http://www.impleximundi.com/tiki-articles_rss.php?ver=2 Sun, 20 May 2012 12:40:07 +0100 Tiki CMS/Groupware via FeedCreator 1.7.2 http://www.impleximundi.com/img/tiki.jpg http://www.impleximundi.com/tiki-index.php en-us http://www.impleximundi.com/tiki-read_article.php?articleId=139
I have had a recent change of events that has allowed me to attend
your Winter Chaos meeting. As noted in the email below I am colleagues
of John Thompson, Alan Bachers and Cynthia Savage as well as Jean
Alvarez. I am boarded in sleep medicine, specializing in Insomnia for
the past 20 years. Some 9 years ago I added non-linear neurofeedback
and have never looked back. In fact, the utilization of this
technology indirectly led to my more recent spiritual explorations, I
am an ordained Interfaith Minister, certified in Nature Awareness
training, and Shaman trained in the Peruvian Laika tradition.

I may not be able to present anything at this late date but I will
participate fully in all the discussions. While I could provide much
information regarding what we know about sleep, and even what "natural
sleep" would look like, my current interests lie in exploring the
non-linear view of the universe that most Indigenous/Native tribes
seem to hold. These views, and their spiritual practices hold great
promise for non-linear transformational models leading to new ways of
"being" in the world. John Thompson and I have had a number of
discussions regarding these topics and his talk will be germane as
well.

Please let me know at your earliest convenience.

Sincerely,
Ed O'Malley

image from http://www.shaman-tantra.com/shaman/laika.htm
]]> fredabraham Sat, 17 Mar 2012 14:41:00 +0100 http://www.impleximundi.com/tiki-read_article.php?articleId=138
photo from 2010 Winter Chaos Conference in Tarpon Springs, FL USA
]]> fredabraham Fri, 09 Mar 2012 03:00:00 +0100 http://www.impleximundi.com/tiki-read_article.php?articleId=137
Roulette Wm. Smith, Ph.D.
Institute for Postgraduate Interdisciplinary Studies
Palo Alto, CA and Long Beach, CA
Email: najms@postgraduate-interdisciplinary-studies.org
Email: najms@humanized-technologies.com

Epigenetics is a term first introduced by Conrad Hal Waddington in the 1940s (Waddington, 1940; Waddington, 1941; Waddington, 1942; Waddington, 1946). It often is defined as heritable changes in phenotype and/or gene expression that do not involve changes in a gene sequence (cf. Holliday, 1990; Bird, 2007; also see ). Traditionally, the term refers to external manifestations of genetic activity. The definition is adequate for usual studies of methylations, other gene-regulating activities and heritable changes that do not involve changes in DNA sequences in a genome.

We prefer to define epigenetic phenomena more broadly, comprehensively … and, not least, more accurately. To wit, epigenetics comprises heritable or propagated alternative states of gene expression, molecular function, or organization specified by the same unchanged genetic instructions and/or DNA sequence. (continued below)


Photo by fred, 2008 Snowflake, Thai Restaurant, Middleton CT
]]> fredabraham Sun, 04 Mar 2012 22:01:00 +0100 http://www.impleximundi.com/tiki-read_article.php?articleId=136
Alan Bachers, Ph.D., Director
Neurofeedback Foundation
32 Elizabeth Street
Northampton, MA 01060
413-585-0511

]]> fredabraham Sun, 04 Mar 2012 11:29:00 +0100 http://www.impleximundi.com/tiki-read_article.php?articleId=132 35 years ago, I made a bold claim by stating that “…dictatorship can be described as the politics of the probable or the politics of entropy and democracy as the politics of the improbable or the politics of negative entropy. Because democratic and dictatorial systems are in these terms respectively analogous to open and closed thermodynamic systems, we may begin to speculate about the possible future development of a science of political thermodynamics” (McCullough, 1977). These ideas were a direct result of living in Brazil during the height of its military dictatorship where I went with the Peace Corps in 1968. After shelving this line of thought for many years, I have returned to it in recent times. In the process, I find myself combining perspectives of complexity theory and political power theory. The result is a complexity theory of politics.

This theory uses Claude Shannon’s information theory and Edgar Morin’s characterization of the human being as “le néguentrope par excellence” (1973:228) to ground human nature in freedom of choice and violations of human nature in denial of choice. It has two core hypotheses. First, power exercised as the choice of one person or group imposed on another is homologous to the process of increasing entropy in a closed thermodynamic system. This is to say that power exercised to dominate others has a disorganizing effect on human relationships. Secondly, power exercised as mutual choice not ultimately imposed on others is homologous to the process of self-organizing in an open, far from equilibrium thermodynamic system. Human social and political systems are organized in this sense to the extent that they are products of free choice.

photo of Mike at the East River, 21 Feb 2012 by his wife, nice shot
]]> fredabraham Wed, 15 Feb 2012 20:24:00 +0100 http://www.impleximundi.com/tiki-read_article.php?articleId=131


Image: The Mathematician\'s Chalkboard 2011 © Linda Alford
]]> fredabraham Sat, 11 Feb 2012 23:14:00 +0100 http://www.impleximundi.com/tiki-read_article.php?articleId=130 This article is (1) a comment on an article discussed on CHAOPSYC February 2012, initiated by Gus Koehler: Nicola Scaffetta & and Bruce West, Is climate sensitive to solar variability? http://www.fel.duke.edu/~scafetta/pdf/opinion0308.pdf

Instead of commenting on details of of Scaffetta's and West's research which was well covered by various discussants in the thread, I (1) point to a metaperspective of theirs on the complexity of a climate network/dynamical system, (2) relate that to another example in the interaction of global climactic factors and its relation to human culture and evolution, features implicated in the Scaffetta-West article, (3) relate it to a new information view of the make-up of space-time at the Planck scale as digital/informational, and (4) point out the question if there might be a optimal dimensionality across domains of scale, that may have a universal potential.

Illustration by Leandro Castelo from Scientific American 2012 Feb, p. 33, for article by Michael Moyer, Is Space Digital? pp. 30-36.
]]> fredabraham Tue, 07 Feb 2012 16:06:00 +0100 http://www.impleximundi.com/tiki-read_article.php?articleId=129
A detailed inspection of the behavior of the process equation in regions of bios reveals several structural features that may be seen to enrich Sabelli’s approach. In the parameter range known to produce bios there can be found small, widely distributed regions where trajectories, after much biotic meandering, intercept attractors and remain trapped in those structures. The attractors form small basins/separatrices that vary in size over a wide range — the ratio of largest to smallest is on the order of 10E+9 for width and 10E+8 for height. Their size range and distribution appears similar to that of periodic windows found throughout ordinary chaos.

Moreover, the behavior of the biotic trajectories adjacent to these basins mimics chaotic trajectories adjacent to their periodic windows, characterized by stretches of apparent stability followed by sudden disintegration into bios/chaos only to return over and over again to quasi-stable behavior that eventually deteriorates. In systems like the logistic map this behavior has been referred to as the “intermittency route to chaos”. Since the analogous behavior seems to occur in biotic regions very close to basins of attraction, it might be referred to as the “intermittency route to bios” since it occurs where the driving parameter gets close to the value where the basin structure starts or ends and bios takes over.

Biotic intermittency can be seen to be reflected in certain types of creative insight (“Eureka”, incubation) associated with scientific or artistic creativity and humor, where the biotic trajectory plays a role not unlike that of unconscious processes – unconstrained in that bios moves about through the space but returning to regions of tentative structure. For example, the kind of System 1 process Kahneman has been proposing might be analogous to biotic intermittency with his System 2 being more firmly embedded in the structure of a stable, basin–constrained attractor structure. It may be valuable to view changes in human cognitive or other psychological structures to result from a kind of biotic wandering among such structure of varying degrees of stability.

(Additionally, two unexpected types of structure not described in Sabelli’s treatment have also been detected — large scale, “W”- shaped attractors interspersed among regions of bios as well as a mysterious basin-looking structure associated with what Sabelli calls “infinitations” – a trajectory of the process equation which grows without bounds. Infinitations appear to grow linearly, but details of their evolution reveal another layer of interesting structure.)

]]> fredabraham Mon, 30 Jan 2012 11:42:00 +0100 http://www.impleximundi.com/tiki-read_article.php?articleId=128
Thanasis Arigiriou (Greece)

 Following conceptions and conjectures, a dialogue on vagueness as to what was introduced resulted. Unnoted science was not implemented as symbolism from an innovative dialogical discovery as a given result. The use of oriented conversation, to guided prepared form, and the unknown outcome of the first provided a whether on importance is a scale of two. A unanimous approach produced in decision where members where also features of choice and the abstracts of intelligence. To reach to thepoint which was already set as fare in unknown ideas, and mirroring to overcome standard ideosyncrancy, was plain enthusiasm, overly confound in literacy and overtly disrespectful of character setting.

]]> fredabraham Wed, 25 Jan 2012 14:11:00 +0100 http://www.impleximundi.com/tiki-read_article.php?articleId=127
Jean Alvarez, David L. Granoff, Allan Lundy

Lake Erie Brain Performance Institute,

Abstract

Purpose: This study examined the efficacy of EEG biofeedback (neurofeedback) in addressing the cognitive sequelae of cancer therapy, commonly known as “chemobrain” or “chemofog.” Approximately fifty percent of breast cancer survivors exhibit cognitive impairment within three weeks of beginning chemotherapy, and half of those have not recovered one year later. Neurofeedback, unlike compensatory strategies currently recommended by the National Cancer Institute and major cancer centers, has the potential to restore cognitive function.

Methods: Participants were 23 female breast cancer survivors, at least 40 years old and 6 months to 5 years post-chemotherapy, who had self-reported distressing cognitive symptoms. They received two 33-minute neurofeedback training sessions each week for ten weeks. Neurofeedback was delivered via Zengar NeurOptimal Professional equipment, a systemic approach that provides concurrent feedback on EEG activity in 16 standard time-frequency envelopes. Four self-reported outcome measures, the FACT-Cog (with subscales of Perceived Impairment, Impact on QOL, Comments from Others and Perceived Abilities), FACIT-Fatigue, Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI; with 8 subscales), and Brief Symptom Inventory 18 (BSI 18; 4 dimensions), were used to assess cognitive impairment, fatigue, sleep disturbance, and psychological distress. Participants were tested three times at regular intervals over a ten-week period prior to the beginning of neurofeedback, and then three more times during the neurofeedback regimen. A final testing took place four weeks post-neurofeedback.

Results: As hypothesized, repeated-measures analysis of variance revealed significant improvements on all 17 measures, most at p<.001, which were linear over the course of neurofeedback training. Improvement was particularly strong in cognitive functioning, fatigue, and psychological symptoms of somatization and depression. On four of the measures (Perceived Impairment, Impact on QOL, Use of Sleep Medications, and Depression), it was observed that there had been significant improvement (p<.05) over the three pre-tests, presumably due to participants’ optimism that neurofeedback would relieve their symptoms, but even after subsequent improvements were adjusted for this effect, results remained significant (p<.001), with the exception of Use of Sleep Medications, which was no longer significant. Improvements were generally maintained at the follow-up testing, with only slight and non-significant improvements or declines shown on some measures. Other variables such as reported depression, age of participant, months since chemotherapy, etc. were unrelated to degree of improvement.

Conclusion: Data from this pilot study support the hypothesis that EEG biofeedback has potential for reversing or reducing the cognitive sequelae of cancer treatment. Larger-scale studies with placebo groups are needed to confirm this result and to explore whether EEG biofeedback, administered concurrently with cancer treatment, might reduce the incidence or severity of cognitive impairment.

]]> fredabraham Fri, 20 Jan 2012 23:46:00 +0100