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The avionics network supports high-safety-level flight operations, with the analysis of transmission failures serving as a crucial means for its safety evaluation. Due to the time-dependent nature of the failure probability in avionics networks, traditional constant and unchangeable probability values can deviate from the actual situation under specific conditions. This deviation may lead to inadequate responses to occasional events and potentially cause flight accidents. A Dynamic Fault Tree (DFT) model for civil aircraft avionics network transmission failures, based on an optimized extended fuzzy algorithm, is introduced in this paper. Initially focusing on event correlations, a DFT is established for the transmission failure of the Avionics Full Duplex Switched Ethernet (AFDX). Subsequently, considering the variations between events, triangular fuzzy processing is applied to the event failure rates based on relative confidence levels. Finally, by optimizing the weakest t-norm operator, the failure probability intervals are aggregated and the fuzzy scale is regulated. Experimental results demonstrate that, compared to the static-minimum t-norm and traditional weakest t-norm methods, the proposed approach enhances the accuracy of the fuzzy failure probability intervals by 66.15% and 40.59%, respectively. Concurrently, it maintains consistency in the ranking of event importance, highlighting the superior effectiveness of the proposed method in analyzing transmission failures in avionics networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The avionics network supports high-safety-level flight operations, with the analysis of transmission failures serving as a crucial means for its safety evaluation. Due to the time-dependent nature of the failure probability in avionics networks, traditional constant and unchangeable probability values can deviate from the actual situation under specific conditions. This deviation may lead to inadequate responses to occasional events and potentially cause flight accidents. A Dynamic Fault Tree (DFT) model for civil aircraft avionics network transmission failures, based on an optimized extended fuzzy algorithm, is introduced in this paper. Initially focusing on event correlations, a DFT is established for the transmission failure of the Avionics Full Duplex Switched Ethernet (AFDX). Subsequently, considering the variations between events, triangular fuzzy processing is applied to the event failure rates based on relative confidence levels. Finally, by optimizing the weakest t-norm operator, the failure probability intervals are aggregated and the fuzzy scale is regulated. Experimental results demonstrate that, compared to the static-minimum t-norm and traditional weakest t-norm methods, the proposed approach enhances the accuracy of the fuzzy failure probability intervals by 66.15% and 40.59%, respectively. Concurrently, it maintains consistency in the ranking of event importance, highlighting the superior effectiveness of the proposed method in analyzing transmission failures in avionics networks.

Nowadays, physicalism is arguably the received view on the nature of mental states. Among the arguments that have been provided in its favour, the inductive one seems to play a pivotal role in the debate. Leveraging the past success of materialistic science, the physicalist argues that a materialistic account of consciousness will eventually be provided, hence that physicalism is true. This article aims at evaluating whether this strategy can provide support for physicalism. According to the standard objection raised against the inductive line of reasoning, the argument would beg the question by assuming some sort of metaphysical uniformity between consciousness and the rest of the natural domain. Here, I concede that there is a way to avoid this criticism. However, I argue that the argument still fails to support physicalism due to a structural problem of justification transmission. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper explores the anti-skeptical bearing of the kind of hinge epistemology I have developed in Extended Rationality. A Hinge Epistemology. It focuses, in particular, on the moderate account of perceptual justification, the constitutive response put forward against Humean skepticism, and the denial of the unconditional validity of the Closure Principle, which is key in rebutting Cartesian skepticism. Along the way, a comparison with Wittgenstein's own views in on Certainty and with the positions held by other prominent hinge epistemologists, particularly Moyal-Sharrock, Pritchard and Wright, is provided.

In this paper I aim to illuminate the significance of thought insertion for debates about the first-person concept. My starting point is the often-voiced contention that thought insertion might challenge the thesis that introspection-based self-ascriptions of psychological properties are immune to error through misidentification relative to the first-person concept. In the first part of the paper I explain what a thought insertion-based counterexample to this immunity thesis should be like. I then argue that various thought insertion-involving scenarios do not give rise to successful counterexamples to the immunity of the target class of self-ascriptions. In the second part of the paper I turn to defend a Metasemantic Explanation of why the immunity thesis holds. The Metasemantic Explanation rests on a reference-fixing story about the mental 'I' whose key contention is that introspective impressions play an essential role in fixing its reference. It is part of my argument in favour of the proposed reference-fixing story, as well as of the Metasemantic Explanation, that they respect the paradigmatic features of self-ascriptions of inserted thoughts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two major arguments have been advanced for the claim that there is a transmission failure in G.E. Moore's famous proof of an external world. The first argument, due to Crispin Wright, is based on an epistemological doctrine now known as 'conservatism'. Proponents of the second argument, like Nicholas Silins, invoke probabilistic considerations, most important among them Bayes' theorem. The aim of this essay is to defend Moore's proof against these two arguments. It is shown, first, that Wright's argument founders because one of its premises, viz., conservatism, invites scepticism and must therefore be rejected. Then the probabilistic argument is challenged, not because its formal part is dubious, but rather on the grounds that it incorporates an unconvincing philosophical claim as an implicit premise. Finally, the two most promising objections to dogmatism--the negation of conservatism--are repudiated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents the key themes of my Extended Rationality: A Hinge Epistemology. It focuses, in particular, on the moderate account of perceptual justification, the constitutive response put forward against Humean skepticism, epistemic relativism, the closure principle, the transmission of warrant principle, as well as on the applications of the extended rationality view to the case of the principle of the uniformity of nature, testimony, and the justification of basic laws of inference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The observations of nonlinear systems, exposed to a fading channel, greatly suffer from both transmission failure and signal fluctuation. This paper focuses on the design-oriented analysis of nonlinear estimator based on a modified extended Kalman filter (MEKF) over fading wireless networks. Bernoulli process and Rayleigh fading are taken into consideration to model transmission failure and signal fluctuation, respectively. The offline sufficient conditions are established for the boundedness of the expectations of the prediction error covariance matrices sequence (PECMS) of the MEKF, which shows the existence of a crucial arrival rate. Furthermore, based on the derived upper bound of PECMS, further sufficient conditions are provided for mean-square bounded estimate error of the MEKF using the fixed-point theorem. Numerical examples are also given to verify the analytical results and demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Knowledge is closed under (known) implication, according to standard theories. Orthodoxy can allow, though, that apparent counterexamples to closure exist, much as Kripkeans recognize the existence of illusions of possibility (IPOs) which they seek to explain away. Should not everyone, orthodox or not, want to make sense of 'intimations of openness' (IONs)? This paper compares two styles of explanation: (1) evidence that boosts P's probability need not boost that of its consequence Q; (2) evidence bearing on P's subject matter may not bear on the subject matter of Q. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to tackle the intermittent observations, this brief addresses the stochastic stability problem of the extended Kalman filter by means of analyzing the prediction error covariance matrix (PECM) and the estimation error performance of the estimator. With the transmitted measurement output of the filter modeled as a Bernoulli process, the existence of a crucial arrival rate is proved such that the PECM is mean bounded when the arrival rate exceeds a threshold value. Moreover, offline sufficient conditions for the stochastic stability of the estimation error are also derived. A numerical example is given to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed method. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Previous studies show that synaptic quantal release decreases during repetitive stimulation, i.e., synaptic depression. Neurotrophin brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) enhances neuromuscular transmission via activation of tropomyosin-related kinase receptor B (TrkB). We hypothesized that BDNF mitigates synaptic depression at the neuromuscular junction and that the effect is more pronounced at type IIx and/or IIb fibers compared to type I or IIa fibers given the more rapid reduction in docked synaptic vesicles with repetitive stimulation. Rat phrenic nerve-diaphragm muscle preparations were used to determine the effect of BDNF on synaptic quantal release during repetitive stimulation at 50 Hz. An ∼40% decline in quantal release was observed during each 330-ms duration train of nerve stimulation (intratrain synaptic depression), and this intratrain decline was observed across repetitive trains (20 trains at 1/s repeated every 5 min for 30 min for 6 sets). BDNF treatment significantly enhanced quantal release at all fiber types ( P < 0.001). BDNF treatment did not change release probability within a stimulation set but enhanced synaptic vesicle replenishment between sets. In agreement, synaptic vesicle cycling (measured using FM4-64 fluorescence uptake) was increased following BDNF [or neurotrophin-4 (NT-4)] treatment (∼40%; P < 0.05). Conversely, inhibiting BDNF/TrkB signaling with the tyrosine kinase inhibitor K252a and TrkB-IgG (which quenches endogenous BDNF or NT-4) decreased FM4-64 uptake (∼34% across fiber types; P < 0.05). The effects of BDNF were generally similar across all fiber types. We conclude that BDNF/TrkB signaling acutely enhances presynaptic quantal release and thereby may serve to mitigate synaptic depression and maintain neuromuscular transmission during repetitive activation. NEW & NOTEWORTHY Neurotrophin brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) enhances neuromuscular transmission via activation of tropomyosin-related kinase receptor B (TrkB). Rat phrenic nerve-diaphragm muscle preparations were used to determine the rapid effect of BDNF on synaptic quantal release during repetitive stimulation. BDNF treatment significantly enhanced quantal release at all fiber types. BDNF increased synaptic vesicle cycling (measured using FM4-64 fluorescence uptake); conversely, inhibiting BDNF/TrkB signaling decreased FM4-64 uptake.

This study discusses the external consensus problem for non‐identical networked multi‐agent systems with network data loss, considering both uniform and random consecutive data losses induced by long periods of transmission failure. A novel approach using a combination of prediction strategy and constant control gain based on gain error ratio (GER) is proposed for solving the problem. The main contribution of this study is a simple and practical way of selecting control gain using GER to help overcome prediction inaccuracies caused by the prediction process during a long period of consecutive data loss. The feasibility and performance of the proposed consensus protocol is demonstrated through simulation and practical experiment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses and resolves an epistemological puzzle that has attracted much attention in the recent literature-namely, the puzzle arising from Moorean anti-sceptical reasoning and the phenomenon of transmission failure. The paper argues that an appealing account of Moorean reasoning can be given by distinguishing carefully between two subtly different ways of thinking about justification and evidence. Once the respective distinctions are in place we have a simple and straightforward way to model both the Wrightean position of transmission failure and the Moorean position of dogmatism. The approach developed in this article is, accordingly, ecumenical in that it allows us to embrace two positions that are widely considered to be incompatible. The paper further argues that the Moorean Puzzle can be resolved by noting the relevant distinctions and our insensitivity towards them: once we carefully tease apart the different senses of 'justified' and 'evidence' involved, the bewilderment caused by Moore's anti-sceptical strategy subsides. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to Jim Pryor’s dogmatism, if you have an experience as if P, you acquire immediate prima facie justification for believing P. Pryor contends that dogmatism validates Moore’s infamous proof of a material world. Against Pryor, I argue that if dogmatism is true, Moore’s proof turns out to be non-transmissive of justification according to one of the senses of non-transmissivity defined by Crispin Wright. This type of non-transmissivity doesn’t deprive dogmatism of its apparent antisceptical bite. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Herbivorous insects frequently harbor bacterial symbionts that affect their ecology and evolution. Aphids host the obligatory endosymbiont Buchnera, which is required for reproduction, together with facultative symbionts whose frequencies vary across aphid populations. These maternally transmitted secondary symbionts have been particularly studied in the pea aphid, Acyrthosiphon pisum, which harbors at least 8 distinct bacterial species (not counting Buchnera) having environmentally dependent effects on host fitness. In particular, these symbiont species are associated with pea aphid populations feeding on specific plants. Although they are maternally inherited, these bacteria are occasionally transferred across insect lineages. One mechanism of such nonmaternal transfer is paternal transmission to the progeny during sexual reproduction. To date, transmission of secondary symbionts during sexual reproduction of aphids has been investigated in only a handful of aphid lineages and 3 symbiont species. To better characterize this process, we investigated inheritance patterns of 7 symbiont species during sexual reproduction of pea aphids through a crossing experiment involving 49 clones belonging to 9 host-specialized biotypes, and 117 crosses. Symbiont species in the progeny were detected with diagnostic qualitative PCR at the fundatrix stage hatching from eggs and in later parthenogenetic generations. We found no confirmed case of paternal transmission of symbionts to the progeny, and we observed that maternal transmission of a particular symbiont species ( Serratia symbiotica) was quite inefficient. We discuss these observations in respect to the ecology of the pea aphid. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contemporary discussions of skepticism often frame the skeptic's argument around an instance of the closure principle. Roughly, the closure principle states that if a subject knows p, and knows that p entails q, then the subject knows q. The main contention of this paper is that the closure argument for skepticism is defective. We explore several possible classifications of the defect. The closure argument might plausibly be classified as begging the question, as exhibiting transmission failure, or as structurally inefficient. Interestingly, perhaps, each of these has been proposed as the correct classification of Moore's proof of an external world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Developed a high precision dynamic model for Zero-Backlash High Precision Roller Enveloping Reducer based on the theory of multi-body dynamics. • Presented a process of transmission damage analysis combining multi-body dynamic method and finite element method. • Investigated the failure modes of Zero-Backlash High Precision Roller Enveloping Reducer under different working conditions. • Confirmed the accuracy of the simulation model by experiments. In this study, the analysis method combining multi-body dynamics (MBD) and finite element analysis (FEA) is used to study the transmission failure of the Zero-Backlash High Precision Roller Enveloping Reducer (ZHPRER). A dynamic model of the reducer is first constructed using the MBD method, and the correctness of the model is verified through experiment. The model is then applied to calculate the change in the contact force of the reducer during the meshing period under different speeds and loads. Finally, the maximum value of contact force in the meshing period of different working conditions is used as a boundary condition, and the weak position in the transmission process is analyzed by the FEA. At the same time, the validity of the FEA model is verified by an overload test. The results show that, within the rated load, the failure mode of the transmission is the fracture of the inner ring assembly shaft caused by fatigue damage or the fatigue deformation or cracking of the worm gear assembly hole. The change in speed and load significantly impacts its fatigue life. When the rated load is exceeded, the failure mode of the transmission is manifested by crushing of the outer ring, rolling bodies, and cracking of the worm gear assembly hole. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we focus on transmission and failure of transmission of warrant. We identify three individually necessary and jointly sufficient conditions for transmission of warrant, and we show that their satisfaction grounds a number of interesting epistemic phenomena that have not been sufficiently appreciated in the literature. We then scrutinise Wright's analysis of transmission failure and improve on extant readings of it. Nonetheless, we present a Bayesian counterexample that shows that Wright's analysis is partially incoherent with our analysis of warrant transmission and prima facie defective. We conclude exploring three alternative lines of reply: developing a more satisfactory account of transmission failure, which we outline; dismissing the Bayesian counterexample by rejecting some of its assumptions; reinterpreting Wright's analysis to make it immune to the counterexample. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This Introduction to the special issue on 'Skepticism and Justification' provides a background to the nine articles collected here and a detailed summary of each, which highlights their interconnections and relevance to the debate at the heart of the issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Crispin Wright has given an explanation of how a first time warrant can fall short of transmitting across a known entailment. Formal epistemologists have struggled to turn Wright's informal explanation into cogent Bayesian reasoning. In this paper, I analyse two Bayesian models of Wright's account respectively proposed by Samir Okasha and Jake Chandler. I argue that both formalizations are unsatisfactory for different reasons, and I lay down a third Bayesian model that appears to me to capture the valid kernel of Wright's explanation. After this, I consider a recent development in Wright's account of transmission failure. Wright suggests that his condition sufficient for transmission failure of first time warrant also suffices for transmission failure of supplementary warrant. I propose an interpretation of Wright's suggestion that shields it from objections. I then lay down a fourth Bayesian framework that provides a simplified model of the unified explanation of transmission failure envisaged by Wright. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To examine the age-related functional and morphological changes in neuromuscular junction, male adult rats were divided into young (3-month; n=14), adult (1-year; n=14) and old (2-year; n=14) groups. Seven rats in each group were subjected to unilateral phrenicotomy to induce compensatory increased activity on intact hemidiaphragm. Neuromuscular transmission failure (NF) after 2min repetitive contraction was evaluated by a comparison of forces generated by the phrenic nerve and muscle stimulations. The endplate area was analyzed by immunohistochemical staining procedure and confocal imaging. The relative NF to muscle fatigue was significantly lower in the old group than the young and adult groups, indicating a functional improvement of neuromuscular transmission with aging. The compensatory activated diaphragm indicated significantly larger endplate area and lower transmission failure than those in age-matched control groups in the young and adult groups, but not in the old group. These results indicated that functional and morphological plasticity of the neuromuscular junction decreased in old diaphragm muscle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The aim of this study was to evaluate the effects of neuromuscular electrical stimulation (NMES) training and subsequent detraining on neuromuscular fatigue mechanisms. Ten young healthy men completed one NMES fatigue protocol before and after a NMES training program of 4 weeks and again after 4 weeks of detraining. Muscle fatigue (maximal voluntary torque loss), central fatigue (activation failure), and peripheral fatigue (transmission failure and contractile failure) of the plantar flexor muscles were assessed by using a series of electrically evoked and voluntary contractions with concomitant electromyographic and torque recordings. At baseline, maximal voluntary torque decreased significantly with fatigue (P <0.001), due to both activation and transmission failure. After detraining, maximal voluntary torque loss was significantly reduced (P <0.05). In the same way, the relative decrease in muscle activation after training and detraining was significantly lower compared to baseline values (P <0.05). Short-term NMES training–detraining of the plantar flexor muscles significantly reduced the muscle fatigue associated to one single NMES exercise session. This was mainly attributable to a reduction in activation failure, i.e., lower central fatigue, probably as a result of subject''s accommodation to pain and discomfort during NMES. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]