Metastability and Eye Movements: A Dynamical‑Systems Interpretation

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  1. Why metastability is a natural language for gaze behavior The idea that perception, attention, and neural activity evolve through transiently stable states has deep roots in cognitive science and neuroscience. Concepts such as attractors , basins , noise‑induced transitions , and escape times appear in work on perceptual switching, decision‑making, and neural population dynamics (Kelso, 1995; Rabinovich et al., 2008; Deco & Jirsa, 2012). Eye movements, especially the alternation between fixations and saccades ,   fit remarkably well into this metastable picture. The Freidlin–Wentzell theory of rare events (Freidlin & Wentzell, 2012) provides a rigorous mathematical language for these intuitions. 2. Fixations as metastable states  Consider the gaze position X t as the state of a stochastic dynamical system. During a fixation the  gaze remains confined to a small region, microsaccades and noise generate small fluctuations, and the gaze tends to return...
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GLOBAL WARMING: THE 21ST CENTURY RELIGION!

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"When people stop believing in  orthodox religion, rather than believe in nothing, they believe in anything!"  
[Gilbert Keith Chesterton, 1874 - 1936]


Reading in the huffingtonpost [here] the note of Peter Lilley on the climate change issue  it becomes plain how deceiving is the uncritical faith in the Global Warming. 
"One of the ersatz religions which fills the void in recent years is belief in Catastrophic Man-Made Global Warming. It claims to be based on science. But it has all the characteristics of an eschatological cult" [Peter Lilley]

 Neither statistical evidence nor the social-economic consequences of their model seem to move the global-warming followers from their theoretical assumption based on the direct relationship of the increase of the global temperature to the raise of carbon dioxide emission.

 But gradually some criticism on this position begin to make inroads. 
     Sir Francis Bacon (1561 – 1626)
« In rebus quibuscumque difficilioribus non expectandum, ut quis simul, et serat, et metat, sed praeparatione opus est, ut per gradus maturescant. »« In all things, and especially in the most difficult, we should not expect to sow and reap the same time, but you need a slow preparation, so that they gradually mature.»
(from:  Sermones Fideles sive Interiora Rerum, n. XLV)


New research suggests Earth may warm more slowly as reported by Alex Kirby in the Scientific American [here], whilst in a recently published works [1 and  2], the russian physicist H.I. Abdussamatov [Pulkovo Observatory, St. Petersburg, Russia] has presented the results of studies in the variation of the energy solar radiation absorbed by the Earth. 

 According to the scientist the origin of climate change is that the Sun is entering a phase of Grande Minimum of its activities irradiation. 
"From early 90s we observe bicentennial decrease in both the TSI and the portion of its energy absorbed by the Earth. The Earth as a planet will henceforward have negative balance in the energy budget which will result in the temperature drop in approximately 2014. Due to increase of albedo and decrease of the greenhouse gases atmospheric concentration the absorbed portion of solar energy and the influence of the greenhouse effect will additionally decline. The influence of the consecutive chain of feedback effects which can lead to additional drop of temperature will surpass the influence of the TSI decrease. The onset of the deep bicentennial minimum of TSI is expected in 2042±11, that of the 19th Little Ice Age in the past 7500 years – in 2055±11."
[H.I.Abdussamatov] 



 One caveat that should be taken seriously by the leaders, given the situation of energy deficit in which populist and short-sighted policies have stuck many countries.



1 H.I. Abdussamatov,(2013).  Grand Minimum of the Total Solar Irradiance Leads to the Little Ice Age, J Geol Geosci 2013 2: 113
2 H.I. Abdussamatov,(2013).  Bicentennial decrease of the total solar irradiance leads to unbalanced thermal budget of the Earth and the Little Ice Age. Applied Physics Research, vol 4(1): 178-184.

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