst for her depictions of cultures that explicitly challenge the modern tendency to discount the past in the name of progress. Temporally and ideologically, Addams can be situated at modernity’s threshold, for her work exhibits ties to both nineteenth-century femininity and twentieth-century public intellectualism. Through The Long Road of Woman’s Memory (1916), Addams not only overtly analyzes the ways in which women experience, remember, and give meaning to their gendered realities, but also uses the Devil-baby tale to query her own “threshold” position. Her equal investment in both modern possibilities for women and traditional, explicitly feminine forms of knowledge provides a model of considering a feminist recovery that, far from objectifying relics of the past, demonstrates the contemporary socio-political needs and possibilities that can only be understood through a pragmatic turning backward.

Forced Migration, Unwanted Acceptance, Uncertain Future of Syrian Refugees: The Struggle for Legal Status

In this study, the current situation of Syrian immigrants coming to Şanlıurfa through forced migration is discussed. Also, the study deals with the level of their adaptation by means of their reflection on the locals. The study mainly focus on the interaction between Syrian immigrants and locals in terms of social encounter, labor relations and the perceptions on immigrants’ position in the society and potential conflicts based on these perceptions. It reveals that the social encounters between the Syrian immigrants and the locals of Şanlıurfa have created an increasingly hostile environment within the social and cultural uncertainty relations because of the extended duration of the residence of the Syrians who are evaluated as "temporary guests". The situation of immigrants, whose legal status can be defined as uncertainty, is precisely a "threshold" position. The immigrants who have to leave their country cannot be a part of society. However, they live in the society. So, this situation leads to outwardness, inattention and uncertainty. In addition, immigrants are increasingly facing problems such as social exclusion, discrimination, marginalization, illegal work, and poverty.This is a descriptive study based on the literature review and the data of applied field research. In this study, it is aimed to understand the intentions and values behind the superficial, numerical part of the data.

Forced Migration, Unwanted Acceptance, Uncertain Future of Syrian Refugees: The Struggle for Legal Status

In this study, the current situation of Syrian immigrants coming to Şanlıurfa through forced migration is discussed. Also, the study deals with the level of their adaptation by means of their reflection on the locals. The study mainly focus on the interaction between Syrian immigrants and locals in terms of social encounter, labor relations and the perceptions on immigrants’ position in the society and potential conflicts based on these perceptions. It reveals that the social encounters between the Syrian immigrants and the locals of Şanlıurfa have created an increasingly hostile environment within the social and cultural uncertainty relations because of the extended duration of the residence of the Syrians who are evaluated as "temporary guests". The situation of immigrants, whose legal status can be defined as uncertainty, is precisely a "threshold" position. The immigrants who have to leave their country cannot be a part of society. However, they live in the society. So, this situation leads to outwardness, inattention and uncertainty. In addition, immigrants are increasingly facing problems such as social exclusion, discrimination, marginalization, illegal work, and poverty.This is a descriptive study based on the literature review and the data of applied field research. In this study, it is aimed to understand the intentions and values behind the superficial, numerical part of the data.

Implicit learning and generalization of stretch response modulation in humans

Adaptation of neural responses to repeated muscle stretching likely represents implicit learning to minimize muscle resistance to perturbations. To test this hypothesis, the forearm was placed on a horizontal manipulandum. Elbow flexors or extensors compensated an external load and were stretched by 20° or 70° rotations. Participants were instructed not to intervene by intentionally modifying the muscle resistance elicited by stretching. In addition to phasic stretch reflexes (SRs), muscle stretching was associated with inhibitory periods (IPs) in the ongoing muscle activity starting at minimal latencies of ∼35 ms. The SR amplitude decreased dramatically across 5–12 trials and was not restored after a resting period of 3–5 min, despite the increase in stretch amplitude from 20° to 70°, but IPs remained present. When SRs were suppressed, stretching of originally nonstretched, antagonist muscles initiated after the rest period showed immediate SR suppression while IPs remained present in the first and subsequent trials. Adaptation to muscle stretching thus includes features characteristic of implicit learning such as memory consolidation and generalization. Adaptation may be achieved by central shifts in the threshold positions at which muscles begin to be activated. Shifts are thought to be prepared in advance and triggered with stretch onset. Threshold position resetting provides a comprehensive explanation of the results in the broader context of the control of posture, movement, and motor learning in the healthy and damaged nervous system.

Under Threshold Position Control, Peripheral Mechanisms Compensate Efficiently for Small Perturbations of Arm Movements

Unexpected small perturbations during reaching movements are normally compensated for automatically. Previous studies of such perturbations observed that the movement trajectory converges back to the preplanned end position. The question remains whether peripheral mechanisms formed by intrinsic muscle properties and stretch reflex are efficient for compensating for such perturbations. Even though this is suggested by a threshold position control model highlighting the role of peripheral mechanisms under central control in movement generation, it is neither developed nor extensively tested for this capability. The present study tests how this model can account for the compensation during single-joint fast reaching. Motor responses to transient, unpredictable, small perturbations at different movement phases were measured and compared with the model predictions. The results show good agreement concerning kinematic and dynamic responses. Simulations with altered mechanical parameters of the model suggest that reflexive responses are well tuned to the intrinsic muscle properties. We conclude that under central control, peripheral mechanisms cope efficiently with small transient perturbations.