I think there is not much of an issue - in the end it is all about taxes. If he had payed all the right taxes (which is hard because he is not a resident) - he would not be in any trouble (maybe someone still would point out to him that he is not supposed to do this without proper residence or equivalent), but it probably would not be such a huge issue.
just to clarify maybe - and I apologize for not doing my homework right now by looking up what has been done in the last 4 years, which is a long time - Compartment models do not fall under the black box theory. Black boxes are for examples "neurons" that are represented from a more theoretical standpoint by a large matrix that describes the response function - disregarding the underlying biology of the model, yet doing a good job for some applications.
Yes I do know about the hippocampal models, and yes they are not that far off from cortical neurons. Most of these models model the "interesting behaviour" of neurons, i.e. supra-threshold behaviour, spikes, spike-trains, LTP and so on. In general this is been done well, and some interesting theories rest on these models. However, reading the fine print in the methods of some of these papers, a wide range, including unphysiological values, of basic parameters appears. Now having done this myself, it is necessary to tune certain parameters to make the model work and to make it simulate a certain behaviour that we have experimental data on, but it is hard to then go and derive conclusions about behaviour that is not supported by experimental data, since there is some uncertainty about some very basic stuff in the model.
While one can treat neurons (or a whole neuronal network) as a black box that produces output starting from a given input, this intentionally disregards the inner workings of the box (neuron or network). This however has been a successful strategy to model the bahaviour of a neuron with a single (set) of functions (which are admittedly complex) , but it is very hard to derive predictions for behaviour that is not within the range of the experimental data that is used to generate the model.
I concur that it is easy to model a simplified neuron, but a real neuron has regions of the cell body that react differently, it has dendrites, an axon and butons - which is where the real computational work in a neuron is performed. There are also some basic problems - last time I checked (which was about 4 years ago, if someone knows better please correct me) - there was not even a model that realistically simulated the eletrotonic response to current injections into the cell body in a cortical pyramidal cell - one of the more interesting cells to study..
Lets take this apart some more:
In fact, there are animals that don't appear to sleep, but actually do (dolphins, for example). What they do is sleep half their body and brain at a time. So there's obviously some benefit, as they've evolved the necessity to remain awake, but still get the sleep they need.
yes they maybe sleeping, but are they at the same time awake ? Just beacuse they are swimming does not mean that they are awake. AFAIK dolphins do not hunt, eat or mate with one half of their brain asleep.
More to the point - you are assuming that because most humans do not move during sleep (sleep-walking anyone?) sleep is associated with a lack of movement.
(Unless it really happens to be some anomaly of evolution (another strike against creationism), like the appendix or spleen, that affects basically the entire population of living creatures). But I would think the dolphins proved otherwise, since they'd be the first to do away completely with sleep.
you make it sound like the spleen is a disease. just because we can do without it (true for almost every appendix, not true for every spleen - look up OPS(S)I - does not mean that it does not have a function. Same btw could be said about the frontal lobes of the brain - you could do without large parts of them, keep reading/. and some people might not even notice..
you do know that your one eye (the one that you closed) provides input to both hemispheres of the brain and your brainstem - so conversly the other eye (which is reading/.) is providing input to both sides of the brain and your brainstem - hence not a lot of relaxing going on (on a global brain scale)..
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I think there is not much of an issue - in the end it is all about taxes. If he had payed all the right taxes (which is hard because he is not a resident) - he would not be in any trouble (maybe someone still would point out to him that he is not supposed to do this without proper residence or equivalent), but it probably would not be such a huge issue.
just to clarify maybe - and I apologize for not doing my homework right now by looking up what has been done in the last 4 years, which is a long time - Compartment models do not fall under the black box theory. Black boxes are for examples "neurons" that are represented from a more theoretical standpoint by a large matrix that describes the response function - disregarding the underlying biology of the model, yet doing a good job for some applications.
Yes I do know about the hippocampal models, and yes they are not that far off from cortical neurons. Most of these models model the "interesting behaviour" of neurons, i.e. supra-threshold behaviour, spikes, spike-trains, LTP and so on. In general this is been done well, and some interesting theories rest on these models. However, reading the fine print in the methods of some of these papers, a wide range, including unphysiological values, of basic parameters appears. Now having done this myself, it is necessary to tune certain parameters to make the model work and to make it simulate a certain behaviour that we have experimental data on, but it is hard to then go and derive conclusions about behaviour that is not supported by experimental data, since there is some uncertainty about some very basic stuff in the model.
While one can treat neurons (or a whole neuronal network) as a black box that produces output starting from a given input, this intentionally disregards the inner workings of the box (neuron or network). This however has been a successful strategy to model the bahaviour of a neuron with a single (set) of functions (which are admittedly complex) , but it is very hard to derive predictions for behaviour that is not within the range of the experimental data that is used to generate the model.
I concur that it is easy to model a simplified neuron, but a real neuron has regions of the cell body that react differently, it has dendrites, an axon and butons - which is where the real computational work in a neuron is performed. There are also some basic problems - last time I checked (which was about 4 years ago, if someone knows better please correct me) - there was not even a model that realistically simulated the eletrotonic response to current injections into the cell body in a cortical pyramidal cell - one of the more interesting cells to study..
Lets take this apart some more: In fact, there are animals that don't appear to sleep, but actually do (dolphins, for example). What they do is sleep half their body and brain at a time. So there's obviously some benefit, as they've evolved the necessity to remain awake, but still get the sleep they need.
/. and some people might not even notice..
yes they maybe sleeping, but are they at the same time awake ? Just beacuse they are swimming does not mean that they are awake. AFAIK dolphins do not hunt, eat or mate with one half of their brain asleep. More to the point - you are assuming that because most humans do not move during sleep (sleep-walking anyone?) sleep is associated with a lack of movement.
(Unless it really happens to be some anomaly of evolution (another strike against creationism), like the appendix or spleen, that affects basically the entire population of living creatures). But I would think the dolphins proved otherwise, since they'd be the first to do away completely with sleep.
you make it sound like the spleen is a disease. just because we can do without it (true for almost every appendix, not true for every spleen - look up OPS(S)I - does not mean that it does not have a function. Same btw could be said about the frontal lobes of the brain - you could do without large parts of them, keep reading
you do know that your one eye (the one that you closed) provides input to both hemispheres of the brain and your brainstem - so conversly the other eye (which is reading /.) is providing input to both sides of the brain and your brainstem - hence not a lot of relaxing going on (on a global brain scale)..