In this essay I argue that many nonhuman animal beings are conscious and have some sense of self. Rather than ask whether they are conscious, I adopt an evolutionary perspective and ask why consciousness and a sense of self evolved—what are they good for? Comparative studies of animal cognition, ethological investigations that explore what it is like to be a certain animal, are useful for answe...

in this paper, we are examining the relationship between stock trading costs and commitment components and find both abnormal and normal commitments associated with these costs are associated. moreover, stock trading costs have a greater influence by both abnormal and normal negative commitments more than positive commitments. further analysis has shown that in general, investors are unable to ...

We present a family of pairs of finite element spaces for the unaltered Hellinger–Reissner variational principle using polynomial shape functions on a single triangular mesh for stress and displacement. There is a member of the family for each polynomial degree, beginning with degree two for the stress and degree one for the displacement, and each is stable and affords optimal order approximati...

CONTEXT The benefits of continuity of pediatric care remain controversial. OBJECTIVE To determine whether there is an association between having a continuous relationship with a primary care pediatric provider and improved quality of care by parental report. DESIGN Cross-sectional study. SETTING AND POPULATION Seven hundred fifty-nine patients presenting to a primary care clinic completed...

BACKGROUND Continuity of care is a key component of care in complex and chronic conditions. Despite its importance, it is often absent in chronic-disease management. One challenge has been identifying tools to measure care continuity. In one context important to families, namely pediatric palliative care, we undertook a project to identify continuity and to pilot the use of network analysis as ...

Theoretical study shows that Said-Bézier generalized Ball curves (SBGB curves) are distinctly superior to Bézier curves in evaluation, degree elevation and reduction. However in practical engineering, there is no effective algorithm for explicit multi-degree reduction of SBGB curves with endpoints constraints in the world. It is going against designing and applying generalized Ball curves. In o...

Spatial networks display both topologic and geometric variations in their structure. This study investigates the measurement of road network structure. Existing measures of heterogeneity, connectivity, accessibility, and interconnectivity are reviewed and three supplemental measures are proposed, including measures of entropy, connection patterns, and continuity. Proposed measures were applied ...

For motion systems such as cam-follower mechanisms and loads driven by servo motors, this paper considers the design of system inputs that are continuous up to their M -th derivative and minimize some design criterion subject to user-defined constraints. This problem is tackled by optimizing a piecewise-linear, continuous parametrization (based on a large number of second-order B-splines) of th...

This paper first shows how the B ezier coefficients of a given degree n polynomial are perturbed so that it can be reduced to a degree m ð< nÞ polynomial with the constraint that continuity of a prescribed order is preserved at the two endpoints. The perturbation vector, which consists of the perturbation coefficients, is determined by minimizing a weighted Euclidean norm. The optimal degree n ...