Fluid MIDI Ribbon Guitar

This project was developed to create a new electronic instrument based off of a guitar. The design will give the user more chord combinations than are available on a typical guitar, the ability to retune each “string”, and customizable MIDI controller outputs, while trying to retain a similar playing style. The initial design for this project included implementing an onboard synthesizer (analog or digital). This idea was scrapped for time and cost considerations and replaced with MIDI output which will yield user customizable sound through virtual instruments, such as Massive

Charged Particle Motion Near a Magnetized Black Hole: A Near-Horizon Approximation

In this paper, the orbits of a charged particle near the event horizon of a magnetized black hole are investigated. For a static black hole of mass $M$ immersed in a homogeneous magnetic field $B$, the dimensionless parameter $b=eBGM/ (mc^4)$ controls the radius of the circular orbits and determines the position of the innermost stable circular orbit (ISCO), where $m$ and $e$ are the mass and charge of the particle. For large values of the parameter $b$, the ISCO radius can be very close to the gravitational radius. We demonstrate that the properties of such orbits can be effectively and easily found by using a properly constructed ``near-horizon approximation''. In particular, we show that the effective potential (which determines the position of the orbit) can be written in a form which is invariant under rescaling of the magnetic field, and as a result is universal in this sense. We also demonstrate that in the near-horizon approximation, the particle orbits are stationary worldlines in Minkowski spacetime. We use this property to solve the equation describing slow changes in the distance of the particle orbit from the horizon, which arise as a result of the electromagnetic field radiated by the particle itself. This allows us to evaluate the life-time of the particle before it reaches the ISCO and ultimately falls into the black hole.Comment: 14 pages, 5 figures. Typos are correcte

Structural analysis of the evolution of steroid specificity in the mineralocorticoid and glucocorticoid receptors

BACKGROUND: The glucocorticoid receptor (GR) and mineralocorticoid receptor (MR) evolved from a common ancestor. Still not completely understood is how specificity for glucocorticoids (e.g. cortisol) and mineralocorticoids (e.g. aldosterone) evolved in these receptors. RESULTS: Our analysis of several vertebrate GRs and MRs in the context of 3D structures of human GR and MR indicates that with the exception of skate GR, a cartilaginous fish, there is a deletion in all GRs, at the position corresponding to Ser-949 in human MR. This deletion occurs in a loop before helix 12, which contains the activation function 2 (AF2) domain, which binds coactivator proteins and influences transcriptional activity of steroids. Unexpectedly, we find that His-950 in human MR, which is conserved in the MR in chimpanzee, orangutan and macaque, is glutamine in all teleost and land vertebrate MRs, including New World monkeys and prosimians. CONCLUSION: Evolution of differences in the responses of the GR and MR to corticosteroids involved deletion in the GR of a residue corresponding to Ser-949 in human MR. A mutation corresponding to His-950 in human MR may have been important in physiological changes associated with emergence of Old World monkeys from prosimians

Robotic Baseball Throwing Arm

ME450 Capstone Design and Manufacturing Experience: Fall 2020We wanted to build a robotic arm that can help study the ways we measure speeds, accelerations and torques of a human arm through a baseball pitchDr. Stephen Cain, Mechanical Engineering Researchhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/164450/1/Robotic_Baseball_Throwing_Arm.pd

The Intermediation of Community and Infrastructure

The concepts of community and infrastructure reverberate throughout the information sciences. As digital information technology becomes ubiquitous in work and everyday life, scholars analyze how communities adapt to, and adapt, information infrastructure. This paper explores this topic through a cross-study of field scientists' changing data practices and of older adults learning technology. The contribution of this comparative study is the concept of an intermediary space. Both studies found individuals, referred to as intermediaries, who enable their communities to speak back to information infrastructure—that is, to have a voice in infrastructural development. In particular, the study noted the roles of those outside positions of power in the design and development of effective information infrastructure. Understanding this intermediary space involves attending to issues related to design and narrative. The implications of these findings include more effectively preparing the information sciences' workforce for these intermediary roles

The mentalistic basis of core social cognition: experiments in preverbal infants and a computational model

Evaluating individuals based on their pro- and anti-social behaviors is fundamental to successful human interaction. Recent research suggests that even preverbal infants engage in social evaluation; however, it remains an open question whether infants' judgments are driven uniquely by an analysis of the mental states that motivate others' helpful and unhelpful actions, or whether non-mentalistic inferences are at play. Here we present evidence from 10-month-olds, motivated and supported by a Bayesian computational model, for mentalistic social evaluation in the first year of life. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at http://youtu.be/rD_Ry5oqCY

Help or hinder: Bayesian models of social goal inference

Everyday social interactions are heavily influenced by our snap judgments about others’ goals. Even young infants can infer the goals of intentional agents from observing how they interact with objects and other agents in their environment: e.g., that one agent is ‘helping’ or ‘hindering’ another’s attempt to get up a hill or open a box. We propose a model for how people can infer these social goals from actions, based on inverse planning in multiagent Markov decision problems (MDPs). The model infers the goal most likely to be driving an agent’s behavior by assuming the agent acts approximately rationally given environmental constraints and its model of other agents present. We also present behavioral evidence in support of this model over a simpler, perceptual cue-based alternative.United States. Army Research Office (ARO MURI grant W911NF-08-1-0242)United States. Air Force Office of Scientific Research (MURI grant FA9550-07-1-0075)National Science Foundation (U.S.) (Graduate Research Fellowship)James S. McDonnell Foundation (Collaborative Interdisciplinary Grant on Causal Reasoning

Local and macroscopic electrostatic interactions in single α-helices

The non-covalent forces that stabilise protein structures are not fully understood. One way to address this is to study equilibria between unfolded states and α-helices in peptides. For these, electrostatic forces are believed to contribute, including interactions between: side chains; the backbone and side chains; and side chains and the helix macrodipole. Here we probe these experimentally using designed peptides. We find that both terminal backbone-side chain and certain side chain-side chain interactions (i.e., local effects between proximal charges, or interatomic contacts) contribute much more to helix stability than side chain-helix macrodipole electrostatics, which are believed to operate at larger distances. This has implications for current descriptions of helix stability, understanding protein folding, and the refinement of force fields for biomolecular modelling and simulations. In addition, it sheds light on the stability of rod-like structures formed by single α-helices that are common in natural proteins including non-muscle myosins

Case Report: Possible Links between Sickle Cell Crisis and Pentavalent Antimony

For over 60 years, pentavalent antimony (Sbv) has been the first-line treatment of leishmaniasis. Sickle cell anemia is a disease caused by a defect in red blood cells, which among other things can cause vasooclusive crisis. We report the case of a 6-year-old child with leishmaniasis who during treatment with meglumine antimoniate developed a sickle cell crisis (SCC). No previous reports describing the relationship between antimonial drugs and sickle cell disease were found. Reviews of both the pathophysiology of SCC and the mechanism of action of Sbv revealed that a common pathway (glutathione) may have resulted in the SCC. ChemoText, a novel database created to predict chemical-protein-disease interactions, was used to perform a more expansive and systematic review that was able to support the association between glutathione, Sbv, and SCC. Although suggestive evidence to support the hypothesis, additional research at the bench would be needed to prove Sbv caused the SCC